...shit, cock, god-damnit..!

She eerily (with hair up) looks like a younger, but better looking Sarah Palin. So I'd say we now know what it would be like if Sarah Palin was actually a troll.

...wait a minute, this is how Sarah Palin acts! She's either a "non-believer", using masterfully created sarcasm, a Russian spy, or the dumbest of "some of" the "believers" on the planet!

At least in a good four light year radius.

Since you commented, your total pwnage.

There is nothing in the Constitution that specifically says that there is a wall of separation between religion and government.

I respect these guys. Unlike the jackass party, they don't hide who they are.

>> ^KnivesOut:

Sorry, what were you blathering about?>> ^quantumushroom:
The Right may not be totally in sync with the Constitution but they are light-years ahead of leftists who believe the Constitution was written on an Etch-A-Sketch designed to be shaken when it's time for more government tyranny (for our own good, of course).
There is one part of the Constitution liberals love, the "separation of church and state doctrine", a part which was never in it.

Sorry, what were you blathering about?>> ^quantumushroom:

The Right may not be totally in sync with the Constitution but they are light-years ahead of leftists who believe the Constitution was written on an Etch-A-Sketch designed to be shaken when it's time for more government tyranny (for our own good, of course).
There is one part of the Constitution liberals love, the "separation of church and state doctrine", a part which was never in it.

The Right may not be totally in sync with the Constitution but they are light-years ahead of leftists who believe the Constitution was written on an Etch-A-Sketch designed to be shaken when it's time for more government tyranny (for our own good, of course).

There is one part of the Constitution liberals love, the "separation of church and state doctrine", a part which was never in it.

[redacted]

>> ^cybrbeast:

About there being a center of the universe you could say we are at the center of our observable universe, this is because we can only see up to the places where light has been coming from (actually 46 billion ly in all directions).
However imagine a star system 15 billion light years away from us, they can also so a sphere with a radius of 46bly. This means that they can look 15 billion light years into a direction we cannot see. Furthermore this means we have no idea of how big the actual universe it.


Acutally, we're pretty lucky to have evolved when we evolved. If the universe is flat and will expand forever, there will be a time when creatures evolve when space has expanded that much, that they can't see other galaxies. What a twisted and creature-centric world view they must derive from that observation...

It's a big and uncaring universe out there.

Most of those empty spaces between the wings filled with galaxy clusters are places that haven't been mapped by this project yet.

About there being a center of the universe you could say we are at the center of our observable universe, this is because we can only see up to the places where light has been coming from (actually 46 billion ly in all directions).

However imagine a star system 15 billion light years away from us, they can also so a sphere with a radius of 46bly. This means that they can look 15 billion light years into a direction we cannot see. Furthermore this means we have no idea of how big the actual universe it. It could be tens of times bigger than we see, 10^10 times bigger, or infinite. The center of the real universe must be at the big bang so in a sense everywhere is the center because from out the big bang everything was inflated from nothing into everything. This inflation because it was faster than light has led us to be unconnected with the universe beyond 46bly.

Mind boggling cannot describe the awesomeness and ungraspability of the whole universe.

@Tymbrwulf

I pretty much agree with everything you just said. I think the prose you wrote above would make an excellent deface to the preface of the new book I prefaced called, 'Elephants That Became A Morass Relay System That Were "Gored" Into A Multi-Platform Supported Prostitute', written by John C. Dvorak and prefaced by me and your stuff near the back. Right before the end; you'll kindly remind the readers that they read 259 pages of nothing. Literally, (literally) nothing, but THIS (plus our stuff):

"Then on that dissmal day did I look fondly over the barren San Francisco skyline and remembered the quote I had stated so long ago, and evermore..so...truth-worthy now..."
----

'Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately, leaves the “why” out of the equation — as in “why would I want this?” The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse’. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I dont want one of these new fangled devices.'

