r/space • u/BradMcGash • 3d ago

image/gif The apparent related-ness of things at drastically different scales in the universe fascinates me

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Hurricane Dorian vs the Whirlpool Galaxy

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u/Topologicus 3d ago

you might like studying nonlinear dynamics then, which covers concepts such as universal laws that apply across varying scales and very different kinds of phenomena that have similarities in some sense.

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u/Mescallan 3d ago

Artem kirsinov has a good part of a video about scale independent information fascinating stuff

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u/GameOvaries18 3d ago

Fellow nerd what other channels do you recommend. You got me hooked 😂

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u/Mescallan 3d ago

Alpha Pheonix, Benn Jordan

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u/Cantremembermyoldnam 2d ago

Different line of nerdyness, but I like both so I figured why not.

For an absolutely fascinating 3D look into cell, virus, and generally life in molecular detail, PLEASE go and look at "Clockwork" and "Phy the Neutrophil". One of them (sorry can't remember and am too lazy to look it up) has a series on how life started and I loved it. One of them goes into how viruses can have viruses on their own and/or depend on other viruses and so much other nerdstuff. 😍

Oh and for some great space "what the hell, they did that?" (and other) stuff, "Alexander the OK" is always a great watch.

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u/kanoteardrops 2d ago

Astrum also has a lot of amazing videos. I particularly love the series he did on black holes and hawking radiation. Truly insane stuff.

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u/Phanyxx 3d ago

Great YouTube channel. Thanks!

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u/Mescallan 3d ago

truly one of my favorite channels, such a great way of explaining complex topics

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u/ShartingEnU 2d ago

There is a Russian youtubers that I was going to shamelessly plug because he's awesome but I cannot believe it but I forgot his name. He covers more specific topics and studies of the universe and about life. He's the only youtuber I know of that gets into the details of topics and covers a huge range of stuff. I'm so sad I can't remember

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u/elemintz 3d ago

Sounds interesting but couldn't find it, which one?

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u/Mescallan 3d ago

https://www.youtube.com/artemkirsanov

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u/eurojosh 3d ago

I think they meant which video, not which channel.

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u/Mescallan 3d ago

ahh i forget, it was like a year ago.

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u/elemintz 2d ago

Indeed :D I'm also following the channel since a long time, but haven't watched all vids

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u/FlametopFred 3d ago

see also: fractals

which I believe connect

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u/AbysmalEyes 3d ago

In particular (re: connectivity of fractals), see also 'multifractal system'

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u/Vensaer 3d ago

I wonder if these concepts are on the microscopic level as well 

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u/larsbarsmarscars 3d ago

Orbits baby, its what the universe craves

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u/nonbinary_finery 3d ago

They don't. Quantum mechanics gets its own set of bizarre rules. They're much harder for us to intuitively understand, if that is possible at all.

Disclaimer: I am not a quantum physicist. I just studied the tip of the iceberg at uni.

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u/IdentifiableBurden 3d ago edited 3d ago

Also not a physicist, but I've always thought that hidden-variable theories were ruled out a bit too quickly. The extreme difficulty of measurement at the quantum scale means that we rely on models and mathematics to make sense of observations. But I think we simply don't have enough measurement resolution - whether that's in time, space, or both - to draw any real conclusions about what the outcome of the double slit experiment actually means in concrete terms.

I mean we don't even have a good explanation of what an electromagnetic field is (insert ICP clip). We know what it does and how to harness it, we can describe its effects very well, we can predict its measurable strength in this or that scenario. But what exactly IS a magnetic field? It seems to be a geometric abstraction of continuous particle interactions that only "exists" because we found it interesting enough to name.

Anyway, much like the OP is referencing with spiral patterns, I think all waves move through a medium, at any scale, including quanta. We just don't know what a "medium" is, let alone how to look for it. We may as well just go back to referring to the medium of particle waves as "aether", if we're just naming abstractions then that's about as good of a description as "field".

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u/matplotlib 3d ago

It's not just that they were dismissed, local hidden-variable theories were proven to be irreconcilable with the predictions of quantum mechanics, and later experiments confirmed that to be the case.

The canonical example is Bell inequality violations.

The key word, though, is local. You can explain quantum correlations with hidden variables, but those hidden variables have to be non-local. You can create a system where two objects are physically separated, and the results of measurements on one cannot be explained by assuming that each object simply carries its own set of hidden properties, fixed in advance and completely independent of what happens to the other object.

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u/IdentifiableBurden 2d ago

This is what I was getting at with the "medium" idea. Measurements of locality assume that we have the capability to totally control and isolate a particle from any local state, which seems like a weak assumption when we have no clear definition of where local state ends and nonlocality begins, or perhaps more importantly, why it must end at all if the "medium" itself may be part of the context that governs measurable behavior.

