Bikerman

Of course we can control it - if I find myself with a terminal disease facing months of pain, you better believe I WILL control it. Where you go after death is your own choice - you can go 6ft down for the worms, or you can go to a gas-fired BBQ for an hour or so. I'll take the BBQ I think.There is heaven and hell in YOUR worldview, not in mine, but in the spirit of cooperation I'll try to help. What do we know about heaven? Well, Isaiah seems to have some information which might be useful: Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold as the light of seven days. Isaiah 30:26 That gives us enough information to do some sums. Heaven gets as much radiation from the moon as the earth does from the Sun, and it gets seven times seven = 49 times as much from the sun as eath does. That makes 50 times more in total. OK, we can use Stefan-Boltzmann's law to calculate the termperature. (H/E)^4 = 50 (where E is the absolute temperature of the earth, 300?K) This gives H the absolute temperature of heaven, as 798 Kelvin (525?C). Now, what do we know about hell? Revelations is useful here: " But the fearful and unbelieving... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." OK - we know that brimstone (sulphur) turns gaseous at 444.6?C, so hell must be cooler than this otherwise the lake would evaporate. So, given that hell is less than 444.6?C and heaven is around 525?C I think your best choice to stay the coolest would be hell...Heaven sounds a bit too toasty for comfort....

It simply isn't credible. Governments are incapable of keeping even fairly minor secrets for long. The idea that the US government could keep the lid on confirmed UFO contacts, let alone dealings, is simply a non starter. The US government is certainly capable of putting out misinformation when it suits and that is what happened with the UFO issue. When the issue began to really take-off it was the height of the cold war. The US had all sorts of secret tests going on and UFOs was a nice cover story for sightings of some of the more radical hardware, like the stealth planes. The military decided to let the UFO stories run - they may even have encouraged a few here and there. The result is that people now ask for papers from the military and find mentions of UFOs redacted (blacked-out). They then assume that this is because the military are trying to hide the fact that they have UFOs when, in fact, various people in the military are just watching their backs and trying to hide any false-stories they might have spread at the time. The whole notion of UFOs is a no-brainer. Of course there are unidentified flying objects - I've seen a few myself. The notion that they were craft driven by aliens, however, is about the least likely of all the possible explanations, and just because another possibility is not always obvious, that doesn't mean that this shows it was an alien craft. Likewise aliens - I'm pretty sure there are aliens out there. I'm also pretty sure that they are: a) Not within range of earth and never likely to be. The speed of light is a harsh mistress and will brook no cheek. It seems to be an absolute limit on velocity within space-time and if so that means any trip to alien planets (or their trip to us) is likely to be a generational affair - taking longer than a person lives and maybe even taking tens or hundreds of generations. Not abducting people. The notion that aliens would undertake such a trip to simply abduct people and do weird things to them is laughable. If they want samples of sperm, for example, it would be pretty easy to get such samples without kidnapping a yokel and risking exposure. Why would they be so incompetent as to let anyone they abducted stay conscious? Why not simply rob (or better, pay someone else to rob) a sperm bank and have an almost unlimited choice?

Yes, I would agree with pretty much all of that.Remember the words of Epicurus: "Where death is, I am not; where I am, death is not. Why, then, should I fear death?" I fear pain, I fear losing my sanity and I fear losing the ability to end my own life should I so choose. That is why I am a strong proponent of the right to ask others to help one commit suicide and am completely opposed to the current situation which means that such a request can lead to a charge of murder for anyone brave enough to help.

