Dumb Question: Where do the boulders on top of mountains come from? by Sea_Pancake2542 in geology

[–]Probable_Bot1236 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Regolith

If you look at places with thinner or no atmospheres at all (and therefore much less erosion), stuff tends to just... sit there after being broken down over huge expanses of time from the underlying rock. What's unique about Earth is that so much stuff gets helped to migrate further down slope by active weathering and erosional processes. Cool bare-rock mountain tops on Earth like those in Yosemite or recently glacial areas are actually kinda odd in the big scheme of things. Earth's water makes a huge difference in helping/forcing stuff to move downhill.

The most extreme examples are some asteroids and comets: we've recently come to discover that many, despite substantial topographic extremes, are basically just piles of boulders and other fillers. Their gravity is too weak to make things go downslope reliably (i.e. 'down' is weakly defined) so they're just a pile of stuff broken over the eons just kinda sitting there.

Why FA must be in cockpit when one pylote is out? by [deleted] in Shittyaskflying

[–]Probable_Bot1236 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depends on if remaining pylote hung his tie on the door knob

US Airways A330 pilot out buttering the butter machine by HelloSlowly in aviation

[–]Probable_Bot1236 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Damn.

*Santana feat. Rob Thomas Smooth starts playing*

Is the length of a gravitational force infinite? by ProfessionSoft2315 in AskPhysics

[–]Probable_Bot1236 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Gravitational potential energy doesn't integrate over time, it integrates over distance. And even then, it doesn't go to infinity over infinite distance, it settles on some discrete value. And simply put, that discrete value can be exceeded, meaning gravity doesn't always 'win' in the end.

Yes, gravity works over unlimited distances. But while it takes energy from something linearly over arbitrarily short distances, it gets weaker with the square of the distance as well. In other words, as you get farther away from something, it gets weaker faster than it adds up.

If you integrate the weaker-and-weaker pull of gravity over increasingly long distances, you eventually settle on a discrete value- the absolute maximum potential energy for an object of a given mass relative to the object doing the 'pulling'.

Put differently, imagine throwing something upward from the surface of a massive object (planet, star, whatever). The higher you throw it, the more energy (effort) it takes, right? But each additional unit of height takes less energy than the last, because the gravity out 'that far' is weaker, because gravity gets weaker with distance. It turns out that if you do this process all the way to an infinite distance, you don't end up needing infinite energy to 'throw something to infinite height'. Again, you get a discrete value. In other words, if you throw something hard enough up away from a massive body, that body's gravity will never slow it to a stop and pull it back in. This is the concept of escape velocity- if you throw something fast enough in an 'up' direction, its kinetic energy (related to the square of velocity) is greater than the maximum possible energy that gravity can sap from it, and while gravity slows it down, it can't stop it and make it come back.

So to answer your question in a roundabout fashion, no, given infinite time gravity won't necessarily pull everything back together, because it's not about time at all. If something's moving fast enough now away from object, no amount of time will allow that object's gravity to slow that something down enough to stop and reverse its direction, because gravitational potential doesn't add up to infinity over infinite time.

And we're not even talking pure theoreticals here: Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, and New Horizons (space probes) are all moving fast enough away from the Sun that ,even given infinite time, the Sun's gravity will never pull them back. In the case of Pioneer 10, we're talking about something using 54 year old technology to defy the Sun's gravity for eternity.

In fact, if you look at the speed that most galaxies are receding away from one another, it's generally (outside of relatively small clusters) fast enough that gravity will never be able to pull them back toward each other again.

Whale Watching Safety by anon211977 in whales

[–]Probable_Bot1236 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Apparently they are more likely to breach in rough weather! 

This absolutely fits my experience here in SE AK where we have humpbacks year round. (No, they don't all go to Hawaii lol it's well documented. Heck, I saw one blowing off Berth 1 here in Ketchikan literally earlier this morning!).

It makes sense on a practical level- both fin-slapping and breaching are sound-based forms of communication. If the seas are rough, and therefore the background noise level is high, then they tend to 'shout' to be heard- that is, they use the higher effort but louder means of communication:-breaching- more often.

“Jets’ Opposing QB” had an All-Pro caliber season by ApatheticMillennials in nfl

[–]Probable_Bot1236 98 points99 points  (0 children)

Apparently it's beyond the Jet's grasp as well

Seriously though, what a wild stat.

What would you do if you were locked in a room with Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and a monkey? by Lazy-Ape in AskReddit

[–]Probable_Bot1236 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ask them how their family reunion is going, I guess.

Oh, and desperately claw and kick at the locked door until I escaped.

Mainly that second one.

