Quantum Pony

Not enough bars with Fish and Chips

vase

440433

Kansas-Carry on my wayward son https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al12WO5x23w

@Mirage Jupiter, just to see how accurate the Wachowski brothers described it in Jupiter Ascending (2015), plus I heard it rains diamond there Do potatoes have feelings too?

When I saw the title of this forum I said to myself (yup if we are traveling into the future and definitely nope if we are traveling into the past). But after reading your post I am starting to reconsider. Wormholes, closed-timelike curves and cosmic strings does sound like cool and plausible ways to travel through time! Although it would cost a pretty penny to build such a machine . On a side note, I think the consequences of time traveling is quite interesting as well. One interesting thing about timetraveling I've been thinking about is to imagine traveling back in time to the early 1900s and say the only thing you did was accidently spilling coffee on another guy's shoe. This could set off a butterfly effect that changes the course of action of maybe 100 people in a day and then spread to a million over a month. For example, two weeks after you spilled your coffee, it may lead to a chain of events leading to a high school teacher living 1000km away to reach school three seconds later than he was supposed to. These changes might seem insignificant at first, but note a slight change in a person's life is very likely result in a different sperm that fertlizes the egg during the conception of their child. Now the couple's baby is likely to look very different than he/she is in the original timeline . So one could argue, every child that was born after your timetraveling event are now drastically different from their original timeline. Now the effect of timetravel is no longer insignificant and these babies (even if say their personalities are exactly the same but look slightly different) are likely to go on and live a completely different life than in the original timeline. As a result, even a very small change in our (recent) timeline may lead to a completely different and unrecognizable now. But.... I am by no means an expert in time-travel (or biology) and aside from ethical concerns, I now do believe time-travel is possible! (At least in paper and maybe not physically possible in the near future. ). (Following contains Spoilers for Season 6&7):

IT (2017)

Ahh I see, well but just incase you're interested, it's from Courage the Cowardly dog . Interesting thought! But I'm wondering is it (in total) really zero volume if two particles can't always be in the same volume ? More questions Version 2.5: Donald Duck or Daffy Duck

This is the most exceptional coconut tale I've ever seen. Long live the great and powerful coconut! (does this allude to Trotsky or Zhukov? xD) I tried every sequence and mathematical operation I know. Then I punched it in Python and ran it for an hours to see if it detect any pattern... Then.... Good one though! Follow up questions Version 2: If Jack has 2 apples and Jill has 3 apples why don't they just shut up and eat?

Lol, that sounds way too awesome. Im gonna try that on my neighbor's cat. I didn't think it would be possible to explain pretty much all of particle physics in one post but you did it! (Although such concepts seems to be too amazing to be explained with only QM ) Since it's my favorite topic, I'd like to throw in my two-cents as well : I believe that Quantum Mechanics is: Just a bunch of (extremely beautiful) math that turns out to be correct and nobody really knows why. =P Couldn't agree more! I personally recommend The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, a book that explains everything in QM without introducing a single equation! This is also the book that makes me fall in love with physics , and I believe if you read just the first 10 pages, you would too! Follow up question: If coconut has hair and produce milk, why isn't it classified as a mammal?

AoE II was my childhood! It is absolutely amazing. I still remember attacking my opponents' castles with cars

Toast always lands butter side down Cat always lands on its feet So what happens when you attach the toast to the back of the cat?

The idea of oblivion after death has always been scary to me. But I would like to propose an interesting theory about what life is like after death. Consider this: Let's take the most scientific approach towards what consciousness is: some kind of chemical intereaction (like nerve cells and stuff) in our brain. (not quite sure about that, not a neurologist ). Now, let's imagine a teleporter. When we go through a teleporter, we are broken down to individual particles and regrouped at the other side of the teleporter. This means that the correct assembly of your particles can recreate 'you' with the same state of consciousness (I hope). So it is possible, that after millions, billions or even trillions of years after we die, there is an alien race advanced enough to recreate every single human being that ever lived by literally reassembling each subatomic particle! But let's consider the worst case scenario: that such an advanced race didn't exist by the time the universe itself ceases to exist. Fear not! Because we know that if anything CAN happen, WILL happen, given enough (infinite) time. So whether we are in a universe going in cycles of life and death or a multiverse, given enough time, there will be a moment where the right combinations of particles (by random chance) recreates the EXACT you! So does this mean we need to wait for trillion and trillions of years? Nope! Without a functioning brain, you do not have a sense of time. Which is why the time between the moment of death and rebirth (say trillions of years) seems instantaneous! So it would seem as if our consciousness 'time traveled' into the future! I think this is a reasonable and 'scientific' guess of what might happen . (Unless of course, our consciousness isn't defined by just one point in space-time but requires a continuous flow of thought and once destroyed can never ever be reconstructed as per its definition. And that the mere action of teleportation destroys us forever and creates a perfect clone of ourself on the other side. A clone that doesn't know teleportation kills us and offers this perfect killing machine for everyone to try. But what a horrible world that would be! )

