Enviro0801

I ask you this. Does our understanding not get better moments before impact??

It seems to me that this concept of "broken" is analagous to the absence of a sense of belongingness. This is a basic, emotional need for all human beings. That is why people tend to form groups/societies/social circles and arguably religions. Often times people seek out, or readily accept religion because this is lacking in their life. Using christianity as an example, not only does the person feel like the belong among their church group, but they convince themselves that they belong to a much higher order. This is often refered to as "feeling the presence of God", and it's an eternal belongingness. It's a seductive notion, especially to those who need to feel like they belong. Those that are born and raised into it have that emotional need fullfilled already, and that only reenforces their faith. I always find it interesting and a bit funny when people say to me "I feel the presence of the lord". Obviously this feeling is not based on the 5 senses. It refers to a sort of imagined feeling. A person must imagine what God is, and then associate a feeling to that idea. I always wonder what it is they are imagining when they do that. Maybe they imagine that quentissential picture of God, with the long white beard and robe? Maybe it's just bright light? Maybe it's purely emotional, and there is no specific figure. Whatever it might be, I sometimes wonder if what they are feeling is not an external God that exists in a metaphysical world of wonder and light, but an internal God, i.e. themselves. That quite literally, God is created to give substance to their own conciousness (the observer). All of the rhetoric and dogma is just a distraction from finding what's been there all along. Perhaps even the devils work, as his best trick is to convince the world he doesn't exist right? I ask you this: What better way of doing that than concealing himself within the dogma of religion? This extremely powerful, clever fallen angel gets cast down here, and he tricks the whole world into believing religion. He convinces the christians that the almighty God sent his only begotten son down to the sinners, in order to die for those sins by the hands of his own people, and then to be forgiven by HIMSELF... Wow.

I'm not sure your analogy fits. First of all science is the persuit of what we don't know, which is theoretically limitless. Language and math are created by us and have specific intentions and limits. Science is the investigation of the natural world. Once that investigation produces significant results, then we can use language and math to interpet those results (i.e. science is discovery, math and language are tools). The true purpose of science is not to answer questions, rather it's to propose new ones. That's why it's limitless. So hypothetically, let's say we conduct observational science and discover the entire area of the oceans. Is our work done? No! We just made a bunch of observations that we now need to interpret. So you make a hypothesis, think of a way to test it, and conduct experimental science. If that fails, go back to step 1 and repeat. Let's say our experiment produces signficant results, and we experimentally reproduce those results hundreds of times, now we got a theory! Yay! So we're done right? Noooope lol, those results pose new questions like: "Now that I discovered this theory, how does it relate to that over there", or "What sort of new experiments could I conduct to try and falsify my new theory", etc.. So you see, each new discovery should produce multiple questions to investigate. When it comes to science, no matter how well you know something, there is always a way to know it better. Now we might come to a road block and not know how to procede (which has happened many times). Maybe there was some other discovery we needed to further that topic, and we figure it out 100 years later and pick it all up again. Maybe there was a fundamental flaw in the experiment, or a bad assumption, perhaps. Some other experiment years down the line figures that flaw out, and off you go again. That is the beauty of science. It's eternal. it's INternal in a metaphorical sense because we are hard wired to ask questions via our consciousness. Finally, getting to what your friend claimed, and you disagreed with, I would make the argument that you're both incorrect. The perception that we have a good understanding of our "world" "universe" (whatever) suggests there is some ultimate understanding or goal that we are getting close to. I hope I provided a good argument that the is no end in science, only the means. So our understanding could never be good or complete, just better than the before. It cannot be any worse, however, which is another cool thing about science I think. You could get something wrong, but that just furthers your understanding, sometimes even more so than getting it right! The perception that we have a bad understanding is even more flawed. Compared to what? This also assumes there is some ultimate end to what we can discover. Now a single person might have a bad understanding of our scientific knowledge up to this point, but that's not required. They can still learn, or just benefit from the knowledge regardless. I might say we understand everything and nothing at the same time; Yet it's irrelevant because science is about the journey, not the destination... Yes, science is life... lol

Or we could just not reside near subduction zones? We have the technology and know-how, we can even live in the oceans. If we build it, they will come...

Sheesh, some of you people have no imagination... And I'm thinking the host is a Picies lol. Anyways, I'm all for the eccentric and imaginative scenarios. I would also like to point out that my "expertise" is in Environmental Science and not Physics, so don't expect it all to make sense lol. So the initial scenario is missing a few assumptions/manipulations from my perspective... 1. The physical laws in this universe are completely different, but irronically analagous to our own laws. Within the magnetic field of the alternate planet, gravity works the way we understand it to work. Gravity working on celestial bodies in outerspace, however, work almost the opposite. I feel this is necessary for a weather/climate scenario, because otherwise I imagine this planet to be an open system (not closed like ours), and therefor barren. 2. Given #1, there would be no permanant moon because the planet would have to orbit around it, yet it's still. If there were a moon, eventually the planet and star would zoom away from it because of the oppositional gravitational forces at play. So let's also assume that the irregular behavior of the star somehow prevents opposite gravity from seperating the system (otherwise we're screwed lol). Ok so now that the psuedophysics are out of the way, let's get down to business . No significant moon impact, but also no oceans, so no significant tidal system. Without ocean currents to circulate warm/cool water, this planet would have very little percipitation. There would be no hurricanes without significantly large and warm bodies of water. The only time there would be evaporation is when the star jumps into a position facing a lake. The amount of evaporation and subsequent percipitation depends on the size of the lake, and the duration of the star's positioning. Potentially the lake could be completely dried up if the star is there long enough. There is no spin, so no correolis effect (also means no tornados or hurricanes), and also no jet streams to drive the storm. So the water would simply percipitate back to its original position as a lake, moreorless. There would be no wind, so no dust storms or anything like that... Without the transfer of energy by storms and currents, the part of the planet exposed to the star would heat up extremely quickly, and cool down just as fast when not exposed. If life evolved on this planet, it would be virtually impervioius to temperature conditions (super sophistiated endotherm?), but probably non-existant based on the theory that life originated from chemical interactions around deep sea vents, and our planet lacks oceans and geothermal energy. Even if you went with the theory that a meteor brought over the precursors to life, with the opposite gravity the meteors would be repelled away. Soooo yeh this universe could not support life, unless you got God on your side. All-in-all, pretty lame and homologous weather and climate. The only cool part would be the rapid heating/freezing and evaporation/precipitation processes. Finally, I am just going to ignore the fact that the entire surface of the planet would be level without plate tectonic activity or meteors barging into it, and as a consequence no lakes. And all the other illogical conditions I just completely ignored. Put that in your bowl and smoke it! PS- On second thought, I should have went with describing the much more interesting and dynamic star, with something like Helium-based lifeforms that evolved the ability to transport themselves physically, and transfer their consciousness between individuals. They could literally be two places at once... Would there even be "individuals"?.. Damn it...