kaneda

Janus. It took me a while to get to using centigrade though I still see some scientists using fahrenheit. Degrees absolute never really seemed to catch on (or at least as far as I've noticed). Admittedly metric does make it easier to work things out in your head though calculators bypass that. swansont. How do you bend what is just a vacuum and nothing more? When I say space has structure, I mean it is not a vacuum but some kind of material that allows light to travel through it as waves. If on our scale we register it as basically being "nothing" then whatever it is, it is beyond our comprehension.

We are told that superstrings exist and lots of scientists work in that field. we are told that they have eleven dimensions. Proof that more than three dimensions exist is......? These are supposedly serious scientists and yet they cannot give any evidence to support what is just a belief. Evidence that superstrings exist is......? Actually a lot of people left the field about five years ago because they saw it as a scientific dead end, but the others still continue. 74% of the universe is dark energy. Or so the scientific establishment would have us believe. Evidence for DE is......sadly missing. Not a shred of evidence. Why do certain people here ask me for evidence when with the right people, they are willing to believe such unsupported statements?

iNow. Better not let Martin catch you making empty statements like that without proof to back up what you say. I wonder why Martin uses a picture of a 17th century idiot as an avatar?

The big bang idea has the CMB and red shift. With creationist zeal, we have been told by infallible people that there is not the slightest chance that these can have any explanation other than what is needed of them. The BB idea has many things wrong with it which is why it needs regular injections of fudge to keep it going and stop people finding what utter rubbish it is. Martin. This is a science forum and not a science lecture hall. Serious scientists like Stephen Hawking would not be caught dead posting here. If I had a new theory, I would not be here but instead looking for a Nobel prize or whatever. Your idea of being a Physics Expert seems to be to quote what anyone can find for themselves in a science text book or on a science site, which means you are redundant here except to people who are too lazy to check the official version for themselves. I have asked where all the new space is coming from, and evidence for a four physical dimension hypersphere which is needed for the current model of expansion. Why have you not asked these questions instead of blandly accepting whatever you are told? I don't know if it is zero but I see problems with expansion. Space IS a material. You talk as though it were just an empty vacuum and nothing else. Explain how space can be bent by a gravitational source if it is just a vacuum as you claim. How do we know that gravity is the same at any distance, anywhere in the universe. Take a star of several solar masses which becomes a black hole and recently we found one which had a stable orbit just one hundred miles from the event horizon (in other words, near where the centre of the core of the star would normally be for such a mass). Gravity moves at light speed. How can it affect something moving FTL? Such a thing would be free of all gravity in the universe. We have no evidence on earth of FTL speeds and only in very distant space, an illusion caused by what is very poorly seen and even more poorly understood. Like god, if you want to propose the impossible, you need evidence and not just some crazy ideas based on faulty evidence with a few names of people you believe infallible to back it up. You behave like a creationist, believing your text book right from the first word to the last. You have answered ZERO of the questions I asked you and just fall back on an "I'm right, you're wrong" stance. Expert? Hahahahaha!

I tend to think of strings as bends in space. The problem I have with them is their size; that they are too small to affect or make anything on any scale we know. Now if they were 10-100 times smaller than an electron, they could maybe work together somehow to form all atomic particles and forces.

Bodies in higher gravity areas naturally move slower, even on a molecular scale. That is called time dilation by the unthinking.

Time is a man made measure to help us cope with the world around us. It is said that heavier gravity causes time dilation. Duh. Gravity literally slows down the components of an atom so it moves slower. The same with cooling an atom down.

Heavy elements are created in super-novae. The big bang is essentially the grand-daddy of all super-novae so should have created massive amounts of heavy elements rather than mostly hydrogen and helium.

Martin. Sorry for claiming that you are not all knowing. The big bang is a crackpot idea for many reasons which you do not seem to know. Expansion relies on a four physical dimensional hypersphere. Perhaps you would like to explain how that is possible? Things moving faster than light is impossible. As EMR, gravity, etc are limited to light speed, this suggests that space itself is the limiting factor and cannot go beyond light speed either. Some claim that it works by separate areas expanding so totalling FTL but you then have to explain where all the new space comes from which has not been done. I have raised some of these points elsewhere but you apparently expect them raised again and again, every time I make a statement. You're just another text book quoter. Big deal.

Earth varies it's distance around the Moon by 27,000 miles, averaging 238,000 miles away. Essentially the Moon orbits the Sun but is pulled into a further orbit by the Earth.

Dark matter is described as being either as light as neutrinos or fifty times as heavy as protons. It is said to be 9000.C but radiates no heat. It moves at a constant speed and cannot form small structures but can form very large structures. It is only affected gravitationally and some say most of it is in the galactic halo so why with six times as much matter in the halo as light matter in the rest of the galaxy do galaxies not look like ring doughnuts, with hollow centres? If large structures of DM exist, then moons, planets, stars, neutron stars, black holes would swallow them as they orbit the galaxy and move about within it. Neutron stars and black holes would literally hoover up these large structures leaving almost none left after billions of years. DM should be in moons and every thing larger as well as in the space around us but no evidence. We are told that a small blob in a photo where a solar system sized black hole would be the size of an atom on that scale is proof of DM. We also see computer simulations of DM where unexplained spaces MUST of course be DM. Can it get any worse? agentchange. Amazing. The article shows the structure of the universe is anything but smooth. I find it difficult to believe that another area could drag everything from that area as claimed a possibility.

