That was actually one early theory about dark matter, but it's since been discarded--for instance, we've since mapped the distribution of dark matter, and it is both rather diffuse and not in locations where one would expect to find black holes. Sorry, it's not that simple.
Better yet, how about its mass compared to the Moon, and how many AU is the Moon from the Earth?
Think of it this way:
Most black holes are for obvious reasons of stellar mass, i.e, less than 20 times the mass of our sun. 20 AU doesn't even get you out of this star system--Pluto is 30 AU or so out. So the contribution of those black holes is going to be completely swamped by the sun.
The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way is thought to be in the neighborhood of a 10^6 solar masses; the galactic center lies about 2x10^9 AU in the general direction of Sagittarius, so any contribution from it will also be swamped by the sun.
Nothing outside our solar system is likely to have any measureable gravitational effect on anything inside it other than the entire system orbiting the galactic center.
A cold, dead Model M? I suppose if you put it in a freezer and hit it with sledgehammer, you'd end up with.... well, a cold keyboard and broken hammer, probably.
Indeed, an important point to be sure. Strontioum-90, though, is a pretty nasty character. Half life of 28.78 years, very high energy beta particle emitter, and it readily substitutes for calcium if ingested, so it sticks in your bones and doesn't leave.
Thank you for the clarification, and yes that's pretty bad. High-energy beta radiation coming from your bones for decades? Ack. Wouldn't want that anywhere near me.
I'm sure you can say a great deal of incorrect things if you like. On the other hand, if you can find a reputable source that disagrees with me, I'd like to see it. In the meantime, please do not encourage the spread of incorrect grammar.
Yes, but being radioactive alone isn't a big deal. What's the half-life and what type of radiation does it emit?
Keep in mind that some "radioactive" materials are so harmlessly radioactive (most commonly depleted uranium) that they can be used as radiation shields around stuff that is dangerous.
For the second time in this thread, this is incorrect. In general, the correct use for commas in modern English is in separating list elements (discussed elsewhere in this thread) and for delimiting non-essential phrases, such as parenthetical asides or prepositional constructions. Note that this implies that non-list commas always appear in pairs, unless the phrase begins or ends the sentence, in which case the closure is assumed.
Pauses in speech have nothing to do with it beyond that fact that they SOMETIMES correlate with the above correct placement.
Some years ago, there was in the city of York, a society of magicians. Seems, at least to me, that this writer and his editor need to read the proper use of commas.
The second comma you added to the phrase from the book is an abomination of the highest order. Please do not correct archaic, albeit understandable, grammar with such monstrous modern miscarriages of language.
Putting commas in place for spoken pauses is a simple rule of thumb that is surprisingly accurate, given that it's wholly incorrect.
The correct use for commas in modern English is in seperating list elements (discussed elsewhere in this thread) and for delimiting non-essential phrases, such as parenthetical asides or prepositional constructions. Note that this implies that non-list commas always appear in pairs, unless the phrase begins or ends the sentence, in which case the closure is assumed.
In spoken English, one often pauses at the boundaries of such phrases, which is what gives rise to the common misconception about comma placement.
As a rule, amateurs don't do the crap work. Most amateurs, being their own bosses, won't do, or do inadequately the pain-in-the-ass parts of the job. Check grammar on a weblog? Make the GUI useful and intuitive to an average user? Hang around and get the damn thing finished?
I am inclined to wonder, am I the only person that finds the above tasks actually appealing? Perhaps it is merely an anal-retentive, overly organized tendency, but I can't feel good about a project unless I've put in the effort on precisely those discomfort-in-the-posterior nit-picky details like good writing, interface polish (NOT chrome and doohicky polish, polish as in smooth and pleasant to use), and suchlike. I even enjoy preparing and improving documentation, a habit which many of my coder friends regard as freakish, perhaps inhuman.
As a technical creationist, I beg to differ.;) (What do I mean by "Technical?" That I don't try and aruge that science prooves God. If the Almighty can cause someone to win the lottery, He can either create life via evolution or create the universe so we can learn how life will evolve going foward.)
Okay, well... just to make sure things are clear, at all points when I've said "creationist" I refer PURELY to young-earth creationists, 'Intelligent Design' advocates, and other people who seek to undermine science in support of their religion. There are a large number of people, including many evolutionary biologists, who believe in a creator God without that conflicting with science.
