Slashdot Mirror
Manyfold Universe Theory
Geek-from-parallel-Universe writes "In the HEP preprints database a preprint
">appeared
in which the authors propose that a world is a brane folded many times in extra sub-millimiter spatial dimensions. We see other folds only
through gravity as a dark matter because light must go around the folds. If this is true then I am waiting for Star Trek-like devices:
'portable submillimeter wormhole generator' and 'personal parallel
universe transmitter' to appear on the market. :-)"
Portable submillimeter wormhole generators and personal parallel universe transmitters suffer badly with tachyon fields and wierd energy like thingies. I thought everyone knew this. Mind you, you could try reversing the polarity. That fixes most things... ;)
The preprints database is a joy to behold; it regularly contains off-the-wall theories that may or may not be worth considering.
As for the manyfold theory: this (to my untrained and feeble mind) sounds a lot like M-theory, which is string theory with an extra dimension.
It presents us with a new dark matter particle and a new framework for the evolution of structure in our universe.
Cool. Predictions always make a theory more worthy of consideration.
I also learnt the word 'phenomenology' which I'll have to use somehow today. Damn!
I wonder how this theory meshes with the earlier reports that time doesnt exist. creativity is our way of making up for feeble, 3D perception.
I really hate the way people wonder along with some new idea and say 'science teaches this' - 'science teaches that'. In reality the entire scientific community is bunch of argumentative ego-maniacs (who will be first against the wall when the revolution comes). Just look at the expanding / contracting universe theory, some scientist (who shall remain nameless) proposes that if the universe stops it's expansion and start contracting then time will start to run in reverse. Five minutes after this was suggested the scientific community disregarded it and the original author retracted it. Five years later it's still in popular culture with 2 dozen film's using it and 3 dozen books using it is a central story.
I suggested reading this nice document on "Time Paradox" dealing with the grandfather paradox etc, its just as much crap but it has nicer formatting and pretty side bar.
...Heisenburg compensators. Always works for Jordi. Oh and if you can channel all of the energy through some kind of deflector dish for just one shot before overloading it, I think that will work too.
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
What's the new thing with this brane theory? Is there more dimensions, or are the scales more macroscopic?
This stuff is so far out there. Ever seem "Brave New World" on ABC, it was on a few months back, ran about 5 shows.. They would try to explain things like this with music videos, songs and whatnot. Definately a Bill Nye for adults. jackchaos.com -The Freak Of Geeks
-Oy Vey
Ok really, how many of you people out there understand what they are talking about in that paper? Is there anyone who knows of a good page about tensor calculus?
See! it's all so frustraiting I cant even get the url right! "Time Paradox"
... was "what a bunch of crap! Who are these freaks?" Turns out these freaks are faculty members at respected institutions. Doesn't mean they are less freaky, but it is harder to dismiss offhand what they have been working on.
However, since this is in no way the type of astrophysics I am familiar with, I don't feel qualified to make many comments on the paper. I will just say that, after reading the introductory chapter, I find it hard to believe that they could have accurately done all the things they claimed to. (I forgot many of the details, but suffice it to say that they claimed to have solved just about every problem, up to and possibly including GUT!)
Anyway, I look forward to comments from those who actually have time to wade through the paper (it is 28 pages long after all).
Eric
Strange that they claim (implicitly) that Newton's inverse square law was correctly deduced because gravitional interactions with branes make a difference only at the sub-millimeter level. But then they go on to say that gravitional interaction with branes can be shown by "unusual" behaviour of objects -- and they gave the example of the rotation of galaxies. Now I'm sure that's not on the sub-millimeter scale! What's going on here?? I must be missing something... why is it that branes don't make enough difference outside the sub-millimeter scale that Newton could still deduce an inverse square law consistent with observations, yet at the same time branes are supposed to account for the way large objects like galaxies behave??
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
I mean, is there some reason for people to sit and blast away "first post" whenever a new article is up at /.? I mean, do you get an award? The respect of your peers? A blowjob? I mean, what?
And to make matters worse, more than half of the "first post" posts are not actually first, but second or even 10th. You end up looking like complete and total morons. So why?
-Lost
I'm no physisist, but from what I understand, the Big Bang must have produced a lot of anti-matter (as much as there is matter). If this were true, then all matter and anti-matter should have "vanished" into energy, unless the anti-matter was confined to some other place. Is this a possible explanation as to where the anti-matter went?
Data: Captain, we're picking up a strange anomaly on radar
...
Picard: On screen
Data: It can't be
Picard: It is..! Another wild theory captured by the media-machine and blown out of all proportion.
Data: What's your order, sir?
Picard: Shields. Lock phasers
Picard: Mr Scott, Warp 4. Get us out of here. And avoid that trans-dimensional worm hole, damnit.
The moral of the story: dont believe everything, especially not a preprint from a bunch of no-names that does not mention the problems of the own approach. If you want something significant read e.g. Wittens next paper.
(even better: dont believe anything :-)
"Such parallel 3-D universes, or three-branes, might contain unusual forms of matter, possibly forming stars, planets and strange people -- all less than a millimeter away from the home brane of the sun, Earth and Dennis Rodman." Ok... now i'm really confused... why is Dennis one of the planets?????
'Course, I'm no physicist. But, if you could send matter into a parallel universe, wouldn't that violate the conservation of mass and energy?
The other problem I have with the theory is, if the parallel dimensions are a millimeter from our own, wouldn't stuff randomly explode throughout the Universe? With gravity being the only force able to pass through, and at such short distances, what would happen if a massive, starlike object would pass 1mm from a star in our own Universe? Wierd, random-seeming intant catastrophic destruction, that's what.
Plus, with gravity passing through the brane, I'd be interested to see how something would react to being pulled in a "direction" that doesn't exist in our Universe.
-Omar
Robin, forget the Star Trek analogies, what this news really means is we're one step closer to constructing our very own TARDISes. Just fold space back on itself a few times and you too can have an entire seemingly infinate universe that's bigger on the inside than on the outside.
Face it, the universe is exactly as it is portrayed in Doctor Who. Bill Gates is constructing an army of his genetic creations to exterminate all competition, and Britain is ahead of us in the space race.
Could someone with the time & qualifications to actually understand the paper briefly say what's different between this and 'traditional' string theory / M space etc etc ?
--
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
The key issue here is that anti-matter would still emit and reflect photon's, x-rays etc.. This meens that galaxies out their could be anti-matter and their is no way of knowing (unless we try to land on a planet in one and get a nasty shock).
If this is true then I am waiting for Star Trek-like devices: 'portable submillimeter wormhole generator' and 'personal parallel universe transmitter' to appear on the market.
Better not start using these just yet. We wouldn't want Windows 98 to contaminate other universes. Wait 'till AFTER the antitrust thing is done.
Is it just me or does this article read a bit like a Terry Pratchett novel? :-)
:-P
I thought this was particularly entertaining:
``You might produce nothing but black holes,'' Dr. Lykken said. ``So physics could look very surprising in this scheme.'' Such mini-black holes would probably go poof in a instant, producing a burst of radiation that scientists could immediately recognize as a black hole's signature.
``You'd say, `Aha! I've made a black hole,'''' Dr. Lykken commented.
"Oh dear, I appear to have accidentally ripped the fabric of space-time. Damn."
When some bright lad tries to split the graviton, I'm outta here.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
One thing you must remember about dimensions:
:-)
A dimension is at right angles to all other dimensions. Not curled up, or anything of that sort. A small dimension (around 1 mm or what have you) is enough to hold an infinite number of 3 dimensional universes, because a 3 dimensional universe has zero size in that dimension.
Tricky shit, huh?
