samcornwell replied to your photo: Voyager 1: beyond the edge of the solar system at…

Instead of time, wouldn’t distance be more appropriate on the x axis?

In some respects, yes, but at this point I think it’s important to determine exactly when the transition to interstellar space might have occurred, and then we can extrapolate exactly where that boundary is after the fact. The distance from Earth won’t be known until we know exactly when that data was collected since both bodies’ movements are relative.

That being said, the boundary is not a firm line, but more like a cloud or a foam. More measurements should verify this very soon, but Voyager is on minimal power usage now, so collecting that and beaming it back takes some time.

samcornwell replied to your photo: Approximations It’s like a chocolate fountain of…

I GOT A QUESTION! :-D How fast are we moving? Please factor in Earth’s spin, Earth’s orbit, The Sun’s orbit, Milkyway’s movement, etc…

Compared to what? In an expanding universe there’s an infinite number of points of reference, so our “speed” in any direction is every point between zero and the speed of light.

But for a more relative view, there’s this.

Q:"Without Hertz, we wouldn’t have wi-fi, iPhones, radio, Kinect, remote controls for our TVs or really anything that sends a signal to something else." This sentence that you posted yesterday has been playing on my mind. Are you sure that without Hertz that radio waves would not have been discovered? Do you think this much time could have passed without the discovery of radio waves? Are there any holes in science where something should have been discovered already but hasn't?

samcornwell

I don’t mean for it to sound exclusive, as if he found it and therefore no one else would have, ever. That isn’t how discoveries like this work. Just look at Edison and Tesla’s War of Currents! He had countless competitors, and had Hertz not accomplished what he did, no doubt someone else would have.

But it would sure sound strange to describe a radio frequency in “kilo-johnsons” wouldn’t it? I’m glad it was Hertz.