Stupid scientific questions.

[Doctor Amadeus]

Ok post em if you got em. Doesn’t matter if you get an answer but at least give it a shot. Of course anyone that knows the answer or thinks they do go for it.

Stupid scientific questions.

If it’s really hot outside and you connected a million little fans or one giant big one could you change the surface temperature outside and what would or could be the implications if the fans were too strong to say atmospheric environment could you literally blow a Tornado in Kansas to Cleveland?

[Danner]

@Mall Security:

This sounds like perfect XKCD "what if" material

Temperature is just atoms wiggling about. The more they wiggle, the hotter they are. By contrast, if they stop wiggling, have have reached the absolute zero point of 0 Kelvin. Things cannot get colder than that by definition.

This holds true both for the atoms in the air, and the atoms of your face. Atoms will bump into each other, and propagate heat to each other. The denser these atoms are placed, the more often they will bump into each other, and the better the material is for conveying heat. This is why metal can convey heat very well (and is super awesome to make a frying pan out of), while air is very bad at conveying heat.

When the sunlight hit your face, a lot of that heat will be absorbed as heat in your face.
When the sunlight hit the air, only a very little part of that will be absorbed as heat in the air.
Generally, the air will heat up very slowly, compared to a human out in the sun.

A fan by itself isn't changing any temperature. It is just moving air around. But by creating a wind, you are increasing the rate of which air collides with f.ex your face. When it does, heat will transfer from the air to your face - or vice versa, depending on which is hotter. Generally, that means a fan allows you to remove heat from your face, into the air itself.

If everything on earth had a constant level of heat, that fan isn't gonna do anything for your temperature. But luckily for your example, that isn't the case! Winds exist because of pressure. The sun shines on some part of the world, and not on others (due to clouds, night). In the areas where the sun shines, the air heats up, and gets molecules that get more .. speedy. They bump into each other more. And like a boiling water kettle, that hot air ends up spreading. Into areas where the air isn't as hot. This is what winds are.

Can you make your own hurricane? Certainly; a fan can do just that. But a normal fan isn't gonna cut it. Hurricanes are stupidly powerful. Even a normal gust of wind can grant us enough power for humanity's current needs. Consider blowing up a nuclear bomb. That explosion will cause a monumental amount of heat, and a collosal wall of wind to match, able to knock over houses and whatnot. Yet a little over an hour later, the original wind is back to where it was.

To put some numbers on it, a cat4 hurricane is typically worth 1.5 * 10¹² joules worth of energy per second. That's about 200x the amount of energy generated by the human civilization.
A nuclear bomb is worth 4.2 * 10¹⁵ joules of energy per explosion. That's around 3750x as powerful as the hurricane - but a hurricane lasts for days, far longer than that 3600 seconds = 1 hr. If you truly want to deter a large hurricane, expect to blow up a lot of nukes.

At least the following nuclear winter will solve the heat problem.

--

My question is:

Why is matter particles existing in space. Why can't it be that space is a field extending from matter?

[Doctor Amadeus]

@Mall Security:

This sounds like perfect XKCD "what if" material

Temperature is just atoms wiggling about. The more they wiggle, the hotter they are. By contrast, if they stop wiggling, have have reached the absolute zero point of 0 Kelvin. Things cannot get colder than that by definition.

This holds true both for the atoms in the air, and the atoms of your face. Atoms will bump into each other, and propagate heat to each other. The denser these atoms are placed, the more often they will bump into each other, and the better the material is for conveying heat. This is why metal can convey heat very well (and is super awesome to make a frying pan out of), while air is very bad at conveying heat.

When the sunlight hit your face, a lot of that heat will be absorbed as heat in your face.
When the sunlight hit the air, only a very little part of that will be absorbed as heat in the air.
Generally, the air will heat up very slowly, compared to a human out in the sun.

A fan by itself isn't changing any temperature. It is just moving air around. But by creating a wind, you are increasing the rate of which air collides with f.ex your face. When it does, heat will transfer from the air to your face - or vice versa, depending on which is hotter. Generally, that means a fan allows you to remove heat from your face, into the air itself.

If everything on earth had a constant level of heat, that fan isn't gonna do anything for your temperature. But luckily for your example, that isn't the case! Winds exist because of pressure. The sun shines on some part of the world, and not on others (due to clouds, night). In the areas where the sun shines, the air heats up, and gets molecules that get more .. speedy. They bump into each other more. And like a boiling water kettle, that hot air ends up spreading. Into areas where the air isn't as hot. This is what winds are.

