tar

Photon Propeller, I think it was Zapatos that made the point that fine tuning requires an out of tune thing to stretch or compress into something that sounds the right pitch. Here, the fine tuning argument lacks a description of what it was the architect took and tuned up. Not to mention who or what came up with the unmolded clay. There is something about intelligence, that I noticed, requires a prexisting world to explain. That is, that what a conscious being like a human senses, remembers, compares and constrasts, manipulates and predicts, is a prexisting world that he/she has internalized and copied in some analogous fashion and the model of the thing that an intelligent person has, is fashioned out of the stuff that prexisted, prior the intelligence. The place was already here, before life came about. Life grabbed form and structure and passed along its pattern to the next iteration/generation, from a universe that otherwise seems to be increasing in entropy. Life pulled itself up, by its own bootstraps. There is no place to house a blueprint for such an adventure, other than this universe. And nowhere for an architect to live, other than this universe. And nothing for an architech to model the place after other than this universe, and no material for an architech to mould, other than the material existant in the universe. So, to believe an architect is required, one would have to at least have a thought as to what the place would be like, without an architect. Interestingly enough, the place would look exactly like this. And there is nobody here, but us chickens. That does not exclude your suggestion that we all come from the same source, so we should act like we are of the same cloth, the same family and have the same world to be of and in and love and be responsible for and take care of and enjoy and make it possible for others to do the same. But your suggestion does not require that an architect be praised for a job well done, because the place happened, without any such expert guidance evident or required. Besides, as far as life on Earth goes, its the parameters of heat and pressure, and a certain mix of elements that exists on Earth, that makes life on Earth a possibilty. We match the place. If we were life on Jupiter, we would match Jupiter. If we were life at a vent on the bottom of the sea, we would match the place. What do you suppose the conditions are that allow an architect to form? Regards, TAR Does this claim make any sense? In the beginning God created an out of tune universe, for some crazy reason, then proceeded to correct his mistake, and tuned the thing up. We are thankful he did not decide to go with the original mess.

Skeptic134, I have "Cosmos" on a bookshelf about 6 feet away. Have not opened it in quite a while, but perhaps that is where I got the idea. Regards, TAR

photon propeller, As someone pointed out earlier in the thread, if you need an architech to design the place, then the question arises as to who is God's mother, and father, or where did God come from? If you are going to propose an infinite God, you might as well just propose an infinite cosmos instead. That is, if you require no starting point. The difference between the two views is only in imagining you know the guy personally, and nobody else does. What I mean by that, and in line with this thread topic, is that considering an anthropomorphic God as a requirement for the universe to be, logically associates yourself, with this God. Since there is no evidence, per se, for this particular consciousness, that is aware of you, and you of it, (to the exclusion of everybody else) then claiming this God to be the source is unfair and untrue to everybody else that does not believe such a personality exists. So in your take, you are right about this personality and anyone that does not see your correctness is in error. Such is the take also of those that follow Muhammed's Allah. If you are not a believer, you are in error. This is contrary the "same source" principle, as it is not possible, under the predecessor universe theory I propose instead, for anybody or anything to not already be associated with and included in the source's outcomes. Religious prejudice is a double edge sword that cuts both the believer and the non believer. The believer is wrong, because he can not be right about his/her personal exclusive relationship with the source. And the non-believer is wrong, because he/she has no other source to spring from, but the actual one. Isis is trying to establish a Caliphate in Syria and Iraq and cut off women's clitori and make people pray 5 times a day to a non existent personality. Any source that I align myself with, does not require such behavior. Which imaginary source is more workable, explains more, allows everybody the same footing, and allows for the least prejudging. 1. An architect. 2. Big Bang (with an undetermined precondition) Regards, TAR

photon propeller, Read a portion of your link. I would have to say I fall in the weak Anthropic category, figuring that things are the way they are, because being this way allows them to be the way they are. If they were different, then things would not be this way. As for something with explanitory power, how about considering that this universe is not one among many, but one with a large, if not infinite number of predecessors. The theory has probably been floated before, but I imagine the possibility of the entire universe one day unifying to a singularity and then happening again, with some artifacts of the last universe, carried on into the next. That is, that intelligence may have begun many universes ago, and built up in steps, and the intelligentness of the last one was somehow coded into this one, as a gift or memorial from/of the last. With this "theory" one can imagine life and intelligence spreading throughout the galaxy, meeting up with other evolved life, and establishing a greater consciousness that, after billions of years, with the singularity approaching, would find a way to leave some breadcrumbs behind, for the benefit of the inhabitants of the "next" iteration of the universe. It requires no god, per se, just a previous consciousness, prior the big bang, that left some constants for us to utilize and love. A once alive, but now dead consciousness, that is just remembered and "felt" by the consciousness that is present on Earth today, and the possible consciousnesses that may exist on other "life giving" planets, and such. Bear in mind that life does not have to be carbon based, and like us. Witness the sulfur tube life at the vents at the bottom of the sea. It does not have to be, and probably is not, a humanlike consciousness, that left its code and clues in the singularity that burst into our current universe. But I would imagine it is a "common" consciousness, that would provide the "source" you speak of. That is, that in the same way that we are all decendents of Lucy, we are all, every planet, star, quark, bird and bee, decendents of the big bang. There is no other source from which to sprout. Regards, TAR

