What is the GREAT ATTRACTOR? Will It Absorb us? What's DARK FLOW?

[@louislesch3878]

I have a background in CFD (computational fluid dynamics) and when I see these patterns, I immediately think of the surface of a slow moving river where these patterns are the effect of undercurrents. When I see rotation curves of most spiral galaxies, I immediately think of micro eddies also as a consequence of a flow field with a Reynolds’s number of 4000 or so. If you look at DNS (direct numerical simulations) where the flow field is resolved to the theoretically smallest eddy scales, this is exactly the same pattern that you see. Dark energy fits well in a great river model as well where you get non uniform accelerating expansion due to a dynamic free surface. The only thing left to accommodate is the Big Bang, the supposed beginning of everything. But what if it’s not the beginning of everything but only the beginning of what we can see? A big splash in this great river would fit nicely because it would result in the the highly energetic yet super low entropy signature as seen in the CMB. Maybe we could collaborate on a KZbin video, Arvin.

[@ArvinAsh]

That's very interesting.

[@louislesch3878]

10’ long

[@TristanCleveland]

​@@louislesch3878 You might be able to find a collaborator at the Summer of Math #2, just announced, which is aimed at pairing subject-matter experts with communicators. I would definitely watch this video and hope you will produce it.

[@anatomicallymodernhuman5175]

But rivers flow in channels. What channels the matter in space? Gravity tends to pull matter into balls, not filaments.

[@ornessarhithfaeron3576]

IIRC professor N. K. Spyrou and K. Kleidis from Physics, AUTh, Greece made a paper DOING something similar but also with thermodynamics

[@tomaaron6187]

Top notch presentation,. As someone who has been in the sciences for decades, I appreciate the quality of information. Clear presentation is not to be confused with dumbing down.it’s refreshing to have this type of quality. One caveat: ‘Might’ not impact us. This assumes that these speeds are constant.

[@CristianKlein]

"You can still sleep sound at night." It actually took me 4 tries to see this video end-to-end without falling asleep. The non-urgent food for thought, combined with the calming voice does an excellent job at helping me disconnect for the night.

[@ArvinAsh]

Glad to hear that. I'm trying to solve the world's insomnia problem.

[@madangopalbhardwaj]

His videos are my lullabies too 😂

[@Reyajh]

Well we can still sleep sound at night for at least another billion years. After that tho, we need to start worrying about the big rip, but really the sooner we start to solve these issues the better! :P😆

[@gsalien2292]

Now my brain is being pulled apart while I process all of this and the Great Attractor is now the refrigerator summoning me towards it to retrieve a frosty pint to finish my contemplation! Thank you so much for another brilliant presentation!

[@bokiNYC]

😂😂👍

[@ArvinAsh]

I'll drink to that!

[@WriterCut]

@@ArvinAsh But here comes my doubt. How do they calculate the movement of our galaxy towards the great attractor if our space is expanding at higher rate than the attraction itself. How can we understand our galaxies movement towards great attractor. I mean movements are the key right.. i dont undertand . Please if you can reply please help.

[@limbo3545]

I never really understood the great attractor and the expansion of the universe. I mean I understood roughly the concept, but you brought it to another level. Great video and thank you for the education lesson.

[@stant7122]

Since the current speed of the expansion of the universe is greater than the speed at which the Milky Way is moving towards the great attractor, I think that means from an outside perspective, we speeding away from the great attractor and towards nothing but empty new space. Or I guess we are speeding towards great attractor but great attractor relative to our position is speeding away from us faster than we could ever hope to catch up.

[@duncanvantongeren4646]

The staggering gullibility… Space is fake as fuck. 2nd law of thermodynamics, anyone?!?

[@tylermcnally8232]

@@duncanvantongeren4646 source?

[@dria7387]

Great attractor is one of Ultimecia's HP attacks in Dissisdia Final Fantasy ☕

[@duncanvantongeren4646]

@@tylermcnally8232 You cannot have pressurized system next to a vacuum without a barrier. The force of 'gravity' is not going to be of help since the weak vacuum of your lungs on the earth surface can already make you drink with a straw, so forget about a weaker gravity doing anything against the 'pull' of a enormous supposed space vacuum. This is a contradiction, so a 'space vacuum' cannot exist above our (existing) atmosphere. Problem with our education is that we trust our teachers and we don't have enough time to think about and test what we learn. Hence we get deceived...

