Speed of Light

Discussion in 'Politics' started by ShoeshineBoy, Aug 9, 2003.

  1. stu

    stu

    I don't agree :) that is.... I don't agree if you are meaning to use Gödel as proof of your statement

    As I understand this, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem proves that it is not possible to establish mathematics as a system of rules, which would enable mathematics to make all propositions determinable.

    Gödel’s Theorem is a theorem which is true, but it can't be thoughtlessly applied to EVERYTHING any more than expecting mathematics to be a true theorem to provide a complete answer to everything.

    From this I don't see that there is a connection to the idea that there cannot be a complete understanding of anything. I suppose it depends how you wish to define 'complete'. I do see there cannot be a complete set of mathematics which can make all propositions determinable by mathematics.

    Gödel’s Theorem is a theorem which is true, however mathematics has theorems which ARE true (proven).... Gödel was able to show that mathematics as a single system of rules could not prove ALL propositions.

    Science ROCKS because - for one thing - there is never the assumption that its theories are absolutely or conclusively proven. The ones it can't prove it does not call truth or proof of anything. The ones it can prove (eg by using mathematical theorem) it uses to build and improve upon whenever possible in an attempt toward greater understanding.

    Because it is not possible (to date) to provide a Grand Unified Theory by mathematical construct does not dictate that physics requires that it can't be done or that it will never be done and if it were.... that would still leave Gödel’s Theorem as true.

    nah not so ....shit + a little, courtesy of the two useless unknown entities of s c i e n c e and p h y s i c s, which brought live market prices (some of which were carried at the speed of light) to your shit useless computer contraption, which you are obviously angry at 'cause it can't tell you the bloody future.
     
    #31     Aug 12, 2003
  2. (continued)

    One result of this vastly expanded view — the "panchromatic approach" as Caltech astrophysicist Shri Kulkarni calls it — has brought about a change in the culture of astronomy itself. A single astronomer can now make use of data from satellites in space, mirrors on mountaintops and radio arrays in deserts. "People used to say, 'I'm an X-ray astronomer,' " Cominsky said. "Now you get people saying, "I look at active galactic [centers]."

    UCLA astronomer Mark Morris, for example, studies the Milky Way's turbulent core — a place that screams in every part of the spectrum — using radio, infrared and X-rays. "You really constrain yourself too much if you look at a single wavelength," he said.

    Astronomers are no longer constrained by the clock, either.

    "We make an observation, we put it on the Internet," Kulkarni said. "Then we go to sleep, then someone in Japan picks it up. It's not just multi-wavelength. It's globalization."

    There is a downside to this rain of riches, Cominsky admits. "Too much data, too little time. We're looking at things faster than we can assimilate them."

    The good news is that astronomers are working as very large arrays themselves, combining instruments and expertise.

    A case in point is the teamwork that allowed astrophysicists last year finally to identify the source of gamma ray bursts that can spit out a million times the combined energy of all the stars in the Milky Way in a fraction of a second. The bursts go off like random firecrackers all over the sky, and fade too quickly to follow easily.

    Instant alerts by gamma-ray watchers in space now allow astronomers to trace the visible afterglow that can remain after the burst like the trail of a sparkler. "You've got armies of people chasing these things," Cominsky said. And armies of robotic telescopes that bypass people entirely, taking their data straight to the Internet.

    As a result of these coordinated efforts, astronomers are almost certain that the bursts are last gasps coming from the sudden collapse of supermassive stars.

    With every juicy discovery, of course, come even juicier new mysteries. The stars that Ghez and colleagues found skimming our galaxy's central black hole at 9,000 kilometers per second are far too massive to have formed in such a chaotic environment, where the black hole's huge gravitational tides would tear emerging stars apart. "There's no way star formation should be going on there," Ghez said. And yet, the stars appear far too young to have drifted in from a distant, quieter neighborhood.

    And while precision measurements of microwaves from the Big Bang have pinned down the exact proportions of the various ingredients that make up the cosmos, they also left entirely unexplained what these ingredients actually are. Almost nothing is known about the 23% that is "dark matter;" less still about the 73% that goes by the name "dark energy" — an even stranger brand of stuff that is thought to be some intrinsic property of the vacuum that exerts a repulsive, antigravity-like force.

    Answering these questions may require solutions that go far beyond anything the electromagnetic spectrum has to offer.

