Slashdot Mirror
Nemesis, the Sun's Binary Star Companion?
0xC2 writes "The Binary Companion or 'Nemesis' theory asserts that a yet-to-be discovered companion to our Sun may actually exist. Recent observations of two nearby stars (assumed companions) show debris disks 'strikingly like the Kuiper Belt int the outer part of our Solar System'. The Binary Research Institute site is devoted to the theory, and presents a concise introduction, list of evidence, and sample calculations in support of the theory. A fascinating read, although the physics and related calculations are not trivial." Has the 'unique theory on the internet' vibe to it, but interesting nonetheless.
Isn't that Microsoft? Oops... Wrong article...
Seti have anything to say about this?
I sense an evil twin joke coming on.....
On a scale of "faked moon landing" to "electric universe", I rate this 'theory' a solid "roswell alien autopsy"
01010011011010000110111101101111011101000010000100 100000010101110110010100100000
01101100011010010111011001100101001000000110100101 101110001000000110000100100000
01100010011010010110111001100001011100100111100100 100000011100110111100101110011
01110100011001010110110100111111
Unless our sun is slowly orbiting some dark, dank mass of anti-matter, I believe we can put this theory to rest.
As the slashdot crowd is pretty much clueless about astronomy I expect lots of Funny rated comments to hide our ignorance on the subject, right guys?
The True FOSS Skype Replacement
I'd like to know what Captain Kirk would say about this.
Scientific Amercian ran a story several years ago about this. One of the pet theories at the time was that periodic extinctions (which haven't been proven periodic) were caused by objects like comets getting kicked out of the Oort every now and then which could in turn be explained by just such a neighbor star. Nasa has a (very short) page here: Imagine the Universe
An actual brown dwarf isn't likely given scarce evidence but there seems to be reason to believe there are one or more large Kupier Belt objects yet to be found. I've read about gravitational anomalies for years now but they just don't seem large enough to indicate a failed star close enough to call us a near miss binary system. I guess if all the outer planets merged we'd have the makings of a brown dwarf but as we are the system seems to be one of those rare single star systems.
... could we possibly find the outer planets by observing their influence on the inner planets' orbits, if there were a freaking brown dwarf in the neighborhood that we didn't know about?
Something like that would've ruined Kepler's whole day.
The summary states...
Recent observations of two nearby stars (assumed companions)
Whereas the space.com article states...
Each of the two disks has a sharp outer edge that might be caused by an unseen companion star
READ THAT AGAIN FOLKS - they are NOT assuming these two stars are companions. They are NOT a binary star system. They are simply two stars that have similar disks as our own solar system. They think a POSSIBLE cause for these disks MIGHT be an unseen companion, but NO unseen companion has been seen. This discovery leads NO MORE CREDIBILITY to the nemesis "theoory" whatsover - all it says is that there are other stars with similar structures to our own. The cause of this structure has not been observed.
If I only had mod points....
My Sysadmin Blog
Twins are hot!
At the distances involved (in the outer reaches of the kupier belt, about a light year), I guess we wouldn't really notice anything but a brighter star, but I still don't really think this is a possibility. Do the math: v=sqrt(Gm/r) where G is 6.67*10^-11, m is the mass of our sun, and r is the distance between them... 1.21746415*10^-6 meters per second orbital velocity. That's about one meter every 9.5 earth years. Anyone else think that seems a bit... unlikley? Also, the of gravity between the earth and the sun is about 1000 times as strong as with another star of the sun's mass one light year away. I don't think such a system would be stable, as a large astroid passing close to one might well pull it enough out of "orbit," if you can call such a small speed "orbit," so that you'd notice it was no longer binary. For the record, at one AU distance, it would take the system 5.64701404*10^17 years for an orbit. That's like 10 order of magnitude longer then the sun's life span.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
He said, "Kuiper Belt".
This is not an illusion, a rip-off, or a ninja technique!
You guys heard that the Earth is flat, too, right?
Isaac Asimov has a novel with this exact premise, written in 1989, titled Nemesis (as if you expected something different). "Evil" companion star for the sun which caused all the mass extinctions, etc. Of course, in the novel there are multiple civilizations, a battle over whether Earth should be saved, etc... but the basic premise is the same. 17 years later, still just as fictional as it was then.