The Big Bang Theory Introduction The Big Bang Model is a broadly accepted theory for the origin and evolution of our universe. It states that some 13.7 billion years ago, the portion of the universe we can see today was compressed into an infinitely dense singularity. Since that time the universe has expanded until it is now the much cooler and vast cosmos we observe today. The theory was first proposed by Georges Lemaître in 1931. In 1927 Lemaître proposed that the recession of a distant galaxy, as measured by Edwin Hubble, was due to expansion of the universe. He arrived at this using a particular solution to Einstein's equations for General Relativity* and the assumption of the Cosmological Principle By 1929 Hubble had, through a series of detailed measurements using the Mount Wilson Observatory, arrived at the realisation that the further away a galaxy was, the faster it was receding from earth (this is now called Hubble's Law). This provided the first support for Lemaître's new theory of expansion. In 1931 Lemaître suggested that, if one were to trace time backwards, the universe would contract until it could contract no further, bringing the whole universe together in a 'primeval atom'. By the end of World War II two hypotheses had emerged regarding the cosmos. One was the 'steady state' theory, championed by Fred Hoyle. The other was Lemaître's theory*. Ironically it was Hoyle who actually coined the phrase 'Big Bang' during a BBC Radio broadcast in March 1949 - intending to mock the theory. The final nail in the coffin of the alternate 'steady state' theory came, in the view of most physicists/cosmologists, in 1964 when Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered the Cosmic Microwave Background. *The particular solution had already been calculated by Alexander Friedmann in 1922 and is known as the Friedmann equations. It seems certain that Lemaitre arrived at the equations independently. If we extrapolate the state of the universe backwards in time, using General Relativity, we arrive at an infinitely dense and 'hot' state at a finite time in the past. This is generally called the 'singularity' and marks the point at which the theory of General Relativity breaks down. This hot, dense state is known as the Big Bang and is regarded as the 'birth' of the Universe (or at least that part of the Universe which is visible to us). In order to arrive at a precise time for this event, measurements of Type Ia supernovae, fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, and the correlation function of galaxies are used. When the calculations are performed, using these metrics, the age of the Universe comes out to 13.73 ą 0.12 billion years. Support for the model The first major experimental support for the Big Bang model came in 1964 with the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation predicted by the model. Most physicists saw this as the clinching evidence that the other main theory - steady-state theory - was wrong and that the Big Bang model was correct. Other evidence: The relative abundance of the lighter elements. The model predicts that there should be a large abundance of helium nuclei (He-3 and He-4), with a dash of deuterium (a form of hydrogen with a proton-neutron nucleus), lithium and beryllium. All the heavier elements are made in the core of Stars. This prediction has been tested experimentally by examining the amount of deuterium in the spectrum of stars and the observations agree with the model. Also, as we look further into space (back in time) the lighter elements become even more abundant relatively - exactly what we would predict. The age of stars. The model predicts that stars would start to form around 200 million years after the initial Big Bang. it follows that we should not observe stars that are older than this - and we don't. Evolution of galaxies. The model predicts that galaxies will evolve as gravity dominates and galaxies collide and interact with each other. Thus as we look back in time we should be able to see different types of galaxies corresponding to the different ages. This is exactly what we do observe. Time dilation in supernova brightness curves. Light travelling through the expanding universe should undergo red-shift as a result (the wavelength is stretched as the universe expands). Analysis of the spectra of different supernovae show this effect quite clearly - the spectra of older (more distant) supernovae are indeed red-shifted. Tolman tests. The model also predicts that the brightness of light sources should decrease as the fourth power of the redshift. The early universe was full of plasma, and photons were constantly scattering off of all of the ionized matter. This means that the universe a perfect absorber; no photons could leave the universe. It follows that the whole universe (or at least that part that was causally connected) is in thermal equilibrium and can be described as having a unique temperature. In classical thermodynamics, photons emitted by a black-body, at a given temperature, have a very specific distribution of energies and, as Tolman showed in 1934, this is what is observed. In fact much more evidence for the model exists - for more details go here

Einstein didn't say that (nor did he believe it as far as I know).It is true that there is a rype of wormhole (Einstein-Rossen bridge) with his name - but lots of things to do with Relativity take his name - whether he agreed (or was even alive) or not. He did discover this possibility in the theory, but whether he thought it was actually possible or not...I doubt it. Some misconceptions here.It MIGHT BE that every particle has an antiparticle, but not so far as we know.Baryonic matter does have equivalent anti-particles, but do the force carriers? Dunno... There is no reason to suppose that anti-universes exist - why would they? Antimatter was produced at the time of the big bang so it therefore existed in this universe. The best theory we have is that the antimatter in the universe annihilated with matter (antimatter + matter = photons) and that there was a slight asymmetry (ie slightly more matter than antimatter) so what we see in our universe is what was left when 99.9999% of it annihilated itself just after the Big Bang. (This would also explain why there are approximately 1 million photons for every particle of matter....) I think you are confusing two different theories. There IS a theory that there are infinite universes, but this comes from quantum physics, not from Einstein's work on relativity. Have you heard of Shroedinger's cat? The multiverse theory is one possible solution to that apparent paradox. No this is wrong. If you travel around the event horizon nothing special happens. Time travel is produced by extreme speed or extreme gravity. As you CROSS the event horizon (and can no longer escape) you are accelerated very rapidly by the huge gravity. When two things move at different speeds, both of them see the other slow down. Therefore an observer would see you get to the event horizon and stop, as you accelerated close to the speed of light. You would be stuck at the event horizon for an observer but your own 'clock' would run normally and you would not notice anything strange - you would quickly 'spaghettify' - the difference in gravity between feet and head would stretch you out like a piece of spaghetti, killing you very quickly.

