finster

And God said "Let there be light and there was Light"

You really think my hypotheses reduces down to that? Okay, that hurt, Alan.

I'd admit my hypotheses is a little out there but to equate it with pseudo-science. That's not fair. Alan. I think it deserves a little more examination, if only to ultimately refute it.

And THAT is where I disagree.

 

I don't believe that a blimp would scale well. You're talking about a very large, very fragile object. If a blimp is reasonably small, it can be simply taken indoors to weather storms. But if it's sufficiently large, where are you going to park it? And don't say that you can simply avoid storms by moving around. That works for a while but sooner or later you'll find yourself in a situation where you simply can't run and you MUST weather some level of a storm. I simply don't believe a blimp large enough to classify as a small "town" could also withstand anything that resembled bad weather. The square/cube law just bites such systems in the arse.

From an airship website:

"Reality - Small non-rigid airships may have long-range difficulty in severe weather, but there are several recorded instances of large airships encountering severe squalls and passing through intact. The success of German zeppelins in severe weather came down to both great piloting skill as well as structural engineering. British and American rigid airships succumbed to bad weather in large part due to avoidable piloting errors and structural flaws.Today there are two major developments that further diminish bad weather as a problem for airships. Advances in weather tracking technology and the development of more powerful vectoring propulsion systems combine to help airships avoid inclement weather altogether or be able to ride out the storm. Advances in flight instrumentation, structural design techniques and material strengths could also serve to further enhance the durability of any modern rigid airships.

Bad weather poses the greatest risk not to airships in flight, but to airships taking off and landing. Take off and landing procedures could be further developed with technology. In the event of poor weather conditions airships may delay a take-off or landing just as airplanes do."

More airship myths debunked at link: http://airshiphangar.com/misconceptions.html

For a possible answer to the origin of the big bang as a phenomenon of consciousness, see my thread here:

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/69397-why-the-existence-of-the-universe-does-not-need-to-be-solved-a-series-of-diagrams-on-the-relativity-of-existence/

finster, something has constituent parts, nothing does not.

 

One must use words according to the way they are defined in language. If you have a different meaning for a word then you might have to coin your own word to explain a different concept concerning any existing word, such as the word "nothing."

 

I think your analysis is based upon the question of how something could possibly come from nothing. The simple answer concerning logic is that it cannot. If valid this answer simply means that either the cosmos (all of reality at any given time including possible multiverses*) has always existed, or that it had a beginning by which the word "before" would be meaningless.

 

Either the known cosmos/ universe* has always existed or it had a beginning. I don't think there is a logical third choice.

 

By definition of the words, "something" and "nothing" cannot be the same. You might however make this argument:

 

If nothing has no constituent parts for a given volume (which it does not by definition)

 

AND

 

If something has no constituent parts or way to describe it for the same given volume

 

then there could be no distinction between something and nothing

 

 

 

 

//

I like your if and then statement.

btw, I posted my full set of diagrams attempting to explain the universe here:

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/69397-why-the-existence-of-the-universe-does-not-need-to-be-solved-a-series-of-diagrams-on-the-relativity-of-existence/

But they do match. All existing evidence is in favor of consistent realities agreed upon by any set of observers.

 

Using some multi-world or alternate existences interpretation, a pair of entities who do not expect their realities to match should also never expect to meet and be able to compare notes (or have any other measurement of each other's existence). Equivalently, if they expect to be able to meet, they should expect their realities to match.

 

It sounds like you're defining existence by a single observer's experience, as in your neutrino example. So anything that I don't know about doesn't exist. That's not the common definition of existence. The point of consistency is that if any two observers compared notes on what events they knew happened (or for that matter what they know didn't happen), then those lists would match be mutually consistent. No observer can say that one event certainly happened while another (who is "meeting and comparing notes" with the first, meaning that they're at the same place and time) says that it certainly didn't happen. There would likely be a lot of events that one observer knows about and the other doesn't, but let all pairs of observers meet and they'll all be consistent.

 

If what I say isn't true, there's no known evidence of it.

I'll give you a very simple example of it. Certain birds and insects can see certain ultraviolet colors that humans can't see. If they were able to compare notes their descriptions would not be the same. That's a very basic example.

But, as explained in my diagrams, since the true universe encompasses all possibilities, all contingencies are possible. When I say something that actually happened "didn't happen" for some other entity, that doesn't mean I'm saying "it didn't happen". I'm saying "it might as well have not happened" for an entity OUTSIDE that occurrences span of existence while I am simultaneously saying, ultimately, "nothing happens" in a universe where an entity is fully conscious of everything because there is no "everything"...it's all nothing.

It's very contradictory but there is consistency in the contradiction. It all depends on your level of consciousness.

