Megabrain

I did read that the expansion will continue until the average temperature of matter comes within one planck degree of absolute zero, at which time the matter will dissappear, as more matter 'dissappeares' the universe would shrink and eventually implode, I think it has credibility, since we cannot achieve a temperature of Absolute zero within a planck degree.

Not much on any of the BBC channels about it but there is a long article on a new Startrek film. Having seen a brother of mine suffer from MND I'd be very surprised if he survives, although he is one of the longest surviving victims of MND (usually 3-7 years from onset to death as I remember). 40 or so years is an impressive record, clearly the man has will power.

Thanks J33 - Hope he pulls through.

If I stand close to a black hole and you stand closer, each of us has a watch and can see an atomic event counter, it registers the oscillations of a caesium atom, after I have counted 1 million oscillations I join you and ask how many you have counted since we started counting at the same instant. we will both have counted the same number of oscillations but our watches will show a different time. time varies from one place to another. Unfortunately from your replies you are merely regurgitating the works of others, take a break and think for yourself. The unit of time is the second, defined from the motion of an atom.

I'll pop back in here and say I am delighted it is being debated, all too often on these forums, posters merely regurgitate what they learned in class, many if told they could theoretically fly would take the word of the scientist and leap into the abyss, there are many examples where at least a considerable section of accepted scientific thinking was clearly ill thought out and wrong, my object is to get people to think outside the box, to accept the 'other way' and play with it, if it does not work then fine but merely quoting Einstein [ (an ex patent clerk who may have stolen ideas from others) and produced a hald arsed botched paper (which he later admitted he tweaked), failed to accept black holes and universal expansion, ] is to follow blindly like sheep.

hmmm, Your challenge was to express velocity without using time and your assertion that "there cannot be. " I expressed such a velocity in terms of motion. Without using time. I find it amusing that you say to the effect; 'I challenge you to define velocity using an alternative to time.' And then when I acheive this this you simply say 'You are simply using an alternative to time' Nowhere in my definition do I use any indication of time, this I think you ought to accept that velocity can be expressed other than by referring to seconds etc and that the argument of whether time is real or just a man made convenience would not be affected by such an acceptance. Neither of us can prove or otherwise the existence of time, we have no reference outside time. In terms of the other dimensions we can prove their existence. Time varies upon where you are and at what velocity you may be travelling at. This is not true for rate of motion per atomic event. In no other branch of science would such a loose variable be used as a fundamental unit of measurement, we do not use elastic bands to measure length, we should not use time to measure motion, indeed referring to time dilation, time is not the same for any two individuals. The number of atomic events will be constant, to one observer whether 5 units or a trillion. I'm not clever enough to convince you but do not dismiss it out of hand, as I understannd it this idea is growing in popularity within the scientific community.

How about Distance traveled per 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation produced by the transition between two levels of the cesium 133 atom. You may not agree with it but it is valid, events can be measured in this way.

Your first statement is a guess, an opinion, there is no direct evidence that 'ET' exists, to suggest an ET is out there looking at us assumes they have the same/similar or more advanced technology than we do. At the risk of being a party pooper I would like to point out that however many 'intelligent' lifeforms evolve in a universe 1, just one has to be first - it could be us however mathematically remote. And so far apart from probability and statistics we have no evidence of any life wherever we look. I agree with Mr Hawking on this point, we should keep our heads down, contact with an alien species would more likely lead to the anhilation of both species, we would have no defence for any of their diseases nor they to ours, both 'sides' would be highly suspicious of whether the other was able to keep things free of contamination. Would you 'trade' biological examples with ET so he can check contact was safe or would you be afraid he might use those samples to manufacture a biological weapon which could be used against you. Sending probes to ET maybe he might see them as a threat and 'nuetralise' them you might be offended at this and retailiate - my hope is that we don't meet/discover or have any contact with ET while I'm alive, again in common with Prof Hawking. So far the only place we can be sure that happy friendly warm cuddly cute little aliens exist is hollywood, along with wormholes, timetravel, warpdrives etc etc.

