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between3and26characterslon, Thanks for the link. I have read such explanations before. The sensible parts, are part of my thinking, and part of my model of the world, already. That still leaves the "for no apparent reason" parts. In these parts, as in the "twins" descriptions, the "logic" stops, and the random application of terms starts. For instance, logically speaking, on the way out, both twins will see the other's clock slow, because each successive tick of the other's clock is further away and will take a longer time to reach the other's position. On the way back, the distance between the twins is closing, and both twins should see the other's clock ticking faster than their own. In both cases, each twin's clock is ticking normally, and as far as I can figure, how this ticking "appears" to the other, is not the crucial consideration, in terms of how many ticks, in their own reference frame, each twin counts. The traveling twin is traveling at .88c and it's going to take her 5.11 years worth of ticks to reach Alpha Centuri. Even if her twin gets hit by a bus, as soon as she leaves. And it will take her 5.11 years worth of her own ticks to return. Lets call it "the stay at home twin dies" condition. She is still 10.22 years worth of ticks older, when she returns. Relativity, has nothing to do with it. If a moving clock ticks slower, then something is slowing it down. I am still not clear on why scientists don't want to look for the reason why particles whizzing through a powerful magnetic field, take longer to decay. So it happens at a rate that fits a formulae. I fail to see the logic for assuming time dilation, and don't know the real reasons. But I believe there SHOULD be an explanation. Time dilation has no meaning to me. I don't understand when and why one should consider time has slowed. In most of the cases used to describe how the world appears to different observers, it make perfect sense to me, why it appears so. I have no reason to believe there is any situation where magic needs to be involved. Regards, TAR2

DrRocket, Well yes, you are right, I know only a few words of your language. And as out of place as I would be in Madrid, discussing the fine points of Spanish law, in Spanish, I am here. (I know only a few words of Spanish) But this does point out a philosophical thing. Math is a language. And any language is only understood by others who are fluent in the same tongue, who follow the same rules, who understand "what is meant" by a particular word, used in concert with other words, in a particular context. But here, you are insinuating that math is not just the language of Physics, but that Physics is the language of the universe, and to not understand math, is to not understand the universe. I disagree. I, with my halting math skills, still have full access to reality, and know what time and space are. What is true, is true, and will remain true, whether I understand math or not. A formula, describing the spin and position and velocity of every quark in a grain of salt, at a designated moment in time, from a designated reference quark's frame of reference, would not only be a very very long and complicated set of equations, but it would only be true for a moment, AND it would only be a very long and complicated statement in the language of Physics. It would not BE a grain of salt. And you and I both know the meaning of "a grain of salt" and the true reality those ordinary words represent. Regards, TAR2

Swansont, Yes but the question is "whose" other frame? Some descriptions of reality, put an army of observers, everywhere, to determine what is going on. This, in essence, is putting ourselves in their shoes, and determining what it is that we would experience, would we be in those shoes...but perhaps, since this goes to Owl's new thread on subjectivity and objectivity, I'll check that one out, and see if WE can come to any determinations. Peer review, you know, is important, when attempting to know "the thing, as it is". Regards, TAR2

P.S. Not that I am not perplexed by why I consider now, now, rather than when I started typing this post. I remember doing that, and I predict I will finish this post script, but I seem to exist on that border line between that which I remember, and that which I predict. My "current" state, seems to be now. Perhaps we cannot consider "time" without considering what it is for a human. The periods between one event and the next, whether imagined or remembered seem to form the structure of time. That reality itself deals in cycles and repeating periods is a given. That notice of these events also takes a period of time is a given. The distance from an event establishes a period of time it will take to get to us. All these notions are "built" in to our consciousness. And we see these things happen, and know they happen, even when we are not experiencing them. We have the year, and the day, and the seasons, and ticking of a pendulum, and the beating of our heart, to mark the passage of time. Perhaps it is EDPP, after all. Regards, TAR2 Sorry Pantheory, I did not see your post till after I posted my postscript to my post. We posted at the same TIME! 'Cept I was a bit dilated.

