Strange

They do (well, maybe not simultaneous - but if they were simultaneous then it would be a single big bang rather than a series): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_inflation "Dark energy is the most accepted hypothesis to explain observations since the 1990s that indicate that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy

One obvious exception is dogs: larger breeds tend to have shorter lives than small ones.

It is worth noting (as this is a science forum) that this concept is not accepted by all linguists, and that very few linguists think that the attempts to reconstruct or understand anything it have any merit.

I don't see how a made-up story contradicted by historical linguistics (among many other lines of evidence) can possibly answer questions better than factual information - even if that is incomplete. That was in reference to Dekan's comments.

Which peer-reviewed journals has this work been published in? If not, why not?

So, after 3 posts we have descended to unsupported personal "theory" and casual racism. Great.

I wouldn't say it is an extreme case. Most of the time they are not diffracted. p.s. my post should say "photons and electrons", not "are" but I can't edit it now...

Or gravitational lensing.

Particles like photons are electrons move in straight lines. Their wavelike properties are nothing to do with the way they move. The experiment can be done with any frequency or with electrons and even with large molecules (e.g. C60 "buckyballs"). The same effect is observed in every case. I assume that if electrons or molecules are used, the experiment is done in a vacuum so the idea of refractive index is obviously irrelevant. There is no paradox.

You have a brain that creates dreams. There is no (rational) reason to think that the universe has a brain. Therefore there is no reason to think the universe can dream.

No. It is simply interpreting evidence and making unsupported claims in order to support your beliefs. It doesn't matter where you start: the argument is circular. Swap (1) and (2) if you wish. So you claim, in order to support your belief. Obviously things which existed in the past, exist now and will continue to exist in the future are temporally extended. I know you have to deny that in order to maintain your beliefs. Stating that they are not, in order to support your argument, is known as "begging the question". Again, you are trying to use human perception to define whether things exist or not. By the same logic, we can say that I can only observe "here" therefore things are not spatially extended; ergo, the rest of the universe doe not exist. You have been given many different arguments and lines of evidence. But you are only able to repeat the same empty claims over and over again. I'm not going to waste any more time on what is, essentially, a religious argument. No, I read it in the past.

I would guess it is just the paint soaking through the card. However, it could be the effect of the light causing the cardboard to be slightly bleached. Here is your opportunity to do some science! Create three pictures as similar as possible. Dry them in different ways: 1. As normal (facing the sun) 2. Reversed (back to the sun) 3. In the dark (either indoors somewhere warm, or outside in the shade) Compare the results. Draw conclusions. Report here for peer review.

You are still making the same circular arguments: 1. Time does not exit; therefore we cannot observe the past 2. We cannot observe the past; therefore time does not exist 3. Go to 1. 1. Time does not exist; therefore things do not have temporal extent. 2. Things do not have temporal extent; therefore time does not exist. 3. Go to 1. You define "observe the past" (in as much as you define it at all) in such a way as to make your argument trivially true. This is the fallacy of begging the question. As has been noted, the evidence contradicts your belief so there isn't really much point just endlessly repeating the same thing. Except as a proof that time exists and you are wasting it. If the future exists, then I predict that in it you will repeat the same fallacious argument. Prove me wrong!

Note that a flash produces relatively light. It might look bright but that is because your eyes have got used to the low light level indoors. Also, because our eyes adjust to a wide range of light levels, we don't realise how great the difference is between daylight and artificial light, in terms of light levels. I can't remember the figures now, but a sunny day is many thousands of times brighter than even bright electric lights. (p.s. it was very unclear what you are asking ...)

Of course scientists believe in love (apart, perhaps, from those who are autistic or psychopaths). Some even study it. What does that have to with believe in God or the soul? Even scientists who believe in God or the soul (and there are plenty) should not let that affect their science. After all, science is all about objective measurements and neither God nor the should can be measured.

All light is photons, in other words all light sources (including lasers) are sources of photons.

