If you read, Stephen Hawking's "Brief History of Time", he talks about how the Vatican in the mid 80's had declared that the Big Bang theory conforms to their doctrine and is the preferable sicentific explanation.
The Vatican are wise to do so. Big reason: they screwed up horribly over Galileo, they took way too long to catch on to the whole Darwin thing, and they don't want to look like fools again. The Vatican is therefore keen to show the world that religion can coexist with a rational understanding of the universe.
So: they are interested in scientific research, especially when it treads on ground that used to be exclusively God's. They loved the Big Bang; it's a singular creation event of absolutely enormous glory and power. Relativity and cosmology all come down, in the end, to something not far from Let there be light! No wonder the Vatican are happy. That's a tremendously impressive god, with a fabulous sense of style.
And how about evolution? How much cleverer of God to set up the system such that life can build itself! And on such a simple principle, too. That's the work of not just an intelligent designer, but a competent one. Much better than the clumsy, cack-handed work of a god who has to do everything himself.
Now, if you're an ancient religious organisation, planning to still be around and relevant a thousand years from now, isn't this the way you'd go about it? You don't fight against the discoveries made about the world by reason; Augustine understood that. You incorporate them. You show that they're fully consistent with what you've taught all along - if only you take a larger, more enlightened view of things. A view so much closer to God's, don't you think? And how better to understand God than to understand his works?
... as I understand it, it's not so much about time dilation as about the overall geometry of spacetime.
The original poster seems to have it in his mind that there is a pre-existing space, in which at some point (0,0,0) at time 0 there was an explosion, and from which since then all the matter in the Universe has been receding. It's a common misconception. Certainly he is correct in his view that, if this is the case, then therefore the glow of the Big Bang, as seen by Penzias and Wilson and later by COBE and WMAP, ought to be racing out ahead of us all, a shell of light further out than the shell of matter, and quite invisible to us.
The mistake is in the initial assumptions. The Big Bang is not an explosion IN space, it is an explosion OF space.
Here's a gross oversimplification for purposes of visualisation: let us picture a toy Universe with only one space dimension and one time dimension, containing twelve galaxies. The space dimension curves around on itself, like the face of a clock. For someone living in this Clockland, the directions around the circle constitute Space, while the directions toward or away from the centre constitures Time. The twelve galaxies sit at the twelve hour points.
Now, let's expand this Universe. Enlarge the clock face. What happens? All twelve galaxies stay right where they are in space, right on the hour marks. They have not moved around the clock at all. But, because the face has become larger overall, the distance between them has increased.
An intelligent observer in this Universe would notice the other galaxies receding away from him, and if he were of Einstein-level intellect he might well deduce that this was down to an overall expansion of all of space. Should Clockland also contain a Hubble, they might then realise that by back-tracking the expansion, they could estimate a date at which all twelve galaxies were together at the centre, and at which all points in space were equivalent.
Now, we might ask, which point in Clockland was the location of the Big Bang? Where is the centre of expansion? Nowhere. Or everywhere. From our vantage point we can see that the centre of expansion is the centre of the clock face, that's easy - but that's not a point in Clockland's space. It is, however, a point in the past of every part of Clockland. In a sense, everywhere in Clockland can claim to have been the location of the Big Bang, because at that time, the whole of Clockland was the same place - right at the centre.
And had a flash of light been emitted at some point in Clockland's past, as the hot gas that filled the universe became transparent, it would not escape and run ahead of the galaxies. It would remain within the circle of the world, but would gradually become redshifted, as the expansion of space stretched out its wavelength.
This is something like what's happening with the Big Bang. The galaxies aren't moving significantly through space (though they do drift somewhat); space is expanding between them. No point in the Universe of space is the centre of expansion.
It's an absolute bugger to get your head around, I admit, but that's general relativity for you. I should also add that the Clockland analogy is also potentially misleading: we don't know if the Universe curves back on itself like this, and indeed we have good reason to think it does not. Things work out similarly with an infinite, open universe - but that's even harder to picture:)
I seem to remember a little event called the FIFA (that stands for real football) World Cup final match which draws the attention of a sizable portion of the world's population, attracts fan from many different countries to stadium AND is covered live pretty much anywhere you can find a television.
A match which neither of the main infidel crusader nations are likely to get to. The USA hasn't a prayer, and England will go out in the quarter or semi-finals on penalties. Again. Not that I'm bitter about this or anything.
