Any noticable change in the dog's personalities? Or perhaps appetites? Any develop a taste for BRAAAINS? Dammit these are things you don't just mess without some precautions!
From TFA: "Do they have permission from the person who wrote the lectures to share it..."
Why would this be any different than taping a lecture and passing the tape around to those who didn't go to the class. Okay, so you can e-mail or post to a website instead of pass physical media. But this is nothing (conceptually) different than posting class notes on-line.
Part zero - Do the metric conversion. All measurements and engineering units should be displayed in metric. The rest of the world just doesn't do as well with rods per hogshead.
Part one - Get rid of all hardcoded strings. Anytime you need to display a string, read it from a config file (numbers excepted of course). This part can be done in english. Make sure that the config file, and the utility to read it, understands unicode.
An easy way to make sure that you get every string is to (temporariliy) tag all strings with some known garbage string. Doesn't matter what the garbage string is so long as it will never appear in the finished app. In other words, if a hardcoded string in the application says "Connect", then change the app to read a string from the config file that says "baloney-Connect". As you are using the app, every string should be prefaced by "baloney-" and if not, then you've forgotten it and need to put it in to the config file.
When you are done, you will have an app that gets all UI strings from a unicode file.
Part two - Change the contents of the file from english to Japanese via hiragana and katakana. Don't try for the proper kanji just yet. Run it past some (native Japanese-speaking) testers to get the vocabulary and the feel down.
Part two and a half - Finally ask several native Japanese speakers for the proper kanji. This is a tough part for someone who learned Japanese in school (or at least it is for me). Don't necessarily trust yourself to it. You could inadvertantly say something along the "all your base..." lines.
Part three (optional) - Do try to move them from GPIB. It's real a pain, cables can only go 3 feet, data rates are low, and the NI-DAQ drivers can be... obscure. At least save a bit of suffering and switch to LabVIEW.
Currently, purified He-3 can cost up to about $1M per kg (depending on the level of refinement). Some studies were done at Univ. of Wisc. Madison regarding lunar He-3 resource utilization. With our current level of technology, lunar He-3 can be mined, refined and returned to earth for about.... (wait for it).... $1M per kg.
Unfortunately, we in the aerospace industry no longer believe a president when they outline such a plan -- as nearly every president has done since Nixon. But (with apologies to Tom Wolfe), no bucks, no Buck Rogers.
A couple of things: as I said in response to the previous article, efficiency is negligible at this point. A few hundred watts of power are required to produce less than one watt of heat. Though this process may be scaled up, leading to greater efficiency, there is an issue with the experimental set-up needing to be cold. The deuterated acetone needs to be kept around 30 deg. F for best bubbling. Higher temperatures destroy the effect.
For commercial power generation, the heat generated will have to be removed fast enough to allow the acetone to remain cool. There are ways of doing this, though none are easy or particularly efficient. Thermal diodes, heat pipes and thermoelectric heat pumps spring to mind.
Right now, this is at the level of laboratory curiosity, though one that shows potential. Bottom line: Mr. Fusion is still a long way away.
- Jim
I have found a remarkable solution to this puzzle
on
Decrypting Kryptos
·
· Score: 1
but unfortunately the margin of this post is too small to contain it.
It's not just a matter of creating the bubbles. By adding enough ultrasonic energy of the proper frequency, one can create bubbles in anything. The thing is that the bubbles have to collapse with a particular velocity. This is dependant on the temperature of the fluid. And, unfortunately, colder is better in this case. Yes, thermodynamic efficiency requires high temperatures. Yes, there are ways of extracting useful energy from small temperature differences (rubber-band heat engines, thermocouples, etc.) but all are low efficiency. There are methods of concentrating waste heat to increase the thermodynamic efficiency (heat-diodes), but at this stage in the research, the only goal is to increse the fusion yield. Power extraction considerations are still a long way off.
