gnarledreaper

I have a hard time getting my head around the space that everything occupies, if it does, somehow, go on forever, which I feel is impossible, how can anything have come into existence at a certain point in infinite space where there isn't a reference point?, infinity doesn't make sense. And then again, if the space we occupy IS finite, how can that be possible?, a finite boundary means there is a boundary, but boundaries have two sides to them.

I Was going to post this as a science question but realized I would only be starting a philosophical debate anyway, I have been pondering, as scientists do you believe that the origin of life can be explained with a series of chemical reactions or do you think there is more to it than that, to my knowledge we have never witnessed the creation of something that is by definition alive out of inanimate matter, it seems to me that there is a driving force behind life that defies description. As far as I know all forms of matter and chemical reactions do little more than react with other forms of matter but life itself seems to have a very different nature than anything else, does this still fill you with awe despite everything you know about the universe, I know it does for me.

Would it be possible to harness energy from the orbit of moons? I had an idea about extending alternators to near the orbit of the moon and having a solar powered magnetic field generator built on the moon so when the moon passes close to each alternator it induces a current in the device, the energy then transferred back to earth, would this be possible, would the power generated by too negligible for it to be practical? If we could build that, would it work?

Shouldn't it be energy cannot be created as far as we know, there's a lot of energy and matter around and it was created by something, it can't simply have always existed can it? I doubt we know enough to say energy cannot be created or destroyed, but i also doubt this simple machine has demonstrated it.

If time can be slowed by gravity then does that mean time might have some physical substance, since gravity "pulls" on things? Forgive my lack of understanding if i am talking nonsense, i am not a scientist of any sort.

My understanding of gravity is limited and this sounds bizarre, i read an article about it in newscientist yesterday and found a bbc link for proof, but you all may know about this http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8197683.stm Does gravity have a field that rotates as the star turns, is that what drags a planet into a stable orbit and keeps it there?, how can an orbit be kept stable in reverse to the spin direction of the star?

Youtube.com Reddit.com spoonyexperiment.com Those are my favourite websites, i also chat to others on msn and browse multiple forums.

There are a lot of women who use the internet but there are also lots of men who will jump at the chance to chat up said women, if you make yourself known as female in an anonymous irc channel, forum or any other medium there are bound to be a few men that will be obscene or annoying, a lot of women will hide themselves or not give away gender so they are accepted, it may sound sexist but it is true.

I have personally witnessed one of these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_triangle_%28UFO%29 while stargazing in a field during my younger years, not under the influence of any drug or alcohol, so are aliens visiting or have they at least done so in the past?, i believe so. The one i saw was luminous blue, moved very slowly and rotated as it moved.

I am more perplexed by the fact our universe, the observable part of it anyway, seems to be expanding into empty space or an absence of matter and energy than i am by the maths part. Here's a poser, as i understand it an object that has a high density can curve the space and time around it does that mean that space is made of something tangible that could have a boundary? I feel a bit dumb for asking that as i can barely get my head around three dimensional space being curved

This may be a question for the philosophy section, but i do not have the privilege to post there so it seems to be best placed here. Does trying to understand infinite space ever bother you, especially as physicists, for instance if you take a box, it has an inside and an outside, everything seems to have boundaries but apparently the matter and energy in the universe is expanding into....nothing?, like we exist inside a space without a boundary I get the same mind boggling confusion if i try to comprehend cause and effect, something has to trigger an event, (take the big bang for instance) but some action has to cause the trigger and so on, chicken and the egg etc. I may well be ignorant of a theory that has been put forward but to me the reality of infinity seems to be impossible yet it cannot be denied, yet. I have listened to lectures on youtube and read up in the topic but it seems there is no way to understand so do you prefer to brush it aside as not yet explained, conveniently forget or just ignore?

I believe he is seeking funding to build a machine he designed, read about him in a newscientist article and it implied he hasn't tried it yet.

Thanks for replying to all of you, i have had the idea i described on my mind for a while now and wanted to express it without being called nuts, i figured a physics forum was the place for it. The antitelephone isn't quite what i had in mind but thanks for the link, i had a look at it. I will be following ronald mallet as well, so thank you for that link also.

Before i start i would like to say i am not a scientist and have no qualifications, what i will type is speculation i had after reading an article by Stephen hawking (http://www.dailymail...me-machine.html) In that article he mentions he did an experiment where he made a party invitation and only planned to tell people about it afterwards, no one turned up as expected which means either travelling through time is impossible or the visit to his party was not worth the effort (which may be considerable) This provoked me into thinking about time travel myself, i dismissed the idea of actually travelling back or forward in time because it seems impractical, what i did think about is would it be possible to communicate with the future, or the past. In that article Stephen hawking suggests that everything has wrinkles and holes in it as a basic natural fact, even the fabric of space and time so if he is right it stands to reason that something could pass through these holes and appear in the future, or the past (maybe a signal of some kind) I don't know if anyone has ever bothered with this and probably dismissed it as implausible if they have but i propose an ongoing experiment, listen in and see if we might be able to talk to ourselves from the future. You take a frequency, a set period of time and a date, you ask a question and then you listen to the frequency, and only release the information after the time has passed, preferably onto the internet and in places where the information will be around for a long time, if we are able at some point in the future to communicate with the past there is probably no motive to do so as unless someone has anticipated this and is actually listening at a certain time the effort would be wasted. Feel free to call me nuts and throw this in the trash, or point me in the direction of someone actually trying this if there is someone (i doubt it)