zapatos

Bring extra batteries or an extra calculator.

In college my roommate had a dog that would take food out of its bowl and hide it around the house. Then later in the evening when the food bowl was gone, the dog would retrieve the hidden food and have a little snack. I thought it was hilarious and if that wasn't planning ahead I'd really like to know what it was.

Got it, thanks. By the way, your signature makes me laugh every time I see it.

Unfortunately when the calculus began my ability to follow ended. I am unsure how to interpret what you are saying given other sources of information that seem to indicate that, assuming current understanding is true, the photons will never reach us. Does your analysis suggest that there is not agreement over whether photons will reach us? Or that under certain conditions or distances the photons can reach us? Or that other sources are being misinterpreted? I am unsure if your example takes into consideration the acceleration of the expansion of space. The following seems to suggest that any photons emitted from a distance of greater than 16 billion light years will not reach us. Can you help me reconcile what you said and what I read below? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light

I am voting for Obama. I like him well enough although I don't give him very high marks. Primarily I am voting for the Democrat because the Republicans have aligned themselves with the far right. Because of this alignment I now consider the Republicans damaged goods. A sad day for me as I used to vote roughly 70/30, Republican to Democrat.

If you haven't done so already, please be sure to give derek w's post some serious thought. What he described is a nice overview of what mellowmorgan said. Any job you do, from going grocery shopping to writing code to planning the invasion of Europe involves the process of starting at a high level and breaking it down into smaller and smaller operations. When it comes to grocery shopping you don't give it much thought but you still start with a high level problem, such as 'Need Groceries'. That gets broken down into components involving 'Food', 'Finances', 'Transportation', 'Storage', etc. You then break 'Food' down into 'Meals', 'Snacks', 'Basic Ingredients'... well, you get the idea. Same thing for writing code but much more involved. What is the basic problem identified in the exercise? Break it down into something like 'Output', 'Input', 'Processing'. 'Input' may come from multiple sources; what are they?, how do you get the data?, error correction, storage, blah, blah, blah. The very last breakdown is the actual code to do the operation.

It sounds as if you already have the right answer. If so, could you please post it?

You are now forever lumped in with other speculation thread type people. Hand waving, misdirection, heels dug in, refusal to concede any point or to directly confront questons threatening your position.

As far as I can tell they get no intellectual criticism from the scientific atheist community unless they seek it out. In which case they are probably interested in other views. I have never in my life been approached by an atheist expounding his beliefs or criticizing mine. The religious however have called me, knocked on my front door, and even started yelling at me on the street. Not to mention the lightly veiled anti-atheist threads on SFN. A better question might be "what makes many of the religious immune to manners".

My guess is that you would need to use a high tech version of a cowcatcher to ensure the obstacle is removed from your path.

Excellent! Thanks. I did a quick read and it is very well done. Now I need to spend some time with it to understand the details. +1

Yes Yes No. Eventually all those photons will crash into us or pass us by.

Also note that had imatfaal chosen to describe what happens from any of the red, blue, or black dots, instead of from the central line, the results would have been exactly the same. No matter where you are on that rubberband (or in the universe) you would see the same average speeds, with those galaxies closest to you receding the slowest, and those galaxies furthest from you receding the fastest.

If light doesn't travel more distance, why is it that we are just now seeing light from a galaxy that was emitted 12 billion years ago when the galaxy was only 1 billion light years away?

If distance did not increase due to expansion, wouldn't the universe be much smaller than it appears to be? If distance did not increase due to expansion, why is it that we are just now seeing light from a galaxy that was emitted 12 billion years ago when it was only 1 billion light years away?

Can you point me to a link for that? I wasn't able to find that number and would like to read more about it. Thanks.

Me too, but I think the problem is our lack of knowledge of exactly what is happening, rather than the fact that we've made a terrible mistake. It may not make sense but that is neither here nor there. The fact is that observation and theory support the concept of expansion. As an example we observe that the further a galaxy is from us the faster it is receding. Meaning that if the galaxies were lined up as: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - Us - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 with an equal distance between each of them, then we will see galaxies 6 and 7 receding at a rate of 1x from us, galaxies 5 and 8 receding at a rate of 2x from us, etc. There is a great deal of scientific evidence to support this observation. Now it could be that our galaxy just happens to be in the center of the universe, and for some reason we are not moving, and for some reason galaxies 6 and 7 are moving away from us at the same velocity of 1x, and that galaxies 5 and 8 who happen to be twice as far away from us are moving away from us at twice that velocity of 2x, and so on. And of course we have to explain why to galaxy 3, the galaxies to the left seem to be moving away at different velocities than the galaxies to the right. But the more likely scenario (once again supported by theory and observation) is that we are not in the center of the universe and the galaxies are all moving away from each other at the same rate, based on comparable amounts of space in between. Based on the previous setup: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - Us - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 expansion would manifest itself as space expanding equally between equally distant galaxies. So if we double the space between each set of galaxies, we now end up with: 1 -- 2 -- 3 -- 4 -- 5 -- 6 -- Us -- 7 -- 8 -- 9 -- 10 -- 11 -- 12 At this point it still looks like galaxies are receding from us, and we still see galaxies at greater distances receding at greater rates, but now we can explain it without us being at the center of the universe, and we don't have to explain the physics behind galaxies at one distance travelling at one velocity, and galaxies at twice the distance travelling at twice the velocity. Galaxies 6 and 7 used to be one unit from us, and now they are two units from us. Galaxies 5 and 8 were two units from us but now they are four units away. Now no matter where you are in the universe, whether at galaxy 4, or Us, or 10, you will see that the recessional speed of galaxies increase as their distance from you increases. Everyone looks as if they are at the center of the universe.