SwansonT, I as well accept the time dilation found in the multitude of experiments, with the cesium clocks and the the muons, and the short half life events that seem to us to take longer at high velocities. Something is indeed going on. But I prefer to think that things happen "as if" something is following a geodesic or not, in regards to the usefulness of the formulae in predicting events, given certain parameters, rather than thinkiing that space and time are some wierd thing we know nothing about, that works in some mysterious manner. Often in looking at drawings and descriptions and plots of reality, I notice that whole dimensions are dropped out, and you are looking at derivitives of functions, that show "something" about the nature of things and their relationship to each other, but not EVERYTHING about the situation. It is hard for a laymen, with just a little reading and math training, to know what has been left out, what has been ignored, what has been approximated, what has been assumed, and what comparisons will and will not map nicely back to reality. For instance, in the "clocks run slower" situation, is that ALL clocks? Take the twin traveler. Out her front window she sees Alpha Centuri extremely blue shifted, out her rear window, she sees the Sun extremely red shifted. Can she not figure out how fast she is going, by the comparison of the frequencies and wavelengths she is seeing, compared to the frequency graph of dark body radiation? And why could she not construct a clock with these frequencies? Or if she is not allowed to look at where she has been and where she is going, and ALL the physical processes are foreshortened and slowed, then she would probably be blind. The frequencies hitting her cones would not be the ones that cause the cones to fire, the eye would not focus right, perhaps, as well. Would the bearings in her lazy susan still be round? Would the foreshortening of the length of her pendulum clock cause it to tick faster and counter act the "slowing" effect of relativity? I do not know the meaning of ALL physical processes are slowed. If her clock is a viscous liquid making its way down an inclined plane under the influence of the 1g spin of the craft that gives her gravity, what about the vicous liquid has changed? Its viscosity? Its friction against the board? Why would it not procede down the board as it would on Earth? Just not sure what physics to carry into the craft and which to leave behind. Regards, TAR2

DrRocket, Thank you for the description, but although I understand what you are saying, I am finding it hard to accept a reality, without a mechanism. With our imaginations, and formulae, we can build models that work, that do not necessarily have to actually fit reality. It seems very strange to me, for instance, that you can say that we figured the universe pretty much out, down to how old it is and how much stuff is in it, and what the nature of the stuff is. All this from observing photons telling us what the universe used to be like. Which is fine, we are pretty smart, and able to make ratios and analogies, map one thing to another, and put ourselves in another location and time and imagine what it must be like. But only because we understand the mechanisms involved. And have built back a model that we "predict" should be the way the entire universe is "now". The Newtonian "notion" of space and time, past and future, here and there, is how I appear to understand things, as a human. I can not "pretend" to understand them elsewise. I can slow things down, speed them up, make them larger and smaller, scale this way and that, but I don't know the meaning, of "coming back aged less". Compared to what? Number of heartbeats was smaller? Would the traveller "feel" like she was forshortened? What are the implications of such a voyage? Would the photons her ship is running into, eminating from Alpha Centuri (if that was her turn around point) be mostly of the x-ray and gamma and cosmic ray variety? Would they burn her up? Would they "age" her? Wrinkle her skin? Make her come back looking like she had aged 100 years? (not to mention how long it would take to get up to that speed at an acceleration that would not tear her apart.) Would the "light pressure" of the high energy photons from Alpha Centuri, hitting her forward shields impede her progress, causing her to have to maintain a constant acceration, through their electromagnetic field? How would this affect her clock, and the equations? In my book, reality fits together, is always true, and always is at least a little more complex than the model of it we hold in our heads. For you to say that I can not properly model reality, without understanding differential geometry is counter intuitive. It is the equations that are not complete. Reality is already complete. And if reality is doing something, there is a reason for it, a mechanism involved, a way that that thing fits into the whole picture. If something doesn't make sense, its because there is an aspect of what is going on that I don't understand. I can accept that I do not know differential equations, but I cannot accept that there is not an explanation of the who, where, when, why and how of a journey that takes place within my view, within my lifetime. There must be mechanisms that cause the effects. Otherwise, they wouldn't happen. Regards, TAR2