Worked on this project for a bit. Yes, it does release more energy that it takes to start -- in theory. In the lab, you need about 100 watts of power to get a few milliwatts of heat. Bear in mind that this technology is in its infancy and may scale upward to the net-gain level. BUT due to temperature constraints in the apparatus (it likes cold), it will be difficult to get this up to power-generation level.
There's only one real reason worth mentioning. Yes, we have learned a lot from space research. Everything from turbomachinery to medical-grade polymers owes a debt to NASA and the basic research that they perform. But as for the space part... it is a near-certainty (statistically speaking) that someday something huge (> 10km accross) will try to smack into the earth. It could be next month, or next year or not for 1000 years - we don't really know. When it happens, we better know how to detect it, move it, blow it up or whatever because right now we really have no clue. And there is no Bruce Willis with a band of drillers, a nuke and a couple of military space shuttles.
As a former (hot) fusion researcher, I have to comment on this. No one that I have worked with has been dismissive of cold fusion efforts. Highly skeptical, yes. But not dismissive. The prevailing thought is that calorimeters can lie -- there can be unforseen chemical reactions at work. But if you can measure neutrons of appropriate energy (or other fusion products, depending on the reactants) then some nuclear reaction must be taking place.
That said, I don't believe that any hot fusion scientist fully trusts the methods of the cold fusion researchers. The cold fusion concepts don't mesh very well with the proven hot fusion body of knowledge. BUT - show me some neutrons and I'll consider almost anything.
Oh, and having also worked on sono-fusion, yes there was (and still is) a lot of controversy simply because the neutron yields were so low (little above background). But again, that controversy is giving way as more data is taken.
for 5-ish years. Take what you think you want to make per year as a "normal", chop off the thousands and use that as your hourly rate: you want to make $50K, charge $50 per hour. This will be slightly off the going rate depending on your location, but will be in the ballpark. If you're in CA, NY NY or DC, double that. And remember that you will need to save roughly half of what you make to pay taxes.
And some advice: For cheap insurance, check out your professional society (IEEE, ACM, whatever). They usually get great rates for independants.
Keep excellent records of the time you spend. It may seem anal, but no points lost for over-documentation.
Spend at least one hour per day (off their clock) looking for the next gig. When your current project is done, it's done and they will have no qualms about letting you go fast.
And finally, if you want the long-term stability or a regular job, drop the hourly rate (slightly) and make sure that every week they know how invaluable you are. And don't sow bad karma by not commenting or documenting or writing unclean code. After all, they might let you go and then hire me to fix it...
Tens of megajoules of energy applied to a small target for a few nanoseconds. How can this not be fun!? That said, this is not being looked at for practical purposes right now. The point is for fundamental research into an ill-understood region of plasma physics. At this point, the best outcome of their experiments would be to identify the plasma instabilities in this regime and correct for them. Future spin-offs would be in terrestrial energy production and plasma or fusion space propulsion, both of which don't scale well outside of the lab due to (you guessed it) instabilities in the plasma. Oh, yeah. It also resembles a nuclear weapon detonation, kinda. Of course advances in plasma physics go to weapons research and vice versa.
Wow, didn't realize that the off-the-top-of-my-head figures and over-simplified explanation would generate so much traffic. To further explain some points:
Yes, magnetic confinement is very lossy and low-density. Except in the case of antimatter, its probably not worth the trouble. Though a prior poster had an interesting idea about magnetic confinement in space - kinda like an M2P2 (mini-magnetospheric plasma propulsion - google it for more info) thing.
As for my choice of numbers - with a bit of work, one can come up with fuels that are as high in energy density if not higher. My original numbers were pulled from: Space Propulsion Analysis and Design by R. Humble, et al; and Fusion Research by Dolan. Both are excellent references.
For more interesting information along the same lines, check: Advanced Energetics for Aeronautical Applications by D. Alexander. It's a NASA paper (NASA/CR-2003-212169) and should be available from the Langley Technical Reports Server.
