Space is not ‘black’. In fact it is filled with the 2,7 K radiation from the Big Bang. You can’t see it, but it is effulgent. Maybe that’s what they meant by ‘space gray’.
+++ for the word effulgent. As for the rest of your comment I will cut you some slack, in general though if you can't see anything due to the lack of light it is considered to be black.
Now, why is space black? If the universe in infinite, wherever you look you should see a star, no?
Yes but those stars are to far away to have a significant impact on what you can see.
They already have a 13" MBP that has no HDD or ODD any more so it's gotten very thin and light. Once the MBA goes Retina there will be even less reason to have a 13" in both sizes. That tells me that getting rid of both MBA sizes and replacing them with a 12" MBA would make the most sense.
I still like the idea of a line up that goes 12, 14 and 16 inches. The only problem right now is that you loose to much performance with the MBA's. I don't see the 13" Pro going away anytime soon. In fact a quad core in the 13" MBP would be nice.
+++ for the word effulgent. As for the rest of your comment I will cut you some slack, in general though if you can't see anything due to the lack of light it is considered to be black.
Yes but those stars are to far away to have a significant impact on what you can see.
Thanks for the triple plus
Well, of course space appears black, but it is filled with radiation. That's what I wanted to point out.
The ‘star too far away’ hypothesis does not hold. If every corner of space, no matter how small intercepts a star, no matter how faint, then summing over all the empyrean one gets infinite radiance.
The key is portability, and now it is possible with the new Intel chips. Apple should make a light (400 to 600 g) Mac, as small as possible and whih whatever form factor (clamshell, slider or tablet). The true compatible device with the desktop Mac (sorry, iOS is not!). Great for Keynote and PowerPoint presentations. The Mac in your pocket. Always.
I'm going to put my guess down: If there is a super slim 12" Retina-MBA in post June-2015, I'm going to say that it will be running an A8X, not an intel chip.
No, there's proccesors intels pushing perfect for this.
The ‘star too far away’ hypothesis does not hold. If every corner of space, no matter how small intercepts a star, no matter how faint, then summing over all the empyrean one gets infinite radiance.
It would need the light from the stars to exist at the same time of observation though. It takes million/billions of years for light to travel from some stars so even in an infinite universe, the lifespans have to overlap. The universe would also have to be truly infinite with infinite light sources and not just planets. And the light sources are mostly opaque so a weak light source at a given point is as bright as that observable point in space can be as it obscures everything behind it. Say that your viewport picked up a grid of points representing stars and every point had a different brightness but eventually you managed to find so many that they were all side by side with no gaps between, summing them all doesn't give infinite radiance because you can't see what's behind them. The sum of observable light sources even in an infinite universe will always converge to a finite and very small radiance, aka black. QED.
I can't help but think that a 12-inch would replace the "11-inch", since that is already listed as 11.6", why would Apple make a model that is just 0.4" bigger?
Something listed as 12" wouldn't necessarily be 12.0". It can be 12.5". Halfway between the 11.6" and 13.3" would be 12.5" but it would be called a 12" Macbook Air.
Apple should make a light (400 to 600 g) Mac, as small as possible and whih whatever form factor (clamshell, slider or tablet). The true compatible device with the desktop Mac (sorry, iOS is not!). Great for Keynote and PowerPoint presentations. The Mac in your pocket. Always.
I always thought I'd want something like that but I don't think I'd use it like a Mac anywhere except where the normal Mac designs are ok. It would nice to not have to sync things up though. It can just be an iPad design that works like an iPad normally but when connected to a wireless display, the iPad can turn into a flat touch surface with keyboard/mouse or you can use those separately and the UI and apps would change to desktop versions. I think the desktop UI has to evolve further for this to happen and desktop software developers would have to make universal apps.
The whole "space is dark" thing is called "Olbers' Paradox", although Heinrich Olbers was not the first to discuss it. In an infinite, eternal universe it's unavoidable. The "dust absorbs distant sources" theory doesn't hold water—the dust would warm up to an equilibrium temperature and reradiate the energy. People struggled with this for two centuries before it was resolved—by the discovery that the universe wasn't eternal. It had a beginning (~13.8 billion years ago). Your line of sight is only 13.8 billion light years in every direction. (The farthest "object" you can see is the Cosmic Microwave Background—that's the universe as it was when it cooled enough for electrons and protons to combine to form neutral hydrogen atoms and it suddenly became transparent.) That has been redshifted by the expansion of the universe so its original temperature of >3000 K° is now ~2.7 K°. That's the "color of space". Better yet, the color temperature of space. "Space Microwave™".
Your line of sight is only 13.8 billion light years in every direction.
Well, no. Expansion faster than c means the radius is ~45 billion light years.
