michel123456

Isn't the Universe itself a perpetual motion device?

Something like the One-electron Universe?

Where is Bart?

I don't

With Internet Explorer I have the same issues. No problem with Firefox.

If I am not abused, in a galaxy the spiral is the cosequence of Keppler 2nd law. The objects orbit the galaxy as planets do in the solar system. If there were more planets in the solar system it would show its spiral more evidently. I began this other very interesting thread that interested almost nobody.

From my little experience a good way to receive News is "believe nothing". There is a kind of a hurry that pushes journalists or common people to spread news before anyone else. i guess news are for sale so its just a part of the economic system. Too bad, because the first information is the one that makes a point. Even when completely false, the wrong info will continue circulate sometimes for years. What happen also is that you may NOT be informed. There are filters. the same people who decide to inform you of this or that decide also to not inform you.

Sort of. An object that is at a distance from you lies in your past. The longest the distance, the longest in the past. An object that is at distance zero is in your present. An hypothetical object at negative distance would lie in your future.

Yes. negative length would produce in physics 1_negative velocity (v=d/s) 2_negative acceleration (a=d/s^2) Whatever it means. And I guess a whole bunch of negative phenomena. What I find very interesting, and intriguing, is that negative distance does not exist and negative time does not exist too. The concept of distance is linked to the concept of time and together form the concept of spacetime. Now, if one reverts theoretically both the concepts of distance AND time, it is like making a pirouette and nothing happens. Velocity keeps positive. Acceleration though

Eratosthenes (Opening the parenthesis: As much as I know, Eratosthenes measured the angle between Alexandria and a town south of Alexandria upon the tropic. That is not longitude. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#Measurement_of_the_Earth.27s_circumference cleaning the parenthesis) ---------------------------------------------------- I was thinking about this mechanism The Antikythera mechanism Here a computer generated image of the front panel, as assumed And the back panel There was only one input, from a handle on the side of the mechanism. IOW, turning the handle, you obtained a configuration of the planets on the front panel and a set of 2 indications* on the back panel. The most intriguing feature is that the back panel is mainly composed of 2 spirals (made up of half circles with different centers). And as everybody knows, a mechanism with spiral has a beginning and an end, unlike a circle. IOW you wouldn't be able to turn the handle as many turns you wanted, at some time the mechanism would reach the end. Note: upon on each pointer of the spirals had a pointer that slide into the gap of the spiral. That all makes me think that the spirals were intended to give a set of coordinates. A position. *not exactly 2, but 5 since there are 3 other small dials on the back panel.

I am not interested at all. Besides your link is broken.

Guessing: a mirror is a piece of glass that have on its rear face a film of reflective coating. see wiki The glass used to make the mirror has a thickness of about 4mm of 5 mm or more. When the glass breaks, each piece has edges of 4mm thick that reflect the light (look at the side of a glass). If i am correct all those reflections must appear in the broken glass except for the ones exactly perpendicular to the line of sight. Going to break a mirror from my mother in law to test my theory...

IMHO the block universe is the result of a wrong interpretation of time. To me, all objects are traveling in time, meaning that objects change coordinate in time. And not that object somehow "persist" in time. The commonly accepted view is that an object in spacetime is a line: IOW the object occupies in spacetime more than one set of coordinates. In my view (speculating here) an object can occupy only one set of coordinates because each set is mutually exclusive. If you are here (in spacetime) you are not there (in spacetime). You cannot be both. If you consider time the way I do then the block universe stops to exist, changing nothing to Relativity.

Not so obvious, there are many ways to unfold a cube. trying to help: hint, what if R=zero? what would be the shortest distance? Find it then unfold the cube with the 3 involved faces in continuous.

In 100 BC you have no geosynchronous satellite. But you have the planets and the moon. I don't know what precision that gives, but if you are not on a ship but on the ground, and if you can repeat your observation for several consecutive nights I guess you can get an acceptable idea of your location. Enough to put an entire island, or a city, or even a region on the world map.

O.K. let's move the goalpost a little bit. It is not a picture, it is live. You are observing the night sky for several nights from a standard position on the ground. You know the date because you have a calendar, you don't know the exact time because you don't have a clock because you are in 100 B.C. You have no telescope, all observations are with naked eyes. Also, you believe that the Earth is the center of the world. You need to find your position because you are lost on a island or because you want to draw a map. Is that achievable? Hint: you have at your disposal a mechanism that replicates the apparent motion of the planets, the sun, the moon, and the phases of the moon.

--------------- Well I was thinking that if one had a kind of mechanism that replicates the motion of the planets and especially their relative motion, he could use this mechanism to compare to what he observes in the sky. Making the mechanism coincide with observation would give him time because there is no 2 times with the same relative position of the planets. I was wondering if this system could also give the position. You surely don't mean that.

[deleted] Never mind.

Right. Your picture is a good example. At any other night, the planets will show in a different order, no? So this picture corresponds to a single night over many years, I guess, in such a way that a good astronomer could say at what time (what day of what year) was that picture taken.

I am especially interested by the planets. The stars are part of a background that rotates uniformly. But planets are seen under a specific configuration that is changing everyday and repeats every [I don't know how many] years. How many years indeed? So if I see the picture of a specific configuration of planets upon the background of the stars, I should know roughly when the picture was taken, but is that sufficient to know when and where ?

If I take a picture of the clear night sky and label on it the stars & planets appearing, in conjunction with the phase of the moon, and show this labelled picture to an astronomer, can he find from this information only when and where the picture was taken?

As a side note to the powers of ten The distance is 10 times larger in each sequence. Which means that the surface as represented is multipled by hundred, and the volume by thousand. The videos begins with the blanket (a 2D surface) that grows a hundred times in each step (and not 10 times), then the video shows the 3D universe and the spectator takes the impression that woaw the power of ten is very powerful, but as volume the image we take corresponds to an increase of thousand not of ten. When you increase the side of a cube 10 times, the volume is increased by 1000.

Nothing makes sense. To speak frankly, if tomorrow I wake up and someone tells me "Michel it was a dream, things are much simpler than that", it would be a relief. Basically I don't understand why we never encounter the same kind of structure twice along the scale. I mean, an atom is not like a planet, and a solar system is not like a galaxy. A planet is not like a huge grain of sand. Secondly I don't understand why it must begin from "fundamental particles" or even worse from "strings". Anyway, from "something" that is made up of nothing smaller. There is something absolute in this that does not go well with relativism. What I would understand is a universe made up of russian dolls, where each doll observes the one above as bigger and the one beneath as smaller, and no end on both sides, only dolls and more dolls till infinite. That is not the case.

Great. But as much I think about it, that doesn't make sense.

Happiness is a fairy tale. I choose intelligence. Dumb and happy is a nightmare.