losfomot

How can it not be part of the question... or at the very least part of the answer? The OP brought the equidistant observer into the discussion him(her?)self in post #13. I don't think the assumption of synchronization is possible when talking about relativity. I agree.

Exactly the same moment according to whom? This is why we need an observer equidistant between the two. Yes... but what about as they are accelerating initially? Each would see himself blasting off first. Again... all of this 'exactly at the same time' stuff must be relative to some observer... if it is relative to the observer equidistant between the two ships, then the ships will see something different. Here is a topic I started years ago that deals with, essentially, the same issue. This could be the thread J.C. was referring to.

If you fly out to space, after a few miles you cut the engine... and you float! However, you are also falling back to the Earth. (edit- I should point out, as others have mentioned, that it only seems like you are floating inside your spaceship because both you and the spaceship are falling at the same time). There are ways to cut the engine... float... and not fall back to the Earth... one is to put yourself in an orbit around the Earth so that, as you fall, you keep missing the Earth. Another is to find a position where gravity is neutralized by competing massive objects (lagrange points). Mass is relevant.

1.21 Gigawatts? That happens to be exactly the amount required to power my time machine.

My mistake... it has been a few years since I read the OT... but the question remains. I don't agree that it makes more sense when not taken literally. Actually, how can it not be taken literally? Do christians in general not take it literally? Do they not take the entire OT literally? But the NT is to be taken literally? or also not? Are all these stories just made up as metaphors? I apologize that this is getting off topic.

Then why not create us that way... I do not understand the point of giving us free will just to see if we give up that free will and do exactly what he wants anyway. It seems we are not given free will outright, we are instead given a choice... obey God or exercise your free will and burn in hell. What kind of sick game is that to be playing. God says 'thou shalt not kill' and then tells Abraham to kill his own son. If that was truly a test, I'd say Abraham failed. How did he know he was not being tricked by lucifer into breaking one of God's commandments? And if God was all-knowing, why does he need to test people? He would know what was in Abraham's heart without having to put him through all that just to say at the last moment 'just kidding, you don't have to kill your son, I was just testing you' It just doesn't make any sense. And yet he loves us all for we are all his ignorant children.

Unless that force is due to gravity... as it is in a slingshot maneuver. Jump out of a plane while enclosed within a box... you are accelerating, yet you feel no force (not until you hit the ground).

But in a regular slingshot maneuver (not a 'powered slingshot' maneuver), all the acceleration is due to gravity... so why would you feel a 'g-force'? As long as your rockets aren't firing, you should be weightless the whole time... shouldn't you?

Wouldn't slingshoting your spaceship around a planet allow you a high rate of acceleration without the 'g-force' beating up your body?

Why would an increase in mass = a larger orbit?

Earth will never be a gas giant. It is not just the size that distinguishes these two planets... it is mass (and composition) that is the important difference.

The Earth is not a white dwarf star... and all planets do not have a white dwarf inside of them. Read up on white dwarfs.

What is it about the 'theories' that you disagree with particularly?

It's great that you are so excited about talking about this stuff. But I think you are here merely to philosophize... rather than trying to discover the truth about things. That can be annoying to people who are trying to answer your questions in the hope that you want to learn something. The term 'big bang' is misleading. It was more an expansion than an explosion. I am not sure what 'straight line of debris' you are talking about. Which wobble are you talking about? There are lots of wobbles. I said: I don't think the sun is the only thing that is stretching here. It was a play on words. OK... first problem... you have not given a cause for the first event. Everything plays out (though it still doesn't work) after 'sun stretches'... what caused the sun to stretch? Do you mean stretch like went from a sphere to a football shape and then a piece pinched off and it snapped back to a sphere? That is a dramatic effect... where is the cause?

I don't think the sun is the only thing that is stretching here. There are many things that were scoffed at that ended up being true... but that is not an argument. My new theory is that the planet is actually a perfect triangle, and we are an alien experiment whose purpose is to see how long the humans can be fooled into believing their planet is round. Why do I believe this? Because we don't know everything that happens in the universe and also because people laughed when someone first suggested the planet was round right? Everyone knew, back then, that the planet was flat... so why not? You keep mentioning the big bang... but that has very little to do with what we are talking about. We are talking about planet formation. You can read a little about it HERE. What is it that you don't like about the theory, and why is yours more believable? Or have you abandoned that idea yet? I can't really tell, you are like a politician... that may be your calling. I like this one a little better than the first one, but really you are just throwing out ideas now... dna strands... hurricanes... white dwarfs... its like a mixture of art, poetry, and philosophy with a little bit of astronomy thrown in. There is no doubt or question that there are many many possibilities... but the fact is that the theory we have now appears to be the best one (regarding planet formation).

