moth

Are you thinking about Hubble's law? that would tell you how the distance between two points in space changes over time. I don't think it's quite the same as how "fast they are traveling" but more like how much more time it would take for light to travel from one point to the other. As for why it seems to be accelerating i don't know.

what is a time lens ? Is it what it sounds like or is it techno-speak? I'm sorry if this topic exists already. I searched and found nothing.

This article about optics seems related. How similar are diffraction in space and dispersion in time? Does an event dispersed in time form patterns like diffraction?

Just curious.

If there were 4 dimensions the answer would be simple. Just like walking around a white room with a black square on the wall, depending on where you stand in the room you may see a square, rectangle, or even diamond shape.

Wouldn't we expect to see a 4-d system work in a similar way? Depending on your kinetic energy relative to another system you have a different perspective on that system (length contraction) and if that 4th dimensional motion were through the "time dimension" (one direction is faster time passage the other direction is slower time passage) a different rate of time (time dilation) would seem natural.

I was just wondering if anybody knows whether any monitoring was done after the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki to see if radiation reached the U.S.?

Short of a China syndrome type of meltdown or a fire in the spent fuel holding ponds, I'm guessing much more radiation was released from the bombs, is that correct?

Some people just don't want to believe.... Even with the evidence right in front of us.... Rest assure.... We will all be able to see this binary companion in the sky within the next 6 months.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJkurPs9smA

you people who don't believe the "truth" need to watch more chinese news .

what is going on? a coordinated disinformation campaign or madness of the crowd ?

if it's the end it's time to party not cry.

I wasn't really thinking about predictive models. I was thinking about the Lorenz butterfly yesterday and it got me wondering if strange attractors ever showed up in models of governments or politics. Maybe there is a topography of strange attractors that make up a political landscape?

It occurred to me a functional approximation of our democracy could be something like electorate is a function of the number of people who vote (and that is a function of what the public believes), electoral_college is a function of electorate, and president is a function of electoral_college PRES(E_C(E(PUB(b))) . It's probably lame because i'm not a mathematician, but the more general question - mathematics can describe so much of nature can it describe government?

If so, might we discover new maxima in the equations, or are people so irrational their government must also be psycho?

Anybody can jump from an airplane with no parachute at least one time.

Have you seen the

If you are at the star it moves away from you at light speed - but the gap between me (on earth) and you (at the aforementioned star) gets bigger so rapidly that the light will never reach me if the universe keeps expanding. Light travels at light speed - but the space it must cross does not remain constant

It sounds reasonable when you put it like that. Must have been the vodka that made it seem strange.

Of course, the dreaded frame mixing. Thanks for setting me straight.

my loose analogy of a photon is a changing electric field causes a change in the magnetic field of "space" which changes the electric charge of "space", but how can something change if no time passes?

Does a photon have frequency or does it constitute a wave together with other photons that have frequency together? A single wave can't have frequency - though it can have wavelength.

my understanding is a photon has frequency as in e=hf

my limited experience with relativity. tells me a photon crossing the the universe travels 0 distance in no time at all due to time dilation and length contraction. if that is the case, how can a photon have frequency?

sorry about the thread header i've been drinking

if a photon leaves a star 27 or so billion light years away heading for earth einstien says that photon is coming for you at 1c Hubbel says the photon is moving away from you at 1c who wins?

Your bias could be said to be partisanship, (speaking very generally) so the media play to that.

i just wonder if it's more than playing to our partisanship, they seem to be pushing it on us.

when i try to watch fox news every inflection on every word, every glance at the camera with that little smile, just rubs me the wrong way. i'm sure it's the same for a fox news viewer trying to watch the daily show, maybe even network news.

it seems designed to push political discussion off the streets and replace it with slogans shouted at each other.

maybe lobbyists write so much legislation because they have no competition from the people shouting at each other.

that is an impressive group of young people in the video link.

We're perhaps less partisan because we're more cynical. Due to complete embarrassing stuff ups by both sides over a long period, most Australians have come to realise that certain rules are true...

sounds like our politicians just need a little more rope and they'll hang themselves.

there was some discussion the other day on the daily show, about having fact checkers on one of the sunday morning news shows. that might not stop people from saying what's convenient instead of what's true but at least people will know the deal.