Anyway, this postulates that gravitons do travel along a 4th dimension (not time, thank you) to affect other universes. If that's the case, then that's probably what's on the other side of the singularity of a black hole. A different universe. Of course, I'm just making this all up as I go along, but it's still pretty interesting.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
If I get one, I'm zapping to a universe with no First Post DUDEZ!! and no Bill Shithook Clinton.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
Topology is very interesting. You can think of further dimension as "casting a shadow" to lower dimensions. For instance....the shadow of a sphere is 3d is a circle in 2d. The shadow of a 4dSphere is thus a 3d sphere in 3 dimensions. Quite a while ago (1996?) I read an article in a scientific journal in which a dance of the honeybee corresponded directly to a "shadow" of the Flag Manifold. The article suggested that there were interactions on the quark level that effected our 3d world, and hence the bee gets its dance.
h tml
http://www.physics.helsinki.fi/~matpitka/honey.
I read an awesome book on the field of topology but I forget the title now. What they were explaining and attempting to describe on paper no less, what really mind-expanding for me. To think...all these weird things we can't quite reconcile with each other may just be because of a greater scheme outside our perception...that we are just the shadow of an even greater and more complicated play. That when things mysteriously "disappear" and "reappear" at the quantum level, that it could possibly be because they are "shifting" in a dimension we can't percieve. A good way to think about extra dimensions is to give them names of other continuims...like "color"....e.g. This particle is at location (1,2,1,red). Very interesting stuff. I have to find that book again...amazing diagrams of 4th and xth dimensional objects.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I probably won't understand the Manyfold universe theory, but this was a great article anyway, in that it pointed me towards arXiv.org, which looks like a pretty cool and (currently browsing the comp sci section) interesting site.
Dana
This theory claims that there are arbitrarily many parallel universes, separated by micron distances along additional dimensions. While strong, weak & electromagnetic forces are confined to our layer, gravity works across all dimensions simultaneously. And THAT is a HUGE problem.
What happens when a parallel universe star passes close to (or directly across) an object in our universe? Gravity would ramp up to insane amounts with no visible cause. Stars would be thrown out of galactic orbit, or ripped apart by tidal forces. If a few ordinary stars (like our Sun) happened to line up, the combined gravity could form a black hole where none should exist.
The fact is, in all of our history of astronomy, we have not seen this happen. But with thousands/billions/googols of parallel branes, it should be a statistical certainty. We would have already seen gravitational interference in the objects of our solar system, a million times over.
The only solution, which the article briefly mentions, is that ALL of the other universes must have tremendously lower densities than ours. This strikes me as inelegant to the extreme. A much more likely solution is that this brane theory is flat out wrong.
The Theory of Sub-millimeter Extra Dimensions is a neat way of explaining what is called the "hierachy problem", mainly why the Plank scale 2*10E18GeV is so high. We have found most of the elementary particles with the number and properties of the Higgs particle(s) and possible supersymmetric partners the most reasonable "undiscovered" particles left. All these particles even the undiscovered ones stay with their mass below a few 1000GeV. So why is there a "Desert" that spans 1000000000000000GeV of the energy scale befor something happens to the particle content again? Small Extra Dimensions are an elegant way of solving this problem without introducing lots of new particles and interactions. I really like the idea because it is so simple, I distrust it partly because it can be used to give almost any kind of physics i.e. it always works and it is difficult to experimentaly test it. On the other hand this idea has been around for a couple of years now so it can't be totally crappy. I hope you remember some high school physics. You may remember that the gravitational force and the electromagnetic force both grow weaker with the inverse square of the distance ~G*r^-2 with G the constant of the relevant force. If you know Math or have done universtiy physics you know that this law is because the space is three-dimensional and this is just the way a wave dissipates in three dimensions. Now imagine that as you go to smaller and smaller distances, say between two particles, the space suddenly has more dimensions so the wave gets to dissipate at a faster rate. Since the interaction remains the same the coupling constant G must change in response. The coupling constant of gravity relates to the Plank scale so you end up changing that and voila by adding some extra dimensions the "Desert" dissapears and everybody is happy. Exept for the experimantalists since you can't verify this theory yet...
This analogy helps, but mathematically you can describe the tube as a curved two-dimensional object without the third dimension. It is just easier to understand untuitively if you think it embedded into a third dimension.
Then you refer to orthogonality (being at right angles). It's a matter of parametrization, i.e. setting up the coordinate axes.
An excellent book which deals with with some ideas of parallel universes and time warps, etc.. is the book Black Holes and Time Warps : Einstein's Outrageous Legacy by Kipp Thorne. It doesn't deal directly with things like the world being a brane, but it deals with a lot of things in a similiar vein.
But I thought one of the more interesting aspects of this book is how it describes the way certain findings became accepted - it makes me wonder what happens behind the scenes in articles like this one...
The forward by Stephen Hawking is very interesting, as well.
... it just arrived on Earth thru the wormhole :)
This is simple thievery, no more and no less. It's a fantastically extravagant welfare system for incompetent academics. They sit on their asses and make up fairy tales all day! That's their religion: They believe that anything they say is true. They have appointed themselves God, and they proceed to "create the universe" in a new way every year. And all you stupid suckers outside their little academic "club" just eat it up, don't you? You believe anything you're told.
Well, they can't prove any of this garbage, for the simple reason that it's all fantasy. I say, enough! No more! The increasingly insane and bizarre myths generated by the pseudo-scientific establishment are all the proof we need that "big science" is utterly bankrupt, morally and intellectually. Every year it becomes increasingly obvious that so-called "science" cannot explain anything at all. The total collapse of the discredited evolutionary "theory" was the first big public wake-up call, but in physics it's been happening for decades as well. But these pseudo-scientific ayatollahs can't give up their funding! They wouldn't be running scams for a living if they were capable of doing productive work! They have no choice but to keep robbing us. So in their desperation and sick hate for the truth, they dream up more and more implausible "theories" which purport to dispense with God. They're like dishonest children who get caught lying: When you reveal their lies, they keep making up more lies off the cuff to explain the discrepancies in the first lie. When you point out how pathetic the second-order lies are, they proceed to invent the most fantastic lies of all to explain those. And so on, ad infinitum.
They think they're God, but they just can't do the job, can they?
The answer is simple: If the only way you can rid God's Creation of its Creator is to postulate a universe the size of an ant, then it's time to give up and face the Truth. They've always known the Truth, too. Their insane hatred and lies wouldn't be so vicious if they weren't motivated by the knowledge of their own failure.
If there are an equal number of parallel universes "above" us as there are "below" then all those pre-Copernicus scientists (the likes of Aristarchus of Samos not withstanding) would have been right in saying we are at the centre of the universe.
:-)
Maybe they were onto something.
Bob.
Um, it's manifold not manYfold. A manifold is another term for dimension or "membrane". E.g. Our universe is a manifold of X dimensions.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
They think they're God, but they just can't do the job, can they?
You've hit the nail right on the head. The tenets of the evolution religion imply that humans can create life in the laboratory. If we can't do that, then the whole thing's a joke. Well, they tried and they failed. And they tried again, and they've been trying ever since. No dice.
What really pisses me off most isn't the mere fact that the money's being wasted, but that it's being wasted on what amounts to a STATE RELIGION, one in which I do not believe. I don't make these morons spend their money to support my religion, why should I pay for theirs?
Interesting quote: "The folded universe picture permits apparently superluminal communication between different segments of the brane through the bulk." He argues that this solves some problems in cosmology.
jesus, slashdot has really gone to hell. the least relevant, least humorous, and least thoughtful comment is sitting right on top with the highest score? there are more insightful, and on-topic posts below. instead of blatantly satirizing (through ignorance) this theory, why not actually discuss the merits of it?
I heard about another(?) theory proposing the existence of many dimensions "confined" (or somehow "tied") within a Planck space (the amount of space measured by a Planck Constant, a very, very, very small number) (I heared about this space being some kind of "quantum of space") Is this new theory (many dimensions within sub-milimeters) related with the older (many dimensions within Planck space) ???