Sorry. I thought one of your objections to the standard black model was the existence of singularities. I was just pointing out that there are a number of other approaches that avoid a singularity (which isn't surprising, because I doubt anyone thinks the singularity is a physical reality). Again, just pointing out that there are alternative explanations. There is a lot of interesting research in this are. The extreme conditions of black holes are a good place to develop the relationships between GR and QM. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.0533v2.pdf http://www.nature.com/news/astrophysics-fire-in-the-hole-1.12726 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=black-hole-firewalls-confound-theoretical-physicists But if you are only interested in discussing the one paper on incipient black holes, I will wander off and leave you to it....

I think most of the answers are going to be "unknown", unfortunately. Probably something along those lines. Based on whatever communication system/sounds our pre-human ancestors had. There are many hypotheses. I'm not sure if any of them can really be tested. One, which is quite similar to your suggestion, is that it grew out of directing other peoples attention to things; by using noises and then words, and then grammar, you can indicate a great many more things than you can just by pointing. It is hard to answer, partly because it is hard to define what a word is. For example, is "water" (the liquid) different from "to water" (the plants)? And is "waters" a different word from "water"? And so on. And then there are words only used is specialised professions: are they part of "the language" or a different language only spoken by those professions. And then, which English? Australian, American, Indian? British? Identifying words is relatively easy in English because they don't change very much (apart from adding an s for plurals, etc) and we separate them with spaces when we write. Other languages create words by tacking an endless number of suffixes on to a root. And so on. This article suggests English could have about three-quarters of a million: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/how-many-words-are-there-in-the-english-language. Most people know between 20 and 40 thousand, I think. Other languages may have more or less. I guess non-technological societies might have fewer. Interesting question. Again it is difficult to answer because it is hard to define what makes up a "sound" in each language. And then there are examples where different sounds are used for the same "meaning" (the same phoneme) depending on the context. And then how do you compare sounds between languages. The "t" sound in British English is a bit different from the "t" in Italian (depending on context) and very different from the retroflex "t" in Indian, for example. English (well my dialect) has about 13 vowels and a similar number of consonants. Hawaiian has (arguably) 5 vowels and 8 consonants. Total number of different sounds? I have no idea! (Lots) You might want to look up Proto-IndoEuropean, the reconstructed ancestor of most European languages. The vocabulary has been used to deduce something about the way of life of the early speakers. I don't really know how reliable that is. Some of the sounds in that early language have disappeared in all modern languages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language Some people have tried to take things even further back, combining mutiple language families to come up with something called Proto-Nostratic. I don't think this is generally accepted by linguists. And even more speculative work like Proto-World (attempting to learn something about the "first" language) is definitely not generally accepted. You only need to look at the language used in, say, Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare and modern English to get an idea...

No, as I said, it gets rid of the singularity (and therefore infinite density). It is speculative, currently, but so is the incipient black hole idea.

the black hole (as in, event horizon) doesn't require a central singularity. They both emerge from the same theory; but that is believed to be incomplete under the extreme conditions near the singularity (theory of quantum gravity required, probably). There is at least one theory that describes black holes (with event horizon) without a central singularity: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/fuzzball.htm This also claims to address the information paradox.

But doesn't that mean that the singularity can be removed if you choose different coordinates?

Interesting, thanks. I hadn't come across that before. However, one paper on a subject that attempts to combine quantum theory and GR (still a problematical area) is not completely convincing. It will be interesting to see where this goes. Indeed, as I work with models of reality every day. (I'm not quite sure what your point is though.) Perhaps I won't bother reading what you have to say, if you can't be bothered to take any care in writing it.

Gravity?

That is your circular reasoning. You have chosen to only allow definitions of "empirical observation" that support your point of view. We can make empirical observations of the past just as easily as we can the present, and we can make predictions about the future (*). This is an almost perfect example of begging the question. (*) you might not get much objection from me if you said the present doesn't exist: as soon as you define something as the present it is already the past. Plus it is probably an illusion generated by our brain to maintain the pretence of consciousness.