I am amused to consider that I find nothing in nature that exists as a negative quantity, for example, a tree cannot have a minus quantity of leaves, if it started with 3000 leaves and now has 2000 it does not have -1000 leaves it has 2000 leaves. leaving aside 'debt' which is a man made concept/quantity, where if anywhere does negative exist in nature, such things as 'negative voltage' is merely a reversal of polarity or direction. Travelling at -3mph is actually travelling at 3 miles per hour in a different direction, negative is an opposite direction and not an opposite to positive in any true sense. In the sum 5-3=2 there is no negative quantity, there is a total of 5 units, and the equation states that if 3 are removed two will remain, thus the - sign is only an indication of direction and not physical existence, the challenge is to find a true negative quantity in nature. Anti-matter not accepted, it is not a negative quantity.

I find the video amusing, Beer does the same thing, when pissed as a rat I'm the best driver in the world, I can think and perform a thousand times better, I have the strength of ten men, and feel no pain when injured. As for time, it is just a label we attach to physical events, indeed the second itself is now defined in terms of mechanical motion of an atom

So far everything a computer does/can do is programmed by a human, or a sub-species of human called a coder, computers can't just have 'random' thoughts like you and I do. Technology will probably never be 'smarter' than us, it can be quicker at specific tasks. Anyway according to computer theory it's impossible for any robot to kill more than once, since we all know it would shutdown as soon as it performed an illegal execution. And that's when you smack it with a baseball bat.

Thats a wonderful piece of self contradiction there, the evidence we have left the edge of the universe 12 billion years ago thus to say that is what is happening today I agree is meaningless. I can accept that not everybody has a mind capable of understanding this point, in the same way of understanding the big bang defeats most people. The facts are that the data we have from the edge of the universe is up to 12 billion years old. Normally in science we would say that this shows that "at that time and befeore then, the universe was expanding at an accelerating rate" For some reason the normal scientific caution is dispensed with in this case. I fully accept that the universe may well still be expanding, in the light that we have no reason to assume otherwise, but if you saw a horse gallop off into the distance as a child would you assume that horse is still galloping away today simply you have no proof either way except by your experience of other horse and their probable lifespan, with the universe we have no other data.

As I said Mr Skeptic, nothing to do with the elastic band, merely an example of the misuse of logic. we have only a single slice of data for any given part of the visible universe, for the very edge of the universe this data is 12 billion years old, if the bubble has burst and the the universe is dissappearing (not 'shrinking') at the speed of light and coming towards us then all the galaxies we see would continue to expand until they were overtaken by the boundary - I also made the point of it being an alien testing the band and then not to far of course we know (but only through experience what will happen) whereas the alien may not yet have discovered that there is a limit to how small things can get.

Ok lets consider this, Suppose we establish contact with a nearby alien society and send them some everyday objects from earth among which is an elastic band. So they play with this and slowly stretch it taking readings of length, after a while they get bored, look at the data and decide that this elastic band could be stretched forever but they don't have the time to put this to the test so they mark rubber as infinitely strechable. What the hell has this got to do with the size of the universe I hear you ask well not a lot except that we seem to be applying this form of logic to where we think the universe is going. I'll explain, the data we have that suggests the universe is expanding at an everincreasing rate comes from modern observations of photons which started their journey towards us up to 12 billion years ago, thus surely it is only scientifically accurate to say that the data from 12 billion years ago supports the premiss that the universe was expanding then. If for example the universe began collapsing towards us at the speed of light then we would have no prior warning of this. we have no direct up-to-date data from the edge of the universe thus to say the universe is expanding is surely NOT a fact but at best only highly probable. Any comments?

Foofighter you are correct, yes you can mash those formula around v^2/r is power just as I^2 *r is also power.

Hi, Megabrain here, moving from another forum, where I was a mod and kept things firmly in control, just a member here though (unless invited to crack the whip), old, retired and decrepit but not yet coprolitic or ophiolitic. Lepton? why, I don't believe I have lepton anything or anyone for years...