You don't need a companion to produce a sharp edge in the Kuiper belt. Simulations have shown that. Anyone who makes the assertion that the edges suggest such a thing ought to have at least become familiar with that research.
Furthermore, the analogy to Saturn's rings is, I suspect, misleading. The moons that directly shape the outer edge of the A ring are close to the ring and small. (They are tied to other moons via resoances so the whole system is strung together, but that's not what's being argued for here.) A star would be much more massive than the Kuiper belt and would seriously disrupt the system rather than maintain it. (It would also be pretty obvious if it were just beyond the orbit of the outer edge of the Kuiper belt. We'd feel it here, for a start.) A more distant star might be able to hold back the edge of the belt with a resonance, but that's a different thing. And odds are that such a companion would destroy a belt more readily than maintain it. (Look at Jupiter and the asteroid belt.)
It should also be noted that 300 million years is a short time in solar system terms. It's even shorter for the outer solar system where it's about one million orbits. Since things move slowly and there is little material out there, spreading is very slow. Ones the material is placed there by a larger body (like Neptune), it tends to stay put for quite a while.
If you convert that message back to ASCII, you will find that it is ontopic and actually quite funny.
I would think for such a claim one would need more than just simple calculations .
But anyway, in other news: "Dark matter coming to a store near you."
With all this pseudoscience crap floating around on slashdot we should open a horoscope section. It would make sense. But in all seriousness there is a possibility of a binary companion, but, this site is nothing more than pseudoscience. It dresses up a crazy astrology theory with a little bit of modern scientific sounding language. Be careful about what you post.
... welcome our nemismatic overlords.
Are they suggesting that there may be a nearby star that astronomers have just failed to see for the past few millenia that we've been studying the sky? I thought the nearest star was light years away. Is it a very dim star? I don't get it!
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
http://www.exitmundi.nl.nyud.net:8090/Nemesis.htm
I actually re-read this article the other day. I had been visiting the site because of an odd 43 degree F temperature change overnight, and decided to check on that again. A temperature change of such a large amount, overnight, is not normal at all during January in NY. All the snow melted overnight.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
01001001001000000111010001101000011010010110111001 10101100100000011000100111100100100000001001110110 01100111010101101110011011100111100100101100001001 11001000000111010001101000011001010010000001101101 01101111011001000111001100100000011011010110010101 10000101101110011101000010000000100111011000010110 11100110111001101111011110010110100101101110011001 110010111000100111
...from what I remember, Star Trek X wasn't that big.
it doesn't give us a sunburn? Come now
Not funny. Not. Funny. It's Not. Sorry.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
All these world are yours except Europa. :hammertime:
Use them together.
Use them in peace.
As a kid I always liked the notion that there was something hidden behind the sun that rotates at a certain speed so as it is constantly hidden from us.
Task Mangler
The 'Nemesis' theory is decades old, Isaac Asimov even wrote a book using this premise in the '80s!
When you are scooped by a work of fiction that is over 16 years old, you either have some serious problems with you research dept. or it is a VERY slow news day.
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
I knew that getting this username before anyone else would one day pay dividends! Username/name of star are inspired by the Isaac Asimov novel "Nemesis" by the way.
...keeps turning,I don't know where I'll be tomorrow....
Uranus is so big it has its own orbit!
</astronomy toilet humor>
No sig for you!!
100 comments about Nemesis AND Stars and no Resident Evil reference?
"STAAAAAAARRRSS...."
If the Sun turns out to be binary, what the hell will the Gentoo guys do, CCFLAGS="-Odamnimcold -DALPHA_CENTAURI -funroll-solar-panels"?
Erlang.org: wow
Funny how one of his last books ever written had to do with this very same possibility. Of course, if we later discover that Nemesis is, in fact, heading on a collision course for Earth, we'll have to hail the man as a prophet and then start evacuating as fast as we can. But seriously, I would imagine that this potential discovery could change the way we think about the formation and dynamics of our own solar system. The presence of an additional solar body (by solar I mean sun-like) could have serious and significant implications on both the gravitics of the solar system (and there are several Einsteinian experiments underway to prove or disprove Einstein's theories of gravity that could be scrapped as a result) and the formation of the planets in the solar system. I'd say, all in all, it's going to get to be very interesting very fsat...