If you're gutsy enough to castigate an entire /. post without even addressing its merits, then you should be gutsy enough to login.
You sound vaguely like a believer. I'm one too, and frankly I think your rabid vitriol makes you, and anyone else who believes in God, sound like a chauvanistic Luddite.
Shut up.
--GAck
3. Profit!
2. ???
1. On Soviet Slashdot, a Beowulf cluster of alien Natalie Portman overlords welcomes YOU!
If you're gutsy enough to castigate an entire
I had the guts and brains to address the fact that it has no merits. Take it or leave it.
You sound vaguely like a believer. I'm one too
"Believer", yeah, right. You don't get to pick and choose. It's all or nothing. If you reject any part of God's Law, you have rejected the whole.
. . . frankly I think your rabid vitriol makes you, and anyone else who believes in God, sound like a chauvanistic Luddite.
Here's where you display the "sick hatred of the truth" that I referred to in my post. I speak the simple plain truth, which is obvious to any honest, reasoning being -- and you start whining about "rabid vitriol". You can't defend yourself against the truth, so you respond with an infantile retort: "I know you are, but what am I!"
We both know exactly what you are. Don't waste your time lying about it.
Brain is spelled "BRAIN" not "BRANE". You know, you guys REALLY need a proofreader here.
...But it's very much like a story that many scientists are beginning to tell about the universe...
... whatever ... )
i do not believe that this theorey is entirely new stuff. not to say it is not cool, it most definetly is...
check out Frijtof (sp??) Capra's "The Tao of Physics" (if you don't know, and you wanna seem cool and knowledgeable, it's pronounced "DAO"
"Tao of Physics" was written in 1975-ish (i believe) and its underlying theory is that there is a narrowing of the rift between Eastern (and no, i don't mean Cambridge, MA) Mysticism/Religon and modern Physics.
One of the sources Capra quoted talks of a tower with many rooms, each room containing many towers exactly like the first, on and on and on, like two facing mirrors... the mansion metaphor struck me as being remarkably similar.
anyway, this is pretty cool stuff, although the article didn't go into as much depth as i would have liked to see... *sigh*
Props...
"Cogito ergo es... I think, therefore you is." -The King of the Moon's Head,
"Cogito ergo es... I think, therefore you is." -The King of the Moon's Head,
This was in Green's book "Superstring Theory and the quest for Ultimate Truth" (title may not be quire right) Anyway, all matter travels through a four dimensional space (time + 3 spatial) at the speed of light. This is why traveling through space at near c speeds slows time down for yourself. Your directing your speed of travel into the 3 spatial dimenstions and away from the time dimension. Consequently, "stationary " matter is still traveling at the speed of light. It's just traveling through time at that rate instead of through space. Wierd, huh?
The total collapse of the discredited evolutionary "theory" was the first big public wake-up call,
What events constituted the collapse of the theory of evolution?
I'm not trying to troll or start a flame war, I really am curious. The public perception of evolution as a theory often differs wildly from the rather conservative notions of the actual text of the theory as written by Darwin, and I've often noticed that observations and explanations which are claimed to discredit evolution are actually aimed at the perception rather than the theory itself.
I really hope you respond, because in recent years my parents - after encouraging my interests in science throughout my childhood and adolescence - have developed a fascination with creation science, but can't explain their precepts well due to a difference in the focus of their educations. I would really like to understand what they believe, and I have a feeling that understanding what you're saying here would help me understand them.
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Essentially, they refer to a brane (which is in itself a manifold) which is "kinked" within a higher dimensional space within which some (e.g gravitational) interactions propagate whilst others (e.g. electromagnetic) are confined to propagation within the brane itself.
Imagine the universe is 1-dimensional (and composed of Crap ASCII Art (TM)). The the Manifold would be a 1d line within 2d, e.g.
---------X-------------------------------Y----
(exciting, huh?... bear with me...)
with all interactions between points X and Y taking place within the 1d line, oblivious of the extra (up-down)dimension.
The manYfold concept would take the above and turn it into the following:-
---------X--------------\
-----------Y------------/
where, although most (i.e. electromagnetic etc.) interactions still have to go all the way along the line and back between X and Y (regardless of the bend of which they are oblivious), gravitational interactions "know" about the extra up-down dimension (referred to in the article as the "bulk") and interact over the now much shorter distance between X and Y, bypassing the normal space distance along the line, leading to things which seem distant in space (but nearby in the "bulk") having much more gravitational influence than they would otherwise.
On a very related note to this concept, I seem to remember something similar being touted about a particular Superstring Theory (E8xE8) where one ends up with 2 independent universes coupled only by gravity. Whilst this is not the same (in the manybrane paper the two universes are actually spatially distant parts of the same one) it does have common features. Of course, it is a long time since I heard about E8xE8 and I may be misremembering.
On a less related (but again similar) note, Richard Feynman and John Wheeler once postulated that all electrons in the universe were in fact the same electron wrapped back and forth (where it appears as an anti-electron) between the beginning and end points of the universe, thus accounting for the fact that every electron in the universe appears absolutely identical.
--
"I am not a nut-bag." -- Millroy the Magician
There's actually been a lot of fuss about what's called "large extra dimensions" recently. The original problem was that the energy scale associated with gravity is about 10^19 GeV (1GeV = the energy an electron would get going through a potential gap of 10^9 V = approximately the mass of a proton) while the energy scale associated with all the other forces of nature is only 10^3 GeV. This is really bad because it means that (for instance) particles would get gravitational fields surrounding them that give them masses on the order of 10^19 GeV, which would turn everything in sight into a black hole.
:) is one thing. In some of the models effective FTL travel may be possible.
This problem can be solved in a number of ways - notably supersymmetry, which causes those giant gravitational fields to cancel out. But there's one other odd problem to deal with, which are "extra dimensions." Basically string theory requires that the universe is actually 10-dimensional, and the other 6 dimensions are simply wrapped up very tightly. (Mental picture: If you wrap up a sheet of paper (which is 2-dimensional) into a very tight tube and look at it from far away, it looks 1-dimensional. Unless you're scanning it on distance scales comparable to the radius of the tube.) The problem is that you have to somehow wrap up these 6 dimensions on a really small distance scale (the length scale of gravity, about 10^-42 cm) and keep the other 4 really big. (the size of the universe) This again happens because the energy scale of gravity is big.
So about a year ago, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Savas Dimopoulos, Gia Dvali and John March-Russell had an interesting thought: We don't *know* that gravity really behaves like anything in particular at length scales below about a millimeter. (The current limit of experiment is about 0.8mm) So they noticed that the following setup gives the right answers too:
* We live in a universe with however many "extra" (small, rolled-up) dimensions, but these are rolled up with radii on the order of somewhere between 1fm (10^-15m, the size of a nucleus) to 0.1mm. (The range of sizes is because there are several different models)
* In this loosely rolled-up world, there are these 4-dimensional objects called "branes" floating around.
Then several amazing things happen. First of all, all matter particles (electrons, quarks, people) are bound to the surface of the brane and can't leave it. So are all the non-gravity force particles. (Photons, gluons, etc.) This just follows from the physical properties of branes in string theory, and it means that as far as anything but gravity is concerned, the universe is 4-dimensional and we won't see the extra dimensions.
Second, gravity completely ignores the brane (except insofar as there's matter, and therefore sources of gravity, there) and flies around freely in all of the dimensions. But because some of them are rolled up, what happens is that at long distances (bigger than the radius) all the gravity gets "squeezed" along the extra dimensions and gravity behaves like ordinary 4-dimensional gravity. At short distances, this changes -- for instance, the 1/r^2 force of gravity becomes something like 1/r^4.
But the real magic is, if the fundamental energy scale of gravity was 10^3 GeV, (the same as the scale for everything else) the distortion of gravity by the rolling up of space would make it seem like the scale was 10^19 GeV to any observer looking at distance scales bigger than the radius!