[@jimsmindonline]

The idea of a larger mass outside the visible universe, causing expansion (dark energy) is an intriguing idea!

[@hupekyser]

fun fact: If you Shazam the song at the very end of this vid at 15:40 you will find its called "When You Are Crying by Norene Murdock" yet if you search the entire internet, you won't find one playable or downloadable file or stream of it, apart from a 30 second clip from a weird place called chartoo. great vid. btw.

[@TheSwiftFalcon]

Is it this one? kzbin.info/www/bejne/aGjCmJairZx8o5I

[@Physics__guy]

Arvinash you are the great Online teacher i have ever seen in my life . I NEVER imagined that i will ever be able to understand these complex Topics in that simplified way... Hats of Arvin . Love from India.🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳

[@Urroner]

Good stuff sir. Got a bunch of my required science fix here. Have a son who, when he was 15, declared himself to be the Great Attractor. He had just learnt about it in school. Ha, ha, funny son. Problem with that is the great attractor is way older than you and way more massive. Without missing a step, he walked up to me, patted my belly, called me Sir TGA, and ran out the door. I expected nothing less. Between ourselves, I was Sir TGA, and he was Mr. U. Every kiss begins with "K," but ugly starts with "U" son.

[@deeperblueofficial]

Another great one. Thank you.

[@rickcilo7567]

channels like Arvin Ash, the versetarium and star talk have taught me more about theoretical physics than i would have learnt in a school and this inspires me to want to keep learning more about the universe.

[@dawnwatching6382]

Thanks Arvin & The Team, you're all great.

[@JohnLobert]

Great video. I learn something new everytime I watch your channel. One note: “Begs the question” doesn’t mean “raises the question” as you used it. It means that the answer assumes the very point being raised by the question.

[@reesetorwad8346]

No.

[@edimbukvarevic90]

In classical rhetoric and logic, begging the question or assuming the conclusion (Latin: petitio principii) is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion, instead of supporting it. For example, the statement "Green is the best color because it is the greenest of all colors" claims that the color green is the best because it is the greenest - which it presupposes is the best. It is a type of circular reasoning: an argument that requires that the desired conclusion be true. This often occurs in an indirect way such that the fallacy's presence is hidden, or at least not easily apparent. In modern vernacular usage, however, begging the question is often used to mean "raising the question" or "suggesting the question". Sometimes it is confused with "dodging the question", an attempt to avoid it, or perhaps more often begging the question means simply leaving the question unanswered. The phrase begging the question originated in the 16th century as a mistranslation of the Latin petitio principii, which in turn was a mistranslation of the Greek for "assuming the conclusion".

[@robertschlesinger1342]

Excellent video. Very interesting, informative and worthwhile video. Many thanks for the links to the papers.

[@robertlee4809]

The scale of our universe is mind boggling...I can't describe the feeling I get when I ponder such scales of size....small? Miniscule?

[@hemantmakone867]

Please make video on James Webb telescope.. 👍

[@ArvinAsh]

That's coming soon! probably 2 videos from now. Stay tuned.

[@SuhailSyed_Ibn_Patcha]

Heard that the first image captured by JWT will be sent back on July 12, wow!! Eagerly waiting to see how humanity will actually experience the cosmos!

[@AndreaZzzXXX]

@@ArvinAsh great !

[@lennyngrado6365]

Astronomy and physics are so interesting that even knowing that there are things we don't know is fascinating.

[@Iogicaldude]

WHAT A VIDEO MAN ! HAT'S OFF TO ARVIN SIR.. IT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING NEEDED

[@paikesitics]

I was holding my breath while watching this!! ..wow

[@brianzomorodi]

Excellent. The best clear science on KZbin.

[@farshadostadalirezania1936]

Thank you Arvin Ash for the beautiful program. As always you explained a hard subject in a way that is easily understandable. You did not leave anything out so all of the questions were answered at the conclusion of the program.

[@jimbuono2404]

Not really. Are you and I moving farther apart? Is the moon moving farther from the earth? The earth from the sun? The answer is 'no'. The local effects of gravity maintain the distance between objects in their local gravitational field. You are not expanding outwards in all directions.

[@alfredobeltran611]

Thanks once more for explaining this topics with such clarity

[@abhishekc232]

The way you explain the concept is incredible.

