Since your question assumes the multiverse existed, then the big bang in such a case was the universe borrowing some energy from the interuniversal distances. Now,this energy would be internuniversal, so there was no energy escaping.

The energy to get to Mars and Venus is much, much less than it takes to get to the gas giant moons.

Is there a theoretical limit to the largest atom that could exist? Could one have 500 protons?

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Physics: Given that the speed of light changes based on the medium through which the light travels, can matter or energy move faster than its local light if in some highly refractive or dense medium?

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That's an interesting question.

On the surface of a liquid or in the volume of a gas, a disturbance impacts every adjacent point, in every direction. A little pressure wave goes out in every direction from the point of disturbance. On the 2-D surface of a liquid like a pond, you get an ever expanding circle. In a 3-D volume like a gas you get an ever expanding sphere.

There are ways to guide or focus this energy initially, but as soon as the little pressure wave is in free space, away from the thing that disturbed it, it starts behaving this way (in every direction.) Even things as tightly focused as lasers diffuse as they pass through gas and liquids, for the same reasons sound does.

Now think of your string not as one thing but as a collection of an infinite number of points (which it is). As it moves, it's disturbing the air around it at every single one of those points, initiating an ever expanding sphere from each. The disturbance does not just travel perpendicular to the string. It goes out in all directions from everywhere on the string. Again, this can be directed initially like we do with speakers and guitar bodies, but as soon as the wave is away from the surface of the speaker or out of the guitar, it starts going in every direction.

Hope this helps. Again, thoughtful question.

Salt doesn't actually make the water colder. It just lowers the temperature at which a phase change happens.

It's the transfer of heat that's important.

The goal is to transfer heat away from the fish.

In the cooler, the fish is part of "the environment" that the melting ice will transfer heat from.

The materials that the cooler is made of aren't good for transferring heat and there's not much else in the cooler except for a bit of air. So most of the heat must come from the fish. If the cooler were a hypothetically perfect insulator and a vacuum, then all the heat would come from the fish.

If the cooler were a hypothetically perfect insulator and a vacuum, then the ice would not have anything to get heat from and it could stay the same coldness forever.

It's really intuitive for us to think of mixing temperatures: half a glass of cold water plus half a glass of hot water equals half a glass of warm water. But that's not the concept we're dealing with so try to put it out of your mind.

Don't think of the ice like a bit of a mooch. If it were a mooch, it would take a little bit of of the fish's heat in a similar to the way the two glasses share their heat and both come out warm... or like a friend who goes out for pizza with you but doesn't pay their share but still eats a normal amount of pizza.

Instead, you need to remember that phase change from solid to liquid is really very expensive in terms of the amount of heat it takes. So think of the ice as water that is heavily indebted to it's environment. On its own, water will pay off its big loan slowly as it gradually gathers heat.

And then think of salt as the loan shark who shows up at water's door with a baseball bat and says "Look at you walking around dressed as a solid! You're paying off all that debt now!" Salt forces ice to pay back the solid debt suddenly. So water looks around and there's not much heat in the cooler except for fish.

And fish says, "How much do you owe anyway? I'll give you what I've got since there's no other option." But the amount is way more than the fish expected. But the fish has good credit and pays off the loan in full anyway. But this puts the fish in debt. It now has even less heat than the water. The fish will be colder than freezing. It will be in deep heat debt.

The fish will cool more suddenly and will freeze more deeply with this method (and as a result of the fish cooling more deeply, it will stay cold longer.

It's all counterintuitive unless you get your head around the idea of phase change forcing outsized debt on the fish.

Been reading about oil and learned that every deposit has different chemical composition, as a result of what went into creating said deposit. Have we ever able to make anything that resemble oil in the lab? Or time is very big factor that goes into making that kind of stuff?

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Astronomy question, I think. If we found a perfectly positioned mirror in space 100 light years away, would we see 200 years into the past? Or maybe if a black hole was bending light at the perfect angle?

Planetary Science: In several billion years when the sun expands, will the expansion stabilize and create a new “Goldilocks” zone. If yes, where exactly will it be and for how long will it be stable?

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Ok so it's more about ship b's progress is compressed and then ship a is essentially watching the ffwd version of the information coming to them.

So your theory here is, the colder something is, the less fine it stays cold?

The phase change is endothermic, so ice near zero degrees will cool the surrounding ice down as it melts into colder water. You're right that the total energy won't change just by adding salt, but you will reduce thermal energy in the system to gain that potential energy in the liquid.

Your second point is dead on though, if anything, it should warm up faster because there's more temperature differential now.

In this case the colder ice water and the 32/0 degree ice water have the same amount of heat present.

They started in a cooler and the addition of salt made the change in temp happen relatively quickly. It’s colder as the melting ice takes heat energy from the water, cooling the water.

The cooler will have cold on one side and ambient on the other. The colder it is inside the more heat transfer through the walls.

I’m guessing that this is their perception only. It would be an interesting test.

Strangest unexplained phenomenon

Just suppose for the sake of this question that the universe is finite and will eventually collapse in a Big Crunch. Will all the energy that was present in the Big Bang be recaptured? Would it be 100%? Or has energy escaped outside of the universe?

Ship A thinks they are standing still - again, both the Earth and Ship B are moving towards them.

The difference in distances is not because of the speed of the ship, it's because of the speed of light. Ship A receives light from Ship B that started travelling some time ago, when B was further away. As the two ships approach, the time lag decreases until it vanishes when they meet - which means that from A's perspective, time onboard B is running fast.

There are a lot of goofy answers here. Adding ice will not make the system cooler, or the ice cooler, but it will make the water cooler because it will make the ice melt earlier. However, if your ice is at 0C already, adding salt will not make things cooler because just adding salt can't take energy out of the system. In reality, your ice is likely -10 to -20 C, and so adding salt helps.

I can't think of any reason that adding salt would make it stay cold longer. The duration of maintaining cold should be a function of starting temperature and the characteristics of the cooler.

So from ship a's perspective, they are

1. closer to earth than ship b and

2. the speed of ship b appears to be faster than ship a?

Ok so at a significant % of c the distance appears shorter... But if you stop does the distance appear to increase as you slow down?