An image we hold in our head, of a galaxy or a cluster of galaxies, is "taken" from a particular vantage point, other than the one the Earth currently holds. If we model the "local" super cluster and visualize it all at once, especially with us in the picture, we are suggesting that all and each of the shining objects in the picture are there now, in that particular arrangement. In our heads we can rotate the model, and the items would maintain their geometric relation to each other, in terms of vectors and lengths, imagined on a three dimensional grid of cartesian coordinates. However, it is not claimed or defined that the items thusly positioned have been temporalized, that is, that any two items pictured in the model are of the same age, and were, are or will be at that spot, at a particular imagined moment. This unclear definition is as bad as the plastic bottle on the early 20th century mantle, because you can not see the current position of the strings of galaxies that the Milky Way is a part of, "at the same time", in any manner different from the way we actually see it all, from here. One photon at a time. Looking in a particular direction, at a galaxy and implying galaxy size movement from the recessional velocities figured by the spectral lines, of material in that direction, only gives us toward and away from us, information. We do not particularly know if that particular photon we collected came from the nearside, the middle, or the back of the column of the galaxy that we are figuring it came from. We do not particularly know if the atom that emitted the thing was going left or right, or up or down at the time, and we can only figure it was in that particular direction we are getting the photon from, in a 50,000 year long window, and that window occurred some 250,000,000 years ago. If we were to "look at" the galaxy in question from an observation point directly in our line of vision, but only 50,000,000 lys away from, it, right now, all the stars in the galaxy would be in different positions than the positions we currently witness. They would all be older, 200,000,000 years older than what we see, and would have had 200,000,000 million years to move around, get closer to or farther away from the center, increased or decreased their distance from neighboring galaxies, blown up or evolved, gained material or lost it, in the interim. But you, Strange, claim that the 50,000 ly decrepancy between the front and back is too small a percentage of the distance between us and it, to make a difference in our calculation of the speed of rotation of a star around the center of the thing. And I have to prove that it would matter. Perhaps this thought experiment would show it would make a difference. Establish an observer 250million lys on the other side of the galaxy in question, exactly as far away as us, from the center of the galaxy in question. Plot the position of each noticable item in the galaxy from here. Plot the position of each noticable item in the galaxy from the other observation point. The items will be at different points, and the galaxy in a different percieved arrangement, from the two vantage points. Regards, TAR

Strange, There was a promo picture for that British Butler show set in the early part of the twentieth century with two of the characters standing in front of a fireplace, with a plastic water bottle on the mantle. You can get fiction wrong. I am sorry, you are right, I have not yet shown the significance. I forgot I was working to that end. Well didn't really forget, I am working on the components, trying to get the definitions straight in my mind, of when we consider something happening now, and when we know it happened earlier, and so on. One "thread" I am working on, is the "numbering" of the pulses a hydrogen atom has undergone/expressed since the beginning of the universe. I realize these are not regular pulses, like some hyperfine transition of cesium or something, and are contigent upon the absorbtion and reemission of energy which may well happen at different random rates for two different atoms, and be related to the proximity of an atom to another, as well as the type and number of surrounding atoms, but the idea of the count, or a hydrogen atom being the exact same age (the age of the universe) as another atom, I am using as a vehicle to imagine the difference between what is happening at the close part of a distant galaxy and what is happening at a more distant part. It is hard to tell the difference between a spectral line made by pulse number 12345.....234 and pulse number 12345...237. The difference is about the same as the difference between pulse 12346..234 on one atom and 12345...234 on the other, especially if it represents the same transition. Even though the two events could have been separated by billions of years. In the case of the galaxy, any tilt of the galaxy, from being exactly normal to our eye view, would create vast time differences, in terms of the age of the hydrogen atom at the close point, and one on the fringe. Having an equation, that considered these two points happening at once, based on which of these (numbered) pulses are reaching our eye now, would be somewhat suspect if it did not include the difference in age of the pulses. And somewhat complex if it did. Leading me to believe that either this difference is not taken into account, or that it is neglected and dropped, inappropriately. The doppler affect you say has to do with the relative motion toward or away from us, that a light emitting object is or has taken. Perhaps this is NOT the effect that I am saying needs to be factored into the equations. What I need to be factored in is the distance in both time and space that exists between one part of the image and another, and the distance in time and space between us and the object's closest point. Regards, TAR

Strange, In addition to? Does that not require first having the doppler effect considerations already accounted for, completely? Struck me, a while back, that from my perspective, everything else that is happening now, will "get to me" later, because of the speed of light limit that connects one event with another. The "photons" that this thread is attempting to "keep track" of. Near stuff, right away, and one can move on to expect the next thing happening...the one thing done, and in the past, and the next true thing occuring. However, there is a different kind of consideration, when a thing is more than a moment away. The question rose in my mind, "which is true?"...that which you see, or that which must have happened for what you see to be happening, or that which must be happening now, for you to see it happening later? The corallary question is, how many instances of a thing are there? Is there only one instance of a thing, or not? Most evidence points to the fact that there is only one instance of a thing. You, for instance are only where and when you are, right now, even though you have been all those other places you have been, in all those other moments. And in general, within the slop of a couple second long moment, we are all IN the same moment, those of us on Earth. But the Mars rover, is in a different one. Has to be in the same one, in certain senses, and has to be in a different one, in other senses. This difference is, in a majority way, due to the distance between, that it takes light to travel the span. It is only forteen minutes, so one can add and subtract, back and forth and take each perspective and decide what is "really" happening "now", and what is a delayed image. But in a galaxy 250 million lys from here, the separation is massive. You can not switch back and forth and have a good idea of what is "really happening now" and what is delayed image. Especially because of the size of the galaxy, where what you see on the fringes happened a longer time ago, than what you see at the closest part of it. You have to be calling similtaneous, that which is not in actuality happening anywhere close to "at the same time". So if you are concerned with the apparent rotational speed, not jiving with physical laws, my question is, "have you properly taken into consideration, the size of the thing you are looking at, and the fact, that the whole thing, even though it looks tiny from here, is not, and is not happening all at once, as it appears from here, to be happening?." Regards, TAR And it seems rather wrong to me to make statements like "the expansion of the universe is accelerating" based upon old, older and even older images of what the universe already did...with NO way to actually check on what its doing now. We do not even know how the Mars rover is doing right now, until forteen minutes from now. Was watching Star Trek the other day, and the craft was moving through the stars like one would move through falling snow. It would not look like that. You can not go 8 times the speed of light, to begin with, and if you could, things would certainly "look" different than that. Things you where heading toward would be blue shifted impossibly much, and things behind, redshifted impossibly much. Saw a rendering of our universe on the web a while back, where the observer, is moving through galaxies and walls and strings of galaxies. Really? What speed is that observer traveling? And if that imaginary perspective were to be taken, would we not see galaxies evolve as we approached them? Would be not see them sped up in their motions? Would we not see them get larger and larger as we approached, until we were "in them"? I maintain, that having an "image" of what the universe currently "looks like", which differs from what it actually looks like, is useless at best. False at worse.

