dstebbins

that's not the point. The point is that we use light to see, so if light is following a distorted path, then our vision should also follow a distorted path, and the two should cancel each other out. Besides, if gravity is just the result of an object attempting to squeeze itself into "spacetime" as you call it, then where does the "force that pulls you towards the source of gravity" come into play? That's what gravity has always meant in laimen's terms, so are we just redifining gravity?

That can't be possible. If space and time is getting distorted by super-strong gravitational forces as you suggest, then as light curves to follow that distortion, it should appear perfectly straight to us. Keep in mind that the only thing that allows us to see with our eyes is light, so if light is bending to follow the dented path, so should our vision, and they should cancel out.

I was just watching the Science Channel. The show was called "Cosmos," starring Carl Sagan, and he made a comment that at a gravity level of 1 million g, light continues to travel in a straight line, but a 1 billion g, light begins to bend towards the source of the gravity, as happens with a black hole. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this would suggest that light actually has mass. I know that light is reffered to in the scientific community as a "wave-particle duality," but the particle part referres to a ball of energy, doesn't it? If light didn't have mass, then it shouldn't be affected by gravity. Am I thinking right?

as for forensic mad, I'm talking about the latter of which you suggested. And how is gravity an issue? I'm not calling you a liar, I just want an explanation, because all you said was that gravitation couldn't be linked to it without even beginning to explain why. I'm just a high-school student who is about to enter his senior year, so please excuse any naivity that I may demonstrate.

Physics is really just a complicated application of mathematics. 99% of everything you learn in physics class are equations and/or inequalities that explain why things work the way they do. The problem with this is that there are literally tens of thousands of different equations to tediously memorize. Sure, we don't know everything about the universe, but that shouldn't stop us from putting what we DO know in a single, mile-long equation that would cover everything physics-related known to man, from kicking a soccer ball to a planet orbiting a star. For things as simple as the former, variables that are not needed can just represent zero if adding and subtracting and one if multiplying and dividing. I don't understand why some Einstein equivalent of the 21st century hasn't thought of this universal equation like I have. Having a single equation that covers fifty sheets of paper at 12 pt font may look intimidating at first to the average person, but at least we wouldn't have to memorize a million different equations and then pick which one is best for the situation at hand, because one size would fit all. Comments?

nevermind, guys. I revised my google search and found space.com. Thanks for your efforts, though.

I'm a big astronomy buff. I love to learn everything about space, and I understand that there is a magazine called Astronomy Magazine, where it gives me the latest news at Nasa, but I can't afford to pay for a subscription (I work at a fast food place, so I need to save all the money I can). Can anyone suggest a website that is free to join where I can get just as good coverage as Astronomy Magazine in the form of a newsletter delivered to my inbox? It really bites that I have to wait until I get a day off from work to watch Cosmic Block on the Science Channel to get my astronomy news. I would go to Nasa's website, but when I type in http://www.nasa.com/, it just takes me to some organization called the North America Search Authority. Any and all help is deeply appreciated. Thanks ahead of time.

Well, thank you for your help. I'll save the email I got as a reply notification so I can come back to this thread later when I have time, but thank you for everything.

Okay, can you show me step-by-step how to work that?

so what do the subscripts and | signs mean? I thought | was just a verticle line to type in case you were making a picture out of text. I guess not.

Please, sir, I am not asking for basic probability, or at least it doesn't seem that way to me. I can figure the probability of one roll. I'm trying to figure the probability of a number of successful rolls in a number of rolls total when I have a certain probability. For example, that link you give me talks about the possibilities of rolling two sixes being one in thirty-six. That's just one roll. What would be the odds of it rolling two sixes exactly twenty times in one hundred rolls?