Given that the process of evolution is itself an elegant design concept that has produced systems far more complex than human engineers can create, I see no reason why it couldn't be how God would create the world.
My problem is, and always has been, with people who use religious justification to make statements about science--not to mention dictating to God that He must have created the world the way they want, rather than using the insights of science to learn more about the world that God did create. The idea that evolution is incompatible with God is rubbish, and an insult to both science and religion.
Exactly right. Except that what, IMO, vocal Creationists (i.e., not me) want is for atheism to be treated like any other religion -- i.e., they don't want the science class saying "God doesn't exist."
I don't think science classes DO say that. If they do, they shouldn't, because that's highly inappropriate for multiple reasons.
Science does not deny God's existance; it is merely indifferent to Him. Science is a process of investigating the nature of the universe we live in with as little interference as possible from preconceived notions. It does not require God's presence nor does it exclude it. Some people's conceptions of God may conflict with science, but that is the fault of humans who use God as an excuse for their own arrogance and ignorance.
Modern scientific understanding of the universe does not REQUIRE any God. This is a very different thing from disproving or excluding God.
Just look up "scaffolding" in this context if you want to see some serious hand-waving, lying, and a firm belief in things which have zero evidential existence.
Never heard the term. I'm guessing it refers to something that developed in combination with other features, then the others atrophied away leaving just the one that couldn't have developed alone. If so, please illuminate on why you think that's so unlikely, how calling it such refutes the OTHER critcisms of IC, and what alternative explanation you propose that provides better predictive value than current understandings of evolutionary processes.
If you can't provide any of those answers, you have nothing to contribute, so please stop assuming that which you do not understand must be false.
No, it's not. It's horribly simple. In fact, THAT's the reason right there.
"It's possible there was an intelligent designer--but it's not certain, and it's equally possible that there wasn't. And since it's simpler to not have one, we act as if there weren't one."
Okay, that much is simple enough, you're right. I meant to actually go through and knock down the common creationist arguments; as faulty as they are, a lot of them sound pretty persuasive to people who aren't already educated.
Not likely. If you're teaching their theory and pointing out why it's not the majority theory, you're doing everything they could ask for.
What they REALLY want is to have their theory taught as if it IS the currently accepted theory (or, at very least, equally valid). They won't be satisfied with anything less, especially if it goes to any length to explain WHY it isn't the commonly accepted theory. You give the creationists too much credit, I fear.
Claiming it's a religious thing is the quickest way to get creationism OUT of the public school. In fact, that's what happened.
Yeah, because what the creationists want is for religion to be presented as if it was science, which clearly doesn't belong in the schools. It could be included if the creationist arguments were treated from a scientific perspective (see above), or if the religious aspects of it were considered in a non-science class (comparative religion, or some such).
If I sound overly pessimistic, I grew up around these sort of people. I speak from personal experience.:\
Great theory, but the problem is that geek males will certainly mate with non-geek females, if given the chance. I'm not sure, but I've heard rumors that this happens enough to dilute the geek genes and prevent speciation.
Well now, it's that "given the chance" bit that's the key point, isn't it?
On the other hand, all those geeks can console themselves on lonely friday nights that they're just doing their duty to not dilute the geek gene pool, eh?
Racism is a *very* touchy subject, and I may get flamed just for bringing it up, but doesn't this sound like butterfly racism? If this were, in fact, a provable, natural, biological mechanism, then, wouldn't we, as biological organisms, be falling prety to much the same effect? Isn't racism a social form of speciation?
Preferring similar individuals, especially for mating, IS a pretty common instinct (though one that's typically counterbalanced somehow, to avoid excessive inbreeding). To the extent this means anything, it's that people who prefer to date and marry within their own race (or their own income group, their own geographical area, the demographic of your choice...) may have a instinctive basis for this.
What impact would this have on the ACLU? Hiring quotas? The civil rights movement in general?
This research? No impact, really. Any research that could have political impact in those areas is generally discouraged (i.e., not funded).
Even serious research into questions whether or not races will have differently working brains, intelligence, etc. is likely to earn you a nice flame war, from laymen and respected scientists alike. The ACLU and civil rights movements should not find fault with the idea that the different races may not be equal, but I'm not holding my breath.