Strange, Hum. I suppose you are right, that they would each experience a different time between the pulses, but that can easily be understood as redshift and blueshift of the wavelengths, and not as dilation of time itself. I suppose, for me, I would rather keep something constant, like the ticking of the pulsar and move everything else around within that structure. I don't feel confused doing such. It makes perfect sense to me. Regards, TAR

Thread, Passed the young woman today, who said she would stop if I did. She told me she was 5 days into NOT smoking. I congratulated her, and welcomed warmly her decision. We will see each other, I am sure, outside, just NOT smoke, now. Regards, TAR

Strange, I do not so much think I am contradicting, as I think I am suggesting an additional way to look at the problems. That is, when one gets carried away by trying to bind together the image of two frames of reference, separated by a distance that it would take light to travel (which is any distance), sorting out the "from which frame are you viewing" is difficult, and the imagination tends to try and take an overall view, that sees the two frames, at the same time, with instant positioning between the two, that puts them again relative to each other, a certain distance apart at an appointed "time". This is very hard to manage, as they are "off" from each other due to their acceleration and velocity, and agreeing on an observer that can see them both at once, is hard and subject to definitional misunderstanding. However, the pulsar will not lie, and any frame you choose, moving or stationary, high in the Andies or at the bottom of the sea, on Mars or Earth, will be on a particular count of pulses from that pulsar, starting from the first pulse that pulsar pulsed. The different positions and accelerations will be on differenet counts, according to their relative positions from each other, and their relative motions toward and away from the pulsar relative to each other. But should they be in the same spot, in the same frame of reference again, not moving relatinve to each other and exactly the same distance from the quasar, they can not but help to see the exact same pulse from the quasar. This gives one (me) a standard to go by. Something to add back the various claims of time dilation and measurement and such, and figure what is "meant" by the claims. Gives me something to judge the "lengths" of the ticks of various clocks against, and that is the existence of all the ticks of the pulsar, existing currently in the space between the pulsar and us, and in the space in the oppostie direction of the pulsar, as well. The tick of the pulsar that we experienced one second ago has just "gone by" us, at the speed of light. If we were to follow it, and try to experience it again, we could not. Yet an observer 186,000 miles away from us, will see that tick right now. If we were to travel the 186,000 miles and talk with said observer, when we got there, we would be on the same count again. Whatever happens on our trip, would have to jive with the pulsar's beat, and we can never "catch up" to a beat in reality, as we can outrun the thing, in our imaginations. Regards, TAR

Strange, There is no "just one time". Well, I suppose this is true...except I noticed a handful of years ago, that everybody in the room I was in, was experiencing the same now as I was. That is, everybody aware of anything at the moment is aware of the same moment as I am. Putin just said whatever he just said...for everybody on the planet. Combine this fact, with the fact that the Mars probe was 14 minutes away, and one has to both agree that there is not just one time, in the one sense, and that there is just one time in the other sense, that every item in the universe must be 13.8 billion years old, and in this manner experiencing the same "tick", currently. This is not a paradox, it is the reality of the situation. A dual requirement, the same as when two people stand next to each other, the other is alternately on the left and right. My take, anyway, that a focal point, such as a human (could be any item) is always at the longest time from the start as is possible. That is, everything that exists, exists currently, and everything that exists is connected to everything else that exists, at the speed of light. There is no other current item that you can experience but in the two ways you experience it. 1. When you see it. 2. When you imagine it, or figure what and when it had to be doing before now, to look that way now, and concurrently imagining what that means for where that item is and what it is currently doing. The equations of relativity express these relationships in a clear and concise manner, and the users of the formula know which stance one is taking and what is relative to what. When it is imagination, and when it is sense. But a couple years ago, I remember looking at the moon, and considering that without a doubt, it was here, now. I know it is separated from me by a distance that it would take light to travel, but I did not have to wait it. There was and is no way for me to experience the moon any more currently than now. If I was to travel to it at the speed of light it would take me exactly the time to get from here to there, as it takes light to get from it to here. In that time the moon would have gotten that much older, and when I got there, it would be doing exactly what the moon is currently doing. If one would travel to a distant quasar at the speed of light, it would not be a quasar when one got there, as quasars are a thing of the past. It would be a galaxy of stars perhaps similar to ours. But, the photons coming from the quasar would have to be accounted for as you traveled toward it. Billions of years worth of emmisions, you would be running into. The photons would be blue shifted and the frequencies so high as to be destructive or at least something that we don't know the physics of. You would experience the whole evolution of that quasar, into whatever form it currently holds, during your trip, and it would...wait...into whatever form it will hold in the time it takes you to make the trip, from now. You would "run into" what it actually looks like now, when you were about halfway there, and by the time you got there, it would actually have had that time to evolve further than how it stands today. So, no, there is not just one time. But on the other hand, there probably is. That, being now. Regards, TAR