Storing hydrogen ions is a *huge* problem as you can well imagine. Some thoughts include magnetic confinement (probably more trouble than its worth) or as frozen, monoatomic hydrogen snow in a bath of liquid helium (also ranking in the "yeah, right" category). NASA (formerly Lewis) Glenn Research Center has done some on the hydrogen snow idea, but hasn't gotten very far.
Polymeric nitrogen will (hopefully) be stable once released from captivity. No one knows for sure though...
Fuel as in energy storage, not energy generation. Fossil fuels give net energy (but not by much) because they naturally exist in an unstable state. Nitrogen naturally occurs in its most stable state, so no net energy by burning N2. But put it into polymeric form and you have a strained lattice storing tons of energy, read: rocket fuel. As a comparison:
You're thinking of (god why do I know this?) a short-lived 70's tv series called "Quark". The main characters flew around in a space garbage truck, picking up monsterous trash bags of orbital debris. Prominant characters were a set of clones and a guy who was an intelligent houseplant...
a company called GH, LLC. The specialize in converting educational materials from traditional sources into raised print -- braille text and raised lines for diagrams. This is for totally blind individuals (obviously) but should serve your child as they would be able to feel raised maps. Note that I am not affiliated with them - just knew some people who worked there.
Another great resource is the Alliance for Technology Access. They have directories of companies that create technologies for handicapped individuals.
OK, that's a lot to process but here goes:
> The universe is roughly a 4D sphere...
Actually from the COBE experiments and the large scale structure of the universe (galactic superclusters and all), the universe is very close to flat, hyperspatially speaking. As of yet, no one knows how this came to be or what it means.
>...sphere radius was nearing zero and is since then expanding
True enough, if you substitute "shape" for "sphere". It's almost meaningless to discuss the shape of the singularity at the big bang. It is, after all, a (hyperdimensional) point with no shape. The shape since the big bang is unknown, but probably some hyperspheric section.
> This expansion implies an expansion of the surface...
>...we can see matter moving away for whichever reason...
Both statements are substantially true. It is even possible for different regions of space to expand at different rates (though they don't seem to be doing that now). It is also possible for the expansion to occur faster than the speed of light. As you said, it's not really matter that's moving. Current thought is that the universe underwent a period of FTL expansion shortly after the big bang. This is (appropriately enough) called the "inflationary period". After a few hundred thousand or so years of this, the expansion rate slowed to more modest levels. BUT - the expansion rate is now increasing! No one is sure why...
> (light mirror thoughts)
You are actually correct in your assessment. It is possible that, at some time in the past and in some part of the universe, the hyperradius of space time was small enough for a beam of light to "catch itself". There is a very good reason that this didn't happen. Unfortunately, were not real sure of that reason. Current thought is that gravity, vaccum fluctuations, dark matter or just plain stuff got in the way and caused the light to scatter. Another thought is that the shape of the early universe was sufficiently "bizarre" to prevent such closed paths from occuring.
That said, there is one place where this effect does occur. Around a black hole, there is a hypothetical surface called the light sphere, around which light can be captured and made to orbit the black hole forever. As the gravity of a black hole twists space-time into a nasty mess (technical term), this is physically identical to your smaller space time idea.
>... two kind of incoming lights which must be somthing specal to see: expanding light versus contracting light.
Not sure what you mean by this. It is possible for an optical wavefront to converge and diverge. If this is what you mean, then we already have good examples. A black hole (or other massive object) can form a gravitational lens. If it is directly in front of a star, and appropriately aligned with earth, there may be multiple images of the star, or even a ring of light around the massive object. These are caused by the optical wavefronts bending around the object. In a sense, expanding and contracting the image of the star behind it. And yes, such pictures are really neat to see.
>...couldn't a 95% map of the universe give us some definite clues about its very shape?
