JMJones0424

It sounds to me that your quarrel isn't with the scientific method. Instead it is with the scientific establishment. The scientific method is simply a way of objectively investigating and describing the world around us. It's easy to claim common sense in such a ridiculously easy example. How do you use the "common sense" method of explaining phenomenon that aren't intuitive? If your common sense leads you to one answer, for example that time is absolute, and experimental evidence leads to another answer which refutes your common sense, is this not a triumph of the scientific method rather than an example of a limitation? By requiring testable hypotheses rather than accepting as fact one's common sense, we gain objectively verifiable knowledge of our surroundings, in spite of our cognitive biases.

I don't think I understand your point. Are you saying that requiring hypotheses to be tested is a limitation of the scientific method? If an explanation cannot or is not tested, how are we to evaluate its usefulness?

The first page of this thread contained a link that, had you read it, would have made you aware of the RNA first and many other hypotheses. Perhaps you should go back and review read the article as suggested so that you can have some foundation on which to further discuss?

If the signal takes 14 minutes to reach Earth, then the distance to the rover is about [math]\frac{3 \times 10^{8}m}{sec} \cdot \frac{60sec}{min} \cdot 14min = 2.52 \times 10^{11}m[/math] And the rover's length is about 3m. Now we can use a ratio to determine what an equivalent object's length would be one meter away. [math]\frac {n}{1m} = \frac {3m}{2.52 \times 10^{11}m}[/math] [math]n \approx 1.19\times10^{-11}m[/math] This is about 11.9 picometers, very small indeed, about one quarter the size of a hydrogen atom.

Yeah, this was my problem with Hawking's approach as well. While it may be appropriate to say that asking, "What happened before the Big Bang?" is meaningless in terms of cause and effect in this universe, the fact that this universe arose from a singularity from which time originates doesn't seem to me to exclude any causal factors prior to the existence of the universe. Perhaps my ignorance is preventing me from understanding Hawking's point, but I wish he'd gone into more detail in this area rather than just stating it as an accepted fact.

No, nor should it be our aim, as the quest is pointless. Dream up anything then set to prove it doesn't exist. The question posed in the opening post is, in my opinion, not a useful question. No creation myth is accurate. No creation myth is even close to accurate unless you allow for a generous amount of interpretation. If you stretch the meaning of the text of the myth to fit known data, then what value is the myth? If your intent is to validate preconceived notions, then given an appropriate amount of fudge factor, any creation myth can be viewed as being relevant. Invoking god, gods, intelligent designers, universal consciousness, higher intelligences, or any other unverifiable metaphysical entity to answer a question that is firmly rooted in the natural world is merely hand-waving. If your answer can't be tested, it can't be shown to be incorrect. If it can't be falsified, then there is no hope of verification. If an answer can't be verified, then you're just wasting your time as there is no way to distinguish one unverifiable answer from another.

A scientist is anyone who "does" science. Science is a method explaining the world around us using testable hypotheses. I would hope that all engineers are scientists. I'm not sure what you mean in the first sentence here, but you can't be using a standard definition of intelligence here. Thank you for finally dropping the random chance straw man. Surely by now you've read all that's been posted about current hypotheses on abiogenesis. The field is relatively new, and as is the case with a lot in biology, there aren't yet any firm answers, but we've got pretty good ideas. Especially when you get back to primordial life, the distinction between inanimate and living is difficult to clearly delineate. When I speak of life, I think of dissipative structures that seek to maintain homeostasis, have metabolism, and reproduce.

I honestly can't make heads or tails of what you're getting at. At first I thought you were arguing for some part of human nature that leads to our creation of gods, but the more I read, the more this appears to be a thread based upon your own stream of consciousness rather than a particular view about cognition. Can you spell out, in an organized fashion, exactly what you are wanting to discuss in this thread? Please don't be afraid to link to studies you cite, or at least give some type of identifying information so that we can locate those studies as reference.

lets say you're converting 100km/s to miles. [math]\frac {100km}{1sec} \cdot \frac {0.62 miles}{1km} = \frac {62 miles}{sec}[/math]

[math] \frac{40km}{1 hour} \cdot \frac{0.62 miles}{1km} \cdot \frac {1 hour}{3600 sec}[/math] [math] \frac {0.0069 miles}{sec}[/math]

Not exactly clear what you mean by "gravity boundaries". If you are asking if a gravitational field is bounded or unbounded, I think it is correct to say that it is unbounded. However, due to the inverse square law, gravitational effects are negligible at a large enough distance.