Strange, But if she experiences the same number of ticks of the pulsar, what would cause her to age less? What is the boundry between her and reality, caused by her containment on the moving ship? GR requires forshortening and such to explain what the stationary twin sees of the traveler and what the traveler sees of the stationary. But what does the observer on the pulsar see? Is not the traveling twin within his view, the whole time? Is it not, from the pulsar's perspective, just one time, that both twins existed in, during the trip? Now there is the small issue, that the observer on the pulsar will not witness the trip for 10s of thousands of years, but when he does, there is no moment in time when both twins are not concurrently existing. On the tangent thing. Let's say the traveling twin was going tangent to the pulsar at the halfway point. Regards, TAR Half way to the turn around point.

Mike, Interesting indeed. But I keep coming back to the same conclusion in terms of the entertaining of such a possibility and the probabilities of such a thing coming about, I mean the possibility of such a thing having already have occurred. There is a large amount of evidence, that the evolution of everything on Earth, actually happened on Earth. There is not any aspect of life or even intelligence for that matter, that would have required outside influences to have occurred. The Earth and the Sun are quite capable, on our own, to have developed the forms and creatures, biosphere and weather patterns, ants and plants, humans and cities, tools and procedures, legends and memories, that we have developed. None other need to be involved. We have the whole story at our fingertips. To entertain the "higher" form idea, you would have to extend the home planet idea to the home galaxy idea, in which case one can entertain the idea of the development of other lifeforms, and even other civilizations (look at an Ant colony, or whales repeating grand patterns of visitation and ritual). If life was possible here, then it might also be possible elsewhere. But how possible is a "higher" form of life? Higher than us, certainly is possible, but on what scale, judging what abilities? Strength, speed, size, problem solving, compassion, flight, permanance, senses, memory, number of appendages, range of electromagnetic spectrum awareness, or what? A higher life form would not have to be going by our standands. A higher life form would not have to know about us. And a higher life form would not have to care about us. Now if the development of space travel, happened elsewhere than Earth, first and this planet was "seeded" consciously by visitors...this is possible, but then these folk would be our wardens and lab attendendants, and they would appear to us as Gods if they have such powers as to read our minds, and change our weather and such...but then we would be more of a lab experiment, than their children. Not equals in anyway, and slaves or captives, as we have in Zoos. Now if we are talking benevolent God type consciousness, then we are talking about God, in the biblical sense. This concept is an overarching one, one that is not bound by sense and reason, physical constrains, and actuality, but one that is formulated as an overarching concept, that trumps everything, that includes everything, and is conscious of everything. This is not a higher life form, this is God. So, what is left for the observers to be? They can not have gotten so much further than life on Earth, as to be conscious of it, and present amoung us, and be "other than" us, all at the same time. One possible explanation, discounts portions of others, and in no case, did whatever happened elsewhere have more than 13.8 billion years to happen. Whatever story you figure, has to fit within that time frame, and operate within the constraints of space and time, and physical laws. If what you are imagining fits the facts then it is possible. If what you are imagining can not actually be true, then it is not possible. Regards, TAR

John, Did not look at the links yet, but the long fluorence lifetimes may or maynot describe an individual electron's grasp on a packet of energy. And if it was figured to be a single electron's hold, "about a millisecond" does allow for it to "let go" of the energy in any random direction (considering the electron would have the opportunity to be in any particular position in its "higher" energy level, in reference to a direction from the nucleus, many many times, before it let go. However, two situations seem to make it hard to figure the geometry. The experiments are sort of gross approximations, taking large amounts of transitions over large amounts of time, where averages and implications hold greater sway than actual measurements of individual photon trajectory. (as opposed to "I hit said electron with this amount of energy at that point in time and it released this amount of energy at this point in time" So tiny and so fast. By the way my quick foray into electric and magnetic dipole transitions did not leave me as knowledgable on the subjects as Schrödinger Hamilton and Pauli would consider sufficient. Regards, TAR FRET is analogous to near-field communication, in that the radius of interaction is much smaller than the wavelength of light emitted. In the near-field region, the excited chromophore emits a virtual photon that is instantly absorbed by a receiving chromophore. These virtual photons are undetectable, since their existence violates the conservation of energy and momentum, and hence FRET is known as a radiationless mechanism. Forster (o with an umlat) resonance energy transfer, (off John Cuther's last link) seems another way for an electron to transfer its energy to another closer range atom than the photon route, although the two seem to be versions of the same mechanism. The "direction" in which the recepient atom is oriented in reference to the donor would still pertain to the thread question. As that an atom in a molecule or matrix of molecules does not have a nearby atom at every direction, but only certain ones consistent with the arrangement of the molecule, this FRET mechanism seems to indicate that the energy can be transferred in a general direction, general enough to "hit" the neighboring atom and in particular, one of its electrons. Taking exact aim on a neighboring atom's electron, would be a highly improbable act, otherwise. that first paragraph after my signature is supposed to be in quotes being from a Wiki article (I am having trouble with my edit feature)