I didn't read all of it but

 

I don't think this addresses the consistency with which different observers see the universe. A given event either happens or it doesn't, and all observers agree (though not generally agreeing on the timing). You may theorize the existence of observers who measure a universe inconsistent with what we measure, but there is no experimental evidence of such (nor should there possibly be, in any way that is consistent with our reality).

 

Or does that fit your point? -- That if there is some existence beyond what we can theoretically detect, it doesn't matter because it makes no difference in anything we will ever measure.

Exactly -- that fits my point. Furthermore, it is your conscious-centric perception that concludes "an event either happens or it doesn't'...it may happen for you not only because you can see it but because your specific entity characteristics allow you to interact with that occurrence. Take a neutrino...a particle that we suspect interacts with little in our span of existence. So if it's not interacting with most of the elements and entities in our universe, does most of our span exist for a neutrino? And if most of our span does not exist for a neutrino, don't most of the things that occur in it not happen for it?

But the consistency is maintained once you understand that we live in a cornucopia of existence where things can happen and both not happen relative to what you are. Entities within the same span of existence can expect to observe and interact with relatively the same forces and materials. Entities existing outside each others span of existence, should not expect their realities to match and so both can be correct when diverging on the reality of a particular occurrence provided they are not taking into account other spans of existence. The point of my hypothesis is to finally take into account other spans of existence.

Note: At maybe one or two points in the above images I use the description "spectrum of existence" when I meant to use "span of existence".

Both actually refer to two different things:

"Spectrum of Existence" refers to the entire Universe, both seen and unseen, and includes all the multiple "spans of existence" that comprise a whole universe.

"Span of existence" refers to the segment or frequency spectrum a particular entity exists within, observe and can interact with and it is much smaller than the true and complete Spectrum of Existence.

I think the poor perishers on dial-up will be able to cope with those diagrams - hint: none of the diagrams are showing up!

edit: reuploaded from a different image host. maybe this will work now.

Some of you will recognize one of these diagrams from a thread on nothingness in the speculations forum. Here are the rest of the diagrams in the series for the forum's review and discussion (in no particular order). Let's have fun.

I have thought about this ....a lot.

Both "something" and "nothing" is relative to what is doing the observing (interacting.)

Here is a diagram (from a series of diagrams) I have made explaining why the Universe appears to "exist" to us (when, in actuality, nothing exists):

http://s12.postimage.org/7g1in5b57/nothingness.jpg

When you start talking about farms and the like, the amount of materials (read: water, etc.) required to keep one person alive quickly become too much to keep in the air. At that point, you're no longer talking about a "city" in the air or anything and are instead just talking about a glorified RV. That's a very different proposition.

 

Could you make a home out of a blimp? Sure.

 

Could you make anything that resembles being self sufficient (ie, a city)? I maintain that the answer is "no."

 

I further note that your linked to design is vaporware.

no city on land is entirely self-sufficient either. total self sufficiency is not a requirement for this to work, afaic.

at the most basic level, cities are a collection of homes (or at least evolve out of a collection of homes.) if one home can be made to suspend itself in the sky, you can have many more. eventually, they can be connected to form a small "town". you can take it from there...

No, it isn't.

Since a modified blimp is basically what we are talking about, I beg to differ.

Here is one small scale design.

http://www.yankodesign.com/2012/03/29/flying-home-of-tomorro/

I have a few issues with this:

 

1. If you have balloons, you will get very little sunlight for your small farms. Your own balloon will block the light.

2. You cannot avoid the weather. You just go where the wind takes you. All you can do is change your altitude.

3. The airspace above a country is legally owned by that country and they can legally deny you access.

4. You need seriously huge balloons to do this. The cost of the construction, as well as the helium would be astronomical.

On Point 1: The farms would obviously have to be positioned to get optimal sunlight, possibly even on a platform above or well below the balloons. If the farm platforms are hanging well below the supporting balloons, sunlight should be able to hit them.

On Point 2: Even though I used the word "balloons" I was referring to blimp shaped balloons which, as you know, are maneuverable because of propellers.

On Point 3: Of course, a nation will assert their airspace boundaries but that would only be a problem if you renounced your citizenship to your country. I'm assuming if you did, you would have resources already set up for yourself outside that country.

On Point 4: The size of the balloons would be, of course, dependent on the weight and size of your platform. As for helium, my suggestion was to use solar balloons with hot air emergency balloon supplements. With solar balloons you would have to be wary of cloud cover and make sure you were either above the clouds or out of cloud cover.

To live in a flying city would be truly amazing, but how would we make it fly, power it, and control it?

This is probably easier for us to do than you think, though it would be no way near the size of a modern city.