Hello, sorry I may have misinterpreted the purpose of this thread . I asked my previous question because practically every single person in my school is an athiest and also athiests won pretty much every single religious debate. So as soon as I saw the name of your thread I just couldn't resist . It is just a question I've been hoping someone could answer, and your response is absolutely perfect ! (And of course I pretty much agrees with you completely ) Hope your thread goes well! And here is a quote from one of the greatest scientist of all time (Although I think he is THE greatest scientist of all time) "If we are honest — and scientists have to be — we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination... I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet." -(Paul Dirac) So I don't really believe the existence of an omnipotent God as described in the scriptures of Abrahamic religions. However, I do like to think perhaps there is something more about the universe than just the physical laws we see today. "One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe" -(Paul Dirac) At any rate, hope everything goes well with the thread!

As a science enthusiast this is always a very interesting topic for discussion. I enjoyed watching videos of one of the most famous athiest, Richard Dawkins, and his debates with religious figures. I think his arguments are very reasonable. However, I always find claiming to be an athiest quite a strong statement. There is so much about the universe that we do not understand (we may understand about 4% of the universe which is probably an overestimate). And as to what lies beyond the observable universe or before the big bang, we know practically nothing. Perhaps we are created by extra-dimensional beings and that our universe is a nice little experiment [see Ben 10 Omniverse]. And their technology, to us, seems nigh omnipotent. Or perhaps a catastrophic time machine incident by future humans created the big bang [See Family Guy]. We humans are amazing creatures whose knowledge and technology greatly exceeds our nearest biological neighbor (chimps). But to be brutally honest, we, as a race, are very young and still have much to learn. Perhaps we should not shut down all possibilites so soon . Just something I like to throw in for discussion . Although during religious debates I pretty much always take the side of athiests xD (like 99% of the time).

