MigL

I'm not a religious person by any stretch although I've had almost all Catholic sacraments ( except marriage and last rites of course ). It just seemed like the thing to do, being born in Italy and all. Here's my take on the three major monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They each have a book which presents ( through parables and stories not to be taken as literal or even real ) guidelines for how we should live our lives. All three books stress that we should care about our fellow human beings and avoid wronging others, but there are some subtle differences. In the Old Testament ( the Jewish guidelines ), the lead is none other than God himself. He is depicted as a vengeful God. An 'eye for an eye'. Stray out of line and He banishes you from Eden, turns people into pillars of salt, floods the Earth or even demands the sacrifice of your first born. Similarly, Israeli Jews are very unforgiving. If you cross them in any way, they will retaliate. The New Testament ( Christian guidelines ), is very different. It is the story ( real or fictional, doesn't matter ) of the Christ, who was all about forgiveness and turning the other cheek. The only time Jesus gets upset is when he up-ends the money lenders' tables in the temple. Once we get to the Quran ( Muslim guidelines ) there is no question of fiction or reality. Mohammed was a real historic figure. And so while we have the writings in the Quran, we also have the historical records stating that when he was banished from Mecca for preaching, he went to Medina, raised a small army, and ambushed/robbed wagon trains on the way to Mecca, to finance his operations. After his religion was established, Muslim armies conquered ( along North Africa ) as far as the Pyrenees separating Spain from Franc, in the West, and as far as the Punjab in the East. Now, don't get me wrong, this isn't a generalization about the followers of the religions, There are good Jews, Christians and Muslims, and bad Jews, Christians and Muslims. This is more a generalization about their respective books or guides, and how they are tempered by historical records. And although the comparison is extremely simplistic, If I had to be religious, its clear to me which I'd favour.

Lets compare the universe at the time just after the big bang to a number line. Lets say at this time, t>0, where we can begin to make measurements of space-time, the size is 1 unit on the number line. We can still subdivide that one unit into an infinite number of points. If we subsequently consider the whole number line, extending to an infinite number of units, we can subdivide that into an infinite number of points. Furthermore we can put each of the infinite points on the one unit length on a one-to-one correspondence with the infinite number of points on the whole number line. Infinities are a funny business and not very intuitive.

One way to look at it is that the hook/guitar system has potential. Over time all the factors Swansont has mentioned degrade the stickiness of the hook. When it finally lets go, the potential is turned into motion as the guitar and hook fall to the ground under the influence of gravity. We can, then, harvest this kinetic energy, and use it to do work.

And we're saying there will be NO 'unforeseen complications' from the trivial increase in oxygen.

No-one is arguing against the block universe model, on the contrary it is an extremely valuable model. That being said ALL of GR is a model, and the very fact that it doesn't apply at certain limits, means it is an incomplete model. Who knows ( I certainly don't, neither do you, nor any of the eminent physicist you mentioned ), maybe the whole geometric model may have to be scrapped to reconcile it with QM ? The only criteria we have to go by is whether the model is a good fit for what we measure. If that seems 'old fashioned' to you and relies too much on proof, then I guess I'm an internet troll who claims to have a degree while offering no proof. ( oh, so now proof is valuable ??? ) P.S.- or maybe its just your arrogant, condescending, dismissive attitude that bothers me.

I beg to differ. I have a physics degree and am familiar with the block universe model. But you, being better than the rest of us, should know that science is all about what can be proven and repeated. So tell us how you can prove that your future already exists !

" Uneducated internet trolls who disagree " ??? That's a little harsh. What Michel123456 presented with his dimensional reduction ( Flatland ) analogy and what Sensei presented with his digital states analogy, are no different than the block universe. All are models which can be used to make predictions. Some models may make more accurate predictions. Some models may apply to a broader range of boundary conditions ( circumstances ). But are they reality ? No, they are models describing some aspect of 'reality', whatever that may be. And we may never know; we certainly accept this limitation in QM. Is a quantum particle described best by the wave model or the particle model ? They are both useful models in the right circumstances, but neither is reality.

If the Earth was to somehow become less 'bumpy' and more 'smooth', all the water accumulating at the deep areas would be evenly spread over the world. I'm not sure about the volume of the oceans and seas of the world combined, and I'm too lazy to look it up, but knowing that it would then be trivial to calculate the height of the water covering the 'smooth' Earth ( may even be more than 1000 ft ). The disaster which causes the 'smoothing' would have to heat the mantle to make it more liquid and, at the same time, stop plate movements which lead to rising/descending plates. As to the 'flood myth', could the flooding of the Mediterranean basin account for it ?

Just to be clear, you can also fuse Hydrogen just like the Sun does, although it is a lot more difficult than starting off with Deuterium. So technically it could be renewable ( just capture one comet and you're good for another million years ). And in case you still haven't grasped John's replies... If we fuse all the Deuterium in the Earth's oceans to produce power equivalent to the total present world usage, for the next billion years, the Oxygen levels will not increase to the levels of most Las Vegas casinos or Michael Jackson's sleeping/hyperbaric chamber. I.E. within 'normal' limits

" The wheels on the bus go round and round... " And the bus keeps going nowhere ! Can we stop arguing about what can't be done, people ? And focus on what CAN be done ! Even Waitforufo has made a suggestion ( along with some other people on both sides of the argument ). He suggested training. So how about having to take a training course in order to be able to buy a firearm ? It would introduce a waiting period ( or cooling off period for mal-adjusted people ), for a thorough background check, and make sure that whoever purchases a gun knows how to handle ( so he doesn't carelessly shoot himself or others ), and store it ( so its accessible for self defense but his young children can't get at it )

Sounds like what you're looking for, Enthalpy, is a processor with a very long pipeline. The last processor produced by Intel with a long, 32 stage pipeline was the P4D, with the hope of scaling it to 10 GHz. Unfortunately it ran into a heat brick wall at 4 GHz, and AMD with its shorter pipeline ( where each stage does more work ), and superscalar ( load multiple instructions/data concurrently ) Athlon 64 wiped the floor with them. Intel had to go back, dust off the shorter pipeline, P3 architecture, and make it superscalar for the Core architecture. Intel has now evolved through Core, Core 2, and core i, it by adding multiple cores on the same die ( up to 8 actual and 16 logical on its latest CPUs ), and AMD has followed suit. Unless you can find some sort of emulator, I'm afraid you're out of luck.

