mavity?

Rezident

Rezident

Rezident

Soldato
Joined
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Anoyone see Horizon on BBC2 last night? Amazing description of spacetime and the graviton.

Funny when their Sat Nav got lost on the way to the GPS headquarters.
 
Usual Horizon stuff really, not too deep but interesting nonetheless. Although at some points I was still going "wtf mate?".

That guy had mavity defying lips, ironically. He literally could not stop smiling.
 
Conscript said:
That guy had mavity defying lips, ironically. He literally could not stop smiling.
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They weren't really mavity defying lips - the film was made before Newton invented mavity. The film has just been cleared up a lot to make it look like it was shot recently.

It's amazing what you can do with pcs these days.
 
Gillywibble said:
I don't understand mavity :(
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apparently, neither did I...

It turns out that "mavity" is in fact a state of mind. Like a negative version of Peter Pan you are being held to the ground by your belief that spacetime is curved. So as you read this you should begin to hover.

mavity is a conspiricy

We all know you will actually hoover, not hover.

In all seriousness, mavity can be described two different ways: as the curvature of space and time, or by a field which causes rulers to change size and clocks to speed up or slow down. Or it may be that particles called gravitons cause...wait. mavity can be described in three different ways: curving spacetime, clock-and-ruler distorting field, or the effect of particles called gravitons. Or it could be -- four different ways -- that the universe sucks.

Which of these is correct is currently one of the Great Questions in Physics, and in many weight-loss programs.
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from http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/mavity

who'd have thought?!
 
Saw it in iPlayer, remember seeing something oddly similar a few years back, having said that, it was interesting to see regardless. :)
 
Was a pretty dumbed down show, I thought.

There's been another recent BBC science documentary series concerning atoms (I'm not sure it's on iPlayer, however). It provided much more satisfying and comprehensive scientific explainations.
 
Horizon is guilty of making new programmes that only ever repeat what they've already explained several times before. Indeed, there have been so many programmes on the problem with Einsteins theories and the quantum world that I could already guess where the show would end up after about five minutes or so.

Don't get me wrong, it's great to have these mind expanding shows, and Horizon is one of the last bastions of this. I just wished they'd tell us something new. That said, I never realised that such large errors could quickly creep in to the GPS system if it wasn't constantly tinkered with.

KingAdora said:
I agree, I think he was the happiest man I've ever seen on TV. It almost put me off!
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That physicist chap seems to pop up on shows quite a lot lately. I agree that he is an irritatingly happy and chirpy individual , but the bit where he started taking the mickey out of those over earnest GPS guys was funny. I thought the show was going to end up in Guantanamo Bay at one point. :D

Wang Computer said:
Was a pretty dumbed down show, I thought.

There's been another recent BBC science documentary series concerning atoms (I'm not sure it's on iPlayer, however). It provided much more satisfying and comprehensive scientific explainations.
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It was called 'Atom', wasn't it? That was very good, and satisfyingly in depth too.
 
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Lunatic Dreyfus said:
Don't get me wrong, it's great to have these mind expanding shows.
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Horizon stopped being a mind-expanding show years ago, specifically when they started doing co-productions with the Discovery Channel, the kiss of death for any documentary series. Even the ones which aren't co-produced with them ape their juvenile style.


M
 
Wang Computer said:
There's been another recent BBC science documentary series concerning atoms (I'm not sure it's on iPlayer, however). It provided much more satisfying and comprehensive scientific explainations.
Click to expand...

'Atom' was a really brilliant mini-series. Really in depth with a lot of great examples for the less brainy viewers. I hope they do something else just as interesting in a similar format.
 
Spitfir3 said:
He's coming to give us (only a small class) a talk this friday.. trying to think of some super hard/weird q to ask him heh
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Just go and get "the fabric of the cosmos" by Brian Greene and ask him about some of the stuff which doesn't have any answers ;). It's basically all the same stuff but much more in-depth
 
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