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Largest-Known Planet Befuddles Scientists
langelgjm writes to mention that scientists are quite puzzled over the discovery of the largest planet yet. According to study-leader Georgi Mandushev it should theoretically not even be able to exist. 'Dubbed TrES-4, the planet is about 1.7 times the size of Jupiter and belongs to a small subclass of "puffy" planets that have extremely low densities. The finding will be detailed in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal. [...] "TrES-4 is way bigger than it's supposed to be," Mandushev told Space.com. "For its mass, it should be much smaller. It basically should be about the size of Jupiter and instead it's almost twice as big." "TrES-4 appears to be something of a theoretical problem," said study team member Edward Dunham, also of the Lowell Observatory. "Problems are good, though, since we learn new things by solving them."'"
...scientists discovered the "puffy" nature was due to its interior being mostly made of a substance remarkably similar to "fluffy chocolate nougat". Mars, Incorporated could not be reached for comment.
Dyson Sphere and all the /.ers rejoiced!
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
This was reported in the Tampa Tribune as a small page-6 blurb under the headline "New Largest Planet Sports Squishy Surface", a conclusion drawn from a quote by a scientist saying the planet has no firm surface. I almost cried.
ResidntGeek
Screw the Space Odyssey diamond in jupiter, this "puffy" planet must be home to the universe's largest marshmallow!
Somebody grab a sun and discover the graham wafer belt already.
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
Prediction: The gravity 'constant' is not constant everywhere in the universe.
I'm guessing it's bigger than it should be because with a lower gravity constant it isn't as dense for its mass.
P.S. Can Hinduism be disqualified from the religion contest by having thousands of entrants or are we Hindus playing it safe by believing in so many of them?
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
As in our theory has a problem.
Isn't this just another in a long line of gas giants that are too young, and too close to the host stars for our theories of planetary formation?
They probably didn't account for the Birkenstock radiation, one of a family of shoe-based radiations.
I have a theory... it could be bunnies!
Academy of Baffled Scientists?
Best Slashdot Co
Makes me think of something a physics professor of mine said.
"You can allways use God to explain everything, but that's not a useful answer unless you can always and invariably get what you want by asking God. If you are of the mindset to accept that answer, you need to then ask what natural tools did God use to achieve that outcome, because that is what you can use, and so far, things tend to have been done with natural tools."
My theory is God gave the planet a lot of moons, or heavy moons, puffing up the atmosphere by releasing some of the pull from the planet on its gasses, as well as making the gravity from that region appear more than that of the actual planet.
'course, I'm not an astrophysicist, so my thoery is 99% likely to be WRONG.
> "TrES-4 appears to be something of a theoretical problem," said study team member Edward Dunham, also of the Lowell Observatory. "Problems are good, though, since we learn new things by solving them."
Dude! This guy should be an adviser to Congress. He can explain science to them.
(And I mean that!)
"TrES-4 is way bigger than it's supposed to be,"
Like, and it's totally dating Pluto, ewwwww!
What's with the valley-girl talk? "Way bigger"?
Please help metamoderate.
Dyson sphere around a now-extinct star. The clouds surrounding it were exhaust gasses that result from their ion-powered generators that scavenged the energy from the star when the star was young.
Slashdot's name? When my compiler sees
It's way too big to be a planet and since small planets are called dwarf planets, please welcome the first discovered troll planet.
I've got a theory, that it's a demon, A dancing demon... no, something isn't right there.
Well I thought it was funny, but no mods points, so wtf does it matter?.
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
I don't doubt that most of the zealots on one side or another will mod you down as flamebait. Unfortunately, they would be wrong, as your post is an excellent example of what is wrong with the whole ID vs. evolution debate.
ID is not science. It's an argument (against no-one) about who created the universe and/or something in it. The how of the matter is not considered. Scientists don't care, since they want to know how. And worst of all, the ID-ers misquote, misread, and malign the Bible in all of their stupid shenanigans. The Bible says the Earth is round. So does NASA. The Bible says that the Earth was created in 6 distinct phases. So do most geologists, biologists, and anyone else with half a clue about science. Only the idiot ID-ers say that the Earth was created in 144 hours, and they do so without any biblical backing. These people deserve the verbal beatdowns they get. They are stupid zealots.
Evolution is science. Perhaps faulty, but still science. Correct or not, it does conform to the scientific method. It's a study of how the universe came to be. Unfortunately, it hasn't been kept current, and it has attracted as much zealotry as any religion would. The word "theory" used to mean "an unproven idea, still in its 'best guess' phase", basically, what we now call a "hypothesis". Evolution was a theory. Now it's a hypothesis. But the evolution zealots won't give up the word "theory" to describe their chosen faith, even though the word "theory" now means something else. These people deserve the verbal beatdowns they get. They are stupid zealots.
I see a pattern here... Perhaps everyone should focus on gaining knowledge and focus less on drawing unprovable conclusions. Eventually, the mass of knowledge will draw its holders to a fully-formed, unmistakable conclusion. Real scientists know not to let stupid ideology get in the way of real progress.
I think there's something to what you say, but I'd say consider the tidal effects from the star, not the planet. That is, suppose this "planet" is actually just a large bulge in a ring around the star, more or less a gas giant in the process of being torn to shreds by tidal effects from the parent star. It's very close to the star, and the star is expanding, I think.
I've got a theory, we should work this out...
My Babylon
Not any more than we Wiccans, who believe in all of those thousands of entrants and the ones in every other world culture along with them.
My blog
Uh no.
Go back to school. The hierarchy in science, in order of increasing evidence, is speculation, conjecture, hypothesis, theory.
The word "theory" in common parlance is an unsubstantiated guess. In science, the word "theory" means hypothesis supported by a large body of evidence, where the truth value of the theory is considered very high. Evolution is a theory that has so much evidence in its favor that the IDers are essentially nutcases who can't read or reason properly. It is the IDers that try to equivocate the position by using the common parlance flavor of the word "theory" when discussing science.
I've got a theory, it could be witches, some evil witches, which is ridiculous because Wicca good and love the earth and woman power and I'll be other there.
It's possible, but that's a very extreme direction to go in at this point. There are a number of far more likely possibilities to explain this (eg. the measurements are wrong, our understanding of planetary formation and structure are wrong), no need to go rewriting the laws of physics just yet.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
It really could be anything. It could be that, but it would be really surprising. It could be that its surrounded by dark matter. It could be that we underestimate the mass of its star. It could be that it's made of an exotic isotope, such as deuterium. It could be that our model is just wrong. Who know.
Think about this: Axe and Dove are actually the same company. Vincent L.B.
Ok, it isn't the mass that is surprising, it is the volume. Larger (in mass) exoplanets have been found, sometimes they fall in to the category of Brown Dwarfs. But TrES-4 is hardly massive. According to the article, the density is .2 g/mL and the volume is 1.7 times that of Jupiter. That gives a mass of
1.7*(1.43128*10^15 km^3) * .2 g/mL = 4.866352 * 10^26 kg.
Jupiters mass is 1.8986*10^27 kg. That means TrES-4's mass is only about one quarter the mass of Jupiter ((4.866352 * 10^26 kg)/ (1.8986*10^27 kg)= 0.256312651)
Perhaps we should no longer call it a planet like we don't Pluto any longer, since it doesn't fit the neat little rules.
I think you fall on the other end of the stupid spectrum.
If it floats on water, then it must weigh less than a duck, which means...
A WITCH! It's a witch!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
TrES-4 is an apt name for the planet. If "TrES" is read as the French word "très," and the digit 4 as the English "four," the resulting phrase is close to the French "très fort" which translates to something like "very extreme(ly)."
Keep in mind that I have next to no knowledge of French and only recognize the phrase "très fort" because of Space Ghost..."Je parle français très fort, no?"
Your brain is not a computer.
Or maybe... some entity made up YOU!
Ceci n'est pas une
I would think the light curve that they used to calculate the density of this planet could be explained by the planet capturing ejected stellar matter, and essentially have an enormous cloud in orbit around it. We see something similar with Saturn's rings (albeit not ejected stellar gasses). The planet has an orbit of 3.5 days so it must be incredibly close to the star...close enough to grab the ejected gasses maybe?
Now we know where all those bottles go. They've formed their own damn planet!
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
"May" "I" "quote" "you" "on" "that" "comment""?"
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I had a dream that I was devouring the largest planet ever observerd...and when I woke up, MY PILLOW WAS GONE!
Walk with Music;
No self-respecting advanced technological civilization would bury significant amounts of useful matter at the center of a planet. They would instead construct objects filled with fiber optic cables to carry large amounts of data between all of the computational nodes. The compute nodes have to be on the surface because they have to radiate away the heat they generate but the central part of the Jupiter Brain (aka Borg sphere) should have a density low enough that gravitational compression doesn't distort the one-to-many point-to-point transmission over the fibers.
The difference between a Jupiter Brain and a Matrioshka Brain is that the center of a Jupiter Brain is not running off of a gravitationally bound and driven fusion reactor (aka "star"). Most of the energy used by the Jupiter Brain comes from the external solar energy it absorbs (though in theory it could house a number of "small" fusion reactors fueled by hydrogen or helium siphoned from the nearby star).
Side note to the Dyson "Sphere" advocates -- classical "spheres" are impossible (you've been watching too much Star Trek) -- Dyson never used the word "sphere" and made a point of clarifying this in his response to the letters following his original paper. A better term to avoid confusion is a "Dyson shell".