Though I suspect there's a crucial typo here, whether you meant "strawman" instead of "starman" is immaterial. If the answer to the question of how life originated is that "some sort of intelligence underpins it", whatever the heck that is supposed to mean, you still haven't answered the question. Worse, you've now added an additional layer of questions. From whence did this "some sort of intelligence" originate? Since you can offer no evidence that this "some sort of intelligence" even exists, it seems to me to be pointless to pursue its origin. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, "When we ask how does a lightbulb give light, answering, 'Edison wanted it that way' is not an explanation by any measure you care to come up with."

Think of it this way- The surface of the Earth, a two dimensional sheet, is not flat. At a small scale, it is close to flat, though there are minor hills and valleys. But at a larger scale, the surface of the Earth is relatively spherical, so that if you travel in a straight line long enough, you will end up back where you started. While there is no edge to the 2D surface of the Earth, it is finite. In the same way, but in three spatial dimensions, if the universe curves back on itself, space is not infinite. We do not yet have measurements accurate enough to confirm that space doesn't curve back on itself, but we do have measurements accurate enough to say that if space does curve back on itself, then the radius of the curvature of the universe is so large that the universe hasn't existed long enough for light to end up back where it started.

We don't know that space is infinite for the reasons discussed earlier. Also, space, even when "empty", isn't necessarily devoid of everything. Empty space, even an absolute vacuum, still contains fields, virtual particles, and other "stuff" that make it not nothing.

I think the term "observable universe" creates the distinction you are trying to make, dapifo.

No, it isn't obvious at all. The Big Bang proposes that all "places" of which you speak originated from the Big Bang and did not exist prior to then. Instead, I think the problems you speak of are more likely due to the Dunning-Kruger effect- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

Besides residing on a nauseating website, the article doesn't appear to me to be written by an author that has even the remotest clue what he's talking about. If you're looking for a point by point rebuttal of his strawmen, I, or someone more competent could throw something together, but if your looking for a basic understanding of modern cosmological thought, might I suggest instead going through Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial and FAQ.

This is a logical fallacy. Correlation does not imply causation. Somali citizens might experience different rates of autism outside of Somalia for any number of reasons. You can't assume it's simply because of vaccines, you need to show that it is. It could just as easily be that autism diagnosis in Somalia is poor. It could be other factors. Without causal evidence, the correlation is just that, a correlation.

Have you tried wikipedia? Landauer's principle Boltzmann constant kB= 8.617 3324x10-5eV/K

