Expanding Universe

mildmanneredjanitor said:
And back on topic, how do they get that 'smashing orangey bit in the middle'? :p

Using a particle accelerator, colliding some Mandarons with Clementon particles.
 
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So Tex from reading that article the whole basis of scientific knowledge could be in doubt!
Stand by to watch everything dissolve before your eyes at any moment :)
 
I just typed some great pearls of wisdom, but then thought, that's a load of old b0llocks, can't decide now, so I'm oft t'pub. No doubt pearls of wisdom will follow in an hour or so :D
 
So the mathmeticians/cosmologists can't understand why there is a finely tuned answer to all the universe as though there is some external force controlling it all!
Why think so deep? Isn't that what matmeticians try to do anyway, try to balance things, make sure that equations balance both sides of the equals sign? therefore isn't it possible that they drive their conclusions down the road to achieving this by only accepting answers that "work out".
Sometimes i think that we hold ourselves back by trying to answer the impossible(at this time) when we should accept certain dead ends and allow new theories to perculate in the hotpot of knowledge.
Even the most brilliant brains on earth could be confused by the complexity of trying to answer some of the questions and rely too much on supercomputers to solve them, remember that these computers still work to program code installed within them and the complexity of the answers are too complicated for the human brain to conceive therefore a certain amount of faith in the result has to be taken.
 
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It is always going to be a "best guess", but it is generally a process of iteration. That is, we seldom find something that totally invalidates a theory, we just find exceptions and additions that improve our guess.

For example, we used to think the world was flat. One day someone noticed the masts of ships appearing over the horizon and realised the world was round. But we still thought it was the centre of the universe. Then one day Copernicus decided the Sun was the centre of the universe. Then later on someone else decided it wasn't, and so on. In Western science the centre of the universe has moved from Jerusalem, to the Earth, to the Sun, to the Galaxy, to a point 14 billion light years away.

If you really want to giggle at some ludicrous theories, read some "alternative science" and "creationist science" websites. But you will feel guilty afterwards, when you remember you should never make fun of *******.

What about this bloke? He reckons that the Doppler shifts mean the Earth is the centre of the Universe (well, you can say that the Earth is stationary, and the Universe is moving around it, but the Earth is certainly NOT at the centre!) He also believes that aliens are in fact... demons.
 
I'm not agreeing with what he is saying as i have my own theories but all the great names in science had to step out on a limb with their theories and put up with ridicule from their peers, wouldn't it be ironic if this guys theories turn out to be correct and everyone elses are wrong!
Now you laugh but it boils down to what i was saying earlier how can we know for sure that all our science so far is correct and not based on an earlier flawed law that up to now has only worked because we base all experimentation on these early laws and our perception of their results.
What i would give to see from the outside our little experiment in the petri dish that we call existence on our small plateu. ;)
 
Well, I can't prove that the guy is wrong, in the same way that he can't prove he is right (although he does make many mentions of his theories being the only possible solution). However, he does say some rather ignorant things regarding the speed of light, and "conveniently" gets his numbers wrong when proving his "divine ratios".

Whether or not I belive in God really does bear no relation to my belief in science. It is perfectly possible to believe in the two, one on a purely physical level, another on a spiritual. However the problem Creationists have is that they constrain themselves with religious literature. If they just thought "What if, just maybe, the Good Book is for spiritual guidance, not a definitive scientific text?!"...

Would you read an interior design magazine and then try to extrapolate from that how a house is built? Of course not! The magazine tells you how to decorate and live in the house, but it doesn't mention bricks, mortar, sand, cement, plasterboards, studwork, wiring, piping. If you tried to, then you would end up saying "The walls are made of paint. This is the only possibility because the magazine doesn't say there is anything underneath the paint. All it mentions is paint on the walls. There is nothing beyond the paint. Just paint."

Of course I could be wrong, but if this guy can prove he is right, then you better keep the paint-stripper away from any walls you want to keep.
 
I understand what you are saying but think about it, science is doing exactly what you are suggesting they are seeing the paint but not what came first simply because there is no way of checking beyond the surface at this present time and the very fabric(paint) of the universe may be as fragile as the "Literature" suggests.
we might believe that we are well on the road to understanding everything but that may be 2 dimensional thinking and the vastness of the task is actually beyond our understanding for time infinite.
 
kendor said:
but that may be 2 dimensional thinking and the vastness of the task is actually beyond our understanding for time infinite.

Definitely you are right there. We have barely scratched the surface. 100 years ago who would have thought we would have as many different particles as we do today? There was no need for them to prove the questions of the day. After all, what is science but questions and answers? When we go deeper, we find more questions. We then set about finding answers to those questions, and by doing that we find more questions.
 
Don't get me wrong science has come along with leaps and bounds in the last century it's just the speed of it all makes me worry that we may have overlooked something important and it may take another thousand years who knows before we realise our mistakes.
As mentioned before i may well have been pushed into this way of thinking by all these "Layman" scientific programmes i've been watching over the years that explain all these wonderful theories in a language that someone like myself who hasn't got the mathmatical expertise can understand but in simplifying it so much it leaves a lot of unanswered questions that someone with an analytical mind like myself can pick holes in.
 
Such programmes are a great thing in my opinion. Most of the ones shown on the terrestrial channels are very informative, and pretty much anyone can sit down and take one in without getting bored. I love it when other people are enjoying science.

I do have a tendency to talk at the screen though. Well, I am yet to get a single answer right in "A Question of Sport", so I like to prove I'm not entirely braindead by naming a theory before the narrator does! :LOL:
 
Ah the great theologian Miss Sue Barker wonder what her thoughts on the subject of why are we here would be? :)
 
Saw that programme tonight, about "things we still don't know". Sorry but I thought this was a lot of old bunkham. The idea that, if just one quantitative measurment was just slightly different, then we wouldn't be where we are today. I was thinking, EXACTLY.

It's like looking at the lottery results and saying, Do you realise that there was only one chance in 14 million of THAT particular combination coming up! So there must have been some divine intervention that chose them. What's more, every time we have a lottery, we get the another equally unbelievable event occur.

Here's another statistical one that makes you think. In a liquid, all the molecules are darting around bumping into each other at some rather surprising speeds. Every so often one of them gets to hit the surface and escape. Due to the large numbers involved the averages tend to even themselves out, such that we can predict the rate of evaporation of the liquid. but as you know, averages don't have to even themselves out. It is quite possible to toss a coin a hundred times and get a hundred consecutive heads, just by chance. The same could, theoretically happen in a body of liquid. By sheer fluke, every single molecule in the body of liquid could end up on a course, whereby it misses all of the other molecules in the body. So you could be in the middle of riding a wave off the Cornish coast, when, in the blink of an eye, the whole Atlantic just dissappears :eek:. It could happen!
 
Exactly Tex! I tried to explain such a concept to my R.E. teacher aged 14, and she refused to acknowledge my arguments on this.

In the nothingness before the Big Bang, if there was a finite probability that a Big Bang would occur at any one point in time, then if you observe it for an infinite amount of time then you will almost certainly observe a Big Bang. Perhaps the probability of a Big Bang occurring is once in a million trillion years. Who knows.

It is like the old "Let an infinite number of chimps type at an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite amount of time, and they will eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare."

But, the silly woman wouldn't listen and just insisted that it MUST have been God. I thought RE was intended to teach ABOUT religion, not preach religion? Bah.
 
:) hello
all of the preceding theory is totally depending on an X factor?
X = does the universe exist?
X=we may be part of a program?
peaceful journey"s :LOL:
 
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