Well, your "incoming" line of sight is about 13.8 billion light-years. When the light you're seeing right now was emitted, obviously it was much closer than that, but the universe kept expanding, and the oncoming photons took that long to catch up. If you tried to return a light-speed signal to the same point, it would take > forever.
The 45 billion light years estimate is based on some rather iffy assumptions that General Relativity regards as illegitimate—trying to estimate simultaneity between points that are spacelike connected involves taking some background standard of simultaneity that relativity denies exists. It may be possible to use the Cosmic Microwave background as a stand-in for such a standard, and that's what they're doing when they tell you those far-off sources would be 45 billion light years away "now". Whenever you see the word "now" used in discussing anything at cosmic distances, you know some fancy footwork is involved.
Well, your "incoming" line of sight is about 13.8 billion light-years. When the light you're seeing right now was emitted, obviously it was much closer than that, but the universe kept expanding, and the oncoming photons took that long to catch up.
Oh, sure; right.
Whenever you see the word "now" used in discussing anything at cosmic distances, you know some fancy footwork is involved.
Hey, I just thought of something. In talk of relativistic speeds, time passes more slowly for the mover than the external world as speed approaches c. But when talking of tachyons (theoretical, yes, but), time is said to pass more quickly for the mover than the external world. So regarding the expansion of the void at speeds greater than c, how has time passed, given that there simultaneously is and is not an ‘external world’ (since the Universe is not expanding from a definable location but equally in all directions)?
Well, your "incoming" line of sight is about 13.8 billion light-years. When the light you're seeing right now was emitted, obviously it was much closer than that, but the universe kept expanding, and the oncoming photons took that long to catch up.
Oh, sure; right.
Whenever you see the word "now" used in discussing anything at cosmic distances, you know some fancy footwork is involved.
Hey, I just thought of something. In talk of relativistic speeds, time passes more slowly for the mover than the external world as speed approaches c. But when talking of tachyons (theoretical, yes, but), time is said to pass more quickly for the mover than the external world. So regarding the expansion of the void at speeds greater than c, how has time passed, given that there simultaneously is and is not an ‘external world’ (since the Universe is not expanding from a definable location but equally in all directions)?
Well, any galaxy that's outside our horizon is moving away from us faster than the speed of light. But that's from our point of view. From theirs, the reverse is true. If they'd had astronomers for a really long time, they could have seen our galaxy before it crossed their horizon, but now they can't see it at all.
In the distant future, the universe will have expanded so far that only the Local Group would be inside our horizon, and astronomy will be a lot less interesting.
Incidentally, if you had a powerful enough telescope (ridiculous of course) so that you could see events going on on some planet of a star in Andromeda, you'd be able to walk fast enough to see the sequence of cause and effect reversed—watch things happening there backwards in time.
ETA: Of course, these events would have happened 2,500,000 years ago, so you can't exactly use the information to cause any Grandfather Paradox-type problems.
Well, any galaxy that's outside our horizon is moving away from us faster than the speed of light. But that's from our point of view. From theirs, the reverse is true. If they'd had astronomers for a really long time, they could have seen our galaxy before it crossed their horizon, but now they can't see it at all.
In the distant future, the universe will have expanded so far that only the Local Group would be inside our horizon, and astronomy will be a lot less interesting.
Hey, I just thought of something. In talk of relativistic speeds, time passes more slowly for the mover than the external world as speed approaches c. But when talking of tachyons (theoretical, yes, but), time is said to pass more quickly for the mover than the external world. So regarding the expansion of the void at speeds greater than c, how has time passed, given that there simultaneously is and is not an ‘external world’ (since the Universe is not expanding from a definable location but equally in all directions)?
There is no such thing as time, that’s a fallacy introduced by Newtonian thought. Every object “lives” in its own frame of reference. For example, an explorer who falls into a black hole would never reach the horizon, as seen from a remote observer: their image would freeze as (s)he approaches it asymptotically. Yet, for the explorer, things are quite different: (s)he reaches and passes the horizon all right, and ends up his life crushed by the enormous tidal forces.
There is no such thing as time, that’s a fallacy introduced by Newtonian thought. Every object “lives” in its own frame of reference. For example, an explorer who falls into a black hole would never reach the horizon, as seen from a remote observer: their image would freeze as (s)he approaches it asymptotically. Yet, for the explorer, things are quite different: (s)he reaches and passes the horizon all right, and ends up his life crushed by the enormous tidal forces.
That's not even the weirdest thing. The only three characteristics a black hole can have are mass, angular momentum, and electric charge. Now real black holes are undoubtedly electrically neutral, more or less, but if you had a large charge imbalance, since like charges repel, the collapsing matter could bounce back outside the event horizon at least once. Since it took just exactly forever to reach the event horizon from the point of view of a distant observer, when is it when it bounces back out?