I believe the main force keeping the sun from 'exploding out' is gravity... not its magnetic field. Of course. Slowing it down or speeding it up is not going to change the outcome. It is still going to fall back to the sun or escape the solar system altogether. What everyone is trying to tell you is that: the only way anything ejected from the sun will attain a stable orbit, is if that object's direction is changed. Any force originating from the Sun will only push it away or pull it in... this cannot help the object attain an orbit. The 'cannonball' must be acted upon by a force other than the Sun for your 'theory' to work. When you are talking about basic laws of physics.... it does.

Every analogy is flawed. And I think we were mistaking 'proper motion' with 'peculiar motion' I am pretty sure it is peculiar motion that we are talking about in this thread. Here's my understanding of 'peculiar motion'... We have assigned a geometry to space. The balloon analogy is always the easiest to work with, so we decorate the balloon with a drawn-on grid system, which represents the geometry of space (since the surface of the balloon is representing space itself). On our decorated balloon, we place a grain of sand in the top left corner of one quadrant (or square) of it's geometry. we place another grain in the top right corner of a quadrant 3 quadrants over from the first. We now define 'peculiar motion' as any motion relative to the geometry (or gridlines, or quadrants) of space (the surface of the balloon). Take a picture of the position of the grains of sand in their quadrants of 'space'. Measure the distance between the grains of sand. Now blow the balloon up some more. Take a picture of the position of the grains of sand in their quadrants of 'space'... They haven't moved. One is in the top left corner of it's quadrant, and the other is still in the top right corner of it's quadrant, 3 quadrants over. By our definition of 'peculiar motion', they have not moved 'through space'. Now measure the distance between the 2 grains... the distance has grown. Without moving 'through space', the distance between the 2 grains has increased. The law 'nothing can go faster than the speed of light' only applies to objects moving 'through space'. Their is a clear difference between objects moving 'through space' and objects moving 'with the expansion of space itself'

When an ambulance drives by you, you know that the 'dee doo dee doo' siren is letting out 'dee doo's at a constant rate, yet you hear more 'dee doo's in the 100 yards the ambulance travels toward you than in the 100 yards it travels after it has passed you (travelling away from you). You don't have to use yards either.... you can use time: When an ambulance drives by you, you know that the 'dee doo dee doo' siren is letting out 'dee doo's at a constant rate. But when the ambulance is travelling toward you, it takes 25 seconds to hear 25 'dee doo's, and when the ambulance is traveling away from you it takes 40 seconds to hear 25 'dee doo's If you know the 'dee doo's are being emitted at a constant rate, how can this discrepancy exist? analogous to:

I always liked the ants on an expanding balloon picture. Proper motion would be analogous to the ants walking around on the surface of the balloon. If the ants stopped walking, the distance between the ants would grow. Not because the ants are moving (proper motion), but because the surface of the balloon itself is expanding (space expansion).

If we could measure a galaxy to be exactly 1,000,000,000 LY away today. In a million years that galaxy would be measured to be about 1,000,072,000 LY away (if I did my math right). This distance change has nothing to do with proper motion, only motion due to the expansion. A million years is a fairly short time in the life of our universe.

Why? Start a top spinning on the table. Hit the table. The top will wobble and correct itself and keep right on spinning.

Not necessarily. If it is supplied with constant energy, then there must be some other reason that it wobbled (a flaw in the surface, somebody blowing on it...) most of these reasons the top should easily recover from, especially if it is supplied with constant energy to maintain its spin. The only sure reason that a top's wobble will indicate a topple, is that it is wobbling because it is slowing down, and is about to topple. You have eliminated that possibility by adding energy to keep it spinning.

You cannot answer that question, because, 'in terms of classical physics', the top will fall over NO MATTER WHAT. A wobble will not change the outcome either way. Ending The film cuts to the end credits from a shot of the top wobbling ambiguously, inviting speculation about whether the final sequence was reality or another dream. Nolan confirmed that the ambiguity was deliberate, saying "I've been asked the question more times than I've ever been asked any other question about any other film I've made... What's funny to me is that people really do expect me to answer it."[49] The film's script concludes with "Behind him, on the table, the spinning top is STILL SPINNING. And we — FADE OUT"[50] However, Christopher Nolan also said, "I put that cut there at the end, imposing an ambiguity from outside the film. That always felt the right ending to me — it always felt like the appropriate 'kick' to me… The real point of the scene — and this is what I tell people — is that Cobb isn't looking at the top. He's looking at his kids. He's left it behind. That's the emotional significance of the thing."[51] edit - Sorry, ^ that's a quote from Wikipedia...

Of course there is a flaw. It could be a flaw in the table he spun the top on that made it wobble... it may have recovered and continued spinning. If they had ended the movie before the wobble, you would have been left thinking that the top spun forever... ending the movie after that little wobble gives you hope that maybe it WILL stop... I don't think it gives you certainty at all. The whole annoying point to the ending is that you are left with ambiguity about whether or not he really is awake this time. If your logic makes you feel better about it, there is nothing wrong with believing that he's awake.