Neil deGrasse Tyson Pinpoints Superman's Home Star System 102
kmoser writes "Everybody's favorite astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, makes an appearance in upcoming Superman #14, in which Superman visits the Hayden Planetarium to view his original planet. Meanwhile, back in reality, DC Comics explains that NdGT has used his 'astronomical' powers to select the red dwarf LHS 2520 as the most likely real-life red star to fit with Superman's back story."
NIce (Score:5, Insightful)
More science stars please.
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Ahh, somebody has hurt feelings and is somewhat bitter me thinks.
So, who would you rather have talking to the idiot public about things they do not understand?
Michio Kaku is a fine example of somebody who is very smart, and is good at breaking down complex topics so that regular tards can understand at least some of it. He is a very valuable science resource. Just because you have had a bone to pick with Hyperspace for 20 years doesn't mean he does a bad job. It is a good sign that we have science "celebrit
Re:NIce (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparing Feynman to Kaku is a bit like blasphemy to me. Feynman was able to make rock solid arguments that silenced all opposition (see e.g. the Challenger accident investigation). Kaku, on the other hand seems to be fascinated by what-if scenario's, theoretical possibilities and the like. Not that it's not entertaining or thought-provoking, but it's not the same thing by far. Kaku doesn't explain current science well, he's just good at extrapolating.
Re:NIce (Score:4, Interesting)
If you like Feynman, I hope you have watched these lectures [vega.org.uk], the video quality isn't great but the content more than makes up for it.
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Really? Have you ever watched lectures by Feynman (see my earlier posts)? I think your point is based upon the fact that Feynman is dead and dead people don't answer questions from reporters well.
Re:NIce (Score:4, Funny)
Ya but what if Kaku had rock solid arguments?
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Which one? I read "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman", it was quite funny. But I'm totally missing the part where he's a male chauvinist pig. Is it because he went to titty bars? Are you a male chauvinist pig if you like watching boobies? Really, I don't know what you're talking about.
Re:NIce (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree that Michio Kaku is a bit "way out there". But in regard to Neil Tyson, I have nothing but praise. Search youtube for his interviews, this man really knows how to spread scientific thinking and knows why it is important.
Re:NIce (Score:4, Insightful)
Going to have to disagree with you. Michio Kaku and Neil deGrasse Tyson are probably the best thing to happen to the various science fields in a long time when it comes to connecting with those outside the field. They give science a much needed boost in perception to those that see it as nothing more than a bunch of guys in white lab coats hunched over a microscope all day getting off on microbes or other invisible "stuff". They can explain everything from the unbelievably complex to the down right absurd in a way that no matter who you are you know exactly what they are talking about.
Science only wins with those two, no matter what they are talking about. Tyson especially has the whole cool factor that transcends stereotypes.
Re:NIce (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is many modern science shows emphasize effects over knowledge. Carl Sagans "apple pie" episode is so jam packed with essential knowledge it's ridiculous.
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It doesn't advance science directly, and neither did the grandfather post say that it does. What it does is popularize science, making it seem friendlier and more accessible to the layman. This is already a very good thing in its own merit, and it also carries the possibility of attracting more young minds into scientific careers. One of these young minds just might do something big to advance science, or at least be a good sci-fi writer or a passionate high school science teacher who will, in turn, attract
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Plus, they may vote for more research funding if they understand it better.
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As for the balance between popularising science and actual research, you should obtain a copy of Isaac Asimov's "View From a Height".
In his introduction he makes the case for both kinds of scientists. After he obtained his degree, his doctorate, etc, he found that he had to specialise too much. He really liked to be able to know a little bit of everything instead of a whole lot of one thing. Its unfortunate that he only had a very narrow channel to popularise science.
His essays are invaluable material to
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Science Stars are better than NASA's current PR strategy. Go watch SpaceX coverage of a rocket launch, then go watch NASA's coverage some time. Night and day.
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I love this, too. Not everything in science has to be about inaccessible theses. And, there are more people watching than the scientific community; by that I mean kids and young adults who will have the curiosity awakened by this. Oh, geeks too!
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Scientists and fake science (Score:3, Insightful)
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What's with the trend of these guys spending time calculating fictional things? Wasn't there a mathematician last week who tried calculating some Cthulhu/wormhole fantasy? Waste...of...reputation.
I think the uncertainty of threatened budget cuts have NSF reluctant to give out research grants, so the scientists have to find something to do with their time.
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Apparently they didn't get stuffed into their lockers enough at high school.
Re:Scientists and fake science (Score:5, Insightful)
No it isn't.
It gives actually science a venue into public discourse. It teaches scientists how to communicate to non scientists.
Important, and frankly it should be something as many scientists as possible strive to do.
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Hmm, perhaps thats because normal idiot people will actually READ an article about Superman or whatever. You then slip some information in there about stars and whatnot, and bam - you have educated them without their knowledge.
What is wrong with this? Why are so many asshole science nerds upset by things like this? It is fun, it DOES have legit information attached to it and it hurts nobody.
