Re: Stray Thoughts & Provocative Questions

"Mr. Knowitall" wrote:
>
> 7/12/2005 17:00 ZULU
>
> I am merely a "lay" scientist that enjoys pondering the big questions and
> mysteries of reality. What follows is a series of related thoughts and ideas
> that aren't necessarily in any particular order.
[snip]

Our debt to you is unquantifiable.

> If you have "something" that meets all of the requirements of the concept of
> existence...such as the physical universe, this logically implies the
> presence (or existence) of something that is NOT the physical universe. What
> would you call that...other than simply *nothing*?

Mathematics. Science is empirical. Mathematics is merely rigorously
self-consistent. Down a notch is philosophy. If you want to swim
with the sewage, religion - wherein internal and empirical
contradictions are worshipped as revelation. Then we have freak shows
like economics (using mathematics to lie) and psychology (dressing
lies with mathematics. ANOVA!).

> What came first...space, energy or matter?
[snip]

Yes. It's still echoing.

> Does "space" contain energy and matter...or does "matter and energy" contain
> space?
[snip]

If Helen Keller falls in the forest, does she make a sound?

> How can light that left its source some 15 billion years ago be reaching our
> region of space that has only existed for 6-8 billion years?
[snip]

How can the exact center of the universe be equidistant from every
point within itself in all 4(pi) steradians of direction? Geometry.
Reality is not Euclidean, Galilean, or Newtonian. Get over it.

> Some interesting facts concerning such a hypothetical spherical universe
> using r = 15*10^9 LY:

So sad... "light cone," schmuck.

> volume = 4/3*pi*r^3 = 1.4137166941e31 cubic light years
[snip]

.... so incapable with significant figures. 15x10^9 has 1.5 sig figs,
git. That's all you get thereafter. Case in point: an empirically
better number is 14.7x10^9 years,

ttp://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0403292
http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0310723
WMAP + Sloane Digital Sky Survey

> surface area =
[snip]

Why don't you be a good boy and tell us where that surface is located
relative to, oh, where we are. Uncle Al sees only the Big Bang in all
4(pi) steradians of direction. So does every body else including you.

> The concept of time requires at least 5 things in order to have any
> meaning...at least 2 objects of physical mass (or units of energy?),
> distance (space), movement and an observer that is capable of measuring
> those phenomena. If any one of those elements is missing, then time itself
> has no real meaning.
[snip]

Hey stoooopid: Time requires a clock. If you do not like
oscillators, use radioactive decay. If you do not like fragmenting
nuclei, use nuclear spin isomers.

> Why not a perfectly valid reality of 1 dimension...or 2? What makes our
> particular universe of 3 or 4 dimensions so distinctive or special...
[snip]

Mathematics and symmetries therein. John Baez and others have
extensively posted.

What is purple and commutes? An Abelian grape. Non-commutative
algebras are richer.

> Modern physicists are discovering on an almost daily basis that Newton's and
> indeed Einstein's theories and calculations are valid to a certain
> degree...

You are too fucking lazy to screw your leaden ass into a chair and get
educated.

> but are ultimately flawed in some fundamental way...

There are ZERO empirical falsifications of Special Relativity. Every
prediction at any scale in all venues works exactly as predicted to
the limits of experimental error. There are ZERO empirical
falsifications of General Relativity. Every prediction at any scale
in all venues works exactly as predicted to the limits of experimental
error. Kindly state the "fundamental error."

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0103044
http://arXiv.org/abs/hep-th/0307140
GR structure, especially Part 4/p. 7
<http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2001-4/index.html>
http://arXiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0311039
<http://www.weburbia.demon.co.uk/physics/experiments.html>
Experimental constraints on General Relativity

Science 303(5661) 1143;1153 (2004)
http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0401086
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0312071
<http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2003-5/index.html>
<http://skyandtelescope.com/news/article_1473_1.asp>
Deeply relativistic neutron star binaries

<http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/ptti/ptti2002/paper20.pdf>
Nature 425 374 (2003)
http://www.eftaylor.com/pub/projecta.pdf
<http://www.public.asu.edu/~rjjacob/Lecture16.pdf>
<http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2003-1/index.html>
Relativity in the GPS system

> To possibly be continued. There's so much *more* to talk about....

Spare us the empty echoes. Go e-mail yourself.

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf
.

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