Janus and Swansont, But then he would know his clock was wrong, because he had covered 9 light years distance, in 4.36 years? He would clock himself going over twice the speed of light! Presumably when he was halfway to Alpha Centuri with the Sun and Alpha Centuri both 2.25 light years away, he would know it would take him, at 0.866c, which is 1.155 years/light year, 2.6 more years to make it to Alpha Centuri, and would know he thus had travelled for 2.6 years, and could recalibrate his faulty clock. Swansont, I understand that different "here and nows" will see the rest of the universe differently. The order of events, for instance, and the passage of time on a distant moving clock, but I was using the twins to investigate the nature of time, that is why I posted in the time thread. And I understand that you have to define the reference frames you are using to discuss what is happening when. But there is a hypothetical reference frame in which all points in the universe are the same age. This frame itself, cannot actually be witnessed, because the points in it are separated by distance, and an event in one spot does not actually occur in another spot, until the photons announcing the event arrive. So for the twins, I think it important for each twin, to on their own, reference this hypothetical reference frame, where all points are the age of the universe, including themselves, and with that knowledge, and their knowledge of the distance between themselves and another point, be able to figure how long events will take to make the trip between, and how long they will take, at the speed they themselves are going, to make the trip. Regards, TAR2 P.S. Not related directly to this thread, but since, this discussion has been moved, I will stick it here. Were the 4 Cesium clocks that were flown around the world, westward and eastward and so on, positioned in the plane in different orientations, or were they all facing the same way, in relation to the direction of the plane. I don't remember seeing a description of how they were placed. It might matter, considering the photon travel time between the cesium atom and the detector. Would it matter if the detector was foward in the plane to the cesium atom, or the cesium atom ahead of the detector? Or the photon travelling UP rather than DOWN to the detector?

P.S. By the way, how does the high speed twin know when to turn around and come back? P.P.S Let's say the traveliing twin was instructed to go to Alpha Centauri 4.5 light years distant, turn around and come back. It would take him about 5 years to get there, he would be running his engines for 5 years, and he would be five years older when he got there. He would run his engines for 5 years to get back. And by my thinking would be 10 years older when he got back. It would not matter that he was seeing the Earth age very slowly as he was outrunning the photons on the way out, and that he would see the Earth in fast motion on the way back, it would still add up to 10 years of travel. Probably also would "see" what was in front of him in higher frequencies/shorter wavelengths than normal and what he was moving away from in lower than normal frequencies/longer wavelengths.

Olvin, I am not really seeing the pattern you are suggesting. Regards, TAR2

Swansont, Don't know who you are referring to as gas bags, hoping to overturn relativity theory, but I would like to check in as someone who does not understand what relativity theory is saying about the universe. I see an experiment where two in sync clocks are removed from each other, one follows one path into another inertial frame, and when rejoined the clocks are no longer in sync. I just want to know what happened, where it happened, when it happened and why it happened, so I can fit the forces, laws and combinations, into my model of the world. I can take ratios and make analogies and transforms, and such, in a general, uneducated, natural way. I can't do the math. Just looking for the explanations. Just need things to fit together in my model, in the same manner that they fit together, for real. For instance if all matter in the universe is in actuality the same age, that is t zero being the big bang, and t "age of the universe" being the age of any matter in it now, I do not know the meaning of our near C traveler coming back 5 years younger. Does that mean that the matter in the ship and body of the traveler is "age of the universe" minus 5 years old? If so, then the universe would be filled with matter of different ages, if matter can leave an inertial frame, and return to it. Just looking for a point of reference from which to understand the rest. Regards, TAR2

