Corrections before I have an aneurysm:
But being a freshman... First year grad student is far from being a freshman
...would also make us the center of it No, it makes everyone think that they're the center of it. Intelligent life in another solar system would also see everything expanding away from them too.
we are getting smaller must.....not....take bait.....
The cause could be as simple as the tons of space dust that deposit on the earth year, increasing our gravitational density just ever so slowly.
While this line of reasoning might better apply to why fatter people are slower, unless you're also going to monkey around with the speed of light AND how the rate of expansion increases the further away we look, local phenomena (such as the micro-increases in "earth mass") aren't going to account for the empirical data.
It's finally happened, the war against science has extended itself onto Slashdot. The Slashdot commentary on this is the width of one rolled up dimension away from calling for the end of physics research funding, gathering the pitchforks and torches and taking over Universities' physics departments to install only approved, generally accepted science. "There's no room in science for idle, fanciful speculation" is what they'll yell as they institute teaching only what Newton told us or better yet, what the bible tells us is true.
Blasting physicists (or any scientist) for speculating on unsolved, scientific mysteries is just an astounding step backwards intellectually and I'm afraid that as a society we've taken that huge leap backwards.
...and now the mob chants in spooky unison: "But it's not provable, it never will be provable"
If the mob stopped spouting their own specious dogma, showing their own Newtonian-based cognitive dissonance and actually RTFA:
"Eric Adelberger and his team at the University of Washington in Seattle, US, have run a series of experiments using a twisting pendulum to measure the short-range strength of gravity, and they have already ruled out extra dimensions larger than a 0.1 millimetre. They are planning a new experiment to probe shorter distances still."
That folks, is science in action. Don't make me go through the checks and balances between experiment and theory.
It stops being science when critical thinking and the scientific process are overruled by non-scientific reasons.
The corollary is that it stops being scientific criticism when the basis of the contrary views also fall prey to non-scientific reasonings. Reasonings such as "I don't see any _______" - fill in the blank with "atoms", "neutrinos", "monkeys giving birth to human babies" - all of which were used as arguments against theories about things we did not yet know and were considered unprovable at the time.
Well, I for one DO NOT welcome the creationist tagging overlords.
Slashdot Mirror
...would also make us the center of it No, it makes everyone think that they're the center of it. Intelligent life in another solar system would also see everything expanding away from them too. we are getting smaller must.....not....take bait..... The cause could be as simple as the tons of space dust that deposit on the earth year, increasing our gravitational density just ever so slowly.While this line of reasoning might better apply to why fatter people are slower, unless you're also going to monkey around with the speed of light AND how the rate of expansion increases the further away we look, local phenomena (such as the micro-increases in "earth mass") aren't going to account for the empirical data.
Blasting physicists (or any scientist) for speculating on unsolved, scientific mysteries is just an astounding step backwards intellectually and I'm afraid that as a society we've taken that huge leap backwards.
If the mob stopped spouting their own specious dogma, showing their own Newtonian-based cognitive dissonance and actually RTFA:
That folks, is science in action. Don't make me go through the checks and balances between experiment and theory.
It stops being science when critical thinking and the scientific process are overruled by non-scientific reasons.
The corollary is that it stops being scientific criticism when the basis of the contrary views also fall prey to non-scientific reasonings. Reasonings such as "I don't see any _______" - fill in the blank with "atoms", "neutrinos", "monkeys giving birth to human babies" - all of which were used as arguments against theories about things we did not yet know and were considered unprovable at the time.
Well, I for one DO NOT welcome the creationist tagging overlords.