[@Humanbeering]

Thank God Arvin explained this, i couldn’t sleep worrying over whether the universe will disintegrate while I slept.

[@sphinxtheeminx]

This channel is my go-to place for expanding my consciousness - who needs psychedelics when we have this to ponder.

[@ArvinAsh]

I agree. Who needs drugs, when we can just ponder the wonder of reality!

[@OmniGuy]

Never a boring Arvin Ash video. Heck, never even a boring minute in an Arvin Ash video. Very well done. Looking forward to your next video, my friend.

[@geraldhoag5548]

My favorite theory involving dark flow is, There is another universe, outside of our own. At one point we thought that all the bright objects were suns/stars. Then we discovered that they included galaxies. Since then we have found Sagan Units of galaxies, you know, "billions and billions". So why can't there be a universe, out there, in fact Sagan units of universes, just beyond our ability to detect. More massive than our universe. Not strings or dimension, just more rocks on rocks, just like our universe with the same laws of nature. A lot more fun to consider, without all the elegant math getting in the way.

[@ArvinAsh]

Dark flow is probably not real, just a mistake in the data.

[@prateekactive]

Superb presentation...how can someone explain these complex terms so easily. This is awesome.

[@FelixIsGood]

I can't sleep calmly after those videos, every time i watch videos like this i get a existencial crisis because of the short time we are alive and how much we will miss. Great video however and that's the reason i watch those kind of videos anyway.

[@lawrencegoldworm960]

Excellent content. Excellent presentation. You are at the top of your game!

[@ashisnaiding8702]

My favorite space channel. Love your arvin ash

[@vikitheviki]

I'm so relieved! This was such a cliffhanger but now I know we will be safe 😁✔️👍

[@ronlawrence5021]

I wonder if anyone has considered the possibility that planets and galaxies might not "create" gravity, but are simply the outward visible results of gravity? Maybe gravity is somewhat like our atmosphere, with areas of high pressure that prevents clusters of clouds forming as well as areas of low pressure where water vapor "falls in", condenses, and manifests as clouds? The cloud doesn't "create" the low pressure....it is the visible manifestation and the result of low pressure.

[@nemohamed]

Your method of story telling gave me the shivers and made my brain tingles

[@stevenbliss989]

Great update, thank you for pulling it all together! :):):)

[@MendTheWorld]

So would you say that Arvin Ash and his videos are a great attractor for you?

[@malcolmabram2957]

I have a PhD in science and did physics at Uni, yet struggle to understand things. I am fascinated by particle physics and astronomy, but Arvin Ash, for me, is above all, with the possible exception of Anton Petrov, in explaining things clearly

[@ArvinAsh]

Glad you enjoy these videos. Thanks for letting me know. I appreciate it.

[@rw6836]

Thank goodness, our lives are so short, that we don't have to worry about collision with any other galaxy or large objects!

[@BlindPidePiper]

I’ve been interested in the subject for quite a while and this was the best description that I’ve seen. Thank you.

[@ManiBalajiC]

SEA did a great job on this concept with a good visualization...

[@xshakespearex1]

This video earned a sub.I came in not expecting to learn much and left wanting to learn more. That is perfect. Thank you for making this

[@ArvinAsh]

Thanks for the sub!

[@sunitapalissery258]

Thank you once again for the beautiful presentation.

[@affenwerk5598]

I'm always spaced out on how far into the universe we can already detect and speculate despite the massive distances... 😵❤️

[@michael195b]

Another great video, thanks for making them.

[@badreddineabbes114]

Love your video my friend ... clear explanation of very complicated phenomena ...even for those who do not use English perfectly .. like me hh ...

[@anuragtuti7357]

I learnt something new today. Very well presented! Of course, I do understand, our attempts to make more sense of our universe is mostly based on prevailing knowledge that we have accumulated so far. So, this may or may not be relevant in future when we are able to unravel the mystery of dark energy and likes of it, which perhaps we still aren't aware of, as yet. Nevertheless, learning something new is so exciting :) Keep them coming!!

