I Want To Live Near My Friend Really Bad

Ask Ethan: Is Spacetime Really A Fabric?

“I’d like somebody to finally acknowledge and admit that showing balls on a bed sheet doesn’t cut it as a picture of reality.”

Okay, I admit it: visualizing General Relativity as balls on a bedsheet doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. For one, if this is what gravity is supposed to be, what pulls the balls “down” onto the bedsheet? For another, if space is three dimensional, why are we talking about a 2D “fabric” of space? And for another, why do these lines curve away from the mass, rather than towards it?

It’s true: this visualization of General Relativity is highly flawed. But, believe it or not, all visualizations of General Relativity inherently have similar flaws. The reason is that space itself is not an observable thing! In Einstein’s theory, General Relativity provides the link between the matter and energy in the Universe, which determines the geometric curvature of spacetime, and how the rest of the matter and energy in the Universe moves in response to that. In this Universe, we can only measure matter and energy, not space itself. We can visualize it how we like, but all visualizations are inherently flawed.

Come get the story of how to make as much sense as possible out of the Universe we actually have.

Captain Fantastic (2016)

“My darling stars, please help me. Let him know I am waiting for him. Dear wind, help me. Go to my Prince and tell him I’m waiting.”

— Русалочка (Rusalochka)

Loving Vincent characters and their corresponding portraits

Iggy, DB and Coco in Japan, 1977.

Have You Ever Seen An Eclipse From Space? Check It Out

On June 21, 2020 an annular solar eclipse passed over parts of Asia and Africa. Eclipses happen when the Moon lines up just right between the Sun and Earth, allowing it to block out part or all of the Sun’s bright face and cast a shadow on Earth. 

On that day, the International Space Station was orbiting over Kazakhstan and into China when this picture of the solar eclipse shadowing a portion of the Asian continent was captured by an external high definition camera. In the left foreground, is the H-II Transfer Vehicle-9 from Japan.

Here is another angle as seen from the orbital lab. In the left foreground, is the Progress 74 resupply ship from Russia.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Dancer in the Dark (1999) dir. Lars von Trier

“This isn’t the last song, there’s no violin, the choir is quiet, and no one takes a spin, this is the next to last song, and that’s all…”

See How They Run (2022)

Stressed Out and Ride - Twenty One Pilots

like/reblog if you save

i think tumblr will be my new twitter now