• Question: I have a random question what is your favourite thing about space

    Asked by Conzo to Joe, Jos, Kate, Lisa, Pierre on 11 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Pierre Lasorak

      Pierre Lasorak answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Hi,
      I suppose my favourite thing about space is the fact that it is “flexible.” What Einstein tells us with General Relativity is that everything that is massive “curves” the space. So for example, maybe you know that the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180°, or maybe you know Pythagorean theorem for a right triangle. These are no longer true in space where you have matter around, in fact this is generally not right in any “curved” space (you can do it on a ball and show for example that the sum of the angles is 270°!).
      So we need some other way of measuring distances in space. And the way we do that is by sending light and see how it is deflected by the masses that are around. It might not be obvious but if you turn on a laser horizontally, the light coming from the laser will “fall” downwards. Just like if you send a ball horizontally it will go fall because it is attracted by the Earth. The only thing is that light go so fast that you will not even be able to measure it…

    • Photo: Lisa Simmons

      Lisa Simmons answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      I like the fact that it is infinite, and that we really know very little about it. There are so many unanswered questions, that it leads to collaborations from many different areas of science and engineering. I think a deeper understanding of space will one day to big developments in unification theory.

    • Photo: Kate Dobson

      Kate Dobson answered on 12 Nov 2014:

      That we will probably never know every thing about it and what’s in it….. think of all those millions and millions of planets and stars….. so much to explore!

    • Photo: Joshaniel Cooper

      Joshaniel Cooper answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      I think the coolest bit of space is the Northern lights, since we can see them (sometimes and in some places) and they remind us that we are just floating in the middle of a sea of emptyness, but it can still affect us!

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