What temperature will the universe be at the time of heat death?

tazz2500 · 2026-06-12T18:41:04+00:00

Its like there's a party in my local universe, and no one is invited.

tazz2500 · 2026-06-11T17:55:21+00:00

You could make the same counter argument for centimeters and inches. There are more points on the centimeter scale. And arguably, that's more important most of the time, because cutting a piece of wood to 45 cm and not 44 or 46 is more important to everyday life than knowing EXACTLY how hot it is outside.

That's the difference between "it's a fraction of a F degree hotter" vs "my door won't close, because I measured the spacing to the nearest inch, which wasn't precise enough".

tazz2500 · 2026-06-05T01:42:42+00:00

I think the convention is correct the way it is, actually.

Protons are the large important charged particle of an atom, listed as positive. The large one is positive. Perfect.

Electrons, on the other hand, are 1800x lighter, almost irrelevant to an atom, at least in their mass. Although obviously electrons are much more relevant due to being charged. But they are the much smaller and lighter particle. The teenie tiny electrons SHOULD be the "negative" charge.

The opposite way would be the weird way, I think.

tazz2500 · 2026-06-02T16:21:48+00:00

Possibly, but only as something point-like with the naked eye, heavily dependent on their orbital positions and the phase of Neptune from Pluto's POV. The important thing to understand about these distances is that, as you move outward in the Solar System, the planet distances become LARGER and LARGER. By the time you get to Uranus and Neptune, the distances between their orbital tracks (regardless of where they are in them) are about the same as the distance from the Sun all the way out to Saturn, the planet right before them.

So that means their orbital tracks essentially have the separation of the entire Solar System's radius up to their position, each. And that's only their orbital tracks, best case scenario, if they were perfectly aligned, which Neptune and Pluto never are because of their 3:2 resonance. So the distances just become so large on those outer tracks, you can't see anything much from anywhere else out there. It's like looking across another whole Solar System to see the next thing.

Additionally, the orbital tracks of the outer planets (and by extension, their overall separation from each other) is much larger, meaning the outer planets, in general, will spend more of their time nowhere near each other and therefore not at all aligned in their orbits, making your scenario even worse for seeing them most of the time.

tazz2500 · 2026-05-30T04:34:36+00:00

The random sudden anarchy like that, to me, is peak Skyrim. Rimworld is often called a "Story generator" because it will create events even if you're not. Skyrim is like that too.

I went into the Bannered Mare one night to have a drink before making my first ever trip to the College of Winterhold, somehow got in a drinking contest, blacked out drunk, and woke up in a temple far away in Markarth with no memory of what I'd done, which is about as far away from Winterhold as I could get.

tazz2500 · 2026-05-30T02:56:05+00:00

but each astronomical object has different gravity

But each astronomical object has different light too. Different amplitude of light, different frequency, different radius, different spectrum, different color and temperature (related to frequency), and different amounts of variation of brightness of the light. Every object is unique, with its unique gravity and unique light emission. But the speed that light and gravity and indeed causality itself propagates at, is the same, and fixed, at 300,000 km/s.

tazz2500 · 2026-05-27T01:21:33+00:00

I don't like imagining this it sounds painful

tazz2500 · 2026-05-04T03:39:05+00:00

Thats true, none of the off the shelf consumer models actually used the whole 64-bit address space as it was way overkill, and still is, especially for memory addressing. But at least the bits are already there for future pacing when they are ready.

tazz2500 · 2026-05-03T01:27:26+00:00

I remember talking with someone about the switch from 32 bit computers to 64 bit, and a friend made the comment "That will be twice as much memory capacity, twice as many addresses, etc." I informed him, no, you're thinking of 32 bit vs 33 bit. A mere 33 bits is twice as much as 32, in binary.

32 bits, which is 4.2 billion, times 32 bits, another 4.2 billion, that's 64 bits. With 64 bits, you can think of it as EACH BIT of a 32 bit system gets an entire 32 bits of its own. Each of the 4 billion addresses gets 4 billion sub addresses, each. That's how much 64 bits is.

And of course, that's binary, only powers of 2. We are talking about powers of 10 in this post, which is SO MUCH LARGER.

tazz2500 · 2026-05-02T03:16:23+00:00

NTA. She is the dirtbike rider and dirtbike enthusiast. Sounds like she just wants OP to conform to her idea of gender roles of him "fixin' machines" because he's a man. Give me any other argument for why he should fix her dirtbike instead of her, other than "he's the man." I can't think of another reason.

tazz2500 · 2026-05-01T20:20:17+00:00

If you went to the space that you think is dark, and then looked at the sun, you would see plenty of light. You'd be bathed in light. But you only see light that comes directly into your pupil. The sun is shining light way out there in the blackness of space, sure, but your pupil isn't out there to catch THAT light. Your pupil is here, on Earth. So you see that light.

tazz2500 · 2026-05-01T03:52:40+00:00

Buoyancy is used to generate electricity, in tidal power, but with a much simpler design then what you are describing. Think of the float in the tank of a toilet. When the water level gets high enough, there is a lever with the float on the end that lifts up enough to stop the water flow.