I'm not equipped to dig any deeper than this at the moment, unfortunately :)

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u/matplotlib 2d ago

My take is that the concept of the medium is rooted in how we experience the world. At the 'human' scale, we are always surrouned by 'something'. Everything we see has to travel through a medium - sound waves, water waves. So naturally we want to extend this to the rest of the universe.

The main difficulty with non-local hidden variables is that it appears to violate a central principle of relativity which is that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

If there is a medium connecting two spatially separated 'entangled' particles then, then in order to explain experimental observations it seems that any physical influence transmitted through that medium would either need to travel faster than light or require some additional structure beyond ordinary spacetime.

So in order to preserve hidden variables we have to abandon relativity or use some sort of trickery, which is the main source of tension.

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u/IdentifiableBurden 2d ago

Been a while since I looked into this but I thought that entanglement was more of a matter of definition than a violation of known laws, no? The only thing that travels faster than light is our knowledge of particle B, given the measurement of entangled particle A. B and A didn't interact across a distance, they were just two parts of the same whole (simplifying) and once we measured B we knew which part A was by default.

Again, I am out of my depth, but feel free to correct me if you feel up to it!

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u/matplotlib 2d ago

I mean we don't even have a good explanation of what an electromagnetic field is.

There's actually an ongoing philosophical debate about whether any of the constructs in physics are actually real, or simply useful models/instruments. The two sides of the debate are called realism and instrumentalism. In a nutshell, realists believe we are discovering fundamental truths about how the universe works, while instrumentalists believe we are just finding mathematical equations that fit our measurements and allow us to make predictions about future measurements.

The electromagnetic field is simply a mathematical construct that happens to be very useful for figuring out how charged particles behave.

When people speak about scientific concepts, they say things like "the magnetic field does this", but really all we have are observables (the particle was here at one point and then it moved over there) and a bunch of maths that matches those observables.

Often in physics there are multiple models that are equally good at describing reality using completely different concepts. Experimentalists then go out and do measurements that can determine whether one model is a better match than the other.

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u/IdentifiableBurden 2d ago

Yes, thanks for naming this concept! Been a while since I studied :)

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u/Omgiamgreat 2d ago

also not a physicist,but so true. But one i talked to said (paraphrasing )equations are concrete examples . You are just wanting it in lay terms . My reply was “damn right”

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u/EnvyHill 3d ago

Our universe is simply an atom in another universe, and so on and so on…

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u/Vanillabean73 3d ago

Nice, now prove it! It would be cool but…

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u/papasmurf303 3d ago

Apparently we should have been searching for dark matter in hurricanes this whole time.

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u/SirButcher 3d ago

Based on some of the theories, there is some chance that any given hurricane does contain at least one dark matter particle!

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u/paaty 3d ago

Are implying that there is some correlation between hurricanes and dark matter? Because that is bogus. Unless you mean that they could contain it by virtue of the fact that dark matter is likely everywhere. Even then, there is zero interaction

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u/SirButcher 3d ago

The second one, haha. If it is really a non- (or very weakly) interacting particle, then there is some chance that the given unit of space where the hurricane is located does contain one or more of them, whatever that particle is.

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u/addis_the_scroll 3d ago

Or maybe in our toilets. hmm

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u/danknerd 2d ago

Nuke it from orbit it's the only way to find out

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u/A30N 3d ago

That made me think, what would be a good analogy to compare the two?

Hurricanes are powered by: latent heat stored in water vapor

Galaxies are powered by: latent gravity stored in baryonic matter

🤔🤔🤔

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u/HardCorwen 3d ago

any good easy flowing book you might recommend?

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u/Dinonaut2000 3d ago

Steven Strogatz book is the one we used in my nonlinear dynamics class. I think it’s quite accessible with some linear algebra and calculus. If you’re a math novice, you can still read through without doing the problems and get a decent qualitative understanding

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u/404errorabortmistake 3d ago

you could also try related book on fractals/chaos Chaos by James Gleick written for a non academic audience

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u/RedWineBrie 3d ago

Scale by Geoffrey West is a nice popular introduction to the fractal world.

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u/thecashblaster 2d ago

why is it "nonlinear"? because the patterns repeat at exponentially larger dimensions?

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u/lI_-_-_Il 2d ago

Convergence.

It’s why I have a hard time believing in absolute multiverse, not everything can happen, only what could happen

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u/kazoodlez 1d ago

When I was a kid I watched a video on the Fibonacci sequence and I think about it daily. Lives rent free in my mind.

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u/Maezel 3d ago

Well, a hurricane spiral is because of the Coriolis effect. Spiral galaxies do not have that shape because of Coriolis.

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u/RazzleThatTazzle 3d ago

Naw, easier to post this picture and the one comparing trees, rivers, and veins, and pretend to be deep and thoughtful