Posts by bohm

47

Methane-Based Life Forms Could Exist on Titan (the giant moon of Saturn), say Scientists

by abiather in

liquid water is a requirement for life on earth.

but in other, much colder worlds, life might exist beyond the bounds of water-based chemistry.

cornell chemical engineers and astronomers offer a template for life that could thrive in a harsh, cold world specifically titan, the giant moon of saturn.

bohm

"Hello I am here to recruit you for my cult. Let me tell you about karma"

88

First law of thermodynamics vs God vs Big Bang

by EndofMysteries in

first law of thermodynamics, that energy cannot be created or destroyed but changed from one form to another.

how does that fit in with god and the big bang to you?

does it make one make more sense then the other to you?

bohm

Caedes: Works even better if you imagine the earth is rotating so fast you are going at about 2000km/h round and round :-).

88

First law of thermodynamics vs God vs Big Bang

by EndofMysteries in

first law of thermodynamics, that energy cannot be created or destroyed but changed from one form to another.

how does that fit in with god and the big bang to you?

does it make one make more sense then the other to you?

bohm

cappytan: A person in the car would say: I don't get why the sign says there are 10 miles from my house to the supermarket when there is plainly only about 100 meters.

88

First law of thermodynamics vs God vs Big Bang

by EndofMysteries in

first law of thermodynamics, that energy cannot be created or destroyed but changed from one form to another.

how does that fit in with god and the big bang to you?

does it make one make more sense then the other to you?

bohm

cappytan:

From the perspective of a passenger inside the car, the world around them would appear stretched

Just to clarify, for a person in the car, everything outside the car would be compressed in the direction he is moving.(sorry English is not my native language so "stretched" and "compressed" might mean the same thing).

88

First law of thermodynamics vs God vs Big Bang

by EndofMysteries in

first law of thermodynamics, that energy cannot be created or destroyed but changed from one form to another.

how does that fit in with god and the big bang to you?

does it make one make more sense then the other to you?

bohm

Caedes: oh, sorry i got your name wrong! Yes all else is 100% sound, your post just made me spend half an hour thinking about relativity and I had to write something :-).

Here is something to ponder to show how strange this is: Suppose I fly from earth to alpha-centauri in a spaceship very close to the speed of light. Suppose the travel takes 10 minutes for me -- so i pass the earth now, and I pass alpha-centaruri what feels like 10 minutes later. For an outside observer though it seems like about 4 years (there are four light-years to alpha-centauri) from me passing earth to i pass alpha-centauri. From my perspective, I am just travelling 10 minutes, so the distance between earth and alpha-centauri is about 10 light minutes (and not 4 light years). However if i am also seeing a broadcast from alpha-centauri on my spaceship, i will be recieving 4 years worth of broadcast from when i pass earth to i arrive at alpha-centauri in just 10 minutes. But at the same time relativity tells me I should see time progress far slower on alpha-centauri than on my spaceship -- after all, from my perspective I am standing still but alpha-centauri is moving. How is this possible?

88

First law of thermodynamics vs God vs Big Bang

by EndofMysteries in

first law of thermodynamics, that energy cannot be created or destroyed but changed from one form to another.

how does that fit in with god and the big bang to you?

does it make one make more sense then the other to you?

bohm

EdenOne:

Newtonian physics also does not take into account the fact that all motion is relative and that the speed of light is constant no matter what the observer is doing. If for example you were in a spacecraft travelling at the speed of light and shone a torch out of the front window then Newtonian physics would say that you would see a beam of light out of the window. Relativity states that the beam of light would travel at the speed of light, the same as your spacecraft and hence never leave the torch.

In Newtonian physics the answer would depend on ones view of light.

If one assume light travels trough a medium like the eather, then one would expect an observer could break the "light barrier" in which photons would not leave the torch. In this view the torch would be blue-shifted 2x when pointing backwards and not shining when pointing forwards.

If however one assumes light just consists of particles (as was also believed for a long time) the light would according to good old gallilean relativity just behave like it was standing still -- notice this is 100% consistent with the predictions of relativity. Newtonian physics is in this view consistent with relativity.

If however we consider an outside observer (or what the spaceman sees of the outside world) things become more tricky and one must keep in mind that the same explanation must go for both observers since, by relativity, one will see the universe hurling towards him and the other will see the spaceship travelling towards him near the speed of light, and both will see time travelling much slower for the other person (think about that for a moment!).

Long story short, the spaceman looking out of the window will see everything behind him very red-shifted, and things in the front of him very blue-shifted. He will also think (or rather, this will be true for him) that everything at the front or behind him is very near to his spaceship, i.e. that alpha-centauri is only a few kilometers away due to length contraction. When he shine his light, he will see the light leave the torch just as it should and travel a very short distance towards the star he is approaching. The person on the outside will see the spaceman turn on his terribly blue/red-shifted torch (depending on where he is) in slow-mo.

(updated)

43

Why are extraterrestrials pictured in ugly form in movies?

by abiather in

humans have produced many movies on extraterrestrials.

yet all of them are shown in ugly form.

why cant we depict an et more beautiful/handsome than humans.

bohm

Wooo a meditation cult without sex! Where do I sign up?

29

Devolution, not evolution

by abiather in

scientists discovered an organism that has not evolved in more than 2 billion years (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150203104131.htm) .

one can dismiss this as an exception*!

yet overwhelming proofs are too obvious to miss if we take the community as an individual (community is the reflection of the behavior pattern of the individuals that make up the whole).

bohm

Do you sometimes feel stressed? Do you sometimes feel you have a lot of uncertainty in life? We are offering a free personality test this month..

Is this the guy from the no-sex sect?

12

The intcal13 dataset: The best evidence I know of for C14 dating.

by bohm in

carbon 14 dating is often dismissed as relying on the assumption the c14/c12 ratio in the past has been comparable to the present, however what is rarely acknowledged is this assumption can be checked.

the way the assumption is checked is by finding a system which admits dating independent of c14.

popular choices are dendrochronology, where tree-rings are counted and by matching variation in tree-ring width across trees it is possible to build a chronology stretching back 12000 years, or varvas, where yearly variations in sediment deposits in lakes admit chronologies to be build stretching back tens of thousands of years.