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Comment by daxfohl | Hacker News Reader

It's kind of astounding given we're just dumb people on a dumb planet moving at uninteresting speeds or distances or times that we can predict the result of a neutron star collision and be right. Especially when our physics breaks down at those energy and gravity levels.

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> Especially when our physics breaks down at those energy and gravity levels.

No, it doesn't. Neutron stars seem like very dense objects with very strong gravity to us, but their density and gravity is still well within the boundaries where our current physical theories work well. As the accuracy of these predictions illustrates.

Okay, was wondering about that. Still, it's a neutron friggin star. A star, made out of neutrons. Colliding with another. Galaxies away. And we got it right. Down to very small details. The more I think about it, the more my mind is blown.

Physics: what happens when neutron stars collide? vs CS: how do I exit vim? :)

Galaxies away, and the size of Manhattan at best.

When neutron stars collide black holes are usually formed.

At least we work within realistic timescales..

How do you really?

Reboot. The emacs solution seems to be they haven't figured out how to exit so they just stay there.

Sometimes people even write a systemd unit for it. Feature, not a bug, etc.

Yes, but it doesn't matter because emacs can do anything worth doing.

Emacs is a great OS, but a lousy editor. ;-)

Ctrl-Z, kill -9 %

That's literally what I do -- it feels safer.

> their density and gravity is still well within the boundaries where our current physical theories work well

We have no idea what goes on inside neutron stars [1].

[1] https://www.nature.com/news/neutron-stars-set-to-open-their-...

The speeds, distances, and times are only uninteresting because you are familiar with them. They are all both unimaginably large and unbearably miniscule depending on the context.

I remember hearing/reading a few times that we exist right around the median order of magnitude of things im the universe. So we might actually be interesting if only because we are unusually mediocre.

Hmm, sort of but not really. Looks like the median log length scale is ~10^-7 m, which seems pretty far from our size of ~1m.

Length of universe: unknown

Length of observable universe: ~10^27 m

Length of person: ~1 m

Planck length: ~10^-37 m

Smaller things: unknown

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(volume)

We're just a vaguely coherent temporary collection of membranes holding a puddle of water together round some selfish DNA, though. The clever stuff is all protein folds and chromosomes which is going on right around that magnitude. Not coincidentally, it's also right where you find the wavelengths of visible light - because structures of that kind of size are what both our eyes, and most of the things we're interested in are made out of.

I think another way to think about it is that we are able to discover a world with a scale such that we are mediocre because it's more convenient for us to place ourselves at such position. What if there exists an alternative dimension on a quark with its own universe is yet something we are able to uncover.

They got their own problems.

And that Dos Equis guy travels at all of them at once.

Uninteresting speeds that allow for us to even exist at all. Maybe not so uninteresting :) (I know what you meant though).

> we can predict the result of a neutron star collision and be right

To be fair, what we're predicting happened long ago in the past... predictions about the past are always easier :)

Touche

Hey! Don't insult my planet!

The people here... can't argue that one.

Visiting Vulcans doing the field portion of their degree in Human Studies can.

#notreallymyplanet

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