John Cuthber, Thank you for the Piers Andrew's submission. I did not read through the whole thing, and the "math" I do not know well enough to appreciate, but I scanned through and read some of the summaries and such. Interesting to me in regards to this thread was this sentence from the final summary. " By fitting the angle dependence of the emission to a simple model which considered the interference between the direct emission from the dipole and the reflected field from the mirror, it was shown that the 614nm emission arose from an electric dipole transition, and the 592nm emission from a magnetic dipole transition, in agreement with studies by previous workers [Drexhage (1974)]." Piers Andrew 1998 Suggests that it may be other than randomly that a photon is emitted. I will have to learn what an electric dipole and magnetic dipole are, but that is the beauty of Wiki, I will know such, by my next post. Also this suggests that the particular electron falling from a particular height that yields a certain frequency photon may depend to some extent on the angle of incidence and the phase of the photon that boosted the electron up in the first place. Not particulary related to the paper, but the fact that timing was studied, made me consider that there may be a preferred time that an excited electron might "hold on" to the energy before it "immediately" released it. Enough time perhaps in the quick and tiny world of an electron, for the electron to have traveled a certain angular distance around the nucleus, or a certain amount of times around, at which point it would prefer to cough up the energy as a photon. Strange, Back to the shorter amount of time to count the same number of pulses. If this were the case, the traveling twin would have to see the beats of the pulsar as "faster" than she knew before she left they were. Also the frequency of light during each pulse would have to be measured as faster and the wavelengths shorter. If she was traveling tangent to the pulsar, what physical law would allow this difference? Regards, TAR

Strange, Overall? The "overall" would be the reality that included both the traveler and the stay at home. Since as Spyman put it, neither ever left reality, and had the pulsar in view the whole time, then any ticking faster on the way out would have to be matched with a ticking slower on the way back, or vice a versa, depending on which frame you are considering, and whose count you are going by at any particular time. My thinking, in the "keeping track of photons" mode, is that any progress toward the pulsar on the traveling twin's part would indeed speed up the arrival of the photons and be experienced as a blue shift, as if the pulsar was approaching. And on the way home, there would be a corresponding red shift in the frequency or the ticks. This could be measured in reference to any onboard clocks the traveling twin might have, and there is some crazyness in trying to figure whose onboard clocks are running at what relative pace in reference to the other, the simple act of traveling, even at near light speed, can not change the ticks of the pulsar. That pulsing pattern of photons is already laid down, those waves are already on the surface of the lake, and traveling anywhere on the lake in any direction, with, against or along a trough or peak, will not change the count. I know this is contrary the experiment with the clocks flown East and West and reunited only to be on different ticks, sped up and slowed down appropriately by velocity aided and abetted by the spin of the Earth, and gravity well considerations as the clock that stayed home stayed deeper in the well...but all three clocks could have been judged against the quasar's pulse, and a deternination made of when and how each clock ticked faster or slower than one or the other, or the other. Time itself, as referenced by the waves laid down on the lake, by the quasar was not, and could not have been affected. Ones reference point might be inadvertently mislaid, but the ticks of the quasar cannot be undone. As an aside, such keeping track of photons, speaks strongly against time travel. While one can easily change ones position on the lake, and concurrently separate themselves "in time" from another, getting infront of, or behind a wave experienced by the other, if one is interested in getting back in sync with the other, they have to make the reverse trip. Thusly they have never affected time and space a whit, only their position in it. You can leave and come back to a spot in space, time on the other hand, marches on. The arrangement of the entire universe would have to be reconstructed to "return" to a moment in time. This is not a possibilty. Time is one way, in this regard. Any calculation that allows time to flow in the opposite direction is in error. The photon waves from every photon release...ever...are not registered on a device that can be rewound and replayed. Its already done. Regards, TAR

Strange, I will work on the quantification and the geometry, but I don't think nothing is implied from a single photon. Read at one time that the large collectors of photons, looking into deep deep space at really distant stuff, collect one photon at a time, have to wait minutes for the next, and record everything and build back the image of the thing based on the results. Classical view of light may be most practical, considering the numbers and varied calculations that one would have to entertain, otherwise, but I am currently concentrating on what is actually happening, what is actually possible and considering the gaps inbetween photons, both in time and in spread. A particular source of photons, however big, only has a finite number released every second. Those photons need to go in ALL directions. There are very many directions. More directions than photons. A singular photon must have a "shot pattern", that is, a span, as in "with its arms extentended" what size imaginary whole would it punch in an imaginary membrane. How close would it have to be to an atom to hit an electron on it, and boost it up to another energy level? The creation of, the travel time and path of, and the destruction of a photon, must occur. Thusly, there are actual photons "on their way" to Earth, from the nearest star. Some that will reach my left eye, some that will reach my right, in enough abundance that I will sense the arrivals as continuous. and the star as visible, and present, there, right there in the sky. I cannot however reach out and touch the thing and verify its position and sync it up with my other senses, like I could the lamp on the other side of the room. Several switches of grain size and models have to be entertained to grasp that star as true in two senses. The sense that it is right there, NOW in the sky at that spot where I am pointing now, AND it is true that it is in another spot, that it has traveled to, in the 2 years it took the photons that I am judging its position by, to get here. AND it is true that the photons I saw coming from the star two years ago, were telling me the exact and actual direction the star would be in today. I apologize, but I fell into this requirement to track photons several years ago, with considerations of the twin paradox, and the thought that one could mentally imagine how both twins would view a distant pulsar during the trip of the one, and "count" the pulses. Upon the return of the twin, the counts would have to be equal. Regards, TAR

