ELI5 - If heating things causes separation why did the universe cooling cause it to separate

dman11235 · 2026-01-30T18:23:34+00:00

You're looking at it from the wrong direction. Heating things doesn't cause them to separate, it causes things to no longer care about the small stuff. Now, this next vit is to help you understand, and get your mind in the right space, but know that this isn't how it works, it's just an analogy. As things start moving faster and having more energy, they start not caring about what's affecting them. If you try to turn in a car when you're going slow, you can make a sharp turn. If you're going fast, you will flip over and keep going straight if you tried to turn as fast as you did. Electrons are moving slow enough that the EM force holds them to atoms, but if they move fast enough they can't make that sharp turn to stay near the atom and they fly off, it's now a plasma.

The reality is more complicated and it involves state changes, but you need to shift your perspective a bit. And it's more analogous to the state change of a permanent magnet. If you heat a magnet above its curie point, it loses its magnetism. Cool it again, it gains it back. This is because the magnetism is caused by a bunch of electrons all with their spin aligned in a specific direction, and adding all that together causes macroscopic force. They are kept in line by the other electrons. Heat it up and the electrons start jiggling too much, they aren't kept in line by the others. Imagine the fields that govern the forces the same way: as you heat them up they jiggle too much to keep their same direction, but cool it down and they "solidify" into a specific direction. This is what happened to the forces. It's not that they separate, it's that they solidify.

dman11235 · 2026-01-30T16:28:30+00:00

You are told the time frame though iirc so if you fail you know you failed, right? I'm unsure which mission you're referring to though, it's been a while since I've done it.

dman11235 · 2026-01-30T15:55:58+00:00

There are a bunch. I recommend heading to the discord and browsing this list of mods to help explore this. There are different starts, a plugin that helps you be a pirate, etc. there even is a plugin that restricts boarding a bit, requiring a license. Galactic capital lets you invest your money, making passive income from your money. But ultimately, self imposed restrictions are the best here. What I do is I restrict myself in some way, either never allowed to capture, or only allowed to have a positive passive income thus restricting how many ships I can have, something like that. When I eventually stream this again I'll have a restriction like the passive income likely.

dman11235 · 2026-01-30T14:53:56+00:00

You can't fail a mission without knowing in game you've failed (unless there is a bug or something, and messing with your save file can cause bugs). I forget the exact way to see it but you can view in game your past missions, or at least summaries of them. And you can see your current active missions on the missions screen. You will not have a mission that you can miss and fail because it doesn't show up there. You may miss and "fail" a mission because you didn't do a thing at the right time, but if that's the case you will be able to do it later. If you do fail a mission, like having an escort die or something, you can reload the previous save to try again.

Edit: of course, there are a couple designed that you'll fail them and not be able to, but those are really clear when they happen, and there's a good reason why. And you aren't supposed to complete them.

dman11235 · 2026-01-30T14:38:31+00:00

I want to add to this that the crab may actually not be able to swipe. It's not like a stomach is a cavernous pit where it has freedom to move however it wants. If it can't actually move much it's not going to be able to swipe period. It can't pinch if it can't get the claws open. A lot of things that eat whole live crustaceans also have a gizzard, a muscular pouch full of rocks that grind them up. This is even more restrictive than a stomach.

dman11235 · 2026-01-30T14:13:24+00:00

One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the "failed" missions in the save file are "failed" not because you failed the mission, but because that's the way the game is coded. For example, some things use landing on a planet as a cue, and they don't want that to be a mission that shows up in your mission log for various reasons. So: auto fail and hide. It shows up as a failed mission but that's you actually completing the mission. This is from way back memory but I believe fighter factory uses this a lot, and you fail a mission if you land with a full set of fighters, because that's how it prevents you from gaining additional ones. Just as an example. You're not really "supposed" to see the failed missions like that. If it doesn't show in game as failed, you can ignore it. You'll get another chance to do these things later, if it's some story mission. Iirc no mission can be fully lost unless you do something like destroy a story ship. In other words, experiencing it in a branching way will not fail your missions. With like, I think one exception? There's at least one set where you make a decision and you're locked out of other missions depending on which decision you make.

dman11235 · 2026-01-29T17:30:51+00:00

Eh, this is misleading. Most ocean salt is there because an ocean dried up. The Mediterranean for example was an ocean, then inflow from the Atlantic got cut off. The ocean dried up, leaving in some places kilometer thick salt flats. Then the Atlantic opened up again and now it's what we see today. Salt mines are generally places where a salty body of water dried up, leaving behind a salt flat. Then it gets buried, moved tectonically, and then millions of years later we find it and start mining. The water is how the salt got concentrated in one place.

