I was reading a bit of stuff about stars the other day and stumbled across the fact that Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is getting closer to us by 5.5km per second.
That struck me as quite a rapid rate of closing a gap, so initially I thought I had misunderstood something, as surely that would mean it was on top of us/past us in next to no time at all.
So I looked up how far away it is and did some sums. It turns out that even at that speed it takes 5,000 years for the gap between us and Sirius to decrease by 1%. Sirius is one of our nearest neigbours – hence why it appears so bright.

Any facts that have stopped you in your tracks recently?

There are 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000 unique permutations of a shuffled deck of cards

Only the female mosquito sucks blood and only to use the protiens in the blood for its eggs.
Therefore if you are bitten, you are 1/3rd mosquito parent, congratulations!

Only the female mosquito sucks blood and only to use the protiens in the blood for its eggs.
Therefore if you are bitten, you are 1/3rd mosquito parent, congratulations!

Midges also.

It turns out that even at that speed it takes 5,000 years for the gap between us and Sirius to decrease by 1%

Doesn’t that mean in half a million years we are absolutely fekt? That’s quite startling in itself if true.

Everest is getting a few mm taller each year but there’s another peak nearby that’s currently a bit lower than Everest but is growing slightly faster so in about a quarter of a million years it’ll be taller than Everest (as long as Sirius doesn’t start messing things up before then)

Doesn’t that mean in half a million years we are absolutely fekt?

No, because it’s not moving directly towards us. It will be closest in about 60000 years and will then be moving away.

We’re still absolutely fekt though, one way or another.

A person without a beard, is a person with a beard, without a beard.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

By “person” do you mean “bloke”?

Well. Just because I’ve never seen a lady bloke with a beard doesn’t mean they couldn’t have one. Maybe they’re all just people with beards, without beards?

Makes you think, eh.

Not necessarily 😉

the pig-faced woman carnival attraction was actually a shaved bear in a dress.

Well. Just because I’ve never seen a lady bloke with a beard doesn’t mean they couldn’t have one. Maybe they’re all just people with beards, without beards?

Makes you think, eh.

You could say the same of tails, or wings.

I’ve never seen a human with a tail or wings…

…Well, at least not outside of Norfolk.

So Sirius will be in proximity of earth in about 500,000 years.
At which time the politics and brexit threads on STW will still be going strong with windbaggery coming from descendants of today’s protagonists.

If you take all the positive integers 1,2,3,4,5,6…….up to infinity and sum them together, the answer is equivalent to -1/12

Now, ‘clearly’ that is nonsense because how can you ever sum all those positive integers anyway and even if you could then any fule can see you’ll get a very large positive number.

BUT –

there are some mathematical / scientific sums (eg: string theory) that in order to work out you need an approximation for the sum, and if you plug in -1/12 in place of it – then the rest of the sum works out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_%2B_2_%2B_3_%2B_4_%2B_%E2%8B%AF

with windbaggery coming from descendants of today’s protagonists.

I can think of one who’ll still be on the thread even if all that’s left is their brain in a pickle jar

The word ‘mortgage’ comes from a French term that means ‘death pledge‘, or a contract that only expires upon death.
Assuming it’s not paid off by that time and you have insurance.

If you put a werewolf on the moon, nothing would happen.

The lane in which the greatest number of vehicles will drive on any motorway is L-1 subject to a minimum value of 2 where L is the number of lanes currently open to traffic.

The speed of any given vehicle in lane L-1 is an infinitely variable value and the only number it cannot be even momentarily is the actual speed limit. Cars driven in L-1 can transition from (for example) 68mph to 74mph without their speed ever actually being 70mph. There’s a sort of temporal blip as the needle creeps towards 70.

Edit: sorry I’ve got the hump after an hour on the M25 and clearly this is not startling at all. 😕

The UK’s only continuous circular motorway is the M60.

We’re all familiar with it being further round the outside of a bend than the inside – hence Strava lines, and running tracks with staggered starts. But exactly how much further is it then around the ‘M25’ (nws nickc above) if you were in the left hand lane going clockwise compared to the LH lane going anti-cw?

