pwagen

The irony.

Going only by looks, it seems gerbils have changed very little over the years.

There's a limit to how sceptic one can be. Sure, question everything. But if you are provided with strong evidence of something, denying it for no good reason isn't being a sceptic. It's being willfully ignorant.

I stand corrected.

I'll go out on a limb and say it comes from the mass of the galaxies themselves.

I can try it at work when I'm rid of my flu, but I doubt graphite has high enough conductivity to work satisfactory.

Using the same logic, shouldn't airplanes be impossible? The effects of gravity works on you or me or my car, but it doesn't work on a 747? What's up with that?

Have there been any studies on this outside of Youtube?

Evolution happening is as factual as it gets. If you deny that, you either don't understand it, or simply refuse to believe it for some arbitrary reason. Thus, you're as ignorant (willfully or otherwise) and anti-scientific as a creationist. I'm not sure a wish to be different ("non-conformist") is a very good way to judge evidence.

Ignorant.

Am I the only one who's really intrigued and want to see what the room looks like?

I've thought about my question during the day, and let me rephrase the wormhole issue. I realized you don't need a wormhole for the example anyway. So let's say we take elfmotat's speed of 99% of the speed of light, and go away for a year (ship time), then return home. So two years will have passed on the ship, and 14 back on Earth. I'm in not totally mistaken, I'm with you so far. But let's say you go away for a year, then stay where you arrive for another year, then go back home. So, you've been away on a trip for 3 years, but how long has passed on Earth? That's what I was trying to get at with my wormhole example. Nowhere in the formulas do I see distance (apart from the "orbiting observer", but I'm guessing that wouldn't apply here). So in short, 15 years would have passed on Earth? That is, 14 for the journey and one for the time you stayed. Is that somewhat accurate? Thanks to both of you for your replies, it's very informative. And sorry if I'm being a bit slow, but I really want to wrap my head around it properly.

Because of my sucky explanation? I'd be happy to try and clarify my question. Might even try to use that formula you gave me above!

I know about GPS having to take into account time dilation when calculating positions, but I wasn't sure whether it was because of their speed or their distance. Any more so than what you said about longer trips? In my last example of being able to teleport to a place far away (or use a wormhole, whatever suits best), wouldn't that take velocity out of the equation and just deal with distance? Or is that thinking so far away from any current understanding of physics that it's just silly? Reason I'm asking these questions is because I was thinking of the science fiction techs available in books, like in the Foundation universe, and what they would be like if they existed here, in one form or another. Naturally, Asimov would have to write his books without taking time dilation into account, or the stories would have been very different from what they were.

I've looked about a bit, but can't find anything about distance being a factor (apart from gravitational time dilation). Am I then correct in thinking that it doesn't matter if my spaceship goes to Sirius and back, or simply orbits the Earth - given the same velocity, the time dilation would be the same? Or is the velocity relative to Earth, and only a moving away or moving to movement counts? Furthermore, would it be correct saying that if you could somehow teleport to a place far, far away (say in this galaxy, so the expansion of the universe isn't that noticable), time wouldn't be dilated?

If saying future creatures are treated unfairly because they won't be able to see the expanding universe etc, then the same has to be said for creatures living their whole lives underground. They won't ever see stars, planets, redshifts, they won't have a clue what's going on other than their underground caverns. Is that also unfair? Maybe, depending on your frame of reference, but nature doesn't take sides so it doesn't matter.

Pretty much exactly what I was looking for, much appreciated!

I was thinking of the hypothetical situation of someone going away from Earth on a spaceship travelling close to the speed of light. Are there any simple formulas for calculating the time dilation of their trip? For example, say the ship is going away at 1 c for 2 days (ship time), then comes back. Is it possible to calculate how much time has passed on Earth? If we stay on Earth and watch the ship go away, and it comes back after exactly five years, is it possible to know how much time has passed aboard the ship? If such formulas (intelligible for a layman not too well versed in heavy physics) exist, I'm assuming they'd include the speed of light? If so, what would happen aboard the ship at speeds beyond the speed of light? Purely hypothetical, of course.

Then I'm screwed. Looking forward to seeing the solution!

I can't see how this would be solvable, unless the solution is not at all related to math, but some other goofy idea. The only thing there we would have any use for is "T + E = 8". T could be 6 and E 2. Or T could be 5 and E 3. Let's say "Q + O = 10" is involved, in that the numbers represented by Q and O can't be represented by any other letter. Let's give them some random, working numbers and see what happens. T = 5, E = 3, Q = 8, O = 2. T = 1, E = 7, Q = 4, O = 6. Since both of these give different answers to T + E + E, and we still have no idea what R is supposed to be, I would say it's impossible to solve without more information. Unless I'm missing something vital.

Something like that, except he wasn't specific at all. His writings are ridiculously vague, and any "prediction" you can read from it will have been after the event has happened.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(biology)#Growth_and_metabolism

What you're suggesting should be quite safe. One way that people who want to erase their whole hard drives does it is overwrite the whole thing with ones, then with zeros (simply put), which totally wipes out everything on it. From what I read back then though, there is still traces of magnetism that makes it possible to find out what's been on it. EVEN if you've overwritten it with something else. Then there's also problems with write caches etc. On the site of Eraser, they describe all of these problems. Since I can't really help more than that, I suggest you look at the source code of it, see how they did it. http://eraser.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/eraser/

Not really. Jesus has left no own writings, Sophocles left numerous plays. Jesus isn't mentioned in any writing until quite a long time since he supposedly died, Sophocles is mentioned in at least one concurrent book. And you would assume that someone who stops the sun in the sky would be mentioned in at least Roman documentation. Not to mention they would most likely write about one of the most successful rioters ever. Furthermore, it seems most of what Jesus is described as is a collage of previous mythology, which further increases suspicions he's not a historical figure. Thus, the existence of Sophocles is a more solid fact than Jesus having existed.

A barrel vault?