The Celestial Conjecture Abstract: In this article, we explore a question as old as MLP itself, one that traces back to the very first episode: How does Celestia and Luna raise the sun and the moon? We attempted this question using evidences from MLP episodes along with some of the most fundamental laws in physics such as Einstein's theory of relativity. Working with the assumption that the Equestria sun has similar propeties as the our sun, we made the argument that the Equestria sun has similar size and positioned at a similar distance away from Earth as the moon. We further propose the three celestial bodies, Sun, Moon and Earth are not in orbits with each other but stationary relative to each other. Finally, we conclude that Celestia and Luna raises the Sun and the Moon with their magic in the most literal way by positioning them above the land of Equestria during day and night respectively. Quantum Pony 1 1 Theoretical Pony Science, Pony Department The Institute of Pony Studies SW8 3AZ Equestria Introduction: (contains extremely minor spoilers from S02E11: Hearth Warming eve) Day and night in Equestria are brought magically by Celestia and Luna, and before that, by group of unicorns as shown in [1]. On the otherhand, in the world we are familiar with, magic is not required to bring forth day and night as it is achieved by the earth's orbit around the sun. Several questions are raised from this: Does the Equestria solar system follow the same heliocentric (earth around the sun) model as our solar system or does it follow a geocentric model (with sun around earth). Interesting and detailed discussions of this can be found in [2]. But a more important question is the role of Luna and Celestia. Is the whole "Celestia raising the sun" simply a huge lie to keep them in power and ensure no pony would overthrow them as it would endanger equestria itself? It is therefore the purpose of this article to investigate just how does Celestia and Luna raise the sun and the moon. Some Physics prelude: As stated in Axiom 2 of the previous entry, we will be assuming the laws of physics that works in our world works in Equestria universe as well. Although this does not mean there isn't new physics concepts in Equestria as well (which I am sure there are plenty). Luminosity: To investigate the question laid out in Introduction, we need to know the role played by the sun in order to sustain life on earth. As outlined in [1], the Earth ponies needs the alteration of day and night provided by the unicorns in order to grow food. It can be computed using the surface temperature of the sun, its radius and distance from earth the amount of power (per unit area) we receive here on earth. In our universe, this adds up to about 1380Wm-2 (where W is Watts, the unit of power). So the distance, d, the size, R, and the temperature, T, of the sun needs to be appropriate in order to provide that much power. Although the ponies may not need exactly 1380Wm-2 we will strive for something at a similar order of magnitude. The equation for the luminosity L (defined as the power per unit area) is: L = (some constant) x T 4 x R 2 x d -2 From this we can see the role played by inverse square law, basically, the closer the sun is to Earth, the greater the luminosity. So to have a large sun very far away is similar to having a small sun very near Earth (assuming they have the same surface tempreature T). Special Relativity: Now we turn our attention to the next topic: Special Relativity. Special relativity, formulated by Einstein, is one of the greatest achievements in the 20th century. It gives rise to what is arguably the most well know equation: E=mc2 . But there is another consequence of special relativity, one that is even more important and controversial in the old days: Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. This is arguably one of the most firmly established and tested law in physics and we must assume it to hold in the Equestria universe as well. Otherwise, we will not be able proceed at all with any form of physical theories after Newton, and assuming faster-than light travel causes a lot of problems with causality as well. Hence, we propose the following: Theorem 1: Magic is a fundamental force of nature. Corollary: As any other fundamental forces of nature, Magic cannot travel faster than the speed of light (300,000km/s). The Equestria Solar system: Position of the Sun, Moon and Earth: In our universe, the moon is positioned dmoon=4x108 m away from earth with a radius of Rmoon=1.7x106 m. On the otherhand, the sun is positioned dsun=1.5x1011 m away from earth with a radius of Rsun=7x108 m. The position and size of the sun gives the correct luminosity to sustain life on earth. One interesting property is that the ratio Rsun / dsun is approximately equal to the ratio Rmoon / dmoon . Infact, this is the reason why the moon and the sun looks the same size in the sky! The importance of this in our investigation will be obvious soon. In [3-4] there are several incidences where the sun is raised by Celestia. One of the most important thing to notice is that as Celestia raises the sun (the moment her unicorn shines bright with her magic), the sun immediately moves as well. But if the sun is at a distance 1.5x1011 m we know it takes about 8 minutes for light to reach the earth. Hence, her action of immediately moving the sun (which if counting her magic reaching the sun and the light from the sun to reach us, should take 16 minutes) would violate Theorem 1 as stated above. To ensure special relativity and hence causality to hold, we need a sun much closer to earth for what happened in [3-4] to make sense. From [5], we can directly compare the size of the sun and the moon in the sky and it shows they are approximately equal, similar to our universe. So we have two conditions to meet: Condition 1: The sun must be near enough to almost immediately react to Celestia's magic Condition 2: Its luminosity must be such that it can sustain life on earth and appear as the same size as the moon. Miraculously, both of these conditions can be met! Proposition 1: The sun is just as bright as ours but has the same size of the moon and placed at approximately the same distance away from the earth as the moon. This is near enough for Celestia's magic to cause an immediate reaction of the sun (with about a 2.5 second delay) and bright enough (~1380Wm-2) to support life on earth. Hence explaining the scenes in [3-4] as well as not violating special relativity. Of course, we can place a slightly larger sun slightly further away as well and still meet Condition 2, however, we