Alan McDougall

http://www.livescience.com/42791-supernova-star-explosion-amateur-photos.html?cmpid=514627_20140124_17471054 New supernova in the sky The supernova was first observed Tuesday (Jan. 21) at 7:20 p.m. local time (19:20 UTC) by a group of students led by Steve Fossey at the University College London. "It was a surreal and exciting experience taking images of the unidentified object as Steve ran around the observatory verifying the result," UCL student Guy Pollack said in a statement. The only closer star explosion in the last three decades was Supernova 1987A, which was spotted in February 1987 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy companion of the Milky Way about 168,000 light-years from Earth. Another star explosion discovered 21 years ago, 1993J in Messier 81, was essentially at the same distance as the new supernova, said International Astronomical Union General Secretary Thierry Montmerle.

I don't think if c were different it would make alter the physical universe in the huge way you suggest, however, if the "force of gravity" were different then what you suggest would be true.

I would say as an Engineer I qualify as a scientist of sorts and I go beyond belief as far as love is considered, I know that I love very many people , some of which I would die for if such an event ever came to pass. Is love just a function of my brain neurons, I really don't care 'all I know is I love people profoundly" ?

Yes even massive objects like colossal galaxies, that are imbedded in space can separate from each other faster than c , by the overall expansion of the universe, but that does not alter the fact that no object that has mass can travel "through" space at c. c is immutable sorry!

c is what it is because that is a "reality of our universe", you cant change it in the same manner you cant change the value of phi, the diminishing returns in energy needed to get an object to c, becomes infinite, the total energy of the entire universe, is insufficient to drive an object to c , thus it is an impossibility for any object with mass to reach c , mass-less particles like photons are always at c. Would you like me to suggest some cosmic traffic official set the limit of c in our particular universe? Must I answer an impossible question, if I could I would outrank Einstein as a theoretical physicist?

The scientists in question have based their belief on the solid grounds of "scientific evidence", not "follow your leader' you insultingly suggest.

Well news today is about the goings in the Muslim majority states below, which have reasonable stability and at are at peace and which are in a state of flux and uprisings? See list below! Note those with # before Muslim Population means that country is in a state of unrest, more ### indicates even more unrest, even civil war. Note those with ? before Muslin Population means I am not sure if there is any unrest and will check! http://www.religionfacts.com/islam/places/top_50.htm Country % of Muslims Muslim Population Mauritania 99.9% ?3,083,772 Maldives 99.9% ?348,756 Western Sahara 99.8% #272,461 Somalia 99.5% ##8,548,670 Turkey 99% #68,963,953 Iran 99% #67,337,681 Algeria 99% ?32,206,534 Afghanistan 99% ###29,629,697 Yemen 99% ##20,519,792 Tunisia 99% ##9,974,201 Oman 99% #2,971,567 Comoros 99% ?664,534 Djibouti 99% ?471,935 Morocco 98.7% ?32,300,410 Iraq 97% ###25,292,658 Libya 97% ##5,592,596 Pakistan 96.35% #156,491,617 Saudi Arabia 95.7% ?25,281,642 Tajikistan 95% ?6,805,330 Jordan 95% #5,471,745 Qatar 95% ?819,898 Senegal 94% #10,459,222 Azerbaijan 93.4% ?7,389,783 Egypt 91% ###70,530,237 Mali 90% ###11,062,376 Niger 90% #10,499,343 Gambia 90% #1,433,930 Uzbekistan 89% ?23,897,563 Turkmenistan 89% ?4,407,352 Indonesia 88.22% ?213,469,356 Bangladesh 88% #127,001,272 Syria 88% ####16,234,901 Guinea 85% ?8,047,686 Kuwait 85% ?1,985,300 Bahrain 85% #585,093 Palestine 84% ###3,159,999 Kyrgyzstan 80% #4,117,024 United Arab Emirates 76% ?1,948,041 Lebanon 70% ###2,678,212 Albania 70% ?2,494,178 Brunei 67% #249,481 Sudan 65% ##26,121,865 Malaysia 60.4% ##14,467,694 Sierra Leone 60% #3,610,585 Burkina Faso 55% #7,658,922 Chad 54% ?5,306,266 Nigeria 50% ##64,385,994 Eritrea 50% #2,280,799 Ethiopia 47.5% #34,700,310 Kazakhstan 47% ?7,137,346