[@jettmthebluedragon]

We say dark energy is the dominant force however it could be as he said the milkey way is moving and the earths rotation is moving as well and according to the observer that could lead to a optical illusion 😐also how can the entire cosmos only be 14 billion years old ?😐it does not make since 😓

[@hupekyser]

Arvin is the school teacher that the kids actually liked

[@Jack-r2v9b]

Kids would like going to school if all teachers were like him

[@carmenosorio1315]

Great Arvin !!! Thankyou!!!!

[@richardrichards9180]

Very interesting and intelligible-the logical extrapolation would seem to be that all matter agglomerates to ever-denser units, until everything disappears into ultra-super-massive "black holes""-(which maybe then explode at "absolute maximum" temperature & pressure, restarting the whole cycle?)

[@chriswhite599]

One of the best videos yet! Thank you!

[@melangellatc1718]

I like you, Arvin! You didn't bore me or hit me with too much math for my BA/History to handle.

[@Dr10Jeeps]

Another wonderful video from Arvin Ash. I love them!

[@sherif.kenawy]

انت الافضل دائما ، رائع و عظيم كالعادة شكرا لمجهودك و معلوماتك

[@maheshanigol8657]

WoW!!! That was mind-blowing and mind-boggling

[@Z-42]

I wish I could upvote this more than once. Thank you!

[@travusfaulkner1461]

The research that I have been doing on my own leads me to believe this to be true. .Dark flow has been my most favorite cosmological scientific research done to this day. I do feel like I might have an idea of what is attracting us to the great attractor or what is pulling the great attractor in that direction.

[@MarsStarcruiser]

Thanks for the explanation of the CMB dipole. I had curiosities on that for awhile now but this definitely makes sense.

[@TM-yn4iu]

This was truly an excellent explanation of a subject that I am not "educated" in but is stimulating. I appreciate the condensed approach to share complex information. I understand that is a documentary mode of theory based on the presenters facts - as always great.

[@tracyhouser]

One of my favorites from you and I've watched dozens of your videos so happily. So so so interesting! Thanks Arvin!

[@louisdetulleo1347]

You are the best! Thank you for making physics and astrophysics so accessible!

[@TheFos88]

I really appreciate the way you end this. I am utterly fascinated with pretty much everything you covered (and explained so well!) yet at the same time I find myself terrified by it all. Like, I can't wrap my brain around the expansion of the Universe and Space-Time itself, because then I wonder why don't we observe this as each second of time goes on, if it's increasing at an ever faster rate? And when would it stop? Would it ever? Would matter itself expand? How far does this behavior of the cosmos go exactly? Just crazy stuff...

[@blokin5039]

Did you already figure it out?

[@The_NASA_GUY]

Great video!! I always wonder about the great attractor.

[@Akamai.808]

This cosmic content is truly top shelf! Your explanations and detail very well presented. Mahalo!

[@TheMg49]

Great vid. Fascinating stuff. Thumbs up and subscribed.

[@jaybruce593]

Yet another video where Arvin knocks it out of the ballpark. Up until 12:40 I'd been getting fidgety wondering "how does this square with hubbles observed expansion?" I should have known Arvin wouldn't leave something as important as that unanswered. Thanks agian my friend, looking forward to your next video o7

[@anthonychan4571]

Thank you for the great explanation. You are perfectly gifted to be a great teacher

[@Stefan_trekkie]

I was waiting for your thoughts on this topic for a long time.

[@onebylandtwoifbysearunifby5475]

Thanks for providing some numbers and detail. More detail the better.

[@XEinstein]

The thing I don't fully can wraps my mind around is that if such a great attractor is millions or billions of lightyears away, then r² is humongous and so the attractive force is miniscule. And still apparently the associated masses are so big that still the attractive force over such vast distances is significant apparently.

[@rwgwrhghwrgwrgwr2933]

well if you do the maths, we are being pulled towards the shapley supercluster with a force of about 0.06 N, not a huge amount but its there and over time it will cause us to be attracted

[@Dragrath1]

Its trickier than it is commonly explained one big caveat cosmologists tend to forget is that we know the rate of expansion can not be constant because if it was constant everywhere there would be no structure within the Universe at any scale as the Friedmann Lemaitre Robertson Walker metric conditions which allow such a simple scenario only applies in a universe where everything homogenous an isotropic everywhere at all scales. It is commonly assumed that we can approximate the FLRW metric if the deviations from isotropy and homogeneity are "small" but this fails to consider the mathematical characteristics of any system of partial differential equations that for each and every possible set of initial conditions there exists a unique solution. This means that all possible paths which information can causally propagate can never cancel out. This mathematically excludes the assumption that deviations from isotropy and homogeneity can ever be small enough to be negligible instead revealing that the opposite must be true for the Einstein field equations, or any other system of partial differential equations for that matter, to remain logically internally consistent for all possible values. basically there can't exist any solution which obeys causality and the cosmological principal without resulting in logical self contradiction. This latter mathematical statement to put into common language means cosmologists have simplified GR below the point it breaks and thus while the masses are indeed huge and the distances enormous the picture can not be so simple.

