Oddities, curiousities and strangness in history

Well bloody well move over

By a marvelous coincidence Azriel I hve just finished that bottle, and its your round.

Think Ive gone deaf ? did petty say hes got a POUND?

David H wrote:no no no. Space-time is not like that at all.

Imagine 3 dimensions of space, call them length, width and depth if you like. Draw them as 3 axes aligned like the edges of a cube at the corner, so they're all perpendicular. Now imagine a time-line like in a history book. OK?

Now the tricky part. Imagine passing the time line through the intersection (corner) of the other three lines in such a way that it's perpendicular to all of them. I know, it's not intuitive, but it's not that hard with some practice. That's the simple version of classic 4-dimensional space-time, and we live in it every day. It's just that we're always moving at a (mostly) constant speed along the time axis.

There, did that help?

No?

OK then, ask Halfy. He's better at explaining these things.

Ah hell, I'll give it a shot.

Every frame in a movie reel shows two dimensions of space. There's a third dimension implied, but we'll just let you remember that it's there. Now if instead of having all these pictures come one after another on a reel, we stack them on top of each other like the feeder of a slide projector, then they form a rectangle. Two dimensions are space, the third dimension of the rectangle is time. You can move around space on any slide and stay in one time, but in reality any time you try to go anywhere in space you travel through time as well: you are effectively forced to move from slide to slide even as you try to simply move across them. So space is largely under our control, time is not: as david said we are forced to keep moving through, forced to keep flipping the slides.

Now imagine each slide is made to go from the flat representation into spatial cubes with depth. Then they are stacked like slides that we have to keep flipping through.

Then Einstein noted that for the laws of electromagnetism to work in all circumstances, the speed of light had to be constant, and the only way to keep the speed of light constant in all situations is to warp space and time in tandem to keep the speed the same in all circumstances.

Any better?

Didn't think so.

Actually.....Im slowly getting it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! phew !

When youve finished with it Azriel could you pass it on to me.

Does perception effect time Halfwise? Or vice versa?
I recall having some very strange encounters with time that did not appear to be entirely linear, or consistant, whilst under the influence of certain local fungi.

I have long held to the belief, well beliefs not the right word, I base it on personnal experience, that perception is not a passive activity but is rather a force with a measurable effect upon the thing being perceived.

Not to speak for Halfwise, but "Scientific Method" works extremely hard to remove perception from all the equations. Objectivity is supposed to be independent of perception by definition.

But speaking as a simple farmer with a lot of real world perception-based experience, it sometimes seems to me the empirical sciences are overly dismissive of perception in their quest for objectivity.

or maybe not....

I dunno...

There are some shaman schools think that perception is a tangable force.
And although things are not entirely clear on this front to me, it seems science seems to acknowledge something going on between observer and observed.

so is the 4th dimension time? are there other dimensions that exist but we cant see or find in scientific controlled experiments because theres nothing been invented weird enough to find them? and could perception be just another dimension? but in our brains, a tiny little dimensionlet, which we can only tap into with Pettys shrooms. and living in that dimension theres stuff like memory dreams ghosties and things that go bump in the night, oh and spirituality and shit. and could one day with these super organic computer thingies create artificial perception and consciousnessnssssy

Yes, time is usually considered #4 when talking about space-time.

Yes, there are other theoretical dimensions that, if you assume they exist, make certain problems in mathematics and physics easier to solve, but nothing's been invented to measure them yet.

But the whole meaning of the word "dimension" is about measuring. It comes directly from the Latin dis + metri meaning "to measure" (I just googled that). If you can measure it, it can have it's own dimension if you like. (For example, if you wanted to think of temperature as the 5th dimension, you could. Whether or not that's useful is another question.) If you can't measure it yet, it's not ready to have its own dimension.

Now the other part of the question is, "But if I can't measure it, is it still real?" This is where I think the Scientific Method is a bit of an idiot savant. It often seems to take the position, "If it exists, I can devise a way to measure it. If I can't, it doesn't."

But there are a lot of things that don't fit neatly into this world view, and a lot of other time-tested ways of understanding the world which don't feel compelled to measure it.

I see no reason not to keep an open mind.

And very close to this topic, have any of you messed with Flatland, either the Victorian novella or the animations?

heres a trailer for the Flatland film its fascinating.

still like it tho !

9/10

Coming back to thread.

Flatland is great and I highly recommend it.

As David said scientist try very hard to remove subjective perception from the understanding of reality - quantum mechanics has caused much angst but I think we are getting closer to untangling the physical effects of perception from our own lack of intuition of how reality works. The act of observing something will affect what we look at, but that doesn't mean we have to be there for the same effects to occur. Or to make it more concrete, bouncing light off an atom in order for us to see it will jiggle the atom, but the atom will still jiggle whether or not we are there to see the light.

