Cool name, hey? 
I enjoyed the reading the 'Attention all moon landing skeptics' thread.
I love science. I want to hear (or read) everyone's theories on anything from the big bang, to God, time travel, parallel universes, aliens, whatever.
Please, let your minds expand! (Intoxicated? Why yes, yes I am)
If any of you do partake, please don't get too personal. I'm really interested in reading this 
I'm not saying don't debate the f**k out of each other though! 
Quote: Leevil @ July 21 2009, 3:09 AM BSTI enjoyed the reading the 'Attention all moon landing skeptics' thread.
There's plenty of room for questions, conjecture and theory in science. But let me make an observation:
There's plenty of room for debate about the origin of the universe. Big Bang? Who knows? But denying the moon landings is like denying that the universe and all its galaxies and stars and planets exist. There's plenty of room to argue about the evolution of man, but you can't argue that the fossils we've found don't exist. Feel free to argue the merits of space exploration, but don't deny that we've actually done it.
Quote: DaButt @ July 21 2009, 3:17 AM BSTBut denying the moon landings is like denying that the universe and all its galaxies and stars and planets exist.
If all of that can exist, in all of the ways we can imagine and all of the ways we can't. How can anything be impossible? How can it be impossible for it not to have happened?
I can understand anyone's determination to believe it was possible; but I do believe, but won't deny, that there is a small chance it did or didn't happen.
Quote: Leevil @ July 21 2009, 3:56 AM BSTIf all of that can exist, in all of the ways we can imagine and all of the ways we can't. How can anything be impossible? How can it be impossible for it not to have happened?
I can understand anyone's determination to believe it was possible; but I can believe, but won't deny, that there is a small chance it did or didn't happen.
Physics
Once upon a Time, except it wasn't really time as time itself didn't exist back then 15 billion or so years ago. Two Universes or a God and a Goddess or somethings else we have no way of understanding, got together and had a REALLY BIG BANG. This spawned lots and lots of teeny weeny particles most of which raced away from the scene of the BANG, very quickly forming the bleeding edge of space and time. And they are still running away so we have an expanding universe.
Those particles that were a bit slow off the starting blocks were left behind somewhat and got kind of lazy and fatter and were now atoms of hydrogen or helium. They generally swirled about a bit flirting and became very attracted to each other, so lots of cliques of them got closer & closer to each other dancing and touching each other till there was a spark of love and these cliques ignited and became relatively large hydrogen-fusion bombs called suns. The leftover members of the cliques (the sort of fringe hangers on) swirled around a bit disconsolately around the outside of their sun and eventually got together in mini-cliques as gas giant planets (like Jupiter). Unable to pull themselves away from their first loves they ran in circles (called orbits) around their suns for their whole lifetimes.
In them thar days everything was quite lightweight being just hydrogen or helium [and they all had squeaky voices like Micky Mouse ]; there were no heavy mob. The hydrogen bomb explosions called suns had a heck of a lot of hydrogen of course so took a rather long time over their exploding (around 5 billion years or so), but most finally finished with a rather bright gang bang party called a Nova.
Well lots of intense things happen at these Nova parties, firstly the Hydrogen & Helium atoms all get squished together in a great variey of ways and they get stuck like that forming the heavy mob (atoms of all the other known elements from relatively lightweight ones like Oxygen way through to the really heavy ones like Uranium, Plutonium etc). Then there's the big flash and they all go racing away from the former site of the sun.
Then it all sort of happened again (*), the mixture of light stuff and heavy stuff swirled about a bit, sucked a bit into new directions by old suns that hadn't yet novaed, creating great clouds of stuff called nebulae. But in due course they forgot the rage that drove them apart and they started to gather together again. Once more they were attracted to each other, collected up any bits of hydrogen & oxygen that missed the first cliques and settle down & ignited as a new sun. Any heavy mob in the central mass get ripped apart again in the hydrogen fusion explosion that is a sun, but in the outer swirling clouds the clumps called planets are not big enough to ignite so the heavy mob stay heavy and form dense planets with all sorts of atoms.
(*) and again at least once more
At one insignificant little spot in the universe one such system formed with a yellow sun (now called Sol) and a nice range of planets from little heavy ones to gas giants. The third one out we call Earth, 'costhat's what we see, though actually its mostly made of Iron. The iron got rather hot when it squished together and though it has been cooling down for about 5 billion years the iron is still molten at the centre. On the surface are various bits of slag that we call the continents and a thin skimming of water and ice, at most 6 miles thick. Eventually Dr Frankenstein came along and zapped a few simple molecules with electrickey lightning bangs and this eventually led to LIFE, the end result of which is a bunch of BCG members sitting around laughing at each other
or having a party.
For a more detailed description of Physics, read "A brief history of Time" by that chappie in a wheelchair: Stephen Hawking.
