Re: Night Sky : Sat Sep 13, 2014 1:52 pm  

I was having self esteem issues before reading these recent posts, now I can add feelings of utter inconsequentiality.

Re: Night Sky : Thu Sep 18, 2014 12:17 pm  

http://wonkette.com/560645/nasa-found-t ... axy-no-big

http://wonkette.com/560645/nasa-found-t ... axy-no-big

Re: Night Sky : Thu Oct 09, 2014 11:06 am  

After what we mentioned a few weeks ago. Is the Big Bang theory a mistake? http://iai.tv/video/bang-goes-the-big-bang

After what we mentioned a few weeks ago. Is the Big Bang theory a mistake? http://iai.tv/video/bang-goes-the-big-bang

Re: Night Sky : Thu Oct 09, 2014 11:44 am  

I wouldn't call it a mistake, as first it fits most observed and observable evidence, and second is just that, a theory, albeit a scientific and rigorously explored, addressed and investigated theory. Also because the phrase "Big Bang" is just a simplistic analogy based on what happens in normal explosions with which we are all familiar, but unfortunately the true "appearance" of a theoretical Big Bang isn't something our brains are capable of visualising; in any explosion, there is an outisde space, and something within it explodes, and the bits fly out. But in this case, the whole point is that ther WAS no "outside". The expanding Universe is all there is. Certainly from our perspective. After a while, thinking this over does your head in: if the Universe is infinite, how can it be "expanding"? If it all appeared out of nothing, where does all the something come from? And of course wtf is 95% of it, anyway? It's just as it should be that many clever people challenge and investigate BB theory, but the thing is that I don't have any perception of any clique or class of scientists who would stubbornly cling to the existing BB theory despite any evidence or alternative theories to any contrary explanation, on this one, I think they all just want to know and it is not a "closed minds" scenario. We don't know much, but what we do know has such weird and magical elements all over the place that nothing would surprise me. For example, do black holes exist? Maybe not, not in the way we popularly know them, anyway. We are all familiar with the "event horizon", notionally a boundary which if you cross, nothing can escape, as the black hole's gravity is too strong. But this turns out to be a fallacy, it turns out that you could fly your spaceship beyond the event horizon, then turn round and emerge safely - as long as you had enough petrol! It's objects travelling through space which don't have a propellant - even light - that can't escape beyond a certain point, but they could if they had engines to assist them. And it's a fuzzy boundary too, all scientists are familiar with matter and anti-matter pairs (these pop into existence from an apparent nowhere all the time, then annihilate each other (cancel each other out) and so disappear again. (Where do they come from, and how TF does that work? But it's a strange bit of factual knowledge that we have learned and is now trite. Did you now, for example that in hospitals, radioactive molecules that emit anti-matter particles are used for imaging in a technique known as positron emission tomography?). Then you have entangled particle pairs, which "know" what is happening to each other even at great distance. That is, nothing can travel faster than light. But however far you separate entangled pairs, an action on one is simultaneously mirrored in the other. That is, there is no communication lag. At all. It happens at the same time. But if you have an entangled pair pop into creation near a black hole at the margins, what if one particle can escape the black hole but the other is drawn in? We should therefore be able to detect these "orphan" particles being "emitted" from the area around the black hole! And we don't even know the full collection of atomic particles. Why, two more were discovered only yesterday! An intriguing article: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... astronomy/ Speaking of particles, of course a microscope can only see to a certain small size limit, after which optics obviously fail. Right? Nope. Betzig, Moerner and Hell have won this year's Nobel prize in chemistry for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy, which for the first time allows us to actually watch nanoscale things like watching individual memories forming in brain cells. Stuff like this apart from being gobsmackingly brilliant, teachs me never to say never! Nuclear envelope of a cell breaking open for cell division

