Scott of the Antares
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Posts posted by Scott of the Antares
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So does the universe have a shape or not? Is the Cosmic microwave background image just a fanciful trick?
Im just a layperson but I would say if it had a shape, it was less likely to be infinite because a shape can be fully described (especially a regular shape).
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The recent series of Blue Planet had a bit where an octopus and a fish worked together to flush prey out from under cover. The best bit was after success, the pair swam off together to the next rocky outcrop; a true team:)
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Yep the area of land submerged by melt water pulse A & melt water pulse B during the Younger Dryas roughly equates to Europe and China. Our ancestors lived though that tumultuous hell and the global flood legends were bourne from those experiences. Fascinating history and science all in one!
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How come anything exists at all?
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That’s life indeed! I wonder if we can meet the technological demands of mitigating a strike before said strike occurs. In the big picture, it casts a clear stark light on humans building armies for posturing whilst asteroid spotting/neutralising projects are short on resources.
I imagine that leaders and citizens are dealing with a threat they have seen many times in their lifetimes and recent history (war), yet have never seen or heard about the devastion such an impact would cause for civilisation. Kind of like the old adage; out of sight, out of mind!
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There seems to be growing evidence for a serious comet or asteroid impact ~12,000 YBP that triggered the Younger Dryas anmolous period so these events are more common than we are aware of I would say.
On 15/05/2018 at 7:40 AM, beecee said:One wonders if there are any with our name on it.
I’d wager it is a question of when not if
yikes!
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I think compression ratios within the engine will have an effect on the note as well as the exhaust.
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4 minutes ago, dimreepr said:
Sure, it's misleading in two ways:
1. Bacteria are alive but their food doesn't have to be.
Thanks! I see what you mean; some bacteria need nutrients classed as food but which is not derived from another living source. That makes sense, thanks again
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22 minutes ago, dimreepr said:
Sorry, Gee, I know how tetchy you are about neg reps, but I couldn't leave this post as +1, it would be so misleading.
Would you explain why this is misleading please?
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On 08/01/2018 at 6:20 PM, Janus said:
I read about a study made a few years back that looked into the feasibility of moving the Earth away from the Sun as it warms.
Imagine if they got it wrong and we wandered outwards into a slow freeze rather than a slow boil!
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50 minutes ago, Bender said:
About your thoughts: why do you equate consciousness to life?
I was assuming here. As a layman I would personally say that life has consciousness and vice versa. This may be wrong.
49 minutes ago, Bender said:Why can a nonliving object not be conscious?
Maybe it can and maybe it cannot, I do not know! If you are postulating that consciousness can reside within what we class as inanimate objects, then that sounds a bit like the Japanese system of Shinto to me (not that I have anything against that untestable idea).
52 minutes ago, Bender said:Do you also think all life is conscious?
Yes.
What are your thoughts on the same questions?
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Hello iNow, My thoughts (as worthless as they are) are that life/consciousness is a property of intricate systems that are natural processes within and by the universe.
A device is a fabrication made by Man (or other life) that completes a function.
A man-made toaster, regardless of how many functions it has, even if it had AI and self replicating nanites to create copies of itself, is still a device of men and not life/consciousness as generated by the propensity of this universe, in my humble opinion. And equating the two is kind of diverting the topic & not what Gees was referring to (although I can be wrong!).
I would like to apologise as the post I down voted didn’t actually deserve it as it was 100% true; toasters do react to their environment in all the ways you suggest, as every inanimate object does; passively. It is just that you seem to be overseeing that Life/consciousness reacts and also acts; the compliment to passivity which is activity. Yes, we can ascribe the quality of toasting bread as an activity but this is a design of men, and it would not happen without actual life (us) making it so, whereas the universe just creates it naturally. That is the quality that I think Gees is referring to.
I am new here and second apology is coming up; sorry if I have overstepped the mark; I was down voting the direction of the content, not the person. I will check the protocol for using the vote system in future!
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18 hours ago, Velocity_Boy said:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance...... Robert Pirsig.
This was one of the first books I read after education and I really enjoyed it although it was over 25 years ago so I can’t really remember too much about it!
It may have been the way it got me to look at the world in a way I hadn’t considered. I have recollections of a personal paradigm shift.
Back on topic, I don’t read fiction so have little to offer:(
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It has been stated that racism is unacceptable and thankfully changing times means that it is on the wane compared to the past.That does not mean that it does not occur, and unfortunately I know of a half-Chinese; half-English gentleman who, as a child, was shunned by members of both races as he was of mixed race.
I don't see this potential bullying as a con to interracial coupling in the slightest as we all have to weather the ignorant and ill-perceived bigotry of others at some point in our lives. Forget them and move forward!
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Hi folks, I saw this in the news yesterday and thought it would be worth posting in case anyone here missed it.
Scientists have observed advanced galactic forms over 12 billion years old which is apparently a first.
link to a U.K. news agency.
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1 hour ago, StringJunky said:
They use it to reduce the risk of fire at high altitude because the wheels are stored in the wings next to fuel tanks.
A great point! Thank you sir!
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2 hours ago, studiot said:
Do little children ever ask any question other than why (not).
So true! My nephews have all been through the ‘why?’ phase and every given answer was met with another ‘why is that the case?!’
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As you guys have mentioned, nitrogen reduces the rate of gas leaking compared to air. Benefits include less maintenance (apparently air leaks out 3 to 4 times quicker than nitrogen).
The US military, commercial airlines & NASA use nitrogen to reduce the freezing of any water held in the air of their tyres.
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9 minutes ago, studiot said:
Why is a rather overused word, which sometimes oversteps its boundaries.
Let me change your question slightly to
Why is your car blue?
