If space is real and we are currently there then why are there no

I tried to not post here, I really did. I kept coming back to this thread reading more and more of the misconceptions.

"Stars can not be seen from space."
Incorrect, they can be seen from space with the naked eye and video equipment under right conditions. These conditions will be explained later in this post.

"Atmosphere or particles are needed to see light!"
... your eyes, retina and all, are particles. As is the receptors on a camera (Film or chip.) It is like shining a laser into your eye, fewer particles in the air allows for photons to fly less interupted into your eyes. If anything, that experiment mentioned with the laser means the receiving end of the laser will have more photons hitting it.

If the point made was "you can't see the laser from the side" - well yeah, that is because photons aren't bouncing out of the direct path by hitting particles, and bouncing into your eye. When you "see" the beam, you are seeing the particle "source" as the photons from the laser bounces of the things in the air.

The same is with stars, we see stars by directly observing the light. In space there are less (but still some!) particles in the way... stars will appear significantly brighter. The light is not as "focused" like a laser beam however, so - while it does "bounce sideways" like in the laser experiments with an atmosphere - it is far less intense of a stream due to the difference and distance of source material. (EG: We can see God's Rays from the side, shining down from the sky... because that is the stream of photons from the sun breaking through the clouds. If we were UNDER them, we would look up and see bright sunshine!)

In short: Light can be seen in space.

But what about stars in photos?
Take photography 101 and you will understand! It is simple mechanics. I will give you a down to earth explanation first.

Ever taken a photo out of a window during the day...from inside? You may have noticed that - even though your lights may be on in the house, it is significantly darker than outside, if not solid black.

Go to a stadium at night, stand in the middle of the field, and then try to take a photo of the trees off in the distance under a street lamp. In most cities at least, the street lamp is far far dimmer than stadium lighting. You might see a little bit of information on your photo, but not as much as if you were standing in the dark, with no stadium or stadium lighting in the way. Why is this?

Photography cameras have several mechanics. In simple wording, consider the following.
1: Bigger the lens = more light collected as a whole
2: More open the lens = more light let in as a whole (aperture)
3: Longer exposure = more light collected through time
4: More sensitive recording medium = dimmer light sources seen easily, bright light sources extremely over powering

To properly photograph stars at night, there are many techniques to be taken...but the cheapest and most efficient...and most common is the following.

First, you need a tripod with a motor on it, because the earth moves! Why is this a problem you ask? Remember number three? Long exposure! A big lens is VERY expensive (I've seen some professional ones hit $4,000 and way more!) and cumbersome... and few are built for maximum light exposure needed for stellar photography. To compensate for the lack of good/cheap lens work, photographers use exposure time to make up for this. More time exposed to light = more light collected into a single shot.

This is why a motor is needed, if you just do a "long" exposure with no motor to move the camera against the Earth's movement- then you just end up with bright lines across your photo of the night sky!

The other down-side to this? Lots of light collected over longer periods of time means bright sources of light increasingly blind your camera. A street lamp for example, would over-power and white-out your photograph of the stars if you were unwise enough to try to take long exposures of the sky under a light. Even something as simple as your cell phone's lighted screen is enough to ruin these photographs.

In space, this becomes HARDER... all our current craft orbit close to Earth. Night exposures do work - they are just not as affective/easy. Why? Because we have a giant reflective source called Earth blinding our camera to the much dimmer, and further, stars. Same for moon photos. You could get a photo of the stars, but the moon and anything near it would be a wall of white.

"Why not as many/any at all in video then?"
Video cameras work much differently. They expose on a per-frame basis. Long star shots can last 30 seconds or more. A camera takes (normally) 24 pictures a second. Most 'video' you see is lots of single shots in a row with normal photography cameras!

"My eyes?"
Eyes have a 'frames per second' as cameras, but are way more versatile and sensitive. Isn't nature great?

~8 years of photography, 3 in college. I work with video daily as well. e

Originally posted by Blue Shift

Originally posted by DaveNorris
ok, lets just humor you for a moment.... theres no such thing as space, whats your opinion on whats really out there?