I wouldn't call it a mistake, as first it fits most observed and observable evidence, and second is just that, a theory, albeit a scientific and rigorously explored, addressed and investigated theory. Also because the phrase "Big Bang" is just a simplistic analogy based on what happens in normal explosions with which we are all familiar, but unfortunately the true "appearance" of a theoretical Big Bang isn't something our brains are capable of visualising; in any explosion, there is an outisde space, and something within it explodes, and the bits fly out. But in this case, the whole point is that ther WAS no "outside". The expanding Universe is all there is. Certainly from our perspective. After a while, thinking this over does your head in: if the Universe is infinite, how can it be "expanding"? If it all appeared out of nothing, where does all the something come from? And of course wtf is 95% of it, anyway? It's just as it should be that many clever people challenge and investigate BB theory, but the thing is that I don't have any perception of any clique or class of scientists who would stubbornly cling to the existing BB theory despite any evidence or alternative theories to any contrary explanation, on this one, I think they all just want to know and it is not a "closed minds" scenario. We don't know much, but what we do know has such weird and magical elements all over the place that nothing would surprise me. For example, do black holes exist? Maybe not, not in the way we popularly know them, anyway. We are all familiar with the "event horizon", notionally a boundary which if you cross, nothing can escape, as the black hole's gravity is too strong. But this turns out to be a fallacy, it turns out that you could fly your spaceship beyond the event horizon, then turn round and emerge safely - as long as you had enough petrol! It's objects travelling through space which don't have a propellant - even light - that can't escape beyond a certain point, but they could if they had engines to assist them. And it's a fuzzy boundary too, all scientists are familiar with matter and anti-matter pairs (these pop into existence from an apparent nowhere all the time, then annihilate each other (cancel each other out) and so disappear again. (Where do they come from, and how TF does that work? But it's a strange bit of factual knowledge that we have learned and is now trite. Did you now, for example that in hospitals, radioactive molecules that emit anti-matter particles are used for imaging in a technique known as positron emission tomography?). Then you have entangled particle pairs, which "know" what is happening to each other even at great distance. That is, nothing can travel faster than light. But however far you separate entangled pairs, an action on one is simultaneously mirrored in the other. That is, there is no communication lag. At all. It happens at the same time. But if you have an entangled pair pop into creation near a black hole at the margins, what if one particle can escape the black hole but the other is drawn in? We should therefore be able to detect these "orphan" particles being "emitted" from the area around the black hole! And we don't even know the full collection of atomic particles. Why, two more were discovered only yesterday! An intriguing article: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... astronomy/ Speaking of particles, of course a microscope can only see to a certain small size limit, after which optics obviously fail. Right? Nope. Betzig, Moerner and Hell have won this year's Nobel prize in chemistry for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy, which for the first time allows us to actually watch nanoscale things like watching individual memories forming in brain cells. Stuff like this apart from being gobsmackingly brilliant, teachs me never to say never! Nuclear envelope of a cell breaking open for cell division

Re: Night Sky : Thu Oct 09, 2014 12:24 pm  

McClennan wrote:

Is the Big Bang theory a mistake?

I like it but the one where Raj and Penny slept together was a mistake, I'll grant you

Re: Night Sky : Fri Oct 10, 2014 12:21 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote: I wouldn't call it a mistake, as first it fits most observed and observable evidence, and second is just that, a theory, albeit a scientific and rigorously explored, addressed and investigated theory. Also because the phrase "Big Bang" is just a simplistic analogy based on what happens in normal explosions with which we are all familiar, but unfortunately the true "appearance" of a theoretical Big Bang isn't something our brains are capable of visualising; in any explosion, there is an outisde space, and something within it explodes, and the bits fly out. But in this case, the whole point is that ther WAS no "outside". The expanding Universe is all there is. Certainly from our perspective. After a while, thinking this over does your head in: if the Universe is infinite, how can it be "expanding"? If it all appeared out of nothing, where does all the something come from? And of course wtf is 95% of it, anyway? It's just as it should be that many clever people challenge and investigate BB theory, but the thing is that I don't have any perception of any clique or class of scientists who would stubbornly cling to the existing BB theory despite any evidence or alternative theories to any contrary explanation, on this one, I think they all just want to know and it is not a "closed minds" scenario. We don't know much, but what we do know has such weird and magical elements all over the place that nothing would surprise me. For example, do black holes exist? Maybe not, not in the way we popularly know them, anyway. We are all familiar with the "event horizon", notionally a boundary which if you cross, nothing can escape, as the black hole's gravity is too strong. But this turns out to be a fallacy, it turns out that you could fly your spaceship beyond the event horizon, then turn round and emerge safely - as long as you had enough petrol! It's objects travelling through space which don't have a propellant - even light - that can't escape beyond a certain point, but they could if they had engines to assist them. And it's a fuzzy boundary too, all scientists are familiar with matter and anti-matter pairs (these pop into existence from an apparent nowhere all the time, then annihilate each other (cancel each other out) and so disappear again. (Where do they come from, and how TF does that work? But it's a strange bit of factual knowledge that we have learned and is now trite. Did you now, for example that in hospitals, radioactive molecules that emit anti-matter particles are used for imaging in a technique known as positron emission tomography?). Then you have entangled particle pairs, which "know" what is happening to each other even at great distance. That is, nothing can travel faster than light. But however far you separate entangled pairs, an action on one is simultaneously mirrored in the other. That is, there is no communication lag. At all. It happens at the same time. But if you have an entangled pair pop into creation near a black hole at the margins, what if one particle can escape the black hole but the other is drawn in? We should therefore be able to detect these "orphan" particles being "emitted" from the area around the black hole! And we don't even know the full collection of atomic particles. Why, two more were discovered only yesterday! An intriguing article: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... astronomy/ Speaking of particles, of course a microscope can only see to a certain small size limit, after which optics obviously fail. Right? Nope. Betzig, Moerner and Hell have won this year's Nobel prize in chemistry for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy, which for the first time allows us to actually watch nanoscale things like watching individual memories forming in brain cells. Stuff like this apart from being gobsmackingly brilliant, teachs me never to say never! Nuclear envelope of a cell breaking open for cell division Was it with a Macro lens !!!!!