>> ^JiggaJonson:

My hat is off to the badass engineering that went into this as well.


not really that bad ass if you compare it to what goes into modern software.

besides this was probably made by Chinese slave children they have to knock out one of these every 40 minutes or they don't get to eat.

its a nice effect though don't think the video would really capture the essence of this its a shame they incased it in glass " mommy look its buzz light year im going to pick him up " , " no timmy noooooooooooooo" ( kids arm is torn and flung across room)

Capo 3
Verse
C Em
C Em
Am G F
F G Am - G

Chorus:
C Am (once per line)

B-part (A billion light-years ..)
2x {
F
G
C Am }
F
G
Am
G

To McBoinkens:
The 4th dimension didn't play into what they are saying directly but it is inseparable from the physics. I was merely pointing out that you were taking their language regarding 'shape' and 'flatness' too literally. Your point regarding reworking of our understanding of gravity is a perfect example. The real question addressed by this video is what is the overall curvature of the universe? The local behavior will be dominated by the local distribution of mass, but what shape does it take asymptotically as you move away from local sources? It doesn't require a re-working of our current theory of gravity and is, in fact, inextricably tied to it. If gravity is related to a bending in the manifold of spacetime than what is the background geometry of the universe? Is it flat or something else? Their analysis did involve the fourth dimension (time) because you can't separate it from any discussin of gravity (or physics in general for that matter). The microwave radiation they measured travelled through both space and time to arrive at the satellite acquiring the data. In that way, it is a measure of the spacetime that it travelled through along the way and they use it to determine the basic geometry of the universe.

To dannym:
I didn't think it was dumbed down that badly. In fact, I thought it was quite well presented. Here again, the curvature they're measuring is the baseline for the universe at large. There are a number of reasons to expect the universe to be flat; not the least of which because it's the most intuitively pleasing. The point is if the universe has a mean curvature to it than that curvature is everywhere including right in front of your face. They aren't measuring the curvature of some incredibly distant point but looking at the most ancient radiation within the universe and the distribution of it to determine the basic geometry of all that is.

>> ^Mcboinkens:

>> ^crotchflame:
It isn't misleading. He's just using the best language available for a popular description of the issue. The universe's mean density determines directly the curvature of the spacetime manifold; so it isn't so much describing shape as geometry. A triangle's still a triangle in a curved spacetime but the geometric properties (sum of the angles) changes. 'Flat' as we think about it doesn't work terribly well in describing a 4-dimensional manifold but still accurately describes the flat spacetime as being one without curvature - or asymptotically Euclidean.
>> ^Mcboinkens:
Misleading. He is saying density is directly related to shape. What exactly qualifies as flat in the view of shapes? That implies that the Earth if flat too. I have a feeling there is quite a bit of debate about the process used here to determine it is flat and not saddled.



I don't se how the 4th dimension even played into their analysis. It's not like they measured time through density. It seemed to me like they were trying to describe the observable 3 dimensional literal space as flat, which is why I thought it was misleading. If they were saying spacetime was flat, I disagree even further because that would completely screw up our current theory of gravity as a function of spacetime. Which is fine in itself, but not without coming up with a replacement for that idea first.


>> ^dannym3141:

I get the feeling this is dumbed down to the point where it can be argued about - maybe the real information is indisputable. But anyway - this might be completely unrelated, but i was shown today by my maths lecturer that if you're "infinitely" far away from a curve, you're equidistant from each point on that curve, so a curve is actually a straight line.
Maybe i didn't follow the video well enough, but it seemed to show a satellite looking out at a section of the sphere we draw around ourself and label "the earliest radiation". How can we look at a surface that is billions of light years away and tell whether or not it has curvature? And if i assume that we CAN see a difference in distance to see whether it's flat or not, surely our error margins are comparatively so large that we couldn't state either way for certain?
I'm going to assume that it's visually extremely hard to demonstrate the principle visually, and that ^ isn't the point.

I get the feeling this is dumbed down to the point where it can be argued about - maybe the real information is indisputable. But anyway - this might be completely unrelated, but i was shown today by my maths lecturer that if you're "infinitely" far away from a curve, you're equidistant from each point on that curve, so a curve is actually a straight line.

Maybe i didn't follow the video well enough, but it seemed to show a satellite looking out at a section of the sphere we draw around ourself and label "the earliest radiation". How can we look at a surface that is billions of light years away and tell whether or not it has curvature? And if i assume that we CAN see a difference in distance to see whether it's flat or not, surely our error margins are comparatively so large that we couldn't state either way for certain?

