1 hour ago, dordle-loddle said:

If energy cannot be created, then how was the sun, Earth's main source of energy, formed during the Big Bang?

In effect the BB was a evolution of space and time [spacetime] as we know them. There was no matter as such. In that first instant the four known forces were combined as one superforce.  As the universe/spacetime expanded, pressures and temperatures started to drop, and the superforce started to decouple, gravity first.

During this decoupling phase transition, false vacuums were created and excesses of energy went into creating our very first fundamental particles, probably quarks and electrons.

The following diagram will help to explain false vacuums during phase transitions....... 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum

In quantum field theory, a false vacuum is a vacuum which exists at a local minimum of energy and is therefore not truly stable. This is in contrast to a true vacuum, which exists at a global minimum and is stable. A false vacuum may be very long-lived, or metastable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum     

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At 3 minutes post BB the first fundamentals were able to form protons and neutrons as temperatures dropped sufficiently, and the first atomic nuclei were formed.

At around 380,000 years post BB temperatures had dropped to around 3000  K which allowed electrons to couple with the atomic nuclei and our first light element/s were created...hydrogen and some helium.

After a few hundred million years, huge gas clouds of hydrogen had formed and started to undergo gravitational collapse, until at the cores of these gignatic clouds, nuclear fusion was initiated and our first very very big stars with very short lifespans were born, went supernova and disgorged heavier elements into the universe.

These heavier elements  along with hydrogen formed more stars and even planets from similar gravitational collapses.

That is very roughly the story of the universe from near the beginning to today.

6 minutes ago, dordle-loddle said:

Do you believe in God? Why?

The universe from 10-43 seconds, post BB, and all we see can be explained reasonably and  and logically without any need for any deity.

God or any deity appears superfluous.

I've got plans to live forever: So far I'm doing OK. 

8 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

No, I never said waiting a few hundred years is a valid approach - I don't think ongoing technological progress delivering the means to make it easy is an inevitability. Nor is continuing what we are doing adequate to the task; I think only a huge investment at a scale far greater than anything to date has any real prospects - greater or equal to a manned Mars mission but with the practical goal of demonstrating the true feasibility of mining, processing and using space resources.

I think doing what we are doing now will not get us there.

 

Commercial mining enterprises would not be a legitimate goal of NASA or other government sponsored space agency but proving the viability of it might be. Space activities that do pay their own way - satellites for Earth based uses - can be successfully serviced by private industry; contracts to service the needs of those space agencies for exploration are government sponsored activities - taxpayer money is being put into private industry rather than private industry putting money into space exploration.

No-one is stopping commercial ventures based around space resources - they continue to not make economic sense.

 

The scale of what's needed before it becomes economically viable exceeds any prior examples - none of which truly parallel what Big Space faces. Previous examples were of commercially proven technology being used at greater scale, within a world far more abundant in readily usable and saleable resources than space is; the space resources are there but they are not readily usable.

Big historic railway projects got up after they had the technology well worked out and it was proven to be very successful and profitable at smaller scale - proven before the big investment took place. We've had 70 years of opportunity to prove exploiting space resources is viable and failed to do so. The massive push that is needed to establish sufficient infrastructure isn't going to happen until clear demonstration that exploitation of those vast resources is feasible and have real commercial prospects.

All I see are "what ifs," excuses and flawed opinions as to why continued progress, inevitable advancement, more knowledge, insatiable curiosity, and continued evolution of mankind is and always will be inevitable....................given the time of course. 

1 hour ago, Alfred001 said:

Is this true?

So IS there anything in the Universe that comes from nothing?

Scientifically speaking, a Universe from nothing is actually the only definitive answer: Unless something like the quantum foam [which some may see as nothing anyway] has always existed.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EilZ4VY5Vs

4 hours ago, Moontanman said:

Private industry is putting a huge amount of money into space exploration already. 

There is indeed a point before which space travel is very expensive but there is also a point where it becomes very profitable and cheap. Elon Musk sees the benefits and doing something about it.

No, space colony would by definition have to be self sufficient, A base or outpost would not. 

3 hours ago, Prometheus said:

Instead of waiting until something is economically viable before making an attempt we could make the attempt and in so doing make it economically viable. Isn't that what happened with all major engineering projects such as the vast railway projects and aviation? It took investment before it became viable, not the other way around.

And even if it's a vanity project - so what? The Great Pyramids, the Terracotta Army, the Colossus and many more were all uneconomical vanity projects but are still regarded as among the greatest feats of man. At least with this vanity project far more of mankind is involved - such is the magnitude of the task it couldn't be otherwise.

2 hours ago, at0mic said:

Yes that's exactly what we need to do. It's years and years of attempts, failed missions, successful missions, research, practice that will get us there. It will never be economically viable if we just wait.