Owl, On the other hand, perhaps EDPP makes some sense, along the lines of looking for the mechanisms that define, or create time in the first place. Perhaps we only get confused when we expect the event to look the same, to every "here and now". Since the universe is very large and an event anywhere is not instantly noticed by the rest of the universe, it may be the delay in notification that actually is what time IS. To expect that you can visualize two events, at disparate locations in the universe, at the same time, ignores the mechanisms of time, and the actual delay in notification, if ignored, takes time out of the consideration of the two disparate events, making it very hard indeed to "see" what time is. Even when an observer is only inches away from an event, the event actually needs to have occurred, prior the registration of the event upon the instruments of the observer. The registration of the first event, actually is a second event that happened after some time had passed. For instance, if an electron in an atom falls to a lower energy level and releases a photon, the event is noticed by a photon detector, which presumably works by having the arrival of the photon, cause another event, which will "mirror" the first event in an analog way, depending on the energy and frequency of the notifying photon. The period of time that passes, while the photon is on its way to the detector may or may not be considered depending on what is being looked at. For instance if we are measuring the period of time, until the next photon emission from that atom, the period between the departure of the first and second photon from the atom will match the period of time between the arrival of the first and second photon at the detector, and in essence the distance (and time) between the events can be discounted. As long as you know you are discounting it in the measurement of the two events, AND the detector is in the same rest frame as the event. If on the other hand, the event of the photon release and the event of the photon detection, are not happening in the same rest frame, then the distance and time between the events becomes important, because it changed between the first release and the second, and thus needs to be factored in to the measurement of the duration of the time between the two releases. Regards, TAR2 Owl, Never quite understood the near C traveler coming back 10 years later, aged only 5 years. Let's say for instance the traveller's "clock", is a powerful telescope, trained on the Sun and the Earth, counting the revolutions of the Earth around the Sun. On the way out, the clock would appear to the traveller to be going very slowly, the Earth hardly moving, and once he made his turn and started back, the Earth would appear to making its orbit quite smartly. If in total, his clock counts 10 revolutions, when he returned, he would have been gone for 10 years, seen each revolution occurring, and have no particular reason to not be 10 years older. Regards, TAR2

Owl, I don't know about the EDPP being better than what we already have. Already Kant has figured that time and space are our two "pure" intuitions. As such we are "given" them already, and know what they are. And the time we are always in is now, and the place we are always at is here. This gives us a frame of reference, on both counts, from which we can determine and know about other moments, (those that we remember, and those that we predict) and other places (those distant from us, and those inside us.) And we have this ability to put ourselves in the shoes of another. Take the perspective of another "here and now". The findings of Physics, are about how the universe behaves, what rules it goes by, how it fits together, what must be the case, from the perspective of a certain other "here and now" if all the known rules are to hold (which they have proven to actually do, or they would not be accepted as true.) In this manner, the observer (another "here and now") on the near C fly by WOULD measure the Earth and its distance from the Sun the way Physics say he/she would. The distance you would measure and the time you would measure, from your "here and now" would not change because of this. The event durations of the physical processes that you measure are not universal absolutes. They only measure so, from your here and now. From our fly by guy, the event duration of the same physical processes would measure differently. But the fly by guy, using the laws of physics, can make the calculations and transforms, to your here and now, and know how you would measure it. Regards. TAR2

Olvin, Except, if you make arrows showing the direction of spin of three gears arranged together in a triangle, you will find that if the first is clockwise, and the second counter clockwise, the third will be conflicted in terms of which direction it should spin. Gear 1 is telling gear three to spin counter-clockwise, and gear two is telling gear three to spin clockwise. In other words, none of the three will spin at all. If you don't believe me, find three gears of the same diameter, with the same size and number of teeth and put them together in a triangle. Nail them each in their center hole with a nail, to a board to give them each and axis to spin on. Then try to spin any of the gears. Nothing will move. Now try it with four gears in a square. They will spin, Your diagram showed a hexagonal pattern. If you would extend your arrows all the way around, you would see they conflict with each other, not support each other. Your system, as drawn, would grind to a halt. Find a geometrical arrangement, in three dimensions, of dense packed spheres, that will support each others spin. Otherwise, your model doesn't work. And if your model doesn't work, it cannot be a model of reality, because reality does work. Regards, TAR2 P.S. Even 6 gears in a hexagonal pattern will spin, but not with a gear in the center, as a dense packed arrangement would have. But I am thinking in two dimensions, and we have three to work with. I believe a dense pack situation with four intersecting hexagonal planes, will yield as well, three intersecting square planes. I don't remember, but maybe there is an arrangement that would work.