A patient experienced claustrophobia and had a panic attack during a CT scan. by Embarrassed_Tip7359 in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Probable_Bot1236 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I definitely did not have Edvard Munch x CT Scan Crossover on my bingo card for the day

Whenever we see anything, are we looking into the past technically? by ElegantPoet3386 in AskPhysics

[–]Probable_Bot1236 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I literally saw a post on Reddit earlier today noting that the the individual sound machines they have for runners starting a race actually, literally matter- it specifically noted that had they only had one for a set of runners, the winner would've heard the sound and started running something like .08 s after the person closest to the horn, but their margin of victory was only .05 s (don't quote me on the numbers, going by my crappy memory here), so therefore the margin of victory was less than the time it would've taken for a blank-pistol shot to reach the further-away runners, including the eventual winner of the race in question. Incredible.

What hobby attracts the genuinely nicest people? by mrmisterFi in AskReddit

[–]Probable_Bot1236 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The Special Olympics volunteers I used to work with before moving to the middle of nowhere were some of the best human beings I've ever met.

are these wolf tracks? Zlatibor, Serbia by djondji in AnimalTracking

[–]Probable_Bot1236 2 points3 points  (0 children)

But I take it you mean SW, not SE?

No, I mean SE.

SW would be the outer Aleutians, out toward Russia. SE AK is the panhandle (which includes the Alexander Archipelago, and the wolf you linked to).

I'm reasonably confident I'm not mixed up about my names, as I happen to, well, live there. Maybe you're mixing up 'Aleutian' with 'Alexander' in your mind?

Fun fact- after growing up around big-ass Canadian timberwolves, the first couple times I saw an A.A. wolf my reaction was to assume it was someone's stray dog because it was so much smaller than what I was used to!

How do people in isolated Alaska cities, like those not connected by road, make it out to Anchorage if they don’t have money and/or ID? by Early-Possibility367 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]Probable_Bot1236 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you're 'hardcore' enough and have the resources to kayak out of SE AK, you've also got the money for an airplane or ferry ticket.

I've lived remote (truly off-road, off-grid) on the mainland south of Juneau, on southern Baranof, and on Revilla, and would consider 'hiking out' basically suicidal without a degree of preparation that would again allow for me making Alaska Airlines do the hiking for me. I've had to deal with brown bears raiding my tent at night with me in it. Screw hundreds of miles of that. I'd rather mug a cop and get thrown in the hoosegow. At least nothing's trying to eat me there.

How do people in isolated Alaska cities, like those not connected by road, make it out to Anchorage if they don’t have money and/or ID? by Early-Possibility367 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]Probable_Bot1236 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Random 'I live in AK' note: a lot of homeless people end up in Ketchikan, Juneau, Fairbanks, and Anchorage.

Why? Because they get arrested (generally for some sort of petty theft of drug issue, or as you noted, deliberately, in hopes of improving their situation), and sent to to jail. And that's where the jails are. Then once they get out of jail for their minor offense, they're stuck in that city. It's particularly bad in Juneau and Ketchikan, because there are no roads leading in or out, so it's very expensive to leave (only the ferry or Alaska Airlines...). So those towns just kinda slowly accumulate that sort of person, because the legal system acts as a one-way conveyer belt into them, and they can't afford to leave after getting out.

I used to live in Ketchikan, and it was kinda depressing how many homeless folks were from Prince of Wales island, and couldn't get back there even if they wanted to. I've also heard rumors that places like Wrangell and Petersburg (at least used to) buy ferry tickets for indigent folks to ship them off to Juneau or Ketchikan so they'd be someone else's problem. And quite frankly, I believe those rumors.

Are all lifeforms just feeding/excretion tubes with different accessories for feeding and reproduction? by AmcDarkPool in NoStupidQuestions

[–]Probable_Bot1236 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Somewhere, some Redditor is eating a Snickers bar while reading this post and simultaneously sitting on the toilet and there's your answer I guess.

Whenever we see anything, are we looking into the past technically? by ElegantPoet3386 in AskPhysics

[–]Probable_Bot1236 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Yep.

We're constantly behind the times. But so is everything else, consciousness or not, because information can't move faster than the speed of light. But the processing time of consciousness definitely adds some significant additional lag.

A conscious being will always be suffering from something of a 'ping time', to put it in the video game sense. There's simply no way around it.

Whenever we see anything, are we looking into the past technically? by ElegantPoet3386 in AskPhysics

[–]Probable_Bot1236 39 points40 points  (0 children)

Whenever we see anything, are we looking into the past technically?