For example, if it takes 6 months to learn to ride a bike, you don't wait 6 months and then ride it. You actually have to practice for the whole 6 months.

nec209 and Ken Fabian seem to think we just have to wait a few hundred years and then the knowledge and expertise for economically viable space colonization will just appear. We actually need to continue what we're doing at the moment and eventually we'll get there. What's the problem with that?

All valid and good points made. With the last point made by at0mic, re the "opponents" "saying we should just wait until the knowledge and expertise is available for economically viable space colonisation and exploration", if that's all they were saying, it certainly would not have invoked such incredulity from me at least. I have continually made the point that such inevitable progress would happen "in time" and even with such a broad open ended logical claim, neither has favourably acknowledged it and in the main it has been ignored. It seems to me the opponents seem to have some inbuilt opposition to the inevitability of space exploration and the knowledge we would gain and  questions that could possibly be answered from such ventures. 

15 minutes ago, Janus said:

If it was in error, these calculation would give the wrong answers and those craft would have ended up way off course instead of exactly where we planned to put them.

As long as we use the correct system of measurements and not confuse metric with Imperial.  

Let's forget for the moment the many reasons why we will go to Mars and beyond....Let's instead look at the reasons why we must go to Mars and beyond.                                               Obviously first and foremost the Earth does have a "use by date" 

Secondly what is the greatest question that we as a species would dearly love to know for certain? Are we alone...is there life elsewhere? ...is there intelligent life elsewhere? How did life actually start? Did life in this solar system originate on Earth?...Or was a form of Panspermia the reason? Finding actual evidence for Abiogenesis...Did Abiogenesis happen more then once in different regions of the universe?

These are and will be extraordinary moments for humanity to remember..Just as when Neil uttered those immortal words..."One small step for man: One giant leap for Mankind"

Curiosity and the realization of a long sort after dream are the reasons our venture to Mars and beyond will continue and should continue.

7 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

It's the lifting of all the hardware from Earth needed to make effective use of those resources that is the issue I keep coming back to. Until it's in place and proven everything does have to be lifted from Earth. How big the pre-investment must be in order to achieve effective use of those resources has not been addressed.? 

 And when do you believe that will be achieved? 100 years, 500 years? 1000 years? or do you believe such technology, know how, advance knowledge will never be reached or obtained?

14 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

Things that could go wrong? Solar flares and cosmic radiation bursts taking out all the communications and transport. A cloud of interstellar debris that no-one noticed coming at high velocity. Essential equipment breaking down and lacking the deep expertise - no matter that you have all the manuals - to repair or replace it.

Plenty of things including what you mention can go wrong....Plenty of things can go wrong with your car travelling down the highway too: But we'll send probes and robots first, we'll research the problems, we'll implement safety protocol and procedures, before any manned effort...the same as we did in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs culminating in putting men on the Moon. It's called progress, and even allowing for hiatus periods due to economic and political circumstance, will always move forward, as long as time allows.

31 minutes ago, Nader said:

Is it my incorrect understanding or does the inflation theory suggest expansion of the universe far faster than our current speed limit of light? if so how do we justify this theory?

In the simplest interpretation, the universe is expanding FTL and inflation did also...spacetime does not have mass and therefor is not inhibited by any speed limit.

In more professional terms though, we must be clear on what we mean by the universe expanding FTL....Sean Carroll explains far better then anything I could........

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2015/10/13/the-universe-never-expands-faster-than-the-speed-of-light/

extract:

"1.The expansion of the universe doesn’t have a “speed.” Really the discussion should begin and end right there. Comparing the expansion rate of the universe to the speed of light is like comparing the height of a building to your weight. You’re not doing good scientific explanation; you’ve had too much to drink and should just go home.The expansion of the universe is quantified by the Hubble constant, which is typically quoted in crazy units of kilometers per second per megaparsec. That’s (distance divided by time) divided by distance, or simply 1/time. Speed, meanwhile, is measured in distance/time. Not the same units! Comparing the two concepts is crazy.

Admittedly, you can construct a quantity with units of velocity from the Hubble constant, using Hubble’s law, v = Hd (the apparent velocity of a galaxy is given by the Hubble constant times its distance). Individual galaxies are indeed associated with recession velocities. But different galaxies, manifestly, have different velocities. The idea of even talking about “the expansion velocity of the universe” is bizarre and never should have been entertained in the first place".

more at the link......

24 minutes ago, cladking said:

Excellent!

I've long thought Feynman would have made a first rate pyramid builder. 

The man couldda been a prophet on any pyramid mebbe even the Anubis Priest. 

