March 17, 2014

Cosmologists Say They've Discovered The Gravity Waves Predicted by Einstein, Evidence of the First Trillionth of a Second of the Big Bang's Lightspeed Expansion
— Ace

If I understand this right (and I probably don't), the universe is estimated to be 13.8 billion years old. This estimate is made based upon how much cooler hot bodies have become over time, calculating backwards from present temperatures.

That figuring yields a 13.8 billion year estimated age. However, the size of the universe is inconsistent with this 13.8 billion year figure. The size of the universe suggests an older universe, because things couldn't have moved so far (space couldn't have expanded so much, distant galaxies couldn't have flown away so far) in just 13.8 years.

I think we know how fast galaxies are moving away from each other, and this current speed is not adequate to explain the prodigious distances between them, given the 13.8 billion year estimated age. Therefore, it must be that at some point in the very, very remote past, things (and spacetime itself) were moving much, must faster than they currently seem to be.

So there's a theory to explain why the heat-figured age of the universe (13.8 billion years) diverges from the distance-and-dimension age of the universe (many, many billions of years more than 13.8 billion years): inflation. The theory is that the very early universe, in the opening trillionth of a second of existence, somehow had the property of expanding at the speed of light... or even faster. I believe physical laws weren't quite firmed up yet (the universe created physical laws at the same time it created physical space), so there may be a little wiggle room, in the earliest microseconds of the Big Bang, as to what is and isn't physically possible.

If understand this right (which, again, I don't), cosmologists have been searching for "gravity waves" in the background radiation of the universe, itself an echo of the Big Bang. Background radiation is presumed to be the scattered energy of the once ultrahot, ultradense universe (very understatedly termed "the hot dense state").

I guess they've been searching for variations -- wavelike peaks and troughs -- in this primordial residue.

Einstein, I think, predicted that such "gravity waves" existed and should eventually be detectable by human instrumentation. These gravity waves apparently also prove (or tend to prove) the inflation theory as well.

I think -- again, I don't really understand this -- that gravity waves would represent a "wrinkling" in unfolding spacetime consistent with the inflation sub-theory of the Big Bang Theory. I suppose a lack of gravity waves, and therefore a smoothness in the background radiation, would disprove it or undermine it.

Before getting into that, these waves were detected by a telescope operating at the South Pole, because the South Pole has such thin sky above it, and such little local light. The telescope is called BICEP2. This is a pretty cool picture of the Antarctic telescope:

southpoletelescope.jpg

I wanted to post that picture because it's the only thing I understand on a tangible level here. And because, colors.

From Stanford:

Researchers from the BICEP2 collaboration today announced the first direct evidence supporting this theory, known as "cosmic inflation." Their data also represent the first images of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time. These waves have been described as the "first tremors of the Big Bang." Finally, the data confirm a deep connection between quantum mechanics and general relativity.


...

These groundbreaking results came from observations by the BICEP2 telescope of the cosmic microwave background – a faint glow left over from the Big Bang. Tiny fluctuations in this afterglow provide clues to conditions in the early universe. For example, small differences in temperature across the sky show where parts of the universe were denser, eventually condensing into galaxies and galactic clusters.

Because the cosmic microwave background is a form of light, it exhibits all the properties of light, including polarization. On Earth, sunlight is scattered by the atmosphere and becomes polarized, which is why polarized sunglasses help reduce glare. In space, the cosmic microwave background was scattered by atoms and electrons and became polarized too.

...

Gravitational waves squeeze space as they travel, and this squeezing produces a distinct pattern in the cosmic microwave background. Gravitational waves have a "handedness," much like light waves, and can have left- and right-handed polarizations.

"The swirly B-mode pattern is a unique signature of gravitational waves because of their handedness," Kuo said.

Okay, I don't really understand this, but I think they're saying that if spacetime is itself propagating it should propagate like a wave, with peaks and directionality, and this should show up in this "swirliness" detected in background radiation.

And somehow this is due to quantum mechanical effects on the tiniest possible scale becoming visible on a cosmic scale, due to a universe which had previously been smaller than an electron suddenly blowing up to a size thousands of lightyears across. In blowing up in size from much, much smaller than an atom, to much, much bigger than a galaxy in just a second or two, the secondary effects of quantum-level of phenomena, the imprinting of "swirliness" in the background raditation, were blown up like a photograph being increased in size a billionfold.

Subatomic-scale phenomena become visible when you blow them up a billion or trillion times in size. 220, 221, whatever it takes.

Scientists believe that in the fabric of space-time, there are tiny ripples called quantum fluctuations. If you could look at space-time on the smallest scale possible, you would, in theory, see them, even today. Unfortunately, no microscope is capable of seeing something that small.

Such fluctuations also existed at the beginning of the universe. Inflation, said Irwin, blew them up much larger. That is what we think of as gravitational waves.

The gravitational waves suggested by the BICEP2 results would have expanded across the entire universe at that time, Irwin said. The length of one of these waves -- the distance between peaks and troughs -- would have been billions of light years across.

Light from the early universe, called cosmic microwave background radiation, reveals these telltale signs of our universe's history...

Instead of temperature, BICEP2 scientists were looking specifically at the polarization of the cosmic microwave background -- that is, the direction the electric field is pointing across the sky....

In theory, this swirling polarization pattern could only be created from gravitational waves. And that is what BICEP2 found.

"It's a very clean signature of those gravity waves," Irwin said.

As I keep saying, I don't understand this. It seems like big shakes, though, so I've given it my best try.

Incidentally, these waves were apparently detected three years ago, but they've kept the discovery quiet as they've firmed up their case that these are the gravitational waves they've been looking for.

In one of these articles (can't find it now, alas), they speculated that while nothing can move faster in space than light, space itself can move (expand) faster than the speed of light.

I just mention that because, Hyperspace and Warp Drive. We all want it.

Posted by: Ace at 03:04 PM | Comments (442)
Post contains 1210 words, total size 8 kb.

1 That dude with the fatso orgy in NYC had some gravity waves going on.

Posted by: Roy at March 17, 2014 03:08 PM (tiOTz)

2 Cosmetology school. That's how you get ahead.

Posted by: garrett at March 17, 2014 03:08 PM (iJYnE)

3 Is this why a hairdresser's need a license?

Posted by: The Hickster at March 17, 2014 03:09 PM (TI3xG)

4 This is all very nice, but am I alive or dead?

Posted by: Schrodinger's Cat at March 17, 2014 03:09 PM (8ZskC)

5 13.8 billion, corrected for inflation. Sounds like the Obama's latest vacay bill.

Posted by: Roy at March 17, 2014 03:09 PM (tiOTz)

6 That picture reminds me of Ice Station Zebra. Other than that, I got nothing.

Posted by: Y-not at March 17, 2014 03:10 PM (zDsvJ)

7 I always found it amusing that the idea of cosmic inflation came about toward the end of the Carter administration, when the consumer price index was doing much the same thing.

Posted by: whoever at March 17, 2014 03:10 PM (pjMym)

8 OT, Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden still are surprisingly silent about Russia and Putin's actions. John Schindler ‏@20committee 4h There are only 2 reasons why Greenwald won't condemn Putin. One is pathological self-absorption + moral blindness. You know the other one.

Posted by: Costanza Defense at March 17, 2014 03:10 PM (ZPrif)

9 That dude with the fatso orgy in NYC had some gravity waves going on. Posted by: Roy

There it is.

Posted by: pep at March 17, 2014 03:10 PM (4nR9/)

10 You want to talk about The Big Bang Theory TV show don't you?

Posted by: lowandslow at March 17, 2014 03:11 PM (IV4od)

11 Lee Strobel makes a compelling case in The Case for a Creator that what they are describing when they say "Big Bang" is a moment of creation, a "let there be light" moment that cannot be explained by the laws of physics.

Posted by: Shooter McGavin at March 17, 2014 03:11 PM (EKqcK)

12 The Universe is more amazing than we can contemplate.


It's humbling. 

Posted by: alexthechick - SMOD, you taunty bitch. at March 17, 2014 03:12 PM (Gk3SS)

13 PULL MY FINGER!

Posted by: The Creator at March 17, 2014 03:12 PM (tiOTz)

14 That dude with the fatso orgy in NYC had some gravity waves going on.

Posted by: Roy


That's how a Moron responds to the majesty of science, right there.

Posted by: Cicero (@cicero) at March 17, 2014 03:12 PM (8ZskC)

15 It's humbling.


And bigger than shit.  Like, really really big.

Posted by: Cicero (@cicero) at March 17, 2014 03:13 PM (8ZskC)

16 I don't quite understand it either, but they've been predicted for a long time, so it's a Big Effin' Deal if they've finally been spotted. Now it's up to other teams to either confirm the results by replicating the observations on their own, report that they cannot duplicate the results, or else come up with alternate explanations for the observations. You know, science.

Posted by: rickl at March 17, 2014 03:13 PM (sdi6R)

17 Size is relative... it's all in how you hold the cell phone, really.

Posted by: Carlos Danger at March 17, 2014 03:13 PM (iJYnE)

18
This estimate is made based upon how much cooler hot bodies have become over time










Is this like what happens when you rub an ice cube on Kate Upton's nipple?

Posted by: IllTemperedCur at March 17, 2014 03:13 PM (TIIx5)

19 This is all very nice, but am I alive or dead?

Posted by: Schrodinger's Cat at March 17, 2014 07:09 PM (8ZskC)

Yes.

And no.

Posted by: John P. Squibob at March 17, 2014 03:14 PM (DQZLr)

20 Posted by: Cicero (@cicero) at March 17, 2014 07:12 PM (8ZskC) There's a Moron theory for everything in your universe, Horatio!

Posted by: Hrothgar at March 17, 2014 03:14 PM (o3MSL)

21 The Gravity Waves used to open for Aerosmith back in the late 80s.

Posted by: Roy at March 17, 2014 03:14 PM (tiOTz)

22 The Universe is more amazing than we can contemplate.


It's humbling.

For you, maybe. 

Posted by: HRH, Barry the Magnificent, Lord of the Rift at March 17, 2014 03:14 PM (4nR9/)

23 The Universe is more amazing than we can contemplate. It's humbling. Meh.

Posted by: Zaphod Beeblebrox at March 17, 2014 03:14 PM (iJYnE)

24 Is inflation the reason Obama's ego is to big?

Posted by: Hepcat at March 17, 2014 03:14 PM (Q4mug)

25 Is inflation the reason Obama's ego is to big?
Posted by: Hepcat

pffft.  Compensation.

Posted by: Michelle Obama at March 17, 2014 03:15 PM (4nR9/)

26 "Instead of temperature, BICEP2 scientists were looking specifically at the polarization of the cosmic microwave background -- that is, the direction the electric field is pointing across the sky.... In theory, this swirling polarization pattern could only be created from gravitational waves. And that is what BICEP2 found." *squirt*

Posted by: Anthony Weiner at March 17, 2014 03:15 PM (qQu43)

27 I don't quite understand it either, but they've been predicted for a long time, so it's a Big Effin' Deal if they've finally been spotted.

Now it's up to other teams to either confirm the results by replicating the observations on their own, report that they cannot duplicate the results, or else come up with alternate explanations for the observations.

You know, science. Posted by: rickl at March 17, 2014 07:13 PM (sdi6R)


You know that awesome news that pretty much any cell can be turned into a stem cell?  Which was awesome and exciting?

Yeah.  Non-duplicatible. 

It sure as hell seems like there are a ton of splashy announcements that are getting Litrella'd lately.   

Posted by: alexthechick - SMOD, you taunty bitch. at March 17, 2014 03:15 PM (Gk3SS)

28 12 The Universe is more amazing than we can contemplate. It's humbling. Posted by: alexthechick - SMOD, you taunty bitch. at March 17, 2014 07:12 PM (Gk3SS) It really is. How anyone can even begin to comprehend the depth of complexity is beyond me. I can barely contemplate tomorrow.... except beer.

Posted by: 98ZJUSMC Rounding Error Extraordinaire at March 17, 2014 03:16 PM (4s6u1)

29 Is inflation the reason Obama's ego is to big?

My lips say otherwise

Posted by: Reggie Love at March 17, 2014 03:16 PM (DQZLr)

30 swirling polarization pattern I think that's my move!

Posted by: Jerry Seinfeld at March 17, 2014 03:17 PM (iJYnE)

31 I wonder how this kind of knowledge would have affected the writers of early religious texts/tenets.

Posted by: SFGoth at March 17, 2014 03:17 PM (bo76M)

32 Ace, wow, just wow. Thanks for something so in-depth.

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at March 17, 2014 03:18 PM (HVff2)

33 How does another 13.8 years of me at the helm sound?

Posted by: Prez'nit 404 at March 17, 2014 03:18 PM (Dwehj)

34 31 I wonder how this kind of knowledge would have affected the writers of early religious texts/tenets.<<< They would have written that 8 yr old girls are really 25, corrected for inflation.

Posted by: Roy at March 17, 2014 03:19 PM (tiOTz)

35 And the Seahawks thought their wave was awesome! Because, heh...

Posted by: Few at March 17, 2014 03:19 PM (wDwaq)

36 Ace, wow, just wow. Thanks for something so in-depth. You should see him review a Marvel Flick.

Posted by: garrett at March 17, 2014 03:19 PM (iJYnE)

37 Over the years I have read a bunch of stuff trying to understand why current physics holds it to be impossible to travel faster than light (FTL). We all know that FTL is not possible simply by traveling fast. The closer you get to the speed of light, the more your apparent mass increases, and the more energy it takes to accelerate you. You can never reach light speed without infinite energy, and infinite energy isn't possible, QED. But what about traveling through hyperspace, teleporting, traveling through subspace, warp drive, etc.? As I understand it, FTL travel is equivalent to time travel, and time travel breaks "causality" (can't have an effect happen before the cause). The explanations always involve "light cones" and different frames of reference, and I'm not sure I quite get it. But supposedly it doesn't matter how you do it, it's not allowed. Yet, as I understand it, current theory would allow a wormhole that could span interstellar distances; if you somehow had a magical shield that kept you from being ripped apart by the tremendous gravitational forces, maybe you could travel in both space and time through a wormhole? Except FTL is supposed to be impossible because causality. I read one explanation that said that FTL travel might be possible without paradoxes if the FTL travel was somehow linked to a single frame of reference. The paradoxes all come about from different frames of reference. In the Star Trek TV show, the common frame of reference must be "subspace" (remember they were always talking about "subspace radio" when they got transmissions over interstellar distances). Any Morons around here who can put me some f'n knowledge about this important issue? Thanks in advance if so.

Posted by: mr_jack at March 17, 2014 03:19 PM (TMG3G)

38 Why the hell is it called a gravity wave?

Posted by: tasker at March 17, 2014 03:20 PM (RJMhd)

39 15 Not only that but they speculate there may be multiple upon multiple universes outside our own bubbling up and into existence just like ours did.. The whole thing is freaking fascinating and mind blowing( and that term really is inadequate).

Posted by: Tuna at March 17, 2014 03:20 PM (M/TDA)

40 13 That! 1111

Posted by: Few at March 17, 2014 03:20 PM (wDwaq)

41 This post could use some Dire Straits.

Posted by: garrett at March 17, 2014 03:20 PM (iJYnE)

42 38 Why the hell is it called a gravity wave? Posted by: tasker<<< A gravity particle is just too hard to comprehend.

Posted by: Roy at March 17, 2014 03:20 PM (tiOTz)

43 In other mind bottling news, women's curling is currently on NBC Universal sports.


Sadly not the Russians but still.  

Posted by: alexthechick - SMOD, you taunty bitch. at March 17, 2014 03:21 PM (Gk3SS)

44 “Putin is set to respond to Obama’s sanctions of Russian officials with his own list. Several U.S. Senators and officials will be banned from visiting Russia, including Sen. Dick Durbin.” This sh1t is getting hilarious, Putin mocking Barry now. BTW can we get McCain on this list too? http://tinyurl.com/jwr56el [dailybeast]

Posted by: ThisBeingMilt at March 17, 2014 03:22 PM (7mQyC)

45 So, scientists stuck a gigantic thermometer up the universe's ass?

Posted by: The Yellow Pug at March 17, 2014 03:22 PM (r7mtu)

46 "This post could use some Dire Straits." --- Why do you need some money and free chicks?