Sellsword, Maybe it was a lightning flash, so close that the sound came at the same time, and you were in a sensory overload condition. (It's said for instance that in a bar with really loud music, you lose your sense of taste, so the bartender could be serving you anything, and you wouldn't know the difference.) Maybe such an overload of sudden strong firing of all the cones in your eyes at once would cause you to not notice the sound. And for a moment, since your cones had all fired everything they had, it took a moment for the chemicals to regenerate. And maybe there is something about the red cones that regenerate faster, so you saw red before the other colors came back. Or maybe lightning is more yellow and blue than pure white, so you had temporarily used up all your green and blue cone juice, and still had some red juice in reserve. So you saw red, until the other cones recovered. Regards, TAR2 P.S. From hyperphysics "Current understanding is that the 6 to 7 million cones can be divided into "red" cones (64%), "green" cones (32%), and "blue" cones (2%) based on measured response curves. They provide the eye's color sensitivity. The green and red cones are concentrated in the fovea centralis . The "blue" cones have the highest sensitivity and are mostly found outside the fovea, leading to some distinctions in the eye's blue perception."

Olvin, I can't get a dense packed collection of spheres all spinning in the same direction, due to the direction of force at their contact points. If you line up a bunch of gears and turn the first one counter-clockwise, it will cause the second in line to turn clockwise, which will cause the third in line to turn counter-clockwise... If you took two gears spinning at the speed of light, both in the same direction, and put them together, all the teeth would grind off, and there would be no friction left between the gears, to transfer any force, or if the teeth were mighty strong, both gears would grind to a halt. So two gears touching will spin in opposite directions. Three gears touching in a triangle won't spin at all. Take a dense pack sphere situation, with each sphere touching 12 others, with friction at their surface touch points, and tell me how you could get any of the spheres, spinning on any axis. Much less get them all spinning in the same direction. Regards, TAR2

Marat, I may have gotten the idea from Spinoza, I am sure I read some of his thoughts in college (was a philosophy major for a couple years.) Just took me thity years to understand it. But although your argument is persuasive, I am not ready to abandon my theory that scientific thought is religious. There is a reality that humans are a part of, that is much greater in size and age than any human will ever be. Science strives to model this reality, and hence "own" it, possess it, have it, in the metaphoric, ratiowise, analog representational, pattern filling synapses of our brains, and of course our collective libraries of discoveries. We can use nature to our own advantage, we can predict her next move. But an earthquake, a tidal wave, a ruptured containment vessel, some unintended consquences, and the universe is back in the driver's seat. As a preist usurps the power of the universe and calls it his/her own, so do scientists. So much so, that scientists think they can make a determination as to whether the universe IS expanding or contracting, or has enough mass to do one or the other. How do you suppose I can check on that determination myself? Where and when am I to stand and look at the whole universe, doing one thing? (sounds like a Godlike view, only) Personally, I don't think the universe is finished doing what it does, and what it does next, locally, now, may or may not be particulary related to what it is doing elsewhere. And in anycase, the universe has not done the things its going to do next, before. So far, the universe has proven to be quite surprising. I doubt that we will ever hold her still. In fact, I know from history that such a thing is impossible. Regards, TAR2 P.S. Where in the quark does it read "TAR2 just went upstairs put some peanut butter in a bowl, sprinkled some nestles bits on it, and is about to stir it up and take a spoonful?." P.P.S. There's a million stories in the naked universe and the Earth's is just one of them. We have no way to view the latest chapter in any of the others. We just see earlier chapters of other stories, years after they were written, with none of the detail available here.