That's the plan! This is why the COBE satellites were launched and why the Hubble is still kept so busy. As I mentioned though, the universe still looks flat.
Anyway, your ideas are good. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you and feel free to send e-mail to me at: j_cavera@yaDONTEVENTHINKOFSPAMMINGhoo.com
This is not a paradox, rather just a way of looking at it that is different than what you are used to. The universe at the beginning of time, existed as a point (more or less) that expanded (somehow) into what we see today. As you look out into the universe, you also look back in time. The farther back you go, the smaller the universe was.
By logic, if you could look all the way back to the big bang itself, you would see a point of light. And this is where your percieved paradox occurs. But this is actually the correct way of thinking about it, because time = distance. So where does that point lie? Everywhere, at a distance of 15 billion (give or take) light-years from us! So no matter where you look, you see a "part of that point" from 15 billion years ago.
OK, this is an oversimplification as the universe was opaque for some time after the big bang, but you get the idea. Here's a potentially useful (though not perfectly accurate) analogy. Go inside a large spherical room with white walls. Put a bright light bulb at the center (big-bang). The walls are evenly illuminated because no matter which way you look, your line of sight intersects with some of the rays of the bulb, that seem to come to you from all around you.
In fact, if you had a good enough detector, you could determine the shape of the bulb's filament by irregularities in the light from the walls. This is what the cosmic background explorer (COBE) missions are about.
Slashdot Mirror
Any noticable change in the dog's personalities? Or perhaps appetites? Any develop a taste for BRAAAINS? Dammit these are things you don't just mess without some precautions!
From TFA: "Do they have permission from the person who wrote the lectures to share it..."
Why would this be any different than taping a lecture and passing the tape around to those who didn't go to the class. Okay, so you can e-mail or post to a website instead of pass physical media. But this is nothing (conceptually) different than posting class notes on-line.
Oh, and FP.
Part zero - Do the metric conversion. All measurements and engineering units should be displayed in metric. The rest of the world just doesn't do as well with rods per hogshead.
Part one - Get rid of all hardcoded strings. Anytime you need to display a string, read it from a config file (numbers excepted of course). This part can be done in english. Make sure that the config file, and the utility to read it, understands unicode.
An easy way to make sure that you get every string is to (temporariliy) tag all strings with some known garbage string. Doesn't matter what the garbage string is so long as it will never appear in the finished app. In other words, if a hardcoded string in the application says "Connect", then change the app to read a string from the config file that says "baloney-Connect". As you are using the app, every string should be prefaced by "baloney-" and if not, then you've forgotten it and need to put it in to the config file.
When you are done, you will have an app that gets all UI strings from a unicode file.
Part two - Change the contents of the file from english to Japanese via hiragana and katakana. Don't try for the proper kanji just yet. Run it past some (native Japanese-speaking) testers to get the vocabulary and the feel down.
Part two and a half - Finally ask several native Japanese speakers for the proper kanji. This is a tough part for someone who learned Japanese in school (or at least it is for me). Don't necessarily trust yourself to it. You could inadvertantly say something along the "all your base..." lines.
Part three (optional) - Do try to move them from GPIB. It's real a pain, cables can only go 3 feet, data rates are low, and the NI-DAQ drivers can be... obscure. At least save a bit of suffering and switch to LabVIEW.
- Jim
Currently, purified He-3 can cost up to about $1M per kg (depending on the level of refinement). Some studies were done at Univ. of Wisc. Madison regarding lunar He-3 resource utilization. With our current level of technology, lunar He-3 can be mined, refined and returned to earth for about .... (wait for it) .... $1M per kg.
- Jim
I've had a Personal LaserWriter since 1990 and it still runs great. Only 300 dpi though, but good enough for most tasks. Oh, and RS-422 of course.
On a possibly related note - anyone need a good LaserWriter?
- Jim
For now at least. Until they merge into Boeheed.