Answer 1)
Because I Iike blue best.
Answer 2)
Because it reflects the non blue light present in sunlight.
Answer (1) is a motivational answer and not Physics.
Answer (2) is a Physics answer but would not be more correct to ask "By what mechanism...?"
IOW how (come) ?
You certainly may change my question, but then it is not the point I was making. You are right when you say a car can be blue (rather than any other colour) due personal preference. The sky however is blue due to mechanisms outside of human control (I think?!). In this example, the word 'why' relates purely with these mechanisms and not any emotion or whimsy of humans.
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1 hour ago, studiot said:
One of the earliest questions asked was
How do I light a fire?
That is a Physics question.
Should I light a fire?, why light a fire? and many more are not Physics questions since Physics does not deal with motivation (the why question) or morality .
I agree with you when you say "Why should I light a fire?' is not a physics question. But a physics question could be 'Why does fire manifest?' In the same way we can ask 'Why is the sky blue?' (inspired by another topic on these forums). I think 'why' is a valid starting point for any enquiry, but not all instances of the use of the word 'why' are related to physics.
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Interested in this topic bump
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On 16/04/2018 at 5:46 PM, studiot said:
'Why?' is not a Physics question.
Surely this is the first physics question ever asked?!
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Denying the Holocaust is plain idiocy, but then some people think the world is flat. The vast majority of people rightly acknowledge it as a fact. A sad and shameful fact at that.
However whilst size of the holocaust has not been matched in history, there have been other mass genocides with casualties entering the hundreds of thousands, and some happened since the Holocaust and yet the world watched on and did nothing. Remembering is not enough, and to be honest, I don’t think a mass genocide has to have a precedent for humans to understand that that are unjust; we should stop it where ever it occurs.
Action by world leaders is the only real way to stop these acts, and unfortunately thst usually means entering conflict ourselves. Unless you prefer to sit back and watch a very real episode of ‘survival of the fittest’.
But to get back on topic, I think CharonY is right when he mentions time passing and the memory attenuating. It is hard to imagine the real horrors that many people must have endured yet are forgotten or a mere footnote in history. Thankfully memorial and service means the ones we remember will never be forgotten, at least by those that care, for as long as our civilisation last.
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Hello all! I am a new member here and am a lifelong pursuer of universal truths and its process’s and patterns. It is great to see other people with passion for knowledge and understanding exploring this amazing reality we experience! My background is that of a lover of science throughout my life since a small child that has lead to into a career as a mechanical engineer working in the machining, tooling and moulding industry. Throughout my 45 years I have also delved into other methods of exploring the nature of our reality, but I am largely just a well read & enthusiastic layman, although my scientific knowledge will not match some on these boards who probably are professionals in their respective fields. That said I do try to keep abreast of the latest developments and theories.
Having read this thread I would like to say that as human beings we have several modes of trying to make sense of the universe, and hopefully to determine some of its nature &/or laws along the way.
Science is the vanguard of knowable truths and explores the mystery of the universe through observable and repeatable measurements. Any other method of arriving at knowledge cannot contradict a scientific observation unless it replaces it with a better observation, that is again scientific (observable and repeatable).
Art could be said to be a personal interpretation of that said same mystery.
True religion is the attempt to determine the best path for human beings to harmonize their actions with the laws/nature of the universe so as to achieve a better quality of existence experientially.
Philosophy and religion deal with questions that relate to our human experience, but stray into areas that science has no remit or method for measurement. Even if the answers to these questions can never be answered due to the limits of the human brain/mind/logic, they are still valid questions. If there were no questions that science couldn't tackle then we could dispense with philosophy and religion completely (and the world would be a calmer place!)
Any perceived truth in any of these modes of investigation has to acknowledge the primacy of valid scientific results (or the ‘truth’ risks becoming invalid itself), yet we cannot with certainty state that science can account for all phenomena in the manifest universe.
With that in mind I would say that science points the way in our material universe, but there are elements of the universe that are not physical and/or measureable and that opens the door for the legitimate discussion of the framework, patterns & process’ of these phenomena.
So to comment on the OP’s point; ’Why is it that God and science are separated so often?’, I would say that at some point in the remote past they probably where one and the same, and over time as we have developed fantastic systems for interrogating the measureable world, the methods of these lines of enquiry have diverged and formed their own schools of investigation. From reading other threads on these boards I see other examples such as when Philosophy split from science, a few hundred years ago, followed by the engineering breaking away from science, and some people say that technology is now also a break away form of science.
Also, specialization in a specific line of enquiry enables more focus, but one has to be careful not to ignore other aspects of reality when postulating a complete hypotheses/theory. There may be some areas where science and religion can test and support each other such as in the mystery of consciousness which neither can offer any real truths on. Merely labeling consciousness as ‘emergent’ or’ divine’ is simply putting label on it and does nothing more. Can a scientist accurately describe the patterns, process’ & mechanisms of the emergent behavior of manifest consciousness? Probably no more than the clergy man can define the same phenomenon though a magical divinity; both are beyond current understanding which means that neither mechanism can be proved or disproved. We can just attest to the fact that it exists and continue searching for the truths that bear it. That honest and impartial search is the true meaning of science to me.
I hope this is a legitimate observation?
Peace and love to you all.
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The Eternally Radiant Shapelessness
in General Philosophy
Posted
The torus is a great example; I can see if we imagine that the entirety of our universe as a ‘2D’ surface mapped into the inside form of a ‘3D’ torus then we have no start or end to our ‘space’; it just loops endlessly. A bit like walking over the surface of a sphere, we can walk infinitely, never coming to a boundary. I imagine it would be quite hard for us to discover a higher dimensional geometry that underpins our space-time, if that turns out to be the case.