Blue Ring Found Around Uranus
 

You sick fuck!

http://science.slashdot.org/article....17246&from=rss

Cool. Although, to be honest, I didn't even know that Saturn had blue rings.

Also, you fail with the sexual innuendo.

Well the fact that you picked up on it means I WIN... SUCKA!

Anyways, for a SERIOUS discussion, new things are discovered all the time in space. I mean there was one time where we believed the universe was a complete sphere with pin holes in it.

So, the universe, is it finite or infinite? Why?

I do not subscribe to the fact that the universe is infinite because I'm a whore for logic over spiritualism and belief. I do believe, or at least I would subscribe to the fact that maybe OUR universe is only one in a series of "universii". Okay, it's universes, but what do you think?

EDIT: Come on, that joke was in the happy medium between ultra childish and unfunny. You know you probably all at least chuckled, so lighten up.

The real question is, who cares? The way I see it, there are three possibilities:

1. It's finite. No matter what happens, we'll eventually run out of resources down the road in billions of billions of years after we mined the whole universe and extracted all the energy we could. Entropy's a bitch. We go extinct.

2. It's infinite, and matter was created by something like the big bang. There's a limited amount of matter in the universe. Same thing as in 1. We go extinct.

3. It's infinite, and matter was created by an infinite amount of "big bang like" phenomenas, perhaps even at different times. There might be infinite matter and energy. However, if matter from another "big bang" collides with that from ours, we're likely done for. Statistically speaking, we go extinct.

See? In the end, we're all dead, so it's not like questions such as "Is the universe finite?" matter.

So you have no desire for knowledge? No desire to know the origins of Earth or how life here will end? No desire to know if there's a counterpart to humans out there?

I'm not saying I, or anyone else on this planet, is smart enough to figure this out, but DAMN I'd sure love to know. It'd be a lot nicer if some superbeing came down and handed me a piece of paper with the answers on it too, though.

Actually, I do, which is essentially why I've decided to study physics and aim for graduate work. Somehow I didn't really feel like giving a serious answer in a thread started by a Uranus joke. Not to mention cosmology is hardly my favorite part of physics, nor the one I'm most knowledgeable about.

It might also have something to do with writing the post around 1AM after a bit of drinking.

I recently included the question in my journal, along with questioning whether time is truly infinite. I, however, could not reach a conclusion, mainly because of mathematics. If the amount of numbers or amount of decimal places can be infinite, then why can't the universe? However, on the other hand, mathematics is a man-made idea, a non-physical item. So, theoretically, the universe has to be finite because nothing physical in this plane is infinite. See what I mean?

I chuckled at your joke, SuperNova. Only because I expected the thread to be serious and found the obvious joke waiting there anyway.

I was under the impression that we already knew that Uranus had a blue ring? I dunno. I remember seeing one of the outer gas giants pictured with a bluish ring in all the old astronomy picture books.

Aside from the joke, I pretty much thought that Uranus had a faint ring way before.

Yeah, I thought Uranus had rings before as well, I'm sure thats one of the things I had to learn for my Exploring the Cosmos exam (!!) or perhaps theres a chance that I mis-learned the material...Or that it was quite a while ago, and I've forgotten!

Those of you who actually read the article probably are aware that Uranus has thirteen rings that we know of, and that there are two known blue rings in our solar system (the other belonging to Saturn). The rings appear blue because they are made out of small particles, as opposed to red rings constituting both of large and small ones.

So, if we're so stuck on the color of things here, what color is the universe?

Isn't Uranus the one with the ring that goes perpendicular to the ones on saturn?

I think (to put this into clearer terms) that if Saturn's ring went along an X axis, then Uranus' would run on a Y. Is that correct, or am I thinking of a different planet?