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Supernova 1987A Decoded
bluevector writes "Electric Universe News is reporting that scientists claim to have proof that 'supernovae are catastrophic electrical discharges focused on a star' and not the result of giant stars undergoing gravitational collapse and subsequent explosion after having spent all of their nuclear fuel as previously thought."
Come on this is big news and I'm an astronomy student help me out here.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
Is this April 1? I'm so confused.
Welcome our new electric overlords
Supernova 1987A Decoded
If anyone knows the where abouts of one Tolian Soran UFP Security is looking for him in connection with the artificial supernova 1987A. Soran is considered armed and dangerous and may be responsible for previous supernova, which can only be caused by external electrical forces directed at stars, and not their own gravity.
Poor sci-fi writers. Half of the (bad) sci-fi deals with supernovas being collapsed stars. What will they do now, use them as a power station?
Electric Universe is a well-known crackpot site, built on the most absurd pseudoscience. They're the same outfit that predicted a large explosion when Deep Impact hit Tempel 1.
As usual, the /. editors display their utter inability to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. Idiots.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
...those stars are being blown up by the Death Star.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Since the submitter didn't bother including one, and the editor didn't do any better, here's one:
n z1
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=re6qx
It's already running so slow it's useless. What I managed to get screams crackpot:
24 August 2005
Supernova 1987A Decoded
13 July 2005
Comet Tempel 1's Electrifying Impact
03 July 2005
The Deep Impact of Comet Theory
26 March 2005
The Dragon Storm
08 February 2005
Columbia downed by Megalightning
05 February 2005
Saturn's Strange Hot Spot Explained
30 January 2005
Titan - A Rosetta Stone for early Earth?
25 December 2004
Megalightning at Saturn
25 November 2004
Titan puzzles scientists
27 October 2004
The True State of the Universe
24 August 2005 Supernova 1987A Decoded
Supernova 1987A is the closest supernova event since the invention of the telescope. It was first seen in February 1987 in the nearby Magellanic cloud, a dwarf companion galaxy of the Milky Way, and only 169,000 light years from Earth. Close observation since 1987 has now provided proof that supernovae are catastrophic electrical discharges focused on a star.
>> IMAGE CAPTION: The enigmatic and beautiful structure of SN1987A with its three axial rings. The brightening of the equatorial ring is obvious. The two bright stars are just in the field of view and are not associated with the supernova.
A supernova is one of the most energetic events witnessed in the universe. The accepted explanation is that it occurs at the end of a star's lifetime, or red giant stage, when the star's nuclear fuel is exhausted. There is no more release of nuclear energy in the core so the huge star collapses in on itself. If sufficiently massive, the imploding layers of the star are thought to rebound when they hit the core, resulting in an explosion, and the blast wave ejects the star's envelope into interstellar space. The bright equatorial ring is caused by the collision of exploded matter from the star with the remnants of an earlier stellar "wind." The two faint rings are a problem. The best that theorists have been able to manage is to postulate some kind of rotating beam from an assumed supernova remnant, sweeping and lighting up a shell of gas expelled at an earlier epoch. The ad hoc nature of these explanations is obvious.
The detection of a pulsar remnant after some supernovae is explained by the implosion of the stellar core to produce a neutron star. Pulsars emit bursts of radiation up to thousands of times a second. It is believed that a pulsar must be a super-collapsed stellar object that can spin up to thousands of times a second and emit a rotating beam of X-rays (like a lighthouse). Commonsense suggests that this mechanical model is wrong when some pulsars rev beyond the redline, even for such a bizarre object.
A recent example of conventional thinking can be seen on the Chandra website. On August 17, a news story was posted: Supernova 1987A: Fast Forward to the Past.
Recent Chandra observations have revealed new details about the fiery ring surrounding the stellar explosion that produced Supernova 1987A. The data give insight into the behavior of the doomed star in the years before it exploded, and indicate that the predicted spectacular brightening of the circumstellar ring has begun.. The site of the explosion was traced to the location of a blue supergiant star called Sanduleak -69Â 202 (SK -69 for short) that had a mass estimated at approximately 20 Suns.
Subsequent optical, ultraviolet and X-ray observations have enabled astronomers to piece together the following scenario for SK -69: about ten million years ago the star formed out of a dark, dense, cloud of dust and gas; roughly a million years ago, the star lost most of its outer layers in a slowly moving stellar wind that formed a vast cloud of gas around it; before the star exploded, a high-speed wind blowing off its hot surface carved out a cavity in the cool gas cloud.
The intense flash of ultraviolet light from the supernova illuminated the edge of this cavity to produce the bright ring seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. In the meantime the supernova explosion sent a shock wave rumbling through the cavity. In 1999, Chandra imaged this shock wave, and astronomers have waited expectantly for the shock wave to hit the edge of the cavity, where it would encounter the much denser gas deposited by the red supergiant wind, and produce a dramatic increase in X-radiation.
The latest data from Chandra and the Hubble Space Telescope indicate that this much-anticipated event has begun. Optical hot-spots now encircle the ring like a necklace of incandescent diamonds. The Chandra image reveals multimillion-degree gas at the location
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/0 3/1246254&tid=160
Summary of the previous discussion: the electric universe theory has as much scientific support as geocentrism.
This should not be news on slashdot I suppose, but since it is, I guess we're going to spend some time bash.. I mean challenging the electric universe theory once more...