No, not while my greatest nemesis still provides our customers with free light, heat and energy. I call this enemy...the sun. Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the sun. I will do the next best thing...block it out!
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
I read about this theory a very long time ago. It was advanced around the time of the theory that a comet killed the dinosaurs. What is interesting, is that mass extinctions seem to occur once every 26 million years or so... and if they are caused by comets... what could cause a comet to hit the Earth at such a regular period? If there was an as of yet undetected massive body that had a regular period of 26 million years, and during its period it gravitationally pulled objects from the Kuiper Belt... the Oort Cloud... and sent them hurtling towards the sun... that would increase the remote chance that one would hit the Earth. It sounds very reasonable... that a dim brown dwarf star (or pin-black-hole) could exist... and be so close astronomically, yet so difficult to detect. Right now... we are between mass extinctions... I think another is expected in about 10-13 million years.
A binary star system is FAR more common in our galaxy than a unary system... in fact... except for the Sol system, it is pretty much unheard of. It almost seems likely that we are in a binary system, and we just haven't realized it yet!
The Admin and the Engineer
Seriously, guys. Sarcasm =].
The smallest visible stars are red dwarfs. There are also cooler brown dwarfs which are only visible in the IR band.
Then you get into gas giant planets like Jupiter. There could be a small brown dwarf relatively close by, and it would only be visible in an IR telescope from outside the atmosphere.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
There are parts of our own world that have not been explored yet. There are creatures being discovered every year. How long have we been searching the earth? The universe is much bigger. I stopped doubting anything when Bush was elected. If a turd can get elected anything is possible.
In the Asmov Gold book, he actually talks about how the idea for the novel sprung from this theory. That's actually how the novel got its name, heh.
It's been known for 1000's of years (Egyptian) and confirmed in the modern day that our sun revolves around Sirius.
The precis of this book is just one of hundreds that misinterpret anthropological data and folklore into some kind of modern cosmology.
For instance, according to Gurdjieff, we have 2 moons orbiting the Earth. Have we found it yet? Was he talking of some kind of dark matter asteroid??? Who knows.
The only thing that is certain is that NASA/ESA have not found it, yet many followers of Gurdjieff believe this as a fact.
Also, just because it gets rave reviews in LA doesn't add credibility.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
You mean this Capt. Picard?
user #1: Nemesis sucks. They cut [clevernickname's]best scenes.
user #2. Get the DVD!
All I need to know is whether or not it has the evil twin Goatee.
The linked article is not really about Nemesis, a distant companion to the Sun supposedly linked to regular massive exctinctions through its influence on the Oort cloud (where comets come from).
It is, however, about an unseen Sun companion responsible for the precession of the equinox. The precession of the equinox is the observation that as the Earth orbits the Sun, after a full year around the Sun the Earth does not realign itself with the distant stars, there is a difference of about 50 arcseconds. This correspond to a period of about 24,000 years.
Current theory for precession says the phenomenon is due to tidal effects due to the Moon acting on the non-perfectly-spherical Earth.
TFA makes the simple point that this could be also more easily explained if the Sun was revolving around an heretofore unseen companion for the same period. This would also explain a number of other more complex phenomena, such as why this the precession rate seems to slowly, but undoubtedly change with time, why the angular momentum of the Sun appears to be so low compared to that of the planets, etc.
TFA goes on to make prediction where this companion might be in the sky, and how far away it should be (between 0.01 and 0.03 of a LY), using nothing more complicated than basic Newtonian celestial mechanics.
Well, time will tell, and I'm not an astronomer, but the theory is actually very simple and testable (in the mid to long run), so either evidence will mount in this direction or it will be disproved.
For example we could measure precession rates on Mars. Since Mars has no large satellite, if it is found to have a precession rate similar to that of the Earth, then this will be very strong evidence that the tidal theory cannot be correct, and that the distant companion one is more likely to be. On the other hand if precession on Mars is very low, then this theory cannot be correct.
In short I think the guy might be wrong but he is no crackpot.