So the bonus of the Large Extra Dimensions (LED) scenario is, everything has the same energy scale, and it only seems that gravity has this high energy scale because we're looking at too long a distance. And all of the problems of a high energy scale indeed go away.
Of course, you can ask what the hell any of this has to do with reality. The thing is that all of this is consistent with all experiments to date and explains several tricky points. More importantly, it is experimentally testable; part of the testing happens in tabletop experiments (groups at Stanford and at NIST in Boulder are working on measuring gravity at distances down to about 10^-6 m) and part of it in accelerators. The final tests (thumbs up or thumbs down) will come from experiments at the LHC accelerator in Geneva, which should (knock on wood) be up to spin around 2004/5. Final results should take a few more years after the machine comes on-line.
But disclaimer: At this point this entire scenario is conjecture. People are already working out "observational experiments" to check these models -- for instance, whether these are consistent with the known spectrum of cosmic rays -- which are strong experimental constraints. But until the final experiments happen we can't be certain, one way or the other.
Also, since the original paper came out there have been several modified versions of the conjecture, which differ essentially in technical (but very important) points. The Randall-Sundrum model is especially important, and today's model looks to join the list of candidates.
So what does this mean for us? First of all, if it's right then the underlying scale of gravity is only 10^3 GeV, which is definitely accessible with the next generation (LHC) of accelerators. This means we can start to directly monkey around with the processes associated with black hole formation and the origins of the universe. Apart from completely changing physics (by making quantum gravity experiments practical) this is one of those things that creates more applications than we know what to do with. Making small black holes (and no, they wouldn't eat up the planet.
But possibly the most interesting thing is that there's no reason at all for our brane -- the one that our universe lives on -- is the only one. In fact, the most reasonable model suggests that there is some unbelievable number of branes floating out there, maybe 10^24 of them. It's not clear that the laws of physics would be the same on all of them -- e.g. the speed of light may be different, or the charge of the electron, or whatever -- but if the scenario turns out to be true, it is possible (though difficult) to communicate between two different worlds.
And for my money, that's the neatest thing of all.
Is it also a shadow from the higher dimensional manifold we see, when -looking up your url, i.e.
:)
this one- they also recommend reading/buying on an auction the book "Enlarge and firm your
breasts by hypnosis tape"????
Of course, it does have to do with geometry....
Roland
It's as likely for pure random chance to generate a human being as it is for a strong wind to blow through a junkyard and produce a 747. Think about it: They want us to believe that of all conceivable configurations of matter, pure random chance led inexorably and inevitably to the human race. The odds against it are absolutely mind-boggling! According to their own hypotheses, it should have been equally likely for an intelligent race to have "evolved" from squids or birds -- or for no intelligent race to have "evolved" at all. But they conveniently forget this logic when they come to the undeniable fact that we do exist, and we do have our present form. They can't account for that.
What events constituted the collapse of the theory of evolution?
Every educated person in the United States has been aware for years that evolution holds no logical or factual water. It's been almost entirely abandoned by serious biologists. The mainstream media steadfastly refuse to report the facts, quite naturally, but I suggest that you drop by your local university and have a chat with the head of the biology department. You'll find that evolution is treated as an historical curiosity and is no longer taught. So-called "evolutionary biologists", who substitute undisciplined speculation for hard facts, are the only ones still clinging to the illusion.
in recent years my parents - after encouraging my interests in science throughout my childhood and adolescence - have developed a fascination with creation science
That's not surprising. They encouraged you to seek out the truth, and obviously they were sincere in that because they've continued to seek out the truth themselves. You're lucky to have parents like that.
The public perception of evolution as a theory often differs wildly from the rather conservative notions of the actual text of the theory as written by Darwin
Darwin himself admitted -- in so many words -- that he could not account for the development of the modern vertebrate eye. In other words, he admitted that his theory was nothing but an idle fantasy. It was the first canonical example of irreducible complexity, and ultimately that crack in the foundations of evolution religion went on to bring down the whole absurd edifice.
There is no God. All god does is provide a father figure for the sheep, so that priests can control them. Sure the false hope religion gives is comforting, but we must forsake God to realise our own power.
You're as mindlessly dogmatic as the Creationist Troll is, but there's a difference: He's kidding.
You can't prove that God doesn't exist any more than he can prove that God does exist (or, even postulating the existence of a god, that his god is the right one.) So chill out.
I don't know what you mean by "our own power", but I have a weird and depressing suspicion that it has something to do with either Ayn Rand or Nietzsche. Ugh.
The fact that you disbelieve what they are working on doesn't make it any less useful. This paper is a hypothetical description, but it actually contains items that are testable. Somebody will work out a way to test them, and our knowledge base will get larger. All whether you like it or not.
Rather than screaming and stomping your feet about how outraged you are, why don't you show us where they are wrong? (And just so you know, waving the christian bible around won't constitute acceptable evidence. It's already got too many problems.)
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
The preprint server contains unreviewed preprints. They are not the official statement of that body of people called 'scientists'. It's just a repository where researchers and students can distribute material. Sometimes they are submitted by kooks and sometimes they come from the very best in their field.
-- SIGFPE
Just another case of Science imitating Science Fiction...
:)
It's not a bad idea, but it's not a new idea. Lots of hard-SF writers picked this one up a long time ago, with their space warps and their jump points and whatnot... Time to re-read Macroscope again...
(for those who don't know, Macroscope is an early Piers Anthony mostly hard-SF looking book, and it's very good, if somewhat strange at the end.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Every educated person in the United States has been aware for years that evolution holds no logical or factual water. It's been almost entirely abandoned by serious biologists. The mainstream media steadfastly refuse to report the facts, quite naturally, but I suggest that you drop by your local university and have a chat with the head of the biology department. You'll find that evolution is treated as an historical curiosity and is no longer taught.
I think that you may be mistaken. I've talked to biologists at my local university (including the ones that I've taken courses from), and they all seem to believe that natural processes result in new species over time, which is all that is meant by biologists' use of the word "evolution". Of ocurse, Darwin's original ideas on just how evolution might work have been extensively re-thought over the years, but I'm not aware of too many mainstream biologists denying that evolution has taken (and is taking) place. Please cite 3 references in mainstream academic (not religious) publications, like Scientific American, or in specialist biology publications, that indicate that the process of evolution is widely discounted.
Also, you might want to be a little more careful in your use of words. For example, you state:
Darwin himself admitted..that he could not account for the..eye. In other words, he admitted that his theory was nothing but an idle fantasy.
The second sentence does NOT follow from the first. The fact, for example, that Einstein could not find a way to get rid of his Cosmological Constant (which he knew was a problem) does NOT mean that he was saying that E=MC2 was wrong. Honest scientists will always admit that they don't know it all. This is not a weakness of science--it is one of its strengths.
Finally, I really think that it would make sense to know about the arguments that you are refuting when discounting them. You might wish to check out the Talk.Origins Home Page for some summaries of the surrent arguments for the side of evolution.
Chris Coslor coslor[at]sprynet.com
WTF?! I don't know what Amazon is suggesting for you, but when I click my link (and the same one you provide) i get:
The Shape of Space : How to Visualize Surfaces and Three-Dimensional Manifolds
(Monographs and Textbooks in Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol 96)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The Miscreant (I must get round to getting a new password some time).
I would believe you except I can prove your non-existance in seven seperate ways. Why not give up and admit you don't exist?
It accepts the fantasy (beloved of the high priests of "physics") that Creation existed for billions of years prior to the date on which the world was, in fact, Created -- some six thousand years ago, no more and no less.
