What happens when....
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That would be just the start of our problems. It exerts a gyroscopic stabilizing effect.
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Well, I'd imagine the missing stabilizing effect would cause our orbit to shift, maybe even lose orbit completely. This could mean our rotation is affected which affects everything. Having no tides has a huge wildlife impact.
You've just wiped us out Alan....well done
It's an interesting one though as I scurry off to google the answer
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@tig said:
If you were to go 'off-center' so as to link specific places, then you'll start to 'scrape' down the walls of the tunnel as you fall further in, as the Earth's center of gravity will exert an uneven pull off to the side nearest the 'core'.
... and don't forget about conservation of angular momentum.
If the tunnel is not collinear with Earth axis of rotation, any object falling through the tunnel will be inevitably pushed against wall of the tunnel.
This effect will be strongest in a tunnel perpendicular to the equator. -
Assuming that we are not falling through solid air...
The air pressure should be around 1.88*10^11 bar, that is either super critical or solid, I couldn't figure that out:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=phase+diagram+of+air -
@mike lucey said:
@tig said:
I
Note: if you were agile enough... on the first 'fall', just as you approached the other end and slowed to a standstill you could 'grapple' onto the tunnel's wall just below the rim, so with a little climbing 'up' you could pop out at the other end... but I suspect you'd be a bit knackered by then [if not dead] !!!
There must be easier way to get to Oz
Go via Indonesia, guys. There is a huge industry of smugglers taking thousands of refugees from the Middle East to Asia and put them on rickety old boat and send them our way..... they get intercepted by Border Control and sent to Christmas Island [detention Centre] for processing [which by the way costs the Australian tax payer millions each year!] and in time they get bought in the back door.....
The previous government had the right idea but when this bloody Labor government came to power they relaxed the policy and HELLO!!!, the boats came a sailin....
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Everytime I see you talk about Oz politics I'm reminded of this...
[flash=600,450:27axgr11]http://www.youtube.com/v/aFV2QYsw9yo[/flash:27axgr11]
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How long would it actually take an object to get through? Shouldn't the trajectory be bent a little if you take in account the gravitational force of the moon? If there was a solar eclipse on the other end of the hole, would that be enough to get you through? If one end is in an ocean and the other on land, wouldn't that make a one heck of a whirlpool and a geyser?
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@aerilius said:
Assuming that we are not falling through solid air...
The air pressure should be around 1.88*10^11 bar, that is either super critical or solid, I couldn't figure that out:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=phase+diagram+of+airapparently this is a frictionless medium (considering the speed with which Rich dismissed my answer
) also perfectly aligned to negate rotational forces, etc. -
Your in my world now where trivial matters like fact are dismissed.
What happens when you try to locate the position of the colour grey in 3D space? Is white at 0,0,0?
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grey is a line extending from white to black. 1,1,1; 2,2,2; 3,3,3; etc.
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Black would be 0,0,0; white would be 255,255,255.
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@unknownuser said:
What happens when you try to locate the position of the colour grey in 3D space?
The TREMULATION (as prophetised)?
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@andybot said:
grey is a line extending from white to black. 1,1,1; 2,2,2; 3,3,3; etc.
Your viewing colour as a hue, which is something we use to visualise variation.
@alan fraser said:
Black would be 0,0,0; white would be 255,255,255.
Your taking the piss but that's expected since this thread is turning into an episode of QI. where's my moon answer?
@chrisglasier said:
The TREMULATION (as prophetised)?
Your wasting my time as much as I'm wasting yours. You should give this a go....
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@unknownuser said:
Your viewing colour as a hue, which is something we use to visualise variation.
But grey isn't just one value. Also, having 3 variables implies hue doesn't it? (red green blue I assume) Oh well, we must be talking about different things.
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No, you're absolutely right. A recent study has shown 50% grey is located at 0,0,0. It's what happens next that I found interesting.
Since we show colours in hues it easy imagine each hue stacked one on the other to create a cylinder of colour. When colour is actually filling 3D space as a sphere (of sorts).
I was surprised, as Alan's suggestion
of white at 0,0,0 was my initial thought if asked. I was hoping someone had link to the study since I've never seen an image of this color ball. -
@unknownuser said:
What happens when you try to locate the position of the colour grey in 3D space? Is white at 0,0,0?
This is a non-sequitur. A colour is a property of an object and so it has no independent existence - an object can be said to exist in 3d space, a colour might belong to an object, but it cannot be thought of as being in 3d space itself. Used as an abstract concept a 'colour' becomes like 'beauty' or 'width' - and none of these have a physical presence in the real world - only as the property of a real 3d object. So the answer is, 'Nothing happens, as you cannot locate a color in 3d space; and therefore the 'non-change' cannot change its properties.' If you were to change the question to, 'What happens when you try to locate the position of an object that has the colour grey in 3D space? Is white at 0,0,0?', then the answer is also that it's illogical, moving an object does not imply its colour will change - although of course given external influences [not mentioned in the question at all!] like proximity to some other agent like a source of light/heat etc the object's colour may well change depending on its relative location - as it heats up it might glow differently...
