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here's a short film of the sizes of the planets and stars compared:
https://video.xx.fbcdn.net/hvideo-xlf1/v/t42.1790-2/11996636_1204574442896898_1414554985_n.mp4?efg=eyJybHIiOjMzMywicmxhIjo1MTJ9&rl=333&vabr=185&oh=af4184474fb6bf8fb51de07ab238afa5&oe=55EEAD74
A century ago, Albert Einstein revolutionised the way we think about the universe. He talked about spacetime, about clocks ticking slower when moving faster while also being compressed and growing heavier at the same time. Two hundred years since Newton, Einstein suggested that the force of gravity, in the classical sense, doesn't exist. Rather, what keeps the Earth revolving around the Sun is a curvature in the fabric of spacetime, a mere result of the Sun just being there.
Those who may have felt compelled to ridicule Einstein had little chance of doing so, as most of Einstein's ideas were picked up by others very fast and deployed in further scientific research. While theoretical and practical successes and advances in the latter field piled up rapidly, technology also benefited from Einstein's discoveries. Nowadays, using satellite technology, we can locate a person anywhere on Earth with incredible accuracy and precision. We can augment the kinetic energy of particles in particle accelerators, not just by speeding them up as such, but by allowing them to gain weight as a direct consequence of them speeding up. The wealth of knowledge gathered from particle acceleration experiments is utterly stunning. But most of all, we can look at the stars and pick up information that had previously been hidden from us, unable as we were to interpret "strange" things like gravitational lensing. Had it not been for Einstein, none of this would have been true.
Only a scientific ignoramus or a joker would at this point dare question Einstein's theory of relativity and its implications. (Just to get an important point out of the way, Einstein proposed other ideas as well and some, like the theory-of-everything and his aversion to quantum physical indeterminism, were much less fruitful. But the theory of relativity is an unmitigated success.) Though honest scientists are careful to say that something is proven - one of the attractive characteristics of science is that the road to proof is more exciting than the proof itself - we can safely assume that Einstein's theory of relativity shall never be disproved. One key element of the theory, however, had until recently been a point of contention in some circles. Gravitational waves.
Simply put, the fabric of space can be rippled by accelerating objects like planets circling stars or binary stars circling each other, but also by black holes and of course phenomenal cosmic events like, well, the big bang itself. These ripples, designated 'gravitational waves', spread out and unlike waves in a pond that swiftly die, these gravitational waves continue to spread out. The "shape" of the waving itself reveals a great deal about the object or event that caused it. Differently put, an accelerating object or event leaves a fingerprint behind in the ripples it creates.
But how do we pick up these waves? Not only did Einstein propose them, he also gave us the tools to discover them: the absolute speed of light. Say you keep a laser beam bouncing between two objects. The beam should always require the same amount of time to get from A to B and back again. But if gravitational waves "hit" Earth and push the objects apart for a brief moment, the amount of time the beam needs to rock back and forth between A and B is altered. By measuring this alteration, not only can we detect the presence of a wave, we can determine a great deal about it; we can "read" the fingerprint of the cosmic event that sent it here.
So what took us so long? Simple. The measurements of the alterations in the time it takes for light to bounce between two objects need to be incredibly sensitive and precise in order to make any of this work. Data is useless unless it was collected with the utmost precision. So the reason we had to wait so long to detect gravitational waves is that we required sufficiently sensitive tools and only recently were those tools actually built. One piece of technology always has to wait for another one to be developed first.
What's interesting is that scientists hoped to detect a glimmer somewhere in the next two weeks but surprisingly enough, they detected quite a lot within the first few hours! Cosmic exhibitionism: it's as if the waves were eager to be spotted by us.
Fine. It probably cost a lot of money to get a bunch of science freaks exhilarated. But how can any of this be useful? First of all, like most other scientific discoveries this may open the path to so much more but of course the most obvious benefiters are astronomers and cosmologists. Not only is this one of the last key elements of Einstein's theory of relativity that had yet to be experimentally verified, it furthermore offers a clear window to the universe like nothing else before it. Specifically the big bang is now even more within reach than ever. Previously, we tried to look into the universe's past using light, but light cannot take us beyond the point of 379 000 years since the big bang. Before that time, the universe was too hot to hold neutral atoms; it was a gas of electrically charged particles and such particles interact with photons (particles of light) but don't allow them to escape. Information about the universe when it was younger than 379 000 years had thus been completely hidden from us, until now. Gravitational waves, originating during and immediately after the big bang, may luckily still be picked up and when identified as such, may tell us whether our big bang models are correct.
Hopefully this can do more than that. In our ever continuing battle against the embarrassing phenomenon of Creationism, gravitational waves may help us to turn a few lost souls to the virtue of rational thinking. Those creationists who are educated, may actually understand what all of this means and may finally see that a literal interpretation of the Bible is hopelessly insane. Those who aren't educated may at least understand, or so I hope, that this is yet another confirmation of the validity of all those scientific models we also use to explain the origin of the universe. So perhaps they will understand that if the bricks and mortar are 'proven', the house that was built with them has a good chance of being true as well...
A good day for science. Let's party, ladies and gentlemen.
"If you took Ross Kemp and all his programmes and fitted them into a black hole, I'd shake your f
g hand!" - Paul Calf
John Barry makes me a believer.