What the man most certainly is, is one of the greater minds of the 20th century and a Nobel laureate to boot., along with many other achievements.

17 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

No, I don't agree with this; this reverts back to this "inevitable that problems will be solved with time" assertion of BeeCee and others, as if technological advancement is a natural law. It's not.

 No physical theory is certain also, as we all know, but some are damn well near certain.....and by the same token to suggest that in time technological advancement is not inevitable, is rather naive to say the least.

21 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

The potential to drop the price of space travel (and space mining and space refining and space manufacturing and space agriculture...) by a significant amount -  I'd think a lot more than 1% in the near term -

Irrespective of costs and whether they drop or not [which again in time they will] robotic space exploration and manned exploration will continue, and will continue to go further and undertake more complicated procedures.

24 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

BTW, I suspect that a space society/economy would be more fragile and more at risk of extinction than human life on Earth. More likely that Earth will be the long term lifeboat for space civilisations than the other way.

Probably now and in the near future yes, but again irrespective, it will take place and gradually improve along with available technological advancements.

From memory [someone please correct me if I am wrong] they do similar on the ISS...well partly anyway!

11 hours ago, studiot said:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-40740422

 

Pictures of the biggest bang actually we have observed in the universe plus discussion.

Nice....                                                                                                                                            We may witness something similar in 2022 

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/colliding-stars-will-light-night-sky-2022

13 hours ago, Gratiano said:

Uhm, I have to rephrase the question... but it seems that I must dig deeper into history of physics in advance... I must keep in mind the last sentence. Roughly, the question is that physicists require a mean, either a field or ether or vacuum... Why? And there is something I still do not understand. The MM experiment proved the inexistence of ether or the invalidity of ether theory(which still is unclear to me of how it proved it). Proving that something is invalid, does it make all the rest valid? Ether theory and field theory are the only two theories that making one false forces the other one to be true? Have we proven that field theory is valid or we accept it just because ether theory is not valid?

 

The M/M experiment showed the ether to be invalid simply by the lack of "drag" in a particular direction, by observing that the speed of light did not change with relation to the Earth's motion.

The invalidity of any particular hypothesis, does not necessarily effect one way or the other, the validity of another hypothesis. Any hypothesis advances to theoretical stage and is generally accepted, when it best describes our observational and experimental data.                 I was taught by an Astronomer to dislike the word "prove" or "proven" with regards to physical theories, but well supported theories like GR and the BB/Inflationary model do grow in certainty over time, as they continue to make successful predictions and match further observations.

1 hour ago, Gratiano said:

Sometimes, we do isolate bits and parts and unfortunately we induce that "generally" the world works like this. Some other times, we look the same thing from different points of view but our vanity does not allow us to accept "alien" opinions or facts someone else has discovered(Leibniz vs Newton, Einstein vs Schroedinger, etc). We are only humans... 

As for the second part about reality, it reminds me of matrix. Reality has a lot to do with perception... I suppose a fly with so many eyes and sucha a small size would have a different opinion than most humans have of how an elephant looks like... 

Reality or truth imo is best described by the following video which I have supplied before in other threads: It's only 7.5 minutes long and worth watching.

Here's another interesting realist/optimist....

Mae Jemison: Former NASA Astronaut with 8 honorary doctorates in science and also Principal of the 100 year starship company:

https://100yss.org/mission/team

2 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

Moontanman - it doesn't matter that military budgets far exceed NASA's; you haven't provided an argument that will divert the funding from the one to the other. Lifeboat scenarios won't do it - and will continually lose out against deep bunker options in military thinking. They are already in place and work for all but the most extreme disaster possibilities.

Of course it matters...[1]Human  Morality. [2] Exploration and knowledge. [3] International co-operation as in the ISS.

2 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

No matter that quantifying the value of military expenditures is impossible or that it includes a vast amount of waste, the financing of a big space push is going to be a separate matter, that will have to be on it's own merits.

The financing of a big space push, while depending on economic and political climate, will happen in time...I just hope it occurs because of our thirst for knowledge and exploration, and is an international effort, rather then a cock waving exercise.

Obviously there are many qualified people of the optimistic variety...

Marc Millis: Aerospace Engineer
NASA Glenn Research Center

and https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1962    https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=11493

There are of course other respected orginizations that have a vision including

http://www.planetaryresources.com/#home-intro

6 hours ago, imatfaal said:

Balloons would act as pretty good "air-anchors".  You also need yardarms .  The sails would need to be different shapes to work - and I don't know this subject well enough but I think they might need to be different shapes depending on where the wind was coming from.  Sails and bits will have a mass between 25-50kg for a yacht - even for that you would need some big balloons; but you woud also need much bigger to provide the tension to keep the line close to vertical when a force is applied through the sail

Yes, that was my first thought.