Bzzt. Next?
they all seem to believe that natural processes result in new species over time, which is all that is meant by biologists' use of the word "evolution"
MICRO-evolution does indeed happen: For example, the breeding of dogs. Change can occur within a single species over time, in small ways -- but "speciation" (the forking of a single species into multiple species which cannot interbreed) has been proven conclusively to be absolutely impossible. You can't breed a dog into a lizard, which is what the fantasy of MACRO-evolution (so-called "Darwinism") explicitly claims to be the case.
The fact, for example, that Einstein could not find a way to get rid of his Cosmological Constant (which he knew was a problem) does NOT mean that he was saying that E=MC2 was wrong.
He may not have had the courage or honesty to admit that he had proven himself wrong, but he had still done so, nevertheless.
Honest scientists will always admit that they don't know it all. This is not a weakness of science -- it is one of its strengths.
This sort of cant amuses me to no end. "Honest" con artists are always like that. It makes them look more honest if they leaven their lies with a small taste of the truth.
The fundamental problem with "science" is that it offers no answers, just guesses -- and one of the basic assumptions underlying this house of cards is that it will all be "proven wrong" within a few years -- in other words, they admit that they're making it all up. This nonsense about "successively finer approximations" is of course a smokescreen to hide their ultimate ignorance. A truly and literally honest "scientist" will simply admit that he knows absolutely nothing at all, that his wild guess is as good as the next, and that neither of them is worth a bucket of warm spit.
When I want an answer, I want an answer, not some snivelling crap about how "oh, this week our best guess is blah blah blah". No thanks.
Please cite 3 references in mainstream academic (not religious) publications, like Scientific American, or in specialist biology publications, that indicate that the process of evolution is widely discounted.
That's clearly a gambit born of utter desperation. Sorry, but I'm not going to do your research for you. If your ignorance and apathy are so perfect and unmitigated as to have enabled you to miss entirely the most significant developments in human knowledge in the past fifty years, then there is no hope for you.
In my Father's house there are many mansions, if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself: that where I am,there ye may be also. (KJV - John 14:2-3)
I always wondered about that passage. Now it makes sense.
comments@vrml3d.com
--SteveDarwin himself admitted -- in so many words -- that he could not account for the development of the modern vertebrate eye.
So? Modern biology has progressed far beyond what Darwin ever thought. Just because Darwin didn't explaing the eye doesn't mean it was explained later by someone else. Try this for starters.
In other words, he admitted that his theory was nothing but an idle fantasy.
Bullcrap. He did nothing of the sort, except admit his own limits. As much as you'd like to believe otherwise.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
On the contrary - it's been observed, in plants and fish.
You can't breed a dog into a lizard, which is what the fantasy of MACRO-evolution (so-called "Darwinism") explicitly claims to be the case.
Strawman alert. Where was this explicit claim made?
A truly and literally honest "scientist" will simply admit that he knows absolutely nothing at all, that his wild guess is as good as the next, and that neither of them is worth a bucket of warm spit.
An odd statement, made in a world where the process of science has given us antibiotics, microelectrons, and space probes to the outer planets.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
I am a Christian today due, in part, to this very question. I have not yet heard an adequate explanation.
I'm agnostic today due, in part, to what I see as an implication of your reasoning: Namely, that even if we do stipulate the need for a divine being, there's no compelling reason to choose any particular divine being. It could be JHVH, but for all I know it could be Zeus or somebody like that.
Your reasoning makes a lot of sense to me. From what I know (not a hell of a lot, granted) about serious physics, natural law is believed to have been itself uncertain or indefinite sometime shortly after the Big Bang. If that's plausible, then God isn't much more of a stretch. But which God? That's the one that always gets me. Every religion has adherents who describe mystical experiences, people who sincerely describe personal contact with their God. Therefore, if they all have that same "proof", I can't accept any one of them as proof, because they mostly exclude each other. Maybe the experiences of one sect are qualitatively different from all the others -- but a mystical experience is by nature incommunicable and personal. There's no way I can evaluate them all and decide which one is the real McCoy. Zen Buddhism seems to have gotten it down almost to a science in terms of a method and repeatability (note the big fat "seems" and "almost" in that sentence!
Kierkegaard was right: At some point, you just have to make a leap of faith. Science doesn't cover that. At this point in my life, I just can't see my way clear to making that leap.
If this theory holds, couldn't we communicate (if the other brane is listening) by moving around big heavy things in weird patterns? Would the arrangements of matter in other branes be similar because gravity can go between branes (and hence, matter in one brane would be attracted to matter in another). Would black holes poke into other branes (or at least, would the other branes have black holes at the same spot because the gravity from ours would attract enough matter from the others to form another black hole?)
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w
No, it hasn't.
See? I can make unsupported assertions, too. If you want us to accept your statements, you'll have to provide something other than lip flapping. Where has this demonstration taken place? (Please don't reference the ICR. Everything they say has been shot down like a cheap clay pidgeon.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
the process of science has given us . . . microelectrons
Fool. You aren't even familiar with the fantasies which you claim to espouse. Even in the fantastic dream-world of current physical theory, there is no such entity as a "microelectron". The story goes that all "electrons" (which are apparently believed to be little animals of some kind) are the same size, and differ only in imaginary and undefined qualities called "spin", "energy level", etc. Even the most drug-addled parasites professing "physics" have invented no "micro" electrons, no "macro" electrons, no "middle-sized" electrons.
Please study up on the tenets of your religion before presuming to defend it.
and space probes to the outer planets.
I saw Star Wars, too. It's a good movie. The special effects were far better than the poor offerings from NASA, but what can you expect from a welfare organization parasitizing the public? NASA is a sham, and not even an entertaining one.
you'll have to provide something other than lip flapping
"Lip flapping"! I like that one. It's a cool image. I'm imagining these thin, rubbery lips, like some breeds of pointers (dogs) have, just sort of billowing in the breeze! Thank you for the image.
a cheap clay pidgeon
Oops. "Pigeon". I'd venture to guess that the 'd' crept in from the word "pidgin", which describes an ad-hoc "trade language" composed of simplified fragments of two other languages. I don't think there's any etymological link between the two, though I could be wrong.
Anyhow, you're a damned (and I mean that literally) deluded secular humanist hate-monger. If you were capable of opening your mind and doubting your idiotic faith, there might be some hope for you, but I doubt it.
just so you know, waving the christian bible around won't constitute acceptable evidence.
Heh heh. Of course not. It doesn't agree with your bizarre preconceptions, so you reject it without even reading it.
It's already got too many problems.
Prove it.
Okay, okay, you CAN have your coordinate axes any way you please, but they're still at right angles to one another. It's just a matter of remapping the axes however you want.
So, yes, you can curve your dimensions. But it's easier (for most applications) not to think of them that way. I could use spherical coordinates to describe how to build a building, but I don't because it's not very useful. It's easier to do with rectangular dimensions.
Now, as to a real dimension being curled, lets use your tube analogy. Can one traverse around the tube (in one dimension, mind), ending up back where you started? Sure. Can you do that in reality? Well, that depends on whether the universe is closed or not. I have yet to see a satisfactory answer either way on that issue.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Of possible to interest to some readers, my latest Brain Candy column at Fatbrain.com is about Einstein's special theory of relativity and how it implies that any faster than light communication implies the ability to send messages backwards in time.
Of course, this yields all sorts of ugly paradoxes, which is why most physicist consider FTL communication unrealizable.
-- GWF
The Computational Beauty of Nature
Check out this column which intuitively explains why FTL communication in any form violates causality.
-- GWF
The Computational Beauty of Nature
What compensates for the Heisenberg compensators?
Also, never, ever cross the beams. Unless, of course, the situation calls for it.
H.P. Lovecraft was on to this a long time ago. Or maybe he was just on something. Either way, the man kicked ass.
Check out this new release of some of his work with a forward by Neil 'The Main Man' Gaiman.