I'm going to assume that it's visually extremely hard to demonstrate the principle visually, and that ^ isn't the point.

Mars is not within our solar systems habitable zone, its just outside of it. The exciting thing about this discovery is that it is relatively close to our solar system, only 20 light years away. That means 2 habitable zone planets within a sphere of space with a radius of only 10 light years. If that density is at all representative of the whole galaxy it would indicate as many as 50 - 100 billion habitable zone planets in our galaxy, greatly increasing the chances of planets with liquid water and consequently some form of life.

it's not "the media", it's NASA News, and this is exciting. no one's going to take settlers there until we find out more about it though. it gives scientists a specific target for further study instead of just launching crap out there willy nilly hoping to find something. now that we've found something along the lines of what we were looking for, it's time to look closer. 20 light years is pretty far tho. regardless, it's an important astronomical discovery.

actually ... yes... you can smell it too
like theres one part when a t rex roars in your face and you get in the face with water and a blast of air that smells like bad breath. also the chairs vibrate and roll around and you can feel wind and breath and stuff. so yeah, you're occupying space while watching a 3D movie.. but in a 4D movie there are phsycial effects that cause the movie to also occupy your space. it'd be cool if that film thing wasn't just propaganda invading my science museum.
In reply to this comment by pavel_one:
Aren't all 3D movies actually 4D? I just don't see how you can leave that 4th D out.
Are you really saying that it's a 3D movie with smell-o-vision? The awesome of shale gas in a 3D movie with stench is mind-boggling.

In reply to this comment by peggedbea:
yeah yeah ok... sure
but the oil and natural gas barons who fund this tea bagging nonsense publicly acknowledge science and the fossil origins of fossil fuels.

example: i live in on top of a previously impossible to tap natural gas shale. they just discovered how to tap the shit out of that gas. the shale is a huge deal here and has brought a lot development and growth to my adorable little cowtown in the last 3 years or so. so much so in fact, that the natural gas companies funded massive renovations to our science museum. so a room in the museum is now dedicated to the science of natural gas. one of the attractions is a 10 minute long 4D movie about how natural gas got underneath fort worth, and how these genius's are getting it out. the movie takes you back in time all the way to the big bang and fast forwards to different periods, clearly acknowledging that the earth is far far far far older than 6,000 years and that god didn't necessarily have anything to do with it.

soooo, i understand that shaping and funding a movement that denies climate change is good for them, but a wonderful justification for denying the science is the godly origins of the earth... but at the same time they're spending thousands to educate an entire city on the ancientness and godlessness of fossil fuels.....

so nothing about this fits. i've never met a teabagger (and i'm probably more inclined to meet more teabaggers than most of the sift because of my geography) that 1. didn't deny the scientific origins of the universe 2. didn't deny climate change and when hard pressed with facts, didn't resort to "jesus is coming back" and 3. didn't looooooove the shit out of some fossil fuels ...... are they really really just too stupid to notice that the circle doesn't close? this makes me sad.

or is it just a cultural thing?? like, texas has been an oil rich state for over a century now. oil is just kind of embedded in our culture and is just accepted as something positive and a point of pride. and the discussion doesn't go much further than that. i grew up in a city who's football mascot was a fucking oil rig. when i think of symbols that mean texas to me, i see an oil rig. oil=texas. texas=home. home=good. done. thought circle complete. i hope that's it. and it's not just outrageous stupidity and a short few years of brain washing alone. i'm sad.

>> ^RFlagg:

Because Jesus is coming again soon to rapture them away so they don't care what they do to the earth, besides god gave them dominion over the Earth to rape and pillage it as they please. They don't believe in anthropological global warming anyhow since they don't believe in science, though some of them believe in peak oil which is why they think we need to drill "our own oil" by international companies selling it on the international market... Also he put the oil in the earth already made along with fossils, and accelerated light so that a galaxy 12 billion light years away can be seen now even though the universe is only 6,500 years old, and all that other prof that he had nothing to do with the creation of the universe. It is that whole god chose the foolish things to confound the wise... and he hid things from the wise and learned and revealed them to children... and all the other excuses they have for explaining such things.
>> ^peggedbea:
i'm super fascinated with how evolution denying teabaggers justify their raging boner for fossil fuels.