The proper link is here. While checking on this, I took the opportunity to have another look around the website. These guys really are chewing the carpet; for instance, their page on the CHANDRA X-ray observatory shows a failure to grasp even the most basic aspects of X-ray emission in astrophysical plasmas.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
FTFA:
The crucial evidence for the electrical nature of supernovae must come from experiment and observation. Anthony L. Peratt, Fellow, IEEE, published a seminal paper in the IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, Vol. 31, No. 6, December 2003. It was titled Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current, Z-Pinch Aurora as Recorded in Antiquity. In it he explained the unusual characteristics of a high-energy plasma discharge. He discussed mega-ampere particle beams and showed their characteristic 56- and 28-fold symmetry. He wrote: "A solid beam of charged particles tends to form hollow cylinders that may then filament into individual currents. When observed from below, the pattern consists of circles, circular rings of bright spots, and intense electrical discharge streamers connecting the inner structure to the outer structure."
*sigh* I seriously doubt that 'supernovae are catastrophic electrical discharges focused on a star', and think that this is instead more unsubstantiated guesswork on the part of the Electronic Universe Theorists.
a story without a link
a fringe crackpot theory on the front page
no monty python foot
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Fools! They fail to understand that a supernova is caused by shock waves emitted when the turtle at the bottom of the stack of turtles that make up the universe is squashed by all the turtles above it. As new turtles come into being at the top of the stack, their weight eventually crushes the bottom turtle, causing the whole stack to drop jarringly. The resulting compression wave is felt by all the turtles, and sometimes causes the familiar flash of light mistakenly interpreted as a stellar explosion. Stars can't "explode" because they are merely holes in the firmament. Whoever heard of a hole exploding! Such foolishness!
In Galactic Russia, electro-magnetically generated Supernova 1987a overlords welcome YOU!!
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I don't know if these electric universe guys are right or wrong, but it seems VERY scientific to me to come up with new theories about how things work...
I have a new theory: jim_v2000 is an ignorant fuckwit who is incapable of assessing the validity of pseudoscientic claims. There you have it, folks: science in action.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
So I guess if this is even true, that instead of waiting 5 billion years + until our sun runs out of fuel, the sun can have one of these discharges at any seocoGI'WOIQF+IHWJFW>F(&"&)"#$')"'#(%
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
No, no, it's psuedoscience. Thier explanation of the behaviour of comets shape simply does not match reality. Nor does thier explanation of the solar wind (which they claim is positively charged if I recall, it is infact electrically neutral).
Thier predictions about Deep Impact were so vaguo they would make a astrology cringe, so to claim they got that right is absurd.
These people don't open themselves up to peer review. We aren't talking about a bunch of little Einstiens the world wont accept. These are genuine crackpots.
It's too bad god didn't give you good grammar or spelling abilties.
http://www.fixedearth.com/electric.html
e x.html
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/mccanney/ind
Yeah, these people are total crackpots
Who but the Flying Spaghetti Monster could possibly have a hair dryer powerful enough to destroy a star when He drops it in His Noodly Bathtub?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Some ludicrously misapplied scientific terms come to the front when Googled, too. Take "Birkeland current," one of the ideas put forth as some sort of power transmission line throughout the galaxy; a brief bit of research indicates that the phenomenon is referred to solely in a terrestrial context (at least, on non-out there sites)
Another one? The paper referenced towards the end, entitled "Characteristics for the occurrence of a high-current, Z-pinch aurora as recorded in antiquity," and published in IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, relates solely to a large terrestrial aurora discharge.
Still, it would be great if we could get a pro in here to thoroughly debunk this. Any astronomers want to step up to the challenge?
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
This is crazy talk. I studied gravitational collapse TypeII supernova explosions in grad school. It's not an electrical phenomenon: it's a gravitational bounce outward from the solid (neutron) core after fusion peters out at Iron burning. From there, for sufficiently massive stars, you either get a neutron star or a black hole. Hans Bethe got the Nobel for explaining process the energy release(~10^51 erg). Aside from some of the 3d fluid dynamics of collapse and ejecta composition, the important parts of the process are fairly well understood.
Well clearly this disproves Evolution, then.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
After you RTFA and think to yourself "I haven't heard that much non-sensical technobabble since Star Trek!" head over to Wiki's Plasma Cosmology page. Or this more detailed page. Its contested, mainly because this is a contested field and the article is overly broad, but I think it fills in some of the holes.
Honestly if their predictions are true it will change everything in cosmology. And if my predictions are true I'll win the Lotto. I'm not sure who has better odds....
No, my friend, your ad hominem came first when you accused me of trolling, with nothing to back up your claim. Read through the rest of the posts for this article, and it should become pretty apparent that the electric universe hypothesis (I won't dignify it with the label 'theory') is fringe science. The claims of these 'scientists' are barely coherent, indicating a total absence of familiarity with how science is prosecuted and presented, irrespective of the specifics of the claims themselves. The fact that they present their hypotheses as press releases, rather than in peer-reviewed journals, should set alarm bells ringing.
In your original post, you referred to 'those who dared say that the earth was round hundred of years ago'. In the interests of educating you about science, just a little, you may be interested to hear that the spherical circumference of the Earth was measured by Eratosthenes, well over 2,000 years ago. Unfortunately, people ignorant of history and science seem to believe that Columbus was the first to make the outrageous claim that the Earth was round. In fact, it was well accepted at that time that the Earth was round; the only uncertainty lay in the precise size.
Ultimately, the fact that pseudoscientific claims draw ridicule from mainstream science does not make these claims any more plausible. Sure, some outrageous hypotheses that are subject to ridicule are later found to be true. However, this happens only in very rare cases, and once the evidence is provided to back up the claims, the ridicule evaporates.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
200 years ago, most of the USA was filled with people who could not read or write. Yet, they formed a country with great prosperity. And they believed in GOD.