[@Haroldus0]

Excellent, very clear, concise and complete. Thank you so much.

[@nullbeyondo]

15:28 Thank you. Didn't know how I was gonna live the rest of the few billions of my life thinking about it. Now I can sleep peacefully.

[@zeus.87]

Great as always

[@raidermaxx2324]

Hi Arvin! So, just to clarify, I was under the impression that the rotation of the Milky Way,(and the stars within) is not related to the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, in fact the stars, including our sun, are not gravitationally bound to this black hole, because-as you said- gravity decreases over space time between massive objects. And in reality, the only bodies gravitationally bound and affected by Sagittarius Star A, are the stars that exist in the immediate vicinity of the black hole, roughly within 50 light years or so.. What I read, was that the Milky Way rotates because of the dark matter that acts like a “skeleton” to the galaxy, as it rotates due to the laws of physics and shit. I’m just an uneducated dude that never even graduated high school, but I’m interested in this stuff as an adult, and am using the internet to learn all that I can. So can you clear this up as far as you know? Thanks!

[@ArvinAsh]

Correct. We are not gravitationally bound to the central black hole. We do rotate around it, however. We actually rotate around the center of mass of our galaxy. The black hole happens to be at the center of this center of mass. The speed of rotation of the outermost stars is determined by dark matter.

[@freefall9832]

Remember dark matter is just a term for gravity that is not understood. Dark matter is a complete mystery to physics beyond its effect.

[@Shah37Bang]

Another great video as usual Arvin, thank you!

[@ArvinAsh]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@SRMoore1178]

I can't sleep at night because I'm worried about what's going to happen to us five billion years from now.

[@MendTheWorld]

Try taking some Dramamine. It might help you sleep. I needed to take some because after watching Arvin’s video I began experiencing motion sickness from hurtling through the universe.

[@glidershower]

If there is a great attractor pulling timespace in, then it stands to reason that _our perception of time feels like is flowing faster as well each and every day that goes on._ *So this is why the older we get, the faster time seems to fly. Huh . . .*

[@sudarshanbadoni6643]

Many many thanks for your endeavors to connect time and life is great and amazing curiosity and intellect you possess. Yet there is another perspective that states that a child and whynot a Scientist are less disordered or entropic and peaks of disorders are prime youth so old minds are more bodily concerned but those serving selflessly are ever young active alive and aimful experience often something called timelessness. Thanks

[@DFPercush]

As you age, a day or a year is less of a percent of your total life than it was when you were young, so it kind of gets lost in the mix, as it were. It's how perception works, we don't see absolute differences, but proportions relative to the total.

[@antonystringfellow5152]

Regardless of how fast you're travelling, you will experience no change in time. You can never experience a change in the rate of time as time is only relative. Time and speed are relative.

[@monkmichel9477]

I always found the memory explanation acceptable, how we only remember certain "critical" events and most of them happened when we were young and they all happened in a relatively short timeframe. The older we get the less memories get saved because the important ones are all already in the library and there is just not much new to add besides a few things like having kids and death of relatives/friends, so the time between those events is heavily shifted towards our youth and time simply goes by the older we get without much of it getting saved to memory. When you look back you remember the important ones and ask yourself where all the time has gone between them and now, because you cant recall much of it, but it happened.

[@jettmthebluedragon]

That could explain why we think the universe is expanding 😐as well 😐now it all makes since now 😐

[@xenan1260]

Great informative content 👍 you seems such a nice person friend 👏🏻

[@lindsayforbes7370]

I've been fascinated by Dark Energy for years. Watched so many videos, read articles and books. This is the best explanation of what is happening to our galaxy out there in space I've seen. I heard nothing new, but the explanation is put together beautifully 👍👍

[@1stPrinciples455]

The only honest and undebunkable answer to any science question is : "We do Not Know."

