Clive Silas

@konstructivizm Poorly worded. Astronomers had been using telescopes for more than a century. He was the first to discover a planet using a telescope, because Uranus is the nearest planet to Earth that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Telescopes had made many discoveries like Jupiter's moons.

On March 13, 1781, William Herschel discovered the seventh planet of the solar system, Uranus. He was the first to use a telescope.

@EmersonEff87236 @forallcurious In Europe we don't call a brake you can't use in an emergency, an "emergency brake".

@brainychat @forallcurious Of course your emergency brake dummy

🚨: Scientists have just figured out a way to get to Alpha Centauri in just 20 years An exciting new approach, which uses lasers to propel and steer objects from a distance, without physical contact.

@TownerJM @drama_doll_ -3³ = -27 not 27. x can be 5,-5 y can only be +3.

@drama_doll_ -16 is also a solution

No pen and paper, what’s the answer??

@drama_doll_ 16 and -4.

@rg_viza @oelma__ kilo is Greek, mill (although used for "thousandth") is from Latin.

@oelma__ K is short for kilo which is 1000 in Latin. Think kilogram, kilometer, kiloton, kilowatt. $1k = 1 kilodollar lol.

can I ask a dumb question… what’s the K for “thousand” stand for..?

@Matt_Pinner Master Shifu!

Without cheating, who is this?🤔

@Inquisitorian77 @konstructivizm Why didn't you Google the lunar rover design. The fact that the "tires" are made of springy mesh metal instead of pneumatic rubber isn't a secret. And all four wheels contributed to the steering, though I can't see any wheels pointing inappropriately.

@konstructivizm Look at those wheels pointing in different directions. I guess we have to bend space-time to get that rover going straight. Transparent tires too😅😆 Its unbelievable that there are people over 5 yo that believe in this nonsense.

Here’s a great shot from the second EVA of the Apollo 16 mission taken by Lunar Module pilot Charlie Duke on Apr. 22, 1972, at station 9 (on Cayley Plains in the Descartes Highlands). Commander John Young is to the right, the cuff checklist on his left arm and sample bags and his Hasselblad camera hanging from the remote-control unit. The Lunar Roving Vehicle stands in the near horizon. In the foreground is a boulder from around and under which soil samples were collected. Rock samples from the top and bottom of the boulder were also collected. This boulder is thought to be from South Ray crater and is a breccia, made up of fragments of other rocks. The scoop marks an area near which soil has been collected. Film type: 3401 (high speed black and white). Camera: Hasselblad with 60mm lens. Sun elevation: 36 degrees. NASA photo id: AS16-108-17741

@Matt_Pinner Pretty much anyone who was a grown adult at the Millennium.

7 for me!! I feel confident nobody Has all 20 How many for you?

@TerryHi92638770 @konstructivizm 186,000 is a terrible approximation. The actual figure is 186,282.4, more than ¼ of the way to 187,000.

@konstructivizm The speed of light is approximately 186,000 miles per second. And travels approximately 186,000 thousand miles per second. Why can't you speak in plain english. If you were my so called Professor, I think I'd pull out my hair and commit suicide 🤣🤣🤣. 🌈🌟💜