This assumes that there was a big bang. There are many problems with the big bang idea, which have been filled in with fudges. Even some professional astronomers doubt the BB happened (27 wrote an open letter to New scientist some years back detailing some of the problems with it and why they did not believe in it).

swansont. Light travels in a straight line unless something causes it to change direction. It can only do that in space if space is bent/curved. agentchange. 175 miles per second. I didn't go to school within the last decade or so, so normally don't talk metric. I checked up and see from the figure I originally had, estimates have changed from 225 to 250,000,000 years for one orbit with correspondingly different speeds. Though these change the figures in my original post, they do not change the basic premise that Earth travels in an almost straight line for a century at a time so hardly a sharp curve which would throw it out of the galaxy.

According to legend, the expansion of the universe is accelerating meaning that it will not rebound but expand forever. Unless the universe has a finite ability to expand so will literally rebound into a big crunch. I hate the word "infinite". After an infinite time, all material in the universe will have undergone heat death or formed just one big black hole which according to legend will have evaporated. All particles will have exceeded their 10^30+ years life span and so ceased to exist. After infinite time, nothing!

agentchange. If all the matter in the universe were in a ball, whether a molecule or a light year across, then it would stay like that forever. A singularity or black hole, whatever you want to call it. Big bangs do not happen for that reason. I don't like the use of the word "infinite" so definitely a finite universe.

swansont. B) How would light waves bend unless there is something to make them bend? C) If space has structure, then the violence of creation and expansion may have caused it to do so unevenly.

So far not the slightest evidence that any more than 3 physical dimensions exist. I debated a one dimensional string with someone working on strings and he just didn't get the obvious properties of such a string. A one dimensional string cannot bend. It requires a second dimension at least to bend. It also means that there is no way they can join with each other. Strings have to have at least two dimensions to be fully functional, though they could join with one dimensional strings but would end up as little more than "spacers".

Martin. Light travels at light speed. If in a single second the distance light is going to travel expands by an atom's width due to expansion of the universe, light still travels at light speed and not light speed plus an atom's width. It would have to travel at FTL speeds to stretch so does not do so. I have problems with the idea of FTL expansion as I have problems with the silly big bang idea. If you can get readings of 60c, then that is proof that the readings are misinterpreted, to say the least. iNow. In what reference point do these effects not happen? Are you now claiming that there is some way light does not experience time and that photons can contract? Note. I have rubbish dial up internet and because my post can take so long appearing, this often comes up as multiple post merged.

iNow. We know that photons can change wavelength so they do experience time. As they are waves and come in a huge variety of wavelengths, they do not experience length contraction as that would change their wavelength.

Reaper. A great site. Thanks. Creation super-geniuses Pat Robertson and Jerry Fulwell have told us that we are the only intelligent life in the whole universe (of maybe 7x10^22 stars). Two more handy sites for putting things in perspective: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMV_zDQaq9o YouTube - Cosmic Zoom http://www.rense.com/general72/size.htm The Size Of Our World

Widowlikcer. I don’t think a singularity has a point source at it’s centre. They rotate and point sources cannot. Infinitely small I think would even stop gravity. A neutron star can have an escape velocity of 2/3 light speed and still have stable neutrons. I think maybe black holes have balls of electrons and quarks at their core. I don’t think there is anything special about singularities other than that their escape velocity is greater than light speed. Gravity is an effect of matter and like EMR is limited to light speed. It was said decades ago that there could be microuniverses inside large enough black holes but they would have to be very massive black holes where there is sufficient room between the central mass and the event horizon. It has also been said that the universe itself might be inside a giant black hole (though there are some problems with this idea). Dark matter is just an idea too. It has many problems associated with it which have to be answered before it can be accepted and just pointing to a tiny blob on a photo or a computer simulation and saying that is evidence of DM is not good science. There might be other universes beyond ours but I think it would be impossible to contact them since there would be no medium between universes that would allow matter or EMR to exist. With black holes, inside they bend space in such a way that there is no path out for light to travel. If you were an atom sucked in by a black hole, you would reach the maximum possible speed for matter (almost light speed) but that would not change time (though some claim that time is an actual dimension so there can be time dilation). A singularity is almost ultimately stable (which is just one reason why the big bang is nonsense) so cannot split. We still don’t know how the universe came about and all ideas are valid till proven otherwise. Yours needs a little more work on it yet, as do most ideas before they become theories.

agentchange. As you say, 175 mps around the galaxy's centre. Our sun is heading towards Vega so not a mathematical perfect orbit. swansont. If you bend space (due to a gravitational source), you can bend the path of light travelling through it. Since light is waves, this would suggest that space has structure. Possibly when the universe was created, there were swirls and eddies like you get in water and that is where matter congregated? We know that in space once motion starts, it continues until acted on by an outside force.

I would think that "wobbling" is normal in objects in space in that there are so many gravitational influences around. Many bodies are not actually solid too, as in the Earth's molten interior which has it's independent motion.

He believes that DM which is said to be a gravitational source made of matter is linked to DE which is an energy source which is said to repel (the opposite of gravity). Also a little matter makes an awful lot of energy. His idea sounds very far fetched to me, but then I don't believe in DM or DE.

It is said that dark matter is needed to hold the galaxy together, otherwise stars would just fly off out of the galaxy at the speeds they travel. Our sun moves at about 175 mps, almost stationary by galactic standards. The ancients thought the Earth was flat. If you look at any circle close enough, a small enough piece of it will look straight. An arc second is just 102 feet at the equator. The Sun/Earth take 200,000,000 years to travel once around the galaxy, some 188,400 light years. An arc second of that is over 847 billion miles and it takes the Sun/Earth over 153 years to travel that distance, for the equivalent curvature over a distance of 102 feet on Earth. It could be thought by a casual observer that our solar system is travelling in a perfectly straight line because it is only when measured incredible accurately or over a long period of time that any curvature is noticed. I think this curvature is so casual (probably the original motion) that unless a strong gravitational force acts on our solar system, it will continue forever to travel it as though travelling in a straight line.