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+--- Thread: Incredible discovery (/showthread.php?tid=854)
Incredible discovery - OB1 - 11th July 2003
http://www.msnbc.com/news/937147.asp?cp1=1
Quite amazing, huh?
Incredible discovery - Dark Jaguar - 11th July 2003
Mother nature is a MAAAD scientist Jerry!
Incredible discovery - Darunia - 11th July 2003
Wow, that is awesome. Makes you want to go out there and explore. I'd give anything to be able to go out to those solar systems. 12 billion years old... well, once again this cursed thing is proven wrong! *throws away Bible*.
Incredible discovery - EdenMaster - 11th July 2003
You just love sparking religious debates don't you?
Incredible discovery - Dark Jaguar - 11th July 2003
Fine, perhaps you would like some books of mine then.
"How To Become King With Little Or No Rupees Down"
"Finding the Girl With the Best Dowrie"
"Why Good Princesses Like Bad Wizards"
Incredible discovery - CartoonDevil - 11th July 2003
Did you know that if you burn your toast until it's completely been charred black, it carbon-dates over 5000 years old?
Basically, scientists have no accurate way of dating anything.
Incredible discovery - OB1 - 11th July 2003
Yeah I'm sure it's just like carbon-dating toast.
Incredible discovery - Dark Jaguar - 11th July 2003
Source that my friend.
In any case, this isn't carbon dating, this is light dating!
Simply put, light speed is a CONSTANT. All they need to do is get an accurate distance for the object (done via using two angles of said object and comparing it to other things with known distances) and then they just put the speed of light into the equation, and boom, you have the age.
The only way around this theologically is if the universe was created with the light from said objects already placed all the way along the trail from there to here. No problem with that I suppose.
The only source of attack if you don't like using that theological defense is to attack the method of determining distance. In other words, not only would you be claiming the universe is a lot younger, but also a lot smaller.
Incredible discovery - Weltall - 11th July 2003
This is pretty awesome...
Which makes me wonder how far along we are now on the long road to discovering light-speed travel. I know they're working on it.
Incredible discovery - OB1 - 11th July 2003
Well light speed travel really isn't possible (as far as we know at this point in time), but there are ways of getting around it and it is theoretically possible to be be within 99.999999999999999999% of the speed of light. Just not actual light speed, which is why if we ever plan on visiting far away planets we would have to figure out how to use worm holes or something along those lines.
And what do I mean by "getting around it"? Well I read about these scientists in Greece (I think it was Greece) who were able to make an atom (or a single electron... I forgot the details) move from point a to point b in a vacuum of some sorts faster than the speed of light, and what actually happened was that the particle got to point b before it even left point a and uh... well I'm tired and I forgot the details. I'll ask my dad about it (he's a physicist) when he gets back from vacation.
Incredible discovery - Dark Jaguar - 11th July 2003
Yeah, it's totally impossible to travel at the speed of light relative to anything. Essentially as speed raises, weird stuff happens, like the distance physically shortening (one way to look at it) so the speed is still lower than light. Only light can travel at light speed. More than that, light's speed is constant. So let's say you start moving away from a light source at some speed, well, the speed of light is STILL the speed of light faster than you even though you are moving away from the light bulb. This creates some weirdness in perspectives, but it's all a constant.
Even if we did travel at light speed, it would take 4 years just to get to the nearest star (besides our sun), and after that, more than the average human life span to reach the 3rd farthest star. We need something FAR more than light speed for realistic travelling, unless we plan on sending a self-sustaining colony into the depths of space and essentially forgetting about them (after a certain distance, we'd loose track of any communication for years to come, and eventually it would take centuries for us to hear from them, unlike Star Trek's instantaneous communications and not a single amount of time lag as a result of travel :D).
Incredible discovery - -iLluSiON- - 11th July 2003
Darunia is a Christian in hiding folks. Don't be fooled.
Incredible discovery - N-Man - 12th July 2003
Well, four years isn't so bad if we can make up some unmanned probe capable of the trip. Let's get to it, gentlemen.
Incredible discovery - Dark Jaguar - 12th July 2003
Just one small problem. Polaris is a totally useless star! We have no real reason to ever actually go there except to go there. No planets or anything. The places we actually WANT to go are much MUCH farther away.
Incredible discovery - N-Man - 12th July 2003
Damnation. *rows to Alpha Centauri*
Incredible discovery - A Black Falcon - 13th July 2003
That is cool... strange. That's sure to shake up things, for sure...
Incredible discovery - Weltall - 14th July 2003
Quote:Originally posted by N-Man
Damnation. *rows to Alpha Centauri*
I'm going to drive my car to Alpha Centauri. Assuming she can handle the trillions of miles it will take, I'll get there before you.