Posted by: ThisBeingMilt at March 17, 2014 03:23 PM (7mQyC)

47 >>>You want to talk about The Big Bang Theory TV show don't you? the whole universe began in a hot, dense state...

Posted by: ace at March 17, 2014 03:23 PM (/FnUH)

48 45 - Basically yes, they're getting pretty good at it too.

Posted by: ThisBeingMilt at March 17, 2014 03:23 PM (7mQyC)

49 I thought the universe is 5K years old? Cuz the bible.

Posted by: Mr. Moo Moo at March 17, 2014 03:24 PM (0LHZx)

50 Isn't this really the story of Barack Obama?

Posted by: Guy Who Likes Old Memes at March 17, 2014 03:24 PM (/FnUH)

51 the whole universe began in a hot, dense state...

Florida?

Posted by: Blanco Basura at March 17, 2014 03:24 PM (0AKks)

52 Anyone know someone who is a theoretic physicist ? I really envy anyone with a mind deep enough to see and understand this stuff.

Posted by: Tuna at March 17, 2014 03:24 PM (M/TDA)

53 Meh.

Posted by: Penzias and Wilson at March 17, 2014 03:25 PM (8ZskC)

54 This sh1t is getting hilarious, Putin mocking Barry now.

Russians-doing the jobs American journalists won't do.

Posted by: pep at March 17, 2014 03:25 PM (4nR9/)

55 “Putin is set to respond to Obama’s sanctions of Russian officials with his own list. Several U.S. Senators and officials will be banned from visiting Russia, including Sen. Dick "Dick" Durbin.”

This sh1t is getting hilarious, Putin mocking Barry now. BTW can we get McCain on this list too?
http://tinyurl.com/jwr56el [dailybeast]

FIFY

Posted by: Reggie Love at March 17, 2014 03:25 PM (DQZLr)

56 I understand this right (and I probably don't ---------- Just ask moo moo. He's smarter than all of us and not afraid to tell us. I'm sure he has the answer.

Posted by: Adam at March 17, 2014 03:25 PM (Aif/5)

57 It is interesting that they found actual data to match the huge inflation hockey stick model. I bet Michael Mann is pissed.

Posted by: Roy at March 17, 2014 03:25 PM (tiOTz)

58 Bernanke/Yellen are jealous.

Posted by: flailing at March 17, 2014 03:26 PM (inQJB)

59 It was a dark and stormy void...

Posted by: garrett at March 17, 2014 03:26 PM (iJYnE)

60 Out, damned sock puppet.

Posted by: John P. Squibob at March 17, 2014 03:26 PM (DQZLr)

61 I was told there would be no math

Posted by: Barky McBamastain at March 17, 2014 03:26 PM (Q6pxP)

62 18 Is this like what happens when you rub an ice cube on Kate Upton's nipple? Posted by: IllTemperedCur at March 17, 2014 07:13 PM (TIIx5) Yes. That would cause expansion, I think.

Posted by: rickl at March 17, 2014 03:26 PM (sdi6R)

63 Putin mocking Barry now. Get in line, Vlad.

Posted by: Asad's Son at March 17, 2014 03:26 PM (iJYnE)

64 50 - Nah that's the Big ClusterFark theory... easy to get them confused.

Posted by: ThisBeingMilt at March 17, 2014 03:27 PM (7mQyC)

65 All this talk of gravity waves makes me think of what Reggie does to me.

Posted by: noble peace prize boy king with a finger on the reset button at March 17, 2014 03:27 PM (hpgw1)

66 For the record, it's gravitational waves. Gravity waves are something from fluid dynamics. The terms get interchanged, but they really are different things. ...and with that, back to tequila'ing myself to immortality!

Posted by: Brother Cavil at March 17, 2014 03:27 PM (m9V0o)

67 So, scientists stuck a gigantic thermometer up the universe's ass?

Hmmmm.  There has to be an Affordable Care tie-in there that we can exploit to get people sign up. 

Posted by: BHO at March 17, 2014 03:27 PM (4nR9/)

68 Slowly gravity turned, step by step, incomprehensibly small distance by incomprehensibly small distance. . .

Posted by: alexthechick - SMOD, you taunty bitch. at March 17, 2014 03:27 PM (Gk3SS)

69 how much cooler hot bodies have become



after this part, too much math and science and stuff


at least you weren't encouraging heteros to Play the Gay Way

Posted by: Alexis in the Lexus at March 17, 2014 03:28 PM (omBWL)

70 Putin mocking Barry now.


Get in line, Vlad.

Posted by: Asad's Son at March 17, 2014 07:26 PM (iJYnE)


I think The Chinless Dentist was just the warm-up act for Vlad.

Posted by: John P. Squibob at March 17, 2014 03:29 PM (DQZLr)

71 But what does Algore have to say about this?

Posted by: Cicero (@cicero) at March 17, 2014 03:29 PM (8ZskC)

72 If there are gravity waves, can they be surfed?

Posted by: Beagle at March 17, 2014 03:29 PM (sOtz/)

73 For a fictional treatise on how this might affect the rough folks keeping us safe at night checkout, "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman. A good read and oddly semi-prescient. Ouch that hurt. I forget sometimes because big words.

Posted by: Few at March 17, 2014 03:29 PM (wDwaq)

74 I often think that Einstein was really a time-travelling alien with a demented sense of humor. He came here to punk us with this stuff. I know I would do that if I were one.

Posted by: Roy at March 17, 2014 03:30 PM (tiOTz)

75 I just mention that because, Hyperspace and Warp Drive. We all want it.

I don't think I could handle hyperspace.  Everybody running around, acting like caffeinated children.

Posted by: Blanco Basura at March 17, 2014 03:31 PM (0AKks)

76 Speaking of Ace,

I found a possible contender for the next ChillGroove selection

The War On Drugs - Disappearing
http://youtu.be/oKIFQah_TO4

Kind of a Roxy Music type retro groove.

Posted by: weft cut-loop [/i][/b] at March 17, 2014 03:31 PM (ligos)

77 So inflation occurred fast than the speed of light and in an amount of time so small our minds cannot possibly comprehend and that is the reason the universe is all nice and even.

Posted by: Tuna at March 17, 2014 03:31 PM (M/TDA)

78 BTW can we get McCain on this list too?>>

I think Putin should send McCain a personal invite just to drive the mockery home.

“You think I’m not going to be on it?” McCain said. “I would be honored to be on that list.”

Posted by: The Hickster at March 17, 2014 03:32 PM (TI3xG)

79 I thought the universe is 5K years old? Cuz the bible.

1.  That's 6,000 years old, dumbass.
2.  That's the Earth, not the Universe, dumbass.
3.  That's based on counting up the ages of certain people in the Bible and not actual doctrine of any major church, dumbass.

Posted by: bonhomme[/i][/b][/i][/b][/s][/s] at March 17, 2014 03:32 PM (P7Wsr)

80 Wesley! What did I tell you. Do not modify the deflector to emit graviton particles.

Posted by: Chief Engineer Geordi LaForge at March 17, 2014 03:32 PM (ecN6u)

81 Is the universe still expanding at an increasing rate?  I haven't checked lately but I think there's an app for that.

Posted by: Cicero (@cicero) at March 17, 2014 03:34 PM (8ZskC)

82 I'm disappointed. I was told there would be buttons

Posted by: thunderb at March 17, 2014 03:34 PM (zOTsN)

83 Don't man-made wormholes also have a horrible limiting factor, the fact that it would take near infinite energy to keep it from collapsing?

Posted by: bonhomme[/i][/b][/i][/b][/s][/s] at March 17, 2014 03:34 PM (P7Wsr)

84 Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?

Posted by: Oddball at March 17, 2014 03:34 PM (DQZLr)

85 Oh, this is so easy! I understand all of this ... more Makers Mark, please!

Posted by: and irresolute at March 17, 2014 03:34 PM (RqHWH)

86 So those of us that helped destroy the ozone over the South Pole deserve a pat on the back, cause if not for the hole, this tele couldn't see the wrinkles... right?  Hell yeah!  Gimmie some R-4 and can of hair spray!  For Science!

Posted by: Yip at March 17, 2014 03:35 PM (/jHWN)

87 Always with the negative waves, Mau Mau.  Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?

Posted by: Oddball at March 17, 2014 03:35 PM (BAS5M)

88 Just more bullshit to attract grant money... The collective we know pitifully little. It's all speculation.

Posted by: Beto at March 17, 2014 03:35 PM (MhA4j)

89 @77 Yeah. "Explosion" so understates that process. See how science disproves God? I never do, but some people keep yammering.

Posted by: Beagle at March 17, 2014 03:35 PM (sOtz/)

90

I think -- again, I don't really understand this -- ......uh,  me neither.

Posted by: Penny at March 17, 2014 03:36 PM (wAQA5)

91
Dueling Oddballs

Heh.

Posted by: IllTemperedCur at March 17, 2014 03:36 PM (TIIx5)

92 Come on ace, haven't you learned anything from CAC? You have to smoke a boatload of weed before you understand astrology

Posted by: Navycopjoe at March 17, 2014 03:36 PM (FxIhI)

93 There's forces at work all throughout the universe.  I think it's just slowing down the further it gets from the epicenter of the bang.  Imperceptibly over millions of years but effectively over billions and billions.

I call it coasting.

Posted by: Baron Von Ottomatic at March 17, 2014 03:37 PM (kUgpq)

94 So like Albert was really smart? Hitler is gonna be crushed

Posted by: Nevergiveup at March 17, 2014 03:37 PM (nzKvP)

95 8 OT, Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden still are surprisingly silent about Russia and Putin's actions. John Schindler ‏@20committee 4h There are only 2 reasons why Greenwald won't condemn Putin. One is pathological self-absorption + moral blindness. You know the other one. Posted by: Costanza Defense at March 17, 2014 07:10 PM (ZPrif) What would Snowden have to say? Agreed on Greenwald.

Posted by: HoboJerky, Hash Hunter at March 17, 2014 03:38 PM (E8IHS)

96 I have shitloads of books on this stuff, I used to read them all the time. Then l figured out why I was getting headaches. I hate math, sooo...

Posted by: Berserker-Dragonheads Division at March 17, 2014 03:38 PM (FMbng)

97 This is a good summary of what the B-Mode detection is about and it's importance:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~caldwell/echoes.pdf

A couple things:
- the statistical detection of these B-Modes seems pretty robust (7 sigma) but there still needs to be verification of the result by other groups (luckily there are a number of experiments with the required sensitivity to test the claim)
- we've actually observed gravitational waves before and seen evidence for inflation but as Ace mentions this ties together inflation with an energy and time
- This rules out higgs inflation and leaves enticing and possibly causal correlations to certain theories of supersymmetry (see here: http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2014/03/curly-impressions.html)
- The inflation model implies multiverses - which is why Max Tegmark was asking about conspicuous 'smudges'

For a longer and great take from the always snarky and conservative Lubos Motl: http://motls.blogspot.com/2014/03/bicep2-primordial-gravitational-waves.html


Posted by: inyourheadZOMBIE at March 17, 2014 03:38 PM (PeB4U)

98 Dueling Oddballs

Heh.

Cur's got purdy lips.

Squeal like a pig.

Posted by: Oddball at March 17, 2014 03:38 PM (DQZLr)

99 I was told there would be no math

Posted by: thunderb at March 17, 2014 03:38 PM (zOTsN)

100 Warped minds think alike.  lol

Posted by: Oddball2 at March 17, 2014 03:39 PM (BAS5M)

101 "49 I thought the universe is 5K years old? Cuz the bible." You're so fucking predictable.

Posted by: Lauren at March 17, 2014 03:39 PM (hFL/3)

102 This is not exactly related to the topic, but that scale model of the solar system has been improved, or at least tweaked to appear better in Safari. I don't know what it looked like on other browsers previously, but it definitely looks better to me than it did when I first saw it linked here. Plus now there are icons that allow you to zoom to any planet (or cheat, in other words). http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

Posted by: rickl at March 17, 2014 03:39 PM (sdi6R)

103 You have to smoke a boatload of weed before you understand astrology

Posted by: Navycopjoe at March 17, 2014 07:36 PM (FxIhI)



Yes...yes you do.

Posted by: Berserker-Dragonheads Division at March 17, 2014 03:39 PM (FMbng)

104 cosmetologists are awesome!!!!

Posted by: phoenixgirl @phxazgrl Happy St. Patrick's Day at March 17, 2014 03:39 PM (u8GsB)

105 We should absolutely pass a gas tax to prevent the gravitational waves from changing our climate!!!

Posted by: ThomAss Friedman at March 17, 2014 03:39 PM (yweJB)

106 Are gravity waves the inverse squared divided by pi meterosexual of wavy gravy? Just askin' for Reggie, he wants to know.

Posted by: noble peace prize boy king with a finger on the reset button at March 17, 2014 03:39 PM (hpgw1)

107 Trying to understand this is like trying to keep up with the latest global warming scam news releases.

Posted by: Buffalobob at March 17, 2014 03:39 PM (RZBmV)

108 I thought the universe is 5K years old? Cuz the bible." You're so fucking predictable. Posted by: Lauren buttons

Posted by: thunderb at March 17, 2014 03:39 PM (zOTsN)

109 Inflation > The Big Bang Theory

Posted by: Dr Spank at March 17, 2014 03:39 PM (P1WNR)

110 31 I think it confirms that there's a whole lot of stuff we will never understand or be able to comprehend unless it's revealed to us by whatever is controlling it. Or maybe the revelation will come as our brains evolve. Gosh who knows? The whole concept of multiple infinite universes gives my mind a giant ache.

Posted by: Tuna at March 17, 2014 03:40 PM (M/TDA)

111 I call it coasting.


It's generally thought to be speeding up when gravity should be slowing it down.  Nobody knows why, but there are lots of theories.

http://tinyurl.com/cveu8d

Posted by: Cicero (@cicero) at March 17, 2014 03:40 PM (8ZskC)

112 Posted by: bonhomme at March 17, 2014 07:32 PM (P7Wsr)

A-

You would have gotten an A, but the target is an easy one.

However, your punchy delivery and excellent use of the word "dumbass" is impressive.

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo (anti-Irish Bigot) at March 17, 2014 03:40 PM (QFxY5)

113 Same thing as when you throw a box of shotgun shells in the campfire.  Just a much bigger box of shells and a much hotter fire.

Posted by: Baron Von Ottomatic at March 17, 2014 03:40 PM (kUgpq)

114 So who's running BURELOC cause I wanna' go to another planet far , far , away .

Posted by: awkward davies at March 17, 2014 03:40 PM (whqez)

115 It's generally thought to be speeding up when gravity should be slowing it down. Nobody knows why, but there are lots of theories. Dark matter.

Posted by: EC at March 17, 2014 03:41 PM (doBIb)

116 Moo Moo is the center of his Universe.

Posted by: --- at March 17, 2014 03:41 PM (MMC8r)

117 72 If there are gravity waves, can they be surfed? Posted by: Beagle at March 17, 2014 07:29 PM (sOtz/) He's not coming back.

Posted by: Johnny Utah at March 17, 2014 03:41 PM (xYb8+)

118 It was my fault.  If I hadn't opened the door, the universe wouldn't have broken any speed limits while expanding.

Sorry, Officer!  I promise not to do it again.

Posted by: Maxwell's Demon at March 17, 2014 03:41 PM (HXpOu)

119
Freaky Cosmology Compliance Soundtrack

http://tinyurl.com/yg958b6

Posted by: IllTemperedCur at March 17, 2014 03:41 PM (TIIx5)

120 Crap.

Posted by: Moriarty at March 17, 2014 03:41 PM (zDsvJ)

121 This kinda shit makes me laugh.

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 03:42 PM (xSfiX)

122 Meow!?

Posted by: Schrödinger's Cat at March 17, 2014 03:42 PM (4KOF2)

123 Yesterday at church they played amazing images of the universe up on the big screen, while we sang "The Maker of the Heavens Knows My Name". It was awesome.