Asshole science nerds like you can sit around and fume all day long (with nobody to tell how wrong these scientists ar
Huh? (Score:2)
What's with the newscientist link? I thought this was the badastronomy discussion board.
So... (Score:3)
they used a real scientist to lie about a fake planet?
real scientist in a fictional world (Score:3)
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The comic is actually Action Comics #14 (Score:1)
The summary is slightly wrong. The comic in question is not Superman #14. It is the other Superman comic, ACTION COMICS #14. In stores tomorrow, by the way.
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I haven't read comics in a while. Can anyone tell me what's up with the numbering? Shouldn't Action Comics be in the 1000's by now?
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Never mind, should have just looked it up for myself. Another reboot of the whole DC Universe. Looks like they did it without a Crisis event this time, they just editorially declared "everything is different now, except for some stuff that isn't" and restarted the issue numbers.
Re:The comic is actually Action Comics #14 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:what they totally forgot (Score:4, Interesting)
If you look at the actual comic, they are trying to help Superman determine if his planet of origin, Krypton, is still intact or detectable.
What they forget is that any light from Krypton's system is so many light years away that we would effectively be seeing Superman's homeworld *before* it was destroyed. NDGT didn't think of this?
The Badass Tronomer's blog hints that that time delay plays a role in the plot.
What I don't get is, if just a handful of kryptonite brings Superman to his knees, how did his parents survive on a whole planet of the stuff?
Re:what they totally forgot (Score:5, Informative)
What I don't get is, if just a handful of kryptonite brings Superman to his knees, how did his parents survive on a whole planet of the stuff?
I am not at all a comic-book-guy; however I was under the impression that kryptonite was radioactive chunks of his home planet created in the destruction of the planet.
So there wasn't kryptonite on krypton while people lived on it.
But I'm sure some comic-book-guy can give you half a dozen arguments about 'canon' and likely as it applies to various timelines or whatever given that they've retconned and rebooted the franchise plenty over the years.
Me? I saw the first 3 movies with Reeves, the new one with Kevin Spacey as Lex, and read the comics casually for a couple years 20 years ago...
Re:what they totally forgot (Score:4, Funny)
But I'm sure some comic-book-guy can give you half a dozen arguments about 'canon' and likely as it applies to various timelines or whatever given that they've retconned and rebooted the franchise plenty over the years.
And once we've worked out the answer to this, we can get back on whether balrogs have wings.
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Well, Gandalf and Saruman and Sauron and the Balrog are all the same kind of being: Maiar. The Maiar are supposed to be shape-shifters or at least wear the forms mere mortals perceive them as like a kind of disguise, so the Balrog may be able to have wings some of the time and not have wings the rest of the time (and be man-sized or gigantic as required). Sauron was described as being able to directly shape-shift, for example. That was before he put some of his power into the One Ring and lost it, however,
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Well, the Balrogs were at least an order of Maiar with an affinity for darkness and fire. How much their appearance was a matter of choice or of base nature is unclear. In any case, Morgoth also had demons who served under the Balrogs as servants. The Balrogs were also referred to as demons themselves.
The big problem with the question of wings is Tolkein's poetic use of language. If he said that a character was flying, you needed context to tell if he meant literally or just that the character was travellin
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That I can actually answer. It is only harmful to Kryptonians when they have powers from a yellow sun. Without that, it is just a normal rock to them.
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the NGDT of that reality (in the comic) doesn't have a fucking superman comic to refer to because SM is real.. and I doubt he has his bio (although he is superman. I'm sure he has a wiki page or something....)
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I seem to recall reading a superman comic a number of years ago where one of the premises of the story involved the earth entering the time-space cone that contained Krypton's explosion, so it was finally "visible" (I use the term loosely) from Earth.
As I recall, Braniac was the villain.
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Perhaps not....
Superman was an infant when his "escape pod" was jettisoned from krypton. He was a toddler when it landed on earth, so about a year and a half flight time. Then, on earth, he aged at least another 20 years before becoming superman.
Then you have any story and plot arcs that have happened between his becoming superman, and deciding to visit the planetarium.
This likely nets us a cozy 30-ish years or so since krypton exploded. Since superman arrived in an FTL capable pod, he can now watch through
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Superman's ship didn't travel faster than light. Otherwise, the Kryptonite would have taken a LOT longer to get here than him.
He was probably in a very long cyrosleep, traveling at some fraction of the speed of light. Either that or he was just a fictional character and some dumbass writers made the whole thing up. One of those.
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At subluminal velocities, it would take him thousands of years to reach the earth.
I seem to recall that his pod contained educational materials, and was not a chryopod. (If it was, he would have crash landed as a fishstick, and not as a toddler.)
For the narrative to be believable, the pod must have been traveling at approx 30x the speed of light.
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At subluminal velocities, it would take him thousands of years to reach the earth.
Only if his star system is thousands of light years away.
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No. Period.
Subluminal travel runs headfirst into special relativity. The energy costs to accelerate a massive body to a nice fraction of lightspeed follows a log curve (approaching infinity on the far end.)
Then you have all the sticky issues with specific impulse, like mass loss, and the constraints about the size of the vessel he was shipped out in.
