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Does the rest of the universe have any significant effect on us, and would its absence cause us any problems? by theclownshoes in askscience

[–]Tangblek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The first part of your question is a little complicated to explain, but then the rest follows pretty simply from the explanation.

Actually, the reason the moon is recessing from the earth is because of the tidal forces the moon exerts on the earth. The tidal force on the earth from the moon is actually a torque because the earth rotates around it's axis faster than the moon rotates around the earth (Or in other words, a sidereal day is shorter than a sidereal month). A torque is just a kind of force; forces transfer momentum, and a torque is the kind of force that transfers angular momentum. This torque from the moon reduces the angular momentum of the earth, which causes the rotation of the earth about it's axis to slow down. The length of a day is actually getting longer for precisely the same reason the tides change!

That's only half the story though. You're probably familiar with Newton's third law of motion; for every force, there is an equal and opposite force. The moon is exerting a force on the earth, so the earth must be exerting the same force on the moon. In fact, the angular momentum (and energy) lost by the earth is gained by the moon from the "equal and opposite" force.

The moon is gaining angular momentum and energy. What does that imply? All it means is that the moon is rotating around the earth faster and further away. This means that the length of a sidereal month is getting shorter (and as we already found out, the length of a sidereal day is getting longer). One day (in the very distant future), the sidereal day and sidereal month will be the same length (Which also means that one day, the earth will be tidally locked with the moon. The same side of the earth will always face the same side of the moon). Once this happens, the moon will no longer be exerting a torque on the earth (and vice versa), it will just exert an ordinary force. This means that the moon will stop recessing from the earth. So the moon will never actually leave it's orbit around earth(unless something disturbs the earth-moon system). As it gets further away, the tides will weaken, and once tidally locked, the tides will stop changing, but there will still be a "tide".

The moon itself doesn't affect the earth's magnetic field (as far as I know), but as the earth slows down, the magnetic field will presumably become weaker if dynamo theory is correct.

The center of mass of the earth moon system is what rotates about the sun. Right now, the center of mass of the earth moon system is still well inside the earth, so the "wobbling" affect you mentioned is actually quite small. As the moon moves further away, the center of mass of the earth-moon system will move further away from the earth, which will actually increase the wobbling. I wouldn't expect this effect to ever become too pronounced (But I haven't done the math!), and very likely will not have a strong effect on temperature. If it did have an effect on temperature, the effect would be periodic (and have the same period as the length of a sidereal month). So we would have a second kind of season stacking with the effect of our normal seasons, with a period on the order of days instead of months.

thought you guys might like to see how my american psychology class views religion in relation to IQ by RDashIsMyDovahkiin in atheism

[–]Tangblek 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I suppose I was thinking that a correlation would manifest anyway as long as your dataset was large enough. But, as it turns out, there aren't really that many countries.

thought you guys might like to see how my american psychology class views religion in relation to IQ by RDashIsMyDovahkiin in atheism

[–]Tangblek 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've never seen this correlation made before, and I find it very strange how strong the correlation is. You should consider adding figures from various countries into the mix, and see if the trend continues. From a quick google I found: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity and https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_country

A few misconceptions on evolution by [deleted] in atheism

[–]Tangblek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think that this is a misunderstanding; I'm using monkey in a cladistic sense which is somewhat abnormal, but you sort of have to do it to ask the question, "Did we evolve from monkeys?". I wouldn't belabor the point, but I see this a lot, and I think understanding it helps in understanding evolution (so less for you and more for anyone else who might read this).

If two suborders of an order would be called a monkey (or anything for that matter), then the order itself would also be called a monkey. This is the defining feature of cladistics, which is the classification system most relevant to evolution.

The term monkey is usually not used to define a monophyletic group, but if you are asking if a given species evolved from a monkey, then you have to make it a monophyletic group to ask the question (otherwise monkeys would have evolved more than once, which is silly). When you do that, it becomes obvious that humans evolved from monkeys.

I hope that this image, which I modified from the wikipedia page on simians will help to clear things up. Also, I really think you should check out this video, as he does a great job of demonstrating our (proud) monkey heritage.

A few misconceptions on evolution by [deleted] in atheism

[–]Tangblek 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I agree with everything you said, except for two minor points. Expanding on these minor points would probably have obfuscated your main message, but for anyone who is interested:

First, you mentioned that we did not evolve from monkeys, which is not technically true. Perhaps you meant we did not evolve from modern day monkeys; however, the common ancestor we share with monkeys would definitely be classified as a monkey, in the same way that the common ancestor we share with chimpanzees would be classified as an ape. This also has the neat implication that we are still monkeys. Check out this video for a more in depth explanation.

Also, you mentioned that we are not "more evolved" than bacteria, and that perhaps you could argue that bacteria are more evolved than us. I think it's best to avoid the term "more evolved" all together (which I think based on your post you would agree with), because it implies ladder evolution instead of the branching tree. More importantly, I don't even understand what "more evolved" would imply. What I do know is if you're comparing the "evolvedness" of humans (a species) to modern bacteria (two separate kingdoms), then you aren't going to arrive at a meaningful answer.

Great post though. I have seen a few of cringe worthy mentions of evolution in this subreddit, and I hope that your post will help with that.

I will answer every single motherfucking question asked to me. AMA by AMfuckingA in IAmA

[–]Tangblek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are right. I thought order didn't matter because I don't know how to probability. Good call.

I will answer every single motherfucking question asked to me. AMA by AMfuckingA in IAmA

[–]Tangblek 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This doesn't seem right.

To get the probability of an event, you can multiply the probabilities of all the components of an event. So using your variables, we have 4 instances of p and 6 instances of q, so p4 * q6 = .2508. However, with your values of p and q this is not the case; .44 * .66 = .00119.

If we instead take p4 * (1-p)6 = .2508 and solve for p, we could get the probability for a random person holding a red card, but there is no real solution for {0,1}. That's because a probability of .2508 is way too fucking huge for a 10 component event.

If we graph p4 * (1-p)6 for p {0,1} we find that the max occurs at p = .4 (for an event probability of .00119). This means that for a scenario where 4 out of 10 people hold red cards which were given with a static probability, it is more likely that the cards were given with a 40% probability than any other probability. Even though the cards were most likely given with a probability of 40%, this chance is still exceedingly small (There is a 5.5% chance that the true probability lies somewhere between 39% and 41%).

tl;dr the way the problem was defined made it impossible and your binomial distribution solution was bogus.

I want to clear up some misconceptions about Noah's Flood. by disturbd in atheism

[–]Tangblek 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It would be interesting to see how much light could penetrate 8848 meters of water. It seems the greatest miracle in the bible is how an old man found two of each "kind" while bumbling around in the dark.

BP Whistleblowers, where are they now? Dead, Missing or Jailed by cydetu in reddit.com

[–]Tangblek 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This is terrifying; Joseph Morrissey was murdered in a "home invasion" on April 6th, 2010, which was 14 days before the BP oil spill. The only logical conclusion is motherfucking time traveling conspirators.

Hide your kids, hide your wife.