Unfortunately, we in the aerospace industry no longer believe a president when they outline such a plan -- as nearly every president has done since Nixon. But (with apologies to Tom Wolfe), no bucks, no Buck Rogers.
- Jim
A couple of things: as I said in response to the previous article, efficiency is negligible at this point. A few hundred watts of power are required to produce less than one watt of heat. Though this process may be scaled up, leading to greater efficiency, there is an issue with the experimental set-up needing to be cold. The deuterated acetone needs to be kept around 30 deg. F for best bubbling. Higher temperatures destroy the effect.
For commercial power generation, the heat generated will have to be removed fast enough to allow the acetone to remain cool. There are ways of doing this, though none are easy or particularly efficient. Thermal diodes, heat pipes and thermoelectric heat pumps spring to mind.
Right now, this is at the level of laboratory curiosity, though one that shows potential. Bottom line: Mr. Fusion is still a long way away.
- Jim
but unfortunately the margin of this post is too small to contain it.
- Jim
It's not just a matter of creating the bubbles. By adding enough ultrasonic energy of the proper frequency, one can create bubbles in anything. The thing is that the bubbles have to collapse with a particular velocity. This is dependant on the temperature of the fluid. And, unfortunately, colder is better in this case. Yes, thermodynamic efficiency requires high temperatures. Yes, there are ways of extracting useful energy from small temperature differences (rubber-band heat engines, thermocouples, etc.) but all are low efficiency. There are methods of concentrating waste heat to increase the thermodynamic efficiency (heat-diodes), but at this stage in the research, the only goal is to increse the fusion yield. Power extraction considerations are still a long way off.
- Jim
Worked on this project for a bit. Yes, it does release more energy that it takes to start -- in theory. In the lab, you need about 100 watts of power to get a few milliwatts of heat. Bear in mind that this technology is in its infancy and may scale upward to the net-gain level. BUT due to temperature constraints in the apparatus (it likes cold), it will be difficult to get this up to power-generation level.
- Jim
There's only one real reason worth mentioning. Yes, we have learned a lot from space research. Everything from turbomachinery to medical-grade polymers owes a debt to NASA and the basic research that they perform. But as for the space part... it is a near-certainty (statistically speaking) that someday something huge (> 10km accross) will try to smack into the earth. It could be next month, or next year or not for 1000 years - we don't really know. When it happens, we better know how to detect it, move it, blow it up or whatever because right now we really have no clue. And there is no Bruce Willis with a band of drillers, a nuke and a couple of military space shuttles.
...though I would hope for more capacity in the iShuffle. Anyone have pics? (FP!) - J
As a former (hot) fusion researcher, I have to comment on this. No one that I have worked with has been dismissive of cold fusion efforts. Highly skeptical, yes. But not dismissive. The prevailing thought is that calorimeters can lie -- there can be unforseen chemical reactions at work. But if you can measure neutrons of appropriate energy (or other fusion products, depending on the reactants) then some nuclear reaction must be taking place.
That said, I don't believe that any hot fusion scientist fully trusts the methods of the cold fusion researchers. The cold fusion concepts don't mesh very well with the proven hot fusion body of knowledge. BUT - show me some neutrons and I'll consider almost anything.
Oh, and having also worked on sono-fusion, yes there was (and still is) a lot of controversy simply because the neutron yields were so low (little above background). But again, that controversy is giving way as more data is taken.
- Jim
for 5-ish years. Take what you think you want to make per year as a "normal", chop off the thousands and use that as your hourly rate: you want to make $50K, charge $50 per hour. This will be slightly off the going rate depending on your location, but will be in the ballpark. If you're in CA, NY NY or DC, double that. And remember that you will need to save roughly half of what you make to pay taxes.
And some advice: For cheap insurance, check out your professional society (IEEE, ACM, whatever). They usually get great rates for independants.
Keep excellent records of the time you spend. It may seem anal, but no points lost for over-documentation.