Essentially, space is composed of "nothing" that we can perceive in a three-dimensional sense. If anything, it is a curved fifth dimension that is not compressed enough to manifest what we understand is matter/energy. It is only past a certain compression density threshold that existence in three-dimensions is capable of happening.

Space, by definition, is "the unlimited three-dimensional expanse in which all material objects are located" and "an interval of distance or time between two points, objects, or events." I perceive position, time and motion (motion is the result of relative position and time i.e. SPEED) therefore it exists. If space did not exist nothing would happen (I think therefore I am). Therefore EVERYTHING WE PERCEIVE IN 3 DIMENSIONS should be considered to be properties of a whole of which space is an integral part of. Only a reductionist approach would mislead us to try to isolate space from the manifest "material" world.

Another way to describe this is that space (from the 3/4D world) is a property/manifestation of energy/matter or matter is a property/manifestation of space. One cannot exist without other. The measurable (time bound) and the limitless (eternal), the finite and the infinite, the manifest and the unmanifest are one and the same.

Now to measure we must perceive. At this point we begin to approach mind and consciousness. Does perception lead to consciousness? I'll leave it here I think.... For now.

Originally posted by blocula
We are told as fact that the universe is around 13.75 billion years old and yet we are also told that the universe is around 93 billion light years across in diameter?!?!

To point out the obvious question, how does something travel from the big bang to 46.5 billion light years away in 13.75 billion years IF THE SPEED OF LIGHT IS A CONSTANT?

NOTE TO READER: 1 light year is how far light travels in a year. In theory light can only travel 13.75 billion light years in 13.75 billion years NOT 46.5!

Originally posted by blocula
If it is actually speeding up,expanding outwards in all directions faster and faster,then we will never be able to know how immense it actually is,because its outer most receeding light will never reach us?!?! > en.wikipedia.org...

If it is positively accelerating (speeding up in laymans terms)at the outer edge of the Universe but the light there is already travelling at the speed of light, what speed is it speeding up to? Is this a paradox. IS THE SPEED OF LIGHT A CONSTANT?

Originally posted by blocula
Those unimaginably vast numbers and immense stretches of time and what they actually mean are so unbelievable and mind bending that i dont believe its our true reality and so i think that the universe is actually a three dimensional holographic illusion...

a simulated reality,projected by class-3 aliens from another dimension.... Just like the matrix. But in the matrix, the 3D world was where the matrix was created. Imagine if the matrix created the 3D universe.

Seriously though (unless you take my comments seriously) those posts were exceptionally good. HOpefully some of the members will take up your points, which is why I have tried to hammer home the unbelievable and mind bending elements, as it's high time. Thank you both for provoking though, hopefully in many more members than little me.

NOTE: Someone will probably kindly come and try to explain relativity shortly. Good luck.

reply to post by Pimander

To point out the obvious question, how does something travel from the big bang to 46.5 billion light years away in 13.75 billion years IF THE SPEED OF LIGHT IS A CONSTANT?

NOTE TO READER: 1 light year is how far light travels in a year. In theory light can only travel 13.75 billion light years in 13.75 billion years NOT 46.5!

Expansion of spacetime? Not to mention before there was light, an elapsed 600 million years passed before particles formed. The expansion in the first second had no rules to follow. Obviously the Universe expanded beyond one light second in the first second after the bang.

Originally posted by Illustronic
reply to post by Pimander

 

To point out the obvious question, how does something travel from the big bang to 46.5 billion light years away in 13.75 billion years IF THE SPEED OF LIGHT IS A CONSTANT?

NOTE TO READER: 1 light year is how far light travels in a year. In theory light can only travel 13.75 billion light years in 13.75 billion years NOT 46.5!

Expansion of spacetime? Not to mention before there was light, an elapsed 600 million years passed before particles formed. The expansion in the first second had no rules to follow. Obviously the Universe expanded beyond one light second in the first second after the bang.