[@acemanNL]

Thank you for letting us all know we can sleep soundly at night! 😀 Great video, my friend!!! ❤️💪

[@cobrabtc]

Great educational video sir. Really enjoyed this and learned about the new superclusters.

[@MahbubRahmann]

Thanks for the great content as always

[@damianabbate4423]

Great video!

[@SleepToSound]

Amazing video as always - keep it up

[@MrDominicharrison]

Excellent video so well presented too 👌🏼

[@ArvinAsh]

Glad you liked it!

[@mikegeld1280]

Great little video 👍interesting, I think the idea of something massive outside the visible universe is a good theory. We just dont know,but I think that a QC would be able to "extrapolate " what could be causing this draw.

[@GururajBN]

Superb explanation. I thought that Virgo cluster was the last word on supermassive clusters. Everything attracts everything else in the universe, yet the universe continues to expand at an accelerated rate of velocity. What can be more mystifying than this! Every space object is in a tearing hurry to get away from its neighbors.

[@raidermaxx2324]

Meh. It’s actually space time that is expanding, and every structure is just floating on top of it, so it “appears” like everything is trying to run away from everything else, but we are actually moving towards the Andromeda galaxy and will collide with it eventually lol. I know you know all this all ready, but forgive me, I’m just flexing my new brain power from the brain implants I bought on EBay last week. I boosted my intelligence to +4 for only $50! What a deal tho

[@jonh8488]

nice final thought :)

[@thedubdude]

Well done. Thanks.

[@vishalikasharma2624]

very well put together! this is one of my favourite channels on KZbin. ^_^

[@anonymousindividual6958]

If we don't comprehend what dark energy is and why it's causing inflation how can we possibly say with confidence that it will continue to do so indefinitely? Wasn't there an earlier inflationary epoch shortly after the big bang didn't gravity eventually come back to dominance for a while before eventually being overwhelmed again? We're making assumptions about these dynamics based on a notion of stasis that things will keep behaving as we presently observe them to but without knowing the underlying rhythm we can't make hard statements.

[@Heartford]

Excellent excellent video…WOW 🤩

[@epgui]

I have trouble reconciling the vast scale of these superclusters with the fact that the largest one is "only" 1000 times the mass of the milky way.

[@nmarbletoe8210]

i think the largest is far heftier than that

[@gary1anderson]

Wonderful presentation. Thank you.

[@rwarren58]

I love that you answered my question about the great attractor and the expansion of the universe before I could ask it. If I may ask I’ll ask a fringe question. Could this be a primordial black hole that is using galaxies like yo-yo’s?

[@User-74891]

Very interestin video. Thank you.

[@keniaoliveira4048]

Arvin ... you are doing an AMAZING & WONDERFUL work 🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌 Thankyou so much ... my days are much more meaning with your videos. Big hug from Sao Paulo-Brazil.

[@raymcconnell1075]

Thank you for another great video! Arvin, you are wonderful!

[@ProactiveForce]

New information for me in this video. I love this type of mystery. The great attractor seems to be an important clue to the mystery of gravity. Imagine the combined kinetic energy of each of the great attractors your described. The significance of quark and lepton action and interaction to me is mind boggling. Our current understanding of the Higgs field and gluon is currently too limited. As to the cosmological constant dark energy and gravity question, I am fascinated by gravity inside a black hole and the actions of quaks an leptons and the curvature of spacetime or time space and the super colider singularity result measured and superposition states. If the gluon force were extended or a new wave field discovered that extended the strong nuclear force seems to be a possible path to follow. To me I am fascinated by the attractive force proton neutron quark kinetic energy measured state heald together by the gluon wave field superposition state. Amazing!

[@pepevelez4742]

in simple form: everybody is attracting everybody, but the greatest attractor gets it all, and curiously enough, we know what every attractor is composed of with the exception of the greatest one. It seems there is space for philosophy to come in.

[@srikanthpilla4173]

What a grand stage!

[@clintwilde1048]

A great tutorial. Scientific endeavor, the ability to make a living thinking about all this, writing it down, speculating, theorizing, made possible by a world of people farming, processing, transporting, drilling for oil, running steel mills and power plants, making the physical world we know, so that some folks can sit around and ponder things.