That's not even the weirdest thing. The only three characteristics a black hole can have are mass, angular momentum, and electric charge. Now real black holes are undoubtedly electrically neutral, more or less, but if you had a large charge imbalance, since like charges repel, the collapsing matter could bounce back outside the event horizon at least once. Since it took just exactly forever to reach the event horizon from the point of view of a distant observer, when is it when it bounces back out?
There’s a fallacy here. When inside the horizon, every trajectory become time-like, and nothing can escape. The more the imbalance, the more it would take for the like charges to fall, but they would, eventually, despite the repulsion.
Besides, as far as I know, the no-hair theorem governs only the interaction of the black hole outside its horizon. View from far away, the charge imbalance would create a swarm of oppositely charged particules along the horizon, which would re-establish neutrality at a negligible distance from the horizon.
Because their processors are literally the only thing worth using.
Nonsense! About half of Apples shipping product base doesn't even leverage the ultimate performance that Intel can deliver. It would take very little effort on Apples part to deliver an ARM based SoC that would perform as good or better than the Intel chips in the MBA or the Mini. Especially when with ARM Apple can easily throw more cores into the chip.
Seriously pick up an iPad and experience what ARM can do in a power constrained environment. Then imagine what Apple could do with ARM if they had ten watts, twenty watts and then fourty watts of power available to use. It is silly to trash ARM because all of the current examples are highly optimized for low power usage. Take an A8 that Apple just announced and imagine it operating with a much faster RAM subsystem, a clock rate of 2.4 or 3.4 GHz instead of 1.4 and other easily added enhancements to make it more suitable for higher performance in a laptop or Mini. Such a processor would be very nice indeed.
Comments
Yes but those stars are to far away to have a significant impact on what you can see.
I still like the idea of a line up that goes 12, 14 and 16 inches. The only problem right now is that you loose to much performance with the MBA's. I don't see the 13" Pro going away anytime soon. In fact a quad core in the 13" MBP would be nice.
+++ for the word effulgent. As for the rest of your comment I will cut you some slack, in general though if you can't see anything due to the lack of light it is considered to be black.
Yes but those stars are to far away to have a significant impact on what you can see.
Thanks for the triple plus
Well, of course space appears black, but it is filled with radiation. That's what I wanted to point out.
The ‘star too far away’ hypothesis does not hold. If every corner of space, no matter how small intercepts a star, no matter how faint, then summing over all the empyrean
one gets infinite radiance.
I'm dreaming of a pocket Macintosh
http://www.macworld.com/article/2449500/im-dreaming-of-a-pocket-macintosh.html
The key is portability, and now it is possible with the new Intel chips. Apple should make a light (400 to 600 g) Mac, as small as possible and whih whatever form factor (clamshell, slider or tablet). The true compatible device with the desktop Mac (sorry, iOS is not!). Great for Keynote and PowerPoint presentations. The Mac in your pocket. Always.
Because their processors are literally the only thing worth using.
It would need the light from the stars to exist at the same time of observation though. It takes million/billions of years for light to travel from some stars so even in an infinite universe, the lifespans have to overlap. The universe would also have to be truly infinite with infinite light sources and not just planets. And the light sources are mostly opaque so a weak light source at a given point is as bright as that observable point in space can be as it obscures everything behind it. Say that your viewport picked up a grid of points representing stars and every point had a different brightness but eventually you managed to find so many that they were all side by side with no gaps between, summing them all doesn't give infinite radiance because you can't see what's behind them. The sum of observable light sources even in an infinite universe will always converge to a finite and very small radiance, aka black. QED.
Something listed as 12" wouldn't necessarily be 12.0". It can be 12.5". Halfway between the 11.6" and 13.3" would be 12.5" but it would be called a 12" Macbook Air.
I always thought I'd want something like that but I don't think I'd use it like a Mac anywhere except where the normal Mac designs are ok. It would nice to not have to sync things up though. It can just be an iPad design that works like an iPad normally but when connected to a wireless display, the iPad can turn into a flat touch surface with keyboard/mouse or you can use those separately and the UI and apps would change to desktop versions. I think the desktop UI has to evolve further for this to happen and desktop software developers would have to make universal apps.
Cladist!!!
Well, no. Expansion faster than c means the radius is ~45 billion light years.
Right, it’s a ghoti.
Well, your "incoming" line of sight is about 13.8 billion light-years. When the light you're seeing right now was emitted, obviously it was much closer than that, but the universe kept expanding, and the oncoming photons took that long to catch up. If you tried to return a light-speed signal to the same point, it would take > forever.
