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Please post all introductions in this forum. Tell us how you found the philosophy forums, what interests you about philosophy, and a little about you, such as your age, where you live, what you do for a living, etc.
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Astro Cat
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Hi there!

Post by Astro Cat »

Ok, I'm not good at these introduction things. I used to be fairly active in a few forums a while back and haven't done so for a while, so I feel like I'm revisiting an old friend in a new form in some ways.

I've been interested in philosophy since I was a child (I'm in my 30's). Though I didn't know a word for it at the time, I suppose I was always most interested in epistemology as my primary concern was usually something like "well how do [you] know?" In my youth, I started exploring the philosophy of religion as I went back and forth between theism, agnosticism, and atheism. (I settled on the latter, if it matters; but don't worry: I'm not obnoxious about it as I fear some online personalities can be).

I don't have a lot of formal training in philosophy (I'm a scientist, finishing my MS in physics and starting PhD bridge shortly after. I do astrophysics, specifically have been working on galaxy morphology and quiescence but am pushing towards active galactic nuclei to dabble in more straight up cosmology). However, I do read philosophical literature when I can. I use Zotero for my research needs and I happen to keep a few folders of "just for fun" stuff that consist of an eclectic mixture of whatever philosophical thing I was thinking about at the time (e.g., looks like the most recently added was "What is a Negative Property?" by Baron et al. 2013).

What do I want out of a forum? I don't know, I'm a full time grad student and full time night worker. I kind of miss being able to read and make posts to blow off some steam in between doing other things.

Anyway, hello! Hopefully I'll be interested by some posts around here!
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Sy Borg
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Re: Hi there!

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Hi Astro Cat. Good to see you here.

Do you find the mind-melting scale of the entities you study influences the way you think about life?
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Astro Cat
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Re: Hi there!

Post by Astro Cat »

Sy Borg wrote: June 17th, 2022, 3:29 am Hi Astro Cat. Good to see you here.

Do you find the mind-melting scale of the entities you study influences the way you think about life?
That's a good question. I don't know that it does simply because the scales are too impossibly huge to imagine. I have very little conception of what a million is, I have even less conception of what it means for a photon from a galaxy with a redshift of 5 to be 12ish billion years old. If I try to make an analogy to myself using scaling (e.g. "okay, what if the Milky Way is the size of a basketball"), it's still so stupidly outside of human experience to really form an intuitive idea.

The vastness doesn't make me feel like my life is small or meaningless or anything like that, if that's what you mean. I mean, it is small and meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but thinking about astro fills me with wonder rather than nihilism!
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Astro Cat
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Re: Hi there!

Post by Astro Cat »

How long do I get "This post is not visible" flags? Does this wear off on its own over time, or does someone have to fully activate my account?
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Sy Borg
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Re: Hi there!

Post by Sy Borg »

Astro Cat wrote: June 17th, 2022, 3:34 am
Sy Borg wrote: June 17th, 2022, 3:29 am Hi Astro Cat. Good to see you here.

Do you find the mind-melting scale of the entities you study influences the way you think about life?
That's a good question. I don't know that it does simply because the scales are too impossibly huge to imagine. I have very little conception of what a million is, I have even less conception of what it means for a photon from a galaxy with a redshift of 5 to be 12ish billion years old. If I try to make an analogy to myself using scaling (e.g. "okay, what if the Milky Way is the size of a basketball"), it's still so stupidly outside of human experience to really form an intuitive idea.

The vastness doesn't make me feel like my life is small or meaningless or anything like that, if that's what you mean. I mean, it is small and meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but thinking about astro fills me with wonder rather than nihilism!
The sensation I feel is awe. Even the size of the Earth and Moon are beyond me, let along the Sun. Galaxies make me feel microbial. If our body's bacteria were sentient, maybe we would look something like a galaxy to them?
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Astro Cat
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Re: Hi there!

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Sy Borg wrote: June 17th, 2022, 11:50 pm The sensation I feel is awe. Even the size of the Earth and Moon are beyond me, let along the Sun. Galaxies make me feel microbial. If our body's bacteria were sentient, maybe we would look something like a galaxy to them?
I feel this too. We are very small! ^_^

Then it gets even crazier if we think of possibilities like eternal inflation, if our visible cosmos is just one decayed bubble in the inflaton field among many. It's turtles all the way down in some cases.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
--Richard Feynman
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Sy Borg
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Re: Hi there!

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Astro Cat wrote: June 18th, 2022, 1:14 am
Sy Borg wrote: June 17th, 2022, 11:50 pm The sensation I feel is awe. Even the size of the Earth and Moon are beyond me, let along the Sun. Galaxies make me feel microbial. If our body's bacteria were sentient, maybe we would look something like a galaxy to them?
I feel this too. We are very small! ^_^

Then it gets even crazier if we think of possibilities like eternal inflation, if our visible cosmos is just one decayed bubble in the inflaton field among many. It's turtles all the way down in some cases.
Yes, there's no reason to think this was the only BB, just whether it happens serially or in parallel.