Ferocious Aardvark wrote: I wouldn't call it a mistake, as first it fits most observed and observable evidence, and second is just that, a theory, albeit a scientific and rigorously explored, addressed and investigated theory. Also because the phrase "Big Bang" is just a simplistic analogy based on what happens in normal explosions with which we are all familiar, but unfortunately the true "appearance" of a theoretical Big Bang isn't something our brains are capable of visualising; in any explosion, there is an outisde space, and something within it explodes, and the bits fly out. But in this case, the whole point is that ther WAS no "outside". The expanding Universe is all there is. Certainly from our perspective. After a while, thinking this over does your head in: if the Universe is infinite, how can it be "expanding"? If it all appeared out of nothing, where does all the something come from? And of course wtf is 95% of it, anyway? It's just as it should be that many clever people challenge and investigate BB theory, but the thing is that I don't have any perception of any clique or class of scientists who would stubbornly cling to the existing BB theory despite any evidence or alternative theories to any contrary explanation, on this one, I think they all just want to know and it is not a "closed minds" scenario. We don't know much, but what we do know has such weird and magical elements all over the place that nothing would surprise me. For example, do black holes exist? Maybe not, not in the way we popularly know them, anyway. We are all familiar with the "event horizon", notionally a boundary which if you cross, nothing can escape, as the black hole's gravity is too strong. But this turns out to be a fallacy, it turns out that you could fly your spaceship beyond the event horizon, then turn round and emerge safely - as long as you had enough petrol! It's objects travelling through space which don't have a propellant - even light - that can't escape beyond a certain point, but they could if they had engines to assist them. And it's a fuzzy boundary too, all scientists are familiar with matter and anti-matter pairs (these pop into existence from an apparent nowhere all the time, then annihilate each other (cancel each other out) and so disappear again. (Where do they come from, and how TF does that work? But it's a strange bit of factual knowledge that we have learned and is now trite. Did you now, for example that in hospitals, radioactive molecules that emit anti-matter particles are used for imaging in a technique known as positron emission tomography?). Then you have entangled particle pairs, which "know" what is happening to each other even at great distance. That is, nothing can travel faster than light. But however far you separate entangled pairs, an action on one is simultaneously mirrored in the other. That is, there is no communication lag. At all. It happens at the same time. But if you have an entangled pair pop into creation near a black hole at the margins, what if one particle can escape the black hole but the other is drawn in? We should therefore be able to detect these "orphan" particles being "emitted" from the area around the black hole! And we don't even know the full collection of atomic particles. Why, two more were discovered only yesterday! An intriguing article: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... astronomy/ Speaking of particles, of course a microscope can only see to a certain small size limit, after which optics obviously fail. Right? Nope. Betzig, Moerner and Hell have won this year's Nobel prize in chemistry for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy, which for the first time allows us to actually watch nanoscale things like watching individual memories forming in brain cells. Stuff like this apart from being gobsmackingly brilliant, teachs me never to say never! Nuclear envelope of a cell breaking open for cell division Was it with a Macro lens !!!!!

Re: Night Sky : Mon Oct 20, 2014 1:25 pm  

Apparently there’s a meteor shower peaking right now, that’s if anyone can see a bit of clear night sky in this Godforsaken country . http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/me ... ionid.html

Apparently there’s a meteor shower peaking right now, that’s if anyone can see a bit of clear night sky in this Godforsaken country . http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/me ... ionid.html

Re: Night Sky : Tue Oct 21, 2014 2:04 am  

Many parts of the world get to see meteor showers. What do we get? The arrse end of a fscking hurricane.

Re: Night Sky : Wed Nov 12, 2014 3:20 pm  

Rosetta live landing in the next hour - hopefully. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/science- ... t-29985988

Rosetta live landing in the next hour - hopefully. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/science- ... t-29985988

Re: Night Sky : Thu Nov 13, 2014 10:37 am  

First image in the history of humanity taken from the surface of a comet As the harpoons didn't fire, Philae actually "bounced" a couple of times on the surface. The comet's gravity is astonishingly weak, but is there, and so does attract Philae, however tenuously. It's settled now, and tweeted: Philae Lander ✔ @Philae2014 Follow Hello! An update on life on #67P - Yesterday was exhausting! I actually performed 3 landings,15:33, 17:26 & 17:33 UTC. Stay tuned for more A full panorama from Philae will be revealed at the press conference 1pm today and will be put up on the ESA site Compared with the moon landings, I'm a bit peeved actually at how many people don't give a fsck about this, and equally how few even have a clue as to what an absolutely astonishing, mind-blowing achievement this is. Shame how the world has dumbed-down.

First image in the history of humanity taken from the surface of a comet As the harpoons didn't fire, Philae actually "bounced" a couple of times on the surface. The comet's gravity is astonishingly weak, but is there, and so does attract Philae, however tenuously. It's settled now, and tweeted: Philae Lander ✔ @Philae2014 Follow Hello! An update on life on #67P - Yesterday was exhausting! I actually performed 3 landings,15:33, 17:26 & 17:33 UTC. Stay tuned for more A full panorama from Philae will be revealed at the press conference 1pm today and will be put up on the ESA site Compared with the moon landings, I'm a bit peeved actually at how many people don't give a fsck about this, and equally how few even have a clue as to what an absolutely astonishing, mind-blowing achievement this is. Shame how the world has dumbed-down.