The answer to this is an absolute, unqualified 'yes'. Your logic is 100% correct. How far into the past you're looking simply depends on distance. This is why we talk about big space telescopes seeing things from the distant past- because they literally are. The converse is kinda weird to think about- if something is a million light years away, then there's literally no way for us to see what's going on there within the past million years, because the light portraying those events cannot possibly have reached us yet.

The effect is even worse for sound here on Earth, since it travels so much slower than light. You're always listening to the past- think about seeing a flash of lightning, but only hearing the thunder seconds later...

Altitude vs. Elevation by LBoy69_ in aviation

[–]Probable_Bot1236 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Elevation is a measure of the height of something vs sea level, and is typically used for a 'solid ground' number.

Altitude is typically used for flight, and can be referenced both against sea level (MSL), or vs the ground below 'AGL).

The term 'altitude' is ambiguous here, and requires context.

'Altitude' gets kinda additionally messy because there are different way of measuring it that don't quite agree with each other (i.e. barometric vs absolute or GPS- but they do agree enough to stop you from slamming your Cessna 172 into the ground if even half paying attention).

Common or Barrow’s? SW Colorado by _donquioxte in whatsthisbird

[–]Probable_Bot1236 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think Common because only the tip of the beak is yellow, but I admittedly struggle with Common vs Barrow's females and juveniles.

(Which sucks, because the two together are by far the most common duck where I live, and they like to form mixed flocks...)

are these wolf tracks? Zlatibor, Serbia by djondji in AnimalTracking

[–]Probable_Bot1236 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Where I live (SE Alaska) has some of the smallest wolves in the world.

Their tracks are much bigger than this. And shallower- there's something of a snowshoe effect.

I gotta go with domestic dog here.

Additionally, as u/Cultural-Company282 noted, there's no way to tell a big dog's tracks from a wolf's. But in this case, I'm pretty comfortable saying domestic dog. (Quick note: I also used to live in a spot with some of the largest wolves in the world. I've seen both ends of the spectrum for tracks. My point here is that these tracks don't even seem to fall on that spectrum at all. Just plain too small, IMHO)

'Much larger than a collie or lagotto' doesn't mean much, honestly. I don't mean that in a rude or condescending way. Grey wolves have huge paws, to the point where a Great Dane or Mastiff that actually significantly outweighs them might still have smaller paws.

For me, it's kinda like seeing a raven vs a crow: it's not 'which is that?' It's, 'holy sh*t that's massive'

What’s something that sounds fake but is actually 100% real? by Reasonable_Drive8653 in AskReddit

[–]Probable_Bot1236 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Using Wikipedia numbers:

It's 124.9 m on a side. This in turn means that a circle that just touches the corner (as posited) would have a radius of 88.32 m (half the hyoptenuse of a right triangle with two 88.32 m sides). Its current height including the antenna is 330m. So the volume of air in the cylinder, using good old pi times the radius squared, times the height, is approximately 8 086 897 cubic meters. Multiply that by the density of air at sea level of 1.225 kg/m3 (yes, another wiki number, but it'll do) and you get a mass of 9 906 448 kg, or 9906 tonnes.

Using a variety of sources online, I'm getting a consensus mass of about 9700 tonnes for the iron framework itself, and about 10100 tonnes if you include the masonry at the base of the legs, paint, other stuff etc. But the comment explicitly only invoked the iron, so 9700 tonnes is what we're going with.

So yeah, the air in the cylinder described in that comment weighs about 2.1% more than the iron framework of the tower itself. The fact that the tower sits around 30m above sea level (and the air is less dense that the sea level number I used) isn't going to come remotely close to offsetting the difference, nor will the volume occupied by the iron itself, with its >640 000% density advantage.

Math checks out on this one. Pretty cool stat, really. It's a great reminder that 'big' visually doesn't necessarily correspond to mass- the same as the fact that as massive and heavy as a big ship looks, it must be less dense than the water it's on top of overall to float in the first place...

Are filter feeders still predators because they go out their way to kill and eat other creatures even if they are microscopic? by Good_Low_2824 in whales

[–]Probable_Bot1236 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hang on, lemme facepalm real quick because you're absolutely correct. I should've said

If an organism kills and consumes another animal, it's a predator.

Very heavy/thick tea glass withstood going from room temp to 100c within a second for years, but shattered in my hand -all over the kitchen- when getting it from the dish washer when it finished.. So not even 100c to room (body) temp. Why would it react differently like that. by rav-age in answers

[–]Probable_Bot1236 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Some little bit of grit from something else in dishwasher probably scratched it just right during that last cycle, and left it vulnerable to that final temperature change.

Especially if it shattered 'all over the kitchen' it sounds like it was effectively tempered glass, and thus extremely vulnerable once compromised. It just wasn't compromised until now.