On a note of 'convention' - [0,0,0] would normal be thought of as 'black' - i.e. there is no red/green/blue, while 'white' is [255,255,255] using RGB or [1,1,1] OR [100,100,100] using unity/%; because the question does not clarify this issue we can only assume, but there are no common conventions where the absence of colour is 'white'... So an adjunct to the answer could also be, 'There is no logical reason in the framing of the question that suggests that being at a particular 3d coordinate would affect an object's colour, and there is no conventional reasoning to make 'white' as [0,0,0] .'
If you 'corrected' the inversion in the colouring and substituted 'black' for 'white' the first part stands, about 'no reason to suppose location affects colour', but you can omit the second part about 'convention for [0,0,0]'...
Stacking coloured objects in space is completely arbitrary - depending on your rules any one of your collection of 'all coloured objects' could be at located [0,0,0] X/Y/Z, irrespective of its actual RGB or any other color-classification system you've adopted. If you then adjust your colour-referencing system to match how you've stacked everything, then you've just invented another reference system, you have NOT found some deep meaningful inter-relationship between these stacked objects and their colours. Whether it's a sphere, a disk, a rectangle, a line, a double-helix, a pyramid etc, and where this collection then stands in 3d space, is determined by the stacker and not by the inherent property of the colours themselves ???
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Solve that problem and you'd probably find God. Grey is 42.
I dug this out on the effect of no moon:-
The first natural phenomenon that would give out is the tides. The sudden disappearance of the moon would completely upend the tidal system. There would still be some movement. Waves would still break on the west sides of continents, due to the rotation of the earth.Or at least they would at first, since the motion of the earth would become unpredictable. Once the moon kicked out the earth would precess like a top which has spun down enough to wobble, but not topple over. This would be a heck of a wobble. The earth would move so radically that it could sometimes spin perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. In other words, the southern or northern hemisphere would be exposed to the sun at all times, while the other hemisphere would be perpetually dark. At other times, it would spin exactly parallel to the plane of orbit, eliminating the seasons by making all days equally long.
The world-killing precession would take a long time to murder the last of the human race, but in the meantime we'd be entertained by ordinary disasters. The moon exerts gravitational stress on the earth as well as the sea, and some consider it a factor in continental drift. As a result, we might see an uptick in volcano and earthquake activity. Meanwhile, any plants and animals which had their reproduction or migration scheduled tied to the lunar cycle would be completely scrambled. The collapse of fish, bird, and insect populations would put a strain and local ecology and result in starvation and social disintegration.
......Oh! and it would also be harder to see at night.
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There you go bringing fact to the table when the questions posted are devoid of fact.
The question's point is to make you place a color value at a point and then extrapolate all remaining colours from that point to create a shape [object]. Do you get a sphere, cube, cylinder etc?
I like Andy's thinking that colour is linear in a 3D space.
@Alan
Thanks for that, especially the poles flipping. Reminds me of a Hawkings documentary describing when Andromeda starts to collide with out galaxy. A lights how lasting millions of years with a disappointing end
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Without a moon there would still be some tides [as opposed to rotation lag affects in the liquid part of the crust [the sea]] because the sun's remaining influence. They'd be a lot less affect, but it'd still be noticeable - at the moment the sun+moon combo causes higher or lower total tides when they are on the same or opposite sides of the earth and combine their affect or counteract one another.
However, this issue of tides is completely outweighed by other matters arising...The sudden disappearance of the moon would undoubtedly be catastrophic.
The continental plates would shift and ease as the usual tidal pressures on the mantle changed - immediate earthquakes and volcanoes...
The sudden loss of a significant part of the mass from the combined earth-moon system would cause an immediate orbit change - by changing our angular momentum, affecting the day length and year length, and most likely moving us out of the 'Goldilocks zone' into a less clement zone where we'd freeze [or possibly boil]...
The issue of the earth's 'precedence' wobble is perhaps more uncertain - but the earth's wobble would certainly become unpredictable, and what was left of our seasons that it creates would become untenable. Although a the volcanoes erupted, the crust split open, and a new ice-age started etc, the same matter of your wheat/rice/maize/potato crops failing might pale into insignificance for a few days, until you died...All in all, if the moon were suddenly to disappear then we'd all be completely buggered - albeit briefly until we were all dead !
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Now Tig you are straying into the realms of fantasy, we all know that nuclear waste from Earth stored on the Moon's far side exploded in a catastrophic accident on 13 September 1999, knocking the Moon out of orbit and sending it and the 311 inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha hurtling uncontrollably into space, and there haven't been any problem like you describe in the last 13 years or so.
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