Can you make your own hurricane? Certainly; a fan can do just that. But a normal fan isn't gonna cut it. Hurricanes are stupidly powerful. Even a normal gust of wind can grant us enough power for humanity's current needs. Consider blowing up a nuclear bomb. That explosion will cause a monumental amount of heat, and a collosal wall of wind to match, able to knock over houses and whatnot. Yet a little over an hour later, the original wind is back to where it was.

To put some numbers on it, a cat4 hurricane is typically worth 1.5 * 10¹² joules worth of energy per second. That's about 200x the amount of energy generated by the human civilization.
A nuclear bomb is worth 4.2 * 10¹⁵ joules of energy per explosion. That's around 3750x as powerful as the hurricane - but a hurricane lasts for days, far longer than that 3600 seconds = 1 hr. If you truly want to deter a large hurricane, expect to blow up a lot of nukes.

At least the following nuclear winter will solve the heat problem.

--

My question is:

Why is matter particles existing in space. Why can't it be that space is a field extending from matter?

Woah!

Now that was a perfect example of what I was going for but that was and knock the ball out of the galaxy response. Thank you so much.

I loved the breakdown and specifics of my admittedly dumb question. But that was awesome my hope in asking my question is that if my question as silly enough but honest. Maybe others won’t be so shy to ask.

Thank you again for also answering in a fun and honest way.

As for your question it’s time to engage my best thinking.

[ayrton2388]

My question is:

Why is matter particles existing in space. Why can't it be that space is a field extending from matter?

Actually.... space is a kiiind of matter, in a way.

What i mean is, empty space (that has NO MATTER in it), is not empty. It has energy. Space is like a 3D fabric, that you can even deform, it is not something void and empty. 70% of the total energy of the universe comes from empty space. It's called dark energy.

Matter, as you and i know it, makes up for around 5% of the energy in the universe. The other 25% is made up of dark matter. Dark matter is different from dark energy. It is more like normal matter, but made of particles we did not discover yet, and most importantly, dark matter doesn't interact with itself or normal matter.

[Danner]

Actually.... space is a kiiind of matter, in a way.

What i mean is, empty space (that has NO MATTER in it), is not empty. It has energy. Space is like a 3D fabric, that you can even deform, it is not something void and empty. 70% of the total energy of the universe comes from empty space. It's called dark energy.

Matter, as you and i know it, makes up for around 5% of the energy in the universe. The other 25% is made up of dark matter. Dark matter is different from dark energy. It is more like normal matter, but made of particles we did not discover yet, and most importantly, dark matter doesn't interact with itself or normal matter.

Thank you for an interesting answer.

I have never really settled with the dark matter theories, and you are right it is at the core of the question. I mean, I understand why those things have to be invented - otherwise the laws of physics don't add up to reality - the universe would have fallen apart. But we've never actually found these things in real life. That's why they are named as they are, after all; Dark as in "unseen". To me it just seems infinitely more sensible that we're just not doing the models of reality right; that our laws of physics are based on assumptions that are not correct; discovering "Dark Matter" is more about explaining this discrepancy and adjusting our models of reality. I suspect that was the original intent of these concepts when introduced, but from what I have from popular science in my lifetime, it sounds like we're looking for them in earnest as proposed. With telescopes. Something happened since these concepts were introduced, and I do not know what. To me, this effort smells like looking for Epicycles.

Your answer makes a bunch of sense, and does clarify to me the actual difference between dark energy and dark matter, something I never looked too much into. To consider Dark Energy as a property/sideeffect/consequence/requirement of space itself, is IMO a super interesting prospect. But it kinds just leads me back to my original thought. What if the model of our understanding space is totally wrong?

We assume the universe to be a 3D fabric, infinite in all directions. What if it's just a field spanning from matter? Consider a gravity field. There is potential energy to be found in a gravity field, in that you can extract energy by letting mass move closer to each other inside that field. I would say that gravity fields has energy in it, though whether you count that energy as a property of the field or the objects in it is a matter of perspective. But pretend it's a property of the gravity field for now. Immediately after reading your answer, I am thinking similar things about space itself here. Dark Energy / space itself - is different from gravity, just how? Do we know that it is not a spanning field, not terribly unlike gravity?

I am fully convinced I am on the completely wrong track with this line of thought, by the way. But I do not know why. I would love to know why. Thus filed as a stupid science question