The 45 billion light years estimate is based on some rather iffy assumptions that General Relativity regards as illegitimate—trying to estimate simultaneity between points that are spacelike connected involves taking some background standard of simultaneity that relativity denies exists. It may be possible to use the Cosmic Microwave background as a stand-in for such a standard, and that's what they're doing when they tell you those far-off sources would be 45 billion light years away "now". Whenever you see the word "now" used in discussing anything at cosmic distances, you know some fancy footwork is involved.
Oh, sure; right.
Hey, I just thought of something. In talk of relativistic speeds, time passes more slowly for the mover than the external world as speed approaches c. But when talking of tachyons (theoretical, yes, but), time is said to pass more quickly for the mover than the external world. So regarding the expansion of the void at speeds greater than c, how has time passed, given that there simultaneously is and is not an ‘external world’ (since the Universe is not expanding from a definable location but equally in all directions)?
Well, any galaxy that's outside our horizon is moving away from us faster than the speed of light. But that's from our point of view. From theirs, the reverse is true. If they'd had astronomers for a really long time, they could have seen our galaxy before it crossed their horizon, but now they can't see it at all.
In the distant future, the universe will have expanded so far that only the Local Group would be inside our horizon, and astronomy will be a lot less interesting.
Incidentally, if you had a powerful enough telescope (ridiculous of course) so that you could see events going on on some planet of a star in Andromeda, you'd be able to walk fast enough to see the sequence of cause and effect reversed—watch things happening there backwards in time.
ETA: Of course, these events would have happened 2,500,000 years ago, so you can't exactly use the information to cause any Grandfather Paradox-type problems.
Well, any galaxy that's outside our horizon is moving away from us faster than the speed of light. But that's from our point of view. From theirs, the reverse is true. If they'd had astronomers for a really long time, they could have seen our galaxy before it crossed their horizon, but now they can't see it at all.
In the distant future, the universe will have expanded so far that only the Local Group would be inside our horizon, and astronomy will be a lot less interesting.
That prospect sounds glum isn’t it?
Unless somebody invents a device based on the Alcubierre metric. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
Oh, sure; right.
Hey, I just thought of something. In talk of relativistic speeds, time passes more slowly for the mover than the external world as speed approaches c. But when talking of tachyons (theoretical, yes, but), time is said to pass more quickly for the mover than the external world. So regarding the expansion of the void at speeds greater than c, how has time passed, given that there simultaneously is and is not an ‘external world’ (since the Universe is not expanding from a definable location but equally in all directions)?
There is no such thing as time, that’s a fallacy introduced by Newtonian thought. Every object “lives” in its own frame of reference. For example, an explorer who falls into a black hole would never reach the horizon, as seen from a remote observer: their image would freeze as (s)he approaches it asymptotically. Yet, for the explorer, things are quite different: (s)he reaches and passes the horizon all right, and ends up his life crushed by the enormous tidal forces.
That's not even the weirdest thing. The only three characteristics a black hole can have are mass, angular momentum, and electric charge. Now real black holes are undoubtedly electrically neutral, more or less, but if you had a large charge imbalance, since like charges repel, the collapsing matter could bounce back outside the event horizon at least once. Since it took just exactly forever to reach the event horizon from the point of view of a distant observer, when is it when it bounces back out?
That's not even the weirdest thing. The only three characteristics a black hole can have are mass, angular momentum, and electric charge. Now real black holes are undoubtedly electrically neutral, more or less, but if you had a large charge imbalance, since like charges repel, the collapsing matter could bounce back outside the event horizon at least once. Since it took just exactly forever to reach the event horizon from the point of view of a distant observer, when is it when it bounces back out?
There’s a fallacy here. When inside the horizon, every trajectory become time-like, and nothing can escape. The more the imbalance, the more it would take for the like charges to fall, but they would, eventually, despite the repulsion.
Besides, as far as I know, the no-hair theorem governs only the interaction of the black hole outside its horizon. View from far away, the charge imbalance would create a swarm of oppositely charged particules along the horizon, which would re-establish neutrality at a negligible distance from the horizon.
Nonsense! About half of Apples shipping product base doesn't even leverage the ultimate performance that Intel can deliver. It would take very little effort on Apples part to deliver an ARM based SoC that would perform as good or better than the Intel chips in the MBA or the Mini. Especially when with ARM Apple can easily throw more cores into the chip.
Seriously pick up an iPad and experience what ARM can do in a power constrained environment. Then imagine what Apple could do with ARM if they had ten watts, twenty watts and then fourty watts of power available to use. It is silly to trash ARM because all of the current examples are highly optimized for low power usage. Take an A8 that Apple just announced and imagine it operating with a much faster RAM subsystem, a clock rate of 2.4 or 3.4 GHz instead of 1.4 and other easily added enhancements to make it more suitable for higher performance in a laptop or Mini. Such a processor would be very nice indeed.