Strange

You could put a brick in the bucket.

Dark energy is not a theory (because we don't know what it is yet). The various possible explanations for [the effect described as] dark energy are all hypotheses. They will be eliminated or confirmed by further observation. That may, or may not, lead to new theory. As we have no explanation, I don't know what "some other explanation" means. An explanation other than the one we don't have? Or do you mean another hypothesis? There is always room for another hypothesis - as long as it makes predictions that allow it to be tested (and eliminated or confirmed) by observations.

"Dark energy" is not an explanation. It is a place-holder for the explanation. Because we do not know what the explanation is. So when people (e.g. me) say, "we need to explain dark energy" it is shorthand for "we need to explain the cause of the apparent accelerating expansion of the universe as observed by Perlmutter, Schmitt and Riess". One possible explanation (which you dismiss) is that their observations were wrong. Or that the observations are not caused by accelerating expansion. These would all fall under the label "dark energy". As would quantum gravity, quintessence, Chaplygin gas, a cosmological constant, changes to GR on large scales, a whole new theory of gravity and cosmology, magical unicorns and anything else you can think of. Exactly. You've got it. "Dark energy" is a technical way of saying "dunno"

It is very unwise to provide a .doc file; even if your intentions are honest, it is possible that you have been infected with a macro virus without knowing. I would advise against downloading a Word document from an unknown source. (I also doubt it is worth reading but will take a look if the PDF is posted.)

About what? Would you ask "when will the human leg be discovered"?

And, for dark energy, the only thing we know is that the rate of expansion is accelerating. (I say "know"; but it is possible that further evidence would show that to be incorrect; hence the use of Hubble to gather more data.) Of course. That is what hypothesis means: not yet confirmed. There are about half a dozen plausible hypotheses to explain dark energy. So far, none of them have further evidence so any or all of them could be wrong. Which is why we call it "dark energy".

Just to continue with the analogy: we named our unknown cause for the rise in level "dark sugar" because that is what we expect to be added to coffee (1). When we find the real reason then journalists will continue to call it "dark sugar" for a while even if it turns out not to be sugar. Eventually, it will be given a new name based on what it really is. (1) we will ignore, for the moment, the fact that sugar won't make the level rise Of course. No one knows what it is. It could be something no one has thought of yet. Hubble isn't expecting to "see" dark energy. They are just gathering more data to try and constrain the properties of this unknown thing in order to eliminate some of the hypotheses. None of those are hypotheses. They are just meaningless names.

Exactly! You've got it. You know something made the level rise (let's call it "dark sugar") but you don't know what is is. Maybe a rock has been added. Maybe it isn't something added, maybe the coffee has expanded. Maybe the cup has shrunk. You know there is something making the level rise and you have a number of hypotheses to explain it. Now you can do some research: send probes into the coffee, measure its temperature and density, try to find a frequency of light that can see through it, etc, etc. This has turned out to be a really good analogy... <cough> Volume of the rock ...

It sounds as if you think the process went something like this: Two physicists are sitting in a bar. It is late and they have drunk a lot of beer and whiskey. They are discussing what to pretend they are researching next. "Hey, what if there was some form of energy we couldn't detect?" "Cool! You mean an energy equivalent to that 'dark matter' those guys at X University made up?" "Eggzactly." [belches] "So we call it dark energy, right?" "Right. But we have to make it sound more important somehow so we can get some time on The Hubble Space Toy" "Yeah. So they say there is like 5 times more dark matter than normal matter? Well we can beat them at that: we will say there is 5 times more of our dark energy than their crummy dark matter!" "Brilliant! But what about evidence? "Evidence? We're not at school now. This is real science. No one cares about evidence." They order another round of drinks.