Posted by: grammie winger at March 17, 2014 03:43 PM (oMKp3)

124 SCIENCE, Bitches! Suck a gravity wave, Luddites!

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 03:43 PM (vHRtU)

125 @97 Multiverses! Ouch, brain cramp.

Posted by: Beagle at March 17, 2014 03:43 PM (sOtz/)

126 When these Cornologists can find a, oh, a particular Boeing 777 on this little planet, I'll be impressed.

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 03:43 PM (xSfiX)

127 123 Now that's something I'd like to see..the moment when a star turns on.

Posted by: Tuna at March 17, 2014 03:44 PM (M/TDA)

128 Polarized glasses help you see through surface glare to spot brook trout over a pebbly bottom. See? I got something this time.

Posted by: Frumious Bandersnatch at March 17, 2014 03:44 PM (1xUj/)

129 ace, I am sure it's been mentioned, but as the AOSHQ union shop steward, I will be filing a work violation against you for illegally doing CAC's work. You can appeal to the horde, but you will lose. Always look for.....http://tinyurl.com/2ftapog

Posted by: Nip Sip, local moron chapter #19 at March 17, 2014 03:44 PM (0FSuD)

130 Any Morons around here who can put me some f'n knowledge about this important issue? Thanks in advance if so.


To start with there are a couple of examples of causality being violated already. There was an experiment where a musical symphony was transmitted by Quantum effects over a considerable distance with zero delay of signal. There are also solutions for Maxwell's equations which involve propagation of a signal in coax cable at speeds exceeding the speed of light in a vacuum, and finally there are conditions under which a standard rf amplifier circuit can have zero or even negative delay times through it (the output occurs before the input).

These are all in the Nothing to see here move along section of physics that you are never told about in college - even as a physics major.

Of course they also don't tell math majors about the fundamental contradiction in math - which is supposed to not have any contradictions in it. Take these two equations:

X/X = 1

0/X = 0

Now set the value of  X to 0 in both equations.

The first says:

0/0 = 1

The second says:

0/0 = 0

Oops. Now you know why the value of 0/0 is officially  undefined.

Bottom line - when we figure out how to go faster than light nothing bad is going to happen - we'll just get where we are going faster.


Posted by: [/i] [/s] [/u] [/b] An Observation at March 17, 2014 03:45 PM (ylhEn)

131 Matter you can't see, Bikini string theory, and now gravy waves. Well hell, this make believe physics ain't so hard.

Posted by: Jethro Bodine at March 17, 2014 03:45 PM (ecN6u)

132 Posted by: Tuna at March 17, 2014 07:44 PM (M/TDA)

I'll bet that it happens fairly slowly. The mass necessary for fusion is small.

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo (anti-Irish Bigot) at March 17, 2014 03:45 PM (QFxY5)

133 If you smoke enough weed atoms look like little solar systems and solar systems look like big atoms, man.

Posted by: wth at March 17, 2014 03:45 PM (wAQA5)

134 Moo Moo Get a ticket to Saudi Arabia and make fun of this guy.

http://tinyurl.com/ll7s3by

Posted by: The Hickster at March 17, 2014 03:46 PM (TI3xG)

135 And what of tachyon emissions? Can we use them to follow a cloaked Klingon Raptor?

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 03:46 PM (xSfiX)

136
Posted by: An Observation at March 17, 2014 07:45 PM (ylhEn)









I understood that there was to be no math on this blog.

Posted by: IllTemperedCur at March 17, 2014 03:46 PM (TIIx5)

137 Should we nominate the authors of Genesis for a Nobel Prize?  Would like to see the waves from all the heads exploding!

Posted by: t-bird at March 17, 2014 03:46 PM (fVXhr)

138 "Now that's something I'd like to see..the moment when a star turns on."

Totally, standing in a trench like those cats from the 50s watching tactical nuclear blasts about a 1/4 mile away. 

Posted by: Baron Von Ottomatic at March 17, 2014 03:47 PM (kUgpq)

139

CAC was going to do this post, but he's having a blast at The Federalist St. Patrick's Days party.

Gotta band, open bar and free hot wings.

Posted by: Laurie David's Cervix at March 17, 2014 03:47 PM (kdS6q)

140 This post must be traveling at near light speed - if us soooooooooo stretched out!

Posted by: Krebs v Carnot: Epic Battle of the Cycling Stars™ [/i] [/b] [/s] at March 17, 2014 03:47 PM (HsTG8)

141 A-

You would have gotten an A, but the target is an easy one.

Hmm, will there be opportunities for extra credit?

Posted by: bonhomme[/i][/b][/i][/b][/s][/s] at March 17, 2014 03:47 PM (P7Wsr)

142 for you Buttons I have been watching the war map slammed up for advertising in front of the newspaper office. Buttons—red and yellow buttons—blue and black buttons—are shoved back and forth across the map. A laughing young man, sunny with freckles, Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd, And then fixes a yellow button one inch west And follows the yellow button with a black button one inch west. (Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in a red soak along a river edge, Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling death in their throats.) Who would guess what it cost to move two buttons one inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing to us? poet Carl Sandburg

Posted by: thunderb at March 17, 2014 03:47 PM (zOTsN)

143 If you smoke enough weed atoms look like little solar systems and solar systems look like big atoms, man.

Posted by: wth at March 17, 2014 07:45 PM (wAQA5)


Eventually they all start to look like munchy food.

Posted by: Berserker-Dragonheads Division at March 17, 2014 03:47 PM (FMbng)

144 "122 Meow!? Posted by: Schrödinger's Cat --- Get back in your box before someone sees you.

Posted by: ThisBeingMilt at March 17, 2014 03:48 PM (7mQyC)

145 God reveals His secrets in His own time. Tell me how the heavens and the earth being created by the BBT is more plausible than the belief that God was the spark that started it all.

Posted by: Niedermeyer's Dead Horse at March 17, 2014 03:48 PM (DmNpO)

146 Wasn't it Fermi that said when the Big Bang became the preferred theory " That's it,we're back to Genesis?"Or words to that effect.

Posted by: steevy at March 17, 2014 03:48 PM (zqvg6)

147 Gotta band, open bar and free hot wings. Posted by: Laurie David's Cervix at March 17, 2014 07:47 PM (kdS6q) What was that address again?

Posted by: The Horde at March 17, 2014 03:49 PM (0FSuD)

148 President Pot Head is banking on the Gravity Wave having his back...

Posted by: Beto at March 17, 2014 03:50 PM (MhA4j)

149 133 I like to picture it like a light bulb being turned on.

Posted by: Tuna at March 17, 2014 03:50 PM (M/TDA)

150 Yesterday at church they played amazing images of the universe up on the big screen, while we sang "The Maker of the Heavens Knows My Name". It was awesome.

You have a big screen at church? 

*gapes*

I'm gonna have to petition Salt Lake.

Posted by: bonhomme[/i][/b][/i][/b][/s][/s] at March 17, 2014 03:50 PM (P7Wsr)

151 Anyone watch the fan-created Star Trek episodes?

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 03:50 PM (xSfiX)

152

What messes with my head...is Time keeping.

 

Our method of keeping time is based on our own planet.

24 hours in a day...365 days in a year...it's based on our rotation around our own sun/star, and the daily spin of the earth.

 

But this would change out in space, right?

So how do you keep time...in space?

 

Time still passes at the same rate in space, doesn't it?

Or does it.

Posted by: wheatie at March 17, 2014 03:50 PM (Xs26g)

153 Gravity Waves will never be cooler than Ligand Field Theory.

Posted by: D-Orbital at March 17, 2014 03:51 PM (HXpOu)

154 Quantum gravity and gravity gravity, how does that work?

Posted by: Insane Clown Physics Possee at March 17, 2014 03:51 PM (sOtz/)

155 Could we please set record straight here:

It was a Catholic priest, Monseigneur George Lemaître, who originally proposed the Big Bang theory, which he called his "hypothesis of the primeval atom"

He was the first person to propose the theory of the expansion of the Universe, widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble.

He was also the first to derive what is now known as Hubble's law and made the first estimation of what is now called the Hubble constant, which he published in 1927, two years before Hubble's article.

And  Lemaître actually proved Einstein WRONG who initially REFUSED to accept the idea of an expanding universe in 1931. Lemaître recalled him commenting "Vos calculs sont corrects, mais votre physique est abominable"  ("Your calculations are correct, but your physics is atrocious.")

That same year, Lemaître returned to MIT to present his doctoral thesis on The gravitational field in a fluid sphere of uniform invariant density according to the theory of relativity. Upon obtaining the PhD, he was named ordinary professor at the Catholic University of Louvain.

Posted by: Something at March 17, 2014 03:51 PM (Ojgjr)

156
If you smoke enough weed atoms look like little solar systems and solar systems look like big atoms, man.

Posted by: wth at March 17, 2014 07:45 PM (wAQA5)









Oy, mate. Splitting beer atoms makes big bangs.

Posted by: Yahoo Serious at March 17, 2014 03:51 PM (TIIx5)

157 Time still passes at the same rate in space, doesn't it? Or does it. Yes and no.

Posted by: EC at March 17, 2014 03:51 PM (doBIb)

158 You have a big screen at church? Yep. Cup holders too. With free coffee.

Posted by: grammie winger at March 17, 2014 03:52 PM (oMKp3)

159 One-trillionith of a second? That's almost the amount of time it takes for MUMR to make a stupid comment after he logs on at the HQ.

Posted by: [/i]andycanuck[/b] at March 17, 2014 03:52 PM (hn5v5)

160 148 Would that I could live that long. Sigh.

Posted by: Tuna at March 17, 2014 03:52 PM (M/TDA)

161 154 - Space time...it's a bitch.

Posted by: ThisBeingMilt at March 17, 2014 03:52 PM (7mQyC)

162 Totally, standing in a trench like those cats from the 50s watching tactical nuclear blasts about a 1/4 mile away.

My Grandpa was probably present for a nuke test.  He never talked about it, but we found his badge among his effects.

Posted by: bonhomme[/i][/b][/i][/b][/s][/s] at March 17, 2014 03:53 PM (P7Wsr)

163 154 I would have to imagine that time would be measured differently elsewhere as our system is, geared toward our planet and its relation to the sun.

Posted by: ManWithNoParty at March 17, 2014 03:53 PM (ojnk6)

164 I'm selling gravitational wave inflation offsets in case anyone's interested.

Posted by: Gristle Encased Head at March 17, 2014 03:54 PM (+lsX1)

165 Tell me how the heavens and the earth being created by the BBT is more plausible than the belief that God was the spark that started it all.

Do you actually want to know, or is this another tiresome "gotcha" question? The short answer is -

On the plausibility of the former, there are several observable phenomena (redshifting of galaxies, the nature of the background radiation of space, age of the oldest and furthest galaxies, etc) which point to an origin around 13.8 billion years ago, at a single point (or close enough).

On the plausibility of the latter - well, there isn't any. It's faith.

You're comparing oranges to the concept of zero-divided-by-zero.

Posted by: boulder toilet hobo at March 17, 2014 03:54 PM (30eLQ)

166 Yeah, when a star turns on, it sweeps the dust right out of the solar system.

Unless some planetoids are there to gobble the dust up, in which case the dust accretes on the planetoid.  Otherwise, it's, "Out damned spot!  Out!"

Posted by: Stellar Broom at March 17, 2014 03:56 PM (HXpOu)

167 You're comparing oranges to the concept of zero-divided-by-zero. Ha! That's easy. Zero divide by zero is zero!

Posted by: EC at March 17, 2014 03:56 PM (doBIb)

168 Re: the Catholic priest That reminds me of a Family Guy episode in which Stewie and the talking dog have a device that allows them to travel within parallel Universes. The pair visit a Universe in which Christianity did not exist and thus "did not hamper scientific progress for two thousand years." This particular Universe was just about perfect complete with cures for every disease and worldwide high speed rail. This is the crap young people believe today, mostly thanks to the Leftist Liars at Comedy Central.

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 03:56 PM (xSfiX)

169 Please no dividing by zero, don't need any BSOD's.

Posted by: ThisBeingMilt at March 17, 2014 03:56 PM (7mQyC)

170 159 Time still passes at the same rate in space, doesn't it? Or does it. Yes and no. Posted by: EC at March 17, 2014 07:51 PM (doBIb) It's relative.

Posted by: A. Einstein at March 17, 2014 03:56 PM (sdi6R)

171

And we are in a galaxy...the Milky Way...that is rotating around a giant Black Hole.

 

Does that mean that we're in some of the Time Dilation that surrounds a black hole?

As in....slowed down.

 

If so, then our concept of Time is actually happening slower than it is out away from the influence of our galaxy.

Posted by: wheatie at March 17, 2014 03:56 PM (Xs26g)

172 109 Inflation > The Big Bang Theory Posted by: Dr Spank at March 17, 2014 07:39 PM (P1WNR) I knew something along those lines would be coming from you.

Posted by: Buzzion at March 17, 2014 03:57 PM (awJIh)

173 #127

As James Randi has pointed out, most scientists aren't trained to deal with subjects that are actively seeking to deceive them.

Posted by: Epobirs at March 17, 2014 03:57 PM (bPxS6)

174 "This estimate is made based upon how much cooler hot bodies have become over time, calculating backwards from present temperatures." Let's see -- you believe they can account for the temperature everywhere going back 13.8 billion years, but you reject global warming, which just requires looking at the earth's temperature for a few hundred?

Posted by: Fred Phelps Last Breath at March 17, 2014 03:57 PM (wLibB)

175 @154

Different planets have different days and years (for ex. a day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus and we've found a planet around a different star whose year is less than 6hrs).  We measure time in terms of past events in the history of our universe in terms of Earth's day/year.

Posted by: inyourheadZOMBIE at March 17, 2014 03:57 PM (PeB4U)

176 On the plausibility of the former, there are several observable phenomena (redshifting of galaxies, the nature of the background radiation of space, age of the oldest and furthest galaxies, etc) which point to an origin around 13.8 billion years ago, at a single point (or close enough). Which in no way negates the plausibility of the latter.

Posted by: grammie winger at March 17, 2014 03:58 PM (oMKp3)

177 When I read shit like this I thank God he looks after my dumb ass. Shit is way over my head.

Posted by: Nip Sip at March 17, 2014 03:58 PM (0FSuD)

178 So, where did the stuff that BigBanged come from?

Posted by: --- at March 17, 2014 03:58 PM (MMC8r)

179 Remember John Carpenter's 'Dark Star' astronaut surfing in space?

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 03:58 PM (vHRtU)

180 So how do you keep time...in space?

Posted by: wheatie

Actually we now keep time by measuring properties of radioactive elements like Caesium, aka atomic clocks.

As far as we know these would work the same at any location in normal space.

Posted by: weft cut-loop [/i][/b] at March 17, 2014 03:58 PM (ligos)

181 Faster than the speed of light for a trillionth of a second, huh? I'm just curious as to which viewpoint that trillionth of a second was seen from. Einstein also pointed out that if a clock was to be able to travel the speed of light then to the observer here on earth, that trillionth of a second on that clock could last 13.8 billion years. hmmmmm, I guess creation could have taken place in 6 literal days. As soon as big bang theorists can understand the complexities of space-time it'll get pretty interesting. However, as it stands right now, 13.8 billion years, from a certain prospective, could have occurred in a blink of an eye.

Posted by: doug at March 17, 2014 03:58 PM (uJ8q7)

182 I'm selling gravitational wave inflation offsets in case anyone's interested.

Posted by: Gristle Encased Head at March 17, 2014 07:54 PM (+lsX1)


Beat it, ya creep, I'm workin' this side of the street.

Posted by: Al Gore at March 17, 2014 03:59 PM (cHwk5)

183 Posted by: Fred Phelps Last Breath at March 17, 2014 07:57 PM (wLibB) Hi, eggmcmuffin. Or Seattle Slough.

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 03:59 PM (xSfiX)

184 Breaking: MSNBC reporting that news of the discovery of "gravitational wave inflation" are incorrect. Researchers at Stanford University say that the report in question was actually a breakfast menu that referred to "biscuits in waves of gravy." MSNBC regrets the error.