Marat, While I agree with what you say, I am exploring a couple of theories of my own that have not completely gelled yet, that are leading me in the direction of accepting God as "nature" or the universe when the term is used by another. My rationale is similar to yours, concerning "how do you get saved if you are not a Christian?" I have generalized Christ's line "no one enters the kingdom of heaven, but by me" into meaning "if you don't go by "our" rules, then you are not seeing the world right". Along the we vs. they lines we have been discussing. This "fault" in Christianity, is also strong in the Koran, where there is a mighty distinction between believers, and those who disbelieve. It seems that all religions consider themselves right, and everybody else wrong, unless they convert, and become "we"s. But theorywise, it doesn't stop with religions. This "we vs. they" can be associated with nations, philosophies, even scientific theories. To a physicist, I am an outsider, perhaps a "wanna be", but one lacking the math skills, and theoretical knowledge to really understand how the world works. They (physicists) have their leaders (priests), texts, founding fathers, rules, and special languages, that "they" understand, and the rest of us don't. But it isn't like physicists invented gravity, they just discovered its nature, for the rest of us. They do not "hold the key" to gravity. It already was, before they wrote the formulae. And it is accessable to all, persons or things. I can drop a hammer on my foot without knowing the formula. (would have a little trouble getting a rocket to Saturn though) But if I WAS a physicist, I would see the value of it, and know it was true, and feel right and proper about it and my relationship to the world. Both the physical world, and the metaphysical human world. So the theory is, we have a "religious" tendency. Probably has a "tribal" basis, and it's all bound up in identity, and the need to belong to "something" greater than ourselves. But it is easy to realize that we actually do belong to reality. And as you say, we understand other people better, if they have a common background to ourselves. (So much for "not interfering") Regards, TAR2

Moontanman, While I have a desire to see other people's answers, without any interference from me, I am interested in what you mean by "no beliefs". It seems to me, for instance, that one has to believe in a theory, to hold it. Regards, TAR2

I have noticed in discussions of theories and God, that there is a reluctance to give the holder of the theory, if it is not "us" holding the theory, the benefit of the doubt. The tendency to put the same idea in a good light when described concerning the first person, a neutral light concerning the second person, and a negative light with the third person, seems evident, and probably has some basis, in terms of how we are "set up" as humans. I am thinking it may have to do with what rules "we" go by. The topic title was written by TAR2 (me), who is an Atheist. The order of Reality,Theory,God might be God, Reality, Theory to a Theist, or Theory, Reality, God to a scientist. The people "we" identify with, are the people whose mind we already know, who go by "our" rules. On the other hand "you" don't know what you are talking about. And "they" are obviously in error. What is interesting to me is that everybody exists in, and has the same access to, the same world. But each individual goes by their "own" rules, consistent with the combination of "we" camps, that they belong to. So, the question is, in your own first person, what is it that you understand, that I don't see, that they are getting wrong? Regards, TAR2

Rigney, Nice link, the one with the 14x zoom and all. It is actually that "picture" of the entire visible universe, seen all at once, in it's "now" state, that led me to the realization that such a "picture" is impossible, except in our imaginations and model creations. Its the "picture" we see when we look up at the sky at night that depicts how the universe "really" is. For instance, if you "really" where to zoom in on a distant point in the universe, it would start out younger, and age before your eyes, as you closed in on it, and the visible light it was putting out would "look" bluer the faster you were approaching it, and the infrared would look visible, and the ultraviolet would appear to be x-rays and so on. And provided your "zoom" machine could muster the energy to up to close the speed of light, you would probably be "seeing" the approaching target, no matter what electromagnetic frequencies it was putting out, in gamma and cosmic rays. And STILL, even at that speed of zoom, it would take you over a year to zoom into the nearest star. (and you have not even left the neighborhood.) The speed of light speed limit, precludes any observer from ever "seeing" the whole universe, in a different manner, than the manner we actually do see it in. But fortunately we do have imaginations and artists and computer aided graphics to build an "accurate" model we can envision. Just as long as you remember the model is not really accurate, is not really correct, and is not actually taking into consideration how the universe would "really" look if you where to move around in it, even at the most tremendous of possible speeds. Regards, TAR2 zapatos, I am sure you are right about distances between objects increasing over a billion years, due to expansion of space. However, you will have to give me the fact that it is hard to imagine what we are using as a "standard" ruler that would have the same characteristics on both ends of a measurement that it takes a billion years to make. And its hard to know who it is that is holding the ruler. And it is hard to know what we are talking about in terms of the "position" of the object. Is it the position we see it in, that is actual? Or are we to consider the position we imagine it in "now" to be its actual position? Perhaps this is a philosophical question. The position we imagine the object to be in "now", is a metaphysical concern. The position we see it in is a physical reality, because the photons are hitting our instruments now. Regards, TAR2