Suppose I have a die with x number of sides, and I roll it y times. Is there a probability equation I can use to figure out the odds of it rolling a certain side a certain fraction of the times? For example, if I have an 8-sided die, and I roll it 500 times. What equation can I use to figure out if it will roll a seven exactly 54 out of those 500 times. Thanks ahead of time. EDIT: Please understand that I am NOT asking you for the answer. Even if you give me an equation along with it, I want to figure it out myself. I don't want to appear as someone who is too lazy to do my own math homework, especially with the math skills I have (I work at a fast-food place as a summer job, and I can sometimes tell how much to charge a person and how much change to give them before I even finish entering it into the calculator!) Once you give me the equation, I'll try and figure it out and post what I get here, and you can tell me if I'm right or wrong.

okay, now that I've got two totally different answers from two totally different people, I don't know what to think.

So let me clarify. If x is the number of items I have, and y is the number of items that must be put in a group, then the total number of possibilities is equal to x^y?

Let me tell you why I'm asking this, and maybe it will become clearer. I'm an aspiring video game designer who is about to graduate from high school and go to college. Suppose, after earning my degree, I get a job as an animator. The character I'm making is supposed to have x number of moves, but instead of making x animations, I want the character to go from one move to the next fluidly, so I want to impliment a set of transition animations. Every move has a transition animation that goes to every other move with perfect fluidity, instead of the jerky animation of many games today. Therefore, the number of items in each group, aka y, would be two. Is there an equation where I can plug in x and y and figure out the total number of animations, both regular and transition, that I'll have to program?

I wasn't asking for the total number of combinations I will have at one time. That's easy. Imagine that all the items have a number on them, so they are distinguishable. I need to figure out how many possibilities there are for combining them. If I need groups of two, I need to figure out how many combinations I will have after I pair each item with each other item once. Does that make it any clearer?

Suppose I have x number of items. I am instructed to put them in groups of y items, such as groups of two or groups of three. Is there an equation that I can plug these variables into to figure out all possible combinations? Thanks.

About this. We may not need to fully understand the brain if we went the artificial sperm & egg route. All we would have to know is the genes that make a person smart and use them.

Keep in mind that this scientist was working by himself. If we could get all the biologists of the world together, agree on a language to speak, and they worked together like a well-regulated military, we might be able to do it in a decade or so. That's not exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking more along the lines of making a sperm and an egg with perfect genes and fusing them together via artificial insemenation. We'd then put them in a test tube and allow it to grow over a nine month period, feeding it to keep it alive, and allow it to grow up like a normal human, just with a perfect body. With that, however, you may have a point. I forgot about how complicated the brain is. Maybe, in a century or so, when we fully understand the brain, we can begin work on this synthetic human.

I was reading a book about the history of Genetics. It's called "Genetics: Unlocking the Secrets of Life" if anyone is interesting in renting it from their library. Anyway, I read about a scientist whose name I can't spell who won a Nobel Prize for cracking the DNA code and a second Nobel Prize for creating a synthetic gene. It wasn't an easy process. He had to painstakingly clense the reactants of any waste products after every step, but after months of hard work, when he inserted the gene into an e coli cell, the cell produced the exact protein that he hypothesised. This made me ponder: Could we take this one step further and create a synthetic life? We could build an entirely new human from scratch, every membrane, every mitochondria, every gene of every cell of every organ. Now, your first argument would be that this would be pointless. That is not necessarily the case. Imagine creating a perfect human, with no medical problems whatsoever and the mind of a Vulcan from Star Trek, capable of doing long, complicated Calculus problems in his head faster than even a computer can. A person like that would be of great strategic interest to a country, say, militarily. I say country because it seems as if only the richest countries like the United States or China can afford to hire a human computer, assuming that their salaries are proportional to what they're worth. So, now that I've explained the possible benifits, what do you think?

astronomy was actually a list of choices in Physical Sciences when I went to college board. Should I just attend a state public university like the University of Arkansas?

I looked at College Board. I came here because the search found zero matches. And I doubt SAT's average score is 1500/1600, because that is almost perfect, is it not?