Perhaps its a baby star. Stars dont have to just start from a gaseous cloud, I propose. No reason why a planet cant build up a significant amount of matter that its sucked off of its parent star to start the gravitational collapse that ignites its own fusion process. Just think outside the box a little bit guys.
Are we sure NASA is reporting in inches and not centimeters?
Unfortunately, it hasn't been kept current
Are you fucking serious? Sure, Darwin's original ideas have been tested and built upon, but the idea of competition driving genetic variance still holds pretty fucking strongly.
See, the thing about evolution is, by most scientific standards of today, a good majority of the principles Darwin outlined in The Origin of Species are actually provable. I'm guessing you think they aren't just because the fundies and IDers are yelling loud enough.
On the more flamebait side, when one of those nutjobs are lecturing in the main mall of your local university, try asking them what they think about crystal lattices- complex, beautiful geometrical structures which will form naturally, and ask if there was an intelligent designer forming the covalent bonds in your ice tray this morning.
+5, Truth
Have you ever seen an electron?
After all, I am strangely colored.
I've got a theory. 42.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
Because their theories better fit the data. When they find a place where their theories and those of their predecessors don't work (this planet may be such a case), they work on formulating more general theories based on what they already know. And when they do this, they don't start from scratch each time, but build instead on previous discovery.
That's what science does. It progresses. It works. Would you rather we abandon the scientific method and just make up random stuff without testing it against reality? Even dark matter and dark energy aren't arbitrary: they're provisional descriptions of stuff we're actually seeing happen.
I'm getting really sick of this "oh, we can't really ever know anything because no theory is perfect, so let's just give up on this science thing" attitude.
DNA just wants to be free...
Astronomers have given the planet an official name, "Puff Daddy".
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Why are you assuming that all these scientists think they've got it all figured out. Right there in the article summary one of the quoted scientists says that they like when things don't fit their theories, because they'll learn more by figuring it out.
You're not being insightful, you're faking it by creating an issue that doesn't exist. Astrophysicists know as well as anybody how little they've actually figured out. All the new observational and simulation techniques that have been developed recently have raised way more questions than they've answered. I doubt you'd find a real scientist anywhere out there who'd say that we've figured out how the universe works.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Dark energy is a mathematical placeholder name. There is an observed force which we can measure, but which we have no tested model to explain. We call this force dark energy.
When you say, "maybe dark energy," you demonstrate that you don't know what that phrase means. That's like saying, "maybe the solution to the problem is x!" X is just a variable name, not an answer to a question. Even maybe we have to revise theories in astrophysics because we were wrong on something... Which happens all the time as our ability to measure and test the universe around us expands. This is an expected consequence of having more information. Someday, we'll marvel at how little we knew "back then" (e.g. today). For now, we have some very good ideas of how the universe in our local vicinity works, but no one expects to not be surprised by something new. sigh, why do scientists think they are right now when their forbears were wrong? Why do you think that scientists are some alien species that don't understand basic logic? Of course astrophysics know that they have some things wrong today, but this is how we learn. We build solid ground upon which to base further ideas, and we constantly assail these ideas and their underpinnings in order to determine which parts are reliable enough to continue to bear the weight of many other theories. Speaking of Astrophysics, if we can look into the sky and only see x millions of years back based off of light years, That's kind of broken statement. Let's try again, shall we? We can measure distance (in ways that range from simple triangulation to measuring red-shift). We know that light travels a certain distance in a certain amount of time. We therefore know how long light from an object would have traveled in order to get to us.
Now that's not quite "seeing x millions of years back," but it's close enough that I understand (I think) where you're going. how do we know that we are not seeing the opposite side of the big bang curve? What is the "big bang curve?" Do you mean, "how do we know that we're not seeing light that started out at a time before the big bang?"
Well there are several easy reasons for that: 1) The big bang started as a singularity. You can't measure or view anything through a singularity. It's a cosmic wall through which no information can pass 2) If that were true, then the expansion of the universe would change as we looked out into deep space, and those distant objects would be moving toward us. This is not the case.
Of course, your question (at least, as I understand it) assumes that the big bang was "preceded" by a big crunch (the universe collapsing into a singularity). That may or may not be true, and we have no way to prove that it is or isn't, since we can't extract information about what happened before the singularity.
Here we are -> ( *Bang* )
More dumb observations later.
made primarily of some material we are not familiar with? Some substance that has high volume and low mass? It seems to me that with the universe as large as it is, there's got to be all kinds of stuff out there we know nothing about.
Maybe this is a stupid question, astrophysics is not my strong point.
btw, how do they know what the mass of something that far away actually is?
It's getting eerie... What's this cheery singing all about?
While your comment is pretty spot on, the science of earth in the Bible does describe something different than what we know it to be today. Flat Earth.
Additionally, in the bible, the blue we see when we look up is water, kept out by a dome over the earth. (Genesis 1:7, Genesis 8:2)
I've yet to hear a Bible literalist (including Fundamentalists) explain this away.
The bible also contradicts itself in several places. In the first two chapters of the bible, there are two accounts of Creation. Most people only think of the first, the 6 days of creation. In the second, God makes man, then the animals, followed finally by the woman. Each creation account is supposed to tell us how we as humans relate to the world around us, and the second, also about how men and women relate to one another.
In the New Testament, three of the gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke (which are merely rewritten copies of one another), say that Simon of Cyrene carried the cross for Jesus. John explicitly denies this saying "Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha)."
There is no way to reconcile these differences and say that each and every word of the bible is literally and historically true. The only way these can be handled properly is to admit that the bible was never intended to be a history or science text, but instead is to be a book that is a spiritual and religious guide, but that Jews and Christians are supposed to only apply it to religious and moral truths about how Christians are supposed to live, not as a scientific book that really tells us what people believed thousands of years ago.
I say all of this as a believing Christian.
Only in Fundamentalist Soviet Russia. What a country!
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Actually, there is an irrefutable theory supporting the OP's view, Intelling Falling
--
You will be assimilated
Yep they are out there....
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=264201&cid=20
The obesity problem is already spreading throughout the galaxy and all you can think of are chocolate jokes...
P.S. Quite sad that I have to use bold tags to keep the spelling nazis away
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Plus, the grammar Nazi insists that you must capitalize the "N".
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
"Half of what we know about Physics is wrong. The problem is, we don't know which half." - Gary Skouson (AFAIK)
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Literally?
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
In the New Testament, three of the gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke (which are merely rewritten copies of one another), say that Simon of Cyrene carried the cross for Jesus. John explicitly denies this saying "Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha)."
The way I had always been taught is Jesus started, but the Simon dude had to take over.
There is no way to reconcile these differences and say that each and every word of the bible is literally and historically true.
I think the Catholic Church came up with the best proposition; "everything in the Bible is true that needs to be true for the reader to attain salvation", or something along those lines.
I say this as an agnostic with an appreciation for theology.
That's no planet... It's a space station.
Self-proclaimed? I'm a 2nd degree Georgian. My high-priest proclaimed me Wiccan.
My blog
"(I know, it's flamebait, I admit it. Go ahead and mod it down. I'm just feeling disgusted right now and needed to vent after being on the other end of a depressingly similar conversation.)"
The truth of the matter is... religious people breed more then secular people, if you want to stamp out religion you can't do it through converting the already infected. You do it by outbreeding them and investments in education, and then waiting for them to die out.
The truth is if people really care about the state of the worlds religiousness, you should do your part by breeding children who are not indoctrinated. Most children come by way of religion through being born into a religious family and their evolutionary systems are taken advantage of through indoctrination and I'd also venture to say that religion is a successful evolutionary meme whether we like it or not. I'm sure many slashdotters owe their existence to religious meme's, that caused those religious ancestors to stave off depression, etc, and concieve ancestors that led to you. As much as you may complain about creationists and religious people a culture that has had thousands of years of history is not destroyed in a day, religion is effective anti-depressant and breeding meme.
Not to mention the fairly nihilistic universe in which we are born. I know it was meant to be funny, but the truth of the matter is, life is not funny. Millions of people die for no particular reason, life is short, most people will never see the singularity (if we make it to that point assuming its even practically feasible).
Just a thought, but couldn't it just be a planet in development? As in, its mass is still pulling it together to the final size. Or given the hot topic of asteroids destroying Earth, something similar has happend to it? Again, could all/most/some of the debri collapse back to form a (new) planet?
Carbon based humanoid in training.
Since when do Wiccans believe in multiple "Gods"? I've always known them to believe that a spirit of "nature" (for lack of a better phrase) inhabits all living things, but not that there are multiple Gods. Unless you consider the "Goddess" and her "consort" multiple gods. When did this belief start happening?
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
The only issue I have with constantly putting something currently unexplainable as a product of God, and insisting that everyone leave it at that, is that if we did so with every new unexplainable phenomenon, we'd still be back in the stone ages. When man discovered fire or the wheel, did they leave it to God to be the only creator of fire or wheels? I think you see where I'm going with this.
I think its fascinating to try and figure out how and why things work, rather than always putting it down to "it just is". Maybe as a child I would have accepted such explanations, but now it just doesn't fill my cup anymore.
Just because something hasn't been seen before, doesn't mean that it can't exist. Isn't science not about what we already think but learning what could be? It seems that there are many theories out there that get proven wrong every day and there seems to be a lot of hoopla whenever someone is proven wrong. Scientists should keep an open mind instead of becoming entrenched in theoretical zealotry.
The game.
I am picutring some super-advanced civilization who is already bored with making Dyson Shells going
Superbeing A:hey! what would happen if we built a full sized mock-up entierly out of balsa wood!