    Recently, for example, a radically new kind of observatory has begun to tune into "gravitational waves," another prediction of Einstein's relativity theory. These disturbances in space-time itself are exceedingly difficult to detect because they only barely affect matter. Even the tsunami set off by distant colliding black holes would wash up on Earth's shores as barely detectable ripples. To sense them, two four-kilometer-long laser beams are strung like spider silk at right angles between nearly perfect mirrors, poised to catch the smallest perturbation.

    With two virtually identical observatories on opposite sides of the country, LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) can rule out many of the local jitters (anything from a passing truck to a tiny seismic shift) that might masquerade as undulating space.

    The real excitement, however, focuses on LIGO's successor, LISA, for Laser Interferometer Space Antenna — one of two Great Einstein Observatories already in the works. LISA's three satellites will comprise an orbiting, triangular observatory with a 5-million-kilometer base. That makes it large enough to detect the lingering thunderclap of long-period waves set off when an ordinary black hole falls into the grasp of a supermassive black hole millions of times the mass of the sun — mergers and acquisitions on a cosmic scale.

    Following such violent events, LISA could sense space crumpling and time freezing. "Gravity wave astronomy has become a real subject," Kulkarni said. "In less than 10 years, we may be actually seeing the birth of black holes."

    And because everything is transparent to gravity waves, LISA has the potential to peer all the way back to the Big Bang. If so, it might be able to watch matter coming into being from the vacuum of empty space, or see how three dimensions of space evolved out of a cosmos with many more dimensions. Both LISA and the second Great Einstein Observatory — a flying array of four X-ray telescopes, Constellation X — are on track for launch by 2010 or 2011.

    Other astronomers, meanwhile, are turning to ghostly particles called neutrinos to see deep inside exotic objects like exploding stars.

    Because neutrinos barely notice either light or matter (trillions pass through your body every second), they can travel unhindered from almost anywhere in the cosmos. When Supernova 1987A exploded, neutrinos arrived in detectors on Earth many hours before astronomers saw the light.

    A neutrino "telescope" aptly named Ice Cube will soon string a cubic kilometer of South Pole ice with detectors, looking for neutrinos from similar cosmic-scale catastrophes.

    As our keyhole expands, the universe, as Einstein put it, "beckons like a liberation" from the other side. Of course, as Alice learned, you never know what you'll find when you slip through a keyhole.

    As for looking into the sky, that's precisely where physics originated, and contemporary astronomy has repeatedly uncovered verifications of some of the seemingly most outlandish theories of physicists - along with new puzzles as well.

    http://www.latimes.com/news/printed...g12,1,3367917.story?coll=la-home-todays-times
     
    #32     Aug 12, 2003
  3. True,,,,we keep changing what we know as "fact...but physics only applies to earth.....If phsyics apllied through out the univese, please explain the black holes in space?.
     
    #33     Aug 12, 2003
  4. Big bang is big hoax.....

    Nothing annoys me more then to hear scientist talk with certainty about black holes, the other universes, life forms,and the expanding galaxy.....and then mention 'the big bang theory"

    that's 4th grade thinking to me....there is nothing wrong wiht saying " I don't know" but to apply some silly ass BIG BANG as the formation of the universe is kind of silly....same with Earth...They claim it was all water and plant life....but have no idea where animal cells came from...on guy thinks it was lightning hitting a plant cell and energizing it...Please...would;t Florida , the lightning capital the world have trees walking around??

    ...and if there was a big bang that is expanding our universe, what was there before that space???:confused:
     
    #34     Aug 12, 2003
  5. science is the only way to go.

    ROCK
     
    #35     Aug 12, 2003

  6. ...until you get diagnosed with a terminal illness, then you star looking for god's help or a herbal medicine man from the orient:D
     
    #36     Aug 12, 2003
  7. stu

    stu

    I know.... you are sooooooo correct.

    Lightning, Black Holes and Big Bangs for shit sakes.

    Next some silly bugger will be saying there's a God thing sitting up in that "spacey" stuff past the sky making planitty things wizz around and mooooooons and stuff and getting angry and making the earth tremor.

    Jeez what do we know sheesh. You are the man.

    Hope this helps
    stu
     
    #37     Aug 12, 2003

  8. You are right, however my beliefs are based on faith..not fact....many of these scienitfic theories are based on the same....yet they act like it is the GOSPEL
     
    #38     Aug 12, 2003
  9. TM, if you're religous, rid yourself of that nonsense, read a few science books, and then come back here.

    ROCK
     
    #39     Aug 12, 2003
  10. Space is part of our universe. The same laws that govern black holes govern the Earth - with different results, at least for the present. Someday, though it may not be a "day" exactly, the matter that makes up the Earth may very well be consumed within a black hole.
     
    #40     Aug 12, 2003