We're talking small fry populations at first but all we need to do is strap some solar (and fuel fired, just in case) balloons to a large platform. And on the platform, we add everything we will need to survive in the clouds: small farms for food, solar panels for electricity, water catchment system for water harvesting, some light structures for lodging and protection from the elements. What else? A radio to keep an eye on the weather so you're not caught in dangerous skies. Maybe the ability to lower small motor boats while close to the ocean surface so they can stock up on emergency supplies at the nearest shore town, if required.

This is totally doable with current technology, especially on a small one person scale. Think of it: First you could fly it above low clouds just in case they are blocking the sunlight to your solar balloons and panels. You could also fly away from approaching bad weather. No property taxes because, well, you'll have no property. You could even fly out to international waters, renounce your citizenship and proclaim yourself and free state and no one could stop you.

http://s16.postimage.org/lpe8nftdf/diaphragmvehicle.jpg

The image isn't visible.

Does it look like a space hopper?

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Space_hopper

LMAO...actually that was the initial inspiration of the idea.

Try this link for the image:

http://s16.postimage.org/lpe8nftdf/diaphragmvehicle.jpg

btw, my thinking behind this idea is not to replace the gas car but merely build a faster bicycle (even though the vehicle in the diagram is a 4 wheeled one)...I gather the force the human body can summon in that position vs. the force the human foot can apply to a peddle would be greater in such a vehicle as depicted in my design. Of course, I would have to calculate how much greater given the pounds of force required to compress the rubber spheres and their push back force, etc...

But my initial impression is we would have a green vehicle slower than an automobile but faster than maybe an electric bike, which would be a step forward and a welcome alternative for many.

Sorry if this has already been posted, but this has been bugging me for a while and a search didn't turn up anything. We keep talking about alternative energy sources everywhere when there is a constant energy around us all the time. What I want to know is, could gravity be used as a feasible source of energy?

What do you think?

No not easy peasy, in a voyage like this, the mothership would be going so fast the possibility of the supply ships being useful is nil.

 

Think of it this way, you have a huge airliner, it's massive, taking off requires a huge amount fuel so to lighten the load you fly smaller support craft up to refuel the plane, food, water, what ever it needs. You even off load passengers like this the plane must fly as much as possible, it's always going faster and faster, each hook up very expensive in terms of energy expended. Can you imaging the failure rate of the off loads of "supplies" would be? The utter devastation if even one messed up?

 

But the most important part is the deta V of the mothership and supply ship, any going ahead, coming back or catching up, would require huge amounts of energy, far more than would be gained by the effort.

Maybe we better plan for stops then. Perhaps swapping out ships altogether and relaunching at each point if and as supplies are needed. If supplies are not needed, which would be the plan, you could pass right by the supply depots. But they would be reassuring knowing they were there.

Well, we do risk management on all of that. For example, spread the fleet out more. Supplies don't have to be 1 hour away. If we are worried about, say, an explosion, maybe we put supplies one day, or one week away. Mismanaging our supplies can occur whether they are close by or far away.

 

 

 

Well personally I believe that once they leave they are gone for good. We have to plan for them having the supplies and know how to care of themselves. When Columbus sailed it was do or die.

 

Aha! So you admit that your plan is do or die! By your admission it is now logical to infer that if ships prior to Columbus had set up buoys filled with supplies at the mid-way point on the Atlantic Columbus's voyage might have been less than do or die! Now I've got you and Moontanman is my witness!

(just kidding)

Because it is included in your plan. I'm just changing the timing of the launches.

Ok. something just clicked. I see what you're doing. And having everything with you would afford the possibility for altering course. To where, I don't know.

But what if we miscalculate the distance? What if something happens to the fleet that damages the supplies with us? We'll have 19,000 years to mess up along the way, breed some rogue captain with a death wish, mismanage and squander our supplies, etc, ad infinitum. Then what?

What if the star explodes before we get there? At the very least, we're going to want a supply chain going back.

No, that hasn't always been your point.

 

 

They are your contingencies, they are your backups, they are your redundancies, they are your supplies.

 

I don't have a separate plan from yours. All I am suggesting is a modification to your plan. Anything you launch early, you instead launch at the same time the people launch. The only difference I am suggesting is that instead of placing things far away from you, you instead have those things close to you.

how can you be absolutely sure you will launch with enough supplies to make it?

No, you are still misunderstanding me.

 

I want exactly the same number of backup contingency plans that you want.

I want multiple alternate options just like you.

I want two baskets, just like you.

 

The only difference in our plans is the distance between the people and the baskets. I want the baskets to be close by. You want the baskets to be far away.

If it turns out due to some unforseen circumstance that I need something in one of the baskets, I can get to it quickly.

If it turns out due to some unforseen circumstance that you need something in one of the baskets, you are going to have to wait 100 years for it.