Posted by: Gristle Encased Head at March 17, 2014 04:00 PM (+lsX1)

185 Yes, but how does this help Michelle Obama?

Posted by: Seems legit at March 17, 2014 04:00 PM (A98Xu)

186 >>Time still passes at the same rate in space, doesn't it?


Check out the twins paradox

Posted by: Albie Damned, hanging ten on the Gravitational Wave at March 17, 2014 04:00 PM (cGaCp)

187 I tried to watch DARK STAR not too long ago. It was pretty bad.

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 04:00 PM (xSfiX)

188 Gravity wave?  You're soaking in it.

Posted by: Madge the Cosmologist at March 17, 2014 04:01 PM (KQp38)

189 173 And we are in a galaxy...the Milky Way...that is rotating around a giant Black Hole. Does that mean that we're in some of the Time Dilation that surrounds a black hole? As in....slowed down. If so, then our concept of Time is actually happening slower than it is out away from the influence of our galaxy. Posted by: wheatie at March 17, 2014 07:56 PM (Xs26g) I don't think so. Depending on the accuracy of the pseudoscience of most sci-fi I believe the time dilation would only take effect once you pass beyond the event horizon of the black hole which we haven't.

Posted by: Buzzion at March 17, 2014 04:01 PM (awJIh)

190 I'd trade all my gravitational waves for a nice girlfriend...

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 04:02 PM (vHRtU)

191 "Actually we now keep time by measuring properties of radioactive elements like Caesium, aka atomic clocks." --- Why you gotta take all the fun out of it? /s

Posted by: ThisBeingMilt at March 17, 2014 04:02 PM (7mQyC)

192 @157 You left out the part where LeMaitre got the Pope to issue a shirk and ridda fatwa on Einstein which led to his murder. Hollywood will fix that. I nailed a Guardian columnist with LeMaitre some years ago. He said something like religion never gave us a theory for anything. LOL, not counting everything.

Posted by: Beagle at March 17, 2014 04:02 PM (sOtz/)

193 Dark Star is a student film. Given that, it's a hoot.

Posted by: --- at March 17, 2014 04:02 PM (MMC8r)

194 I recently discovered the Dick Constant which is the amount of time needed for Mr Moo Moo  to realize the comment he's about to make is retarded and a "Dick Move"™, and not post it. It's still a constant in theory only since it's never been attained.

Posted by: Dr Spank at March 17, 2014 04:03 PM (P1WNR)

195 Do you actually want to know, or is this another tiresome "gotcha" question? The short answer is - On the plausibility of the former, there are several observable phenomena (redshifting of galaxies, the nature of the background radiation of space, age of the oldest and furthest galaxies, etc) which point to an origin around 13.8 billion years ago, at a single point (or close enough). On the plausibility of the latter - well, there isn't any. It's faith. You're comparing oranges to the concept of zero-divided-by-zero. ..... What I am saying is that the BBT is almost magical in its complexity and mystery and WOW factor yet many believed in it despite the fact that the basis to support it continues to be discovered. People believed in at, had faith in it, despite lacking complete evidence to support it. How is that faith more right than my faith that the BBT, if that is how it was created, was at God's bidding?

Posted by: Niedermeyer's Dead Horse at March 17, 2014 04:03 PM (DmNpO)

196 Why do they presume that the speed changed?

Why couldn't their heat calculations be wrong?

We know from recent past that scientists tend to try and justify their pet theories by postulating that OTHER scientist theories or experiments are wrong.

Isn't this like the effect where we see in the news that they have something totally wrong because it's in an area of our expertise and then we turn the page and suddenly believe everything they have to say because either we don't care or we want to believe because it fits one of our personal theories or one we've been taught at a young age to believe?

Scientists are wrong about stuff all the time and they correct their wrongness by postulating that other stuff is wrong and not their ideas.

For all we really know, maybe G-d did create the world 6,000 years ago. The only proof we have that it didn't is the word of geologists who claim to have figured out how to calculate the Earth's true age. But what if they're wrong? (I don't personally believe this. It's just an example)

Same with evolution of species. There are holes in that theory that large trucks could be driven through but we treat it as settled science because one part of it does work.

Follow the money and the money comes from grants and grants aren't awarded to those who don't follow the standard theories.

Posted by: Bitter Clinger and All That (Awaiting Armageddon) at March 17, 2014 04:03 PM (LSDdO)

197 Hilary will debut a new documentary this summer at the National Native American Summit, July 4th, SanFran: 'An Inconvenient Science.'

It's about how gravitational waves make you step on your jowls...

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 04:04 PM (vHRtU)

198 So, we can make a bomb out of this?

Posted by: Chris_Balsz at March 17, 2014 04:04 PM (5xmd7)

199 Hey, is the St Paddy's day thread? Drink up!

Posted by: Nip Sip at March 17, 2014 04:04 PM (0FSuD)

200 Alan Guth is full of shit.

Posted by: Xavier at March 17, 2014 04:05 PM (Jvm59)

201 The pair visit a Universe in which Christianity did not exist and thus "did not hamper scientific progress for two thousand years." This particular Universe was just about perfect complete with cures for every disease and worldwide high speed rail nothing but goat herders, illiterate burka-clad women, and child brides.

FIFY

Posted by: Baron Von Ottomatic at March 17, 2014 04:05 PM (kUgpq)

202 Check this out. An episode from the 1980s Twilight Zone reboot "The Star", based on a short story by Arthur C. Clarke. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcEQlih7wrM It's a nice little discussion of science vs. religion, with the patented TZ twist.

Posted by: rickl at March 17, 2014 04:05 PM (sdi6R)

203 so, anyway, first things first, if anyone from malaysia was involved in anyway with this I call BS. In other news, the gravity wave discovery ties in nicely with my theory about the missing plane.

Posted by: yankeefifth at March 17, 2014 04:05 PM (rDidD)

204 Let's see -- you believe they can account for the temperature everywhere going back 13.8 billion years, but you reject global warming, which just requires looking at the earth's temperature for a few hundred?

Ugh, apples to orangutans.  One is a function of precise measurements of the CMB.  The other has uh, what to precisely measure temperature?  The last 150 years of temperature measurement are reasonably precise, but not to exacting standards.  Before then you've got a whole bunch of hand-wavy "proxy" measurements. 

Posted by: bonhomme[/i][/b][/i][/b][/s][/s] at March 17, 2014 04:06 PM (P7Wsr)

205 btw, Yesterday at the gym I noticed a name on the sign-in sheet Kaylee Hunt. The gym employee and I got a chuckle out of it.

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 04:06 PM (xSfiX)

206 "So, we can make a bomb out of this?" --- We sort of already have.

Posted by: ThisBeingMilt at March 17, 2014 04:06 PM (7mQyC)

207 Which in no way negates the plausibility of the latter.

I didn't say it did. In fact I said the opposite. I said they were independent hypotheses.

The former is a hypothesis of science which has plausibility, or not, based on empirical data. The latter is a hypothesis of faith, which has no scientific plausibility and can have none. Otherwise it wouldn't be faith.

Posted by: boulder toilet hobo at March 17, 2014 04:07 PM (30eLQ)

208 Wow, AoSHQ continues to impress, 2 replies to 'DARK STAR' !!11

OK, now reply to this clue: orbiting biodomes containing the last ecosystems of earth... bonus points if you ID the robots and how they directly influenced later versions...

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 04:07 PM (vHRtU)

209 you can also power a starship at lightspeed with the gravity waves, until is splodes on ya.

Posted by: yankeefifth at March 17, 2014 04:08 PM (rDidD)

210 You see, the lesson there is that you never name your daughter a "K" or a "C" name if your last name is Hunt.

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 04:08 PM (xSfiX)

211 In other news, the gravity wave discovery ties in nicely with my theory about the missing plane. ..... Lol

Posted by: Niedermeyer's Dead Horse at March 17, 2014 04:08 PM (DmNpO)

212 Hey NDH.

Posted by: yankeefifth at March 17, 2014 04:09 PM (rDidD)

213 As far as we know these would work the same at any location in normal space.

Posted by: weft cut-loop at March 17, 2014 07:58 PM (ligos)


But do they work the same in the new normal space?

Posted by: Hrothgar at March 17, 2014 04:09 PM (o3MSL)

214 The monkey face orchid is seriously creeping me out. I clicked on the photo and what did I find? More orchids with faces. Mother Nature does have a sense of humor.

Posted by: Tuna at March 17, 2014 04:09 PM (M/TDA)

215 Silent Running, Huey Dewey & Louie, Star Wars.

Posted by: --- at March 17, 2014 04:09 PM (MMC8r)

216 “Putin is set to respond to Obama’s sanctions of Russian officials with his own list. Several U.S. Senators and officials will be banned from visiting Russia, including Sen. Dick Durbin.” --- Putin will ban Sarah Palin from visiting Russia, but will allow her to continue viewing it from home.

Posted by: whoever at March 17, 2014 04:09 PM (pjMym)

217 OK, now reply to this clue: orbiting biodomes containing the last ecosystems of earth... bonus points if you ID the robots and how they directly influenced later versions... Silent Running Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

Posted by: EC at March 17, 2014 04:10 PM (doBIb)

218 --- A Winner!!!!! Well done!!!!!

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 04:10 PM (vHRtU)

219 Damn!

Posted by: EC at March 17, 2014 04:10 PM (doBIb)

220 Shouldn't ace really be posting on something important like Crimea instead of where we came from, how we got here and where we are going? Priorities people.

Posted by: Dr Spank at March 17, 2014 04:10 PM (P1WNR)

221 bonus points if you ID the robots and how they directly influenced later versions... Huey,Dewey,Louie

Posted by: Panhandler at March 17, 2014 04:10 PM (LqVNJ)

222 What I love is how there seems to be a group of scientists absolutely determined to prove Einstein wrong, and every single time they find something to discredit his ideas, it turns our their observation or experimentation was fucked. Remember the 'faster than light' particle that supposedly disproved Einstein? The coolest thing I've seen in a telescope, btw, was another gravity-related warp predicted by Einstein. There is a faint galaxy that has a still fainter and further quasar right behind it. Because of the mass of the foreground galaxy warping the space around it, the quasar behind actually appears in for separate spots around the foreground galaxy. It's called Einstein's Cross. Pretty badass what you can see with your own eyes these days.

Posted by: CAC at March 17, 2014 04:10 PM (pQkGj)

223 The Gravitational Waves


Gravity don't surf.


It's a particle.

Posted by: DaveA[/i][/b][/s] at March 17, 2014 04:10 PM (DL2i+)

224 8:10 already. This is not right. This is why I hate DST. It screws with Time. No good.

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 04:10 PM (xSfiX)

225 Runner up shots to EC!

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 04:11 PM (vHRtU)

226 170 Re: the Catholic priest That reminds me of a Family Guy episode in which Stewie and the talking dog have a device that allows them to travel within parallel Universes. The pair visit a Universe in which Christianity did not exist and thus "did not hamper scientific progress for two thousand years." This particular Universe was just about perfect complete with cures for every disease and worldwide high speed rail. This is the crap young people believe today, mostly thanks to the Leftist Liars at Comedy Central. Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 07:56 PM (xSfiX) Actually family guy is on fox. And based on this you should look at the South Park episodes concerning atheism. The shoving food up the butt or the cartman in the future episodes. Basically when dealing with religion and atheism South Park >> family guy.

Posted by: Buzzion at March 17, 2014 04:11 PM (awJIh)

227 oh good, a commercial for Hepatitis C

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 04:12 PM (xSfiX)

228 223 - Yeah probably, or posted this yesterday when I first read about it elsewhere...but then again wtf do you expect it's AoSHQ.

Posted by: ThisBeingMilt at March 17, 2014 04:12 PM (7mQyC)

229 I blinked, and missed it.

Posted by: Mike Hammer at March 17, 2014 04:12 PM (aDwsi)

230 Gravity is neither a wave nor a particle.

It's a fart.

It's everywhere, whether you know it or not.
It spreads against all known physical laws.
Whomever smelt it, dealt it.

 

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 04:13 PM (vHRtU)

231 Shouldn't ace really be posting on something important like Crimea instead of where we came from, how we got here and where we are going? Priorities people. Posted by: Dr Spank you are apparently unaware of obama's fascination with the movie "The Black Hole". His plan for the US is based upon the movie. and no, there is no double entendre.

Posted by: yankeefifth at March 17, 2014 04:13 PM (rDidD)

232 I blinked, and missed it.

Your career?

/kidding

Posted by: bonhomme[/i][/b][/i][/b][/s][/s] at March 17, 2014 04:13 PM (P7Wsr)

233 Anyone see the new commercial with Ray Liotta for 1800 tequila? It's pretty damn cool, and I'm not some idiot who likes commercials like the dummies who watch the Super Bowl to see the commercials.

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 04:13 PM (xSfiX)

234 225 Hope Einstein is quietly chuckling from his seat in the heavens.

Posted by: Tuna at March 17, 2014 04:13 PM (M/TDA)

235 What I am saying is that the BBT is almost magical in its complexity and mystery and WOW factor yet many believed in it despite the fact that the basis to support it continues to be discovered. People believed in at, had faith in it, despite lacking complete evidence to support it.

The BBT supporters  actually didn't believe in BBT in the way Christians believe in Christianity. The former accepted BBT as an incomplete model, superior to other models (Hoyle's steady-state theory being foremost). They were open to anything better which is why they kept looking.

Nobody was laughed out of the academy for floating ideas like inflation (which is now vindicated), or dark-matter, dark-energy, quintessence (this one was pretty much debunked) or even steady-state.

Compare with global-warming, where the skeptics are called "deniers" and the true-believers even recommend they be jailed.

That's the difference between belief-as-accepting-a-model and belief-as-dogma.

Posted by: boulder toilet hobo at March 17, 2014 04:14 PM (30eLQ)

236 The pair visit a Universe in which Christianity did not exist and thus "did not hamper scientific progress for two thousand years." ======== Gregory Mendel farts in their general direction.

Posted by: --- at March 17, 2014 04:14 PM (MMC8r)

237 Well I guess this administration is waging a War for Oil...

US Navy SEAL forces seize a Libyan tanker full of oil.
http://tinyurl.com/kgc84gg

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at March 17, 2014 04:14 PM (YYElT)

238 Wasn't the Big Bang Theory originally proposed by a Jesuit priest? Pretty sure about this.

Posted by: votermom at March 17, 2014 04:14 PM (DRoC0)

239 BBT =?

Big Beautiful Trannies?

Whatever dude, if it's all consenting adults, knock yourself out...

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 04:15 PM (vHRtU)

240 240 - Aren't you glad that whole Libyan thing has worked out great? /s

Posted by: ThisBeingMilt at March 17, 2014 04:15 PM (7mQyC)

241 It's a particle. Posted by: DaveA *waves *

Posted by: Wave at March 17, 2014 04:15 PM (aDwsi)

242 Wasn't the Big Bang Theory originally proposed by a Jesuit priest? Pretty sure about this. Posted by: votermom chucklorre is a priset, huh?

Posted by: yankeefifth at March 17, 2014 04:16 PM (rDidD)

243 Well I guess this administration is waging a War for Oil...

US Navy SEAL forces seize a Libyan tanker full of oil.
http://tinyurl.com/kgc84gg

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at March 17, 2014 08:14 PM (YYElT)



Anna, not to worry, it's not our oil, and we won't profit from it, so it's all good!

Posted by: Hrothgar at March 17, 2014 04:16 PM (o3MSL)

244 Or, what @157 said.

Posted by: votermom at March 17, 2014 04:16 PM (DRoC0)

245 But it's Comedy Central with Jon Stewart who over-simplify and trivialize everything so their young audience can digest the "news."