Yeah, right. Keep a seat warm for me :(
Incredible discovery - Darunia - 14th July 2003
Did you know that if you burn your toast until it's completely been charred black, it carbon-dates over 5000 years old?
Is that for real...?
As for the lightspeed argument, how can you say that it is impossible. Three hundred years ago space flight must've seemed impossible. I understand your argument, that the faster you go yadda yadda, but c'mon, it'll happen some day. It must be possible, as without it one couldn't scale the galaxy in any realistic time frame.
Incredible discovery - OB1 - 14th July 2003
Well as far as human scientists currently know, it is simply impossible to reach the speed of light.
Incredible discovery - Dark Jaguar - 14th July 2003
It must be possible because you want it to be? Oh yeah, the universe sure cares about our opinions alright... Look, according to the immutable laws of physics, it is TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE to travel at light speed. Space travel was physically possible even before we made space craft, we knew we just didn't have the technology. Technology was the issue with space travel, NOT PHYSICS! After all, physics is what they used to be able to make a space craft.
It's not about seeming impossible, it's about it BEING impossible. 2+2 can NEVER equal fish, no matter how much you try (well, unless you have magic).
However, you can "cheat". If you can't travel that distance, then shorten the distance :D. That's where hyper space comes in (I know star trek has both sub space and hyper space, but in reality both are names for the exact same thing here, and hyper space is a better term for it, assuming it exists that is, technically we can't proove it because our instruments would bend as much as everything else... well you get what I mean). We simply compress space somehow, and boom, the distance is shortened. We still aren't traveling at light speed, but we are doing so "in effect". Unfortunatly, we have no real way of actually doing that. Mass is the only thing that can bend space, as of yet, and the amount of mass needed would make the craft immovable long before any decent amount of warpage occured, and thus unusable. The only real way for us to get this travel, assuming there ever will be a way to leave this rock outside of sending a self sustaining biodome out for centuries (currently our only hope for super long term survival) is a worm hole. However, in order for a wormhole to stay open for more than a trillionth of a nanosecond (it takes two black holes connected via the theoretical hyperspace by their bending, imagine our world 2d and hyper space 3d for a second to get this, to create a wormhole, and it instantly vanishes into hyperspace and is seperated from us like an elastic wasteband tearing with the tag being left behind), we need something called "exotic material". This material, which nothing on Earth has the property of yet, but is technically possible, would have a NEGATIVE density when viewed by someone going by it at the speed of light. I've heard Dark Matter actually has this property, but the amount we would need to hold open even a small wormhole would be the size of Jupiter! We simply CANNOT ever get all that darkmatter and possibly ever forge it into a tunnel shape AND catch a wormhole and shove it in there in time!
So sorry Darunia, the colony option really is our only option, unless we find our current understanding of physics (and I'm talking quantum stuff here) is prooven wrong and we find something new that allows for it. Now then, of course I do believe that'll happen. Humanity has a LONG track record of being wrong over and over again scientifically, and thinking they were totally right, and it would sure be a weird chance that we were the first ones to be right :D. However, since we have no real proof that it's wrong, or even that these theoretical new laws would even allow for such super speedy AND actually buildable travelling methods, we've gotta go with what we actually know as fact. And, as a fact, we better not ever hope to see other worlds besides what's in our solar system in our life time.
Edit: I forgot the obvious! Our bodies, ourselves :D. The standard sci-fi solution is to put ourselves into cold sleep. Nothing in physics says this is impossible. However, biology has a problem here (which has been overcome before mind you). You see, everyone freezing themselves RIGHT NOW is dead, and will never be revived. Sorry, but current cryogenics is a scam. You see, even if a future cure for their ills is discovered, the very act of freezing a human destroys any and all cells with water in them, that's all of them mind you. It's called "freezer burn". You see, when ice forms, it's in a pointy sharp shape that tears up cells. Imagine your whole body being torn up. Not a single cell survives freezing. The freezing kills you. Of course, kept just ABOVE freezing, it can prolong life and in fact this has been a way to do heart surgery, but since you aren't frozen, ageing still occurs here, just very slowly, so it's hardly the way to preserve yourself.
However, there is hope. Antifreeze. No, not what we use, natural stuff. You see, many species, like some frogs, produce a chemical in their body that changes the way ice forms. It instead will form into soft cell-like shapes, these will compress the cells in the body, but it won't destroy them, and the being survives. That's why frogs can actually be completely frozen for years on end until a thaw arrives and boom, they are perfectly fine.
The question is this. Can some sort of medicine be devised that can be injected into humans and saturated into all our cells (all our cells much be saturated, for all of them have water) that will both do the same as this frog chemical AND do so without poisoning us in the process (remember, frogs are designed with this in mind, but we aren't). If this sort of biological solution can happen, and soon, then we actually can dream of seeing other worlds, though everyone left on Earth we have known will be LONG dead when we arrive there, and sending signals back will take a very long time, shorter than it took for us to get there (since it'll be going back at light speed) but still VERY long.