Good thing God gave them all those slaves, eh?
200 years ago, most of the USA was filled with people who could not read or write ... And they believed in GOD.
Exactly. The uneducated, stupid people believed in god. You put it perfectly.
I'm impressed. The link to The Onion that was marked Google instead of Humour was a bit of a low point for Slashdot. But a story about a bunch of cranks that doesn't even include a link is a whole new record. Are you guys having a competition?
Tomorrow's Stupid News article: RocketRainbow writes about a staggering discovery: "Some guy in a bar told me that he made a time machine". The implications are astonishing.
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
Did you ever notice how science changes its anwsers so damn often. But the Bible stays the same.
2 1234547.htm
Actually, real scientists have used this event to prove a hypothesis. In 1999, Chandra X-Ray center suggested that the shape of the rings resulted from a cavity, caused by the explosion, in the dust and gas surrounding the star. They predicted that the supernova explosion would produce a shock wave which would hit the edges of the cavity and produce a dramatic increase in X-Rays. This is happening as predicted. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/08/0508
You see, that's the difference between science and superstition. Science makes predictions which can be tested. That's why it sometimes changes. Superstition is not testable. That's why it stays the same.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Finally, a Slashdot post (not an Ask Slashdot or a book review) where I don't have to RTFA, because there is no TFA!
Peter Pan did not walk the earth. Jesus did.
Then it's obvious who was the more magical, isn't it?
How are these "catastrophic electrical discharges" occur and funciton?
As I understand the gibbering drivel that poses for the hypothesis of the electric universe, the claim is that the stars become positively charged due to the loss of electrons in a stellar wind. There is then some huge discharge episode that causes the supernove.
Of course, this flies in the fact of everything that is known about stellar winds. In the case of the sun, we know that the wind is electrically neutral, from in situ measurements by space missions such as ACE. In the case of massive stars, that undergo supernovae at the end of their lives, the winds cannot possibly be negatively charged, for a simple reason: these winds are driven by photons scattering off positively-charged ions. In fact, the wind plasma of massive stars is neutral, being an equal mixture of positive ions and negative electrons.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Did you ever notice how science changes its anwsers so damn often. But the Bible stays the same.
That's true. No matter how long human civilization lasts, the Bible will always hold an accurate record of God's chosen disciple, Lot, fucking his daughters. Nice choice, God - you picked a winner there!
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Tinkerbell!
Who ordered that?
From TFA..."Stars are an electrical plasma discharge phenomenon. Electrical energy produces heavy elements near the surface of all stars. The energy is transferred over cosmic distances via Birkeland current transmission lines. The energy may be released gradually or stored in a stellar circuit and unleashed catastrophically. It is these cosmic circuits that are the energy source for the supernova explosion not the star."
Even if TFA was mildly belivable there is still the problem of where does all the electrical energy come from, where is the "power station" at the other end of the "Birkeland current transmission lines".
Skip to the end of the article and it starts dribbling on about the geometry of Stonehenge. The fact that it was posted seems to indicate that slashdot will soon have an astrology section.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Did you ever notice how science changes its anwsers so damn often. But the Bible stays the same.
That's funny. The Koran stays the same, the Hindu Vedas stay the same, and many other religious texts which have nothing to do with the Christian god stay the same too. Does the quality of being static mean something to you?
When I went to college, they taught some stuff in biology, chemsitry, and physics that is wrong. They graded our papers, and gave us low marks. Why? They did it to everyone. In my Chem class, and "A" was a 38.7%. That is about 4 out of 10 points on a test. The curve was fucking rediculous.
What, exactly, does this have to do with anything? Hundreds of years ago Christians believed the earth was flat and that women should be burned alive. And you're complaining that either you couldn't learn or that your professor couldn't teach?
God said they would persecute us. And they are doing that.
Who are "they"? And what are "they" doing exactly?
I would rather take comfort with God than with the here_today, gone_tomorrow of science.
That's fine. Kids take comfort in teddy bears and imaginary friends too. Would you prefer a static stock market if change is too difficult for you to understand?
Why not live in a happy moral time, with good families, and worthwhile occupations. Why live in horrible times, working for in the factory of an atheist for minimum wage?
False dilemma much? Why not live in a happy non-religious time, where everybody gets along? Why live in the constant fear and guilt that Christianity teaches?
THINK ABOUT IT. WHAT IS DIFFERENT TODAY? NO PENSIONS AT JOBS. NO GOOD JOBS. And there is less of God too. He is letting us know.
Ah yes... that *clearly* is the *only* thing different today. Yes, *nothing else* has changed in history. Any other pearls of wisdom to share, oh swine of knowledge?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
it's a gravitational bounce outward from the solid (neutron) core after fusion peters out at Iron burning.
Actually, recent models show that the bounce doesn't cause the explosion, since the outward-propagating shockwave stalls at some point within the stellar envelope. The current idea is that the explosion is caused by the neutrinos from the core, that get absorbed by the outer envelope and heat it up to crazy temperatures. Sure, the cross section for an individual neutrino to interact is miniscule; but with so many neutrinos being produced, enough of them interact to cause the explosion.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
I sent an email on this subject to Phil Plait at www.badastronomy.com, someone I consider an authority on astronomy and in particular supernova 1987a (it was the subject of his PhD).
Hopefully Phil will have the time to examine the claims and comment on their truth or falsity on his web site.