That is correct. Unfortunately that is not something I'm able to answer. If someone else with more knowledge could jump in I'd love to hear the answer myself. It seems to me that this is not well understood and is therefore difficult to calculate. I continually see differences of opinion on how much of the expansion is intrinsic, how much of a role dark energey plays, how much of it is due to inertia from the big bang, what role the early inflationary period of the universe played, etc. It seems easy enough to calculate the rates at which expansion is taking place over very large distances but I have never seen a calculation that determines a point at which two bodies pass from being governed by gravitation to being governed by expansion.

I'm wondering then how attraction comes into play. I am sure there is some homosexual behavior that is simply social. Some women I know who have had public displays of 'making out' with other women said they did it simply because it was fun, to tease the guys who were around, etc. But it seems like this is a small part of what is involved in homosexual behavior. Don't most people who have sex do so with the the gender they are 'attracted' to? Is it true that most people who participate in homosexual behavior do so because they feel that attraction to the same gender? Having an attraction sounds to me like it must be from something like a genetic or developmental cause, rather than a social cause. People have talked about sexuality being on a continuum, but just from personal observation (which may not mean squat) it seems that 'most' people are heterosexual, followed by a small group that is homosexual, followed by a very small group that falls in between.

I don't know enough about the subtleties of evolution to participate in this discussion much, but I am unclear on a particular point that has been made and would appreciate some feedback. A couple of times in this thread the point was made that people have sex primarily for enjoyment, not procreation. I understand that it is pleasureable, but presumably the pleasure is simply an incentive to procreate. I don't think we evolved that pleasure simply to make our lives less dreary. Evolution has built a mechanism to ensure procreation; a need that gets us up and off the couch on Saturday night, and a reward in the pleasure of some one-on-one athletics. The need to have sex is similar to the need we get from thirst. The pleasure that comes from a cool drink of water and sex seems to be there simply to help ensure we slake those respective thirsts. It seems to me that while our conscious minds may think we are having sex for pleasure, deep down we are having sex to procreate. Homosexual behavior, whether genetic, environmental, or cultural is of no particular benefit and simply exists because the mechanism for procreation is not flawless.

The concept is exceedingly simple. The fact that you acknowledge that a photon cannot exceed c, and that you acknowledge that recessional speeds do exceed c, leads me to believe that you are being purposely obtuse and wasting the time of those explaining it to you. I cannot imagine why you are doing so. He didn't say matter has been observed to travel at or above c. He said a galaxy can have a recessional speed exceeding c, for which there is scientific evidence.

Yes, you are of course correct. Expansion is thought to be a generic property of space, and expansion is thought to be accelerating due to dark energy. To the OP, my point remains that the reason that atoms in my body do not expand away from each other and stars do not expand their way out of the galaxy, is due to them being bound by the stronger forces of gravity and other physical and chemical bonds. Expansion is simply an observation of the behavior of structures in the universe. The structures we see in the universe have been named solar systems, galaxies, galaxy clusters, superclusters, etc. What we observe is that space expands between structures as large as what we've named superclusters, but is not observed between, for example, galaxies within a cluster. There is nothing special about 'superclusters' expanding away from each other, it is just that there is a much larger distance between superclusters than there is between galaxies within a cluster. It is the distance that is important. The distance between superclusters is enough to allow expansion to overcome gravity, the distance between galaxies within a cluster is not enough to allow expansion to overcome gravity. If in some part of the universe there are two stand-alone galaxies which have a distance between them that is comparable to the distance between two superclusters, then they would be expanding away from each other also.

An idea exists only in the mind; The EU exists in reality Europe. I believe the de facto headquarters are in Brussels which if you are so inclined you can visit. Unlike an idea, the EU can and does take action, just like a person does.

It's just an analogy... As Spyman said, at the point in time when "...space, BETWEEN us and those photons, is expanding faster than light." Problem solved. Correct. But then so what? No one has to 'evaluate' how something will happen before it can happen. Does a leaf not flutter to the ground because no one has evaluated wind speed, humidity, distance to the ground, aerodynamics of the leaf, etc.? The universe doesn't "know' anything.

Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system. Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! HELP! HELP! I'm being repressed!