Star-struck

The wrong thing done for the right reason is still wrong! The Nazi's certainly furthered science and medicine, and we can benefit from that, but their means and methods were disgusting. They regarded Jews and Gypsies as less than human and not deserving of ethical treatment. We know this to be flawed thinking. To say they were humanists is ridiculous. Humanism stresses an individual's dignity and worth. We would be foolish though not to let good come from this evil!

science of mind is what brings that which cannot be named, because structure hinders the studier from comprehending the mind in it's true state,

How can the universe have no center? There must be an absolute center. The center doesn't necessarily have to stay the center for too long, depending on how the universe is expanding, but at any given moment there must be a center. As for what can tear...well the fabric of space of course. What if predictions are correct and such things as black holes can bend light waves? You may think you are looking out at something straight ahead of you when in reality it could be quite skewed. Some postulate that this could be the case and that the universe could actually be much smaller than we think. Some have gone as far to say, based on this model, that while we think we may be observing a distant galaxy we may actually and unwittingly be observing our own.

At any rate, the universe is expanding. Will it reach a certain point where it can' t expand any more and be pulled back to the center? Or...maybe when it reaches that point the center itself will tear and begin to expand itself so that the universe is shaped like a ring. Maybe then it will tear into two separate universes. Who knows!

Following is the definition of empirical: Main Entry: em·pir·i·cal Function: adjective Date: 1569 1 : originating in or based on observation or experience <empirical data> 2 : relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory 3 : capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment <empirical laws> 4 : of or relating to empiricism How then can it be impossible to prove empirical theory?

I appreciate that honesty! Too many people seem to think to rigidly when it comes to things that are all based on as of yet unprovable theories. Seems to me that the greatest breakthroughs often come when someone dispatches with "traditional" thinking and goes outside the box.

So what if the theories that are the bedrock of what we think we know turn out to be all wrong?

Oh yeah, you are right...because one theory is "predicted" by another theory. And the theory it is "predicted" by, relativity, doesn't lose a little face every time there is another breakthrough in quantum mechanics.

That is conjecture. What proof can you offer that the big bang wasn't an explosion? The definition of "explosion" is:"a large-scale, rapid, or spectacular expansion or bursting out or forth." I think we can classify the big bang as an explosion albeit not today's standard definition of the word. Most people associate an "explosion" with a combustible. Not necessarily true. If I overfill a balloon with water it will explode. Anyways, based on your theory what houses space in which it can expand?

What do we know of explosions? We know that when an explosion occurs there is an intense outward force which throws everything away from the source of the explosion. This creates a vacuous expanse in the vacinity of the source of the explosion. Once the outward force expands out as far as it can based on the force of the explosion, it collapses back towards the source of the explosion having been drawn in by the vacuum. So, we know that the Universe is expanding. Eventually, the Universe will reach the limit of expansion based on the force of the original explosion. Space is a vacuum. The Universe will contract in on itself back to the source of the original explosion. All this matter, anti-matter, and energy contracting and compacting in on itself will cause another explosion. Another "Big Bang". This could keep happening like a perpetual yo-yo going up and down. Due to our perception of time we look at it as happening over billions and billions of years. In reality it could all be happening in nano-seconds. Just thinking out loud.

If you breed all the ethnicities together who is to say that the resultant being would be optimal for it's environment? You would invariably over-write certain traits, that are crucial for one environment, with dominant traits from another. Adaptation, dare I say evolution, works fine on it's own. Why mess with it? I've not heard of cures to diseases differing for different ethnicities. Enlighten please!

Schools, such as those that make up America's Ivy League, and England's Oxford and Cambridge, do certainly hold themselves to high academic standards. Why though, if they are comitted to the intrinsics of acedemia, do they charge such outrageous tuitions? This delimits lower and middle class intellects from obtaining an education worthy of their capabilities. I think the bottom line, sadly, is one of greed and ego vice a genuine desire to provide top notch education. Imagine an educational institution who's goal was to find the brightest people irregardless of socioeconomic class! That would truly provide a diversity of intellects that could really make advancements.

Okay, then back to your group of 1,000,000 vice group of 10...of course a group of 1,000,000 would likely be far more developed than a group of 10. Their solution to a problem would likely be one that is more advanced than the group of 10 could conceive of. For the sake of the discussion though this is irrelevant. For the sake of the discussion it only matters that the two groups are similar in size and diversity.

I find it amazing how you continuously pick an insignificant part of a thought, one that has little to do with the main point, and debate it. Are you just argumentative?

I read somewhere, no kidding, that the speed of thought is somewhere around 88 miles per hour.

I recall, vaguely, an article I read a year or so ago where some type of experiment was being performed in which light was sent, maybe in a vacuum and the time it took to travel from the source to the target was recorded with syncronized clocks on both ends. It turned out that the light actually somehow reached the target chronologically before it was sent (according to the syncronized clocks). I don't remember the specifics though or what ever came of it. Ring a bell with anyone?

You are correct. Counter to what many think, I think that is all we could hope to achieve by travelling faster than the speed of light.