Incredible discovery - OB1 - 14th July 2003
Why should we hope that?
Incredible discovery - A Black Falcon - 14th July 2003
Yeah, warp speed is so far impossible but technically it IS possible... maybe, if we could find some way to discover some new materials or bend the laws of physics, like DJ says. Or make stable wormholes we can aim at other parts of space... :)
But yeah, figuring out coldsleep is probably the best way to go in the interim. Because I doubt very much that faster-than-light travel will be possible for a very, very long time... and we technically COULD do slow travel whenever we wanted to if we could figure out coldsleep. Which would be impractically expensive, but really cool. :)
Incredible discovery - N-Man - 14th July 2003
No it would not, dammit. If I send a corps of bloodthirsty space marines to smash the 'Ysshh'kilikili on JX20492, I don't wanna have to recall them halfway through because their equipment is woefully unadapted in light of new discoveries made within the last CENTURY OR SO!
Incredible discovery - geoboy - 16th July 2003
I think we need to worry more about traveling to a younger universe rather than achieving the speed of light. A few billion years or so from now (like WE have to worry :D), the universe will simply "run out" or at least get low on energy, and much of the matter will spread so far apart into the blackness of space.
Take note, energy and matter won't dissappear, they'll just spread into the vastness of space (billions of years from now) where they become unatainable. If humans want to survive, they'll have to travel to a new universe full of matter and energy, if such a thing is even possible.
Incredible discovery - Dark Jaguar - 19th July 2003
Since we have no evidence to support the idea of alternate realities, or time travel, it doesn't exist, or at least we have to act based on the idea it doesn't it exist. Thus, we have to work with what we got, which is a universe with an ultimate end.
Oh right, for those not in the know, something needs to be said. You may have heard back in grade school that there was a "pulsation theory" on the universe that theorized that our universe is constantly recompressing and big banging. I'm sorry to say that was prooven wrong. It seems that during any big bang, the universe is destined to spread and spread. Thus, there has only been one big bang, for if any happened before this, they also would have spread and spread. Sadly, there is a force called dark energy that seems to actually be stronger at larger distances. This force has been building and building as we get farther and farther from the rest of the universe's matter. Oddly enough, rather than slowing down since that legendary explosion, everything has been speeding up. The center is now very hard to determine, because this speeding up is always "away from all else" which could have affected direction. As things get farther and farther, they push harder and harder. Eventually, everything is pushed apart from itself. due to everything else hitting it with the distance energy. Everything is torn apart, and in the process, slowly pushes itself away from the rest of itself over a course of many years (billions isn't nearly anywhere near big enough a number here. billions are puny, billion is like a couple bigger than 10 in this case!, not even trillian, or quadrillion, but rather thousands of google (google is one of the largest numbers we have, not just a search engine) years from now, that's when this all happens). In fact, in the end all that will exist are smallest parts of atoms, like single protons (hydrogen that is), and atoms will be the size of star systems, well, in the space they take up, still the individual parts would be very small). And thus, this is how it all ends, not in a bang, but in a wimper, a wimper that can never ever come back together, but rather will just infinitly spread and get simpler and simpler. Nothing can ever combine, and thus nothing will ever evolve again. Behold the end and dispair!
Incredible discovery - Dark Jaguar - 19th July 2003
Hmm, I think that such a realization instantly shoved into Kefka's mind during the magic infusion process may have been what made him go insane. Oh, his Japanese name is Kafka.
Incredible discovery - A Black Falcon - 19th July 2003
Or at least that's our current understanding of the facts. As we've learned nothing is absolutely definite...
And anyway maybe by then intelligent species could overcome such a insignificant obsticle to survival. :D
Incredible discovery - N-Man - 19th July 2003
So... the universe is getting fat... and it needs a belt..?
Incredible discovery - geoboy - 19th July 2003
If the universe was "getting fat" it'd be gaining mass. That's not the case, however. The universe is just spreading further and further apart.
It is, however, getting larger in overall volume, if that's what you meant. And all a belt would do is hold up the universes's cosmic pants.
Incredible discovery - Great Rumbler - 19th July 2003
Quote:And all a belt would do is hold up the universes's cosmic pants.
For some reason that sentence is really funny! :D
Incredible discovery - N-Man - 19th July 2003
THE UNIVERSE NEEDS A COSMIC BELT!!!!11
We are so much more fucked than I ever believed...
Incredible discovery - Great Rumbler - 19th July 2003
Well there is Orion's belt...
Incredible discovery - A Black Falcon - 19th July 2003
Oh come on this is a serious thread...