Spend at least one hour per day (off their clock) looking for the next gig. When your current project is done, it's done and they will have no qualms about letting you go fast.
And finally, if you want the long-term stability or a regular job, drop the hourly rate (slightly) and make sure that every week they know how invaluable you are. And don't sow bad karma by not commenting or documenting or writing unclean code. After all, they might let you go and then hire me to fix it...
Good luck.
- Jim
Tens of megajoules of energy applied to a small target for a few nanoseconds. How can this not be fun!? That said, this is not being looked at for practical purposes right now. The point is for fundamental research into an ill-understood region of plasma physics. At this point, the best outcome of their experiments would be to identify the plasma instabilities in this regime and correct for them. Future spin-offs would be in terrestrial energy production and plasma or fusion space propulsion, both of which don't scale well outside of the lab due to (you guessed it) instabilities in the plasma. Oh, yeah. It also resembles a nuclear weapon detonation, kinda. Of course advances in plasma physics go to weapons research and vice versa.
Wow, didn't realize that the off-the-top-of-my-head figures and over-simplified explanation would generate so much traffic. To further explain some points:
Yes, magnetic confinement is very lossy and low-density. Except in the case of antimatter, its probably not worth the trouble. Though a prior poster had an interesting idea about magnetic confinement in space - kinda like an M2P2 (mini-magnetospheric plasma propulsion - google it for more info) thing.
As for my choice of numbers - with a bit of work, one can come up with fuels that are as high in energy density if not higher. My original numbers were pulled from: Space Propulsion Analysis and Design by R. Humble, et al; and Fusion Research by Dolan. Both are excellent references.
For more interesting information along the same lines, check: Advanced Energetics for Aeronautical Applications by D. Alexander. It's a NASA paper (NASA/CR-2003-212169) and should be available from the Langley Technical Reports Server.
Storing hydrogen ions is a *huge* problem as you can well imagine. Some thoughts include magnetic confinement (probably more trouble than its worth) or as frozen, monoatomic hydrogen snow in a bath of liquid helium (also ranking in the "yeah, right" category). NASA (formerly Lewis) Glenn Research Center has done some on the hydrogen snow idea, but hasn't gotten very far.
...
Polymeric nitrogen will (hopefully) be stable once released from captivity. No one knows for sure though
Fuel as in energy storage, not energy generation. Fossil fuels give net energy (but not by much) because they naturally exist in an unstable state. Nitrogen naturally occurs in its most stable state, so no net energy by burning N2. But put it into polymeric form and you have a strained lattice storing tons of energy, read: rocket fuel. As a comparison:
2 H2 + 02 -> 2 H20 12.6 MJ/kg
N4 -> 2 N2 60 MJ/kg (est.)
Other, even higher energy (non-nuclear) fuels include:
Metallic Hydrogen: 2 H(s) -> H2(g) 138 MJ/kg
Free-Radical Hydrogen: H + H -> H2 104 MJ/kg
Metastable Helium: He* -> He 480 MJ/kg
Ionic Hydrogen: H(+) + H(-) -> H2 835 MJ/kg
As much fun as you can have without going nuclear...
You're thinking of (god why do I know this?) a short-lived 70's tv series called "Quark". The main characters flew around in a space garbage truck, picking up monsterous trash bags of orbital debris. Prominant characters were a set of clones and a guy who was an intelligent houseplant...
Before you ask: No, I have no life.
a company called GH, LLC. The specialize in converting educational materials from traditional sources into raised print -- braille text and raised lines for diagrams. This is for totally blind individuals (obviously) but should serve your child as they would be able to feel raised maps. Note that I am not affiliated with them - just knew some people who worked there.
Another great resource is the Alliance for Technology Access. They have directories of companies that create technologies for handicapped individuals.
Good luck.