Unless al-Qa'eda has some quarrel all of a sudden with Brazil, I doubt the World Cup final will be as large a target as the Superbowl.
"It now looks as though the Milky Way is the biggest galaxy in the local Universe, bigger even than Andromeda. It was thought until just a few months ago that it was the other way around."
Could someone explain what the "local universe" is? And how does this compare to the entire universe?
Our local cluster of galaxies - which IIRC consists of three giant spirals and a whole bunch of small cloudlike galaxies - is unimaginatively titled the Local Group.
Hitherto it's been thought that the Andromeda galaxy was the largest in this group, with our own Galaxy about two thirds its size. Now, it seems that's not the case... damn, my childhood astronomy books lie to me again!:)
Dark Matter should hook up with the cosmological constant, they'd make the perfect couple.
Already done; look up 'dark energy'. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've left my dinner in the oven and I think it's burning; I smell phlogiston. Damn, with such delays I'll never get this new suit ready for the Emperor in time...
I was actually wondering, could it be the case that we might not even be able to understand and explain some phonemena simply because our brain power is not adequate. For example the math works out for QM, but I don't think anyone can understand or conceptualize what is happening during entanglement (Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance" and never quite got to accept it). Or when someone is talking about multi-dimensional spaces, it is easy to express it in a mathemtical form (R^6 or C^6), but what does that mean in reality, how would you think about such a space?
You needn't go off with such physical exotica as QM and multidimensional spaces. Conceptually they're weird, but they're relatively simple mathematically. Indeed, that's the great value of such mathematics: it gives us the language with which to accurately describe the unimaginable.
For a problem that seems to be truly beyond human intelligence, try turbulence. The mathematics to describe laminar fluid flows are well developed and understood, have been for centuries... but nobody has got the hang of turbulent flow. Even with supercomputer numerical simulations, you can only get so far. Proper modelling of turbulence has baffled the best minds for hundreds of years, and still we're not really any closer.
If someone is denying access to information, you need to look at why first.
From the Holy Book (OK, the Holy CD-ROM) of Slashdot Philosophy:
It's because in their heart, they imagine themselves your master.
A quotation I always nod wisely along with, agreeing wholeheartedly, while making damn sure to deny all the other factions the information about How To Build Missile Needlejets With Nerve Gas, and plotting to become their master:)
What, you heard it was Digital Rights Management? No, no, no. The purpose of the technology is to take away rights, like the fair use right to copy to an ipod or a mix tape, and to impose restrictions, like how if your subscription to Napster lapses then all your music stops working. It's Digital Restrictions Management.
Use the phrase in your posts, in conversation with non-techies, on IRC. Whenever the subject arises. Spread the meme. Subvert the language. It's Digital Restrictions Management, because they want to Restrict you. They care nothing for your rights.
They are right, but nowhere copyright says that using the material under "Fair use" should be easy.
As a defence of DRM, that would be fine... if the content cartels hadn't managed to get a law passed that makes the exercise of fair use not only difficult, but illegal.
If the content providers want to wrap their products in DRM, that's their own business. But if they do, then the law should side with the citizens exercising their fair use rights: such things as modchips, libdvdcss, or hacked ebook readers should be explicitly protected by law, rather than being banned as they are at present.
... they're a lot more influential than people realise. They do run their own special forces unit, which for no adequately explored reason conducts all its business in Japanese...
I'd certainly be pissed off if I'd just paid $1400 for GSX only to be told this week it's free.
Why? If you thought $1400 was too much for the product, you wouldn't have bought it. Since you bought the product, clearly you thought that what you were getting was worth more than what you were paying for it. So you were happy with the deal you made with VMware. Surely you are not petty enough to begrudge others the better deal that they are now getting?
Though I'm certainly not the religious sort, I'm reminded of the Christian parable of the workers in the vineyard. You made your own deal with VMware, and you were happy with it. What business is it of yours if, since then, they have changed their plans and now offer better deals to others?
I'm sorry? It won't be super destructive? May I ask what you define as a super destructive virus? Overwrting the contents of all MS Office documents (not just deleting them) is extremly devestating.
Sure. But I reckon gradually corrupting small parts of them is still worse. You might only realise you were infected months later, when the quarterly financial figures come out totally whacked, and you'll spend the rest of forever in the company of accountants and auditors trying to track down the correct figures.