OK, Maybe a lot later. Have not found the proof yet. Here are the areas that I am considering. Photons emitted from the column of space through a distant galaxy in a particular direction (toward Earth) are from diverse times, such that they do not all correspond to a singular position/configuration of said galaxy. Said column is not clearly defined, as it is not stationary, nor reproducable, nor does the one end of it, represent the same epoch as the other. Being such, the information gleened from a particular photon coming from said column, can only be trusted to NOT represent the current position of the atom that emitted it. And to truly state the rotational characteristics of said galaxy, one cannot be certain they are saying a true thing, unless the immense size of the galaxy in question, and the immense distance and uncertainies involved are fully defined, as well as the perspective from which, any claims about it are made, is clear. Second area of uncertainty is the non compliance of observation of item's motions within a galaxy with Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Over the last thrity years, this problem has been solved by adding a halo of dark matter of uncertain characteristics to galaxies, with mostly consistent results, but not complete success. Other solutions are still entertained. Adjusting the laws of motion at that scale is one consideration and one I am currently entertaining, Especially in referrence to the photon travel time differencial between the sources at face of a galaxy, as opposed to the ones comings from the wings. With sources traveling a thousand miles a second, the position differential this would cause over 50,000 years is substantial. Adding all the motion back, to come up with a positional model of the galaxy, at any figured point in time, is a tremendous challenge. Third area of possibility is that ordinary matter acts in ways that we are not considering, when veiwing distant stuff. Especially not considered is the fact that material in a distant galaxy is more likely to have characteristics that the Milkyway had a million years ago, than those the Milkyway has currently. And "currently" any evidence we get of what is happening at the other end of the Milkyway is 100,000 year old news. Bottom line, there are many areas of conjecture, like considering a model of a galaxy with high porportions of large bodies consisting of metallic hydrogen (as in Jupiter) and factoring what this would mean both in gravity and in internal light absorbtion of a galaxy. Photons from behind such a body would not get here, thus rendering the photon emitting source "dark" to our eyes. And considering the size of a Galaxy there is a tremendous amount of a distant galaxy that is "hiding" behind a "Jupiter" on the near side, at any particular moment. Regards, TAR To say nothing of the tremendous amount of photons that are "blocked" by huge light emitting items at the near side of viewed galaxies. We ourselves can not see through the center of our own galaxy. Thus a large portion of our own Galaxy is "dark" to us. Same with a distant galaxy. Any item will block any item behind, from our view. Photon travelwise. How one is to figure this shadow, over time is very complex. What volume of M33 is blocked from our view, by a Jupiter placed at M33's nearest point? And considering the shadow of this "Jupiter" is moving like a negative beam, for each other lightsource in M33, the "shape" of each of the beams singulary would be hard to figure over time, and all together a really knotty problem. For just one "Jupiter". For billions? I am afraid someone else will have to do the math. I simply can not. Not laziness. Just lack of ability.

Stange, I have to get ready for work. Will think about it a bit, read up on what forcing reasoning dictates the presence of dark matter, and formulate an alternative explanation based on the thickness of galaxies presented as evidence. Track the photons and prove they do not present a momentary state of a huge thing and its rotational characteristics. Later. Regards, TAR

Strange, But it isn't that I don't see it is a small percentage. It is that I disagree that a small percentage means it can be disregarded and not factored in, as to the meaning and consequence. You are a small percentage of the population of the planet, but whether you drive or walk, or waste a thing or recycle it, makes a difference. There was once a saying, that no single snowflake feels responsible for the avalanche. The difference between the front and back of a distant galaxy is a tiny percentage of the distance between us and the front of the galaxy...so why consider the distance between the front and the back? Because it takes photons 100,000 years to make that trip, which one has to take into consideration, when attempting to describe the rotational motion of the huge area of space being viewed. If we were one foot away from the front of the galaxy in question, the 100,000 lys disparity would be a significant multiple of the distance between us and the front of, as in our example it is a tiny percentage of. Does this make our description of what we see, any different? Should it? Does being "right on top" of a galaxy or viewing one at 250 million lys distance, give us a better or worse perspective on the situation? I do not think that just because we see the thing at a very small angle we can think of it as a point source, where the distance between front and back can be discarded. If scientists DO think this distance can be ignored in the calculations of the rotation of the galaxy in question, and they think it can be conceptually considered in the equations as happening all at once, then perhaps they should not. If scientists already do take this huge time lag into consideration in their equations, then tell me that. Not that the percentage difference is too small to matter. Regards, TAR The thickness of the crust of the Earth is just a small percentage of the distance between the center of the Earth and the far reaches of our atmosphere. It is in some ways analogous to pond scum building up at the downwind end of a pond. It morphs into mountains and folds, and wears down and changes shape as per the effects of wind and water and bulldozer and dynamite. The continents have shifted and grand motions are at foot as plates progress this way and that and India plows into Asia and lifts the highest mountains on Earth...yet we dig two feet into soil, lay concrete, build a foundation and a house on top and call it stable, raise a family and live a lifetime in it. Small percentages do not mean insignificance. Especially at the scales we are talking here.