Superbeing B:that sounds really pointless. where did you get such a stupid idea?
Superbeing A:I heard it in some Fump song....
Superbeing B:Cool! I'll go grab the supervodka and the meta-Dremal!
While there are extremists who believe in God, many of us are much more logical. Science and religion do not have to be opposing forces. A Christian can believe in both The Big Bang and evolution. Believing that God created humans through an evolutionary process does not detract from the glory of creation. Instead, it leads us to a better understanding of life and God. People who deny the validity of the scientific process on religious grounds are fooling themselves. The same goes for people who believe Science is somehow a substitute for religion. Personally, I think extremists from both sides are the only ones bickering about it.
I saw someone mention a perhaps it has a ring like Saturn and that is causing some false readings. I figure they have presumably run into this before and know how to discount that. I will go one step further and say perhaps the planet has a crazy amount of moons orbiting closely and/or other debris of various sizes swirling around it. This would increase its size mistakenly and decrease its density at the same time (as there would be significate amounts of space between planet and orbits (presumably).
:)
Anyway thats the extent of my Grade 10 Physics, so please don't be too harsh with me!
In any event, how "fluffy" a center are we talking here. What defines a "Planet" from a slight congealing of gas? I say if it isn't dense enough to crush the life out of me as I try and float through on a drunken spacewalk, then I don't think it is a real planet!
Also perhaps we are looking too hard at what it is, and not what is could be or might become. Perhaps look at processes that make up our celestial bodies. I am not sure how concrete our science is as to the creation of various kinds of planets, perhaps this is part of the short (in space/planet creation terms) phase of planet construction. The gathering of a bunch of lose material that is slowing coalescing due to gravity into a rough planetoid. If the phase if brief in galactic terms perhaps this is why we haven't seen it before. The coalescing material not having totally solidified nor compress due to significant gravity and space could account for the light density and great size. A sort of proto-planet if you will, a huge glom of material just swirling around falling in towards itself slowly, just hasn't reached the stage that is it really recognizable as a real planet yet.
Ok now I am really just wasting work time...
I've got a theory, some kid is dreaming, and we're all stuck inside his wacky Broadway nightmare.
Eh, just wondering, because that seems to be counterproductive to the point you're trying to make.
You've obviously never actually read about ID. ID says nothing about who created the universe, and it certainly says nothing about the Bible. It is a scientific argument that primarily contends that the observable evidence in biological systems is incompatible with the theory of them being created by random mutations combined with natural selection. Specifically in analyzes specific systems or structures which exhibit "irreducible complexity," meaning any possible reduction in complexity of those systems would yield a non-functional system, which implies that if that system indeed evolved, it evolved with some purpose of what it would become in the future.
"These people deserve the verbal beatdowns they get. They are stupid zealots."
There is no such thing as a "stupid zealot". Foolish zealot, perhaps. But calling another person a stupid zealot indicates that you are a zealot for your position. All of us are stupid at some time or other, and (hopefully) all of us are zealots at some time of other. Calling someone a name is an easy way to write them off without considering first just how similar you are to them.
And over there we have the labyrinth guards. One always lies, one always tells the truth, and one stabs people who ask t
...but Will it Blend?
That is the question.
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
You either don't know the claims of ID, or you are a nutcase yourself.
No, what they do is to point out that the "random mutation" aspect of the neodarwinian theory of evolution is unsupported, and in fact unsupportable, by the evidence presented in actual biological systems. They don't necessarily argue against evolution in general, but present evidence that precludes evolution from being driven by the forces accepted to be its cause in the more widely-held theory.
Actually, I understand what the theory is pertaining dark matter (stuff we can't see but must exist) and dark energy (an universal force that we really don't understand but we figure exists by what we think we see). I am sorta haphazardly amazed that people are surprised that something isn't playing by the rules that we have artificially set when we haven't gotten our tails out there and truly tested. We need to remember that we are working off a mixture of proofs and assumptions that might not be exactly like we think they are, as a chem professor pointed out in Organic 2, 12 years ago. It was her warning to us about hubris.
On the big bang question, understanding that there are points we haven't seen yet due to the speed of light (horizon theory) and points we might never see, is it possible that we are mis-guessing ages by not understand our position to the position of the sighted object versus the position of the singularity point?
On the logic part, scientists are humans first. I knew a guy who was very smart and excelling in his post doc, when he blew his brains out over a bad breakup over a chick. People forget perspective.
In God we trust, all others require data.
...and all of us are foolish at some time or another. Your point isn't made through your attempt at semantic wit. Your point is made and should have been contained in your last sentence. Most /. posters are zealots, from what I can tell, including me. I don't shy from that fact, I am proud that there are things that I feel so strongly about. It means that I have a certain amount of passion, giving my life that much more meaning. To your parent, I submit that being fervent about something does not preclude rationality.
"Little is much when little you need."
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
Our method for measuring the mass and size of distant objects may not be as accurate as we think it is.
I think it's a beer-based planet, and it's still fizzing up because it's young yet. I can't prove this yet.... but anyone who doubts me is a closed minded religious zealot!
http://www.mhall119.com
Why yes, yes I have.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
He did not argue they are nutcases, he argued that they are nutcases because [insert actual argument here].
Seriously, the premise of "irreducible complexity" is flawed in that it assumes that everything must have an immediate purpose, and that purpose must be the same as any future generations.
http://www.mhall119.com
See, the thing about evolution is, by most scientific standards of today, a good majority of the principles Darwin outlined in The Origin of Species are actually provable.
Oh yeah - you have a prove for origin of every single species on Earth? I bet this one will disagree and so will killer bees. How do you know that there is not a single animal or plant that you consider wild that hasn't been in fact created by ancient humans through artificial selection and breeding that wouldn't happen in nature due to size/habitat/different mating habits? Wouldn't it be in fact an instance of intelligent design?
In fact, my parents gave some thought to the idea of procreating and the factors involved went beyond survival of the fittest. For all I know cro-magnum also thought with their big head once in a while. Doesn't this in fact make me a product of intelligent design? If some of my ancestors were religious and married according to the doctrine, didn't the founder of their religion play some role in my genetic linage, perhaps a bigger one than physical characteristics?
I think he's confused Wicca for the broader category of neopaganism. It happens a lot, but Wicca is a specific religion. It's not a "roll your own" sort of religion.
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
When people do things like that, it's pretty annoying, but it seems like people who don't believe in God have this conception that anyone who does ignores all science, which is not true. I'm Muslim (yes, go ahead, flame me all you want) and believing that "God created the universe" does not mean that there's no scientific explanation to how everything works, how everything evolved and how everything was created. Just because I believe in the existence of God does not mean I can ignore science. In fact, Islam encourages science, and does in fact also encourage questioning and re-evaluating your beliefs; just ignore when any crazy fundie tells you otherwise. I'm not trying to tout Islam's horn (in fact, I'm not exactly that religious myself), but just providing an example I am familiar with to show that not all people who believe in God are oblivious to the world. I know you were venting, but I just had to vent myself.
Bzzzzt. Strike two. A theory, in the scientific sense, has always meant (to quote Wikipedia) "a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation."
Evolution was and still is a theory. Not the common usage that means "guess" or "hypothesis", but the scientific usage that I quoted.
Did you ever saw any valid argument for Inteligent Design?!?
Please, show it. Everything I always saw was nutcases repeating flawed conjectures.
Rethinking email
OT I know
Being that Hindus have many Gods is their one people could pray to for computer help? I was just talking about this need with a coworker this morning when I was having problems.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
This belief that God created humans "through evolution" is a little weird to be honest. Did he game the evolutionary process? The alternative is that he didn't know what would come out, sort of like a computer simulation of evolution (which has been done). But then, God is all-knowning, right? There's no guarantee either way that sentient or civilized beings would be the result. Did God come about through evolution as well? How do you explain something infinitely complex just existing without the need for a creator? That's a tough one.
Nope. Guess again. I believe it to be started in the 1950s.
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No, you're right, sort of. All Gods are viewed as aspects of the God, and all Goddesses are viewed as aspects of the Goddess. However, I personally tend to be more hard-polytheistic, and this is actually acceptable in my tradition.
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So no, no you haven't, or if you have you still haven't shown us.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
Wicca is a specific religion, and no I've not confused with a broader category of neopaganism. Like I said, above, I'm a initiate of the 2nd Degree in the Georgian Tradition of Wicca. Georgians are a bit more eclectic than Gardnerians or Alexandrians, what I can I say?
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It's besides the point, but I don't think we do. Systems thought to be non-functional in the past, such as the appendix, have long since been found to be otherwise.
No, it's the theory neodarwinism that believes that every feature must have an immediate purpose (though not necessarily the same purpose as past or future generations) or it otherwise cannot evolve, as otherwise there's no natural selective pressure on that feature. The point of Irreducible Complexity is to attempt to prove that there are systems which could not have had a function at an evolutionary step before some critical point, and therefore the existence of those systems are incompatible with the neodarwinian theory. While it is an exceedingly difficult thing to prove, it is at least strongly suggestive, and in my mind puts the burden of proof on the neodarwinists to offer evidence that such systems in fact evolve "blindly" rather than with some "end in view," so to speak.
Shani (equivalent of 'Saturday' i.e. Saturn) is supposed to bestow incredible mathematical and analytical prowess on those he favors. Of course, if you don't study math regularly or piss him off otherwise (by claiming that you don't need math-fu to be a CS Guru), he takes offence and punishes you with '7.5 yrs of ill luck'. I inherited one of these spells and it's supposed to wear of this year (w00t!). I have avoided too much ill luck by studying a lot of math (pseudo-penance) and consequently having Shani reducing the burden of ill luck I am carrying. Had I not been under this curse, I would have become an accountant.