OK, that's a lot to process but here goes: > The universe is roughly a 4D sphere... Actually from the COBE experiments and the large scale structure of the universe (galactic superclusters and all), the universe is very close to flat, hyperspatially speaking. As of yet, no one knows how this came to be or what it means. > ...sphere radius was nearing zero and is since then expanding
True enough, if you substitute "shape" for "sphere". It's almost meaningless to discuss the shape of the singularity at the big bang. It is, after all, a (hyperdimensional) point with no shape. The shape since the big bang is unknown, but probably some hyperspheric section.
> This expansion implies an expansion of the surface...
> ...we can see matter moving away for whichever reason...
Both statements are substantially true. It is even possible for different regions of space to expand at different rates (though they don't seem to be doing that now). It is also possible for the expansion to occur faster than the speed of light. As you said, it's not really matter that's moving. Current thought is that the universe underwent a period of FTL expansion shortly after the big bang. This is (appropriately enough) called the "inflationary period". After a few hundred thousand or so years of this, the expansion rate slowed to more modest levels. BUT - the expansion rate is now increasing! No one is sure why...
> (light mirror thoughts)
You are actually correct in your assessment. It is possible that, at some time in the past and in some part of the universe, the hyperradius of space time was small enough for a beam of light to "catch itself". There is a very good reason that this didn't happen. Unfortunately, were not real sure of that reason. Current thought is that gravity, vaccum fluctuations, dark matter or just plain stuff got in the way and caused the light to scatter. Another thought is that the shape of the early universe was sufficiently "bizarre" to prevent such closed paths from occuring.
That said, there is one place where this effect does occur. Around a black hole, there is a hypothetical surface called the light sphere, around which light can be captured and made to orbit the black hole forever. As the gravity of a black hole twists space-time into a nasty mess (technical term), this is physically identical to your smaller space time idea.
> ... two kind of incoming lights which must be somthing specal to see: expanding light versus contracting light.
Not sure what you mean by this. It is possible for an optical wavefront to converge and diverge. If this is what you mean, then we already have good examples. A black hole (or other massive object) can form a gravitational lens. If it is directly in front of a star, and appropriately aligned with earth, there may be multiple images of the star, or even a ring of light around the massive object. These are caused by the optical wavefronts bending around the object. In a sense, expanding and contracting the image of the star behind it. And yes, such pictures are really neat to see.
> ...couldn't a 95% map of the universe give us some definite clues about its very shape?
That's the plan! This is why the COBE satellites were launched and why the Hubble is still kept so busy. As I mentioned though, the universe still looks flat.
Anyway, your ideas are good. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you and feel free to send e-mail to me at: j_cavera@yaDONTEVENTHINKOFSPAMMINGhoo.com
Now my linux box can wreck a nice beach!
This is not a paradox, rather just a way of looking at it that is different than what you are used to. The universe at the beginning of time, existed as a point (more or less) that expanded (somehow) into what we see today. As you look out into the universe, you also look back in time. The farther back you go, the smaller the universe was.
By logic, if you could look all the way back to the big bang itself, you would see a point of light. And this is where your percieved paradox occurs. But this is actually the correct way of thinking about it, because time = distance. So where does that point lie? Everywhere, at a distance of 15 billion (give or take) light-years from us! So no matter where you look, you see a "part of that point" from 15 billion years ago.
OK, this is an oversimplification as the universe was opaque for some time after the big bang, but you get the idea. Here's a potentially useful (though not perfectly accurate) analogy. Go inside a large spherical room with white walls. Put a bright light bulb at the center (big-bang). The walls are evenly illuminated because no matter which way you look, your line of sight intersects with some of the rays of the bulb, that seem to come to you from all around you.
In fact, if you had a good enough detector, you could determine the shape of the bulb's filament by irregularities in the light from the walls. This is what the cosmic background explorer (COBE) missions are about.
BTW, yes IAAP (I am a physicist).
... they seem to know more than I do. And I'm a professional programmer. Oh, wait... I think I just answered my own comment...