Those of us of a certain age remember the word as it was first used. Early trolls were normally quite clever and trolling wasn't exactly frowned upon by all. A troll was someone who, spotting a naive poster, would cast the net by issuing some blatantly wrong-looking statement in a posting (this was on Usenet of course - before the web). The idea was to provoke indignation and outrage in the poster, and then show them that what they thought was a ridiculous point was actually correct and that their understanding was at fault. There was quite a bit of this sort of trolling in the days of UseNet and the reaction to being hooked was normally 'damn, I swallowed the bait whole, didn't I?' at which point there would be general smiles and all would then be fine. Nowadays, as stated, the word is used to define anyone and any posting that someone takes objection to and it has therefore become almost meaningless. Other terms from those early days have also morphed. 'Mail Bomb' was an interesting one with two possible origins. The generally accepted one is that it was a punishment (often used against those who tried to do commercial business on the early internet - Oh the irony!). Selling stuff was a big no-no and as a punishment you would be sent hundreds of copies of a large document (the bible was sometimes used). This mattered in those days, because access was mostly slow and expensive (1200/300 modems) so you would have to pay a small fortune to download the emails that you didn't want anyway - and there was often no other way to clear your inbox. The other possible origin results from the academic unwillingess to conform to authority. It became known that the authorities were routinely scanning email and usenet postings, using filters that would pick up on suspicious words or phrases (terrorist, explosion etc). As a protest against this many academics would deliberately include the word 'bomb' in every email or usenet posting they made - the idea being to jam the monitoring software, rather like a modern-day denial of service attack. Those were the days :-)...

This is contradictory. On the one hand you say that 'satisfaction is always attained' and on the other you say that fate never allows us to get what we desire. Which is it? If you believe in fate then there is no point striving for a better world - fate has already decided. It is those who do NOT believe in fate who struggle to make the world a better place - why would one struggle against fate? That would be futile. You cannot have both fate and freewill - the two are mutually exclusive. If you have freewill then nothing is predetermined - ie there is no 'fate'. If things are predetermined (destined to occur) then you cannot have freewill, because you would be able to ensure that they did NOT happen.

Well, we need to be clear about meanings. Fate is often used to mean 'predictable result'. In that sense it seems to me to be fine. However, it is often used to mean 'predetermined outcome/result'. I would certainly argue with that, but I honestly do not see how Christians, and other mono-theists can. As an atheist I have no belief in a Deity and I do not believe in predestination or determinism - other labels for 'fate'. If you believe in an omniscient and omnipotent God, however, it is impossible to logically defend any notion of choice/freewill. Christian theologists normally gloss over it by just stating that 'God gave us freewill' - but that is simply begging the question. If God knows everything you will do throughout your life (and he must, if he is omniscient) then what you will do in 10 years time at a particular time and place is already known. If it CAN be known then it must be predetermined - by definition. In other words, your 'fate' is already decided.

Mainly my own forum - ScienceFile. It's one I help manage and moderate and it is designed mainly for scientists or people interested in science. We have quite a few biologists so if I want to research something I normally start with a question there. If I want to consult the literature then I used to go to the journal concerned but I recently came across a nice webservice called Mendeley which indexes most of the papers I would be interested in.

Well,firstly would you accept that the brain is where we do our thinking, feeling, consciousness etc? Or are you someone who thinks there is some mysterious hidden part of the body responsible for personality, memory etc (they do exist, so I have to ask).Presuming you are sane and you agree that the brain is the place, then consider. The brain is a collection of switches. It contains billions of special cells (neurones) linked together in a big matrix. That is what we do our thinking with.Now, tell me, what is there about this that is impossible to repeat in a machine? Why can't we build a big switch matrix, just like the brain? And if we do then why should IT not be conscious and intelligent?Personally I can see no reason at all. At the moment we are limited - our switches are 2 dimensional - they only switch horizontally. The brain switches in three dimensions which makes it many many times more powerful. There is no reason why we cannot build switch matrixes like that though - and we are.Now, I know some people believe there is a divine spark or 'spirit' which makes us different. Personally I do not believe that, I think it is baloney. So as far as i can tell there is absolutely no reason, in principle, why a computer cannot be as intelligent, as self-aware and as 'conscious' as a human - and more.