My thread is about Islam in this day and age and is not meant to compare it to Christianity, although admittedly Christianity was guilty of the most hideous crimes in the past. Of course if other members want to compare Islam to other faiths it is their right to do so!

Humans carry the sea/oceans of their origin inside their bodies, blood is salty etc! In fact there are no animals as far as I know, that have fresh water blood, thus the oceans were/are our original homes from which we emerged millions of years ago.

A lot of them, however, believe love and other emotions are just due to brain hormones etc. Maybe a moderator should decide if it is really a breach of rules.

Is Islam really the religion of peace their followers claim it to be? Looking at the daily news contradicts this claim don't you think?

My mistake, my point is that any object that has mass cannot be accelerated up to C!

The original question asked in this thread was "Why does light travel at 299,792.458 kilometers per second in a vacuum. The best answer I can think of is that any object that has mass, even a fundamental particle would need an infinite amount of energy to reach C It is simply a reality of our universe,such as phi. This barrier would apply equally to a colossal mountain of a trillion tonnes, as well as that of a single proton, it is all about diminishing returns. At first a huge amount more energy is needed to accelerate the huge mountain, and almost nothing to accelerate the proton. Assuming the energy is available to continue acceleration both said object closer and closer to C the energy needed to get closer to C would begin to equalize until at say? 0,9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999991 C the energy to drive both object towards C would begin to equalize. Hypothetically speaking at exactly C the exact same amount of energy would be needed to get the colossal trillion tonne mountain or the single proton to C (Impossible infinite) The energy increases exponentially the closer to C you get, and your input will exhaust eventually no matter how large it is. Lets assume you get to the last infinitesimal tiny faction of speed needed before actual C say as I indicate below! 0,00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 of the speed of light the energy needed to bridge this final last gap to reach C is still infinite no matter what was the original mass of the object.

What is the future of theoretical physics beyond the SM, can the SM be said to be complete with the discovery of the Higgs boson/Higgs field? Again I mentioned the Higgs boson for those visitors to our forum that might be interested in it, can't the forum serve as a "source of information" as well as a "place to debate", I am not playing games , that is an insult and you should know better by now that I do not do such inane things on the forum.

Your sarcasm and wit are breathtakingly brilliant! Your answer is correct, the lie which is a negative always leads to the opposite of the truth, thus any answer you get from any of the guards you do the opposite.

I know that!, but I added some facts and information about the Higgs boson and the Higgs field, that might interest those with less knowledge than yours

Anyone with the very basic understanding of physics , knows that light photons do not "accelerate" and by this time you should be aware of the fact, that the level of my understanding of physics goes beyond that of primary school children.

The Higgs boson was the only particle predicted by the standard model of physics that remained undetected , thus must we accept the SM as complete, and back to my question must we now develop new theories/physics beyond the SM. The Higgs boson is what leads to matter having mass to matter, so does it also have mass, if so where does it get its mass own from?. The Higgs particle is a ripple in the Higgs field, and studying the Higgs particle will tell us something about the Higgs field. Since gravity pulls on things proportional to their mass, and since the Higgs field is responsible for giving most known fundamental particles mass, is there a close relationship between gravity and the Higgs Field?. How different would our universe be without the Higgs Field?

From my statement in Post #49 it should be obvious I knew that, I was just making a point!