Strange, Well, I seem to be frustrating you. So I will stop. My intention was to provide an another angle with which to attempt to explain the motion of distant galaxies, by requiring a mapping and keeping track of each photon, first from what we see and second by where and when the thing was that released it, and third by where and how we might imagine that source being currently arranged in the universe. The switch between there and then, here and now, and there now is not an easy one for me. The transformations are very complicated and each aspect of the transformation needs to be thought out. I am pleased to hear that scientists have these aspects all figured out. I am glad it all makes sense to you. I will leave you with your crystal clear view. Regards, TAR

Strange, I didn't mean you. I meant one that was describing the density of dark matter...etc. My "problem" with the percentage volume of dark matter, within the solar system and then the galaxy and then the galaxy 250 million lys from here, and then the universe as a whole, is that one can not see the universe all at once. One can imagine it all at once, but one can not see it all at once. Since seeing a thing has a lot to do with photons, it has direct relationship to the "direction" question raised in this thread. And imagining the way the universe works has something to do with keeping track of photons. Where they were emitted and in what direction, and at what point in time, as in how old was the universe, when the thing was emitted, and where is that atom now, and what is it currently doing. With this "image" being structured in my mind. one can not easily flip back and forth in grain size and consider the density of a thing so large as to not all be happening at once. The same equation can not be employed on two different scales, without making the propler transformations. And these transformations require clear definition of what material you are considering, when you make your densitiy announcement. That is to say, that there is only one instance of a particular atom, or particle of dark matter and you have to be clear as to when you are counting it, in reference to another. Example. Let's take one atom of hydrogen in our Sun and call it atom 1,989,489,384,809,847. This singular particular atom is releasing photons at the incredible rate SwansonT described earlier. It has been doing so in a similar fashion for 13.8 billion years. Its photons are spread out throughout the universe, and are reaching, and have reached, and will reach disparate atoms, or "observers" all over the universe. Let's take atom 1,989,489,384,809,847 and consider the photons it released yesterday at 3am for the one second between 3am and one second after 3. Those particular photons exist in a spherical shell 186 thousand miles thick, about 20 billion miles in radius, centered on the position of the Sun at 3am yesterday. Every photon atom 1,989,489,384,809,847 ever released can be imagined as existing somewhere in the universe, in an appropriate position consistent with where it was released and when it was released, and it what direction it was released. We on Earth only see certain of these photons released by atom 1,989,489,384,809,847 at 3am yesterday, and we only see the ones we see for a second at 3:07am yesterday. The others are elsewhere now, far away and getting farther every second. They still exist, and are part of the present of some other observer. The photons we recieve from some star in a galaxy whose motion we are observing, to determine the density of gravitationally involved matter, also came from a particlar atom in a particular Sun, at a particular time and was released in a particular direction, that wound up here in some recording device of ours at a particular time. And an atom on the other side of that distant galaxy also released a photon that wound up at our recording device about the same time...except that photon was released 100 thousand years prior the one from the front. Under these circumstances, stating "how" that galaxy is rotating is somewhat ambiguous. And saying that you need some "extra" non photon emitting material to account for this motion, is somewhat arbitrary. My suggestion here, is not that we do not see what we see, but that what we say what we see means it not necessarily properly and completely thought out, and does not completely fit together. The density of a Galaxy would have to be figured in relationship to some volume and said volume would have to be "frozen" in time, to ensure that no two particles were counted twice, or missed. To do this properly one would have to entertain formulae that corrected for distance and time lag, in some concentric sphere shell manner, starting from some defined point in space and time. I would think, anyway. It just seems to me that these considerations are NOT built into the equations that force the requirement for dark matter to exist, and I would feel better about dark matter, being a requirement, if I did not feel that the huge size of distant galaxies, and the inability to "freeze" such immense areas into one moment, was an unfactored, consideration. Regards, TAR

Strange, No I am not suprised that scientists already know the stuff I think about. It is primarily because of what other people (scientists) have figured out and observed that I have facts to deal with to begin with. It is the implications of and combination of the facts that I am trying to address here. Normally, as I mentioned before, things are true in more than one way. That is, things fit, and balance and trade off. You take the thing away from there and put it here and it subtacts from there and adds to here and everything still adds up. You keep asking me to do the math and this is fine, the math is good, but the problem needs to be set up. The constraints of the problem need to be defined. You have to tell me over what time frame you are figuring the number of atoms in the universe, and also tell be what your boundry conditions are, in terms of how far out, you are counting. Are you assuming we are counting atoms in the observable universe or in the entire universe. And how are we handling stuff that used to send photons to this location but now have receeded from us, due to the expansion of space to the point where a photon released today will never reach this location? Is there not at least two ways to account for such an atom? In the one sense, we will never see photons it is releasing now. In the other sense, we are still seeing photons it released before. So there is likely material that used to be in a causal relationship with us, that is no longer in such a relationship. How are we handling that stuff, in the count. A math equation is fine, but if you apply the ideal gas law to something the size of the universe, you have to tell me how you are handling the vast distances involved and still imagining the thing happening at once. How many instances of a particular atom are you entertaining in any particular consideration. Lets say we are talking about the atoms in a nearby star. Are you talking about how many there are now, or are you talking about how many there were releasing photons toward us two years ago when they released them. Just like know the definitions and make sure that one set is being held throughout the calculation, so that there is no double counting or anything missed. Regards, TAR