Must be miles, eh? Nope. Less than 200 metres

Approximate to a circle, with circumference C = pi x D where D = diam of the M25

But, assume that’s the inside diameter, now assume the outside is 8 x 3m lanes and a central reservation wider. Call it 30m but that’s per radius, at both ends = 60m.

So, distance round outside = pi x (D+60) = pi x D + pi x 60. Leaving a difference of only pi x 60 = 188m. 6s longer at a continuous 70mph.

And that’s probably overstated, lanes are typically 2.8m I read somewhere, there aren’t always 8 lanes and the central reservation isn’t 6m.

Bear that in mind if you have to join and exit at opposite sides, a wise choice could save you 2-3 seconds.

Yes, but the earth is spinning so it’s kind of like a giant conveyer belt. You’d be better to take the route where more of the conveyer belt is going in your direction than against you. Not many know this handy hint.

The UK’s only continuous circular motorway is the M60.

It might be signed as such, but to drive right round it you have to exit and re-join at junction 18, Simister Island.

exit and re-join at junction 18, Simister Island

No, Simister Island is subject to motorway rules and the M60 is continuous through it. You don’t go on the M62.

Yeah, I know it’s all official M60, but the fact you use 2 sliproads and a couple of sets of traffic lights mean I disagree that its continuous.

18 / Simister anti-clockwise got no traffic lights or non-MWay speed restrictions, just a shortcut past the roundabout.

Jesus wept, you lot are argumentative today, has the Brexit thread been closed? 😁

Sorry to derail your thread Tom. I’ll try and come up with a less indisputable ‘fact’ later. 👍

Facts not opinions. Definitely no Fox Newz vibes emanating from me.

‘Pillars of Creation’ pic from Hubble. Left hand thing is over 30 trillion km in length which is around 1000 times the diameter of the solar system.

Andromeda is on a direct collision course with the Milky Way. It’s moving towards us at over 110km/s and in about 4.5 billion years it’ll be right on us.

Two quite startling vaguely interesting facts:

– even though the galaxies are colliding, there is enough space between the stars in each galaxy that nothing may actually physically contact anything else

– even though it’s 4.5 billion years until the main body of the galaxies meet, the outer halo of the two galaxies is already touching!

As well as space being quite big, time is quite long.

Cleopatra lived closer to today than to the building of the pyramids. Dinosaurs lived for so long that fossils from the earliest dinosaurs (Triassic) existed at the same time as dinosaurs from the later (Cretaceous) period.

The Stegosaurus lived 150 million years ago; the T-Rex 67 million years ago.
That means a T-Rex is closer in time to us than it was to Stegosaurus.

but to drive right round it you have to exit and re-join at junction 18

you’re not exiting and re-joining, you’re still on the motorway. Roads don’t stop being themselves just because there’s a roundabout.

The M25 isn’t continuous?

I teach physics in Luton

So in tell my students that if they get a job commuting to London then they’ll travel about 100km per day by train.

If they commute 300 days per year for 10 years they will have traveled one light second

It’s eight light minutes to the sun, 4 is light years to the nearest star and 10,000,0000,000 to the most distant visible objects

The M25 isn’t continuous?

I didn’t dare ask but was thinking the same.

But is the Blackwell crossing not motorway?

The M25 isn’t continuous?

The Dartford Crossing has a separate road number.

But is the Blackwell crossing not motorway?

It’s A road, think it’s the A282

Edit, my mistake the A282 is the Dartford crossing. It’s the A102.

I didn’t dare ask but was thinking the same.

I’m Northern so I’ve no idea, I always just assumed. There’s Dartford too I suppose?

I teach physics

10,000,0000,000

Good job you don’t teach maths. 😁

It might be signed as such, but to drive right round it you have to exit and re-join at junction 18, Simister Island.

There’s loads of places around the M60 where if you stayed ‘on’ it, i.e used the lane that was going ‘straight on’, you’d end up getting off it. Intuitive it is not.

Intuitive it is not.

I forget exactly where, but there’s a point sorta North-East going anticlockwise where a slip road merges you into the ‘fast’ lane, that’s always a fun surprise for the less confident of drivers.