**>>BELCH
These things sound with an interesting similarity to some SF and paranormal stories. While most of these things go too much over fantasy there is a point that humans cannot imagine things completely out of this world. So are these "fantasies" a mirror of what the human mind may presume out of its own reality? Are dreams a middle term between "our" world and this "parallel" part of reality? :)
:)
What about travelling between worlds? Frankly this theory does not sound like StarTrek. It sounds much more like Zelazny's "9 Princes of Amber". There are several worlds. They are the result of the intersection between two "original" ones. So there are several Earths. Each one differs from the other by its distance to each of the "original" worlds. Funny but, somehow, certain human myths exactly reflect this nature.
While this is the world of phantasies and dreams there is a point that still theory seems to pass by. The fact that, the other possible "world", may be not like ours. Not only by events or biology but by its inner nature. Physics and its constants may be a little different from ours. Even its geometry may be quite different from ours. Maybe somehow that "other" dimension may be felt stronger than in our world...
Interesting is the Universe has such a nature. So don't get scared if you suddenly see your mirror image with a grey skin. It's just you
Four billion years ago, given all the random factors the odds that it would be us were astronomical, but after the fact it's not remarkable (other than for sentimental reasons) that it turned out to be us.
That's nonsense. Pure sophistry. If it A is unlikely at point B, then of necessity it's equally unlikely at point C unless A itself changes. "Chance" is inconceiveable for that reason: It implies that reality is a series if wildly improbably accidents, which, cumulatively, are so wildly improbably as not to be worth discussing. Therefore everything is inevitable. Therefore everything is planned. Ergo, God.
Hard as it may be for devout beleivers (who usually want to go backwards in time for their authoritative statements) to understand
That sounds mighty odd coming from somebody who has a quote from that old fossil NICK LOWE in his
Jesus CHRIST, the last significant thing Lowe worked on was the Pretenders' cover of "Stop Your Sobbing" -- and that was significant only for historical reasons, and then Hynde (wisely, IMHO) got Chris Thomas and Bill Price to record the damn Lp anyway (and that led inevitably to working with the same team on Pretenders II -- and I defy you to find a better-sounding album than P II anywhere, including Zep III, the Tom Wilson tracks on VU and Nico, Remain in Light, and For Your Pleasure by Roxy Music (which is one of the very few that I'd seriously consider -- but, gee, go figure -- I just looked at the sleeve -- Chris Thomas produced it, you miserable atheist creep!)). It's time to stop living in the past, buddy. Nick Lowe is history. Don't tell me about his work with Elvis Costello, either -- Costello's first couple of records were crap. Juvenilia. Not worth discussing.
I typed "improbable" as "improbably" two or three times there, god damn it. I always do that. It's some kind of weird reflex. That's what I deserve for not proofreading. Sorry.
I was outraged and ashamed after hearing about some of the Anti-Scienctific Paranoid Religious Establishment's latest opinions. Here's the story: If you don't think that the Anti-Scienctific Paranoid Religious Establishment finds enemies everywhere, then you've missed the whole point of this letter. For heaven's sake, I must ask that the Anti-Scienctific Paranoid Religious Establishment's cronies take a strong position on the Anti-Scienctific Paranoid Religious Establishment's pranks, which, after all, appropriate sacred symbols for sexist purposes. I know they'll never do that, so here's an alternate proposal: They should, at the very least, back off and quit trying to foster cameralism at every opportunity. In order to complain about wretched prissy card sharks, tremendous sacrifices and equally great labors will be necessary. Am I angry? You bet. The Anti-Scienctific Paranoid Religious Establishment treats people as objects. In short, the Anti-Scienctific Paranoid Religious Establishment and its pigheaded obiter dicta should be shunned.
Brilliant man. Absolutely brilliant...
Ever take a peek out from behind your hands?
Was that randomly generated or something? I just can't figure out where you're coming from, or why.
One way or another, I'd like to offer my congratulations on a profoundly weird post.
Ever take a peek out from behind your hands?
Yep. There's nothing out there.
says nothing at all about how life came about. It is only concerned with how it adapts and changes over time.
Yeah, but how did life adapt to existence from its prior state of non-existence?
You can't just blow that off.
In other words, you are willing to stand up and make hysterical pronouncements, but when called upon to support your position, you hide behind ad hominem and run away. I'm not surprised.
As far as "damned" goes, that necessitates the existence of a god as specified in the christian bible, for which the evidence is thin at best. I'm not worried.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Are you sure the guy's not kidding? I'm not at all sure of that, myself . . . The bit about the Pretenders and Roxy Music just didn't ring true to me. He's too bizarre to be real, if you ask me.
Fine, take your marbles and go home. See if I care!
Jeez, I thought we were friends.
Which genesis? 1 or 2? Or haven't yo bothered to read the whole bible? While we're at it, why don't you take a tour through leviticus and report back on how you're doing obeying gods laws that are listed there?
Whoops... the original LED scenario was Arkani-Hamed, Dimopoulos and Dvali. Their original paper is here. Sorry!
Yonatan
Howdy folks. As somebody who has interacted with at least two of the authors of the preprint, I suppose i should make a few things clear: the authors *are* well respected members of the high energy theory community, and there is a *lot* of current research going into theories with extra dimensions, of several different sorts: Planck scale extra dimensions (10^-33cm or so, from string/M theory) - which would not be directly observable any time soon, sub-millimeter extra dimensions (i.e. only barely sub-millimeter, as opposed to the above 33 orders of magnitude sub.), in which "Standard Model" forces are constrained to live in a 3 dimensional (spatial) slice of higher dimensional space, where gravity sees the whole D-dimensional space (but since gravity is so weak, we have only probed it accurately on scales longer than a cm or so, so it is conceivable that on shorter scales the 1/r^2 law of 3 dimensions is modified to a 1/r^2 + k/r^4 law, where k is a constant related to the size of the extra dimension (and the number of extra dimensions)), the third extra-dimensional scenario allows for possibly *infinite* extra dimensions, with both gravity and the Standard Model forces (strong and electro-weak) are confined to our 3-dimensional slice (called a 3-brane).
The interesting new idea in this paper is that the brane may not be flatly embedded in the higher dimensional space, but it may be folded, possibly many times over (thus the name, "manyfold" - a pun on the mathematical term "manifold" referring to a smooth curved surface of arbitrary dimension - this manyfold is also a manifold, most likely). This allows for an explanation of dark matter as just matter living on other folds - electromagnetically they may be whole galaxies billions of megaparsecs away, but in the higher dimensional space, gravity sees them as only a millimeter away, so it looks like invisible heavy matter.
Another thing which is important to note about these folded branes is that they are most likely not stable in that configuration (technically, they are not BPS saturated objects), meaning they may cause certain postulated symmetries to be broken (i.e. supersymmetry), which is good, because we know that if these symmetries are real, they are broken. I cannot see why the universe would stay in such a configuration at first glance, but after I read the article more carefully, I'll report back.
-jake
spam-free-mannix@spamless.stanford.edu
p.s. there are a series of articles in the LA times recently about M-theory, string theory, etc. by K.C. Cole which were quite good. check them out: most recent (i beleive)While we're at it, why don't you take a tour through leviticus and report back on how you're doing obeying gods laws that are listed there?
This came up much earlier, in one of the cloning articles. So I can confidently predict this weiner will come back with some tosh about how JEE-zus invalidates the Word of God in Leviticus about dietary laws and mixing fabrics and earlocks.
See, *he* gets to pick-and-choose God's Law, because he's wit' JEE-zus. Anyone who doesn't agree with him, though, will Burn In Hell (tm).
He sounds *just* like the wanker in that long-ago cloning thread, and frankly it's probably just some troller who gets his jollies impersonating a frothy Creationist. Do ignore him, and he'll go away.
Of course, there's a lot of value in modern Christian thought, but Sturgeon's Law inexorably applies there as elsewhere. You have to pick through a lot of crap to get to some really admirable and noble sentiments about getting along with your fellow earth-bound critters.