If you ever have a few hours to kill and want to read about some fascinating astronomy topics check out his web site. He spends a lot of time debunking claims made by "scientists" regarding such things as the face on Mars, the moon landing "hoax" and many other hugely engrossing topics.
I think you'll find that Jefferson, Franklin, Washington and the others who lead the revolution and formed the republic were all highly literate people.
"Yet, they formed a country with great prosperity. And they believed in GOD."
Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick. That neocon bollocks is really sinking in, isn't it?
THE FOUNDING FATHERS OF THE US WERE NOT CHRISTIANS!
Read some history! The US was not founded on christian principles! The signers of the declaration of independance where mostly freemasons, and it is not a coincidence that there is only one reference to god in the constitution, one which is best attributed to 'habit' and 'the way things were done at the time' than any religious thought.
Shit, even a cursory knowledge of history will show that the US was inhabited by people fleeing religious persicution in Europe and that they really, REALLY did NOT want a country founded on religious principles, but one where there was a seperation of church and state and where no religion could gain so much power that it could encroach upon any other religion.
The rest of your post is fine, but thgis one point has been spouted by the neo-con movemenet so often that now it looks like a lot of americanss actually are starting to really beleive it.
Just like it was the americans who captured the first Enigma machine.
*grumble*historicalaccuracy*grumble*
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
"Did you ever notice how science changes its anwsers so damn often. But the Bible stays the same."
.. but its possible) but the amount of rewrites due to political slanting and posturing , making bits fit the ideas of the current church and plain old translation errors have made the thing a total mess.
... if it was the work of god then I'm fairly sure it could afford someone to handle continuation .. and why would a perfect being make a mistake and need to correct it with a new testament ..
That is a whole crock of nonsense if ever i have heard it.
Compare older versions of the Torah in Hebrew to the old testament.
Compare the old and new testaments , even compare different modern versions of the bible.
It has been shown that the Jewish faith as early as 800BC was perhaps not monotheistic .
The rules of the many Christian churches have changed so often it isn't funny.
In essence the bible has been rewritten so many times , that perhaps at one stage it may have contained the truth (I don't know , and i don't believe
The bible if anything is the work of man
Science may change , but so does your faith . the only difference is science changes based on understanding and advancement . The bible changes based on confusion and politics .
Take the core of your belief , the love , the helping others and faith in a higher power out to help us and use that . Don't use the confusing mess of a book that has caused countless deaths.
God and science , the twain shall never meet . you can enjoy science and a strong faith in a higher power. Science is not something to put faith in , it is something to take understanding from.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
COALITION FORCES ENTER THE MEGELLANIC
Allied forces put an end to the continued Magellanic resistance to peace keeping troops in the Middle Magellanic, a million years ago.
"Once again the significant investment in Deathstar technology is proving itself in the field." a coalition spokesperson told GNN.
Coalition commanders in the Magellanic say their troops are still meeting some resistance but it is very patchy. "We have struck a devastating blow to their terror network. The ability of their terror cells to function have been severely limited, now they have no nuclear-terror storage facility." quoted one high ranking commander.
A Milky way journalist who has visited 1987A say resident worlds there told him they were prepared to surrender to advancing Coalition forces, rather than lose their nuclear energy reserves (the sun).
A journalist from the Earth Solar System news agency EFP said a tribal world leader near 1987A told him to convey a request to the Coalition troops to stop blowing up suns and allow local leaders time to negotiate the surrender of Magereenic fighters still loyal to Zaphod.
UGS marines are reported to be fighting Magellanic forces, including Y fighters, on the southern outskirts of SK-69, about 140 light years (822,444,234,277,022.1 miles) north of 1987A. SK-69, once the pleasure capital of the Magellanic , is believed to be a possible remaining stronghold of Zaphods's regime and there has been speculation that troops loyal to the deposed leader might be planning a last stand there.
A Milky Way journalist with the UGS forces told GNN: "It's a very, very significant attack. They've brought forward a great number of Vipra assault X wings and the Deathstar (large round peace keeping spaceship) is in orbit."
Helium 3 and Gigarod mining operations and new mining construction in nearby worlds has been unaffected by the latest fighting.
Interesting. Wikipedia has this to say about her:
Many of Teresa's donors were evidently under the impression that their money was being used to build hospitals. In 1991, Dr. Robin Fox, then editor of the British medical journal The Lancet, visited the Home for Dying Destitutes in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and described the medical care the patients received as "haphazard". He observed that sisters and volunteers, some of whom had no medical knowledge, had to make decisions about patient care, because of the lack of doctors in the hospice. Dr. Fox specifically held Teresa responsible for conditions in this home, and observed that her order did not distinguish between curable and incurable patients, so that people who could otherwise survive would be at risk of dying from infections and lack of treatment.
Fox conceded that the regimen he observed included cleanliness, the tending of wounds and sores, and kindness, but he noted that the sisters' approach to managing pain was "disturbingly lacking". The formulary at the facility Fox visited lacked strong analgesics which he felt clearly separated Mother Teresa's approach from the hospice movement. There have been a series of other reports documenting inattention to medical care in the order's facilities. Similar points of view have also been expressed by some former volunteers who worked for Teresa's order. Mother Teresa herself referred to the facilities as "Houses of the Dying".
In contrast to the conditions at her homes, Mother Teresa sought medical treatment for herself at renowned medical clinics in the United States, Europe, and India, drawing charges of hypocrisy from critics such as Hitchens.
Worthy of sainthood? Doesn't quite sound like it. But it doesn't really matter, since the ceremony doesn't mean anything.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
Clearly we need to start some classes in trolling. This is a perfect example of the decline in trolling quality that we've seen at slashdot in the last few years.