. I am sure they knew what he meant, but for those who might not, can I add a comment below? Photons and other "mass-less" particles have Zero rest mass. When a Photon is created it is already moving. It isn't like a ball that in laying on the ground and gets kicked. At the point of conversion the photon is instantly traveling at the speed of light namely C SR dictates that only things with mass require more energy to be accelerated. Since photons have "no mass" and actually never "accelerate" the restriction doesn't apply to them.

Matter /antimatter asymmetry exists as a reality of our universe, luckily for us or our universe, would like be a gamma ray soup. You are right it is one of the great mysteries of physics. If the mass of neutrino's could be measured accurately, maybe there combined mass would account for the missing mass of the universe or dark matter. However, in all the previously mentioned, still to be solved physics, the Higgs Boson must play a part. Has the Higgs Boson been included into the SM?

Are photons ejected?

Physics Beyond the Standard Model? The discovery of the Higgs Boson in July 2012 by the Large Hadron Collider team, was a triumph for particle physicists. However could there be a downside to this discovery? Is there a need for any physics beyond the Standard Model? Does the Standard Model not successfully explains the data?. Why generate extremely far out difficult to comprehend theories, based on particles and extra dimensions that might not exist, and so far have never being detected, when a far simpler theory might suffice? Occam s Razor should it apply in this case? Super- symmetry and String Theory , has there there any good scientific evidence to accept them as real possibilities? The Standard Model has 61 elementary particles? are there more still to be discovered if so should we add them to the Standard Model