This is an unfortunate side-effect of the fact that those with racist agendas have often cloaked their efforts with fake science, such that the well has been largely poisoned for ANY analysis of many traits (even those with known genetic aspects!) varying by "racial" populations.
A lot of people refuse to touch the issue at all for fear of encouraging those motivated by racism, not honest science... and unfortunately, a lot of people are so opposed to "racism" that they don't CARE about the value of honest science.
It addresses a very similar problem with both creation and evolution: neither is falsifiable.
Natural selection and aspects of micro-evolution ARE falsifiable. Macro-evolution is not. The people that parade evolution around as the "real origin of life" are nothing more than anti-creationists with a near-religious devotion to their Big-Bang god.
This really isn't the case. The distinction between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" is not the big deal it's made out to be; all changes are small, but the timeframes in which evolution works are GIGANTIC, allowing the small changes to accumulate.
Because Evolution has very specific requirements for how organisms change, it IS in fact falsifiable; the fact that it hasn't been is what gives it strength.
The most simple way to falsify evolution is exactly what the Intelligent Design crowd stumbled on; to demonstrate that a particular feature in an organism could not arise as a series of incremental changes from other organisms.
Unfortunately for the ID crowd, no such feature has been found. They do a lot of hand-waving and lying, but in the end there simply isn't such a thing as irreduceable complexity among life on Earth. All life forms have the same basic composition, a lot of the building blocks and sub-components are very similar, analogous structures and shared genetics can be found in very different organisms... it all fits together.
There's a difference between something that cannot be falsified by any possible evidence and something that cannot be falsified by evidence that actually exists.
Slashdot Mirror
That was actually one early theory about dark matter, but it's since been discarded--for instance, we've since mapped the distribution of dark matter, and it is both rather diffuse and not in locations where one would expect to find black holes. Sorry, it's not that simple.
Better yet, how about its mass compared to the Moon, and how many AU is the Moon from the Earth?
Think of it this way:
Most black holes are for obvious reasons of stellar mass, i.e, less than 20 times the mass of our sun. 20 AU doesn't even get you out of this star system--Pluto is 30 AU or so out. So the contribution of those black holes is going to be completely swamped by the sun.
The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way is thought to be in the neighborhood of a 10^6 solar masses; the galactic center lies about 2x10^9 AU in the general direction of Sagittarius, so any contribution from it will also be swamped by the sun.
Nothing outside our solar system is likely to have any measureable gravitational effect on anything inside it other than the entire system orbiting the galactic center.
I'd sure like to see the source for your statements.
:)
He can't see it... therefore it doesn't exist?
A cold, dead Model M? I suppose if you put it in a freezer and hit it with sledgehammer, you'd end up with.... well, a cold keyboard and broken hammer, probably.
Indeed, an important point to be sure. Strontioum-90, though, is a pretty nasty character. Half life of 28.78 years, very high energy beta particle emitter, and it readily substitutes for calcium if ingested, so it sticks in your bones and doesn't leave.
Thank you for the clarification, and yes that's pretty bad. High-energy beta radiation coming from your bones for decades? Ack. Wouldn't want that anywhere near me.
What can I say? You're quite wrong.
I'm sure you can say a great deal of incorrect things if you like. On the other hand, if you can find a reputable source that disagrees with me, I'd like to see it. In the meantime, please do not encourage the spread of incorrect grammar.
Yes, but being radioactive alone isn't a big deal. What's the half-life and what type of radiation does it emit?
Keep in mind that some "radioactive" materials are so harmlessly radioactive (most commonly depleted uranium) that they can be used as radiation shields around stuff that is dangerous.
Commas reflect pauses in the sentence.
For the second time in this thread, this is incorrect. In general, the correct use for commas in modern English is in separating list elements (discussed elsewhere in this thread) and for delimiting non-essential phrases, such as parenthetical asides or prepositional constructions. Note that this implies that non-list commas always appear in pairs, unless the phrase begins or ends the sentence, in which case the closure is assumed.
Pauses in speech have nothing to do with it beyond that fact that they SOMETIMES correlate with the above correct placement.
Some years ago, there was in the city of York, a society of magicians. Seems, at least to me, that this writer and his editor need to read the proper use of commas.