I watched the video, and in the interest of facilitating further conversation, I've made some notes to help others participate in the conversation rather than requiring them to watch the entire video. If the following is in quotes, then it is an exact transcription, otherwise it is the gist of what was being presented at that point of the video. Click on the time to jump directly to that point in the video. I think it is clear that the OP misunderstood the point of the presentation. Hawking is not claiming that the universe arose from a black hole, and he does try to explain how the universe can arise from nothing. Of course, the specifics DO require quite a bit of education to understand, but it doesn't require an exceptional education to understand this presentation. ------ Hawking begins with the premise that the origin of the universe is a scientific question. A contrast is made between the Vikings, who thought that a god was eating the sun when they witnessed a solar eclipse, and Aristarchus, who questioned whether lunar eclipses were caused by gods and realized it was due to the Earth's shadow falling on the moon. By investigating rather than accepting a mystical answer, he not only answered his original question, but was able to deduce a heliocentric model of the solar system and that stars were distant suns. He realized that the movement of heavenly bodies was governed by natural laws rather than by gods. This is one of the themes of this presentation, that scientific inquiry enlightens mankind, whereas mystical explanations have not been shown to have value in the quest for understanding our surroundings. "I believe the discovery of these laws has been humankind's greatest achievement. For it's these laws of nature, as we now call them, that will tell us whether we need a god to explain the universe at all. " "If you accept, as I do, that the laws of nature are fixed, then it doesn't take long to ask, "What role is there for god?" This is a big part of the contradiction between science and religion, and although my views have recently made headlines, it is actually an ancient conflict." "Science does not deny religion, it just offers a simpler alternative. But several mysteries remain. After all, if the Earth moves, could it be god that moves it? Ultimately, did god create the universe in the first place?" Three ingredients needed to "cook-up" a universe: a) matter b)energy c) space Where did matter, energy, and space come from? Einstein was the first to realize that two of the three, mass and energy, are like two sides of the same coin. So now, instead of three ingredients, we are left with two: energy and space. Space and energy were created in the Big Bang. How did it all appear out of nothing? For some, this is where god comes back into the picture. The laws of physics demands the existence of negative energy . When the Big Bang produced vast amounts of positive energy, it also produced an equal amount of negative energy. So where is all this negative energy? It's in space. Space itself is a vast store of negative energy, enough to ensure that everything adds up to zero. "So what does that mean on our quest to find out if there is a god? It means that if the universe adds up to nothing, then you don't need a god to create it. The universe is the ultimate free lunch." Since we know that the positive and negative in the universe adds up to zero, all we need to do is work out what, or who, triggered the whole process in the first place. In the quantum world, something for nothing happens all the time. Did god create the quantum laws that allowed the Big Bang to occur? Science has a more compelling explanation than a divine creator. Space and time are intertwined, and at the Big Bang, time itself began. Inside a black hole, time ceases to exist. "The role played by time at the beginning of the universe is, I believe, the final key to removing the need for a grand designer and revealing how the universe created itself." "You can't get to a time before the Big Bang because there was no 'before the Big Bang'. We have finally found something that doesn't have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me, this means there is no possibility of a creator, because there was no time for a creator to exist in." "So when people ask if a god created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn't exist before the Big Bang, so there is no time for god to make the universe in. It's like asking for directions to the edge of the Earth. The Earth is a sphere, it doesn't have an edge. So looking for it is a futile exercise. We are each free to believe what we want, and it's my view that the simpliest explanation is, 'There is no god'. No one created the universe, and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization: There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful." ----- Ultimately, I was disappointed that so little time was devoted to the crux of his argument: 1) There is no need to invoke god to explain why matter, energy, and time exist. 2) The only realm left for a creating entity is then in the Big Bang itself. Since the question of "What existed before the Big Bang?" is as meaningless as "Where is the edge of the Earth?", invoking a god that existed prior to the Big Bang to kick the whole mess off is neither necessary nor productive. Personally, I prefer Sagan's approach to the question of god in Cosmos episode 10: "If the general picture, however, of a Big Bang followed by an expanding universe is correct, what happened before that? Was the universe devoid of all matter and then the matter suddenly, somehow created? How did that happen? In many cultures, the customary answer is that a god or gods created the universe out of nothing. But if we wish to pursue this question courageously, we must of course ask the next question: 'Where did god come from?' If we decide that this is an unanswerable question, why not save a step and conclude that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that god always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe always existed? There's no need for a creation, it was always here. These are not easy questions. Cosmology brings us face to face with the deepest mysteries, with questions that were once treated only in religion and myth." In short, if the scientific explanation of the natural world is insufficient for you, if you feel the existence of the universe necessitates a creator, then why doesn't the existence of a creator necessitate a creator of creators? To conclude that a god or gods must have been responsible for the origin of the universe is to deny the question all together.

No, can't think of one off the top of my head, but quote mining the first sentence without the following sentence does make it seem rather silly.

Apples ripen over a period of time. Late harvest is the end of this period, before they fall off the tree. http://www.extension...ure/DG6238.html