It seems like English is not your first language, so let's try again. You are confusing two different things: knowledge of the existence of dark energy, and knowledge of the nature of dark energy. 1. they have no idea what makes up the dark energy Correct. The do not know what it is. Which is why there are many research projects looking at different possible hypotheses. 2. Hence, so far they couldn't find any evidence for dark energy! Wrong. There IS evidence for something that has the effects labelled "dark energy". This is the reason that people are trying to understand what it is (see point 1). So, in summary: there IS evidence for dark energy. There is not yet an explanation for what it is. Is that clear? They are not a confirmation of the existence of dark energy; they are about our lack of understanding of what dark energy is. The confirmation of the existence of dark energy is the observations I linked to in post #27. The same issues are relevant to dark matter as well: we know that something exists that has the effects labelled "dark matter" but we do not know (yet) what that the cause is (e.g. wrong theory of gravity, invisible matter, invisible pink unicorns, etc ...)

Are you suggesting that humans don't have minds?

As he almost certainly doesn't have anything new or original (or true) to say, you will probably find his points refuted here: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html If not there, then elsewhere on that site. But I would have thought that anyone who starts there video about science by talking about Lizards taking over the world (or whatever it was) has sufficiently little credibility left after 30 seconds, that their claims can just be ignored...

There are many things wrong here. Electrons do not follow classical paths. Length contraction does not only apply to atoms, or even things containing electrons. Length contraction has nothing to do with the Pauli exclusion principle.

That seems to be the case. (It seems to be true for almost everything you read.) The evidence: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2011/ - We do not know what the cause of that accelerating expansion is. - The name given to this unknown cause is "dark energy". - If modelled as energy it makes up 74% of the total mass-energy of the universe. Is that simple enough for you?

Yes. Happy now.

Agreed (see my first response). But the amount of dilation is unknown if none of those factors are known. So one possible answer is that the effect of time dilation would be too small to notice. Another possible answer is that there would be a noticeable delay so touch and sight would be out of sync (like watching a movie with the audio and video out of sync). My calculations suggest the latter is impossible because of the tidal forces, but imatfaal says otherwise so I assume I was wrong about that. But you didn't set any parameters! That is why I suggested it would only be possible to answer if you did. Agreed. But whether that is significant or noticeable is unknown. (Without more information).

Do you think people made it up for no reason? Of course there is evidence; they got a bloody Nobel Prize for the discovery.

That is not very clear. Say you want to specify the location of an event. Normally, we would specify this with 4 space-time coordinates. You seem to be saying that one or more of these can be replaced with "information". Can you be a bit more specific about how you would do this. For example, traditionally, we would use metres or miles to measure the spatial coordinates and hours/minutes/seconds to specify the time coordinate. What units will you use to specify the "information" coordinate?

No more than there is a relationship between width and length. The whole point about dimensions is that they are independent. That is just the way in which the coordinates are changing. The easy way is to define one of the people as stationary and give the other person their coordinates in that frame of reference. This is what we usually do: when we arrange an appointment, we don't consider the fact that the Earth is moving round the Sun, or the Sun round the galaxy, etc. Similarly, you could arrange to meet someone in seat C5 on the 4th deck of ship at 4pm. You don't care that the ship is moving. So, in summary: no. The spacetime of our universe is usually interpreted from a Euclidean space perspective, which regards space as consisting of three dimensions, and time as consisting of one dimension, the "fourth dimension". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a mathematical space (or object) is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimension Can you explain how "information" is used as a coordinate to define a point?

And usually named after the wrong person! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy

@Gees: an excellent summary.

The general answer depends because you haven't said: - The mass of the black hole - The distance from the black hole - Whether the black hole is spinning or has charge - Whether the person is falling or orbiting (or using magic to hover) So: yes there will be a delay. It might be large enough to notice. Or it might not. The situation might be physically impossible (in which case all answers are meaningless). Choose whichever answer that makes you happy, if you are not prepared to ask a specific question. Don't ask, "what would happen in this poorly defined and probably impossible situation" and then get upset when you get a variety of unhelpful and contradictory answers. The problem isn't with those trying to help you. Perhaps you could explain why you think the question is interesting and then we might be able to address that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimension#Time

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimension

There are many definitions of information, depending on the context. The definition in quantum theory is different from that in communication theory, for example. No. It is a measurement of some property of a system. That doesn't make much sense. It is bit like asking which is better: potatoes or voltage. The same properties that distance has.