The second comma you added to the phrase from the book is an abomination of the highest order. Please do not correct archaic, albeit understandable, grammar with such monstrous modern miscarriages of language.
Putting commas in place for spoken pauses is a simple rule of thumb that is surprisingly accurate, given that it's wholly incorrect.
The correct use for commas in modern English is in seperating list elements (discussed elsewhere in this thread) and for delimiting non-essential phrases, such as parenthetical asides or prepositional constructions. Note that this implies that non-list commas always appear in pairs, unless the phrase begins or ends the sentence, in which case the closure is assumed.
In spoken English, one often pauses at the boundaries of such phrases, which is what gives rise to the common misconception about comma placement.
You DO realize that "natural pauses" have nothing whatsoever to do with correct comma placement, right?
Just wondering.
This is an excellent idea, actually.
It has been my general observation that the parents typically have a far more difficult time distinguishing fantasy from reality than the children do.
All scientists do all day is think. How boring is that?
;D
Are you asking because you've never tried?
As a rule, amateurs don't do the crap work. Most amateurs, being their own bosses, won't do, or do inadequately the pain-in-the-ass parts of the job. Check grammar on a weblog? Make the GUI useful and intuitive to an average user? Hang around and get the damn thing finished?
I am inclined to wonder, am I the only person that finds the above tasks actually appealing? Perhaps it is merely an anal-retentive, overly organized tendency, but I can't feel good about a project unless I've put in the effort on precisely those discomfort-in-the-posterior nit-picky details like good writing, interface polish (NOT chrome and doohicky polish, polish as in smooth and pleasant to use), and suchlike. I even enjoy preparing and improving documentation, a habit which many of my coder friends regard as freakish, perhaps inhuman.
As a technical creationist, I beg to differ. ;) (What do I mean by "Technical?" That I don't try and aruge that science prooves God. If the Almighty can cause someone to win the lottery, He can either create life via evolution or create the universe so we can learn how life will evolve going foward.)
Okay, well... just to make sure things are clear, at all points when I've said "creationist" I refer PURELY to young-earth creationists, 'Intelligent Design' advocates, and other people who seek to undermine science in support of their religion. There are a large number of people, including many evolutionary biologists, who believe in a creator God without that conflicting with science.
Given that the process of evolution is itself an elegant design concept that has produced systems far more complex than human engineers can create, I see no reason why it couldn't be how God would create the world.
My problem is, and always has been, with people who use religious justification to make statements about science--not to mention dictating to God that He must have created the world the way they want, rather than using the insights of science to learn more about the world that God did create. The idea that evolution is incompatible with God is rubbish, and an insult to both science and religion.
Exactly right. Except that what, IMO, vocal Creationists (i.e., not me) want is for atheism to be treated like any other religion -- i.e., they don't want the science class saying "God doesn't exist."
I don't think science classes DO say that. If they do, they shouldn't, because that's highly inappropriate for multiple reasons.
Science does not deny God's existance; it is merely indifferent to Him. Science is a process of investigating the nature of the universe we live in with as little interference as possible from preconceived notions. It does not require God's presence nor does it exclude it. Some people's conceptions of God may conflict with science, but that is the fault of humans who use God as an excuse for their own arrogance and ignorance.
Modern scientific understanding of the universe does not REQUIRE any God. This is a very different thing from disproving or excluding God.
Just look up "scaffolding" in this context if you want to see some serious hand-waving, lying, and a firm belief in things which have zero evidential existence.
Never heard the term. I'm guessing it refers to something that developed in combination with other features, then the others atrophied away leaving just the one that couldn't have developed alone. If so, please illuminate on why you think that's so unlikely, how calling it such refutes the OTHER critcisms of IC, and what alternative explanation you propose that provides better predictive value than current understandings of evolutionary processes.
If you can't provide any of those answers, you have nothing to contribute, so please stop assuming that which you do not understand must be false.
No, it's not. It's horribly simple. In fact, THAT's the reason right there.
:\
"It's possible there was an intelligent designer--but it's not certain, and it's equally possible that there wasn't. And since it's simpler to not have one, we act as if there weren't one."
Okay, that much is simple enough, you're right. I meant to actually go through and knock down the common creationist arguments; as faulty as they are, a lot of them sound pretty persuasive to people who aren't already educated.