The time-space relationship will change with the observer, but for a whole different set of reasons. maybe a short course on relativity is in order. Raise your hand if you remember the Pythagorean theorem: good show of hands? Great. That and some common sense with some algebra/geometry is all you need to understand the fundamentals of space-time.

Not sure when I can get to it. David, can you do the parallel mirror light clock thought experiment? If not It may take a few weeks for me to get around to it.

April 18, 2013 NASA HOME

NASA'S Kepler Discovers its Smallest 'Habitable Zone' Planets to Date
WASHINGTON -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the "habitable zone," the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water.
The Kepler-62 system has five planets; 62b, 62c, 62d, 62e and 62f. The Kepler-69 system has two planets; 69b and 69c. Kepler-62e, 62f and 69c are the super-Earth-sized planets.

Two of the newly discovered planets orbit a star smaller and cooler than the sun. Kepler-62f is only 40 percent larger than Earth, making it the exoplanet closest to the size of our planet known in the habitable zone of another star. Kepler-62f is likely to have a rocky composition. Kepler-62e, orbits on the inner edge of the habitable zone and is roughly 60 percent larger than Earth.

The third planet, Kepler-69c, is 70 percent larger than the size of Earth, and orbits in the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. Astronomers are uncertain about the composition of Kepler-69c, but its orbit of 242 days around a sun-like star resembles that of our neighboring planet Venus.

Scientists do not know whether life could exist on the newfound planets, but their discovery signals we are another step closer to finding a world similar to Earth around a star like our sun.

"The Kepler spacecraft has certainly turned out to be a rock star of science," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The discovery of these rocky planets in the habitable zone brings us a bit closer to finding a place like home. It is only a matter of time before we know if the galaxy is home to a multitude of planets like Earth, or if we are a rarity."

The Kepler space telescope, which simultaneously and continuously measures the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, is NASA's first mission capable of detecting Earth-size planets around stars like our sun.

Orbiting its star every 122 days, Kepler-62e was the first of these habitable zone planets identified. Kepler-62f, with an orbital period of 267 days, was later found by Eric Agol, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Washington and co-author of a paper on the discoveries published in the journal Science.

The size of Kepler-62f is now measured, but its mass and composition are not. However, based on previous studies of rocky exoplanets similar in size, scientists are able to estimate its mass by association.

"The detection and confirmation of planets is an enormously collaborative effort of talent and resources, and requires expertise from across the scientific community to produce these tremendous results," said William Borucki, Kepler science principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., and lead author of the Kepler-62 system paper in Science. "Kepler has brought a resurgence of astronomical discoveries and we are making excellent progress toward determining if planets like ours are the exception or the rule."

The two habitable zone worlds orbiting Kepler-62 have three companions in orbits closer to their star, two larger than the size of Earth and one about the size of Mars. Kepler-62b, Kepler-62c and Kepler-62d, orbit every five, 12, and 18 days, respectively, making them very hot and inhospitable for life as we know it.

The five planets of the Kepler-62 system orbit a star classified as a K2 dwarf, measuring just two-thirds the size of the sun and only one-fifth as bright. At seven billion years old, the star is somewhat older than the sun. It is about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra.

A companion to Kepler 69c, known as Kepler 69b, is more than twice the size of Earth and whizzes around its star every 13 days. The Kepler-69 planets' host star belongs to the same class as our sun, called G-type. It is 93 percent the size of the sun and 80 percent as luminous and is located approximately 2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

"We only know of one star that hosts a planet with life, the sun. Finding a planet in the habitable zone around a star like our sun is a significant milestone toward finding truly Earth-like planets," said Thomas Barclay, Kepler scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute in Sonoma, Calif., and lead author of the Kepler-69 system discovery published in the Astrophysical Journal.

When a planet candidate transits, or passes in front of the star from the spacecraft's vantage point, a percentage of light from the star is blocked. The resulting dip in the brightness of the starlight reveals the transiting planet's size relative to its star. Using the transit method, Kepler has detected 2,740 candidates. Using various analysis techniques, ground telescopes and other space assets, 122 planets have been confirmed.

Early in the mission, the Kepler telescope primarily found large, gaseous giants in very close orbits of their stars. Known as "hot Jupiters," these are easier to detect due to their size and very short orbital periods. Earth would take three years to accomplish the three transits required to be accepted as a planet candidate. As Kepler continues to observe, transit signals of habitable zone planets the size of Earth orbiting stars like the sun will begin to emerge.

this was pretty weird http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Love-Diet-Coke/31872

The story was weird or you providing a link to it is?

of course

That is SUCH a touching story !! Not so much for the lion tho, as he HAS to look after himself in the wild, but, it shows they remember & do care ! How emotional it must have been for the brothers ! Id only boo my eyes out if that were me !

it's a love story baby just say rawr

They left out the bit where the rest of the pride turned up, didnt know those blokes from Adam and tore them limb from limb and had them for lunch.