The night my heart stopped and I flat-lined On the 18th August 2011, I my heart stopped beating numerous times, at home and then in the Sunninghill Hospital (clinically death) I had taken nap on that Thursday night, and a dear friend of mine, Tony was somehow moved to phoned late that night, a thing he had never done before, I woke up with heart going crazy almost stopping, my wife immediately called the for the ambulance and they got to my home in ten minute flat, the hospital is less than a half kilometer from my home and I was there in five minutes and went I got attention immediately. Note! If my friend of some thirty five years,Tony , had not phone me, from the town of George in South Africa, to where I live in Johannesburg some thousand miles away, at the exact moment he did, I would never have woken up and would have died in my sleep. I am sure fate moved Tony that night to phone me that Thursday night, at the very unusual hour of about 9 pm. Tony never phones me so late at night and maybe he can explain what made him call me why he was moved to call me at that moment in time. His phone call woke me up from a deep sleep from which I would simply died in my sleep, because I was unaware that in my sleeping state that my heart was going wild in my chest, stopping and starting in a life and death struggle and I was approaching real death.. My phone is right next to me by my bedside so even though I in a very distressed state, I was ably to pick it up and answer it to the best of my ability. My friend Tony could hear over the phone that there was something really wrong going on which me. He said over the phone “Alan you don’t sound right, are you OK?" I replied “No”!! “Tony something is very wrong” “you phone back a little later”. I put down the phone and could feel my heart actually starting and stopping in a most frightening way and I became deathly pale and started to sweat profusely. I did not realize at this stage know how very close to dying I was that night. It is very scary when I looked at wife or daughter, and saw them actually becoming dimmer and dimmer in my eyes, because my brain was being deprived of oxygen. It was then that I began then to move in and out of consciousness on the very edge of death. I saw my daughter Desiree in the passage and called out weakly for her to tell my wife Denise, that I was dying or having a heart attack. I don’t not think she believed me, but after one look at me with my face pale and sweating body, she called the ambulance, which reached our complex in some ten minutes. On resuscitation table due to third stage or total, AV heart block. I went through the whole drama of my heart stopping, flat- lining over and over again, adrenaline, atropine were injected directly into my heart and the shock paddles and chest depressions, used over and over again in a desperate effort to get my heart to beat again this was a real struggle of life or death. I now entered a life threatening desperate state of AV heart block (Heart stopping and starting) I recall very little of what happened to me that night, because I had began to go in and out of consciousness. I only regained full consciousness the next morning in the intensive care ward and noticed a temporary heart pacemaker had been connected to my heart to keep me alive. I had to wait a day or two in hospital for Doctor Rodney King Cardiologist, to get my medical aid to agree to the fitting of a permanent heart pacemaker, under my skin in my chest wall. This pacemaker cost about sixty thousand South African Rand or about nine thousand American (USA) dollars at the then exchange rate. The team of doctors and nursing assistants were desperately trying to get a needle into one of my veins. I have very poor veins and they are fairly deep under my skin and difficult to locate. Later back in the emergency care ward after I finally became fully conscious I noticed that both my arms wre4 very bruised and hands were full of needle pricks. I had no blood pressure at all and this also made it almost impossible to find a vein. I heard them call for atropine and adrenaline, which the doctor told me they injected directly into my heart. When even this did not keep my heart beating as it should, they used electric paddles to shock my heart and get it beating as it should. On return to the emergency ward for intensive care I noticed both sides of my chest, ribs, or torso were very painful to touch as it hurt to breath for days after the event. I only remembered vaguely what went on while on the resuscitation table during, those long three hours of life and death struggle. However, later I began to remember more and more about the strange things I saw while alternating between consciousness and seemly going elsewhere during the period of resuscitation by a team of doctors. each time my heart stopped and I went flat-line, I went somewhere else, not of this world and each time the emergency team of doctors got my heart to beat I came back.I kept going in and out of consciousness during the attempts at resuscitation. I recall telling one of the doctors I was dying and they should let me go, it seemed to me I was about to enter a black void, I heard the doctor say to me. "No one dies on my table" maybe his words gave me hope to fight for my life. At this time I did not think of my family or wife or children, I was absorbed with my survival. After three hours the on the resuscitation table the doctors installed a temporary pacemaker to maintain my pulse between 65/110 beats per/minute instead of the 5 to zero it had been beating/not beating most of the time on the resuscitation table. My wife had to wait nearly the whole evening before one of the cardiologist came to her and said I would survive but it was a very close call, indeed and I was a lucky man The doctor said if I had arrived hospital even five minutes later it would have been impossible to revive me. I am 73 years of age now and would not have minded if I had died then, but I suppose there must be some things left for me to do, because a whole lot of favorable coincidences made it possible for me to survive. I really came as close to death that night as possible, without actually dying, and yet brought back by a great team of doctors, to live again and be with my family and friends a little longer I hope. In fact since the hear pacemaker was fitted I have felt much more healthy and maybe the heart irregularity was a long standing problem of which I was unaware. Then each time doctors got my heart to beat I was drawn back to the earthly world and vaguely remember being on the table with people pricking me with needles all over, my arms and hands I because I was continually being resuscitated by the medical team , I floated in and out of consciousness, into the Other-World and back to This-World until I was finally stabilized. If I had any doubts about life after death I have none now, each time my heart stopped my soul or consciousness left my body and went into another existence, beyond physical life I believe.. When I was elsewhere on the other side, I saw a huge tree with a numerous books all around its trunk. I tried to read what was on the covers I somehow knew that they contained all the answers to my questions I had posed during my life on earth as well as knowledge and mysteries of existence. “Was it the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”? There was only one very large book which I think consolidated all that was in all the smaller books. When I tried to lift the large book, it was too heavy to carry and I decided to leave it there under the tree and return later for it. Maybe when I finally die, I will go back to that beautiful tree and retrieve this book which I think might the "The book of Knowledge" During the moments that I flat-lined, I sort of went through the back door of a colossal mansion and I saw numerous people all gathered to welcome me wherever I was. I think that some of my beloved passed over people were there. It seemed like a welcome home party, or a sort of wedding reception. Although not in this particulates event, I thought about my beloved Dog Bully who had died fifty years prior and remembered the many dreams I had when I felt his loving doggy presence. When on the other side of life I one saw a beautiful pulsating orb of golden light that I took for the essence of all that is good and pure because it emanated perfect peace and love. I had no tunnel and meeting of a being of light. Another moment I came to a large dark cave, with countless people sitting in the dark gloom. There was some enormous evil entity, so pitch black that it seemed like tar and did not reflect any light. When the Golden orb approached it, it shrank away from it. Was this dark entity Satan? I now have a permanent pacemaker in my chest which should last ten years and despite the great shock I got that night, I am felling much better and very alive and well. Note; the medical term for what happened to me is Total AV heat block. I have no fear of death in fact if I had died then it would have been a nice way to die, maybe now I will hang on get very old and horrors become demented! Alan McDougall ©Copyright Alan McDougall 2013