How, in the name of all that is holy, can you have a Bible troll like this without at least one direct reference to male homosexuality or bestiality! And there isn't even an attempt to blatantly steer the debate to make it a debate on abortion or prayer in schools.
At long last, do you have no sense of troll decency sir? Oh usenet trolls of alt.athiesm, why have you abandoned us?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Of course first Enigma machine was not captured and decoded by Amewicans...
It was famous Wussian scientist that cweated first decoder for Enigma, in same facility where they kept nuclear wessels.
- Pavel Checkov
Too bad EuroPeon slave traders were the middlemen in that transaction.
Spoken like a typical right-wing American: you don't want to accept responsibility for anything. Blame the Europeans, blame Islam, blame the Chinese, whatever, but you can do no wrong; how could you? You are a God-fearing citizen of The Greatest Nation on Earth. And it is The Greatest Nation on Earth because it can do no wrong. QED.
200 years ago, most of the USA was filled with people who could not read or write. Yet, they formed a country with great prosperity. And they believed in GOD.
They also didn't shower regularly. This uncanny association really makes you wonder, doesn't it? Maybe it was poor personal hygiene after all, rather than a belief in GOD, that made them prosperous.
They make a decent attempt in sounding scientific, and one would almost be inclined to consider it a viable hypothesis...untill they start introducing Stonehenge.
That was just a wee bit over the top, guys. Next time, try to hold back on that, and some people might actually be fooled.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Some of them were Christians. Some were deists. Some were out right atheists. Just as the grandparent shouldn't make vast generalizations neither should you. How do you classify someone such as Jefferson? Jefferson was by most accounts a deist. Is he Christian? He published a red letter edition of the new testament in which all of Jesus's moral teachings were well--highlighted in red. Yet he ignored the "mystical" elements. So was he religious or not? depends on your definition of religion mroe than anything.
Ever read the Declaration of Independence?
You are basically right--the Constitution and future government of the US was meant to be free of religion, and to protect freedom of religion. This does not mean that many of the founding fathers were not deeply religious men, nor that religion was universally reviled.
I'm also curious about your point about "no religion could gain so much power that it could encroach upon any other religion." What about anti-semitic laws, catholic/protestant anti-miscegenation laws, and more, that we've had for years? Until relatively recently even.
One must remember that the early American context was largely white (of Western European extraction), male, protestant. Other groups come into prominence later--be they black slaves, women, Irish, Catholics, Italians, Jews, etc.
This is not to disagree with your basic point, but I would take issue with many of your assumptions (and incidentally, you've been reading too much Davinci Code with regards to masons--my grandfather was a mason, and the man attended church every week of his life--what's the correlation? none..read about freemasonry and you'll see what I mean)
Not when you recall that Lot offered these same daughters to a rape mob, to avoid inconveniencing a couple of angels. Truly a man of God!
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
"I would rather take comfort with God than with the here_today, gone_tomorrow of science."
When I was a kid, hiding under the bed would make me feel safe as well. I never really saw the boogie man, because - you know - he doesn't exist. And neither does god. I take more comfort in "atheist science" than in lies - damn lies - that have kept humankind down, led the world to pain, war and destruction for the last 5000 years over and over again.
Look further, accept and embrace your human condition.
IANAL, but imagine a beowulf cluster of in Soviet Russia all your belong are base to us welcoming the new SCO overlords.
"Did you ever notice how science changes its anwsers so damn often. But the Bible stays the same."
Congratulations! You're one step closer to rational thought!
Unlike religion, science doesn't claim it's explanations to be correct. It claims them to be the best explanation we can find given the current evidence.
Science is a method for trying to explain why something is the way it is best on testing a hypothesis.in a repeatable way.
Unlike religion it does not say "this is the way it is", it says "this is the best explanation we have for why this happens".
The difference is that there's actually evidence involved in science. Religion just has books of mostly unverifiable claims by people long dead with no supporting evidence except... more mostly unverifiable claims by other people long dead!
On the other hand there are many good moral teachings in religion that virtually anyone can agree on. It's just a shame they're mixed in with so much crap.
Did you ever notice how science changes its anwsers so damn often. But the Bible stays the same.
A self-correcting way to knowing? That's freakin' awesome! What else?
When I went to college, they taught some stuff in biology, chemsitry, and physics that is wrong. They graded our papers, and gave us low marks. Why? They did it to everyone. In my Chem class, and "A" was a 38.7%. That is about 4 out of 10 points on a test. The curve was fucking rediculous.
I know, right? I'm with you on this one. I would much rather see this kind of question:
Did God do it?
a.) Yes
b.) Praise the Lord
c.) You betcha'
God said they would persecute us. And they are doing that.
Who's persecuting you? Last time I checked (and believe me, I check OFTEN) you guys were pretty much in charge of everything. What? No prayer in schools to our Judeo-Christian deity? PERSECUTION!!!! You mean we can't burn witches anymore? PERSECUTION!!!! We can't send all atheists to China?! PERSECUTION!!! I can't express my religiosity? Oh, wait, I can! Shit.
Why not live in a happy moral time, with good families, and worthwhile occupations. Why live in horrible times, working for in the factory of an atheist for minimum wage?
I'm sorry, but, what the FCUK? Maybe someday there will be a time when most people are retarded and this kind of logic will seem valid to everyone. How do you guys come up with this stuff?