Fragging out a file all at once? Then the victim realises something's up, gets the machine fixed, loses some work. Imperceptibly corrupting the file? Victim keeps spreading the virus, and every version of every file he works on is suddenly untrustworthy...
exploits vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system
Remember when these things were computer viruses? Now they're Windows viruses.
Nice to see, that. It puts the idea in the head of Joe Not-a-Geek that 'Windows' is not synonymous with 'computer', and that people not using Windows don't have to put up with this crap.
Here's a little viral propaganda you might like to try spreading. Refer to it always as the war against terror. In conversation. In posts. On IRC. It's the war AGAINST terror. Try to get that alternative phrase into common currency. Get your friends to do the same. Spread the meme throughout/. - there's nearly a million of us, and we're quite talkative, so if we work in concert to subvert the language we can make a difference. Think of it as linguistic Googlebombing.
It's just possible that the acronym of the new phrase, and its appropriateness to the likes of Bush and Blair, will have a subliminal effect on all who hear the phrase. George Bush leads us in the war against terror. TWAT.
I really don't see what Microsoft can do against this.
Perhaps, for compatibility, they could make the UserAgent string pretend to be Mozilla? Put the real identifier in brackets where the obsolete website scripts don't expect it.
Obviously there's no precedent for this kind of shenanigans at all, but it might be worth a try:)
Hang on, didn't it originally get cancelled by the BBC?
Yes, but if the old Doctor Who qualifies as 'cancelled within a couple of seasons' then I think pretty much every show ever made is going to end up a disappointment...
At any given point in the project you should be able to ask yourself, "Will I be making more at the end of this project than I still have to spend to finish it?" If the answer is ever no, the project should be canceled immediately; at least if your goal is maximizing expected value.
There was a Justice League comic I remember from long, long ago. An alien menace of some sort has turned up with a huge fleet of horribly beweaponed starships. They mean to conquer the earth, enslave all humanity, plunder natural resources, etc. and to do so for a profit. The fleet commander's robotic adjutant turns up from time to time to give him a projection on the profits expected from the mission.
Up go our bold heroes, the lot of 'em, and take on this fearsome force. Cue enormous space battle. The League pound on these ships and do some considerable damage, but it's clear enough the aliens are winning, that the heroes are doomed if things continue.
But meanwhile, the robot is factoring in the projected costs of repairs to the fleet. Every profit projection is a little lower. So:
Slashdot Mirror
The Vatican are wise to do so. Big reason: they screwed up horribly over Galileo, they took way too long to catch on to the whole Darwin thing, and they don't want to look like fools again. The Vatican is therefore keen to show the world that religion can coexist with a rational understanding of the universe.
So: they are interested in scientific research, especially when it treads on ground that used to be exclusively God's. They loved the Big Bang; it's a singular creation event of absolutely enormous glory and power. Relativity and cosmology all come down, in the end, to something not far from Let there be light! No wonder the Vatican are happy. That's a tremendously impressive god, with a fabulous sense of style.
And how about evolution? How much cleverer of God to set up the system such that life can build itself! And on such a simple principle, too. That's the work of not just an intelligent designer, but a competent one. Much better than the clumsy, cack-handed work of a god who has to do everything himself.
Now, if you're an ancient religious organisation, planning to still be around and relevant a thousand years from now, isn't this the way you'd go about it? You don't fight against the discoveries made about the world by reason; Augustine understood that. You incorporate them. You show that they're fully consistent with what you've taught all along - if only you take a larger, more enlightened view of things. A view so much closer to God's, don't you think? And how better to understand God than to understand his works?
The original poster seems to have it in his mind that there is a pre-existing space, in which at some point (0,0,0) at time 0 there was an explosion, and from which since then all the matter in the Universe has been receding. It's a common misconception. Certainly he is correct in his view that, if this is the case, then therefore the glow of the Big Bang, as seen by Penzias and Wilson and later by COBE and WMAP, ought to be racing out ahead of us all, a shell of light further out than the shell of matter, and quite invisible to us.
The mistake is in the initial assumptions. The Big Bang is not an explosion IN space, it is an explosion OF space.
Here's a gross oversimplification for purposes of visualisation: let us picture a toy Universe with only one space dimension and one time dimension, containing twelve galaxies. The space dimension curves around on itself, like the face of a clock. For someone living in this Clockland, the directions around the circle constitute Space, while the directions toward or away from the centre constitures Time. The twelve galaxies sit at the twelve hour points.