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 04:16 PM (xSfiX)

246 Ace or a cob recently linked the Asimov short story about the Big Bang. It is a nice combination of science and religion. If you missed it, here's the link. The Last Question http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Posted by: EC at March 17, 2014 04:16 PM (doBIb)

247 Hrothgar.  Its even more strange.  The tanker the rebel group used was North Korean flagged.

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at March 17, 2014 04:17 PM (YYElT)

248 BBT =? Big Beautiful Trannies? Whatever dude, if it's all consenting adults, knock yourself out... Posted by: OG Celtic-American having spent too much time here I misread it as "EBT", sigh.

Posted by: yankeefifth at March 17, 2014 04:17 PM (rDidD)

249 The pair visit a Universe in which Christianity did not exist and thus
"did not hamper scientific progress for two thousand years." This
particular Universe was just about perfect complete with cures for every
disease and worldwide high speed rail nothing but goat herders, illiterate burka-clad women, and child brides.

Yep. Without Christianity, we still get the other Jewish-inspired heresies. And the Roman Empire (and the Sassanids) still would have rotted from the inside.

There'd be a Koran without even the nice things said about Mary and Jesus.

Posted by: boulder toilet hobo at March 17, 2014 04:17 PM (30eLQ)

250 BURELOC

Ask the Crimeans about the Soviets in charge of that.  If you can find the Tatars.

Posted by: DaveA[/i][/b][/s] at March 17, 2014 04:17 PM (DL2i+)

251 The Butterface Orchid, so common, yet so rare...

Posted by: Lincolntf at March 17, 2014 04:17 PM (ZshNr)

252 250

Well it was a cinch it wasn't a US flagged vessel!

Posted by: Hrothgar at March 17, 2014 04:18 PM (o3MSL)

253 Big Beautiful Trannies?

Has the Pentagon given the Okay for them to join the military now?  Talk about MOABs...

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at March 17, 2014 04:18 PM (YYElT)

254 240 Heh Anna. Aren't you the P.C. Hodgell fan? Or am I thinking of someone else from the Book Thread?

Posted by: Tuna at March 17, 2014 04:18 PM (M/TDA)

255 The soul exists. It's....science?

http://tinyurl.com/l4tux8o

Posted by: Albie Damned, hanging ten on the Gravitational Wave at March 17, 2014 04:19 PM (cGaCp)

256 124 Yesterday at church they played amazing images of the universe up on the big screen, while we sang "The Maker of the Heavens Knows My Name". It was awesome. Posted by: grammie winger at March 17, 2014 07:43 PM (oMKp3) @@@@@@ And the number of hairs on your head. "He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names."

Posted by: Bob's House of Flannel Shirts and Wallet Chains at March 17, 2014 04:19 PM (mTM2n)

257 BURELOC, such an obscure reference, yet so, so satisfying...

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 04:19 PM (vHRtU)

258 No Christianity?  Then no Bible  either.  I guess  my  idea won't ever be popular then.  Nevermoind.

Posted by: Johannes Gutenberg at March 17, 2014 04:19 PM (BAS5M)

259 So, once again, the science is settled?

Science is on a roll....

Posted by: Stateless Infidel at March 17, 2014 04:19 PM (AC0lD)

260 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3 ¶ And God said, Let there be light: 2 Cor. 4.6 and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. 6 ¶ And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. Have we found the Echoes of the Word of God?

Posted by: Romeo13 at March 17, 2014 04:20 PM (84gbM)

261 Einstein also predicted that if one were to drink sufficient quantities of cheap green beer and consume near lethal doses of bacon and cabbage, one could literally bend the gravity of any situation by igniting one's flatulence.

Posted by: Fritz at March 17, 2014 04:20 PM (PnMCP)

262 The soul exists. It's....science? http://tinyurl.com/l4tux8o Posted by: Albie Damned, hanging ten on the Gravitational Wave shhhh, obama will force it to buy insurance .

Posted by: yankeefifth at March 17, 2014 04:20 PM (rDidD)

263 241 Wasn't the Big Bang Theory originally proposed by a Jesuit priest? Pretty sure about this. Posted by: votermom at March 17, 2014 08:14 PM (DRoC0) Yes, ma'am. Monsignor Georges Lemaître. He also proposed both the Hubble Constant and Hubble's Law several years prior to Hubble doing so. Einstein actually initially discounted expansion theory.

Posted by: Mandy P., lurking lurker who lurks at March 17, 2014 04:20 PM (qFpRI)

264 And the name is Lemaitre (Lemaître) as 157's typing got Pixied, votermom.
www.amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/web/essaybooks/cosmic/p_lemaitre.html

Posted by: [/i]andycanuck[/b] at March 17, 2014 04:20 PM (hn5v5)

265 264 I tell ya. That man had a superior intellect.

Posted by: Tuna at March 17, 2014 04:21 PM (M/TDA)

266 Tuna, yep a P.C. Hodgell fan.

Got the next book on pre-order with Amazon.  Hopefully Jame can pick herself up.

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at March 17, 2014 04:21 PM (YYElT)

267 So, once again, the science is settled? Science is on a roll....

It's like I type, and I type, and nothing shows on the screen.

Posted by: boulder toilet hobo at March 17, 2014 04:22 PM (30eLQ)

268 Anyone have the link to the Ultra Deep Telesecope project and it's '3-D' representation of travel to the edge of known space?

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 04:22 PM (vHRtU)

269 Agree or Disagree? Christianity was mostly responsible for Western Civilization.

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 04:22 PM (xSfiX)

270 I think one of the Popes said the BBT was compatible with creationism. (Not sure if this was ex-cathedra though)

Posted by: votermom at March 17, 2014 04:22 PM (1eR0f)

271 I've got a lightspeed expansion...in my pants!

Posted by: Carlos Danger at March 17, 2014 04:23 PM (UAMVq)

272 But it's Comedy Central with Jon Stewart who over-simplify and trivialize everything so their young audience can digest the "news.">>

Just like birds and Wolves regurgitate partially digested food for their young.

Posted by: The Hickster at March 17, 2014 04:23 PM (TI3xG)

273 Agree or Disagree?
Christianity was mostly responsible for Western Civilization.

I agree, but I don't approve.

Posted by: boulder toilet hobo at March 17, 2014 04:23 PM (30eLQ)

274 /drops mic

Posted by: boulder toilet hobo at March 17, 2014 04:23 PM (30eLQ)

275 Got an email from Baen. You can download part of the book before it's officially released. Also I see there's a new cover artist. No more va va voom Jame.

Posted by: Tuna at March 17, 2014 04:24 PM (M/TDA)

276 266 241 Wasn't the Big Bang Theory originally proposed by a Jesuit priest? Pretty sure about this. Posted by: votermom at March 17, 2014 08:14 PM (DRoC0) Yes, ma'am. Monsignor Georges Lemaître. He also proposed both the Hubble Constant and Hubble's Law several years prior to Hubble doing so. Einstein actually initially discounted expansion theory. Posted by: Mandy P., lurking lurker who lurks at March 17, 2014 08:20 PM (qFpRI) There's a Jesuit priest in my Twilight Zone link in #205. Seriously, check it out.

Posted by: rickl at March 17, 2014 04:24 PM (sdi6R)

277 That's mentioned in the brief article on Lemaitre I put up the URL link for, votermom, in #267. (And not ex cathedra.)

Posted by: [/i]andycanuck[/b] at March 17, 2014 04:24 PM (hn5v5)

278 Christianity was mostly responsible for Western Civilization. Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 08:22 PM (xSfiX) Chicken or Egg argument...

Posted by: Romeo13 at March 17, 2014 04:25 PM (84gbM)

279 Apropos of nothing I feel like my head is about to experience lightspeed expansion. It's fuckin' killing me.

Posted by: Insomniac at March 17, 2014 04:25 PM (UAMVq)

280 Agree or Disagree? It was Western Civilization that advanced medicine, education, transportation, etc. into what we know and enjoy today.

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 04:25 PM (xSfiX)

281 272 Absolutely.

Posted by: --- at March 17, 2014 04:25 PM (aFFEz)

282 Friggin' Jesuits. *grumble*

Posted by: Captain Howdy at March 17, 2014 04:26 PM (mTM2n)

283 BICEP2 brings gravitas to the discussion.

Posted by: Mike Hammer at March 17, 2014 04:26 PM (aDwsi)

284 @238

This.  Also these types of discoveries underpin one of the main differences between something like inflationary theory versus say some of the climate or macroeconomic models you hear about - inflationary theory makes falsifiable predictions that would serve as empirical evidence in support of it.  Whereas any new synoptic scale phenomena or market/economic reaction can be explained away by tweaking a model or by advancing a convoluted hypothesis there are pretty strong bounds that are provided by measurements astronomers take.

A good example of this is claimed evidence of predicted 'bubbles' in the CMB a couple years ago that were supposed to be proof multiverses.  Planck measurements with better resolution showed those were false and as a result the multiverse theories remained speculative theories. 

Religion and science aren't analogous for falsifiability and many other reasons.

Posted by: inyourheadZOMBIE at March 17, 2014 04:26 PM (PeB4U)

285 Agree or Disagree? Christianity was mostly responsible for Western Civilization. Posted by: soothsayer -------------------------------- Maybe Western Civ, as we know it. But Western civilization, i.e. Greece and Rome, predate Christ.

Posted by: Tobacco Road at March 17, 2014 04:26 PM (4Mv1T)

286 @273 LeMaitre and the pope of the time accepted the BBT / Primeval Atom Theory before science had a consensus. Catholics Beat Science! They were 0-a lot of other stuff.

Posted by: Beagle at March 17, 2014 04:26 PM (sOtz/)

287 273 I think one of the Popes said the BBT was compatible with creationism. (Not sure if this was ex-cathedra though) Posted by: votermom at March 17, 2014 08:22 PM (1eR0f) That would be Pope Pius XII. And, no it was not ex cathedra. There have not been very many of those issues in the 2000+ years of Christian history. Pius XII is responsible for one exercise of his Magisterial authority via an ex cathedra statement, and that was on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin.

Posted by: Mandy P., lurking lurker who lurks at March 17, 2014 04:27 PM (qFpRI)

288 Have you filled out your bracket yet? Wait much longer and you'll be filling it out while the guy is coming around to collect. Don't be that guy.

Posted by: Lincolntf at March 17, 2014 04:27 PM (ZshNr)

289 " The theory is that the very early universe, in the opening trillionth of a second of existence, somehow had the property of expanding at the speed of light... or even faster. I believe physical laws weren't quite firmed up yet (the universe created physical laws at the same time it created physical space), so there may be a little wiggle room, in the earliest microseconds of the Big Bang, as to what is and isn't physically possible."

It's actually fairly simply explained- Imagine a balloon with spots drawn on it.  Now as you blow it up, the spots move away from each other as the balloon expands, even as they don't move at all relative the piece of balloon they're on.  So now imagine two objects in space/time, and even if those objects don't move at all, but there is faster than light speed expansion of space/time itself as with the balloon (not beholden to the laws inside the space/time of the universe), then those objects are now moving apart FASTER than light relative to their two positions while at the same time moving slower than light relative to their position in space/time.

You're welcome.

Posted by: Wysiwyg Mtwzzyzx at March 17, 2014 04:27 PM (98Feg)

290 All I know about the Big Bang Theory is that Kaley Cuoco is crazy hot.

Posted by: Mike at March 17, 2014 04:28 PM (Rk8LS)

291 So the world will cease to exist in 13.8 billion years? Billion, with a "B"? Whew, for a minute I thought you said 13.8 million. Made me nervous.

Posted by: Seamus Muldoon at March 17, 2014 04:28 PM (g4TxM)

292 294 All I know about the Big Bang Theory is that Kaley Cuoco is crazy hot. Posted by: Mike at March 17, 2014 08:28 PM (Rk8LS) Which is all that matters, really.

Posted by: Insomniac at March 17, 2014 04:28 PM (UAMVq)

293 Posted by: Tobacco Road at March 17, 2014 08:26 PM (4Mv1T) And it was the reformation... the changing of much of Christian thought, which really allowed the West to progress... but that happened partly because of Secular Forces... Its so intertwined its impossible to separate...

Posted by: Romeo13 at March 17, 2014 04:29 PM (84gbM)

294 All I know about the Big Bang Theory is that Kaley Cuoco is crazy hot. Posted by: Mike not since the first season or so.

Posted by: yankeefifth at March 17, 2014 04:29 PM (rDidD)

295 See cartoon here:

http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/gallery/math/index.php#

Posted by: Mike Hammer at March 17, 2014 04:29 PM (aDwsi)

296 Speaking of Jesuits there's a good series of detective novels featuring a Jesuit priest in Paris during the middle part of Louis XIV's reign. Judith Rock is the author.

Posted by: Tuna at March 17, 2014 04:29 PM (M/TDA)

297 'Western Civ' existed for 750-1000 years before Christ.

One can construct a decent argument that Christianity destroyed 'Western Civ.'

Certainly it did nothing to advance science, medicine, physics, math, or literature... Christianity  400-1600 AD was as destructive as Islam 700 AD - present...

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 04:30 PM (vHRtU)

298 BRB, catchin' a gravitational wave!

Posted by: Silver Surfer at March 17, 2014 04:31 PM (UAMVq)

299 I am a Britophile. I love Top Gear, Pegg and Frost, Python, the Rolling Stones, Mitchell and Webb, the Doctor, Bond, you name it. But CNN has a new British asshat, Richard Quest, being all annoying about MH370 all day long. Do they have some sort of asshat Brit gravity wave?

Posted by: Frumious Bandersnatch at March 17, 2014 04:31 PM (1xUj/)

300 hey the vet that confronted the fake vet in the previous vet he was with a vet who was off camera who was just arrested for trying to join Al Qaeda in Syria via Canada

Posted by: thunderb at March 17, 2014 04:31 PM (zOTsN)

301 Trying to understand this is like trying to keep up with the latest global warming scam news releases. --- At least they aren't lobbying world leaders to spend $100 quintillion to keep the universe from expanding.

Posted by: whoever at March 17, 2014 04:31 PM (pjMym)

302 Dude - the south pole doesn't have a particulalry thin atmosphere.  That title belongs to the observatories in Atacama Chile.  They refer to the south pole as the best place on earth next to space based on the quality of the observations, not the thin atmosphere.  What they have is very cold temperatures which prevents thermal distortions, and low pollution and cloud formation.

Posted by: Geosupreme at March 17, 2014 04:31 PM (/EkKm)

303 Wasn't   the Big Bang Theory put to the test in some guy's sublet apartment in NYC recently?

Posted by: Count de Monet at March 17, 2014 04:32 PM (BAS5M)

304 Really? Would the United States of America ever have been founded if Christianity did not exist?

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 04:32 PM (xSfiX)

305 The Big Boob Theory is on now.

Kat Dennings.

http://tinyurl.com/ljvwmwv

Posted by: The Hickster at March 17, 2014 04:33 PM (TI3xG)

306 Hey yankeefifth

Posted by: Niedermeyer's Dead Horse at March 17, 2014 04:33 PM (DmNpO)

307 Posted by: Frumious Bandersnatch at March 17, 2014 08:31 PM (1xUj/)


My theory is that since the Brits are more socialist than we are, they are better than us and CNN is helpfully providing lecturers to show us the error of our ways.

Posted by: Hrothgar at March 17, 2014 04:33 PM (o3MSL)

308 We just have to mint a trillion-second coin to fix all of this!

Posted by: mister krugman at March 17, 2014 04:34 PM (hn5v5)

309 But CNN has a new British asshat, Richard Quest, -------- Busted for meth in 2008.

Posted by: --- at March 17, 2014 04:34 PM (cmRIP)

310 301 'Western Civ' existed for 750-1000 years before Christ. One can construct a decent argument that Christianity destroyed 'Western Civ.' Certainly it did nothing to advance science, medicine, physics, math, or literature... Christianity 400-1600 AD was as destructive as Islam 700 AD - present... @@@@@ I'll be sure to pass that along to all the monks who preserved everything.

Posted by: . at March 17, 2014 04:34 PM (mTM2n)

311 Would the United States of America ever have been founded if Christianity did not exist?

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 08:32 PM (xSfiX)


No, it would be part of the expanded Ottoman Empire!