First of all, Catholic schools in Belgium are fairly liberal these days. The “Catholic” label is a dry remnant of the old days, when priests and nuns were still the chief instructors and educators in our schools. But the mission statements of our Catholic schools nowadays pertain more to a secular form of ethics than to the Christian values of old. Religion is taught in our schools as a phenomenon which happens to exist in our society rather than as the absolute basis of a virtuous life. For this reason, amongst others, our Christian schools welcome people of all persuasions, including Jews, Muslims, agnostics and atheists. Even teachers, at least in my school, aren’t “screened” anymore before they are hired. I have (free-spirited) Muslim colleagues, Christian colleagues, “new-age crystal shop” colleagues, gay colleagues, … and most of them are great people whom I’m proud to call my friends. So I’m confident, to say the least, that my principal won’t reprimand me on the basis of the note I quoted above.
Secondly, Catholics these days are quite receptive to evolutionary and cosmological teachings. Creationism, sadly, is still much more of an issue in other fractions of Christianity. That the parents of young (…) nurture a deep confidence in Catholic schools as an example of pure creationist advertising, is a sign of ignorance and naivety in itself.
Furthermore, my so-called “anti-creationism” propaganda isn’t even that, technically speaking. While I often tend to go pretty “hardcore” in my posts on this forum, I try not to shock too many people too often in class. ;-) I know where to draw the line, even if I sometimes secretly crave a chance to go completely Dawkings or Krauss on my sweet, poor pupils. So let me explain what the parent was talking about in the note.
In my physics or chemistry classes I try to accomplish two things besides the obvious textbook science: A) that my students learn to think for themselves and never accept anything from dogma or “higher” authority or blind faith, and B) that they understand that admitting we were wrong isn’t a sign of weakness in science, but in fact the most exciting thing a scientist can do. Naturally, when some of the more “troublesome” scientific hypotheses and theories are addressed, which in my case almost always involves the age and origin of our universe, it’s practically unavoidable to refer to the Bible and to how terrifying it is that so many people still take Genesis as the literal truth, against all scientific evidence. But even though my posts on this forum are often harsh and borderline insulting, I refrain from rhetoric crudeness and insolence in front of an under-aged audience, primarily because I want to demonstrate to them that as a scientist, I feel confident enough to fight creationism in an understated, rational and well-argued fashion without having to resort to arrogance, impudence or primitive anger and verbal intensity. (Let’s just say that this forum serves as an informal chatter space where my darker side is much less concerned with things being safe-for-work. ;-))
In truth, I fail to see how in stimulating my pupils to always be critical, to always apply common sense and rational thinking when addressing the major cosmic mysteries which both science and religion, each in their own way, labor hard to answer, I insult them, their faith – if any – and the entire system of Catholic schooling in Belgium. It’s no secret that I wish we could live in a world devoid of creationism. I neither lie about that nor avoid the subject in class, but I calmly explain my reasons and allow kids who see things in a different way to state their counterarguments – which, by the way, is usually enough to make them see the fallacies in their own “reasoning”.
If I’m not allowed any of this, I can’t be what I’m so proud of being: a science teacher with a clear mission and not just someone who in an ultra-disciplined yet uninspiring fashion funnels boring knowledge into his barely interested students. Even more so, the thought that I’d have to hold back for the sake of not upsetting creationist parents who think that Catholic schools should harbor a blind faith in the contents of the Bible, is petrifying if nothing else. Actually, it is something else; it’s insulting. And by sharing this little frustration with you lot, I’ve already gotten over it. So thank you and good night. :-)
You'll find it a fun fact that my small office is right inbetween the offices of the SGP party at Parlement. Yes, those orthodox protestants that still manage to get two seats in parlement every election. But even amongst them (won't name names, he'd lose his job) doubt is spreading about the literal acceptation of the bible.
I remember that one. A rewritten 20, 000 Leagues Under The Sea in space with bits of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars. Very uneven, both in quality and tone. But I enjoyed it.
I have loads of science books about Star Trek.
I have highly detailed blueprints of the Deep Space Nine station.
Anything outside Star Trek is a lie.
Did you know that Gene Roddenberry and L. Ron Hubbard were best friends at one point, but became enemies after Hubbard started the Dianetics movement and Roddenberry created Star Trek?
It is like the Catholics and Protestants or the Sunny and Shite.
This man is out-of-his-mind!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=gpKtZcIIS0Q
Cracking stuff. Love how he uses cars built in different countries to prove evolution couldn't happen. Forgets they all evolved from the basic design for a car when it was originally invented.
Love this as well - '^ Wanker'
"See? I asked two scientists [a vet and a doctor] on stage [in a room full of Creationists anyway], shove a mike under their mouths and ask if they are Creationists or not [which is then supposed to prove that Creationism is correct?]"
The car analogy got me rolling on the floor. Also, the meteor didn't hit us? So... uh... someone gently put it in the Yucatan?
Reminds me of the eye argument: "Only God could have created something as perfect as the eye". Said by someone with glasses, it is even funnier. They should worship their ophthalmologist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity
non-mathematical:
I've Always one more then you!
Science fiction; does that mean we can discuss religion here? Or would that be just straight 'fiction'?
Or more accurately 'bullshit'.
If you look down the pages you'll see we've been discussing the fiction of religion a great deal, especially when it tries to compete with science. I think it's been called 'bullshit'before too.. ;-)
I have found the infinite symbol now, I was wrong; I did look at my key board for the sign and the closest one I did find was the one I wrote, Dart, it was not to annoy You.
Then I realized the actual reason on why it is not there on my Keyboard..!
Hackers knows the reason to that weakness.
But One can construct another similar symbol; Using ~ and 8 and ~(~8~); the eight symbolise the infinity math and science symbol reinforced by the other symbols.
the 'eight' laying sideways is the corresponding actual infinity symbol, but does not interfere with the programming sequence.