Now, let's expand this Universe. Enlarge the clock face. What happens? All twelve galaxies stay right where they are in space, right on the hour marks. They have not moved around the clock at all. But, because the face has become larger overall, the distance between them has increased.
An intelligent observer in this Universe would notice the other galaxies receding away from him, and if he were of Einstein-level intellect he might well deduce that this was down to an overall expansion of all of space. Should Clockland also contain a Hubble, they might then realise that by back-tracking the expansion, they could estimate a date at which all twelve galaxies were together at the centre, and at which all points in space were equivalent.
Now, we might ask, which point in Clockland was the location of the Big Bang? Where is the centre of expansion? Nowhere. Or everywhere. From our vantage point we can see that the centre of expansion is the centre of the clock face, that's easy - but that's not a point in Clockland's space. It is, however, a point in the past of every part of Clockland. In a sense, everywhere in Clockland can claim to have been the location of the Big Bang, because at that time, the whole of Clockland was the same place - right at the centre.
And had a flash of light been emitted at some point in Clockland's past, as the hot gas that filled the universe became transparent, it would not escape and run ahead of the galaxies. It would remain within the circle of the world, but would gradually become redshifted, as the expansion of space stretched out its wavelength.
This is something like what's happening with the Big Bang. The galaxies aren't moving significantly through space (though they do drift somewhat); space is expanding between them. No point in the Universe of space is the centre of expansion.
It's an absolute bugger to get your head around, I admit, but that's general relativity for you. I should also add that the Clockland analogy is also potentially misleading: we don't know if the Universe curves back on itself like this, and indeed we have good reason to think it does not. Things work out similarly with an infinite, open universe - but that's even harder to picture :)
Most likely a country sitting on top of a large deposit of some very dark - indeed, quite black - matter. Preferably of the liquid, flammable variety.
I mean, why break the habit of a lifetime?
A match which neither of the main infidel crusader nations are likely to get to. The USA hasn't a prayer, and England will go out in the quarter or semi-finals on penalties. Again. Not that I'm bitter about this or anything.
Unless al-Qa'eda has some quarrel all of a sudden with Brazil, I doubt the World Cup final will be as large a target as the Superbowl.
More to the point, I don't recall the Birmingham Six being terrorists.
Could someone explain what the "local universe" is? And how does this compare to the entire universe?
Our local cluster of galaxies - which IIRC consists of three giant spirals and a whole bunch of small cloudlike galaxies - is unimaginatively titled the Local Group.
Hitherto it's been thought that the Andromeda galaxy was the largest in this group, with our own Galaxy about two thirds its size. Now, it seems that's not the case... damn, my childhood astronomy books lie to me again! :)
Already done; look up 'dark energy'. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've left my dinner in the oven and I think it's burning; I smell phlogiston. Damn, with such delays I'll never get this new suit ready for the Emperor in time...
You needn't go off with such physical exotica as QM and multidimensional spaces. Conceptually they're weird, but they're relatively simple mathematically. Indeed, that's the great value of such mathematics: it gives us the language with which to accurately describe the unimaginable.
For a problem that seems to be truly beyond human intelligence, try turbulence. The mathematics to describe laminar fluid flows are well developed and understood, have been for centuries... but nobody has got the hang of turbulent flow. Even with supercomputer numerical simulations, you can only get so far. Proper modelling of turbulence has baffled the best minds for hundreds of years, and still we're not really any closer.
What joke? I do the same. You'd be amazed at the number of halfling girls I've gone through over the last few years on NWN...
* rereads last sentence uneasily *
Um. Er. You'd be amazed at the number of halfling girls I've played as over the last few years on NWN. Yeah. That's better. Much better.
From the Holy Book (OK, the Holy CD-ROM) of Slashdot Philosophy:
It's because in their heart, they imagine themselves your master.
A quotation I always nod wisely along with, agreeing wholeheartedly, while making damn sure to deny all the other factions the information about How To Build Missile Needlejets With Nerve Gas, and plotting to become their master :)
Do your bit for information freedom.
DRM stands for Digital Restrictions Management.
What, you heard it was Digital Rights Management? No, no, no. The purpose of the technology is to take away rights, like the fair use right to copy to an ipod or a mix tape, and to impose restrictions, like how if your subscription to Napster lapses then all your music stops working. It's Digital Restrictions Management.