Got a friend who is a mason and is certainly not Christian. My impression from talking to him is that you must believe in a higher being of some kind, just not one dictated by any particular religion. The are some rules about not talking about religion or politics in many settings. It probably stops many arguments from ever happening and it also debunks the crazy idea that they are some sort of world dominating secret society (would be tough to organize without discussing either).
And if anyone believes that organized religion is anything but another government, theyre are totally kidding themselves.
There's serious work going on detecting and characterizing solar-, nebular-, galactic-, and galactic-supercluster- scale current flow that the Electric Universe people are happy to co-opt. Regardless of how supernovas happen, what you end up with really are huge clouds of electrically-conductive plasma at widely-varying densities, compositions, and degrees of ionization, that spontaneously organize. Forms routinely observed in laboratory plasma experiments, scaled up many orders of magnitude, are unmistakable in such nebulae, just as is also seen on a smaller scale in our own solar system (e.g. the aurora), and on an immensely larger scale in the galactic core.
The bible stays the same? Fine, show me the original.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
- supernovae just happen to match what would happen to a star under gravitational collapse when it runs short of fusion to support itesf.
- we just happen to have the distribution of elements that would happen to a star under runaway fusion in spherical shells....
- supernovae just happen to put out scads of neutrinos, just what would happen under runaway fusion.
- supernovae just happen to push waves of matter in front of them, at the speeds and in the quantities expected under runaway fusion.
I'm an astronomy news bottom-feeder, and even I see the problems with an "electrical" theory of supernovae.Actually, that is incorrect. The 13 colonies, and in particular the Northern ones, had very high litteracy rates. Massachusetts had universal schooling, even for girls.
Yet, they formed a country with great prosperity.
Again, incorrect. The U.S. was quite poor; it wasn't even considered a nation of importance until the time of Teddy Roosevelt, i.e. the 20th Century. Before then Americans were considered to basically just be country bumpkins by people in the powerful countries of the day (UK, France, Germany). It didn't become a superpower until after the second world war. And that was to a large extent because of the efforts of imported, secular, German and Eastern European scientists.
And they believed in GOD. They thanked him for what they had.
I infer that you think that we should "go back" to a society where religion dominates all political thinking and public life. I would suggest that you look at the Middle Ages, or even the Dark Ages for an example of what life in a theocracy is like... For 1500 years they believed in God to the point of letting the church dominate all life - and lived in total squalor.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
I remember reading that the flux of neutrinos is enough to kill a human out past the range of Jupiter's orbit. (And heavy lead jammies aren't going to help.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
This appears to be the Birkeland in question. Nobel Prize nominee seven times, figured out how the polar aurorae worked, invented the gadget we use to manufacture nitrate fertiliser, and so ons.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
You're right. And I knew you were right when I posted. Thing is, we're dealing with spin here, and it needs a simple answer. If I had remained factually correct on every point, I'd have to add caveats with every single sentence in my post. Sorry.
/., not a tract for my thesis).
I know a lot of people were religious at the time. Pretty much impossible not to be (although I do suspect many of the founding fathers would have been athiests [who would have read the bible and the other 'great books'...yaddayadda] had they grown up in this time instead of then, but that's idle speculation).
As for the laws...same reason the USSR was a dictatorship even though it was based on Marx.
As for the Da Vinci Code...I revile it. But it must be said it's actually gotten quite a few people to go read actual good books on the subject, by actual historians who did actual validated research on the matter. I know where freemasonry comes from; the name is a dead giveaway (as is the symbolism) that they are descended from the cathedral builders (yeah, simplification...I'm writing a post on
So, I oversimplified. Fact is that an awfull lot of people have started believing in the past 5 to 8 years that the US was founded by a bunch of christians who wouldn't have minded the ten commandments hung up in courtroooms. For those people, oversimplification may be whats needed. Maybe not. I just don't know. Got any tips?
PS: I wasn't oversimplifying the 'just one refference to god' bit; it's right at the beginning, something about 'the year of our lord'...and thats it.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
200 years ago, most of the USA was filled with people who could not read or write. Yet, they formed a country with great prosperity. And they believed in GOD.
Good thing God gave them all those slaves, eh?
Slaves, slaves, everybody always bitches about the slaves. If a farmer paid the equivalent of a freeman's salary for a year to buy a slave at least he had to protect his investment. Same as grease, oil changes and other maintenance on the tractor.
What about the potato famine Irish? Get a factory job in the U.S. like a Chinese sweat shop working seven days a week at starvation wages until a flywheel belt takes off your arm and you bleed to death because there aren't any OSHA laws. No maintenance. You find another Irish the next day after you've gotten the blood mopped up. 100% on their own until a mean death in a short life and no cost to the factory owner.
Basically, the 19th century sucked no matter what your research watching Little House on the Prairie would lead you to believe.
Don't even get me started on the Indians. Give them a smallpox infested blanket and they'll give your whole clan free farms. They were pathetically easy shooting compared to, e.g. the Zulu, and "gave" us an incredibly rich continent to exploit.
God worked in mysterious ways to bring great prosperity to America.
...that article links to a description of Birkeland currents, which might give you a big tip about what the relatively coherent parts of the article are on alluding to. If Earth's Birkeland currents routinely hit a million amperes, can you imagine what the Sun's must be like? Nice shot of Jovian aurorae, too.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Several years ago, I read an Isaac Asimov novel called The Currents Of Space, written in the 1950's or 60's, which dealt with a planet whose star was about to undergo a supernova event, thanks to (you guessed it) a Birkeland Current. If I remember correctly, the current was deviated and missed the star, saving all involved.