Rigney, We will have to let ajb tell us what is what. I am not so far over your head, compared to ajb to not consider myself in your boat. However I will make a slight correction. I don't think you should say "billions of light years ago". A light year is a distance, not a time. I think you can safely say however that when we see something at a distance of 1 light year, we are seeing something that released the photons we are seeing, one year ago, in terms of the "now" shared by the entire universe, based on each part of it being as "old" as our "now" here on Earth. So something a billion light years away, is seen as it was when it was 12.2 billion years old. Interesting to me, is that by this reckoning I could probably safely say, that to me, I am the oldest thing in the universe. Every part of the universe is just about to do what it has not yet done, and put one more tick on the 13.2?????????????????????? billion year old clock. But to me, I put the tick on first, and I see the rest put that particular tick on, later. However, I still maintain that there is no platform, other than human imagination, where the whole universe can be seen "at once", all in the "now" state. Regards, TAR2 P.S. And to that intelligent being 1 billion light years away, you and I won't even be born, for another billion years. And she probably sees the universe much as we do, with the stuff farther away, being that much younger than her area. And SHE is the oldest thing in the universe, as far as she is concerned. P.P.S. And If we were to send her a message, and she lived to be 100, she would never get it. It would arrive at her location a billion years after her death.

ajb, Well, thank you for that. I sort of understand that gives a workable "now" reference point. Our area of the universe is a certain age, and everything we see is younger, and if we make the necessary allowances for distance we can imagine that that other area we are seeing is "now" still there, in a condition similar agewise to the situation locally. But the "here" part is still a bit illusive. We can take "here" to be at our telescope, or our city, or our continent, or our planet, or our solar system, or our galaxy, or our local cluster, or our string of galaxies, or indeed our observable universe, and even the whole thing can be thought of as "our" universe here and now. But we can't see it all at once. What conventions do we use to tell the difference between that which we see, and that which we imagine? If the question is whether the universe is speeding up or slowing down and we are going by historical data, are we not determining what the universe was doing "then" as we see it? And how do we know what size structures are carried by the expansion, intact, and what size stuctures are separated by it? Regards, TAR2 Regards, TAR2

ajb, Only laymenly familiar with scale factors and Hubble constant and the like. Its the "careful" observation of super nova, that I am not fully understanding. In equations and calculations there are always assumptions and definitions, that I am not knowledgeable of. I never know whether I "agree" with the definitions, or whether the "reference points" are compatable in the equation. I suppose I could make the assumption that better minds than mine are at work, and are reviewing each others work to catch any misapplication. But it is hard to completely trust somebody elses imagination. I am not understanding properly the idea of "now". The images of distant supernova are compiled "over time" as sparse photons are gathered one by one, to build and image of the event. Then the image is considered as how that part of the universe was, as long ago as it is deemed to be far away. We have no way to know how that part of the universe is now, except to assume that it might be like "here", "now", if it underwent the same kind of evolution and its "constants" and physics developed as one with that of our location. Not sure exactly how one can make that assumption, since, by what has already been determined, the universe has gone through various stages of inflation and expansion and potentially has left most of itself out of our reach...ever. But even considering the knowable universe, judging anything from here and now, does not put us in a position to ever "see" the entire universe at one time. We always see it later, after it has done something, by the photons that announce the event. Our imaginary eye may defeat itself in its ignorance of the time it takes for one part of the universe to actually announce itself to another part. What I mean, is there is no actual platform upon which we can stand, that can see two separated parts of the universe as doing what they are doing, now. So I am always left with a frame shift problem, and don't know the math to do the proper transforms and mapping, from one here and now, to another. Nor to I have the confidence that everybody that CAN do the math, is taking everything that needs to be taken, into account. So I am left with the question, in regards to whether the universe is speeding up, or slowing down, now, "whose here, and whose now are we talking about?" Regards, TAR2