That's a beautiful and poetic reminder of just how immense our solar system truly is! The speed of light—exactly 299,792,458 m/s (often rounded to 300,000 km/s) —sets the cosmic speed limit, and these light-travel delays turn every glance upward into a look back in time. Your summary captures the wonder perfectly.Here are the values with a bit more precision for reference (based on average or typical distances; actual times vary slightly with orbital positions):The Moon: About 1.3 seconds on average (distance ~384,400 km). It's the closest thing we have to a "real-time" view in space. grc.nasa.gov The Sun: 8 minutes and 20 seconds on average (1 AU ≈ 149.6 million km). We're always seeing the Sun as it was nearly 8.3 minutes ago—enough time that if it suddenly vanished, we'd still enjoy its light and warmth for those precious minutes. skyatnightmagazine.com Mars: Varies significantly with orbital alignment—from about 3 minutes at closest approach to 22 minutes at farthest (sometimes cited as up to ~20–22 minutes). That communication lag is indeed a huge engineering challenge for rovers and future crewed missions; commands and responses can't be instantaneous. ck12.org Saturn: Light from the Sun takes roughly 80 minutes (about 1 hour 20 minutes) to reach Saturn's distance (~9.6 AU on average). So when you peer through a telescope, you're seeing it as it was over an hour earlier. Earth-to-Saturn one-way light time is similar, around 67–80+ minutes depending on positions. spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov Neptune: Around 4 hours (typically 4–4.3 hours) for sunlight to reach it (~30 AU). By the time the light arrives, it's much fainter, and we're peering back half a day. Earth-to-Neptune light time is comparable, varying with alignment. reddit.com These delays aren't just trivia—they shape how we explore. Radio signals (which travel at light speed) mean Mars rovers operate with autonomy, and outer-planet missions like those to Saturn or Neptune require incredibly patient planning and onboard intelligence.It's a profound thought: even the fastest thing in the universe can't conquer these distances instantly. Distance and time really are intertwined, as relativity reminds us. The farther out we look, the deeper into the past we're gazing—whether it's planets in our backyard or galaxies billions of light-years away.What a humbling, awe-inspiring universe we live in. Got a favorite planet or a specific mission whose light-delay challenges fascinate you most? Or want to dive into how this affects things like potential future human travel or telescope observations?

@konstructivizm 8 minutes 20 seconds is not 8.2 minutes, it's 8.333 minutes

@Godsx2023 @PhysInHistory John Conway headed the Sporadic Finite Groups project. The Langlands program is a large collaboration to unify two sides of mathematics. To solve Fermat Andrew instituted the Wiles program to chase down all the primes for T-S. But he forgot to invite any other mathematicians!

@PhysInHistory In 1994, after working in secrecy for about seven years, Wiles finally completed his proof, which was published in 1995 after correcting a small error with help from Richard Taylor.

Happy Birthday to Sir Andrew Wiles, the mathematician who solved Fermat’s last theorem in 1994. The problem remained unsolved for over 350 years from its conjecture in 1637.

@PhysInHistory In a lecture Andrew said that solving Fermat itself would not be particularly useful to mathematics. But the *route* to solving it, proving Taniyama-Shimura, was essential to the progress Mathematics was making. I loved that.

Terrible night for Pat Nevin. #arseve 2-0 #chenew 0-1

I always knew those hours on Defender weren't wasted!

@PhysInHistory Too busy reading Amazing Stories.

The isolator helmet was a device invented by Hugo Gernsback in 1925 to help people concentrate and eliminate distractions. The helmet was made of wood and felt, and had three pieces of glass that allowed the wearer to see only a narrow slit in front of them. The helmet also blocked out all sounds, and had a tube that supplied oxygen to the wearer. The idea was that by isolating the senses, the wearer could focus better on reading or writing. However, the helmet also had some drawbacks, such as making the wearer drowsy after 15 minutes, and being very bulky and uncomfortable. Gernsback claimed that the helmet was 90-95% efficient in blocking out noise, but he only made 11 helmets and they disappeared by 1926. The isolator helmet was featured in Gernsback’s magazine Science and Invention, and later inspired other similar devices such as the Helmfon. 📷Science and Invention Magazine

@internet_kaiser @DAVID_FIRTH No, he IS David Fourth, you're just saying it wrong.

Very happy to be back on Smiling Friends tonight as "Mole Man".

@RnRFootball Where's the podcast?

@DAVID_FIRTH I think nude scenes involving SF definitely counts as spoilery.

the next episode of Salad Fingers (#14) will be called "Crows" and is close to completion. I value the element of surprise so here are unspoileryish screenshots:

@JANUSZCZAK I imagine French connoisseurs are a bit sniffy about the architecture of the plinth.

This is what eating hamburgers does to the human brain. 👇