You are correct, but the fact that time can be broken down into further units of measure (hours, minutes, etc) doesn't negate the fact that time is a unit of measure itself. Time is the parent unit just as the Metric System is the parent unit that includes meters, etc. Why agrue symantecs though. I think we understand if not agree with each other on the meat of the matter. Now, I read a web page recently that states that time travel is possible if one can travel faster than the speed of light. While I certainly agree that if you travel away from something at a rate much faster than light, and then look back at your intended subject, you can observe past light emissions/reflections from your subject. You would have to perfect a way of looking back on your subject in a way as to achieve suitable magnification, and overcome the dissipation of the light the subject reflects, so you could actually see something smaller than a galaxy with any detail. But travelling away from something at a rate faster than the speed of light will only take you further from that point in space more quickly. Nothing exists except for here and now...unless you subscribe to the movie reel theory of time. The light an object emits or reflects is not the object itself. You cannot travel to it as though it was a place where things are happening. If I shoot my reflection in a mirror I will not be harmed (until my wife gets home ).

Time is solely a unit of measure. Most people think of time to concretely. Time itself does not exist. Think of the unit of measure we call the meter. A meter doesn't exist. There are things that are a meter in length, or several meters, but there is no meter. Therefore, time does not have an inherent direction. It starts where you start measuring and stops when you stop. You can measure from past to current, or current to past. If you believe that "time" is a chronology of events then the past has happened, is over, and can't be travelled to. The future hasn't happened yet, and therefore doesn't exist, and can't be travelled to. In order for time travel (as most people define it) to be possible everything that will ever happen, from the beginning of "time" to the end, would have to happen simultaneously with our consciousness traversing each moment. It would be like an old reel to reel movie. The movie is complete, from beginning to end, but you can only view each frame in order and at a predetermined speed. With a movie, of course, you have rewind and fast forward. You can jump to any point in the movie you fancy. You would need only discover a rewind/fast forward mechanism for traversing to each of times frames to "time" travel. This again assumes that everything is happening simultaneously.

I feel you Tom! Some of these people get caught up in symantics and of having to be right all the time. There is no right or wrong when you are talking about something that doesn't exist outside of Hollywood! All science is magic until it can be done! Lightening was magic to Native Americans until science proved what it truly was. Maybe science will one day find a way to remove ego from an otherwise decent person. Imagine what they could accomplish if they weren't worried about being right all the time.

I realize and inferred that there are other sources of fuel. Nothing that is ready to take to place of fossil fuel on a large scale though.

Its all speculative....there are no answers. That is what is great about science. We can die hard believe in something one day and find out the next that it is incorrect. We don't ( or at least shouldn't ) mock the people who came up with the erroneous thought. We praise them for being able to think out of the box and we realize that being wrong, when realized, helps to steer us in the right direction. Unfortunately, ego all too often gets in the way.

There isn't a clearly defined definition for teleportation. If you think there is, you have been watching too much Star Trek. Therefore, berating someone for thinking outside of this loosely defined box is not appropriate. Teleportation per most peoples defination may not be possible. Deconstructing someone on the atomic level, transporting the atoms at an almost instantaneous speed, and reconstructing them elsewhere is pretty far fetched. This is the typical definition of "teleportation". Some other method, perhaps the one suggested in this post, may eventually be possible that will produce the desired end result of "teleportation" only by a different means. The end result should be the ability to transfer someone's consciousness vice their body. As long as you can recreate the person's consciousness you can "teleport" them this way. Afterall, the body is just the container for the consciousness. So, the fact that the body itself would be made up of entirely new atoms is irrelevant. The real question here is whether or not our consciousness is an energy free of matter or if it is irrevocably linked to the chemical bonds that form in the brain to make memories and thought. If it is the former then recreating the physical being elsewhere won't transport the "life force". Now lets inject an ethical question. Say you can "transport" someone in this way. Should you replace any damaged atoms during the reconstruction phase so as to rid the "traveller" of disease and aging?

There really isn't a viable replacement for fossil fuel energy. At least not anything that can currently and readily be mass produced, save maybe nuclear energy. You are correct though, there could be via science if politics would only allow it.

I fear that our curiosity and development will only bring about our own demise. We are rapidly reaching a point where the planet can not sustain our needs for food and energy. Via science and medicine we have prolonged the average lifespan such that population continues to grow at a rate where the plane cannot sustain it. Even with our technological advancements, which more often than not rape and pillage the planet, we cannot find a way to feed all our peoples. Opec says that we will exhaust the planet of all its majore oil reserves within the next 70 years. Other experts say 40! WIth everything becoming computerized we are losing basic skills that took hundreds if not thousands of years to develope. For instance, I watched a program last night on the timber industry. Saw mills are all computerized now so that they get the most out of each log. People who work at saw mills no longer know how to produce timber from logs. They know how to run computers. If some cataclysmic event took place, such as nuclear war or total loss of electricity due to lack of fossil fuels, and we no longer had machines to do things for us how would we survive being that no one possesses any skills any more?