Prof. Muller from the UC Berkeley physics dept. is into this theory. He has a webpage devoted to it. Others in the dept. regard him as a bit of a crank for his interests, but he's not a total crackpot.
In general, it's easier to see what's going on out in space than on Earth. Why? Because there's nothing in the way.
How many walks to the chemist is that?
More than two would have been enough. Sorry to be a bit anal, because apart from that I agree.
I recall reading a book (which had been published sometime in the 80s, if I recall, but I've been beating myself up for 15 minutes over it yet can remember no title) written by a rather respected science writer (again, damn my memory!). The book was a rather higher-level book attempting to be a comprehensive study of dinosaurs and Paleontology. Much of the last little bit naturally dealt with the death of the Dinosaurs, and more strikingly the fact that every ~30 million years there's a major catastrophe on the Earth (many of which are quite big, many bigger than what killed the Dinosaurs--actually, funny anecdote, about the time I was reading this I was in summer camp, and one of the camp leaders was taking biology. He knew about the Permian extinction but insisted that it had, in fact, killed off ALL of the life on Earth, which had then started over again. He scoffed at my assertion that this was bullshit. It might have been then, at a rather tender age, that I realized that people could easily go to University and still persist in being really f-ing stupid. And ignorant. And arrogant. Indeed, it often can perpetuate it.)
Anyways, the punchline of all this is missing. Why was it that approximately every 30 million years (not quite the number, IIRC it's a bit more exact, but I forget the specifics) there were recurring catastrophes? Talk about a science mystery worthy of Science Fiction! My own thoughts were along the lines of some kind of statistical quirk of the setup of Earth over millions of years (things get strange characteristics over such timespans, much the way that the dynamics of situations look fundamentally different if you're looking at things recorded reeeeaaalllyyyy sssslllloooowwwwwwwwwwwwly or, trading time for space, under a microscope). But the book referenced an apparently widely-known theory, though hotly contested, that the Sun had a twin star, probably a brown dwarf, which orbited somewhere outside of the Oort cloud. Perhaps some characteristic of its orbit meant that around every 30 million years (or whatever it was) it would swing close enough for awhile to start disturbing the Oort cloud. With so many possibly dangerous objects being flung around, the likelihood of a cometary impact on Earth suddenly becomes relatively quite alot higher (though probably still unlikely enough that it's far from a reliable impact, perhaps explaining the wiggle room in the exact time of the recurrance of mass extinction). There were other bits of random evidence both astronomy-related and geology-related, I don't quite recall them. But whether the theory is true or bunk, the idea of Nemesis (which is also how it was referred to in the book and in other related literature that I read up on at the time) is at least a significant step about the stereotypical internet-theory.
One last sidenote, though it's somewhat OT: I had been thinking, back then, that if you do the rather simple math we're at least a handful of million years overdue for another mass extinction. Then I did a double take as I realized that we actually weren't! The way that these extinctions were measured, since the fossil record is far from play-by-play, is a sudden and drastic disappearence of biodiversity, with large numbers of species suddenly disappearing. And you know what? Not making any direct opinionated slant on this (though my stance is probably obvious), but humans have managed to wipe out enough in the way of species that we're already about on par with many of these rather significant (from a fossil-record viewpoint) extinctions. (Seen from a kind of statistical-determanistic point of view, then, we're just the inevitable comet-equivalent that would inevitably pop up sooner or later, give or take a handful of million years).
Sorry for waxing so arguably OT, but the theory of Nemesis is such an interesting science bit, what with how it manages to draw threads in from so many interdisciplinary puzzles and findings. And in such a more reasonable and non-paranoid way than those aforementioned internet theories!
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
As an undergrad at UCONN (University of Connecticut) I read a book called "Nemesis" back in 1992! And it was old then! (In fact, the book had only been taken out of the library twice in 10 years...)
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Here's the thing: scientific hypothesis and theory used to be peer reviewed and tested in ways that weeded out the wild ideas that were incorrect (usually) before the public ever caught wind of them. It ISN'T that "real scientists" don't have wild ideas and flights of fancy. Most of the large "earth shattering" ideas over the centuries were just that in their day: wild weird ideas that had large segments of the scientific community thinking "who is this crackpot" for a while. The issue now is that anyone with a flight of fancy that may or may not be right can publish his (her) idea on the internet in a way that makes it appear to be a given that "this is so."
