Betelgeuse reaches all time low in brightness.  This is quite noticeable with the naked eye.  Speculations that this is a sign of imminent supernova are - highly speculative.

The blue hour in Oslo this morning.

32276 Statistics need to be viewed with severe skepticism, I've seen industry spin numbers their own way (like the Tobacco industry did with nicotine.)  Statistics isn't a science.  I've taken statistics, it's a very simple and basic kind of math.   Nothing like calculus!  I've seen the same statis...

32262 Probably the best way to render energy useless is to collapse it (or matter, or whatever mass-energy you want) into a black hole (which is the maximal entropy state of any system), and then let the black hole evaporate (which increases the universal entropy even further by converting the mass...

32237  "Correlation = causation" is one of the most pervasive fallacies in science and human psychology, and it is absolutely important to understand it, the meaning of statistical significance, and how hypothesis and model testing actually works. Indeed.  Scientists use statistics all th...

32250  Most of the wave energy goes right through, just like neutrinos So "good" ways to render energy pretty useless would be to turn it into gravitational waves or neutrinos. What is the most boring universe - a universe only containing neutrinos or a universe only containing gravitatio...

32242 meaning anything up to about 586,000 solar masses worth of gravitational waves can be emitted.  That is a huge amount of energy Indeed, yet it takes an extremely sensitive instrument to detect it!   How much energy could be "hidden" in frequencies we can't realistically measure?  An...

Watsisname wrote:

Qr Bbpost So we'd need some mechanism for having more antimatter to collapse into black holes than matter,

Yes, that was the idea. Like a tiny asymmetry in the distribution of matter and antimatter.

Watsisname wrote:

Qr Bbpost which only shifts the problem. 

Yes, but perhaps to a context that we understand better.

Interesting question.  Assuming that the Big Bang produced exactly equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, could the creation of anti-matter black holes be what shifted the balance and prevented everything from just annihilate into pure energy?

Yes, where did the synths and octave bass of the 80's go?

32072 The most exciting possibility is always that there is new fundamental physics behind any measurement discrepancy, but that's also always the least likely possibility. Yes, but only if we had some clear leads for what the new fundamental physics would be.  Leads that are clearer than those for...

A-L-E-X wrote:

Qr Bbpost Where does Superman fit in for you?

I think it's fantasy.  His powers are more like magic than something scientific.

The trouble us, I guess, that if it's true, then much else which has already made it into textbooks, is wrong.

I think science fiction aims to be credible.  Fantasy, where I would place superheros, does not aim to be credible.  I'd regard the Marvel films as fantasy, Star Wars likewise.  I'm placing Star Trek, Interstellar, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5 and such in the science fiction category, t...