An astrologer told my family at birth that I would be an auditor. He later informed us about the curse when he observed my aunt's stars clashing with mine (since I lived with her for an year) and said that the reason I was still doing reasonably well was because I had a passion for math.
HTH
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
The planet has now announced that it wants to be known as "P. Planet" instead of Puffy Planet. Future name changes may involve dropping the P because "it's getting between him and his fans."
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I have a degree in Homeopathic medicine!
You have a degree in baloney!
This is easy. We know its mass because of its orbital period and its size because it occludes its parent star. It isn't too big, it LOOKS too big. It has a highly inclined axis of rotation and an extensive ring system like Saturn.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
Nobody has ever presented a valid argument for intelligent design, all they do is present multiple and often contradictory arguments _against_ evolution.
/.
just really wanted to repeat that.
we need some kind of system where anyone that wants to actually contribute to discussions must read at least 3 basic rules of logical reasoning.
i for one, am so sick of ID morons and their minions i might throw up.
or stop reading
or both!
Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.
> Wouldn't it be in fact an instance of intelligent design?
While I understand what you are getting at -- and it is an interesting point -- no, it would not. That is selective breeding. Intelligent Design insinuates designing a species, not guiding the development of a subset of one that exists.
Your parents had no hand in designing the structure and arrangement of your DNA.
It doesn't even mention the possibility that this planet was observed in the middle of somekind of transformation.
Maybe it's losing mass. Maybe it's coalescing.
As we like to say around here, "only God knows, but the Devil has a theory."
Don't know a whole lot about this stuff but I wonder if the unexplained volume could be from abnormal creation. Say perhaps instead of forming through the standard "celestial disk" accretion method that I think planets are commonly considered to form through, maybe this is a long extinct, small, Red Dwarf that's been accreting matter during its dormant travels. This kind of composition difference may explain why the gravitation forces of its mass are not creating the volume that it should (maybe the red dwarf core, as opposed to something like metallic hydrogen - assumes gas giant -, would instigate some strange EM afffects that are limiting gravitational compaction?...) Don't know if this is at all plausible.
Did God come about through evolution as well?
Neither science or religion can ever attempt to figure out how the universe began. Christians will tell you that God has always been and scientists will tell you about a dense point, but that doesn't explain what created the material to make it dense in the first place. So bringing that up in a serious discussion about the relationship of religion and science is childish.
Your parents had no hand in designing the structure and arrangement of your DNA
Oh well, that's coming soon enough. Our grandchildren wouldn't be able to say that their origin follows any of the Darwin's assumptions completely. In the meantime, our own origin doesn't strictly follow "survival of the fittest" theory unless the concept of fittest is defined by human intelligence in general and philosophy of some influential humans in particular.
I also have a theory. My theory is that you're an talentless twat.
Thank you,
Shawn
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
Sorry, I could not resist
This post was not intended to make fun of any religion. only to amuse and perhaps poke fun at the English language. I did not intend to offend.
While the title is "Scientists Puzzled" and emphasizes the lack of knowledge.
Why is it that the obsession is with confusion rather than learning. At a time when many people are turning to stupidities like Intelligent Design because it claims to have "answers" perhaps some of the blame can be put on horrible reporting which seems unable to distinguish between finding new info and being "confused" "lost" or "puzzled".
Maybe God just likes puffies, you know?
We all have our fetishes. I know I do.
Sorry, I should have titled that comment "Obligatory Futurama Quote." I hold no such degree myself :)
Could be that they were nonfunctional in the past. Could be that they are slowly gaining functionality, and are right now the equivalent of eyespots that can sense light and dark, but will eventually evolve into real eyes that can make out a far greater level of detail.
An appendix is not critical, like a heart or brain is. It's not even serious, like eyes. It's on the same level as tonsils. Things that do something, but not so much that they'll be immediately missed when removed.
Also, why should something ever be completely nonfunctional? I have skin. Skin is important stuff. Among all of its important uses, it also has mostly useless photoreceptors. So far, the only use I've heard of for them is trying to beat jet lag by putting bright lights behind the knees. We don't really need them right now, but if blindness becomes a selected trait for whatever reason (Cthulhu waking up and walking around the world would do it, but probably nothing else) those with nonfunctional eyes would start breeding more that those without. Genetic blindness would spread throughout the (drastically depleted) population. And the photosensors would get better, first discerning light and dark, then all the levels of illumination between light and dark, then colors, and so on until we had they best visual senses we could that didn't have issues with the madness-inspiring form of a Great Old One.
That's not what skin does now. But if skin does that in the future, the future people will say the same things people say now about evolution and useless organs, without consideration of what was there first.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
It seems the simplest explanation is one of the estimates or both have a large error. Measuring the mass and volume of things like this isn't easy, especially when it is so far away. I wouldn't be surprised if one of them is off by 50%. For example, they measure the mass by the effect of its gravity. This could be perturbed by another object(s) in the vicinity yet undiscovered. That seems more probably than a planet made of a compression resistant spongy material IMHO.
Sorry, but I have to jump in here.
;^)
Right now the distance to an "astronomically" far object is really just inferred. Most folks use the red-shift/blue-shift (so called velocity dispersion spreading of the spectral lines) vs the apparent size of a similar object in conjunction with the theory of expansion (aka Hubbel's law) that relates the apparent average red-shift to the assumed distance consistant with expansion. The distance in time is reversed from this theoretical distance using the assumption of the speed of light.
IF some the theories that make up the basis of this chain of reasoning are shown to be not consistant with the observed universe (e.g., some of the theories of astrophysics turned out to be wrong), THEN it would be safe to say that we really didn't "know" how long light took to reach us, we were just mistaken in our estimation.
Of course today, it is safe to say that we are currently just using a chain of reasoning based on current astrophysical theory to infer how long light took to reach us based on how far we think the object is away from us and the speed of light is constant in the universe (but it could all be proven wrong when we know more about astrophysics). But maybe that kind of equivocation doesn't make for a good headline
As an example, we could find that quantum mechanics were somehow time dependent so that the spectral lines we are using to infer distance are somehow different in the past and hubble wasn't quite right about expansion factors and the galaxies are really as far as we thought (or maybe they are further than we thought), or perhaps the speed of light really isn't a universal constant or gravity doesn't really work the way we expect it to. Today, we can hardly explain observation about the heliopause or the pioneer anomaly and these are pretty near to us in astronomical terms...
ID says nothing about who created the universe, and it certainly says nothing about the Bible.
No, it talks about an 'intelligent designer'. Now who could that be?
It is a scientific argument that primarily contends that the observable evidence in biological systems is incompatible with the theory of them being created by random mutations combined with natural selection.
how would you falsify something like that? What predictions does it make? You have to be able to answer those questions or it isn't a theory.
any possible reduction in complexity of those systems would yield a non-functional system
Such as the appendix (look up 'vestigal organs'). It's entirely possible that observed complexity is a result of multiple systems merging and then simplifying down into the present state, which leaves us with a system that appears 'irreducible'.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Maybe its not a planet at all - maybe that solar system had a binary star and the inhabitants built a dyson sphere around the second star ???
Don't they measure mass by the effect the planet has on the star that it orbits?
Couldn't that be explained by a synchronized orbit of another planet/asteroid mass/collection of lost pens?
As unlikely as it is that they are perfectly synchronized, it seems like it could be close enough over the period of time we were observing the star.
Then again, it could be Magrathea, which is hollow if I recall correctly.
The television will not be revolutionized.
I thought it was hilarious and almost brilliant - until you threw in the overused memes. Sigh. Oh well, that's what Slashdot is all about!
What if I have GURPS: Wicca? I should be able to get it working any other system, right?
I drank what? -- Socrates
I am sorta haphazardly amazed that people are surprised
No one is surprised that I know, though I'm sure someone is. Headlines on Slashdot notwithstanding, the only general and systemic surprise when we discover something new stems from the thrill of discovery, not a violation of anyone's expectations that the universe was a well-defined and cataloged thing.
... that something isn't playing by the rules that we have artificially set when we haven't gotten our tails out there and truly tested.
Well, to be fair, there's an awful lot that we can know without going to a place. For example, going to Mars resolved quite a few questions, and introduced new ones, but we knew a great deal before a rover ever touched down.
On the big bang question, understanding that there are points we haven't seen yet due to the speed of light (horizon theory) and points we might never see, is it possible that we are mis-guessing ages by not understand our position to the position of the sighted object versus the position of the singularity point?
Hrm... quite a few problems with that question.
First off, we are the position of the singularity. The singularity of the big bang wasn't a firecracker in an empty room. It was all of space (and time, we think). As it expanded outward, our universe came into being as we know it. There's no place in the Universe that's the origin of the big bang, just as there's no "center" of the expansion on the surface of a sphere as it's inflated from the inside. There's a center of a sphere in 3 dimensions, but THAT center isn't actually part of the surface. Similarly, if there's a geometric center of our universe's expansion, it's not a 3-space point within our frame of reference, and thus moot when talking about distances between two points in our Universe.
Now, on to your question: is it possible that we don't understand distances in space, and thus are mis-measuring the age of the universe? ABSOLUTELY! I'd say certainly, but being certain about uncertainty is a sticky concept. However, it's important to understand the scale of that uncertainty. We have many ways of measuring distance, and at the very least we can be pretty sure about the size of our own galaxy (on the order of 100,000 light years in diameter, depending on where you measure it). That means that light arriving to earth from the center of our galaxy is tens of thousands of years old. We might be off in our measurements, but it's very unlikely beyond reason that we'd be off by an order of magnitude, so these rough approximations are about as reliable as you're going to get.