To illustrate my disillusion with exclusive religion, a case in point was Jimmy Swagggard, a hell and brimstone evangelist, who screamed and shouted from the pulpit against all sins, especially sexual sins and depravity, he was caught red handed at a brothel trying to secure the favours of a prostitute for the night. A few days later in front of his congregation , he wept and wept asking say over and over again “ I have sinned I have sinned” He pleaded with God and his congregation to forgive him, and I think many of them did forgive him for the terrible sin he had done. However, this sad story did not end there, a week or so after his desperate plea for forgiveness, a police officer pulled over a car for a suspected traffic violation, who do you suppose he found inside the car? No less than Jimmy Swagggard and a prostitute in both in a very in indecent and compromising situation. Jimmy got off with a warning from the law, but this hypocrite did not learn from his mistakes or from the very words he had preached and screamed about for over 30 years. Twice this hypocrite was caught doing the same act of depravity resulting finally in most of his congregation, not forgiving him and leaving his church, extremely disillusioned like I was. However, unbelievably, some of his congregation overlooked all his discretion and remained his followers. This was a person who I had admired as a man of God, who preached ethics and morality and now I found out he was nothing but a secret sexual pervert. After that I could never listen, his preaching or to his music and felt his Christian calling was removed from him by God. Off course he was/is not the only hypocrite preacher out there. Many of them are puffed up with pride at their supposed wisdom, became extremely wealthy, residing in huge mansions their own airplanes and traveled the world first class to sprout their nonsense to the world at large. Alan McDougall brother writes on Religion My family has never understood my contempt for religion. Mostly they can’t distinguish religion from God and like most people, believe that to subscribe to a religion automatically means belief in God and righteousness. I despise all religion yet I don’t despise the notion of God. My acceptance of the existence of God comes from the incomprehensibility of the cosmos and sheer wonder of nature. The bible means nothing to me, as would the Koran or Talmud, should I ever read these works, which I never will. The background to my strident view of religion comes from my childhood. I don’t blame my parents, they were only doing what they thought was right. They were decent people, misled by equally decent people. From the age of about nine, starting with my convalescence from rheumatic fever and for the next two years, I was confined to home and consequently spent many of my formative childhood years in the company of adults. I was exposed to adult conversation and ultimately my parents involved me in a new sect that they had just joined. The teachings of this sect were as insidious as all other such sects and it crept up on me, and brain washed me, as it did my mother, father and two Aunts. My Aunt my mother’s sister, nearly 80, and my cousin on my father’s side, now over 70, are still members of this sect and have been for over 50 years. This sect differentiated themselves by claiming no name; they wanted to simply be called Christians. However they did assume names such as “The Way”. This name implicitly condemned all other religions. They taught that unless you were one of them, there would be no place in heaven for you. This condemned all of mankind, except them, to eternal damnation. The women were not allowed to cut their hair and wore it in large buns. They were not allowed to expose their arms or legs so they wore long dresses down to the ankles, with full sleeves, not matter how hot it was. Radio was not allowed or TV in the home and no one was permitted to attend a movie or go to a circus. Certainly smoking and drinking were forbidden. My Aunt, my father’s sister, remained a member of the sect all her life and attended the meetings religiously. She kept a radio in her house, under cover. I know that her husband secretly had a smoke when no one was looking! The faithful were kept under control by the preachers who went from home to home in two’s. It was always two women or two men and in many cases they were partners of 20 years or more. They were called workers, even though they never did a day’s work in their lives. "They were the ultimate fun police". They ensured that the woman's hair was kept long, that there were no radios to be seen