A smaller scale, but still mind-bending are galactic superclusters. I still remember being amazed with the first news of Laniakea and the Shapley Supercluster. A whole other set of interaction between entities at the largest (?) of scales.
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Astro Cat
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Re: Hi there!

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Sy Borg wrote: June 18th, 2022, 1:18 am Yes, there's no reason to think this was the only BB, just whether it happens serially or in parallel.

A smaller scale, but still mind-bending are galactic superclusters. I still remember being amazed with the first news of Laniakea and the Shapley Supercluster. A whole other set of interaction between entities at the largest (?) of scales.
Yes! And the voids. Those creep me out. If anything were to give me nihilistic feelings it would be the voids, the vast mostly-emptinesses. There was an episode of Star Trek: Voyager where they were travelling through a void and it really creeped me out.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
--Richard Feynman
Atla
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Re: Hi there!

Post by Atla »

Welcome! I think we're like right in the middle of the golden age of astronomy, and in a few weeks it will get even much better! :)
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Astro Cat
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Re: Hi there!

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Atla wrote: June 18th, 2022, 6:48 am Welcome! I think we're like right in the middle of the golden age of astronomy, and in a few weeks it will get even much better! :)
Yes! Though not for me, haha!

I use Hubble's WFC3, a lot of my data comes form the CANDELS surveys. I have a 0% chance of getting a proposal OK'd for JWT with all the senior/more established people in front of me :(

(But that's OK, my data is fine for what I'm doing. Now if I want to go past z = 5 in the future though...)
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
--Richard Feynman
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Astro Cat
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Re: Hi there!

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Astro Cat wrote: June 18th, 2022, 7:13 am Yes! Though not for me, haha!

I use Hubble's WFC3, a lot of my data comes form the CANDELS surveys. I have a 0% chance of getting a proposal OK'd for JWT with all the senior/more established people in front of me :(

(But that's OK, my data is fine for what I'm doing. Now if I want to go past z = 5 in the future though...)
Sorry I am tired and forget to be more clear on acronyms and stuff.

WFC3 = Wide Field Camera 3

z = redshift
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
--Richard Feynman
Atla
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Re: Hi there!

Post by Atla »

Astro Cat wrote: June 18th, 2022, 7:13 am
Atla wrote: June 18th, 2022, 6:48 am Welcome! I think we're like right in the middle of the golden age of astronomy, and in a few weeks it will get even much better! :)
Yes! Though not for me, haha!

I use Hubble's WFC3, a lot of my data comes form the CANDELS surveys. I have a 0% chance of getting a proposal OK'd for JWT with all the senior/more established people in front of me :(

(But that's OK, my data is fine for what I'm doing. Now if I want to go past z = 5 in the future though...)
That's still awesome, how much observing time do you get on the WFC3?

Do you think there could be a major revision to the Big Bang theory in like half a year, once the JWT images on the first galaxies are in? So many problems already around the BB.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Hi there!

Post by Sy Borg »

Astro Cat wrote: June 18th, 2022, 1:51 am
Sy Borg wrote: June 18th, 2022, 1:18 am Yes, there's no reason to think this was the only BB, just whether it happens serially or in parallel.

A smaller scale, but still mind-bending are galactic superclusters. I still remember being amazed with the first news of Laniakea and the Shapley Supercluster. A whole other set of interaction between entities at the largest (?) of scales.
Yes! And the voids. Those creep me out. If anything were to give me nihilistic feelings it would be the voids, the vast mostly-emptinesses. There was an episode of Star Trek: Voyager where they were travelling through a void and it really creeped me out.
Still, there are occasional galaxies tucked away in the voids. Maybe they are especially life-friendly, given reduced cosmic rays? Apparently our solar system exists in a void within the Milky Way, which is admittedly junior league compared to the giant voids like the Bootes.
Atla
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Re: Hi there!

Post by Atla »

I think there was one study that suggested that the cold spot in the CMB could actually be caused by a long tube-shaped void, and the void is positioned in such a way that we are looking right through the whole thing.

Sounds like the simplest solution, but then how reliable is the CMB in general, maybe it's basically justthe imprint of the stuff the light traveled through after it was emitted ? Although that still wouldn't explain the Hawking-points for example.
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Astro Cat
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Re: Hi there!

Post by Astro Cat »

Atla wrote: June 19th, 2022, 12:29 am I think there was one study that suggested that the cold spot in the CMB could actually be caused by a long tube-shaped void, and the void is positioned in such a way that we are looking right through the whole thing.

Sounds like the simplest solution, but then how reliable is the CMB in general, maybe it's basically justthe imprint of the stuff the light traveled through after it was emitted ? Although that still wouldn't explain the Hawking-points for example.
I hadn't seen this until now. One of these days I'll get around to talking about the CMB in my astro post.

We study the CMB using spherical harmonics:
Image

When applied to the whole sky we get l's like this:
Image

It's common to plot the multipole moments with the power spectrum because it's a powerful test of cosmological models: we can predict the shape and location of the curves on such a plot in a model-sensitive way. Since we find data points that do indeed fall along model curves, I'd say that the answer to the question "how reliable is the CMB in general" is "very reliable" since it produces testable outcomes from first principles reliably.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
--Richard Feynman
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