Now, when measuring further out, effects which we have less understanding of start to become more important. Gravitational lensing isn't a huge problem for measuring the distance to other Local Group galaxies (such as Andromeda), but it does enter into measuring the distance to distant galaxies outside of the Local Group. Again, we can be pretty sure that the distance to Andromeda is about 2.5 million light years. Now, we might be off on that, but it's very unlikely to be by an order of magnitude (e.g. while 2-3 million light years might be conceivable, it would require that many different, unrelated sorts of measurements were wrong in the same ways for it to be 100,000 or 10 million light years away). This is almost unimaginably improbable.
When you start to talk about galactic superclusters and structures that are larger, still, then there's significant uncertainty. Is the most distant object that we can see at the "edge" of the Universe? Is there an edge at all, or does space form a continuous surface like the circumference of a circle? Are these objects 8 billion lightyears away or 15? More? Effects such as gravitational lensing and the unknown makeup of the vast cosmic distances involved make it impossible to be certain.
On the logic part, scientists are humans first. I knew a guy who was very smart and excel
Someone marked 42 down. Unbelievable. Someone on Slashdot has an un-earned geek card.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
On the more flamebait side, when one of those nutjobs are lecturing in the main mall of your local university, try asking them what they think about crystal lattices- complex, beautiful geometrical structures which will form naturally, and ask if there was an intelligent designer forming the covalent bonds in your ice tray this morning.
That's Jack Frost's Day job now a days. He has been a busy fellow since we've invented refrigeration.
For clarification, if you believe in the Christian God, Jehovah or whichever of His names you choose, you *don't* believe in any of the others. If you believe in more than one God, you *don't* believe in a Christian one at all. His words, not mine, read the book.
Allah has a similar statement. I'm pretty sure Buddha doesn't much care about this God-thing, singular or plural. He has a different agenda.
Yeah, the whole 'it's God's will' is variously dismissed as a clever rhetorical device by many, and misunderstood by others. We see this planet's characteristics as 'not making sense', and sure enough we'll want to figure it out and make it fit into our clever theories about the Universe. We just don't know all the rules yet, and may never. But it keeps us busy, which, being that we are crunchy and taste good with ketchup, keeps us from looking for dragons too much.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You could say it claims a "creator" or at least designer of biological systems, but extrapolating from that to claims of a creator of the universe or any connections to the biblical God are well outside its claims and arguments.
Fair questions, but if a theory has to be falsifiable, then String Theory (and variants) aren't theories either, and neither is much of neodarwinism, for example the claim of "random" mutation. I think much, both in neodarwinism and ID, may start to be falsifiable through computer modeling and simulation in the future. If we could ever completely simulate something like a bacterium down to the molecular level, we could answer a lot of these questions, I think. As for predictions, it predicts that the driving force behind evolution is something beyond only survivability and reproduction, and that there are additional laws or forces that direct it that have yet to be discovered. To me, the truth of this prediction is self-evident, as the continually increasingly complex life forms do many things astonishingly better than bacteria from which they came (such as math and philosophy, for random examples), but the two things they do NOT do any better at is reproduction and survival.
That is certainly something to keep in mind when thinking about the possible origins of any particular system. Hopefully in most cases we'd know enough about the earlier forms to know if something like that happened. If not, we probably need less debate and more discovery of evidence.
Could it be a planet that was impacted by another large body? That would account for a diffuse mass as the matter settled back into a coherent form. I really don't know how long it would take to reform but it's possible.
It beats the hell out of some of the other stuff I've been reading here...
This sig contains a manual self-destruct. Kindly please put your foot through your monitor in 8 seconds.
This partially correct. What they do is try to poke a hole in Darwinian evolutionary theory and then proceed to fill the newly manufactured gap with a premise that is even less supported and supportable by the evidence -- a god-like Designer.
The basic argument of Intelligent Design advocates (or at least Behe) is that evolution occurs as a result of both random and intelligently guided mutation combined with natural selection. The theory of evolution that gets written about in peer-reviewed papers supposes that the mutations occur naturally and randomly (which is not to say each mutation is equally likely to occur, or that any mutation is possible -- just that the mutations themselves do not seem to occur with any bias towards reproductive fitness, or any "intelligent" bias) -- which is consistent with all of the available evidence.
ID advocates equivocate not necessarily by disparaging the theory of evolution for being a mere "theory," but by calling ID itself a theory and putting it on seemingly equal footing with ToE. Creationists use the word "theory" to denigrate evolution, to create a false impression of uncertainty. IDers use the word "theory" to elevate Intelligent Design and create a false impression of scientific credibility. Same basic trick, same basic fallacy.
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Your theory isn't out of place historically, however it just doesn't fit with the times.
I put this little bit of history before you...
Man once believed that the sun was a chariot of fire driven across the sky by a God. Science has revealed this to be false.
Humans have a history of uncovering a mystery, finding a lack of other credible explanation, and claiming that what caused the mystery was God. If the wind blew too hard, it was God. If a young child was struck down by a strange whooping-like cough, it was God. If an Adult was stuck down in a seizure, it was God. These three things, we now know to be Weather Patterns, Whooping Cough, and Epilepsy.
So looking at a mystery and jumping to the conclusion that "It is God that made that." is not only foolish, but it is falling victim to forgetting one of the most time honored and true cliche's ever uttered... "Those who fail to remember history, are doomed to repeat it."
Ok, so my quotes are most likely not actually quotes... but they are close enough.
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -D. Adams
A bit of gas + a bit of heat due the proximity of the star = simple expansion. Why could not be this the explanation? How much the uncommon proximity, who knowns what kind of gravitational cataclism can have occurred in this solar system, even the asteroids of our system are yet to be perfectly explained. Sorry the bad grammar, I used Babelfish to help me.
-x- Sorry my bad English. I'll have him tarred and feathered. -x-
if a theory has to be falsifiable, then String Theory (and variants) aren't theories either,
No arguments there. I'm still waiting for something testable.
neither is much of neodarwinism, for example the claim of "random" mutation.
That stuff is testable via experimentation on bacteria - you can use penicillin to breed PCN resistant bacteria.
If we could ever completely simulate something like a bacterium down to the molecular level, we could answer a lot of these questions, I think.
We don't have to nail things down precisely, just be better than the next guy and make useful predictions.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
"Nobody has ever presented a valid argument for intelligent design"
By definition there can be no logical argument based on evidence for a supernatural event. "supernatural" means outside of the realm of observation. There can not be evidence for or against.
For example let me make a claim: "I created the universe five minutes ago." I doubt many people believe me but I'll give you a beer if you can prove me wrong. (hint: Your memory or yesterday and your collection of 78RPM records is part of the universe that I created so don't use those as proof.)
Bravo, you have done a great job explaining what I have been trying to figure out for about a year. I understand math well enough to get some of the principle behind nth dimensional theory, which helps to work with multi-dimensional data structures (patient care stats for example) for several years. The explanation of 'the big bang' does a poor job of explaining cosmic topology to us poor laity. Most of the books, articles and 'expert opinion' for the laity state theory as fact and consensus when disagreement exist. Glossing over the hard-to-explain bits doesn't help.
I tip my hat at you.
In God we trust, all others require data.
I don't know if it's necessarily a "trick" or a "fallacy." Saying "it's just a theory" is just another way of saying "there's not enough proof to compel belief." They're not trying to imply that it's taken less seriously by the scientific community than other theories, just that they have reason to believe something else, and the evidence doesn't exist of such a nature that would "invalidate" their belief.
In this day and age, I think "it's just a theory" is a useful reminder, equally applicable to all areas of science, given a populous who increasingly treats scientific theories as if they were divine dictates handed down from a priesthood.
http://www.mhall119.com
That would give it a low density. Maybe a playgroup, a housing development, or a temple - its your imagination.
No, it's a demon. A dancing demon. No, wait.. something isn't right there.
It's bound to be able to get some sort of state funding to help ....
Not that I buy it, but the Kalam Cosmological Argument argues for an intelligent designer without refuting evolution.
the {theory|fraud} of intelligent design is evolving....
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
:) No worries... I didn't expect you to have one anyway...
:)
I was just making a weak pun on how homeopathic medicines are 1e-35 % solutions in water of some chemical
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
if you want to stamp out religion you can't do it through converting the already infected.
The Mormon Church, home of the best breeders, is losing membership.
Play Command HQ online
For clarification, if you believe in the Christian God, Jehovah or whichever of His names you choose, you *don't* believe in any of the others. If you believe in more than one God, you *don't* believe in a Christian one at all. His words, not mine, read the book.
God wrote a book? Certainly not the Bible, which is known to have been written by other people (it says so right in the book). What book did God write?
Allah has a similar statement.
Really? Sure you don't mean Muhammad? Again, I've not heard of any books written by Allah.
I'm pretty sure Buddha doesn't much care about this God-thing, singular or plural. He has a different agenda.
*nods* Buddha (who actually did write books, unlike any of your previously asserted authors) wasn't terribly interested in those sorts of questions. Buddhists run the gamut from polytheists to atheists, because it's largely irrelevant to Buddhism if there is or isn't a god or gods. Such questions of metaphysical trivia distract people from what's really important.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Saying "it's just a theory" is just another way of saying "there's not enough proof to compel belief."