Strange, Well, here is the problem. If it is undetectable when its here and now, what makes it detectable when its over there, then? And number 2, if its over there, then, what connection does it have with us, here, now? That is, what does it matter? It seems to me, that mathematically, doing the arithmetic, the time lag between a photon arriving here from the front of a galaxy 250 million lys from here and one coming from the back of the same galaxy would be highly significant. Grainsize wise, in your calculations of dark matter density in said distant galaxy, you figure the whole galaxy at once. I am suggesting that this is not actually possible. What is happening at the front of the galaxy and what is happening at the back, according to the photons we receive today, are not contemporary events. Not contemporary with events here, now, and not contemporary with each other. The photons received from the front were released 250,000,000 years ago, the photons received from the back where released 250,100,000 years ago. 100,000 years is a significant portion of the lifetime of the universe if the universe is just 3,800,000,000 years old. There hence are several ways that one can imagine that distant galaxy, all of them being incorrect in one way or another. Either the place is considered one grain at one time, in which case one is not taking into account the immense size of the thing, and the separation between events at the front and the back, or the thing is considered a massive collection of massive stars, spread out over a hundred million lys distance, in which case talking about its density at any particular time, is a misnomer, because you have not identified the moment in which you are taking the measurment. For instance, let's take two examples of things that scientists have said about the universe. One, I remember somewhere hearing that based on calculations and extrapolations of the ideal gas laws, one can figure the exact amount of atoms in the universe. Really? Number of atoms then, or number of atoms now? Before a heavier element was forged in a stellar furnace, or after? Two, I remember hearing that based on current observations, and calculations, the expansion of the universe is accelerating. What does that mean? If we are basing our calculations on current observations, we are basing them on old news, and the old position of material that released photons a long time ago. If we are basing our calculations on the projected positions of all the material that hypothetically exists currently in the universe, we are speculating, because we will not recieve any evidence of the correctness of our projection of what and where an item 250 million lys from here is currently, until 250 million years from now. So what exactly could the statement "the universe's expansion is currently accelerating" be based on? Speculation, with is speculation, or observation which is not of current affairs? Regards, TAR

Strange, I never heard about the "settling down into the plane of the galaxy" thing. Seems like there is a gravitational item (dark matter) that does not do this, as ordinary matter would. However, even though all the gas and dust and clumps of matter models have problems, the "dark matter" idea in general has problems. One of the big ones, in my mind, is the fact that we have done so well without it, for our entire history, up to a few decades ago. How did we miss it before? I was, for many years, a troubleshooter. Answered a hotline, where experienced techs called to get solutions to tough problems. We often, (almost all the time) found solutions where others were baffled. We had each other, and the engineers that designed the equipment, at our disposal...I had a rule, sort of a joke rule, but a workable one..."its got to be something". I understand that various "ordinary matter" models have been discounted, for one reason or another, and things keep pointing to the existence of some "other" type of matter that has magical properties, and does not fit exactly with everything else we know...but, this non fitting with everything else we know, is a problem. As serious a problem as dark matter not seeming to fall into the plane of the galaxy with everything else. Enough of of problem to consider if there is some aspect of the problem that we are not considering correctly. I have this "feeling" that the size of galaxy and the universe beyond, is not condusive to holding a working model in ones head. What I mean by this, is that when we build a mathematical model, there are certain portions of it that are at the scales that SwansonT knows I do not grasp. Certain portions that are not properly factored in to the model. Certain portions where a "switch" of perspective should be engaged and is not, or is engage when it should not be. In this mode of "looking for" an answer, I present the geometrical nature of the universe, and in particular the direction upon which a released photon starts out on its course. For every item in the universe that has ever released a photon, is currently releasing a photon, or will in the future release a photon, only one in a zillion head directly toward your eye. The others, go some other way. All the other ways. In this condition, that a single person is in, as a focal point and receptor of photons, from an entire universe, we can build back the reality the universe must be in, based on the small portion of photons that come our way. But we have to make transformations and understand when it is that we are seeing the image, and when it is we are imagining the thing, based upon the image we receive. If dark matter is a mysterious type of stuff, that exists everywhere, but not like what we expect, then it exists here and now as well. In between the center of the Galaxy and us, inbetween the nearest star and us, inbetween the Sun and the Earth, inbetween the clouds and our eyes, inbetween the TV and our eyes, inbetween our hands if we hold them a foot apart, inbetween our thumb and forefinger should we hold them an inch apart, and inbetween the molecules we gaze at under an electron microscope. If such a thing was around, we would not have missed it...all these years. If it was real, it would now be explaining stuff, that always perplexed us before, not perplex us where we before understood. Presentation here, is just trying to "imagine" the universe that way it is, the way it has to be, the way that "works" with no problems, one way or the other. Regards, TAR There is an infinity of directions one can imagine, from a point. An infinity of directions in which a photon can leave an atom. An electron in an atom in Cleveland could shed its photon toward my left eye in New Jersey, or toward my right eye, or toward my nose. This "type" of thing, the shedding of photons, goes on all the time, everywhere, and alway has and will for the forseeable future. When imagining distant galaxies, at the same time as imagining distant stars in our own, at the same time as looking at the lamp across the room, there is a time concern that is not necessarily correctly imagined, consistently across the board. The "position" of the elements we "see", as a consequence of a photon reaching our equipment, is not probably correct, now, as if one could rely upon the thing being where and how it appears now...actually. The far away stuff is wrong, in this geometrical sense. It is not "actually" in that direction, necessarily, at the moment. Do the calculations of galaxy spin, especially galaxies 250 million lys from here, take these large scale problems securely into account? Are are the proper transformations made? There is, after all, quite a time lag between the photons coming from this side of a distant galaxy and the other side of a distant galaxy. Enough perhaps to cause an optical/mental illusion. Regards, TAR