Not likely. If you're teaching their theory and pointing out why it's not the majority theory, you're doing everything they could ask for.
What they REALLY want is to have their theory taught as if it IS the currently accepted theory (or, at very least, equally valid). They won't be satisfied with anything less, especially if it goes to any length to explain WHY it isn't the commonly accepted theory. You give the creationists too much credit, I fear.
Claiming it's a religious thing is the quickest way to get creationism OUT of the public school. In fact, that's what happened.
Yeah, because what the creationists want is for religion to be presented as if it was science, which clearly doesn't belong in the schools. It could be included if the creationist arguments were treated from a scientific perspective (see above), or if the religious aspects of it were considered in a non-science class (comparative religion, or some such).
If I sound overly pessimistic, I grew up around these sort of people. I speak from personal experience.
Great theory, but the problem is that geek males will certainly mate with non-geek females, if given the chance. I'm not sure, but I've heard rumors that this happens enough to dilute the geek genes and prevent speciation.
Well now, it's that "given the chance" bit that's the key point, isn't it?
On the other hand, all those geeks can console themselves on lonely friday nights that they're just doing their duty to not dilute the geek gene pool, eh?
I do, however have the following problems with evolution, none of which have been properly explained to do this day.
And by "none of which have been explained", you mean "I read these bullet points somewhere but never did any research to find the answers".
It's not that hard to educate yourself if you're HONESTLY curious...
"...mainstream news source mangles simple science! More at eleven."
Sigh.
Racism is a *very* touchy subject, and I may get flamed just for bringing it up, but doesn't this sound like butterfly racism? If this were, in fact, a provable, natural, biological mechanism, then, wouldn't we, as biological organisms, be falling prety to much the same effect? Isn't racism a social form of speciation?
Preferring similar individuals, especially for mating, IS a pretty common instinct (though one that's typically counterbalanced somehow, to avoid excessive inbreeding). To the extent this means anything, it's that people who prefer to date and marry within their own race (or their own income group, their own geographical area, the demographic of your choice...) may have a instinctive basis for this.
What impact would this have on the ACLU? Hiring quotas? The civil rights movement in general?
This research? No impact, really. Any research that could have political impact in those areas is generally discouraged (i.e., not funded).
Even serious research into questions whether or not races will have differently working brains, intelligence, etc. is likely to earn you a nice flame war, from laymen and respected scientists alike. The ACLU and civil rights movements should not find fault with the idea that the different races may not be equal, but I'm not holding my breath.
This is an unfortunate side-effect of the fact that those with racist agendas have often cloaked their efforts with fake science, such that the well has been largely poisoned for ANY analysis of many traits (even those with known genetic aspects!) varying by "racial" populations.
A lot of people refuse to touch the issue at all for fear of encouraging those motivated by racism, not honest science... and unfortunately, a lot of people are so opposed to "racism" that they don't CARE about the value of honest science.
It addresses a very similar problem with both creation and evolution: neither is falsifiable.
Natural selection and aspects of micro-evolution ARE falsifiable. Macro-evolution is not. The people that parade evolution around as the "real origin of life" are nothing more than anti-creationists with a near-religious devotion to their Big-Bang god.
This really isn't the case. The distinction between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" is not the big deal it's made out to be; all changes are small, but the timeframes in which evolution works are GIGANTIC, allowing the small changes to accumulate.
Because Evolution has very specific requirements for how organisms change, it IS in fact falsifiable; the fact that it hasn't been is what gives it strength.
The most simple way to falsify evolution is exactly what the Intelligent Design crowd stumbled on; to demonstrate that a particular feature in an organism could not arise as a series of incremental changes from other organisms.
Unfortunately for the ID crowd, no such feature has been found. They do a lot of hand-waving and lying, but in the end there simply isn't such a thing as irreduceable complexity among life on Earth. All life forms have the same basic composition, a lot of the building blocks and sub-components are very similar, analogous structures and shared genetics can be found in very different organisms... it all fits together.
There's a difference between something that cannot be falsified by any possible evidence and something that cannot be falsified by evidence that actually exists.
By beseeching God to send a prophet to clarify the matter for those who would never dream of questioning His Word.
It has been said that God speaks most loudly through the wonders of His creation.
Yet most of His followers don't even know how to listen...