My counterpoint to that is and has always been, if the supplies you have with you are still not enough, all you have are the supplies with you. My option is the supplies you have with you PLUS supplies you pick up on the way. In addition, you'd only have to wait 100 years if we spaced out the supply depots by 100 years. We could choose to space them out sooner. The point is, the supply chain is set up and ready BEFORE you venture out, which would give our star wanders a tremendous boost of confidence.

I think we're grappling with an ad infinitum argument. I keep advising a supply chain and you keep grabbing the supplies for yourself even after I've said you'll be given enough supplies to make 3 round trips. You're being greedy. The fact that you keep on insisting you have all the supplies with you, tells me you're not confident. The purpose of the supply chain is to provide confidence.

And in addition, the fact that a supply chain trail has been pre-established all the way to the nearest star is a virtual guarantee you will make it. They are like stepping stones across a river. If they are going all the way to the next star, if you follow them, you probably will too.

I swear I think you are not reading what I am writing.

 

What would be better, to have an emergency duplicate spacecraft positioned 100,000 miles away, or to have an emergency duplicate spacecraft positioned 1 mile away?

Zapatos, I'm not saying you won't have that. You will. You will have all the emergency spacecraft you want 1 mile away, if that's what you like. But to be truly confident, those space craft have to make it out there with you. How much more confidence will you have if, in addition to the emergency craft you are taking with you, there are craft already positioned and in place ahead of you BEFORE you even set out on your journey?

Boys boys boys, sadly you are all wrong... Just kidding but i would like to point out a couple things on this.

 

First why do you think sending supplies out ahead will help anyone? If the mother ship is traveling faster than the supply ships then you have that nasty delta vee to worry about. No matter if the supply ships could accelerate to catch up to the speed of the mothership, if they could so that they will take exactly, more or less, the same amount of energy launch as simply storing the supplies in the mother ship. Why not let them go along side the mother ship if they don't fit inside?

 

Got that figured out. Mother ships won't have to stop or adjust. As they close in on supply depots and unmanned mother and support ships, they send ahead smaller freight ships to collect supplies and drop off crew to populate the new ships. Easy peasy.

Plus, again, you don't want the ships altogether. You want a line. Not all the ships have to keep up with one another. They will all have supplies with them to make it on their own. And conversely, the longer the space caravan, the more connected fleets will be to one another.

I've got a perfect illustration of this to hammer home my point: I'm sure you recall Apollo 13? They too took all the supplies they needed with them to get to the moon. But something went wrong with their spacecraft and not only did they have to abandon to moon shot but were shitting bricks for the whole return trip. Now if Nasa had pre-positioned emergency duplicate spacecraft between here and the moon, they might have been able the finish the moonshot. Instead, they had to come home and almost lost their lives.

Is that what you want, Zapatos? Another Apollo 13?

In what way do you think I am arguing against your idea of redundancy?

Because I'm saying we employ multiple backup contingency plans and you are insisting on one.

So do you think your way would be better because ultimately, you would have even more supplies available to you than I would?

No. You're not fighting redundancy of supplies. You're fighting redundancy of options. The only thing wrong with your plan is the resistance to multiple alternate options. Why put all your eggs in one basket if you have enough eggs to put them in two?

With all due respect in return, I think you are missing my point.

 

I am suggesting that anything you may have pre-positioned, you instead take with you. Any redundancy is with you instead of somewhere ahead of you. There is no limit to how much I can take with me. Anything you would have sent out early, I would send out at the same time the people left. Any supply that you can get to in 100 years, 200 years, or 1000 years, I can lay my hands on today.

 

 

They left them behind because they could not possibly take the supplies with them. They had a limited carrying capacity. You don't have that same limit in space.

 

How many explorers died because they couldn't get back to their pre-positioned supplies in time? If the supplies had been with them they would have survived.

Firstly, I will kindly point out that by postulating a fear of running out of supplies, you are unconsciously conceeding my point.

Even when I've agreed you will have enough supplies on hand with you (maybe even triple the supplies needed) to make the entire journey without way-stations, you still insist, by postulating a fear of running out of supplies, as a reason to not set up way-station points. Again, way-station points are a REDUNDANCY, an insurance policy. If you asked the people going on this journey whether they'ed want BOTH enough supplies with them to make the entire journey PLUS the addition of way-stations, if they already know they will have enough supplies with them to make the journey, they are going to agree to the way-stations as an added REDUNDACY, an added assurance.

If you asked the Apollo astronauts at the time if they would want to have an extra return launch vehicle set up on the moon ahead of their trip just in case the one they brought with them failed on the moon, do you think they would say no to that? if I were them I would have felt a lot more confident about the trip.