Curiously, there was an author's foreword that discredited the scientific content along lines like this:
"The Birkeland Current theory was in vogue during the time this novel was written. However, science advances and astrophysics is no exception, as current theories better explain the origin of supernova events".
Goin' full circle, everything old is new again! However, in the novel, any star could go supernova if hit by the Birkland Current, so these guys today have done quite a bit of fine-tuning.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
Playing around is fine - you don't have be be serious all the time, of course not. But playing around and pretending you're serious is another matter.
wow...this is a dooooooozy of an uninformed post.
Compare older versions of the Torah in Hebrew to the old testament.
you are, of course, aware that modern Old Testament translations are translated from the oldest extant Torah/Hebrew texts, but that Jewish copyists were so meticulous that it doesn't much matter? that the corruptions that snuck in were single words and minor misspellings, and that even over the 2,800 year spread between current press runs and the earliest manuscripts and pottery shards, there are stunningly few differences, especially when compared to parallel texts (Homer and the presocratics, for instance)
It has been shown that the Jewish faith as early as 800BC was perhaps not monotheistic.
Somewhat true - but it was also not what we would call polytheistic - what many scholars now believe is that the pre-literary (1000bc+) Jewish believers may have lent credence to the existence of other supernatural beings, but believed theirs was the highest God - the creator and ruler; their understanding of other 'gods' was closer to what modern fundamentalists would call demons - things other people worship that have powers, but not what we would refer to today as an omnipotent God. of course, oddly enough, much of that understanding comes from texts in the scriptures which were not erased by subsequent believers, which seem to indicate a diversity of opinion.
In essence the bible has been rewritten so many times....the amount of rewrites due to political slanting and posturing , making bits fit the ideas of the current church and plain old translation errors have made the thing a total mess.
that's just plan wrong. the bible has certainly been reinterpreted, but all mainline groups (eg, excluding Marcionites, certain Gnostic sects and the like) have faithfully transmitted the text, even if they chose to ignore inconvenient sections. which is why fundamentalist Catholics using circa-16th century Latin/Vulgate texts which where recopied zillions of times until the invention of the printing press, and Jewish scholars poring over scraps of the Torah dug up in 5th century BC tombs argue about interpretation and not content. there are, in fact, probably only about half a dozen passages in the Old Testament where the Hebrew and Greek/Latin traditions vary by enough to affect the understanding of the passage...and none of them affect the message of the passage, just its nuance.
the rest of your post is presented as opinion, so i don't see the need to correct it - as you're entitled to your opinions. but please don't present completely erroneous nonsense as historical fact.
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
-- U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
That's why Karl Marx wrote favorably to Lincoln:
"From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class. The contest for the territories which opened the dire epopee, was it not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the labor of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of the slave driver?"
The Republicans of today have nothing in common with the radical abolitionists of the 19th century.
For those of you interested in what supernovae core collapse might look like, there are some simulated animations in the link below. Very pretty too.
http://www.astro.le.ac.uk/~rt53/work/index.html
Cheers,
Roger
Do you have any better hostages?
What *do* we see when a star undergoes gravitational collapse and subsequent explosion after having spent all of its nuclear fuel?
SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP! God gave us the light bulb and immunizations and antibiotics and the printing press and the Internet. What did those damed bolshevik, nazi, homosexual atheists ever do for us?
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Scientists don't like to play with theories that are obviously wrong, as this one is. Science is a search for how the universe really works, and bullshit purporting to be truth is deeply offensive to that goal.
Many of the most important founding fathers were Deists, Atheists and Agnostics. Furthermore even the religious members of the founding fathers all agreed on the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Ammendment to the US Constitution - which Thomas Jefferson described as "erecting a wall of Seperation between Church and State" to preserve the rights of the citizens and the dignity of both organizations
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Parent bases his entire argument off presumption, bigotry and blatant falsehood.
You can stop reading the post right here "America is a christian nation founded upon christian principles." as that statement is 100% FICTION.
The Constitution of the United States was written upon ENLIGHTMENT Principles by people that were christian, deist, agnostic and atheist - and the "Seperation of Church and State" [Thomas Jefferson] was universally agreed upon.
So before Parent opens their mouth EVER again I suggest they LEARN HISTORY.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
"And I knew you were right when I posted. Thing is, we're dealing with spin here, and it needs a simple answer. If I had remained factually correct on every point, I'd have to add caveats with every single sentence in my post."
So, not only did you lie, but you lied with full knowledge that you were lying, and then gave a pathetic excuse.
When are you running for president?
Please! Isn't far simpler to think of stars being part of some invisible array of high power lines (we'll have proof some day, don't worry) and that neutrinos and heavy elements are being generated by some sort of electrical thingy. Stars explode and discharge mass through an electrical discharge which means the vacuum of space has an electrical potential of some sort that varies from place to place, once again we can't prove it but we know you are wrong.
Now compare this to the misguided THEORIES of those scientists who try to suppress us! Instead of our wonderfully complex and gap riddled ideas they would have you believe it is as simple as gravitational compression. Arrogant fools! Common sense demands that the simpler explanation be dropped.
Stop being fooled by MAINSTREAM scientists with their experiments, controls, peer reviews, data, exhaustive studies, hard work, successful predictions, working theories, revisions, and hard evidence.
Next week, how refrigerator magnets can cure arthritis.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
"America is a christian nation founded upon christian principles. This is a hard fact"
You have a typo in there "fact" should be spelled "LIE". Another possibility would be "pathetic attempt to rewrite history by idiotic religious zealots who never bother to learn facts because with religious idiots, fervor is more important the accuracy" but I think "LIE" works best there.