If there's no signal to the monitor and no activity lights, the computer is not booting. No sense checking any of the equipment like hard drive, memory, motherboard or processor ( yet ). I have to agree with Sensei, the power supply is most likely old/weak and not setting a 'power good' signal. First thing, try another power supply. Doesn't have to be anything fancy if you're using integrated graphics, 400-450 watts should be more than plenty.

As has already been explained several times ( what, didn't you read all the posts, Capayan ? ), the surface of the balloon is the only relevant analogy. It is a reduced dimensional analogy where, for ease of visualization, our normal three dimensions ( length, width and height ) are reduced to two dimensions ( length and width ) on the SURFACE of the balloon. The air inside has as much meaning in this analogy as the air outside the balloon. NONE ! The universe, i.e. all that there is, is represented by the surface of the balloon, and surface only. The properties of the universe prior ( whatever that means ) to the big bang are irrelevant as we can never know them. Space-time was created at the big bang event, John316. I find it interesting that you think it incredible that all the mass/energy of the universe could emerge from a universe which was once so many orders of magnitude smaller than its present size as to be equitable to an atom. Yet you, being a creationist, have no problem believing that all the mass/energy of the universe could spring forth from the whim of a Creator

First time I read about gravity possibly 'leaking' into other dimensions was over ten yrs ago in a paper by Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum. Lisa Randall is somewhat of a celebrity for her intelligence ( tenure at Harvard working on theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology ) and good looks ( best looking Physics PhD I've ever seen, certainly better looking than Swansont judging by the few pictures pointed out in a recent thread ). I think there has been some work done at the LHC on this subject, but to no conclusion. edit: Don't mean to pick on you Swansont but I don't know who else is a PhD on here ( and can take a joke )

Google 'big bang inflationary models'. Or do a search on this forum. I'm sure Mordred has posted relevant links.

You want to speculate about speculations ??? I'll stick with Occam's razor. What's affecting gravity at galactic scales ( but not al lesser scales a not even at greater scales AFAIK ) interacts gravitationally, but not electromagnetically. Anything beyond that is pure conjecture.

Didn't read the link , but yes, strings and branes could affect gravity. In string theory the graviton is the only boson that is a closed loop and therefore not confined to a brane, while brane bound gauge bosons and fermions are open ended strings where the ends are attached to a brane. That means that gravity could 'leak' into other dimensions. This was originally postulated in relation to compactified, Planck scale dimensions. Since gravity strength falls off as r^(n-1), where n is the number of available dimensions, gravity would then have increased as measurements approach Planck scale. I don't think any measurements have proved conclusive ( or sensitive enough ) yet. The effect is always an increase in gravitational strength as more dimensions come together. So if branes were close enough due to galactic presence for this effect to be significant, we, being part of the galaxy would note nothing out of the ordinary, and so cannot account for dark matter affecting galactic rotation. What we would note is decreased gravity in the voids between galaxies, compared to in, or about, the galaxy.

Potential is a form of energy, Sorcerer, but I see where you're going with this. I don't remember who first proposed the zero-sum universe. My 'opinion' is that 'nothing' is ill defined. What do we really mean by it ? The absence of what ? And don't say "the absence of everything", because then, you are using one ill defined word ( everything ), to define another ill defined word.

All depends on the configuration of the extra dimensions. If they are compacted, we cannot interact with them because we can't access Planck scale energies. If they are separate dimensions in a higher dimensional bulk, then we would intersect them at successive 'units' of that dimension. Think of it like the dimension of time. A moving object will intersect a new 'position' at each different unit of time. In effect, it will 'draw' a line in the time dimension as successive intersection points combine to form what we call a world-line.

Yes, let's explicitly specify the conditions. And then you tell us what is the difference, Michel123456. Two isolated systems, one of which has Studiot's cup on a ledge, and the other which has Swansont's ice cube on a ledge. Both the cup and the ice cube fall to the floor and shatter into pieces. Obviously neither will re-form in an isolated system, neither by natural, nor human intervention. Do a quick energy analysis, and tell us what is different

This begs the bigger question... " Can we ever know everything there is to know ? " Or will we always have/need a 'God of the gaps' ?

None of the processes you mention, Michel123456, are 'spontaneous'. Melting, travelling, mixing, evaporating, forming, falling and freezing, are all processes which require energy to be added to the system. Using the 'equivalent' energy and half of the processes you mention, a cup can be easily 're-built'. So again what's the difference ?

No, the pieces of the rock will not come together again, no matter how long you wait. They will only come together again if useable energy is introduced into the system ( by earthquake, wind, water flows or any other natural process ). And that is exactly what humans do, when they build something ( like a cup ). So again, what's the difference ?

Generally winter sucks in western New York. You should definitely move Elite Engineer. I live in the Niagara region (( Canada side ), only about 30 min away, and by November we are usually making fun of Buffalo, already buried under 3 ft. of snow, while we have none.

John, according to swansont's mod note, we shouldn't have to 'click' on your fridge to see if there is actually chicken there waiting to be cooked. You should have already cooked it for all of us, so we can decide whether to eat it for supper, or later on in the week.