Basically, baby superman would have split the earth into ball of high energy plasma, if his pod had been doing even half lightspeed when it "landed". Due to th
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Superman’s ship traveled faster than light to get to Earth.
The explanation of all the kryptonite getting to Earth was that the ship created a wormhole to get from Krtyton to Earth and a fair amount of debris got sucked in and followed. Now, mind you, this was 90s comic books science. I don’t know what the start of the art is today.
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What I want to know is why kalael sent him to sol, an not another red dwarf. Class M stars are copiously abundant in our local star cluster, and sending his baby boy to a G type star would be like our scientists deciding to send somebody to a blue star. Unless they are a dark skinned baby, they would have a hard time there. (G type stars like ours have considerably higher percentages of UV light compared to M type stars, like "krypton's". This may explain why spuderman is fair complected.)
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In some versions of the story, Jor-El knows that his child will have vast powers under a yellow Sun, and selects a yellow Sun for that reason. (This begs the question of how Jor-El knows that.)
Not long before the "52" reboot, there was a storyline with a bunch of aliens (who turned out to be police of sorts for an alien 'war crimes' tribunal) looking for a Kryptonian (who turned out not to be Kal-El). Seems that the Kryptonians had actually gotten out of their solar system at one point (not just to anothe
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(This begs the question of how Jor-El knows that.)
*grind grind grind*
Re:what they totally forgot (Score:4, Interesting)
Jor-El, as a brilliant scientist, knew that the yellow sun would give his child super powers.
Look, Superman been around for almost 75 years. During that time a lot of above average people have had these types of questions and the writers have answered them. Sometimes with poor science, sometimes they contradict themselves.
On the flip side, there is some good stuff out there.
James Kakalios is my favorite example. Physicist (PhD., Professor.) and lover of comic books. He has done some cool stuff.
http://www.physicsofsuperheroes.com/intro-physics-book.php [physicsofsuperheroes.com]
http://www.physicsofsuperheroes.com/videos.php [physicsofsuperheroes.com]
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If you look at the actual comic, they are trying to help Superman determine if his planet of origin, Krypton, is still intact or detectable. What they forget is that any light from Krypton's system is so many light years away that we would effectively be seeing Superman's homeworld *before* it was destroyed. NDGT didn't think of this?
That will surely be the whole point of the story.
Superman is 27 years old. Krypton is 27 light years away.
So, what will he see?
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What they forget is that any light from Krypton's system is so many light years away that we would effectively be seeing Superman's homeworld *before* it was destroyed. NDGT didn't think of this?
Simultaneity is relative - if the light we're reveiving is from before Krypton's destruction, then there is a reference frame (albeit one we're unlikely to get ourselves in) in which an observer would perceive that those events are happening at the same time as our present on Earth.
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Wat? Kal El didn't travel to Earth FTL. Relativistic speeds, sure, but there is no problem with light observation. Well, Brainiac might hack the Hubble and feed false results...
In related news... (Score:1)
... Krypton demoted to "dwarf planet"
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... Krypton demoted to "dwarf planet"
The kryptonians should be grateful for still having one, don't you think?
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TV does that, you know !! Makes people stupid !! On both ends !!
Ah, that explains why my feet feel dumber by the day... (of course it started with the head end, long ago!... otherwise why would I bother to reply on /. ?)
Fi-Sci (Score:2)
Tyson is definitely not my favourite astronomer (Score:2)
There are clearly three main types of natural orbiting object (that we know about) - big round gassy planets, smaller round rocky planets, and smaller again not round objects. The boundary between first two is the natural line between giant planets and dwarf planets.
By concentr
Re:Tyson is definitely not my favourite astronomer (Score:5, Funny)
I have to post this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me3-r5rsUSI [youtube.com]
"Hey at least I didn't declassify Pluto from planet status. Way to make a the little kids cry Neil. That make you feel like a big man?"
~ Dr. Rodney McKay
Nor is he Sheldon's. (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3DfwFZZXDQ [youtube.com]
Mmmm... Jewel Staite is yummy (Score:2)
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And there's got to be some joke in there about deciding Krypton isn't a planet. After all, one of the more valid criticisms of the definition his camp came up with for defining a planet was that it wasn't p
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How would being from another universe change anything? Maybe in his universe humanoids can fly just because doing so is cool, but those laws of physics would obviously not apply in this universe.
Face it. Superman is just not scientific in any way. Only the super-strength might be explainable if his species evolved on a super-earth with much greater mass than our planet. The whole flying thing is just ridiculous.
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What if the flying is explained by properly timed superfarts?
Superman can do anything, so full control of his sphincter isn't beyond the realm of possibilities.
It would also explain why the cape always flutters while he is "floating" in midair.
why LHS2520? (Score:2)
There are quite a few red dwarfs within a 30 ly radius of earth. What's so special about LHS2520? Maybe it was just chosen randomly.
General Zod (Score:2)
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Mitt's home star (Score:1)
Next up: Kolob found
Everybody's favourite? (Score:2)
Everybody's favorite astrophysicist
Hey, speak for yourself, buddy. For me, it's E. Margaret Burbidge or nothing.
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