Posted by: Hrothgar at March 17, 2014 04:34 PM (o3MSL)

312 Eh. My link should have point to this cartoon:
http://avionod.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/and-then-a-miracle-happens/

Posted by: Mike Hammer at March 17, 2014 04:35 PM (aDwsi)

313 Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 08:32 PM (xSfiX) Would the US exist as it is, if Christians were all still pretty much Catholic, and thus followed the Pope... and thus the whole Rule by Divine Right stuff? Heck.... the Founding Fathers could have all been excommunicated but they were not rebelling against a Catholic ruler...

Posted by: Romeo13 at March 17, 2014 04:35 PM (84gbM)

314 All this here jibber jabber sounds like witchcraft to me, ima just keep eatin' my boogers and playin' with myself, you witches better hope i don't tie your asses to the stake and light you up.

Posted by: booger sez burn teh witches at March 17, 2014 04:36 PM (xRDdL)

315 I'll be sure to pass that along to all the monks who preserved everything. Posted by: . at March 17, 2014 08:34 PM (mTM2n) Give it to the ones who burned books and witches to... Just for balance...

Posted by: Romeo13 at March 17, 2014 04:36 PM (84gbM)

316 If Christianity held us back, why aren't the Chinese the most advanced nation on Earth?

Posted by: --- at March 17, 2014 04:37 PM (cmRIP)

317 I guess CNN has a check box for one annoying pretentious British twit.

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at March 17, 2014 04:37 PM (YYElT)

318
One can construct a decent argument that Christianity destroyed 'Western Civ.' Certainly it did nothing to advance science, medicine, physics, math, or literature... Christianity 400-1600 AD was as destructive as Islam 700 AD - present...
Posted by: OG Celtic-A




*tips fedora at a rakish angle*

Only if one was younger than 24 and hugging the right end of the autism spectrum disorder scale.

Posted by: Laurie David's Cervix at March 17, 2014 04:37 PM (kdS6q)

319
Would the US exist as it is, if Christians were all still pretty much Catholic, and thus followed the Pope... and thus the whole Rule by Divine Right stuff?

Heck.... the Founding Fathers could have all been excommunicated but they were not rebelling against a Catholic ruler...

Posted by: Romeo13

No.

Posted by: weft cut-loop [/i][/b] at March 17, 2014 04:37 PM (ligos)

320

"Certainly it did nothing to advance science, medicine, physics, math, or literature..."

 

That is probably one of the stupidest things I have read all day.

Posted by: CrotchetyOldJarhead at March 17, 2014 04:38 PM (pUAXu)

321 I honestly don't see a conflict between the BBT and a Divine Creator. Something has to get it started. It surprises me that some people seem to think there is one.

Posted by: Moriarty at March 17, 2014 04:38 PM (zDsvJ)

322 I love a Big Bang!

Posted by: Sandra Fluke at March 17, 2014 04:38 PM (UAMVq)

323
"Certainly it did nothing to advance science, medicine, physics, math, or literature..."

That is probably one of the stupidest things I have read all day.
Posted by: CrotchetyOldJarhead




Stick around.  It's still early and it's one of those "drinking" holidays.


Posted by: Laurie David's Cervix at March 17, 2014 04:39 PM (kdS6q)

324 73 For a fictional treatise on how this might affect the rough folks keeping us safe at night checkout, "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman. A good read and oddly semi-prescient. Ouch that hurt. I forget sometimes because big words. Posted by: Few at March 17, 2014 07:29 PM (wDwaq) ***** Definitely a favorite!

Posted by: Elinor at March 17, 2014 04:40 PM (95xxa)

325

I think it's easier to believe in Creation than in evolution and the Big Bang theory. Whenever you have a mutation, it's never an improvement. Think 13 chromosomes and Down's.

People used to think the earth was flat, too.

Posted by: ALH at March 17, 2014 04:40 PM (btTLZ)

326 I meant 'no' as in everything you've written is horseshit.

Posted by: weft cut-loop [/i][/b] at March 17, 2014 04:40 PM (ligos)

327 Obligatory: the multiverse suggests a gang bang theory.

Posted by: Beagle at March 17, 2014 04:40 PM (sOtz/)

328 The roots of Western Civilization were in ancient Greece and Rome, which were eventually supplanted by Christian civilization, and modern science grew directly out of Christian civilization. It didn't appear anywhere else. From Churchill's famous quote about Islam: Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytising faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

Posted by: rickl at March 17, 2014 04:41 PM (sdi6R)

329 319 And the Greeks exposed babies. Blah, blah, blah. Different times, different minds. Oops! Forgot about our abortion clinics. Never mind.

Posted by: Tuna at March 17, 2014 04:41 PM (M/TDA)

330 Still waiting for Darwin to rise from the dead. Like me.

Posted by: Jesus the Christ at March 17, 2014 04:41 PM (l0lja)

331 Stick around. It's still early and it's one of those "drinking" holidays.>>

At the AoSHQ those holidays land on all the days that end in Y.

Posted by: The Hickster at March 17, 2014 04:41 PM (TI3xG)

332 I'll be sure to pass that along to all the monks who preserved everything.
And be sure to date the letter using the Julian calendar.

Posted by: [/i]andycanuck[/b] at March 17, 2014 04:42 PM (hn5v5)

333 Would the United States of America ever have been founded if Christianity did not exist?
------------------

A better question, posed by Glenn Beck, would the state of Israel exist if the USA had not come into existence?

The following is only suitable for those who believe that there is an inspired basis for the order of things:

Beck has suggested that perhaps the reason that the USA came into being at all was solely to the end that Israel would be brought into existence. Wave a hand and dismiss the idea..., or ponder it.

Posted by: Mike Hammer at March 17, 2014 04:42 PM (aDwsi)

334 Julius Caesar allowed the Library at Alexandria to burn a bit. 

A power mad Christian bishop raised a rabble that killed Hypatia and burned the Library a bit.

But it was Islam that eradicated the Library and silenced until the Rosetta Stone the language of the Pharaohs when the forces of the Prophet conquered Egypt.

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at March 17, 2014 04:42 PM (YYElT)

335 330 I meant 'no' as in everything you've written is horseshit. Posted by: weft cut-loop at March 17, 2014 08:40 PM (ligos) Really.... so if there had not been a church of England.... and all the Founders had been Catholic, they could NOT have been excommunicated for rebelling against 'Gods chosen Ruler'???? Because if we are talking alternate history possibilities.... how can anything be 'horseshit'?

Posted by: Romeo13 at March 17, 2014 04:43 PM (84gbM)

336 335 Read my word and you will understand. Hint: I know how it begins and how it will end.

Posted by: Jesus the Christ at March 17, 2014 04:43 PM (l0lja)

337 If I understand Global Climate Change Law right, and I think I do, the universe's aggregate hot body heat is sequestered in the deep ocean.

Posted by: AnonymousDrivel at March 17, 2014 04:43 PM (1CroS)

338 Christianity was mostly responsible for Western Civilization.

Absolutely.

Posted by: OregonMuse at March 17, 2014 04:43 PM (I8YZX)

339 As I said in my 157 comment - it was a Catholic priest, Monseigneur George Lemaître, who originally proposed the Big Bang theory, which he called his "hypothesis of the primeval atom".

Lemaitre also calculated that the expansion on the universe was not constant - but rather, it was accelerating. This is significant, because when this process is mathematically reversed the contraction obviously decelerates. And as you decelerate to the singularity the equation for time becomes so distorted that it is utterly meaningless.

Ergo, Lemaître deduced, that TIME itself was actually created at the "moment" of the Big Bang. Which means, the Intelligence that started the whole process must have been outside of time itself. This is the timeless definition of God Himself: I AM. 

But Lemaître allowed for personal interpretation for the genesis of his theory. He stated “As far as I can see, such a theory remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves the materialist free to deny any transcendental Being… For the believer, it removes any attempt at familiarity with God… It is consonant with Isaiah speaking of the hidden God, hidden even in the beginning of the universe.”

Interestingly, the first person to ever theorize that time itself must have been created at the inception of creation itself was St Augustine of Hippo in the 5th century. 

But hey. Religion is soooo anti-science and stuff.....


Posted by: Something at March 17, 2014 04:44 PM (Ojgjr)

340 When practically the only literate people were some nobles and clergy, how can anyone say the church did not advance literature? You may not like what they wrote, but at least they wrote.

Posted by: Beagle at March 17, 2014 04:44 PM (sOtz/)

341 For all our so called awareness I don't doubt that 500 years from now we will be looked upon as uncivilized dopes.

Posted by: Tuna at March 17, 2014 04:44 PM (M/TDA)

342 Posted by: Mike Hammer at March 17, 2014 08:42 PM (aDwsi) I've wondered the same thing.

Posted by: grammie winger at March 17, 2014 04:44 PM (oMKp3)

343 Whenever you have a mutation, it's never an improvement. --- Well, no. Lactose tolerance past infancy is a pretty cool mutation.

Posted by: Barack Obama at March 17, 2014 04:45 PM (gF9SS)

344 345 For all our so called awareness I don't doubt that 500 years from now we will be looked upon as uncivilized dopes. Posted by: Tuna at March 17, 2014 08:44 PM (M/TDA) So basically nothing will have changed in 500 years.

Posted by: Insomniac at March 17, 2014 04:45 PM (UAMVq)

345 All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education,  law, wine, public order, irrigation, banking, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what has  Western Civilization   ever done for us?

Posted by: Non Western Non Civilization at March 17, 2014 04:45 PM (BAS5M)

346 Mike Hammer, I love watching events unfold. I wish I could live long enough to see how It all ends.

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 04:45 PM (xSfiX)

347 Green beer through nose...

Individual advances have always been suppressed by all Right Thinking Men (Heinlein via Ambrose).

Muslim heretics or Christian heretics, it was always those that could think outside the permitted norms that advanced science.

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 04:46 PM (vHRtU)

348 OregonMuse One of the morons asked if I know how to reach you because he wants to chat about the book thread. Are you on twitter?

Posted by: Niedermeyer's Dead Horse at March 17, 2014 04:46 PM (DmNpO)

349 Really.... so if there had not been a church of England.... and all the Founders had been Catholic, they could NOT have been excommunicated for rebelling against 'Gods chosen Ruler'????

Because if we are talking alternate history possibilities.... how can anything be 'horseshit'?

Posted by: Romeo13

Wanna point out the encyclical that describes this 'God's Chosen Ruler' thing?

Posted by: weft cut-loop [/i][/b] at March 17, 2014 04:46 PM (ligos)

350 Speaking of Gravity, I saw the Sandra Bullock movie last night on Blu-ray. It was pretty good. Even better, though, are the extras on the disc that show the making of the movie. The technology they put together is astounding. They also explain that this isn't a space story, but a story set in space - something I didn't get while viewing, so I'll be watching it again. Highly recommended.

Posted by: whoever at March 17, 2014 04:47 PM (pjMym)

351 ***breaking*** The plane is still missing

Posted by: phoenixgirl at March 17, 2014 04:47 PM (u8GsB)

352 Tuna: "I don't doubt that 500 years from now we will be looked upon as uncivilized dopes."

I saw Uncivilized Dopes open for pretty much every concert I ever attended. They didn't even get up on stage!

Posted by: AnonymousDrivel at March 17, 2014 04:47 PM (1CroS)

353 If The Forever War is a bit of a slog, there is always Voices of a Distant Star about a high school girl who gets selected to take the war to the Taurans and the boy she left behind.

http://youtu.be/0HQLGO03_-M

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at March 17, 2014 04:47 PM (YYElT)

354 And Franco is still dead!

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 04:47 PM (vHRtU)

355 Okay, but would Western Civ have thrived under the Greek or Roman way pre-Christinaity or post-Christianity?

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 04:48 PM (xSfiX)

356 Mike Hammer, I love watching events unfold. I wish I could live long enough to see how It all ends.

Posted by: soothsayer
---------------------

I know what you mean, but for billions of people, it hasn't been fun.

Posted by: Mike Hammer at March 17, 2014 04:48 PM (aDwsi)

357 Cosmetologists are making up all this stuff. Whatever happened to a good old shave and a haircut?

Posted by: Foghorn Leghorn at March 17, 2014 04:48 PM (l0lja)

358 2 Bits!

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 04:49 PM (vHRtU)

359 A List of Christian Contributions to Science.


http://tinyurl.com/3c2tas


It is hard to imagine the advancement of the Western Civilization without Christianity.





Posted by: Something at March 17, 2014 04:49 PM (Ojgjr)

360 Considering the Romans became Christian under Constantine....

Posted by: --- at March 17, 2014 04:50 PM (FKDqV)

361 And two hardboiled eggs!

Posted by: Chico Marx at March 17, 2014 04:50 PM (BAS5M)

362 One of the morons asked if I know how to reach you because he wants to chat about the book thread.

Are you on twitter?

Yeah, but I hardly ever check it. Best to use the book thread email.

Does he want some sort of real-time chat?

Posted by: OregonMuse at March 17, 2014 04:50 PM (I8YZX)

363 That dude with the fatso orgy in NYC had some gravity waves going on. Posted by: Roy at March 17, 2014 actually, the reason they were there when he got home was the gravitational time dilation from their combined mass.

Posted by: yankeefifth at March 17, 2014 04:50 PM (rDidD)

364 Beer made Western Civilization possible in the first place.

Posted by: Seamus Muldoon at March 17, 2014 04:51 PM (g4TxM)

365 I know what you mean, but for billions of people, it hasn't been fun.

Posted by: Mike Hammer at March 17, 2014 08:48 PM (aDwsi)



This is known as "bad luck"!

Posted by: R A H at March 17, 2014 04:51 PM (o3MSL)

366 These aren't the gravity waves you're looking for.

"These aren't the gravity waves we're looking for."

Posted by: Corona at March 17, 2014 04:51 PM (fh2Y7)

367 But it was Islam that eradicated the Library and silenced until the Rosetta Stone the language of the Pharaohs when the forces of the Prophet conquered Egypt. -- Nobody does "let it burn" with more enthusiasm than the Muzzies.

Posted by: votermom at March 17, 2014 04:51 PM (sTE/4)

368 Posted by: Something at March 17, 2014 08:49 PM (Ojgjr) Hey, but the Muslims invented , ummm, ...... then there was that thing they discovered, errrr ......

Posted by: grammie winger at March 17, 2014 04:52 PM (oMKp3)

369 Is that pic of the Antarctic telescope before or after MacReady burns The Thing?

Posted by: Circa (Insert Year Here) at March 17, 2014 04:52 PM (k7N5n)

370 Correlation is not Causation.

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 04:52 PM (vHRtU)

371 re: suffering Life is but a blink of an eye compared to an eternity.

Posted by: soothsayer at March 17, 2014 04:52 PM (xSfiX)

372 347 Don't you maintain lactose tolerance is by never stopping drinking milk? In which case, it's not a mutation because it's something you already have.

Posted by: ALH at March 17, 2014 04:53 PM (btTLZ)

373 well, I think christian concepts of love and forgiveness have played a very useful role in the development of wetern civilization and accounts for some of the findamental diferences between western and eastern civilizations.

Posted by: yankeefifth at March 17, 2014 04:53 PM (rDidD)

374 I think this article would have been better if you had mentioned that you don't understand the subject.

Posted by: Merovign, Dark Lord of the Sith[/i][/b][/s][/u] at March 17, 2014 04:53 PM (qyfb5)

375 And Egypt got by on beer, onions, and unleavened bread. Thank God for beer. Well, and the other two, too.

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 04:53 PM (vHRtU)

376 Hey, but the Muslims invented , ummm, ...... then there was that thing they discovered, errrr ...... Posted by: grammie stealth airplanes.

Posted by: yankeefifth at March 17, 2014 04:53 PM (rDidD)

377 376 347Don't you maintain lactose tolerance is by never stopping drinking milk? In which case, it's not a mutationbecause it's something you already have. Posted by: ALH at March 17, 2014 08:53 PM (btTLZ) It's more of a moo-tation.