/. It makes us think, brings out some good wit and sarcasm, exposes me to other peoples "wild ideas." (And makes me glad I'm not the only person having stupid flights of fancy, they just aren't on my web page!) However, having a "Horoscope section" (as another poster suggested) for this sort of stuff would only generate long threads of "why is/isn't this in the horoscope section" Let them go ahead and present new ideas as science and we'll give them a thrashing. Even mainstream scientific ideas deserve a good thrashing: the entire concept of dark matter is still full of wild assed guesses, trying to fit the data to a hypothesis is like this. Thrash it good, the chaff will fall out and then we'll have a better idea of what we're supposed to be looking for.
Most probably he has had this flight of fancy a while, and "something herding kuiper belt objects" was all he needed to make his leap to "see, I told you so" when it's probably nothing more than a Earth-Neptune sized snowball riding herd on the edge. In another age, he'd of either been so far from acedemia that no one except his neoighbors and the cows would have ever heard his idea, or else the professors around him would have said "you're saying WHAT with the little bit of data we have?"
An aside: I enjoy reading the comments from psuedo-science articles on
If the sun really does have a companion, then because it is so much closer than any other star (I assume), wouldn't we see a very fast star movement somewhere? And if it does have a companion, one would logically assume that it would be the closest star.
Oh yeah? Go ahead and show me entropy decreasing in a closed system then, please.
Quick facts: most systems are binary. Triple systems are also possible (see Tatooine) and quadruple ones made from two pairs have been found. A week ago Hubble found that the north star, is in fact three stars - grid, magnetic and polar anyone?
Don't be afraid of the skull - link is safe
I prefer Adcott's Binary Translator, mainly because I can remember the URL. ;)
Keep your eyes to the sky.
What's a better way of doing this in Ruby? My solution looks a bit long winded.
0 0 100000010101110110010100100000 01101100011010010111011001100101001000000110100101 101110001000000110000100100000 01100010011010010110111001100001011100100111100100 100000011100110111100101110011 01110100011001010110110100111111".gsub(/\s/, '').scan(/......../).each{ |c| t=0; p=7; s=''; c.each_byte{|d| t += 2 ** p if d == 49; p -= 1; }; print t.chr }
"010100110110100001101111011011110111010000100001
Because we still haven't figured out that all of our understanding of the universe is fettered by our unwillingness to admit that we don't know how to understand the universe we sometimes confuse observation with truth. We haven't yet recorded an instance such as you suggest, but we also do not know if we can. Is the speed of light a truth? Or is it merely a flawed observation on our part.
I must say this is old news. This has already been revealed in the Quran 1400 years ago: Glory be to Him Who created in pairs *all* *things*, of what the earth produces, of themselves, and of which they have no knowledge. [Quran 36:36]
01000001 01100011 01110100 01110101 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00101100 00100000 01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01110010 01100001 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01100001 01101101 01100001 01111010 01100101 01100100 00101110 00100000 00100000 01001001 00100000 01101000 01100001 01100100 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110010 01100001 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110111 00100000 01101111 01110000 01101001 01101110 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01010011 01101100 01100001 01110011 01101000 01100100 01101111 01110100 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01100100 01100101 01110010 01110011 01101000 01101001 01110000 00100000 01110101 01101110 01110100 01101001 01101100 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110011 01100001 01110111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01101101 01100101 01101110 01110100 00100000 01100111 01101111 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01100100 01100100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110101 01110000 00100001 00100000 00100000 01001110 01101111 01110111 00101100 00100000 01001101 01111001 00100000 01110110 01101001 01100101 01110111 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110011 00100000 01100011 01101000 01100001 01101110 01100111 01100101 01100100 00101110 00101110 00101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100101 01101101 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01101001 01101110 01110100 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101001 01100111 01100101 01101110 01110100 00100000 01101100 01101001 01100110 01100101 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01010011 01101100 01100001 01110011 01101000 01100100 01101111 01110100 00100001 00001010 00001010 01010100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101100 01101001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01010011 01000101 01010100 01001001 01000000 01001000 01101111 01101101 01100101 00100001
I don't know if this is the "dark star" that was reffered to in the news a few years ago. But it shattered my concept of reality. The thought of a Star that makes darkness! More powerfull then light when it comes to objects, the darkness will go straight through it. Its whats makes things dark in the middle. Yet light would always seem to overpower it.. And one question I would have if this kind of Dark Star actually exsists, Is What would it be if there was no light or dark?