Yes - I used it in a lecture with my BTEC students last year. I was around when the original program of this type was written. It was called Eliza and it pretended to be a psychiatrist. It persuaded quite a few people that there was a real person at the other end of the keyboard :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

Yes. Life requires long-chain molecules as far as we can tell. The only common elements that can form such molecules easilty are carbon and silicon. Silicon life would be extremely different and there are problems with the chemistry, so carbon is by far the best bet.

Oh certainly not in the next 5 years. Maybe in 20, maybe never. It seems to me that as we develop intelligent machines we should also be developing methods of controlling them. It would be criminal stupidity not to....

Indeed they will. It would depend how 'active' the monitoring was. Any interference with the environment would be likely to interfere with the course of evolution and/or abiogenesis.

For sure? I wonder how you have such certainty. Are you an expert in AI systems? I'm not an expert, but I know a bit about it (my first degree is in Computing and I did some work on AI systems, but that was a long time ago) and I'm not certain. I know that it would be very easy for a conscious machine to take over other non-conscious machines - they speak the same fundamental binary languages, so once the 'flavour' of processor is known it would be trivial for an intelligent computer to control other digital devices.

No - it wasn't replication as such, it was actually an artificial cell that Ventner created (ie he made the DNA, he didn't just take bits of DNA from existing cells). The problems with this argument are many. The main one is that any designer of the human body was not that intelligent. Our bodies have MAJOR design flaws. Probably the best example is the vegus nerve. It carries critical functions (breathing, heartbeat, sweating, digestion (peristalsis) and more) all down the same nerve bundle. That is just dumb from a design point of view - you don't design several critical functions down one pathway (putting all your eggs in the same basket). But it gets worse. This nerve goes from the brain, down to the chest, loops around the heart and then comes back up through the thorax to the throat. Why on earth would anyone design a nerve bundle, carrying critical functions, to be longer than necessary and to meander all over the place? The answer is that it wasn't designed. All creatures have this nerve and in early lifeforms the distance from brain to gut was small, so it was efficient to do it that way. As animals evolved they kept the nerve - evolution generally works by building on existing structures, changing them for new functions. So now we have humans with this silly nerve which can kill us if it goes wrong, wandering all over the body. But it is worse - the Giraffe has the same nerve - so it goes up and down that huge neck....3-4 metres longer than it needs to be. Nobody would design a body like that. (I could give many other examples of terrible design if you like). The simple fact is that the evidence for evolution is so overwhelming that only religious zealots find a problem with it. These RAEL people sound like religious zealots without a specific religion to me.... If panspermia did happen then, yes, it could have happened at the cell level (or even at the pre-cell level) to produce the first life on earth. It certainly didn't happen when some alien scientists came down and created the creatures we see today...

Well, the birds are the last of the dinosaur line. Whales and similar (dolphins, porpoises etc) came after the dinosaurs. They evolved about 45 million years ago from a land-based animal - Indohyus - which evolved to return to the oceans. Yes it is one of the hypothesese for abiogenesis (the start of life on earth). I'm not convinced by the arguments, but it is a serious suggestion. We know that there are organic molecules in space - quite a few meteors have shown such molecules. It is not inconceivable that life could evolve in space - a simple virus-like structure - and then be deposited on planets by comets/meteors.Personally I favour an earthly origin for life, but panspermia is certainly a possibility. RAEL are a bunch of wakkos. They think that alien scientists visited earth thousands of years ago and created life. It is a particularly idiotic version of Intelligent Design.

No - they were actually very different kinds of structure. The pyramid shape is not surprising - any large building in those times would not be able to support a huge 'top layer' so the pyramid is quite a natural choice, since it requires no special engineering or materials technology.