Very good questions Tom B. Some of your questions have already been answered by Greg H., but I'd like to add a little bit and point you to a few resources you may find useful. I am going to take some liberties and assume an education level that may be incorrect. It is not my intention to insult your intelligence. I never took any math courses after high school, and cosmology was very difficult for me to wrap my mind around until someone was finally kind enough to break down some of the basic points to me. If you already understand this, then please allow me to explain to some of the other participants of this thread, or to the lurkers who may have questions that they don't wish to ask. I highly recommend you dig around in Ned Wright's website, specifically the Cosmology FAQ. If you are like me and are in need of a quick reference for basic physics questions, you may find GSU's HyperPhysics site useful as well. Is the universe finite or infinite? This is not an easy question to answer, and the truth is that we don't really know. One may be tempted to conclude that because the Big Bang took place a finite amount of time ago, the universe must be finite. But it's important to remember that Big Bang Theory does not necessitate that the Big Bang happened in a finite volume as is commonly thought. If the Big Bang itself were infinite, then even though it happened a finite amount of time ago, the universe would still be infinite. We only have the observable universe to deal with, which is finite, because the Big Bang occured a finite amount of time ago. Just like Greg H.'s illustration, everyone in the universe appears to be at the center of their observable universe, because the speed of light is finite and the age of the universe is finite. In fact, far in the future, if expansion continues to accelerate, there will come a time where all other galaxies will also be beyond the observable horizon. The answer to this question depends on the geometry of the universe, and we don't yet have accurate enough measurements to determine an answer one way or the other. If Euclidean geometry is an accurate representation of the universe at a large scale, then the universe has no curvature and is unbounded. If the universe is positively or negatively curved, than the universe could very well be finite. Measurements made so far show that the universe is pretty darn close to flat, but we are not able to conclude if there is a slight curvature one way or the other. Curvature? How can 3D space be curved? If you haven't been exposed to non-Euclidean geometry, this may be a difficult concept to understand. Basically, Euclid is credited with formulating the kind of geometry that is taught in high school. He derived all of what we call geometry from 5 basic postulates (assumptions). The first four are pretty straightforward: 1. A straight line segment can be drawn joining any two points. 2. Any straight line segment can be extended indefinitely in a straight line. 3. Given any straight line segment , a circle can be drawn having the segment as radius and one endpoint as center. 4. All right angles are congruent. The fifth one, the parallel postulate, is the one that was always a thorn in everyone's side. It essentially states that given any straight line and a point not on that line, there exists one and only one line that passes through that point but does not intersect the original line. Stated more simply, parallel lines do not intersect. This seems obvious, because this is the geometry you were taught. However, noone was ever really able to prove this postulate in a way that stood up to intense scrutiny. Much, much later, in the 1800s, people began developing new geometries that do not rely on the parallel postulate. If you give it a moment to consider, you too can see why the fifth postulate isn't necessarily defensible. Take the angles of a triangle, for instance. You know that the angles of a triangle equal 180o. However, let's say you make a really big triangle. Start at the equator, go straight north to the north pole, turn 90o and go straight south back to the equator. Including the equator, you now have a triangle made of two lines that intersect the equator at 900 and each other at the north pole at 900 as well, giving a triangle with a total of 2700. A die-hard Euclidean would complain that no, you in fact don't have a triangle, you've got a curved section of a sphere that roughly looks like a triangle but isn't itself in a "flat plane" and therefore is not a triangle. However, ask the Euclidean to support his argument with the postulates listed above, and he wouldn't be able to. What you have done is proved that the Earth is not a flat plane, not that you needed proof, but you have also visualized a spherical geometry with positive curvature. (Remember that it's positively curved because there are more than 180o in a circle.) Another type of curved geometry is hyperbolic geometry, where there are less than 180o in a circle. Examples of a plane in a hyperbolic geometry would include a horse saddle and the inside of a donut. Image Source: Wikipedia on Shape of the Universe. From top to bottom, spherical, hyperbolic, and flat. So, what does this mean for the shape of the universe? If the universe is positively curved, like a sphere, then the universe is not infinite. If the universe is flat, then it is infinite, or at least it is unbounded and if expansion continues forever, it would expand infinitely. If the universe is negatively curved, like a horse saddle or a donut, it could be either infinite or finite. The fact of the matter is that we do not yet have a precise enough measurement of the curvature of the universe to answer definitively whether or not the universe is finite or infinite. We do, however, know that if the universe is curved, the radius of its curvature is so great that light has not had enough time to "wrap around" back to where it started since the Big Bang. EDIT: minor grammatical changes

The question is understood. One is The subjective, mystical, arbitrary, numerological meaning you wish to place on the number one is of no interest to "the scientific community". Your proofs are meaningless and depend on particular naming conventions and numbering conventions that cannot be supported as fundamental to the physical applications you are trying to shoe-horn them into.