No rules sounds desperately contrived to me. No rules (laws?) means no forces to cause an expansion. Paradoxical surely?

To say, "this happened in the first second but we don't have to explain how because there weren't any laws or causes," defeats the mechanistic attempt to explain the origins of the Universe as it leads to no definable mechanism.

The above is for me one of the fundamental brick walls of a LINEAR theory of origins. In a mechanistic world (or theoretical framework) all things have a cause, caused by a cause. You will always need to explain a further cause. Only a Mobius like non-linear theory seems likely to nail the problem but even that could have paradoxes - but I stop there.

Expansion and distance are properties of "4D reality" so expansion must be subject to its laws to have meaning

reply to post by Pimander
The universe is known to be expanding with exponential acceleration.But the recession speed of the distant galaxies is determined based on the light which has reached the earth after many billions of years of propagation.So the recession speed that we observe of the periphery of the universe,its external boundary,is only apparent,not actual.It is the recession speed which existed billions of years ago.The actual current speed of the universe's expansion must be unbelievably faster,almost incomprehensible...

reply to post by blocula
reply to post by Illustronic

I'd love to carry on with this. However, to make myself clear will take a lot of explaining. I love both of your answers and suspect that, like me, you both have a lot more ammunition on these types of topic.

reply to post by Foxe

Thanks for that. The best explanation on this thread in my opinion, most of which I agree with. It's quite interesting to see how differently an astronomer, photographer and a biologist explain pretty much the same thing.

Originally posted by longtermproject
you can't see the stars from space because of a lack of an atmosphere.....

quoted from Scienceray.com

....to understand this effect it is important to understand how the eyes filter or focus an image, unfortunately, this is outside the scope of this article. However, for simplicity, we still use two theories of light; one depicts light as a wave vibration, and the other depicts light as particle. Wave-light demonstrates minute energy signature, while, particle light is more energetic. Of the two light concepts, star light has wave characteristics and therefore requires amplification before it can stimulate our optical sensors. This is where the sun and our atmosphere come into play. Although the sun is on the other side of the globe- at nights, its ambient light is reflected and refracted off the atmosphere and encompasses the earth. We cannot see the sun at night but the sun makes it possible for us to see at light. When the earth experience an eclipse of the sun, night on the opposite side where the eclipse occurs will experience an unusually darker night. This is caused from a reduction in the sun light reaching the atmosphere. Read more: scienceray.com...

What you say is totally wrong, and the quote you pasted is talking about the Sun, not the stars.

Originally posted by Pimander
reply to post by Foxe

 

Thanks for that. The best explanation on this thread in my opinion, most of which I agree with. It's quite interesting to see how differently an astronomer, photographer and a biologist explain pretty much the same thing.

Yes interesting.

And here's a dumber explanation.

"At night you cannot see the man behind a torch pointed directly at you. So in this case the earth/moon is the torch and the stars are the man" Phoenix the unprofessional.

reply to post by Foxe


Thank you for posting the only sane reply, I was starting to lose faith reading through the thread. Same goes to defcon5 for illustrating the point very clearly.

reply to post by Pimander


Apparently 95% of the known Universe doesn't obey our laws of physics, dark matter and dark energy, though measurements can be made for the presence of such mass and forces. Also explained expansion was not a constant, it is observed that 7.5 billion years ago expansion increased, sped up. We can't measure anything beyond the WMAP, nearly 400 million years after the big bang. So though it sounds like a cope out to say, 'not abiding by our known laws of physics' simply just means we haven't discovered that dark area yet to explain neatly within our understanding, exotic forces, exotic particles, or 'flavors' which is the new particle punch phrase now.

Can you draw the parallel between the micro and the macro? Within the laws so far my understanding of the forces of nature, gravity is the weak force in the micro, but the strong force in the macro. In the interest of brevity, I leave it there.

reply to post by Illustronic
Gravity is another great apparently paradoxical one....

In the interests of not driving everyone mad or going any further off topic I think we really should leave it here.

Sorry, but your new avatar is way too cool for any member on ATS by the way.