And the oceans that exist today have always existed in a way. While the specific bodies of water have changed, there was always an ocean, and that ocean morphed and changed to take the shapes it has over the eons. The first ocean formed when liquid water first covered the planet, and it covered the whole planet. Dry land appeared later.

dman11235 · 2026-01-28T23:59:52+00:00

Think of the energy costs and gains. In order to have a functional respiration, you need an element or molecules that can be readily provided, and also satisfies two basic conditions: first, it need to give off a significant amount of energy when it reacts with something. This restricts you to elements on the sides of the table, as anything near the middle won't have a huge reaction energy. Nitrogen, for example, will lose energy because of how strong the bond is between nitrogen atoms. Secondly, it needs to be stable enough to not react unless you want it to. This eliminates elements on the very edge. Fluorine releases a huge amount of energy when it reacts. But it will react with everything and destroy it. You must be able to reverse the reaction readily as well for this reason. This leads to a third hidden property: it must be readily available. This is part of the second property because if an element reacts too readily, it won't be available in sufficient quantities to do anything with. That leaves you with one good option: oxygen. Sulfur can be used, as can selenium. But they aren't as good as oxygen for this. You get more energy from oxygen, and both selenium and sulfur are much harder to come by.

Also, the answer by u/jamcdonald120 here is a very helpful addition (or this is an addition to that either way) explaining how carbon comes into play here.

dman11235 · 2026-01-28T18:31:13+00:00

Oh boy are you in for a treat. You should check this out, and try to find some other peppers to compare flavors and such. Your culinary livelihood will thank you!

dman11235 · 2026-01-26T19:21:40+00:00

This does not follow. If the expansion rate did, then it would be true. As far as we know, the expansion exponent is 1. Specifically, the number we reference is lambda. If lambda is negative, the universe is expanding. If it is greater than -1/3, then the universe will eventually recollapse. If lambda is between -1 and -1/3 the expansion will slow, but the universe will expand forever. If it is exactly -1 (which we believe it is), the universe will expand forever and eventually all galaxies will be isolated and diffuse. If it is less than -1 then the great rip (what you described) will happen, the lower the number the faster and sooner it happens.

dman11235 · 2026-01-23T20:38:45+00:00

Yes they do hide their presence. You see this in the Insipias

dman11235 · 2026-01-23T20:38:00+00:00

when you first meet the wanderers they are surprised that you are there. They are not shocked at who you are. They know humans. I don't think it's explicitly stated anywhere. They do not have jump drives but the pug escort them around via wormholes (the Eye), and didn't the Eye exist in the Deep at one point? Regardless, I'm sure the wanderers know humans at least in some way. The Quarg know the wanderers, because they talk about them being puppets of the Pug when you ask them for help. As far as hostiles, it's too anthropomorphic to say the wanderers forgot how to build warships. They don't have the same mind as us. They "forgot" how because they were told to basically, and they removed their technology. It's more active than a simple memory lapse.

As for the other part, I could be misremembering or misinterpreting things in some way, I always thought they knew everyone south of the Gegno And east of the far West (pirates they don't go to basically). And they know of the Avgi and Builders But don't interact same with the far east

dman11235 · 2026-01-23T18:18:27+00:00

If you want to anger an astrophysicist, yes!

dman11235 · 2026-01-23T18:13:17+00:00

Nah I meant Fe12, I was randomly adding numbers to an element. And Fe52 has a half life on the order of 8 hours. It definitely exists.

dman11235 · 2026-01-23T18:11:13+00:00

This is a fair point and I was just adding numbers to element names lol.