If the system really is set up that you can Accept Jee-zus, be a total asshole, and go to Heaven, and not Accept Jee-zus, be a self-sacrificing loving person, and go to Hell, then the system sucks and I want no part of it, and the God pushing that system can go fuck himself up the ass with a fire hydrant.
gomi
Jesus, I am so fucking sick and tired of listening to you fundies whine on and on about scientists and fields of study that frighten you because you believe they could discredit your religion. Well, I've got some news for you:
.."
It's already been discredited!
Nobody is listening to you. You're disgracing the name of Christianity. When people see tirades like yours, they roll their eyes and mutter "There they go again
So if you want to destroy science, you've got one option: Start killing scientists. Seriously. You think you're doing the Lord's work, right, and what harm can come from you doing the Lord's work! Start killing them now. Put your machete where your mouth is. Your rants aren't going to convince anybody. A glorious bloodbath in the name of Jesus is your only option, my friend.
Matthew Fox has a lovely metaphor for this ("ecumenical garbage!", I hear the Creationist Troll froth in background):
The world's religions are stained-glass windows in a lantern; God is the flame within.
I really dig Matthew Fox, crazy outlaw excommunicated former Jesuit that he is.
Religion isn't really a commutative or transmissible experience -- you either gots the feeling within, or you don't, and mileage varies wildly between folks.
gomi
Why is it the responsibility of the scientific community to address the claims made by the right-wing extremist fundamentalist Christianity-offshoot cults, such as the one you belong to? If you come out and say "Glory be to God in the highest, the Earth is only 6,000 years old", then it's your responsibility to prove it, pal.
If you want people to take the Bible seriously, then I suggest you produce a talking snake, a rabbit that chews its cud, or an impregnanted virgin. Until then, I'll continue to regard the Bible as a sick, twisted collection of fairy tales and bedtime stories.
Author, author! Keep it coming!
:-)
This is some of the funniest satire I've read all week.
First, it's considered bad form to reply to your own posts.
.. a twisted perception.
Secondly, science is not a religion. If it pleases you to label it as such, then be my guest. But your twisted perception of the work that is being done by good and decent people with families is exactly that
Thirdly, people do pay money to support your religion. The tax-exempt status that churches and other religious establishments enjoy introduces a funds shortfall that must be subsidized by taxpayers. A portion of my property taxes, therefore, go to support local churches.
Religion's tax-exempt status in the United States must be rescinded immediately. Churches should be taxed just like any other business.
Well they don't have to be compensated often but modulating the field harmonics usually works... =)
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
This person is either performing an elaborate ruse, or seriously disturbed. I'm sure that many Slashdot readers have questioned the reality of their perception (what if I am hallucinating all of this, is everyone I know just acting a role, how much more real is Saddam Hussein that Darth Vader, etc...), but to actually believe these delusions is psycosis.
Seriously, Troll, if you are for real, then you have some serious psychological issues to deal with. This kind of paranoia and loathing of "THEM" may even be a result of schitzophrenia.
BarneyGuarder (not logged in 'cause I'm at work)
I Like to eat food?
What kind of ignorant SOB are you anyway? Even most Christians don't believe that God literally
created the earth in 6000 years. Haven't you ever heard of a metaphore? The Bible is full of them by the way. And who ever said that science and god can't coexist anyway. It's just your feeble mental power that finds the Bible at odds with science.
Religion is about spirituality and a higher purpose to life. If you had any real spirituality,
you would see that the very fact that the universe works without any help from "God" is a miracle in itself.
You give up the free will god gave you when you hide yourself from the truth. Did the bible predict the rotation of the planets or the effects of gravity? Does the bible explain Calculus or statistics? Do you really think that with all the different species that exist today, Noah could have fit two of each one in his tiny boat(you may actually have to crack a book other than the Bible to figure out how many species there actually are today), or even gone to all seven continents and rounded them all up? If you do then you are a bigger fool than I thought and if not then you have to accept evolution(There isn't any passage in the Bible about god restocking the earth after the flood). The Bible is so full of inconsistancies that it isn't surprising that the fun"duhh"mentalist has to completely reject reality in order to have faith
in God.
Science works. If it didn't, we couldn't have this little "discussion". Science is about creating models that accurately describe the world around us. Your religion seems to be about denying the world around you in order to have all the answers. well I've got news for you buddy, we're never going to have all the answers in this life. We can only deceive ourselves into thinking we have all the answers and show our own ignorance in the process,as you have aptly done. There is nothing more foolish than foolish people who thinks they are wise and nothing more destructive to society than ignorance in the cloak of religion.
One last thing about the Bible. You know what a parable is right? Did you ever stop to think that the whole book may just be a bunch of parables and not the literal truth(obvious to free thinkers), or even (heaven forbid) a story book created to keep the masses in check(no, it couldn't be that, could it?) ?
I could go on and on but I won't.
Peace and Love
Thats why I find it so amusing that the latter day saints of our business one, attribute to me motives that just weren'
Yeah... but ... quantum physics, which has been demonstrated to be the most accurate theory ever in terms of experimentally verified predicitions, routinely violates locality, and thereby causality. People just don't like it doing that...
You and I both know he or she meant to say "microelectronics." Your little joke has exposed you for the troller that you are!
Just out of curiousity, doesn't anyone know where in the New Testament Jesus says you can ignore all the old dietary laws? I've been wondering about that one for a while...
Of course, there's a lot of value in modern Christian thought, but Sturgeon's Law inexorably applies there as elsewhere. You have to pick through a lot of crap to get to some really admirable and noble sentiments about getting along with your fellow earth-bound critters.
That's what I love about Unitarian Universalists: they pick through the crap and take just the best parts. And what's even better, they do it for religious texts other than Christian ones as well. Grab the best from all religious thought anywhere, that's the ticket!
If the system really is set up that you can Accept Jee-zus, be a total asshole, and go to Heaven, and not Accept Jee-zus, be a self-sacrificing loving person, and go to Hell, then the system sucks and I want no part of it, and the God pushing that system can go fuck himself up the ass with a fire hydrant.
It'd be more amusing to see the people pushing this idiocy off as Christianity suffer that fate. Oh, and thanks for the mental picture. Yikes!
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
blow it out yer ass wholesale
Just out of curiousity, doesn't anyone know where in the New Testament Jesus says you can ignore all the old dietary laws? I've been wondering about that one for a while...
What I've seen adduced is some vague passages where Jesus speaks of bringing a 'new covenant,' although the searchable-bible page I just tried doesn't pull anything up on that. Perhaps our local Creationist Troll can give us chapter and verse. What I've seen cited so far does not specifically address dietary and bodily maintenance (earlocks) laws, but just speaks vaguely about 'new covenants' and such, which is pretty weak grounds for shaving off your sideburns if you ask me.
gomi
ayn rand mcnally: 'get lost. we don't care.'
man, that's the coolest quote i've seen in a long time! thank you for brightening my morning.
As for the rest of your post: You're right. As an atheist I often tend to fall back on Ochkam's Razor (Ironic, since Ochkam invented it to "prove" that God does exist
First, it's considered bad form to reply to your own posts.
Ya nailed me!
A portion of my property taxes, . . . go to support local churches.
True -- but they also go to support other non-profits.
Religion's tax-exempt status in the United States must be rescinded immediately. Churches should be taxed just like any other business.
I think the question is whether or not to support non-profit organizations. The 2nd Amendment is off the point because no particular religion is getting special treatment. In any case, in the past, some "churches" have lost their non-profit status by behaving blatantly like businesses. (I'm not sure about Scientology's current legal status, but they'd be a good place to start weeding out the phonies IMHO.) If it is reasonable not to tax non-profits, then it's hardly fair to treat churches as a special case.
I'm not trying to offer an answer, I'm just trying to put the question in context.
