Strange

My understanding is that the expansion was slowing until about 5 (?) billion years ago when it started accelerating. Do you have a reference to these new theories? The big bang model describes the universe expanding from an early hot dense state. I am not aware of any theory that contradicts that. That is rather vague. I don't really know what it is about. OK. After a bit of thought, maybe that is the Casimir effect. Searching for that in relation to Neil deGrasse Tyson, I only found an interesting comment relating it to Hawking Radiation. It is nothing to do with the Higgs Boson, though.

Actually not. It is a very clever analogy ...

The event horizon is defined by the Schwarzschild radius: [latex]r_s = \frac{2 G M}{c^2}[/latex]. It is not directly related to c. It is the point at which there are no paths from the inside to the outside. The escape velocity at the horizon is [latex]v_e = \sqrt{\frac{2GM}{r}}[/latex] If you substitute r with the Schwarzschild radius, you do get an escape velocity of c. But that is not the reason why nothing can escape from a black hole. After all, you can leave the surface of the Earth at less than the escape velocity.

They both sound like implementations of the same algorithm to me.

The CMB comes from much later than inflation. About 360,000 years later. A good way of understanding what we see, even though it happened everywhere, is the surface of last screaming https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March03/Lineweaver/Lineweaver7_2.html

The sieve of Eratosthenes has nothing to do with factorisation. I think the answer to the question is that the time for each division operation is not the problem; it is the number of operations required.

Same here. It's just one of those bits of String Theory Trivia that I have picked up.

The structure of neutron stars is complex and fascinating. I seem to remember lots of pasta analogies (spaghetti, lasagna etc)

Really? Are your reading comprehension skills really that bad?

Thank you. (And it makes sense now!)

There is a good summary of the ways a gamma photon can interact with an atom here: http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/ugrad/205/manuals/matter.pdf (pages 5 & 6) I don't think lower energy photons will interact with the nucleus at all.

My (v. limited) understanding is that first generation (pure hydrogen) stars tend to be much bigger and shorter-lived than later ones. (Because physics that I know nothing about.) Trivia that may help when researching this: astronomers call all elements above hydrogen "metals" so 2nd and later generation stars have higher metallicity.

Some lighter elements are formed by fusion in normal stars. The heavier elements are made in supernovas.

We probably need a theory of quantum gravity to answer this. String theory predicts a fuzzball. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzball_(string_theory)

Or banning computer programming because some software engineers were murderers.

I find it disgraceful that people are completely unaware of what is going on int he world around them. And why shouldn't they?

So what is your alternative explanation? If you don't have one, then this thread seems a little pointless. (After all, you are not actually asking a question to get answers, are you.) We have already had one "abiogenesis is impossible (but it happened)" thread. Which went nowhere for obvious reasons.

Ah, yes. The old dishonest "I'm only asking" trick. Anyone can see your posting history, you know.

This has to be one of the stupidest suggestions I have heard for a long time. For one thing, not all terrorism is religious. Much of it is purely political. Remember the Red Army Faction? Even the Irish troubles were ultimately political; it is just that the political split matched religious divisions for historical reasons. And the sort of people who are willing to bomb in the name of "religion" are hardly going to be stopped by the fact you have said their religion is now illegal. That will just give them another reason to feel aggrieved.

Why do you think that would help?

So your argument is that its impossible but it happened. Got it.

What is your alternative?

What? Sorry, just hyperbole for dramatic effect!

Except there is no evidence for any such origin. And even if there were, god is no explanation at all. And if there were evidence for the origin of the universe, then that evidence would almost certainly be a better explanation than "magic!"

It very clearly does not. It describes the ongoing evolution of the universe from an early hot dense state.