Posted by: Insomniac at March 17, 2014 04:54 PM (UAMVq)

378 Tuna, I am glad they found a new cover artist.  That person totally failed in understanding Jame.  They should have just used one of the line drawings P.C. Hodgell has done, think stained glass without the color but with an oddness about it.

Of course that might have turned people off from buying the book.  Where as large boobehs on the cover does tend to attract some readers.

Did you get a chance to read Talisman's Trinket?

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at March 17, 2014 04:54 PM (YYElT)

379

Nobody does "let it burn" with more enthusiasm than the Muzzies.

 

 

Damn straight!

Posted by: Parisian Yutes of Indeterminate Backgrounds at March 17, 2014 04:54 PM (BAS5M)

380 Ace, space-time can expand faster than the speed of light. Stuff moving within space-time is restricted to the speed of light. This is a grand discovery. These folks might even get laid.

Posted by: eman at March 17, 2014 04:54 PM (Qr2rh)

381 Muslim heretics or Christian heretics, it was always those that could think outside the permitted norms that advanced science. Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 08:46 PM (vHRtU) That is simply not true, although it has been a very heavily promoted meme for over a hundred years now. Christian thinkers in Western universities and elsewhere worked within extremely wide parameters insofar as intellectual boundaries were concerned. A few days ago, there was a sidebar story on this site about the politicization of the new 'Cosmos' series, which heavily promotes the idea that religious faith is antithetical to scientific observation and knowledge. The author of the piece essentially fisked an animated segment of the show alleging that a Christian heretic was burned at the stake for his heliocentric view of the solar system. The cartoon wasn't true in any aspect. It was a lie, a myth propagated by men with an agenda who believe religious faith is the enemy of true knowledge. Lots of irony there if you look for it.

Posted by: troyriser at March 17, 2014 04:55 PM (ptcFO)

382 Tuna: >>

"I don't doubt that 500 years from now we will be looked upon as uncivilized dopes.">>

And it will be for the same reasons Libs look upon Tea Party members as uncivilized dopes. Hubris

Posted by: The Hickster at March 17, 2014 04:55 PM (TI3xG)

383 Cosmologist, cosmetician, cosmoline....I get confused.

Posted by: BignJames at March 17, 2014 04:55 PM (HtUkt)

384 Yeah, but I hardly ever check it. Best to use the book thread email. Does he want some sort of real-time chat? *** I think he wants to discuss a book he is writing or has written. I'll look for the book email addy and forward it to him. thanks.

Posted by: Niedermeyer's Dead Horse at March 17, 2014 04:55 PM (DmNpO)

385 It's all turtles. How could it be otherwise? All the way down I mean.

Posted by: eleven at March 17, 2014 04:55 PM (fsLdt)

386 377 well, I think christian concepts of love and forgiveness have played a very useful role in the development of wetern civilization and accounts for some of the findamental diferences between western and eastern civilizations. Not to mention the ideas of personal responsibility, educating ones self (to study Scriptures), contributing to your community, supporting your own family, and living an ethical life. BTW, all these can be traced back to Christianity's Jewish roots.

Posted by: grammie winger at March 17, 2014 04:56 PM (oMKp3)

387 But..... what are all the unknown unknowns? And how long is it gonna take to know all that stuff? *sobs*

Posted by: We're gonna need a bigger budget at March 17, 2014 04:56 PM (PGiec)

388 the guy confronting this fake soldier is named Viera. There is a guy off camera talking too. He was later interviewed by the local television station. His name is Nicholas Teausant, who told the television station he served in the National Guard. He has just been arrested for trying to join a break away Al Qaeda group in Syria and wanted to bomb the LA subway system. He was charged with a single count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and was due to appear later Monday in U.S. District Court in Seattle. He tried to join the National Guard in 2012 but did not go through boot camp because he never met the academic requirements so one of the students complaining about this guys stolen valor, himself pretended to have a service record and has been arrested for trying to be a terrorist there is a story in the Daily Mail and at KXTV

Posted by: thunderb at March 17, 2014 04:56 PM (zOTsN)

389 389 It's all turtles. How could it be otherwise? All the way down I mean. Posted by: eleven at March 17, 2014 08:55 PM (fsLdt) Recognize, bitchez!

Posted by: Yertle the Turtle at March 17, 2014 04:56 PM (UAMVq)

390 Has anybody watched my link in #205 yet? It's quite appropriate to this thread. It starts out as an argument about science vs. religion, then goes off in an unexpected direction. I think it's quite lovely. Serious you guys.

Posted by: rickl at March 17, 2014 04:57 PM (sdi6R)

391 Nobody was laughed out of the academy for floating ideas like inflation (which is now vindicated), or dark-matter, dark-energy, quintessence (this one was pretty much debunked) or even steady-state. Compare with global-warming, where the skeptics are called "deniers" and the true-believers even recommend they be jailed. My favorite (next to the Piltdown Man fraud) is quasicrystals. Linus Pauling (yes, THAT Linus Pauling) ridiculed scientists who claimed to have found evidence of them. He called it "quasiscience". Now, because there wasn't a political or religious issue on the line, it became one of those usual nasty intramural battles that occurs in academia that the general public doesn't see. But Pauling was a double Nobel winner and if he said "shut up", you did. A few years ago the chemistry Nobel went for the discovery of quasicrystals. Science can be a very nasty business and can be quite wrong.

Posted by: AmishDude at March 17, 2014 04:58 PM (xSegX)

392 So, really, ya fuckin' heathens, not one bloody mention of our high holy day today?  It's like I've never met ye.

Posted by: Peaches at March 17, 2014 04:58 PM (8lmkt)

393 Actually we now keep time by measuring properties of radioactive elements like Caesium, aka atomic clocks. --- The atomic clocks in GPS satellites have to be adjusted both for the effects of special relativity (which makes them run slow because they travel at 17,500 mph) and general relativity (which makes them run fast because they are high up in earth's gravity well) in order to keep them in sync with the atomic clocks on the ground.

Posted by: whoever at March 17, 2014 04:59 PM (pjMym)

394 The online article troyriser mentions is linked in my sock, OG C-A. Please read it; it's not massively long.

Posted by: [/i]andycanuck[/b] at March 17, 2014 05:00 PM (hn5v5)

395 Rickl, I remember seeing it when it first ran on CBS.

Posted by: --- at March 17, 2014 05:00 PM (0TQka)

396 Hey Peaches!

All the Blarney and fighting got used up in the Morning thread.  An argument over beer of course.

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at March 17, 2014 05:00 PM (YYElT)

397 Hey, but the Muslims invented , ummm, ...... then there was that thing they discovered, errrr .....

clitoridectomies?

Posted by: OregonMuse at March 17, 2014 05:01 PM (I8YZX)

398 So, really, ya fuckin' heathens, not one bloody mention of our high holy day today?

It's national boobehs day?

Posted by: Circa (Insert Year Here) at March 17, 2014 05:01 PM (k7N5n)

399 Ah, and I be thankin' ye, Anna Puma.  Sadly, I was at work this morning and unable to partake.  Left early and had some very middlin' corned beef and cabbage and lit out for home when the first fight started, so around 4 pm. 

Posted by: Peaches at March 17, 2014 05:01 PM (8lmkt)

400 New burning thread.

Posted by: grammie winger at March 17, 2014 05:01 PM (oMKp3)

401 One neat thing about the installation there is that while they get little precipitation - most of Antarctica is a desert - the wind blows snow in from elsewhere since it never melts (the temperature rarely rises above zero).  This piles up, so the whole thing is on legs which crank up like screws and can raise it up to two stories in the air.  By the time it piles up that much, the wind will reverse with the season and gradually blow it away again.

This observation is a further confirmation of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

Posted by: Adjoran at March 17, 2014 05:01 PM (QIQ6j)

402 BTW, the Romans weren't really big on innovation, either. They stole most everything from the Greeks, it's just that they built things when they conquered. A little bit of structural engineering, but otherwise not much.

Posted by: AmishDude at March 17, 2014 05:03 PM (xSegX)

403 Hey, but the Muslims invented , ummm, ...... then there was that thing they discovered, errrr ...... Posted by: grammie --- The concept of zero? And from there I guess it was a straight line to Preezy BZero

Posted by: votermom at March 17, 2014 05:04 PM (GSIDW)

404 Cosmoline, excellent for long term storage of ferrous metals. A bitch to clean off though...

Linear logic, entirely pre-Christian,upon which all of west civ is based.

Scientists and 'natural philosophers' -many perhaps most who were monks or religious affiliates did science and preserved/expanded knowledge in spite of rather than because of religious support. They recorded and disseminated observations by the European post system that was supported by secular political interests - often inimical even overtly hostile to Church dogma -  for 800 years. SCIENCE advanced by men and women of faith who rebelled against dogmatic power - and who spoke truth to power either directly or through their writings. Their faith led them to truth. They represent some of the best of us...

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at March 17, 2014 05:04 PM (vHRtU)

405 "the universe created physical laws at the same time it created physical space"

wha???

Posted by: CommonSenseMom at March 17, 2014 05:05 PM (Y4yFN)

406 I believe physical laws weren't quite firmed up yet (the universe created physical laws at the same time it created physical space), so there may be a little wiggle room, in the earliest microseconds of the Big Bang, as to what is and isn't physically possible. Actually, the prohibition on things moving faster than (or equal to) the speed of light applies only to stuff moving through space. Space itself can (and continuously) expand, and relativity allows for space to expand faster than the speed of light.

Posted by: RomneyBot since 2007 at March 17, 2014 05:06 PM (ubkrT)

407 These gravity waves, are they positive or negative waves?
You know man, that's kinda important to me.

Posted by: Sgt. Oddball at March 17, 2014 05:06 PM (mETGQ)

408 Posted by: OregonMuse at March 17, 2014 09:01 PM (I8YZX)



Dayum, I knew there had to be something they perfected, but I think they also came up with rules for "civilized" goat screwing and pre-pubescent child marriage.

Posted by: Hrothgar at March 17, 2014 05:07 PM (o3MSL)

409 I believe physical laws weren't quite firmed up yet (the universe created physical laws at the same time it created physical space), so there may be a little wiggle room, in the earliest microseconds of the Big Bang, as to what is and isn't physically possible.

You have to give God a few microseconds to vocalize the organization of creation. 

Posted by: Al Gore, Hah Ha ha at March 17, 2014 05:07 PM (Aqvh6)

410 It may simply be so that the things that create universes have always existed and were never created. Our universe is a product of natural phenomena, as far as we know. We get to ride in it before the moment we cease to exist. I can live with that.

Posted by: eman at March 17, 2014 05:07 PM (Qr2rh)

411 Peaches - My joke du jour:

An Irishman walks out of a bar.

Posted by: Mike Hammer at March 17, 2014 05:10 PM (aDwsi)

412 407 Hey, but the Muslims invented , ummm, ...... then there was that thing they discovered, errrr ...... Posted by: grammie --- The concept of zero? And from there I guess it was a straight line to Preezy BZero Posted by: votermom at March 17, 2014 09:04 PM (GSIDW) Nah that was more likely the Indians than the Muslims. I think that bit of confusion is because we do use Arabic numerals. So there is the invention you can attribute to them though Arabic existed before Islam.

Posted by: Buzzion at March 17, 2014 05:13 PM (LSPGE)

413 It may simply be so that the things that create universes have always existed and were never created.
--------------------

You're going to have to explain what you mean by 'always'. It suggests that there is no such thing as 'time'. I would dispute that, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics disputes it also.

Posted by: Mike Hammer at March 17, 2014 05:13 PM (aDwsi)

414 395 My favorite (next to the Piltdown Man fraud) is quasicrystals. Linus Pauling (yes, THAT Linus Pauling) ridiculed scientists who claimed to have found evidence of them. He called it "quasiscience". Now, because there wasn't a political or religious issue on the line, it became one of those usual nasty intramural battles that occurs in academia that the general public doesn't see. But Pauling was a double Nobel winner and if he said "shut up", you did. A few years ago the chemistry Nobel went for the discovery of quasicrystals. Science can be a very nasty business and can be quite wrong. Posted by: AmishDude at March 17, 2014 08:58 PM (xSegX) Heck, I think even Immanuel Velikovsky has been vindicated to a certain degree. In 1950 he published a book called "Worlds in Collision" which postulated that the planets went careening around the solar system and could explain historical events. The reaction of the scientific establishment was extremely hostile; something like the modern global warming orthodoxy demanding that 'deniers' need to be silenced. Read literally, his theories were and are nonsense, but guess what? It turns out that the Solar System really is a shooting gallery, with collisions large and small playing an important role that wasn't fully appreciated in 1950.

Posted by: rickl at March 17, 2014 05:15 PM (sdi6R)

415 @406 Roman concrete built a world, to name one major innovation. In name.

Posted by: Beagle at March 17, 2014 05:15 PM (sOtz/)

416 An Irishman walks out of a bar.

Posted by: Mike Hammer at March 17, 2014 09:10 PM (aDwsi)


lol!!!

Posted by: Cops everywhere, ready to shoot fish in a barrel at March 17, 2014 05:16 PM (8lmkt)

417 Bit of trivia on time measurement.   Because the GPS satellites are moving fairly fast they need an adjustment for relativity on their oscillators to match up to time on the ground to get the proper positioning beacon effect for triangulation.   Back when I was in college the profs said the AF was not convinced they would need that relativity adjustment so the first GPS satellites had a switch to turn it on/off.   

Posted by: PaleRider at March 17, 2014 05:17 PM (dkExz)

418 I'll give you a way in which objects can exceed the speed of light in a vacuum.


The event horizon of a black hole is where the escape velocity = the speed of light in a vacuum.


Gravity - however is not a force field; gravity is an acceleration field, and the acceleration is independent of the mass of the object falling in the field. (Heavy objects accelerate at the same rate as light objects in a gravitational field.)


Because of this an object falling directly into a black hole would reach the speed of light in a vacuum as it reached the event horizon. It would continue to be accelerated inside the event horizon - exceeding that supposed speed limit and would thus be able to escape from the black hole - much in the way that an object falling from the distance of the moon could (if there were an airless hole through the center of the Earth escape all the way back to the distance of the moon again.
 

Posted by: [/i] [/s] [/u] [/b] An Observation at March 17, 2014 05:18 PM (ylhEn)

419 Don't you mantain lactose tolerance by continuing to consume lactose? --- No. People who lost the ability to make lactase (which processes lactose) around age 3 (like mostpeople used to) will not start making it again no matter how much milk they drink. They'll get used to the symptoms to some degree, but that's it. If you don't have the mutation, you lose the ability in early childhood and never regain it.

Posted by: Jenny Hates Her Phone at March 17, 2014 05:22 PM (gF9SS)

420 Science can be a very nasty business and can be quite wrong. Posted by: AmishDude at March 17, 2014 08:58 PM (xSegX) fnord (xSegX) If you've had the opportunity to observe the chatter between competing scientists, and I suspect you have... sometimes the difference between that and a YouTube comment section is one of vocabulary more than tone. People are people. Sure, people are different, but they're people.

Posted by: Merovign, Dark Lord of the Sith[/i] [/b] [/s] [/u] at March 17, 2014 05:31 PM (qyfb5)

421 I'll tell you one thing for sure: reformation or not, you'd have never caught LeMaitre drinking a pre-mixed "Black and Tan" out of a can.  And, evidenced above, don't you ever criticize me for arguing a small point.

Now, a little error we are all prone to make when we discuss the high and low points of "Christian culture" or "Western Civ." And (this is just me), it always seems to be the mark, one way, of someone educated in a church school, or catechetical classes; other side, those who have been raised to see Churches as the enemy. Blind spots all round though:

We presuppose that all members of Christian society -- monks, priests, Charlemagne, the Kings of Sweden, wandering minstrels, knights and soldiers -- were actual Christians. OK, there was only one "Church," but that's no reason not to think that most people only believed part-heartedly, or had reservations and set-asides, or didn't think about theology at all, or lied about their faith, or quickly and easily forgot it when opportunity presented. You know, the way we are today, and most religionists of all stripes were, around the world.