. . . And JHVH does not smite all the unbelievers all the time. Remember when Lot talked the LORD into not smiting the cities of the plain if there were ten just men there? The list goes on. The bible is full of unbelievers who don't get smitten -- JHVH only smites the unbelievers who pick a fight with Him, or with His people. The last 60 years of history could be seen to support that contention (if you ignore the previous 2000 years).
IMHO your proof seems to break down -- quod erat suggestandum, anyhow
Steven Weinberg, one of the leading Nobel Laureates working in this field, has an article in Scientific American, the December 1999 issue. He explains what will probably be required to understand the nature of the universe at the very tiny Planck scale of the space-time, and mention of the "brane" theories. There are many links to explain the concepts behind his arguments, and this is one fo the best ways to get a handle on this problem.
While we're at it, why don't you take a tour through leviticus and report back on how you're doing obeying gods laws that are listed there?
Heh heh heh. I dig it. Show me a Christian fundamentalist who obeys all of God's commandments rather than just the convenient ones (i.e. the ones that give him an excuse to act out his worst impulses), and I'll show you a . . . a . . . uhh, well, I can't even imagine it. There's just no such thing.
And then there's Exodus 21:22, which pretty damn explicitly states that abortion is a matter for the family and the civil courts to adjudicate according to their own preferences:
021:022 If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.
frankly it's probably just some troller who gets his jollies impersonating a frothy Creationist. Do ignore him, and he'll go away.
Given the amount of enjoyment you're clearly deriving from the thread, don't you think that's a bit unkind?
I mean, to be perfectly frank, you've hurt my feelings.
Now I'm sad.
:(
Perhaps our local Creationist Troll can give us chapter and verse.
I'd like to, but I'm really no expert. I seem to recall having heard that it's based on the scene early in Acts where the one apostle is on the roof and the LORD shows him a great piece of canvas with forbidden food on it, and tells him to eat up. He refuses three times, and then the LORD says "EAT, DAMMIT" or words to that effect, and he chows down. I think, also, Jesus may somewhere say "you are free of the Law" or something.
which is pretty weak grounds for shaving off your sideburns if you ask me.
Ugh, sideburns. Tailfins for humans. What the hell was JHVH thinking . . .
You and I both know he or she meant to say "microelectronics." Your little joke has exposed you for the troller that you are!
Oh, my, but it was such a lovely joke!
:)
Are you saying God picks lottery winners and guides golf balls?
Thank you. That's a better clarification than I've been able to come up with on my own.
Of course you are. You're a Creationist.
:)
It seems to have seriously impaired your musical taste, too. I mean, the Pretenders? Nick Lowe? Costello?
Hey, I slammed Nick Lowe! And the Pretenders were a great fucking band for the first three records. If bass/drums/guitar four-piece rock'n'roll bands mean anything to you at all, go back and listen again -- that stuff has not dated, not a bit. There are songs on Pretenders II that are like vast pizzas with nine toppings -- and every topping is a loud fucking guitar! It's unbeatable! Even those couple of borderline-filler tunes on the first album have aged well. The original lineup on the first two Lp's (half of that band died of ODs) was just an absolutely immortal rock'n'roll band. It's one of those cases like Led Zeppelin or Ronald-period Flaming Lips where there is no weak link: You get four people whose strengths mesh perfectly, who just belong together, and who have material that plays to their strengths. I really can't say enough about that band. If you've just heard what's on the radio you may have missed out. Most of the "hits" were from Learning to Crawl, which is a good record but by the time they recorded it the bass and lead guitar players were dead and they filled in with adequate session guys. It's a damn good record, but you really should listen to Pretenders I and Pretenders II. Yeah, the album names are stupid -- you can't have everything.
As for Elvis Costello, he had some fine moments. He also produced the Pogues early on, which must count for something.
Just because it's old doesn't mean it's bad.
Yeesh. Get out of the 80's. Wouldn't Creed be more to your liking?
Ain't heard Creed. I'll check 'em out on cdnow -- hell, if you promise to pick up a copy of Pretenders II and give it a few serious listens (it's a deep record, there's a lot there -- it'll be a "grower", most likely; it took me years to fully appreciate it) I'll agree to buy this Creed thing. Deal?
The founder of the Religious Society of Friends (a.k.a. the Quakers, and AFAIK the only sect to try to take all Christ's teachings [incl. "turn the other cheek"] seriously and really live by them) was named Fox, first name being George IIRC but I'm not certain.
I like the lantern metaphor, too, but IMHO he's talking out his ass just as much as anybody else is on the subject of religion
(Uh, actually the Franciscan order gets a good solid first runner-up behind the Society of Friends in the Taking Jesus Seriously Sweepstakes).
For God's sake, you can say "crap" on American TV. It ain't offensive.
I like the way you argue. Step 1) state something without any proof. Step 2) Therefore, draw conclusion that does not in any way follow from step 1. Step 3) Write QED and bask in the glory of a job well done.
Well, gee, if the unproven assertion is in fact unproven, I may as well blow it off in the conclusion stage, you know? Be creative!
:)
Did the bible predict the rotation of the planets or the effects of gravity? Does the bible explain Calculus or statistics?
No, but it doesn't explicitly contradict them either. The astronomy in Genesis is vague enough to leave room for believing the truth. IIRC there's a line somewhere later about G-d stopping the sun in its course during a battle, but a good fundie could talk his way out of that one. Probably he'd claim that G-d really stopped the Earth's rotation, and it's expressed as it is because that's what the people then and there were able to understand in terms of their limited knowledge of astronomy -- in other words, a fundie would explain that in precisely the same way that a Catholic explains the scientific innaccuracies of the account in Genesis: Metaphor and simplification. Which leaves the basic literalistic premises of fundamentalism out in the cold, but fundies are wildly inconsistent every day of their lives. It's not a problem. Their theology is not one of logic, but of pure emotionalism. If you want logic, go to the Catholics. They may be paternalistic and annoying, but as Christian sects go, the Church has contributed a hell of a lot to logic and science. See St. Augustine, for starters. Not all Christians are illiterate dirtballs. (Disclaimer: I am a seriously lapsed atheist ex-Catholic, not a believer).
Did you ever stop to think that the whole [Bible] may just be . . . a story book created to keep the masses in check?
Given that most of the OT was written at a time when the Israelites were scattered tribes of pastoralists, and that the NT was written at a time when there were very damn few Christians running around loose (and most of those were fugitives), I doubt it. Both of those books preceded mass Christianity by many centuries.
I'm not saying that either one of those books is God's Word or anything, I'm just suggesting that that one particular explanation that you suggest doesn't necessarily hold much water.
They're shooting doctors already. Don't give them any encouragement. There are a lot of people running around loose in the US who quite sincerely believe that a "glorious bloodbath in the name of Jesus" would be a fine thing indeed. Don't forget those two brothers in California who murdered the gay men and set fire to synagogues. They may be freaks, but they're not alone.
The book was probably "Hyperspace"
This comment is right on the money! Somebody please moderate it up!
I think you meant mr laForge.
This is not my sig
First Post!
Click on the link; d/l the postscript file (or pdf or whatever). Read what these scientists are saying!
I understood about every 3rd paragraph (which is pretty good for me). The "branes" are "folded" in sheets that are bigger than our observable universe, > 15 billion lightyears. Yet the sheets (or branes) are less than a millimeter apart gravitationally, which is where the dark matter comes from, according to these guys. That means dark matter is just like regular matter, just invisible except for the gravity. So you would have "dark stars" which look like MACHOS, "halos" of dark matter around visible galaxies (which reveal the presence of other-brane galaxies nestling together "through the bulk" of the branes. Oh, my head is spinning!
And now a safety tip: Please don't pour sulfuric acid on your genitals.
I'm cool like a fool in a swimming p-p-pfft-pool