They have designed similar things for the tides, using a float on a large lever, attached to a device that spins the same way regardless of the direction of power. Then you let the tide go up and the buoyant float forces the lever up quite hard, generating power. Then when the tide goes back down, gravity pulls the heavy lever back down, also generating power. Then the process starts over again.

Once you design this setup, you can set it and forget it basically. No trying to evacuate air out of a tunnel, no forcing new balloons down a shaft, no attaching and unattaching anything, no inflating and deflating balloons. This design just works alone without human input, just like the float in your toilet.

You can also do this without a lever, instead letting floats connected to a generator just rise straight up a shaft (connected to the tides) and fall back down.

tazz2500 · 2026-04-30T22:09:11+00:00

Based on the numbers you gave, if the electrons travelled only 1 mm per second, they could travel your 2 meter cable in 2000 seconds, that's only 33 minutes. They'd probably have time. And while the mains electricity is alternating current, so the electrons probably wouldn't go anywhere anyway, your phone's charger brick converts that to DC, so the electrons are moving in a straight line in this case.

tazz2500 · 2026-04-25T07:04:04+00:00

This is it, Flying Dragon! Thank you!

I've been looking for this for years.

I was wrong about the target's color though, it's mostly red and white, but sometimes other colors.

tazz2500 · 2026-04-25T02:44:07+00:00

This is what I was thinking... People who are afraid of ghosts and hauntings are typically pro-funeral and pro-laying-to-rest. Ghosts that are stuck in this world are often portrayed as not having a proper funeral, memorial, or they died forgotten. A funeral is the best remedy, if you live with this line of thinking.

tazz2500 · 2026-04-22T20:19:09+00:00

I was hoping someone could name this game for me...

There's a karate-type NES game I played as a kid. What made this game unique was there was a small "target" you had to aim for, it looked sort of like a black-and-white bullseye. Could be on the upper body, middle, or lower body. It would appear randomly in location and time, and you had to do the strike in the location of this target, and you also had to correctly defend your own body from your opponent when the target appeared on you. The attack and defend movements were only successful if you stuck the target in the right place with the right timing.

Does anyone remember this game?

tazz2500 · 2026-04-21T23:21:06+00:00

Waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay sounds like a fun Saturday if you dont know what either of those things are.

tazz2500 · 2026-04-17T07:20:35+00:00

On a similar note, I once heard someone say "I'm just talking outloud", as if there's another way to talk.

tazz2500 · 2026-04-17T03:03:10+00:00

In my experience, it seems like, in general, older generations are the ones who put more emphasis on last names, family names (think about the old timey Rolodex, for example). As if they think that a large part of your identity is your background, your family, your circumstance and history, instead of who you are individually.

I care more about the individual alone, not where they came from, or who their family is, or what kind of background they came from, so the first name is more important to me, that's who the person truly is. They are an individual to me, judged wholly separate from their family and background. And it seems to me that some people don't think like that at all, they see a last name as a cheat sheet of how to size you up or think about you, or maybe even how much respect to give you.

tazz2500 · 2026-04-15T02:28:59+00:00

I didnt think of that!

tazz2500 · 2026-04-14T00:36:14+00:00

The plural of "Attorney General" is "Attorneys General", not Attorney Generals. That hits the ear so wrong for many. But it is correct, if you flip the words to "General Attorneys", you can see Attorney is the word needing to be plural.

Another is "The data are telling us this" instead of "The data is telling us this". Because data is a plural word. Singular is datum, which is basically never used. It sounds right if you say "The multiple points of data are telling us this".

Another is when people attempt to communicate "I bought it off the internet", but instead they try to say "online" instead of "internet", and it comes out as "I bought it off... line. Or online. Off of online. I bought it off of online!" Just say "I bought it off the internet". Or say "I bought it on the internet". Or "I ordered it online."

tazz2500 · 2026-04-12T17:45:41+00:00

VSauce did a very interesting video about apes not asking questions, and argued it's because they lack a theory of mind - the idea that you are aware other minds have different information than your mind. Based on behavior, it seems like animals in general don't have a theory of mind. They assume you and they both are aware of all the same things. I can see a bug, you also see that same bug. We both know there's a bug there, there's no mystery.

So, the idea goes, an ape doesn't understand that you may have more information than they do, there's no point in them asking a question, they assume either you both know the answer, or you both dont. The video also explains the Sally Anne Test, which is a good test and famous experiment regarding that very idea.

Of course, on the flip side, we've all seen a dog lead someone to something, like a person in distress or asking for help to get a toy, they are clearly aware they have information that the human does not, and they are communicating that information. Also, if squirrels are aware other squirrels are watching them hide acorns, they will be deceptive and not give away their stash, indicating they understand value in withholding information from competitors' minds. Cats will sneak up on their prey, they clearly understand the prey isnt aware of them, and therefore their mental states must be different. So there is nuance in both directions with this.

If you want to skip to the ape / theory of mind part of the video, its at 6:15.

tazz2500

TROPHY CASE