eoinmac

jimmy, I understand fully that early intervention does affect "the ability to learn and regulate emotions" however, the biological and genetic factor must not be undermined. If a child did not have a receptive brain to such education, or if they genetically have a trait that has been passed to them to not respond as much to such stimuli then the child would not learn as much. Would it be acceptable to say that environment only affects us by setting off certain behaviors biologically encoded in our DNA? We have yet to understand why humans sleep, what forms personalities, the subconscious, and other extremely important parts of human life so to say this question has been answered is not correct, in my opinion.

Interesting point about nutrition, never thought of that... Couldn't the brain's functions be purely biological because the way it developed would give it a response to a certain stimuli? Say some people are more prone to depression because of shape and development of a certain part of their brain which controls the release of chemicals therefore their environment becomes a trigger but the cause is really a biological based reaction

Inow, my reply was to ecoli. And why are you so sure it's both?

I mean that environment factors such as family, friends, culture, society, etc

Guess I'll try the poll..... and by environment I don't mean a tree smashing into your head and making you slow or something

sisyphus- what do you mean by time symmetrical?

radiating away will take a very long time for a neutron star right?

 

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/158

Awesome site, thanks!

Thanks snail, do you know more about the end of a theorized neutron star? Would there be a super nova explosion?

IMO homosexuality is not a mental illness. Perhaps homosexuality is nature's birth control? Some say there is an increasing population of gay men and women in today's society, but this could be due to a) more people coming out and b) evolutionary trait (most likely one of those on/off switches protein on a DNA sequence) that has been turned on and passed down genetically. Surely environmental factors can alter these proteins but as well know evolution does not happen overnight. Just a thought..

lol what is that thing

Seems like little is sure about them at the moment... Interesting objects though! Has anyone heard anything about the theorized life cycle of a neutron star? I wonder if at the end of a neutron star's life there is a chance for a black hole to form

Well if space and time are so strongly woven together then time reversal would result in viewing the information or matter at a certain spacetime at a certain point, to the observer it would seem as if the particle never entered the black hole but only came out. Also if you think of gravity as the example of rubber sheet and ball, gravity would appear to be repulsive. Say a photon flew in from space toward a star, you reverse time and the particle would seen going away from the star. It would be interesting to apply this to the Big Crunch theory in which gravity would seem to be repulsive, turning into a chicken or the egg of crunch or expand. Could gravity's attractive force or repulsive force then rely on the direction of time we experience?

I dont understand how running time backwards on black hole would not make gravity seem repulsive? You would see the matter's history going into the black hole point from point and reversed it would be coming out

I cant believe that there was not a moment where things changed.... even with brane theories the question does not go away of where the branes come from, and the crunch theory implies also that there an expansion to have a crunch. Sometimes i feel like we are all trapped in a huge russian matryoshka doll....

Thanks for the response, do you know what is the state of matter on the neutron stars? Is it a liquid, gas, solid, plasma or what? And why have they not turned into black holes?

these are hard for me to imagine, it seems like you're talking about the existence of other dimensions yet undetected influencing our universe? I've read some interesting stuff saying that dark matter might not even exist and there are other reasons for the gravitational effects. One theory is that our universe is on the surface or inside of a gigantic black hole and the gravity from it is what we mistake as dark energy and dark matter and that is also why the universe is expanding. not a physics expert but still find this subject intriguing!

I would like to hear other peoples hypothesis on pre big bang space, and the future of our universe, also if the universe is infinite or finite. Can't hurt to hear new theories!

Just need some general info on neutron stars, wikipedia's page was a little too advanced and need something a little more basic please. Their compostion, importance in cosmology, and other useful info would help, thanks!

I was under the impression that singularities have no physical shape or anything like that because there is a finite mass smashed into zero volume thus having no dimensions at all?

I am getting the feeling that many of you are assuming that black holes get smaller in size. So far observations tell us that black holes always become larger in diameter as they grow more massive.

Good point, i should clarify that the black hole i had in mind was not surrounded by matter such as a black in a galactic center but more in open space

My best guess is that the hawking radiation emitted from the black hole accumulates over huge time scales and then they suddenly 'disappear' like the black holes that some hypothesize enter and depart from existence almost instantaneously. There would most likely not be some huge explosion of energy or particles because most of the mass (energy) of the black hole has already escaped into space via hawking radiation. Just a guess

I was wondering if one could think of matter as 'condensed energy'? Which lead to an idea that there must be something for energy to condense onto?

Thanks!