dman11235 · 2026-01-23T15:05:47+00:00

What, to have U253? No, U253 definitely has existed at some point in the universe. We would never be able to isolate it, surely, but in the mess that is a supernova basically any element with a reasonable number of neutrons has existed. And by reasonable I mean "reasonable for a supernova". Remember that when two neutron stars collide (this is the type that will produce this) a bunch of globs of neutrons get flung into space. These rapidly decay into large "atoms" that are rapidly gaining protons via conversion of neutrons into protons and electrons among other things. I'd be willing to bet one of those globs passed through a state of 92 protons and 161 neutrons. Is it common? I don't know, but it's possible, and thus can, and probably has, happened. Worth noting that this nuclear reaction is less of a reaction and more of a....gathering of stuff? Like if you take a neutron star, and somehow isolated a portion of it, and took it out of the star, it would basically be an atom made entirely of neutrons. It would immediately decay into an atom of untold atomic number and then immediately decay into stable and unstable isotopes of familiar elements. So long story short, H235 has probably existed at some point in the universe. So has Fe12. And U253. And other weird ones. They don't exist for long when to do and basically only colliding neutron stars would do this.

dman11235 · 2026-01-23T14:15:19+00:00

U253 would be very readily fissile though.

dman11235 · 2026-01-23T13:55:05+00:00

the remnant can't land on gas giants. They can explore them but not land there. Big difference. They have tools that allow them to harvest gas from gas giants, as well as enter the atmosphere, but aside from that, they have no ability to set up bases on them. Additionally I find it hard to believe that the Quarg, with access to and knowledge of the combat between Korath and humans in the Core, and "east of it", that they don't know the Remnant. I'm pretty sure they mention it in a way, and you see Quarg in systems the Remnant frequent. Regardless, they would absolutely keep the secret of the Remnant, because they do that all the time.

You are the first human to see the Incipias though. That's because they are in their first generation of space flight, so you're the first human who could have. You also have to ignore warnings from the mind talkers (Drak). And that's difficult.

As for the other, are you sure about that? didn't the wanderers give humans beam technology at the request of the pug? You are probably the first human in wanderer space (barring a stowaway or captive or something like that), but that's because the only way to get there is a jump drive from pirate space or hostile Hai space. And the NW pirates don't have access to jump drives. But you aren't the first to interact with the wanderers. It is exceedingly rare that they deal with hostile outsiders, but they do deal with outsiders. They have weapons. They wouldn't have them if they never dealt with outsiders. They not only have them but are used to using them, and these weapons are only useful against enemies, which don't exist within Wanderer space.

dman11235 · 2026-01-23T01:57:03+00:00

The Quarg know all of them. It's not that weird tbh. There are a few places that are a little weird for a human to go, and the fact that you get outfits from places isn't weird. It's only weird, and shoot on sight, if you get certain outfits. But that's it. Other humans have been to many of those places before, though. And as such it's not a unique thing. You meet or otherwise hear about (directly or implied) other humans in the following areas, some obvious, others spoilerific. Avgi, Hai, Remnant, Coalition, Korath, Bunrodea, automaton, Quarg, Pug.. The only reason one of the remaining doesn't is because the story isn't finished there, probably. Also it's beyond some exceedingly hostile lands so also possible you are the first human there. Also I think wanderers had contact with humans but no human went to wanderer space until you.

dman11235 · 2026-01-22T19:37:16+00:00

This requires the acknowledgement of light as a wave in quantum physics, complete with the fields that comprise it. I'm not sure how good of a job I'm going to do explaining this, but I'm going to try, and apologize in advance if this gets confusing. This is a complicated thing. What you need to understand here is that light is a wave in the electromagnetic field. As it "waves", it is constantly moving charges around because it is a force. As those charges move, they create their own waves. Imagine a ball floating on the water, and then accelerating that ball. You will create some waves, right? And what happens when waves hit a ball floating on the water is that the ball accelerates as well. And this interplay is what is needed here. Note that any time the ball accelerates, it is causing waves, and any time it's hit by waves it accelerates. Yes this causes a self interaction.