There are a few things we shouldn't fully credit to the orthodox church of the time, and there are lots of evil things that came to pass that were not caused by core Christian teachings. It was a Christian world only because the acts of men were played out within the structure of big church, and big church was the only one keeping score there for a while.

And on those lost classical manuscripts, the monks are kind of 50/50. Not to take a thing away from them, but the "naisse" that was Re-naiss-ancing was a steady stream of "new" classical manuscripts from the Arabs. Sad? True. 

One thing you don't find much in discussion of Islam is "he was a half-hearted believer, but still accomplished..." or "obviously he was not acting in a full understanding of the faith." Things you hear said of Christians of all stripes, now and again, and also some Eastern religions. I expect this is because of the very clear delineations in Muslim sects, and the killing. I think in the fullness of time, world surviving and all else equal, Islam will come to have shades of difference. I won't call it tolerance, but they can't go on like this. Tolerance between Christian sects pretty much grew out of the lack of people after the Thirty Years War. I don't think Islam has had its 30-years-war yet, which makes me wonder about that 777.      

Posted by: Stringer Davis at March 17, 2014 05:40 PM (xq1UY)

422 Roman concrete excelled because its mixers knew enough never to expose it to deep frost. That is it. Put the shit in the same environment as our concrete, and it breaks right up. No magic.

Now the SOB's could really dig a ditch, I give them that. And the MacAdam courses of their stone, so water would wash down through it toward drainage and continually re-compact the dry mix, that's real engineering.

And they crushed and laid that stone and concrete with whipped slaves. Never forget for a moment that Rome was not based on trade, or family values, or republican virtues.

It was based on capturing people and holding them against their will for a lifetime. That's not "just the way things were." There could have been a choice. The Romans liked slavery.   

Posted by: Stringer Davis at March 17, 2014 05:48 PM (xq1UY)

423 "I don't do numbers. I especially don't do large numbers."

God - "That's why I get paid the big bucks."

Posted by: Corona at March 17, 2014 06:06 PM (fh2Y7)

424 It was really just the can opener...

Posted by: Yep, I'm a nerd at March 17, 2014 06:26 PM (FCgaq)

425 Google The Speed of Gravity Critically read the proofs that gravity is much faster than light, like 10 raised to the 22nd power faster than light Many things are not explainable by whomever is reading the teleprompter on Cosmos, and it would be in your interest to take them all with a grain of salt. Weak force indeed

Posted by: Weak_Force_My_Ass at March 17, 2014 06:31 PM (Zz48T)

426 Guth has a lecture on you tube from a few years ago.   It's given in a small room to a bunch of faculty.   In it he does an exceptional job of explaining inflation. 

Posted by: aquaviva at March 17, 2014 06:44 PM (wFinq)

427 417 It may simply be so that the things that create universes have always existed and were never created. -------------------- You're going to have to explain what you mean by 'always'. It suggests that there is no such thing as 'time'. I would dispute that, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics disputes it also. Posted by: Mike Hammer at March 17, 2014 09:13 PM (aDwsi) The 2nd law of Thermo applies in this universe. We do not know if it applies anywhere else. There may very well be no such thing as time.

Posted by: eman at March 17, 2014 07:03 PM (AO9UG)

428 Honestly cosmology is about like climate science; layers upon layers of sheer speculation with very little factually known. This is probably all speculation and nonsense.

Posted by: Roadrunner at March 17, 2014 07:30 PM (xMSfj)

429 "417 It may simply be so that the things that create universes have always existed and were never created. -------------------- You're going to have to explain what you mean by 'always'. It suggests that there is no such thing as 'time'. I would dispute that, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics disputes it also. Posted by: Mike Hammer at March 17, 2014 09:13 PM (aDwsi) The 2nd law of Thermo applies in this universe. We do not know if it applies anywhere else. There may very well be no such thing as time." It's very dubious to apply laws of thermodynamics to the universe as a whole. The laws are valid for isolated systems for which the energy density is finite and energy is therefore size extensive, roughly meaning the total energy grows proportionally to the amount of stuff you have. For example 2 gallons of water at temperature T has twice the thermal energy of 1 gallon of water at the same temperature T. But all this flies out the window the moment we start talking about large collections of heavenly bodies interacting via gravity, because gravity is a long ranged interaction that has no "screening" in the sense of electrostatic interactions in matter. The amount of charge in the universe is balanced, so on the long distance electrostatic interactions screen out rapidly and energy density is finite. There is no analogous "screening" or "charge balance" for gravity; consequently the energy density for an ensemble of massive bodies is divergent, and the laws of thermodynamics probably aren't valid to apply on the large scale to entire galaxies or collections of galaxies.

Posted by: Roadrunner at March 17, 2014 07:34 PM (xMSfj)

430 "Okay, I don't really understand this, but I think they're saying that if spacetime is itself propagating it should propagate like a wave, with peaks and directionality, and this should show up in this "swirliness" detected in background radiation. And somehow this is due to quantum mechanical effects on the tiniest possible scale becoming visible on a cosmic scale, due to a universe which had previously been smaller than an electron suddenly blowing up to a size thousands of lightyears across. In blowing up in size from much, much smaller than an atom, to much, much bigger than a galaxy in just a second or two, the secondary effects of quantum-level of phenomena, the imprinting of "swirliness" in the background raditation, were blown up like a photograph being increased in size a billionfold." Ace they would more than likely need a quantum theory of gravity to explain these things, which they presently don't have. Saying these observations proves the Big bang theory is about like saying that recent warming proves catastrophic anthropogenic global warming theory. It doesn't, and in fact there probably is a manifold of possible theories that could be cooked up which could explain these observations equally well. You have to understand, academic science gets very hive-minded. For whatever reason, there's been this collective herd-thinking that string theory and big bang theory "must" be correct because "they are elegant" or similar subjective stuff, when in the end these theories are not predictive and remain speculative fluff. It drives me crazy because I work in the field of theoretical condensed matter physics and quantum chemistry, where we take quantum mechanics and computers and try to predict the behavior of solids (semiconductors, metals, insulators, ferromagnets, etc) and molecules. Because people actually have accurate measurement techniques for these materials, we can't just make bullshit up like these cosmologists, because at the end of the day there will be a measurement performed that will contradict you if you are wrong. Over the past 50 years there have been tremendous theoretical developments in this field bridging physics and chemistry through quantum mechanics, and much of this development has overlapped with nuclear physics, as their problem is also essentially the same (describe a quantum mechanical many body system of bound particles, particularly fermions). The theories they've developed have probably never been read about in any fluff popular magazine, but they are powerful and actually predictive, e.g. they can predict the geometrical structure, vibrational modes, energy, reactivity, optical, magnetic, electrical, etc properties of a material before it has even been synthesized. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartree–Fock_method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Configuration_interaction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_functional_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupled_cluster

Posted by: Roadrunner at March 17, 2014 07:43 PM (xMSfj)

431 I'm all science-y 'n' stuff, being at times in my "real life" a science writer, but there's one (fundamental) aspect of the Big Bang that I "just don't get" because it's beer been explained. Say, as most suspect, the universe began as a nearly infinitely dense point smaller than an electron which nonetheless contained all the energy and mass that still exist today. And then the Big Bang happened, and in the blink of an eye it "expanded" a gazillionfold to be as big as, well, the universe. But if we look around that universe today, we see that it is asymmetrical and has wrinkles and empty gaps and concentrations and all sorts of weird-ass stuff going on. But how could that be possible? From whence did the asymmetry arise? If the resulting explosion produced an asymmetrical result, then the original "point" containing all energy and mass must itself have been asymmetrical to begin with. If I were writing the script for what would happen in a putative Big Bang, the original ultra-dense "point" would have expanded but it would have done so with perfect symmetry in all directions, so that the resulting "universe" would basically just be a single gigantic undifferentiated particle. Like say, for visualization's sake, a single neutron as big as a trillion galaxies, floating in otherwise completely empty space. But that script didn't happen. Instead, everything went all haywire,which lead to all the kookiness and irregularity in the universe today. So: In what manner could the pre-Big Bang proto-universe be asymmetrical? Two scenarios: The religious/mystical, and the scientific. In the first scenario, the universe was created by God, which means that God created that infinitely dense point containing the universe' substance, and then let it go BOOM to create everything we see. But why did God create an imperfect and asymmetrical starting point? Is God even capable of creating imperfection? And if so, what would be his motivation? In the second scenario, a Big Crunch may have preceded the Big Bang, but the almost infinitely hot and dense proto-universe pint would be the black hole to end all black holes, and would be so impossibly dense that it would necessarily have achieved perfect "symmetry" of a sort, since all stuff got crunched together into a perfectly tiny space in which no information can be retained. Either way, it seem unlikely that the proto-universe could start out as asymmetrical. And yet it must have been, for the resulting explosion to produce asymmetrical results. Thus, I declare that I Am Dissatisfied With The Current Theories. I have no replacement theory. I'm just here to complain.

Posted by: zombie at March 17, 2014 07:51 PM (mizYg)

432 "The BBT supporters actually didn't believe in BBT in the way Christians believe in Christianity. The former accepted BBT as an incomplete model, superior to other models (Hoyle's steady-state theory being foremost). They were open to anything better which is why they kept looking. Nobody was laughed out of the academy for floating ideas like inflation (which is now vindicated), or dark-matter, dark-energy, quintessence (this one was pretty much debunked) or even steady-state. Compare with global-warming, where the skeptics are called "deniers" and the true-believers even recommend they be jailed. That's the difference between belief-as-accepting-a-model and belief-as-dogma." This is a pretty naive view of how academic science works. For example, any common sense person can see that solar energy is a waste that will never amount to much. But within the materials science/physics/chemistry communities they are pimping solar power as some magical energy source that will solve all our problems, even though behind closed doors any scientist would admit the whole thing is on shaky grounds. What they say to the public to keep the grant $$$ rolling and what is actually known behind closed doors and only mentioned within paid subscription locked journals are two completely different things. The BBT has never made any hard quantitative predictions analogous to what is the standard in quantum chemistry or theoretical condensed matter physics. I don't know how more scientists don't realize a double standard is being employed, but it is. BBT is basically cosmology's answer to catastrophic manmade global warming theory; it is always right. Even when a measurement contradicts it, they just invent a new ad hoc assumption (inflation, dark matter, dark energy, etc) to keep it going. It's an ever expanding set of parameters, each of which is continually fiddled with to retroactively conform to measurements.

Posted by: Roadrunner at March 17, 2014 07:52 PM (xMSfj)

433 "Say, as most suspect, the universe began as a nearly infinitely dense point smaller than an electron which nonetheless contained all the energy and mass that still exist today. And then the Big Bang happened, and in the blink of an eye it "expanded" a gazillionfold to be as big as, well, the universe. But if we look around that universe today, we see that it is asymmetrical and has wrinkles and empty gaps and concentrations and all sorts of weird-ass stuff going on." The whole "blink of an eye" unfathomably extremely rapid expansion was itself confounding and arbitrary, and to "explain it" the BB theorists invented "inflation", which itself requires more ad hoc assumptions to as to what mystical physical mechanism (that still has never been measured and identified) must actually cause inflation. "But how could that be possible? From whence did the asymmetry arise? If the resulting explosion produced an asymmetrical result, then the original "point" containing all energy and mass must itself have been asymmetrical to begin with." They handwave some of this as being caused by "randomness" from quantum mechanics. As someone who works with quantum mechanics literally every day for my job, I always thought his sounded like handwaving horseshit. To really understand what they are trying to they need to have a quantum theory of gravity, and they don't. It's all speculation then at this point.

Posted by: Roadrunner at March 17, 2014 07:57 PM (xMSfj)

434 Actually, immediately post-inflation our universe is about the size of a marble, according to Guth.

Posted by: aquaviva at March 17, 2014 08:35 PM (wFinq)

435 One of the more interesting outcomes of "Inflation Cosmology" is it's perpetuation and the creation of infinite "pocket universes".

An inflationary patch decays "at a geometric rate," as it decays it leaves behind our "existing universe",  but remaining "inflationary patch" portion continues to expand at a exponential rate.   So, as it decays - yet expands even faster for more of it to decay - it continuously creates "pocket universes"....forever.

Posted by: aquaviva at March 17, 2014 08:41 PM (wFinq)

436 I thought the universe is 5K years old? Cuz the bible.

You don't get out much, do you?

Posted by: Additional Blond Agent at March 17, 2014 09:20 PM (FvyJS)

437 425 "One thing you don't find much in discussion of Islam is "'he was a half-hearted believer, but still accomplished...' or 'obviously he was not acting in a full understanding of the faith.' Things you hear said of Christians of all stripes, now and again, and also some Eastern religions. I expect this is because of the very clear delineations in Muslim sects, and the killing. I think in the fullness of time, world surviving and all else equal, Islam will come to have shades of difference...." --- Actually you hear about this all the time. Islam has as wide a spectrum of belief & variation as Christianity. The Islam of the maghreb is very different from that of Saudi Arabia which is very different from that of India which is very different from that of Indonesia, etc. Not to mention the whole Shia/Sunni split (at one time, Shi'a even outnumbered Sunni), the wars of Fitna (so-called "apostasies" on the Arabian peninsular which took place almost immediately after the death of the Prophet and were as much due to local chieftains not wanting to pay tithing to the "family rulers" in Medina as to theological differences, etc.) Islam many parts of the world has incorporate greater or lesser degrees of pre-Islamic practices and beliefs such as devotion to saints' shrines and so forth. All of this is much hated and lambasted by the Wahhabis as you can well imagine. Islam in Saudi Arabia, supposedly it's "purest" form, is more of an anomaly than the rule. Saudi Arabia is sort of the "Utah" of Islam (if we use the old Mormon-Muslim comparison, very loosely.) And Mecca and Media are sort of like the Utah County (home of Provo and BYU) or San Pete Valley versions ... very orthodox and hardcore, to a fault, and this is not well understood by Muslims from other parts of the world who have never been to Saudi Arabia. (That's one reason the Saudi's push the pilgrimage so much ... it's the only way they have to enforce some form of hard-ass conformity in a religion which theoretically isn't supposed to have a hierarchy or single source of leadership.)

Posted by: Moron Labe! at March 18, 2014 03:20 AM (K5Csv)

438 "Gravity - however is not a force field; gravity is an acceleration field, and the acceleration is independent of the mass of the object falling in the field. (Heavy objects accelerate at the same rate as light objects in a gravitational field.) Because of this an object falling directly into a black hole would reach the speed of light in a vacuum as it reached the event horizon. It would continue to be accelerated inside the event horizon - exceeding that supposed speed limit and would thus be able to escape from the black hole - much in the way that an object falling from the distance of the moon could (if there were an airless hole through the center of the Earth escape all the way back to the distance of the moon again." No, just no. You can't naively apply a classical interpretation of F=ma to something relativistic like accelerating near the speed of light in the vicinity of a black hole. Even falling into a black hole an object would never attain a speed greater than that of light in vacuum, even if the object accelerated forever. In relativity that "a" in F=ma would be a 4 vector, a completely different beast from the "a" you classically think of in newtonian physics as in the acceleration of a dragster or a falling rock.

Posted by: Roadrunner at March 18, 2014 04:57 AM (ZhdIe)

439 It's funny how Schrodinger's Pot Stash always seemed to be missing from the box. 
It somehow wound up in the Higgs Bong. 

Posted by: Big Fat Meanie at March 18, 2014 06:21 AM (Ec6wH)

440 "They speculated that while nothing can move faster in space than light, space itself can move (expand) faster than the speed of light."

But space is nothing, at least under my bed, with the exception of my dog's chew toys and a couple of old socks.

Posted by: Levin at March 18, 2014 08:26 AM (mgl7C)

441 Man, I had no idea that cosmetology school was so educational.

Posted by: jpg at March 18, 2014 10:59 AM (VBZ/Z)

442 Ha, hah! God sure has fooled these guys good! But then again, He's God. His sense of humor is infinite.

Posted by: J. Moses Browning at March 18, 2014 02:06 PM (yt8uW)

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