need it as close as possible in order for Condition 1 to hold. Furthermore, due to the possiblity of an eclipse, the lower boundary on the distance is that it still needs to be further away than the moon. The actual movements of the Sun, Moon and Earth: When two celestial objects such as the sun and earth comes near each other, they will be caught in each others' gravitational pull. As a result, they orbit around each other, with the heavier body appear more still and the lighter one appear to move around it. This is how planets orbits the stars and moons orbits planets in our solar system. However, one of the reason this works is that out of all the fundamental forces, only gravity is significant in this situation. Equestria on the otherhand, has another significant force which is Magic. The ability of Celestia and Luna to move the sun and the moon shows this long range force is significant enough to combat gravity. Hence, it wouldn't be a surprise that the even though planets might orbit around each other before the time of ponies, when the unicorns came they stopped the orbit with their magic. As a result, one can make an educated guess that the sun, moon and earth are stationary relative to each other. Now lets get into some more detail. There are times in [5-6] where there is no one to perform the duties of raising the sun and the moon. If we consider the above theory that unicorn magic is the force that repels the gravitational attraction of the three celestial objects, wouldn't they collide into each other during its absence? The answer is yes. However, due to their distance apart, it would take a significant amount of time for this to occur such that in the time frame of [5-6] there wouldn't be a significant difference in their positions in the sky. This can be computed using Kepler's laws and the result is about 5 days. For more information see [7]. With these features established, the act of Celestia and Luna raising the sun and the moon is exactly what it is. They used their magic to position the sun and moon above equestria to create day and light. At night, the sun would be rotated to the otherside of earth and similarly for the moon during the day. Questions yet to be addressed: The propositions above solves some of the questions but also raised some more questions. For a star to be the same size of our moon is unheard of in our universe and seems even more difficult for it to be just as bright as our sun (since it needs to be at a certain size to sustain the fusion reactions in its core). Furthermore, the mean density of the moon is lower than that of the sun, hence for them to be the same size, the moon would probably have been heavier thus contradicting the comments made by Celestia in [8]. However, the above calculations maintains that the sun merely have to be approximately the size and distance of the moon. We can place it slightly further away, with a larger volume and lower surface temperature and still allows the same luminosity to sustain life on earth and keeping laws of relativity intact. Although the exact computations needs to be worked out. There are also questions about whether the Earth is flat or spherical. My personal view point is for Earth to be spherical and such arguments were already made in [9]. However, a flat earth Equestria would not significantly hurt the arguments above as gravity still works the same way. Celestia simply needs to take the sun to the 'backside' of earth. See [10] for a visualization of this process in a different universe. Conclusion: The position of the sun can be chosen to be approximately the same distance away from earth and with the same size as the moon. This allows a luminosity that can sustain life on earth as well as not violating the laws of relativity when Celestia uses magic to move it. Furthermore, the sun, moon and earth are stationary relative to each other instead of being in orbit. As a result, Celestia and Luna raises and lower the sun and the moon by using their magic to resposition them above the sky of Equestria and thus bringing forth day and night. Future work can include doing some more computations so that the numbers adds up and considering other effects that a smaller and closer sun could do to Equestria. Acknolwedgements: Quantum Pony is grateful of all the insightful and stimulating discussions in mlpforum and fimfiction. Quantum Pony is supported by the Equestria Potato Grant. References: [1] Williams, M et al. (2011) S02E11 MLP:FIM [2] Batbrony et al (2013) The Solar System of MLP: Ptolemaic or Copernican? mlpforum [3] McCarthy, M et al. (2013) S04E02 MLP:FIM [4] McCarthy, M et al. (2014) S04E26 MLP:FIM [5] McCarthy, M et al. (2013) S04E01 MLP:FIM [6] Haber, J et al (2016) S06E25 MLP:FIM [7] Scileander et al (2017) If you were to fall the the distance that the Moon is from Earth, how long would you fall? [8] Lewis, J et al (2017) S07E10 MLP:FIM [9] Ponitten et al (2016) A theory that could prove that Celestia doesn't raise the Sun after all, mlpforum [10] Summit Entertainment (2016) Gods of Egypt

In this short entry, I will try to list of the Axioms or fundamental principles that we should follow in order to investigate the scientific laws in Equestria. Most of the science we encounter have two main branches, Theoretical and Experimental (there is also computational but not sure how we can investigate that in Equestria given computers doesn't really exist there...) . Since we cant really carry out experiments (as we do not live in Equestria), we can only investigate evidences that are presented in MLP episodes. And our job is try to explain these phenomenons and formulate a complete picture of science in Equestria. Axioms: Axiom 1: Anything in the Equestria universe displayed in an episode / movie are considered to be Facts. Note on Axiom 1: We should not assume all scientific theorems that works in Equestria universe works in Equestria Girls universe. But this does not mean they don't overlap at all given that they can travel from one universe to the other. Axiom 2: Scientific theorems and laws that are true in our universe is also true in Equestria universe. Note on Axiom 2: For example, we can assume Newton's laws of motion to be true in Equestria universe as well. Although there can be scientific laws in Equestria that are absent in our universe. So to be more exact, the laws of nature in our universe forms a subset of the laws of nature in the Equestria universe. This is the least number of axioms I could think of in order for us to proceed. Hopefully we won't need more in the future but we shall see . Next entry: Lets test things out