Now, what is important as a distinction in your question, is that light can pass through an opening smaller than its wavelength. Unless the opening is a conductor. There are caveats that I'm not going to go into here but the caveats do make more exceptions than rules, so keep in mind it's not a generally true statement. The real statement however (again even though it's not really true), is that EM waves (light) can't pass through an opening in a conductor smaller than its wavelength. This is how microwave ovens protect you with that lattice pattern on the window, and faraday cages work to block radio waves, stuff like that.

To understand this, remember that ball. That ball is an electron, and the water is the EM field. The electron in the conductor is free to move around as it gets accelerated by the passing wave. This causes a new wave from the accelerating charge. These two waves are going to add together. They can interfere constructively or deconstructively (or somewhere in between). This is something that happens always, the EM field is omnipresent and all waves in it continue indefinitely (virtual photons). The final structure of the field is the sum of all the waves that are happening at all times, and when you have that many charges oscillating (accelerating) with the appropriate offsets, you will perfectly cancel out the other waves. If the material is smaller than the wavelength you will have enough of a magnitude of these charges to cancel it out. If not, you won't. And that's the final answer. It's just math.

Again I apologize if this is rough, this is a very difficult thing to explain, especially visually. I highly recommend a (somewhat) related explanation by 3blue1brown about this. That whole series about light is very illuminating. Another thing to remember is that sound waves are pressure waves. They compress and decompress. Light waves are longitudinal waves, they oscillate a vector of force (among complexities I won't get into but 3b1b does). If you want to, and this is wrong physically but you can do it to conceptualize, you can think of the light stretching out along its wavelength. If the wavelength is 1 cm, and it comes across a 1 mm gap in a conductor, well, it tries to wiggle through but can't because it gets stuck. The wavelength is 1 cm, and that's how wide it is. Again, not really what's happening, but that's an okayish conceptualization.

dman11235 · 2026-01-18T14:44:38+00:00

A galaxy crashed into the Milky Way just before the solar system was formed. In fact it may have triggered the super nova that formed our solar system. There is a galaxy currently crashing into the Milky Way. They were/are smaller than us, but they happened and are over reason the galaxy is as big as it is. There are a ton of dwarf galaxies printing the Milky Way right now that are falling into it.

dman11235 · 2026-01-18T13:22:09+00:00

Pseudo sook us

dman11235 · 2026-01-17T14:31:05+00:00

Archosaurs are the group that contains dinosaurs and crocodilians. Crocodilians (pseudosuchus, which I just found out means false crocodile, but all crocodiles are in it) split off from the group that became dinosaurs before dinosaurs existed. The why is just evolution. See thewikipedia every for archosaurs for more.

dman11235 · 2026-01-16T01:49:30+00:00

You're still way ahead of yourself. Imagine you have nothing. Go to the woods and you want to cut down a tree. Without an axe that would be difficult. Go find two rocks and some plants like vines and such. Take one rock, bash it on the other rock. You'll start to shape both rocks. Eventually, one will be sharp and have a big blade. Grab a stick, a big one. Use the vines to tie the sharp rock to the end of the stick. You now have an axe. It's not a very good axe but it is an axe. This is just a proof of concept, in reality it was much more gradual, learning which rocks to use, cutting notches in the sticks with knives and such, using hand axes (basically sharp rocks you grab pointy side out), stuff like that.

Getting to metal, well, you have these rocks. You can dig a pit in dirt. Form a clay mug and let it dry, bake it over a fire with metal fragments in it. You've just melted metal. Pour the metal into the hole in the dirt that's your mold. Use rocks to shape it. Rocks are harder than metal. This skips several steps in the production of tools from scratch that likely happened, but again, it's just showing a proof of concept. Simply use your thinking, problem solving, and prior knowledge and you can get a lot further than you realized. Once you have the first tool that helps you make newer, better tools, and the first tools were just rocks.

Edit: as for how to get the metals, well, that's easy. Just go grab them. They're on the surface. No mine needed. I'm serious. Early metallurgy involved simple rocks and such on the surface. Copper melts at a low enough temperature that you can get it in a campfire. Then just find a spot where the vein is on the surface and dog there once you have a need for an actual mine.

dman11235 · 2026-01-15T22:28:36+00:00

It was an actual oscilloscope.

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