... to the scientific mind, no. Just as words and phrases used by those of the legal persuasion don't always mean what you might expect if you're not trained in their use, the same is true in science. Creationists don't get to redefine our vocabulary any time they please just because it suits them.
... there are still tiny minds rooted in ignorance who want to take all that away from us.
Colloquially-speaking, yes
In any event, I'm afraid that you have it exactly backwards. As the GP correctly stated, the word "theory" has a specific meaning in science: it means that a particular hypothesis has sufficient experimental evidence behind it that it can be considered "true" to quantifiable degree of accuracy. I might add that many scientific theories are so well backed by available evidence that they can essentially be considered fact. To deny that is to deny reality. Do so at your own peril.
The phrase "scientific theory" has been corrupted by antiscience, antitechnology thugs with destructive agendas. This isn't the first time in recent memory that a group has tried to hijack our language to their own ends. The media took the term "hacker" and gave it criminal connotations: likewise, the ID crowd is trying to co-opt the language used to describe the very core of science! The original hacker community isn't particularly thrilled about what happened to them, considering what "hacking" actually means (hint: it has nothing to do with anything illegal.) Trust me, scientists are not pleased with the Creationists' efforts, and more of them are starting to realize that the rest of us just may be too stupid to see through the ID scam without help.
This abuse of the language has nothing whatsoever to do with taking those arrogant scientists down a notch. This has to do with deceit and control, under the guise of pseudo-science, and is no different that the RIAA's continual mischaracterization of "piracy". It's lies, all lies, and it makes me ill.
The battle against this particular brand of evil must be fought until the very last Creationist has had his cerebral cortex replaced with one having reasoning ability. Until then, they are a dangerous group of people that are capable of causing great harm to the fabric of our society and our knowledge of how the Universe works. Only science can tell us that to a useful degree of certainty: fundamentalist belief systems only "explain" the nature of things if you ignore most of what is.
The great tragedy of life on this miserable planet is that after millions of years climbing out of the muck, finally becoming able to reason, understand the world around it, and unlock true power on a meaningful scale
To Hell with them.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Well, science doesn't deal in proof, it deals in evidence
Well, it depends on who we're talking about. As I said, "creationists" generally use a somewhat less subtle approach, more easily identifiable as logically fallacious equivocation. One minute they'll tell you "it's just a theory," and the next, invoke the second "LAW" of thermodynamics to refute evolution -- for some reason, they almost never see fit to remind us that the entire scientific model of thermodynamics (or any other well-subscribed, religiously inoffensive science) is also "just a theory."
Intelligent Design is all about casting doubt on evolution and people who understand ID usually don't make the "just a theory" equivocation argument, but as I said, many attempt to create an impression that ID is scientific -- a genuine theory of science, just like evolution (only better, more correct!) The problem is that ID, scientifically speaking, hasn't earned the right to be called a theory, the same way the theory of evolution has. It'd be more accurate to say it's a conjecture. Those aspects of ID that haven't been effectively refuted by evidence or rational examination are sometimes impossible to produce evidence against, because of how they've defined their belief in such a way that it cannot be falsified, which is another reason (besides the dearth of supporting evidence) that it's not a valid scientific theory. ID lacks predictive power, a requisite quality for any good scientific theory. It's pretty clear now that ID hasn't been arrived at or verified through honest application of the scientific method.
Intelligent Design could be correct. Heck, even young Earth creationism could be correct
That's funny, because in this day and age, I'm more worried about a populace that treats divine dictates handed down from a priesthood as having more weight and credibility than well-tested scientific theories.
The real danger lies with a scientifically illiterate public, who are unable to distinguish junk science and pseudo-science from the real thing -- or those who behave as if some kind of superstition is just as good, right and reliable as science (if it's not in fact what they consciously believe).
The planet's proximity would obviously drive up temperatures, I'm sure Jupiter would swell a bit if it was within Mercury's orbit.
The star being more luminous would just add to surface heating of the planet.
But it is probably the age that will be the main determinant. An F-type star ages much more quickly than a G-type star like our own. While our sun has a main-sequence life of 10 billion years, the average F-type star has only about 4 billion. Since TFA says that the star has only about a billion years left. The planet is probably only 2 to 3 billion years old (about half the age of jupiter). This means that it has retained more of its formation temperature than jupiter has.
I think a combination of these factors will increase the size
"Laugh while you can a-monkey boy!" - Dr Emilio Lizardo
ResidntGeek
If the 'planet' was composed almost entirely of ionised gas particles with the same charge, then wouldn't the electrostatic repulsion be far greater than the gravitational attraction until a certain average distance between particles is achieved? Might this explain the inflated size? The electrostatic force might even be strong enough to maintain a near constant density through the entire 'planet', considering it's many orders of magnitude greater than gravity.
What about the ones who do present valid arguments for intelligent design?
The fictional ones, you mean?
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
That's fine. If they want to adopt the ultimate position that "we think it was done in some supernatural way which is by definition beyond the reach of what we can know", I'm okay with that.
But then you have to wonder exactly what the hell they think they're going to teach in schools. Or why they always try to use "science" to back themselves up. There are literally thousands of websites and books devoted to the alleged science which "proves" or at least provides "evidence" for creationism. And yet the same people who write such gibberish, and the same people who read it, will eventually, if pressed, fall back to saying "WELL GOD IS BEYOND SCIENCE!" Which is true, so why don't they shut up about it?
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
I've got a theory
A theory quite eerie
To explain impossibilities
To clarify irrationalities
An improbable planet perplexing people
A seemingly insoluble situation in the stars
I've got a theory
It could be witches! Yes, some evil witches
Space witches from another world
Bloating up planets, those evil space bitches!
Thanks to them we are imperiled
Lo, for now the darkness gathers
And we lack a Cotton Mathers
To Hell's black hearth he'd drive these wretches
Who vex this orb with their vile hexes
Goddamn I say we really oughter
go ahead and blame it on Potter
But Rowling's got a deceit of lawyers
Lined up like vultures in her foyer
I know what we should do!
Just as our ancestors, through and through
We'll go ahead and blame the Jews
Ok, any better?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
It could be a smaller, denser planet with a great big artificial roof. A planetary equivalent of a Dyson Sphere would expand the apparent volume and lower the apparent density. Maybe we should look for a chimney.
I would doubt that this is still under formation. The star is close to the end of its life, which means it's been around for at least a couple of billion years, whereas from most accretion theories I've heard of say that planet formation is pretty much done within 10 million years or so. So I think the system is a bit old, by a couple of orders of magnitude, to still be forming planets.
"Laugh while you can a-monkey boy!" - Dr Emilio Lizardo
Wow... I mean, seriously man, wow.
I've never heard evolution explained in the context of surviving the waking wrath of Great Cthulhu by seeing with your skin, but... uh... can I have some of what you're smoking?
No, you are a product of selective breeding, not DESIGN. It is still natural selection, by definition.
Natural: by means of nature, of which humans are a part
Selection: selection of certain traits over other traits
Nobody designs species, nobody ever has. They have guided their progress, influenced the process, which simply means we are another form of environmental pressure on natural selection. In other words, EVOLUTION.
Sheesh.
Survival of the fittest isn't evolution per se. It's one facet of natural selection. It's one of the forces acting upon large collections of DNA. Many many many species evolved and died out because they were not the "fittest" but they still evolved. There are plenty of factors influencing natural selection, even something like a massive extinction caused by a meteor, or a volcano, or whatever. Sometimes species thrive just because they got lucky.
Even if humans can actually code DNA (and not just copy genes around) doesn't make it above and beyond evolution.
Darwin didn't invent evolution. He simply described what he saw. That doesn't mean things can't change, or become more complex where speciation and DNA combination are concerned.
Nationalist Islam (ie: fundamentalist attempts to create a Muslim Nation) likewise only worries people because of the sheer depths to which it will sink to murder people.
Great! So now we have to figure out the Origin of the GOD Species... Thanks a lot!
Cheers, Chris
Although I think many people do not have a particularly strong grasp on the nuances of English,
I suspect in cases such as this the issue is instead brevity and punchiness over specificity.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Christian are polytheist. They actually believe in three gods: the "father", the "son" and the "holy ghost". When a christian claims his religion is monotheist, it's because he talks newspeak.
But yeah you're right that the Buddha didn't care to speculate on the existence of god. He didn't consider it important.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I'd say it's not belief in a god alone that qualifies someone as a lunatic. Agnostic theist's tend to be a very reasonable bunch and probably most believers would fall under that catagory. It's only when someone think that they are right without any room for disagreement that they fall into the loony bin.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I'm an amateur at conveying these sorts of concepts. The grand-master was Asimov. If you ever get a chance, treat yourself to some of his science essays. Many folks who enjoyed his science fiction forget that he was a professor of biochemistry who had a decent grasp of most of the hard sciences.
Asimov on Physics, Asimov On Astronomy and some others comprise the collected versions of these essays.
Belief in what? Gravitation as per current general-relativity taught in universities to physics grad students, or the simple fact that objects seem to fall towards earth as observed by human beings?
If you are talking about general relativity, it's status as a theory is very highly regarded and has withstood many tests (hence it's promotion beyond other hypotheses) but it contains various serious problems and difficult situations that are unsolvable with the current understanding of it. In fact, the system of equations are self-referential in places i believe, and Kurt Godel showed Einstein some tricks with self-referential mathematical systems that provenly yield demonstrable contradictions, and Einstein therefore reconsidered and finally doubted his theory as a result. And a few years from now we may consider solutions that simultaneously solve the dark matter/energy issues as well, so yeah, it is "just" a theory.
