yguy

You completely missed the point. What a surprise.

Principia

Then, I guess I didn't miss much.

Alix Nenuphar

Yguy:

Remember "annoying everybody" and "disproving lies"? You are keeping those things in mind aren't you? There might be one or two people who are waiting to see if you can do either of these things. There might not, of course... so far as I can determine from this thread, a great many people simply enjoy baiting you.

yguy

I have made not claimed that they are complex,nor that I have any substantive understanding of these forces. Let those who have claimed such understanding demonstrate it, that their glib pronouncements that this or that is possible or probable may gain credibility.

yguy

I cannot be baited. But you are welcome to keep trying.

caravelair

i never claimed to know the reasons why the universe has the properties we see.

i'm not claiming to know everything about gravity. but it appears to be a relatively simple thing, so until you can provide evidence to the contrary, i have no reason to believe that it is complex.

and again, until you provide evidence of their complexity, it is reasonable to assume the opposite.

well, recently physicists have been theorizing that the speed of light may have changed... during the first fraction of a second of the universe, and has been constant since, which wouldn't change things significantly at all. then there is an old creationist theory that the speed of light was slowing down since the start of the universe until the decade when we invented equiptment which can accurately measure the speed of light. unfortunately for that theory, we can measure the constancy of light by looking at pulsars and cepheid variable stars. if light had been slowing down, when we look farther away, and therefore farther into the past, things would appear to be moving slower than when they happened. since certain types of stars pulsate at well known frequencies, they would appear to be pulsating at a slower rate the farther away you look. but when we look at those stars that are far away, they pulsate at the same frequencies as they do in closer proximity, so we know that the speed of light has stayed the same, or at least extremely close to the same.

yguy

But you have claimed to understand gravity. If you did, answering a simple question like that would be child's play.

I don't think it's necessarily complex, I just think it may not be as predictable as we think.

As I have suggested elsewhere, the more reasonable course would be to assume nothing at all...but I'm aware of how seductive it is to assume, and how un-hip it is to admit ignorance.


http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...157961167.html

From the article:

Incorporating some of the most intriguing aspects of cosmology and theoretical physics - distant quasars, black holes, event horizons and, probably, quantum theory - they have concluded that the speed of light has slowed down over time.

<snip>

For now, Murphy and Webb's observations of quasars will continue to be scrutinised and be regarded with scepticism. "If they're right, this makes theoretical physicists very uncomfortable," Davies says. "These are cherished laws and they don't really want to have to ditch them, because all of the favoured frontier stuff these days, with people working on string theory, M-theory and all these other sexy topics, would have to down tools and start with a completely different conceptual scheme."

More articles

caravelair

i never claimed to have a complete understanding of gravity. doesn't mean i can't know some things about it. and i have NO idea why you think that such a question would be easier to explain than gravity. i think it would be quite the opposite.

but again, we have never observed it to behave in an unpredictable manner, so what reason should we have to believe otherwise? at the very least, it behaves like we expect almost 100% of the time.

As I have suggested elsewhere, the more reasonable course would be to assume nothing at all...but I'm aware of how seductive it is to assume, and how un-hip it is to admit ignorance.[/B][/QUOTE]

but as i've pointed out, the fundamental laws appear very simple, so it is natural to assume that they are the way they seem.


also from that article:

""The light that comes to you from a quasar has been travelling for most of the age of the universe - several billion years - and it carries with it information about what happened to it along the way," Murphy says."

so clearly, i don't think it's making the type of changes that you think. it's not going to change the fact that the universe is billions of years old.

another thing that seems fishy about this theory is the fact that E=mc^2, so if light has been slowing down, that means the total energy of the universe has been decreasing, which violates the 1st law of thermodynamics.

Mageth

I have made not claimed that they are complex,nor that I have any substantive understanding of these forces. Let those who have claimed such understanding demonstrate it, that their glib pronouncements that this or that is possible or probable may gain credibility.

Let those that claim to not have any substantive understanding of these forces (but don't let that stop them from making claims about them) not call those who do, and have demonstrated it in their posts, on the carpet for not being credible.

Mageth

From the article:

Incorporating some of the most intriguing aspects of cosmology and theoretical physics - distant quasars, black holes, event horizons and, probably, quantum theory - they have concluded that the speed of light has slowed down over time.

I note that yguy highlighted the last phrase. I don't think the word "concluded" should have been used here. The slowing of the speed of light this is still one possible hypothesis to explain the observations at best, and is not a conclusion, certainly not a fact or even considered a theory AFAIK. Time will tell if it holds up.