and that nobody experienced any fun or enjoyment whatsoever. They were the Taliban of the 60s and they had me entrapped. My father eventually saw the light and withdrew and I was quickly able to follow suit. I was free. I was thirteen and there was still some time left for a normal childhood. I had spent nearly three years in this sect, during which time, I never saw a movie, attended a circus, or listened to a radio, other than secretly. I spent these years attending meetings in our home and other homes on Sunday mornings and evenings and Wednesday evenings. I had nothing in common I could share with my friends. Once a year, we attended a convention which lasted for a week, along with hundreds of members from all over the country. The meetings went on all day, interrupted thankfully by tea, lunch and dinner. For ten days we were preached at by workers, their sermons going on interminably. I know I daydreamed through them, they made no sense whatsoever.. Somehow this all seem perfectly reasonable to me at the time but over the years, leading into early adulthood, I increasingly saw the absurdity of it all. During my early adult years I began to see this absurdity mirrored in every religion. Every religion has rules which serve no purpose in furthering the worship of God, yet people mindlessly pursue these rules, even to their deaths. I mention below a few of the absurdities that I have observed over the years. South Africa’s government and state church, the Dutch Reformed Church, justified apartheid based on Christianity. The state airline, flying only white passengers, always had bibles prominently secured to each bulkhead, presumably for the devout Christians in the plane to read up on apartheid. You could not be a real Christian if you were black, it seems. If you are a Muslim, then everybody else is an infidel! The Catholics believe in the infallibility of the Pope. It is impossible to ascribe infallibility to the leader of the Catholic Church, when you look back on the monumental mistakes made this religion over the years, all with the blessing of the same infallible Pope. Infallibility means never having to say sorry! Muslims on the other hand seem to think that the murder of innocents can justified by objectives of their religion. Those that execute these crimes are little worse than those Muslims who commit no such crimes, yet stay silent! They all stand condemned by their religion. This is different only in degree to the Catholic and Anglican leaders who knowingly hid paedophiles in the church leadership. Yet these same religions condemn gay people who commit no crime and even if by some stretch of the imagination, you decide that this is a crime, and then it is, at the very worst, a victimless crime. How much worse is it to condone the abuse of a child, by a person placed in a position of absolute trust? If you can’t trust a man of God, then who can you trust? The Israelis and Hezbollah kill innocent people and both of them do this in the name of God. Surely they can see that the God to which they both ascribe infinite benevolence, would not countenance the murder of innocents or otherwise. Surely they can see that they both can’t be right. Surely they can see that if they both believe in the infinite benevolence of God, that they must both be wrong. But of course they can’t! Buddhist’s are not involved in wars, abuse and don’t enforce their teachings on others. Buddhists believe that you should kill no living creature and this is an admirable philosophy. Yet they eat meat. Their reasoning behind this is that the person eating the meat does not kill the animal. Lest I stand condemned by those that follow me for these views, let me add that I despise religion, not God or the people that worship God through these religions. For these people I have only compassion, for all people need meaning in their lives and need structure and tradition against which they can measure their worth. To the extent that religion might serve these ends, it is good. To the extent that it serves the ends of its leaders and founders, then it is not good. If there is a God, these leaders of the church will face him, as will I, to justify the deceit and the wrongdoings committed in his name during our lifetimes. I expect however to face a benevolent God, if such a being exits, who will be wise enough to see my misdeeds in the context of my life and my ability to comprehend and interpret them according to my conscience,, as will he those billions of people less fortunate than me. He will disregard the religion they pursued, only evaluating their life and deeds objectively I hope.