With evolution we can similarly either talk about whether it happened (this is pretty much indisputable) or how/why - a much more difficult question. It is difficult because it involves probabilistic events that are extremely difficult to simulate exactly, so people will be arguing about the possibility of all the successful combination of germline mutations happening on this planet being utterly random, for a long time to come. I , like many, am interested in that argument, particularly if people develop discrete computational power that can actually simulate a fast-forwarded small earth on all scales (planetary to nano). But our interest is overshadowed by disgust at the behavior of participants in these conversations (not you, just the typical others).
Love the math, dump the fleshy feelings, mathematics is the only [possible] truth.
Really... They should call it Your Mum!
signature is pants
Mmmhmm, if someone thinks that God is going to send them to hell for questioning things, they've not read the Psalms..
which is totally what she said
No, not in the sense of there being a "supreme being" that is guiding our "design". Yes, we now have the ability to genetically engineer things and that could be called "intelligent design", but it has nothing to do with "God". We have evolved enough to do this and I think we're making BIG mistakes.
Consider it to be my equivalent to a religious belief.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I agree almost entirely with your post. The only exception is that I don't think the RIAA is misusing the term 'piracy'. I hate the *AA as much as the next guy but downloading music is piracy in the same way that downloading games and copies of windows is piracy. I'm interested to know what euphemism you would like to use.
Nobody designs species, nobody ever has.
If we are not 100% there, we are coming very close
Regardless, teaching Darwin's origin of species as an infallible doctrine ignores the complexity of how humans shaped themselves and the rest of the Earth. It can even be said that religious figures "designed" humans by restricting marriage and promoting desirable traits to look for in a mate. I am well aware that this is not how Kansas board of education would like to present things. Personally I can neither proof or disproof that these individuals influenced human DNA in any other way, but the holy books certainly smuck of being written by ordinary humans seeking to preserve their contemporary culture.
Even if humans can actually code DNA (and not just copy genes around) doesn't make it above and beyond evolution.
We can design organisms that don't fit the concepts of evolution as it's currently understood. For example, many current genetically engineered crops are not capable of producing offsprings. And certainly coding DNA can be reasonably described as "intelligent design".
Most of the hard SF writers did/do. Niven, Asimov, etc... They also know how to write for people. Wikipedia has some great science articles, but they are written for people in the field and suffer from some incestuous language barrier. I have yelled at a friend for one of his articles, but he also was kinda of a self-centered prick in high school. (Still love you Dave and you know I am right) I have an very good grasp of both health care business law in the US and economics, but the articles over such sections read like alien speach because they are so jargon filled. This is comming from a guy who knows the jargon. Try to rewrite them and you get a whole bunch of flack about dumbing down. People need to look into writing in Plain Language.
In God we trust, all others require data.
I actually attended seminary and graduated. I spent a decade of my life studying philosophy and theology. I had many talented professors with degrees from Oxford, Princeton, name it. Not one ever advocated a literal six day age for the earth or creation. All were extremely careful to give ALL possible explanations including fully embracing evolution. They were also careful to say that hard science is not theology. Theology is an endeavor to understand, as best as possible, God or the concept of God. You do not even have to believe in God to study theology (some of my teachers were atheists). Theology is a relational study. It is a liberal art. Some people decide to apply the bible as hard science, but I've never known an educated theologian who did this.
Understanding an argument means understanding the other side, and I really think you don't.
To quote Lewis, "I was an atheist and as a former atheist I must say that you are not one. You are a god-hater, and a god-hater is not necessarily an atheist." (paraphrased)
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
I highly recommend watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 6, episode 7 entitled Once more, With Feeling
Not that you will of course, because you couldn't take the time to log in and thus be notified of replies to an obvious troll, but enjoy =)
No, I am not an English major. My posts are subject to typos and incorrect grammar. Do not expect perfection.
Right, but as an atheist, both of us have a burning desire to have logical reasons for religious beliefs (which explains the absence of religious beliefs in my case). So what is your logical reason?
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
I've got a theory, it could be bunnies...
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
So what about String Theory. Is that a Theory? Or is it a Hypothesis?
It seems unlikely to me on a few fronts:
1) When you say that *a* creator set in motion all physical and chemical actions/reactions/properties/laws, it would be reasonable to identify *which* creator. Yahweh? Jehovah? Allah? Shiva? Cthulhu? I challenge you to find any divine creation story that actually meets all the physical evidence our scientists have accumulated over the years. Read the creation stories and you'll find:
clear contradictions to what we know is so- there is space above the sky, not water.
2) For a creator to create the ultimate illusion of inexistence- what does it imply? First of all, how do you love something that will hide their existence from you? Or even better, the theory that God makes science 'appear' true, but he really created the world 6,000 years ago: I heard it best described as 'childish, I'm-not-touching-you on a cosmic scale'. If such a God exists, why would you even care?
Finally, in answer to your exercise, please realize that that's not the way science works. Science doesn't get asked "why" and deliver an answer immediately- the "why" is what drives science to poke and prod and use reason to derive an answer.
+5, Truth
The Bible says the earth is a circle, i.e. flat. NASA says the earth is an oblate spheroid that is very very slightly fatter at the bottom. http://bible.cc/isaiah/40-22.htm http://regentsprep.org/Regents/earthsci/units/intr oduction/oblate.cfm
The Bible says that the Earth was created in 6 distinct phases. So do most geologists, biologists, and anyone else with half a clue about science.
What 6 phases are those? Cos i'm pretty sure most biologists would take issue with the claim that plants were created before the sun, and most cosmologists would not agree with the idea that the earth was created after space but before anything else like the stars.
You really need to read more than just creationist propaganda in order to have an accurate understanding of what science does and doesn't say. As it stands your remarks are the equivalent of saying "science say the sun revolves around the earth". That's how totally out of whack your comments are.
For you to say evolution hasn't kept current and has been discredited is just so totally divorced from reality it's not funny. For you're own sake open your eyes. Read something about evolution that isn't a piece of creationist propaganda. You are being lied to by people with an agenda. All these things that anti-evolutionists accuse science of, being blinkered zealots and using intellectual dishonesty to support an agenda, is just a total lie, and a total hypocrisy. I suggest you start by looking at http://talkorigins.org/origins/faqs.html
If after seeing both sides of the story you still aren't convinced, fair enough, but don't do yourself the disservice of relying one side of the story.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Admittedly, I only scanned the wikipedia article, but I didn't see any scriptural references.
What we do see is water. Water droplets. Or possibly a water canopy.
Thats not a second creation account, that was allowing Adam to name the previously existing creation.
So if three different newspapers are covering the same event, and three different articles are written, are they merely rewritten copies of each other? Also, John says that Jesus went out carrying it. He didn't say he carried it all the way there. This is easy to reconcile. He started off carrying it, but the exhaustion got to him eventually, and they impressed Simon of Cyrene to carry it the rest of the way.
Some gospels include details that other gospels do not. It depends on what the author felt was most important.
Of course its not going to all literally and historically true. Did the parable of the good Samaritan actually happen? No, it was a story that Jesus said to prove a point. But I would argue that more of it is literaly and historically true than you seem to believe.
I agree that its not supposed to be a science text, but I would argue the times where it touches upon science and history it is accurate.
well that's one way to read it, ignoring the fact east and west are not places but directions. unfortunately the bible also says in a couple of places that if you go up high enough you can see all of the surface of the earth at once. Unambiguously indicating a flat object. Oh but wait, that bit must be allegorical, and any other times that happens its allegorical. And whenever there is a very tenuous convoluted way to take something out of context that appears to indicate a sphere, then its that.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
No, actually, we believe in one God, with three aspects;
The Father, Creator and God of the Universe...
The Son, send by the Father, and of Him, to do His work...
The Spirit, that of God which pervades our existence... And I greatly simplify this.
But it the Three that are One. Do not be deceived by the lies of those who only seek to discredit Him. His first Commandment states, "I am the Lord your God...", which is fairly clearly singular. And Christ even stated He came from 'the Father'.
Just one God. But an easy mistake to make, thinking the three aspects are three not three parts of one.
Kinda like you have five fingers, two hands, but one body. Not 12 bodies. Assuming you're a typical human, and haven't lost any or weren't given all of them in the first place.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Use Occams razor:
Everything came about by chance, due to a near infinite number of universes, or:
A special creator dreamed it all up. On a whim. Somehow. And you aren't allowed to ask where the creator came from, as thats blasphemy.
Now which seems more likely?
Good job checking your facts CNN. They obviously spoke with several astronomy experts before publishing this article. "New exoplanet 20 times Earth's size" And here's a little taste of the win and awesomeness contained within: "PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) -- Scientists have discovered the universe's largest known planet, a giant ball made of mostly hydrogen that is 20 times larger than Earth and circling a star 1,400 light-years away." http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/08/09/exoplanet .discovery.ap/index.html
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Allow me to get this straight - you tell me what my psychology is, then you ask me to explain myself in a way that fits that notion? Are you actually serious?
The human mind is not entirely logical. Nor am I, in the aggregate. I simply believe, through a lifetime of experience, that religious belief is lunacy. Whether or not that's my own personal lunacy isn't really something I care about.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
The Bible says the earth is a circle, i.e. flat. NASA says the earth is an oblate spheroid
Isaiah 40:22 uses the Hebrew word "chugh", which can be translated as either "circle" or "ball". A ball is not a two dimentional object, but it is, in fact, the only object that projects upon your retina as a circle when viewed from any angle. And seeing as how Isaiah penned that passage nearly 3000 years ago, I doubt he had the instruments available to him to measure that the Earth is an oblate spheroid rather than a plain ol' sphere.