"Drill baby drill" might not be such a bad idea in the short run. Sure, I believe that AGW is a REAL PROBLEM, but perhaps distancing ourselves from dependence on OPEC might open up some cost saving and revenue generating channels for us to figure some viable alternative fuel.

 

P.S. I'm a conservative, but don't accuse me of being a republican .

we have seen this (the end of affordable oil)coming for 30 years and failed to make any progress in that direction. this article says there is only 3 years supply in all the areas opened up i just don't think it will help much, but i remain hopeful for the future of bio-fuels.

maybe if we subsidize alternative energy and stop subsidizing big oil we'll be able to "grow our own" fuels and be carbon neutral and opec free.

some of my best neighbors are conservatives - even with the polarized atmosphere.

Correct. Remember though, that Polar Bears, shrinking Ice, etc, etc are also not evidence in the AGW debate, as these things would happen when the Earth warms, whether humans have a hand in it or not.

i would have much more appreciation for a politician who would make that argument than one who tries to come up with an even more misleading statement as a counter argument. at least that would be discussing the actual issue.

how did you manage to get past this in Australia?

but none of that is evidence for or against global warming. it's just a form of attacking the messenger.

and global warming is just one example of pushing fear-mongering over discussion.

another example would be the death panel approach to drumming up resistance to health care reform. instead of talking about the actual idea, time is wasted arguing about things not even being considered.

i feel the highly polarized society here in the u.s. just benefits mediocre politicians, and i just don't understand why people are so willing to give up the middle ground.

On a more serious note, is it not reasonable to ask whether there is a possible conflict of interest when someone is standing to make millions (in some cases billions) out of the "answer" that they are pushing?

i think a reasonable person would examine that possibility. i don't know, but i seriously doubt al gore will make nearly as much as exxon mobile so we should question their answer to the problem too.

i also think whether al gore is sincere or not has no bearing on whether global warming is a problem.

And who has been demonising the scientists? How?

maybe demonise is too strong a word. i was on my way out and probably should have waited until later to post.

maybe i would have remembered the point i was trying to make about the fear of the right that global warming is the excuse for a global conspiracy to redistribute wealth, and of course those evil scientists were all part of it.

by the way i don't remember saying anything about war crimes, and i'm not a member of greenpeace, i do try to use a minimum of oil products but they're everywhere so that's almost impossible.

sorry if i got dead meme on anyone.

i heard that rinses right out with a little club soda

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Merged post follows:

i've heard "if you have to explain your jokes, they're not funny". this was only half in jest so let me explain.

the first short is supposedly not political, but based on an i.r.c. http://www.somethingawful.com/d/icq-pranks/icq-transcript-space.php

when i first saw it on tech tv(damn i miss techtv) i thought it was political statement about fear based politics.the campaign ad, which i just found a couple days ago just confirmed that for me.

i felt it was relevant because of the way the right wing has been exploiting fear to deamonize their opposition and keep the base motivated.

what was the right's response to global warming? better science? no.

an honest discussion of the chaos that will be caused when we have to get "off" carbon? no.

their response is to attack al gore's motivation and deamonize the scientists actually trying to understand the problem we face. drill baby drill indeed drill these lies into your brain.

now it would appear the right wants to protect the "real" americans from the rest of us.

bullsh*t!

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how far does this copying go? am "i" a collection of memes the way my physicality is a collection of genes.

maybe the brain is a meme replicator and "i" am an illusion like hofstadter strange loopiness.

nixon kissinger secret bombing cambodia laos

reagon supplying arms to terrorists to finance secret war in nicaragua

bush/cheney/rummsfield trashing the seperation of powers and the constitution

where were the teapeople for all of that? cheerleading as far as i can tell.

the constitution,seperation of powers,and a free press are what these people can't stand. are the tp standing up for the truth about iraq wmd? what the hell was going on in cheney's office with the cia?, anything? no they just whine about losing an election.

better they lose elections than u.s. lose all our protection from corrupt polticians.

as much as i would like to ignore these people i think thats how we wound up with gwbush.