$str='010100110110100001101111011011110111 010000100001001000000101011101100101001000 000110110001101001011101100110010100100000 011010010110111000100000011000010010000001 100010011010010110111001100001011100100111 100100100000011100110111100101110011011101 00011001010110110100111111'; $str=ereg_replace('[^01]','',$str); do echo chr(intval(substr($str,0,8),2)); while($str=substr($str,8));
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Hmm. The mass of the sun is about 10^3 the mass of Jupiter. The distance of Jupiter from the sun is about 5.2 AU (1 AU = 1.5x10^8 km). Given these numbers I did a quick calculation of the distance of the center of gravitiy of sun/Jupiter system from the center of the sun: about 7.8x10^5 km. The sun's radius is about 7x10^5 km. So even if we consider only Jupiter (which makes up for 70% of the planetary mass), the center of gravitiy is outside the sun. Where it actually is certainly depends of the distribution of the remaining 30% of planetary mass. But much of that is located beyond Jupiter orbit. My bet is the center of gravitiy is slightly outside the sun all the time, just as the parent said. So be careful with your guarantee!
617B3B7F7E7C7D7F00EOF
The problem is that any evidence of an interstellar impact will be long gone by now. The Permian Event took place around the time of Pangea , for chrissake... continents could have shifted over, around and through any impact crators by now.
Heck, you could posit that the bulge of tectonic activity around the Himalaya is a result of uneven plate shifting due to a large, say, crator. Point is, all the pre-Pangean crust has long been subducted into the Earth, so this doesn't necessarily eliminate the possibility of a cyclical catastrophic interstellar event.
To be on the safe side, let's just assume this planet is toast and start planning to look for new digs.
I'm not sure if you're making a philosophical argument or not. If so, its first year philosophy: See Descartes, he already went ahead and worked out the various permutations of "how can I believe anything I experience?" for you.
On the other hand, if you're suggesting a true scientific observation and causality model, its quite deeply flawed.
I'm sorry, come again? Observation is truth, in the most direct sense. I think you're too freely intermixing prediction, observation and conclusion. Clearly, by its very nature, prediction is unsettled and unknown. Conclusion may be, and often is, partially or completely incorrect. Observation is the gold standard, its the one thing that can be counted on; the problem is that in many cases its not possible to make direct observations and indirect observation may have as-yet-unknown causality factors. If anything, the underlying challange to "understanding the universe" is an inability to directly observe detail.
But getting back to my original point (anything possible blab blah, show me entropy decrease in a closed system), you cannot so easily utter "we don't know the truth", wave your magic wand and make it disappear. This is not theory, this is law. We don't even need a closed system really, just take any system whose energy output is equal to or greater than any energy input and demonstrate a system-wide decrease in entropy. Hint: You can't without magic. If you could that would mean that we do not live in a consistent universe, that any perceived rules are subject to change at the drop of a hat and that the paranormal offers the only explanation for causality.
stdin:6: error: '::main' must return 'int'
God, I'm sick of all these people thinking that main can just be a void. That's not the way the world works, and you're wrong... god damn stupid star theory is probably bringing that up...
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
I think we've found our Sun's binary companion already! Good going, Slashdot.
qntm.org
Oh yeah? Go ahead and show me entropy decreasing in a closed system then, please.
Actually, "closed system" properly refers to a system which does not exchange matter but can exchange energy. So, a simple example is to place a sealed jar of water in the refrigerator. It's entropy decreases, but it doesn't exchange any matter. Now, decreasing entropy in a closed, adiabatic system (aka, an isolated sytem) would be hard to find.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
RAEL.
I seem to feel a song coming on:
CHORUS:
"Benson, Arizona, the warm wind through your hair
My body flies the galaxies, my heart longs to be there
Benson, Arizona, the same stars in the sky
But they seemed so much kinder when we watched them, you and I"
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"