Maybe as it rushes inwards, the increasing compression causes a burst of fusion. The extra energy causes the material's bounce to overcome gravity and spread out.
Just a guess.
SBB writes "Green Universe News is reporting that scientists claim to have proof that 'supernovae are the direct catastrophic result of Global Warming on Earth' and not the result of giant stars undergoing gravitational collapse and subsequent explosion after having spent all of their nuclear fuel as previously thought."
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
Lot's daughters grew up in Sodom, and it seems to have had an effect. Lot took his family and fled Sodom before it was destroyed, as he was warned to do. After it was destroyed, his his daughters got him drunk and slept with him. If they were spared as the only "good" people in Sodom, maybe there was something to its destruction?
Genesis 19: 30-36
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
HOWEVER, it is certainly reasonable to act on the assumption that this article is false as it is the more complicated theory and fails to explain a significant range of observations regarding supermassive stars. As such, it does seem to fail the litmus test.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Lets get real people! When people start using Stonehenge as evidence in their modern astronomy papers they you have a real crackpot. I mean this guy uses a preface from H.P. Lovecraft in his preface!
Next think you know this guy is going to be claiming that the moon landing never happened. Oh, wait.... Perhaps calling his website hollow-science would be more appropriate.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Actually, you remeber MOSTLY correctly. But only Mostly. God decided to Destroy all of Sodom And Gemorah. Cause they were EVIL. And he Came to His man Abraham. And said "Abe, I gonna blow this Joint". And Abe says, what you gonna kill everyone, surely there are good people there. How you gonna kill the good with the bad?"
And God and abe argue for a bit, and the bottom line is that there arent even 10 decent people in Sodom. At best, 8 passable ones.
Lot and his family are the 8. So as a favor to Abraham, God Pulls them out. And even they arent so good. It is sort of, in comparison to the rest of Sodom and Gemorah, these 8 are ok. But look how bad THEY are. THEN you will get an idea about how TRULY evil Sodom and Gemorra were.
That is mostly the Gist of that portion of the bible (there are other things too. If you feel so inclined, go read it. But yea. Lot&co. arent held out as really good people. Just good in Comparison to the TRUE evil of sodom and gemorrah)
I submitted this controversial article, and I suppose I ought to poke my head up and offer a few observations.
/.'s main page, was missing a link to the article hosted by holoscience.com, it's not my fault, as I did include one, but the story as submitted (expectedly) underwent heavy editing before it was displayed for public consumption, and the editor must have accidentally dropped the link. By the time I visite Slashdot today, the mistake was corrected.
/. that pointed to thunderbolts.info's "Deep Impact predictions" page. I'd never heard of "plasma cosmology" and the "Electric Universe" theories before . . . and so began to read about them. I discovered that there is quite a spectrum of thought that makes up this fringe scientific camp.
First, if the story, as it showed up early this morning on
I've seen many replies under this story crying "crackpots!" and "quacks!".
But I haven't read even one yet that suggests some simple principles or facts which can be used to debunk the basic claim of the plasma cosmologists and the Electric Universe proponents: that plasma physics (i.e. electrodynamics as embodied in the behavior of plasmas) is not given enough credit when scietific models and theories that attempt to explain stellar and interstellar phenomenon.
And I am all ears. I studied physics in college and was well on my way towards a B.A. in that discipline when I decided to try my hand as an entrepreneur during the dot-com boom. I think I've developed a fairly sensitive internal "b.s. meter" over the course of my lifetime. And I try to "keep up" in my personal (albeit hobbyist) study of science, with space physics and cosmology being my dominant interests. I read stuff on the "popular science" level and I am also comfortable reading papers of a more technical nature. I self-admittedly have a more philosophical bent in my musing upon these matters, but that is not a variant of the excuse, "I'm not so good at math" -- I am actually fairly competent when it comes to advanced mathematics.
Several weeks ago, I read the story on
On the one hand, you have the plasma physicists/cosmologists that believe that the behavior of stars, galaxies, galactic clusters, etc. are governed not primarily by the gravitational force but rather gravity AND electrodynamics, with electrodynamics dominant in many contexts. And they pretty much stop with that assertion and confine most of their work to exploring it.
The Electric Universe enthusiasts go farther, and are trying to develop an all-encompassing framework in which they see every aspect of the universe (from the subatomic to the intergalactic) and its history as governed by the "Electric Force."
Am I true believer in the so-called "Electric Universe?" No. I actually find members of that end of the spectrum in question to be a bit too eager to engage in polemics, and that doesn't impress me. On the other hand, I will say that I find myself highly sympathetic to the work and claims of plasma physicists like Dr. Anthony Peratt.
Here's why, in a nutshell: Since I was a little kid I've been fascinated by ideas like black holes, neutron stars, the "big bang," grand unified theories, etc., etc., etc. In fact, it was my reading Timothy Ferris' Galaxies when I was in the 2nd grade that planted the seeds for my future interest in pursuing physics as a career. I read Hawking's A Brief History of Time in the 6th grade, "understood" it, and from there began a more rigorous self-directed study into more advanced treatments of physics and mathematic
IC XC NIKA
there is a degree of uncertainty in everything.
There is a degree of uncertainty in the statement "The Sun will come up tomorrow"... uncertainty introduced semantically and uncertainty introduced because of astrophysics.
But it's a good bet. The theory of evolution will be futher refined, but that something of an evolutionary mechanism is in play is very well demonstrated.
Demonstration is possible. Proof is not.
But... we don't need proof. We don't need proof the sun will come up tomorrow to place our bets on it.
-pyrrho