In what sense do you think man is not natural? If man creates something then why is that not natural? We create all sorts of things - including things which CAN be seen as physical objects.The real question is whether maths encompases truths about the universe - and it appears to do just that. Yes, it is a human creation, but that creation seems to have correspondence with reality and it is therefore reasonable to suppose that there is something universal about maths as regards any intelligent beings. No this is wrong. Order emerges quite naturally with no 'reason'. Look at a snowflake. Evolution is a cracking example of emergent order with no purposse but it is not the only one. There is nothing pointless about life. Just because there is no transcendent meaning that does not mean one's life is pointless. One sets one's own point. Mine is to learn as much as I can, be relatively happy and try not to cause injury to others on the trip... Our physical bodies go back to the stars. They decompose into the chemicals they are made up from and eventually those chemicals, along with the rest of earth, will be converted into gas and rubble which will then form the basis for another star in the distant future.

Such high voltages would seem excessive unless there was a good reason (and I can't think of one). Insulation would become a real issue and you wouldn't be able to pack transistors close together with that sort of voltage (firstly it would short and secondly the heat generation would be huge). The Gravity constant is, as far as we know, constant (hence the name :-) ). Local gravity changes according to the mass of the planet. There are limits on size for carbon-based lifeforms - the Dinosaurs probably hit those limits. After that then you get into a self-defeating cycle of adding more mass, then needing more mass to support the extra mass...etc. The only solution would be to take to a liquid environment - which is why our biggest creatures are aquatic. Unfortunately it is difficult to see how technology could be developed in a marine environment - putting circuits together would be a real pain for example....

I was just going to reply with the same observations. Short of putting on a blindfold it would be hard to think of worse advice....you also loose any chance of engaging first on most older cars if the engine isn't running - you need to give the throttle a blip to try and match the shaft speeds on the gearbox to the engine revs....

I would agree. Unfortunately, given what we know about physics it is unlikely that we will ever be able to talk to them. Distances way too great for any communication.....

The trouble with quotes in computing is that they are out of date by the time you use them. Certainly computers are dumb by our standards at the moment. Estimates put it somewhere between a bee and a small rodent. The idea that computers only do what they are programmed to do is just wrong. MOST computers do, but not all. Quite a few systems now use Neural Networks or similar Artificial Intelligence technology. A neural network is not programmed like a 'normal' computer - it learns. Here is a simple example of a neural network system : http://www.20q.net/ The neural network will attempt to guess what you are thinking of. Nobody has programmed it to do this - it learns. Now this is a trivial example, meant largely for amusement. Much more powerful versions already exist in industrial and research organisations and there is no theoretical limit to how much they can learn. Some of my colleagues predict that technology will reach the intelligence of an average human (IQ 100) in about 20 years. I think that is a bit optimistic and would put it at more like 50. It WILL happen though..

Paul Allen was a major philanthropic contributer in recent years - I think he still is...

Happened to me once in an old Mini I had. I put my foot on the brake and it went straight to the floor (like the clutch) with no braking effort at all.At the time I was on twisty country roads doing about 45mph. Fortunately as a youth my dad wouldn't let me use the family car when i passed my test at 17. He made me do a police driving course with one of his mates for 12 weeks before I got a sniff of the keys to the family car (a horrible Simca 1500) - he was a wise old bird - I learned more from that Police instructor in one lesson than I had from 4 weeks of lessons from my dad before the test.My instincts, partly as a result of those lessons 20 years before, were good ones. The first instinct was to reach for the handbrake (don't do that whilst cornering or you might pull an accidental handbrake turn which could be bad). Second instinct was to change down the gears - in this case into 2nd gear (the extra revs apply engine braking and quickly reduce your speed). First gear was not going to be possible since the car had a 'crash' first gear rather than a snycromesh My third and last instinct was to look for a potential ditching spot. Ideally you will pull the speed right down with the first two, and maybe not even need to ditch, but if you have time to plan then it is a good idea. In my case I selected a low hedge on the other side of the road. I managed to get the speed down to about 15-20mph, but I was approaching a T-junction, so rather than risk coasting across it blind I aimed across the road to go into the hedge at an angle of about 45 degrees. That was enough to prevent a complete front-end impact and, instead, a more gradual stop as the car hit the hedge-stems and came to a fairly quick halt. Total damage - bent front bumper, paint scraping on front bonnet and driver-side door, dents in the front grill, and the driver-side front wheel rim dented where I kerbed-it on route to the hedge. I got the car repaired on the insurance and sold it straight away - I could never trust it again.