2 hours ago, cladking said:

There is no "equation" to prove evolution and if there were one it still would probably be misapplied. 

Across the board we take things on faith that are not really established fact.  Even that math necessarily can reflect reality is based largely on faith. 

Math is quantified logic and the only reason it so often applies to what we know is that what we know is derived from experiment which is by definition reflective of reality. . 

Evolution is as certain as any reasonable thinking person could wish for. Even the Catholic church recognises it. Mathematics is the language of physics, and supports the models that best match our observational and experimental data, rather than unsupported mythical beliefs in magical spaghetti monsters.

2 hours ago, cladking said:

 We're building models rather than understanding. 

Our models help us understand, and while strictly not necessarily "truth or reality", model what we see, and make successful predictions.

2 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

It's not about how much time; whether this is attempted now or attempted in some distant future the problems with achieving a kind of critical mass for being a self supporting enterprise are going to have to be faced. Technological advances will occur but, just as it was found that taking commercial aviation beyond the speed of sound was possible but it failed to thrive, there are no guarantees that the ones most required or desired will be delivered. The advances needed are not inevitable. Like Area54 pointed out above - our Earthly problems like climate change could be economically constraining enough to make investments at the scale required beyond reach, especially with enduring division, rejection of expert advice and wilful mismanagement; the geopolitical consequences of excessive fossil fuel use are going to occupy nations and polities for centuries to come and the opportunity to pursue large scale speculative enterprises may get harder over time, not easier.

Of course the aspect of time is relevant! And whether attempts are made now, in the very near future, or a 100, 500, 1000 years hence [I won't go any further than that at this stage] the technological advances made will dictate when that will take place.

And commercial aviation is still experimenting with various means that entail going faster then the speed of sound. The demise of the Concord of course after the accident. was more to do with noise issues, low passenger numbers after 9/11, and the high price of oil: Again faster then sound commercial flight may yet again take off.

And while there is of course never any guarantees about the future, advances in technology are as close to certain as one could hope for and I would go as far to say again, inevitable.

I'm afraid that it appears the only agreement we can have is to disagree on this matter, and as Moontanman mentioned, of course optimism is paramount, and while that optimism appears as strong as ever among those at the coal face, I would suggest that the same optimism is of course tinged with the utmost caution with regards to safety etc, particularly radiation.

An emotional rendition of our second national anthem at a concert in 2008 of which I was one of the 38600 that was in attendance.

Carmen Monarcha:

Carla Maffioletti

Heia in den Bergen

André Rieu & Carla Maffioletti - Die Juliska Aus Budapest

46 minutes ago, Gratiano said:

Wandering around the forum I read a moderator's(swansont) thread which included the following words: 

"You are contradicting accepted science. Accepted science has a large amount of data supporting it, so if your thesis runs contrary to experimental results, you have basically pre-falsified your work. If you are proposing a new theory, it has to do better than the one it's supplanting. Remember, you have to be consistent with all of what has been observed, not just some small subset of it."

I cannot understand the reason that we still have all science based on maths to "be accepted" by scientific community. A new discovery backed by mathematics should be ultimately accepted as a valid fact. Noone should have to convince the rest of the community for one's findings. 

Why is science to "be accepted"? Either it is or it is not. 

Accepted science existed in medieval times when priests were afraid of losing their priviledges, it should not be like this nowadays... We are spending time and money in conferences in order to demonstrate the obvious when we should spend time trying to apply new discoveries in improving our world(consequently, our lifes and ourselves). 

PS: I have in mind two disputes, the famous ether vs field theory about 12 decades ago and a non-famous one, the one between Godel and Einstein. 

 

New theories and discoveries are checked and re-appraised...even GR today still needs to make successful predictions and continue to match new observations to be accepted.

Those theories that do that best are accepted by the majority.                                                      With your ether and field theory inference, the ether was simply invalidated with the Michelson Morley experiment. 

But being a rank amateur at this game, I decided to do some searching for you.                    https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/308413/ether-vs-quantum-field-theory

"I think what distinguishes quantum field theory, where each elementary particle in the particle table defines a field all over space time, from the luminiferous aether is Lorenz invariance.

The luminiferous aether theory was falsified by the Michelson Morley experiment because it was not Lorenz invariant.

In quantum field theory an electron traversing space time is described by a quantum mechanical wave packet (which means that what "waves" is the probability of existing at (x, y, z, t)), manifested by creation and annihilation operators acting on the electron field, and the expectation value defines the location of the electron as a function of (x, y, z, t). The same for a photon, riding on the photon field. The quantum fields though by construction are Lorenz invariant and thus cannot be identified with the luminiferous aether".

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Or maybe I have misunderstood your question.