Use the phrase in your posts, in conversation with non-techies, on IRC. Whenever the subject arises. Spread the meme. Subvert the language. It's Digital Restrictions Management, because they want to Restrict you. They care nothing for your rights.
As a defence of DRM, that would be fine... if the content cartels hadn't managed to get a law passed that makes the exercise of fair use not only difficult, but illegal.
If the content providers want to wrap their products in DRM, that's their own business. But if they do, then the law should side with the citizens exercising their fair use rights: such things as modchips, libdvdcss, or hacked ebook readers should be explicitly protected by law, rather than being banned as they are at present.
... they're a lot more influential than people realise. They do run their own special forces unit, which for no adequately explored reason conducts all its business in Japanese...
Why? If you thought $1400 was too much for the product, you wouldn't have bought it. Since you bought the product, clearly you thought that what you were getting was worth more than what you were paying for it. So you were happy with the deal you made with VMware. Surely you are not petty enough to begrudge others the better deal that they are now getting?
Though I'm certainly not the religious sort, I'm reminded of the Christian parable of the workers in the vineyard. You made your own deal with VMware, and you were happy with it. What business is it of yours if, since then, they have changed their plans and now offer better deals to others?
Easy. The enemy's gate is down.
Remember, they're Americans. It's called Stupid Design.
Sure. But I reckon gradually corrupting small parts of them is still worse. You might only realise you were infected months later, when the quarterly financial figures come out totally whacked, and you'll spend the rest of forever in the company of accountants and auditors trying to track down the correct figures.
Fragging out a file all at once? Then the victim realises something's up, gets the machine fixed, loses some work. Imperceptibly corrupting the file? Victim keeps spreading the virus, and every version of every file he works on is suddenly untrustworthy...
Remember when these things were computer viruses? Now they're Windows viruses.
Nice to see, that. It puts the idea in the head of Joe Not-a-Geek that 'Windows' is not synonymous with 'computer', and that people not using Windows don't have to put up with this crap.
Here's a little viral propaganda you might like to try spreading. Refer to it always as the war against terror. In conversation. In posts. On IRC. It's the war AGAINST terror. Try to get that alternative phrase into common currency. Get your friends to do the same. Spread the meme throughout /. - there's nearly a million of us, and we're quite talkative, so if we work in concert to subvert the language we can make a difference. Think of it as linguistic Googlebombing.
It's just possible that the acronym of the new phrase, and its appropriateness to the likes of Bush and Blair, will have a subliminal effect on all who hear the phrase. George Bush leads us in the war against terror. TWAT.
Yeah, but where does that leave us Spinal Tap fans?
Good call, but I think European iRiver players have a volume limiter in firmware - some EU regulation or other to prevent hearing damage.
So... I think I'll be suing Rockbox for removing that limitation and letting me pump ska into my ears without Brussels' interference ;)
Perhaps, for compatibility, they could make the UserAgent string pretend to be Mozilla? Put the real identifier in brackets where the obsolete website scripts don't expect it.
Obviously there's no precedent for this kind of shenanigans at all, but it might be worth a try :)
Yes, but if the old Doctor Who qualifies as 'cancelled within a couple of seasons' then I think pretty much every show ever made is going to end up a disappointment...
There was a Justice League comic I remember from long, long ago. An alien menace of some sort has turned up with a huge fleet of horribly beweaponed starships. They mean to conquer the earth, enslave all humanity, plunder natural resources, etc. and to do so for a profit. The fleet commander's robotic adjutant turns up from time to time to give him a projection on the profits expected from the mission.
Up go our bold heroes, the lot of 'em, and take on this fearsome force. Cue enormous space battle. The League pound on these ships and do some considerable damage, but it's clear enough the aliens are winning, that the heroes are doomed if things continue.
But meanwhile, the robot is factoring in the projected costs of repairs to the fleet. Every profit projection is a little lower. So:
"Projected profit: 8444000 credits."
"Projected profit: 6214330 credits."
"Projected profit: 2770450 credits."
"Projected profit: 540800 credits."
"Projected loss: 10 credits."
And suddenly, the entire fleet vanishes into hyperspace all at once, leaving behind a party of very bewildered superheroes...
No signs of Doctor Who getting cancelled any time soon. Second season just about done filming, I believe, and plans being laid for the third.
Last time around, it lasted for 26 :)