What 6 phases are those?
1) The universe, then the Earth itself (Gen. 1:1, "heavens" - above the earth, "earth" - planet). At this phase, the earth is covered with water and a thick cloud layer. Light cannot penetrate the cloud layer (Gen. 1:2, "darkness upon the surface of the watery deep"). The cloud layer progressively thins due to natural atmospheric water cycling, eventually to the point that light can penetrate the layer (Gen. 1:3, "there came to be light"). Obviously this will cause daily visibility changes on the surface (Gen. 1:4, "division between the light and the dark").
2) Breathable atmosphere (Gen. 1:5, "expanse", "between the waters and the waters", air between the sea and the water vapor layer).
3) Land appears (Gen. 1:9), plants grow (Gen. 1:10).
4) Sun, Moon, and stars are finally visible through the cloud layer. (Gen. 1:14, "luminaries"). This is probably due to the lesser abundance of water, seeing as how much of that is now in constant use in the cells of plant life and is absorbed into the ground.
5) Fish and birds (Gen. 1:20).
6) Land animals (Gen. 1:24), including humans (Gen. 1:26).
It's helpful to remember that the Bible's creation account is told from the perspective of someone living on the earth for the purpose of instructing people who live on the earth. Observations that sound "out of whack" are probably due to that shift in perspective. It wasn't until the last 50 years that humans have had a perspective that didn't stay within 30,000 ft. of solid ground. Only recently did we as a group start thinking about things in a universal perspective rather than an earth-based one. Even now we have trouble convincing most people to use measurements that aren't earth-based ("weight" instead of "mass", anyone?). It should come as no surprise that ancient people told the creation story from an earth-dweller's perspective. "First the space around earth was made, then earth. Then some air. Then some plants. Then you could see stars, the moon, and the sun. Then fish and birds. Then animals. Then us. Got it? Good. Now go plant some crops so we don't all starve, k?" Nobody cared to even write it down until 3500 years ago. It just wasn't a priority.
science say the sun revolves around the earth
No, the earth revolves around its axis. It orbits the sun. And depending on the mathematical model you choose, anything (including the earth) can be the center of everything. It's just that the math is simplest when the earth orbits the sun, the moon orbits the earth, and so on.
Where's Jenny Craig when you need her?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
How do you know that there is not a single animal or plant that you consider wild that hasn't been in fact created by ancient humans through artificial selection and breeding that wouldn't happen in nature due to size/habitat/different mating habits? Wouldn't it be in fact an instance of intelligent design?
To the same degree that a chemical engineer that was taught to arrange various temperature-pressure chambers to synthesize molecules. But the real question is - do you credit the Chemical Engineer with God like status? He has created a foundry that fashions minerals that would never occur naturally on this planet. Can we generalize his powers? No! He's just a pion that can't do much outside of a small set of equations that he had no part is designing. He probably can't create timeless poetry or art. He probably can't get a race car or a horse to the finish-line fastest.
The conveyance of life to an engineer (An IDer) really is a poor spiritual analogy. All you are saying is that at least one aspect of our existance was crafted in a foundry by someone with enough knowledge to set up and or design that foundry. You can place no further moral or imperitive importance on that designer than one would of the potentially pedifilic Chemical engineer.
Of course ID is really just a stepping stone.. If ID proponents can get people to accept this as truth, they can derive entire religions and moral imparatives based on weak logical progressions.. If God created me and had a purpose, then that purpose would have been eventually made apparent to me. And You as a preacher are currently apparent to me. So maybe I should put my faith (and hard earned tithe money) into your pockets and let you tell me what to do.. But it's probably as good a conveance of God's will as I'm ever going to see. Hell, you're ID idea is just so dum gaud impressive.
The alternative is to sit in absolute amazement by the beauty of the cause-and-effect relationships we've thus far been laid witness to. To hunger to learn more - not just of physics, but of art, poetry, emotional complexity.. If quantum particles only bind together consistent with certain mathmatical relationships that permit only a finite range of combinations. And those combinations build at different scales into an amazing set of consistent and re-produceable patterns.. At ever higher and higher levels of organization (all again consisent).. Then why is it so hard to internalize the theory the biologically apparent life is a natural outcome.. That there was no universe without the patterns condusive to the natural sequential synthesis of life.
If this conjecture is true - that there a multi-path evolution of energy patterns (atomic orbitals, molecular combinations, acidic geometric formations leading to protein, later RNA then still later DNA inside a complex cell factory), then any question of an over-arching engineer becomes utterly boring. Everything can be seen from first-principle (in theory - not yet in practice). Those principles define the universe, NOT the engineer, which one day may be the alien race of Proteons (seeing life on various worlds) or the Chemical engineer facturing molecules, or even the geneticists creating new species. They're not doing anything that time and conditions wouldn't have done at least once somewhere in the universe.. If we had to synthesize is ourselves, it was merely because there was a natural ineffeciency that needed to be over-come.. Either via unlikely occurances of catalists, or certain temperature-pressure-geometric requirements that are unlikely in our current bio-sphere.
If this conjecture is true - God, be as God may, would be present only in the forming equations - not in the particulars of engineering and design.. The engineer is of no consequence (should the crafted Bee worship the bee breeder?). But with an initial rule-setting God view, what is this thing to worship? Surely all the fables ever told him "him" are primitive, false and frankly charlantanry (just as we would view
-Michael
I stand corrected. I generalized to say that atheists don't believe in things without logic. In my defense, you are the first one not to fit my stereotype :(
;)
P.S. You are indeed heinous
Cheers!
--
Vig
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
Chugh or Chuwg cannot be translated as ball. The reason people think it can is because it is one of the many misleading and intellectually dishonest pieces of "evidence" used by fundamentalist propagandists, and so gets parroted a lot by people who want to believe its true.
http://www.searchgodsword.org/lex/heb/view.cgi?n umber=02329
In reality, it is the word Duwr that can be translated as both.
http://www.searchgodsword.org/lex/heb/view.cgi?n umber=01754
Regarding the oblate spheroid bit, that was just pedantry on my part and doesn't really reflect on the validity of the passage, which is already destroyed by the fact that it claims the earth is a flat circle.When I said "what 6 phases are those" I was asking about the 6 phases you think that "most geologists, biologists, and anyone else with half a clue about science" would say that the biblical phases concur with.
5) Fish and birds (Gen. 1:20).
According to science, birds did not exist before land animals. This is just flat out false. I really love the rationalisation that the genesis account is given from the perspective of someone watching it happen from the earth. Superficially it seems to smooth out the obvious wrongness of the account. But it doesn't quite work, as with the birds / land animals thing. And according to science, sea creatures came waaay before land plants of any kind, let alone fruit bearing plants. Not so according to the bible. To say that the genesis account concurs with science is absolutely wrong.
It wasn't until the last 50 years that humans have had a perspective that didn't stay within 30,000 ft. of solid ground. Only recently did we as a group start thinking about things in a universal perspective rather than an earth-based one ... It should come as no surprise that ancient people told the creation story from an earth-dweller's perspective.
Well for a start off, they weren't there when it happened so God must have directly told them what happened. So it being "no surprise" is not true as God could have got them to relay the story any way he wanted.
And that excuse doesn't change the fact that the bible is not in concordance with science. The "perspective" argument is irrelevant, because even with the change in perspective, the account is still wrong. The bible makes claims which are at odds with well established scientific fact, despite some very clever rhetorical maneuvering on the part of apologists.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Also, what's interesting to me is that puffy planets are highly correlated with fast-burning stars; I think that's a good clue right there. Perhaps, because of the faster speed of formation of these kinds of star systems, the planetoids don't sweep up as much material as a 'regular' planet, and thus don't have as dense a central core, thus leading to less gravitational load.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
If you now inflate the sphere like a balloon, you get an effect like that of the expanding universe. All points on the surface of the sphere will see their neighboring points recede from them, and from any point on the sphere, an observer would think that they are at the "center" of the expansion. In reality, the geometric center of the expansion is the center of the sphere, but that point cannot be reached by traveling in any direction on the surface of the sphere, only by traveling perpendicular to the surface. If you live in the two-dimensional universe that is the surface of that sphere, then you can never reach the "center" of your universes expansion. Similarly with our universe, if there is some "center" to our universe's expansion, then it is almost certainly at a point which is not within our universe's frame of reference. We simply cannot observe that point because, long ago, our universe expanded in 4 (or more) dimensions away from that point.
Now, that need not be the case. The universe could be a dumbbell-like 4-dimensional figure-8 where the center of expansion is at the point where the two "lobes" of the figure-8 cross over. In that case, the center of the universe's expansion would lie within our universe. However, this idea is not likely to be the case. In fact, we don't even know if there's a 4th-dimensional frame of reference in which to measure a geometric center of our universe's expansion.
So it is fairly safe to say that the expansion of the universe has no "center". It's an approximation and simplification of quite a lot of math and theory, but it's a fair approximation.
Thanks for the explanation. So if I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, if we assume that the universe is shaped like a torus, for example, then there's no geometric center to a torus which exists inside the torus. Thus, it's outside of its frame of reference to all the people living in it.
This whole > 3 dimensional thinking messes with my brain. I've always pictured the universe as just empty space unlimited in X, Y, and Z dimensions, where the boundaries of the universe is simply defined by the furthest objects and if those objects keep traveling outwards relative to the rest, the universe gets bigger.
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