driver
- 09 Mar 2006 22:31
- 199 of 245
hewittalan6
- 10 Mar 2006 10:39
- 202 of 245
Scientists have discovered water on one of Saturns moons today, giving rise to the hope they might also find life.
Yorkshire water have imposed a hosepipe ban since there has been little rainfall on the moon for several billion years.
driver
- 10 Mar 2006 10:47
- 203 of 245
hewittalan6
- 10 Mar 2006 10:50
- 204 of 245
That won't stop Yorkshire Water. All they need is about 20 minutes without rain and they cry shortage.
Its a constant problem here in Gods own county, but I have the solution.
Everyone should be made to dilute their water so it goes further.
Kivver
- 10 Mar 2006 14:29
- 206 of 245
been saying for a long time now that we need more reservoirs, you know more people, more dish washers, new attitudes towards you must 3 showers a day, more bidets, more larger, more natural water (filled with tap water) WE NEED MORE RESSERS, but too intelligent for some. durh!!
hewittalan6
- 10 Mar 2006 14:31
- 207 of 245
Or a French approach to personal hygeine.
Kivver
- 10 Mar 2006 16:04
- 209 of 245
well, we need somewhere to dump our insurance write offs.
superrod
- 12 Mar 2006 23:26
- 210 of 245
just a small input
when i was at south east london tech in 1977, we did a thing called the Hopkinson test ( electrical engineering ).
this involved two similar motors, each rated at 100Kw.
one was connected to the other via their drive shafts.
one was powered from mains electricity acting as a generator for the other whos output was fed back to the first....a lesson in perpetual motion....
i can still remember how amazed i was to see 2 100Kw motors running flat out and the only power input was 1Kw. ( from mains electricity ), due to losses wrt windage, resistace, etc
hewittalan6
- 13 Mar 2006 07:38
- 211 of 245
Probably cos of Quantum and the space-time coninuinuinuum.
hewittalan6
- 13 Mar 2006 15:38
- 213 of 245
However it must be wrong.
All theories must be wrong, for a given value of "wrong".
No theory, past or present can predict accurately both the small scale world and the large scale universe.
String theory attempts to, of course, but it relies on the dubious mathematical trick of "renormalisation", where infinities cancel each other out.
There are those that argue the reason no theory can describe everything is down to our inability to understand increasingly complex theories well enough to make the predictions accurately.
For my part, I tend towards the strong anthropic principle that answers the question ; "Why are we here?" with the answer ;"Where the hell else should we be?"
The debate therefore becomes whether the anthropic principle is a dereliction of a scientists duties, or a willingness to accept that the universe is not as mathmatical as we think. I would argue that if the famous uncertainty principle is correct (and the foamy universe relies on this somewhat) then we can never really predict anything from our theories as all the values we apply have to be approximations and where we use an approximation, the result that emits from our beautifully constructed equation has to also be an approximation. The goal of science, therefore has to be finding answers that are less wrong, rather than finding answers that are right.
Alan
hewittalan6
- 13 Mar 2006 15:52
- 215 of 245
You told Kivver I needed his help!!!!!!
It's you thats stuck for a response!!!!!!!!!!!!
Alan
jimmy b
- 13 Mar 2006 16:04
- 217 of 245
"Why are we here?" with the answer ;"Where the hell else should we be?"
Al thats probably the most intelligent thing ive ever read , thanks for sharing that , now iv'e just got to sit down and get my head round it ,this could change the meaning of life for me, ,and anything i have ever believed in ..
driver
- 13 Mar 2006 16:05
- 218 of 245
Al
I have thought about it, I think that the anthropic cosmological principle asserts that the laws, constants and basic structure of the universe are not completely arbitrary. Instead they are contrained by the requirement that they must allow for the existence of intelligent observers, ourselves.
Example: Why is the visible universe about 15 Billion light years in diameter? Because that means the universe is about 15 billion years old. Our sun is at least a second generation star because it contains Carbon, Oxygen, Silicon and other elements. It had to get them from earlier stars that had exploded--they were not available just after the big bang (which could only have produced Hydrogen and Helium). Hence the sun as we know it could not have existed much earlier in the history of the universe. Since we in turn require those elements, we could not have existed in a much earlier phase of the universe. You also have to allow a few billion years for evolution. We see a universe that is 15 billion light years across because the universe had to grow to that size to permit us to exist. We could not, incidentally, observe a universe that was a lot older, since by that time the stars will have burned out and there will be no available energy to support life. Many other examples are discussed in the following references.
There are lots of other facts in physics, astronomy, and chemistry, that can be interpreted in this manner. You can argue that this is all coincidence, and some of these observations have been referred to as "cosmic coincidences". You can also argue that this is obvious--nothing else would be possible. The subject is very controversial.
One aspect of this is that the Principle asserts that there is something special about our place in the universe. The example above shows that we must live in a particular segment of cosmic history. This goes against the general trend of science since Copernicus; that there is nothing special about our place. This makes a lot of scientists uncomfortable, but I think it is hard to dispute, THIS SHOWS HOW WRONG YOU ARE..