____ 
Quote: billwill @ July 21 2009, 4:08 AM BSTPhysics
A few semesters of calculus and physics at university were real eye openers for me. They really drove home the fact that everything is governed by the laws of physics and can be described mathematically.
Quote: DaButt @ July 21 2009, 4:00 AM BST
That may be true. But you can't throw the infinite universe into the argument and not expect infinite possibilities being thrown back.
If you can't deny the universe and can't deny the moon landings (putting them on the same pedestal) Then what is the universe? Something that follows our rules? 
()
Quote: Leevil @ July 21 2009, 4:22 AM BSTThat may be true. But you can't throw the infinite universe into the argument and not expect infinite possibilities being thrown back.
But in reality we're not debating the infinite universe. We're talking about a couple of guys getting in a rocket and flying to the moon for a few days. It'll be interesting to see what the doubters say in a few years when the Chinese land on the moon.
It will be very interesting and I look forward to it very much. It's fair enough to bring it back down to basics, like I said. For now, I'm happy to believe it did happen. I'm just open to the possibility it didn't.
And if it didn't. What would that mean for the world? For the fate of mankind? Isn't this all part of a mathematical equation? Something to do with, you know what, It's too late, my head hurts...
My kids and I are really looking forward to the eclipse. My daughter really doesn't understand what's going to happen, but my son is beside himself excited. I'm curious to see what will be affected by it.
Quote: Leevil @ July 21 2009, 4:22 AM BSTThat may be true. But you can't throw the infinite universe into the argument and not expect infinite possibilities being thrown back.
Assuming the Universe is infinite, not finite. An infinite Universe would suggest that this is the only universe in existence, a universe containing billions of galaxies.
Personally I like the finite universe theory with the possibility of hundreds or billions of other universe's out there each with billions of galaxies, or even the existence of parrallel universe's. Helps me get my primitive earthling brain around the question 'if the universe is infinite how can it expand when there's no space left to expand beyond infinity'.
Here's a sciency question that's ‚'doing my head in'.
We all know that time travel is possible because we do it every night when we look at the stars. The stars we see aren't a representation of the celestial bodies at this point in time on the Earth but how they looked hundreds or millions even billions of years ago, how long it takes for the light from these objects to reach us. The further we look into the universe the further we travel back in time.
Right, imagine a planet 100 light years from Earth, if I get Scotty to beam me onto the surface of this planet I will travel 100 light years in a matter of seconds. When I look at the Earth through my super powerful telescope I will see the Earth in the year 1909 because the light hasn't caught up with me yet.
Now I'm here on this planet at this planets point in time looking at the Earth 100 years ago if I get Scotty to beam me from this planet straight back to Earth, will I be in 1909, 2009 or 2109?
Quote: hey_nonny @ July 21 2009, 8:35 AM BSTAssuming the Universe is infinite, not finite. An infinite Universe would suggest that this is the only universe in existence, a universe containing billions of galaxies.
Personally I like the finite universe theory with the possibility of hundreds or billions of other universe's out there each with billions of galaxies, or even the existence of parrallel universe's. Helps me get my primitive earthling brain around the question 'if the universe is infinite how can it expand when there's no space left to expand beyond infinity'.
Yeah, well. Infinity is odd like that. There's nothing, theoretically, to stop us having an infinite universe, which is expanding and is just one of a possibly infinite number of other infinite universes.
Look up Hilbert's Infinite Hotel for a reasonably understandable explanation of how infinity works and how odd it can be.
Edit: Here we go. Don't Panic.
If you can wrap your head round that, follow the link at the bottom of the page for a description of Cantor's different sized infinities.
Quote: hey_nonny @ July 21 2009, 9:04 AM BSTHere's a sciency question that's ‚'doing my head in'.
We all know that time travel is possible because we do it every night when we look at the stars. The stars we see aren't a representation of the celestial bodies at this point in time on the Earth but how they looked hundreds or millions even billions of years ago, how long it takes for the light from these objects to reach us. The further we look into the universe the further we travel back in time.
Right, imagine a planet 100 light years from Earth, if I get Scotty to beam me onto the surface of this planet I will travel 100 light years in a matter of seconds. When I look at the Earth through my super powerful telescope I will see the Earth in the year 1909 because the light hasn't caught up with me yet.
Now I'm here on this planet at this planets point in time looking at the Earth 100 years ago if I get Scotty to beam me from this planet straight back to Earth, will I be in 1909, 2009 or 2109?
2009
Yes. What Fred said. When you look at stars you are not travelling in time, you are looking back in time because the light takes so long to reach us. The stars are still there in 2009 (mostly) but we won't see the light they are currently emitting for a long time yet.
And FWIW for anyone who cares, I'm not convinced that Schroedinger was right. Put a cat in a box with a 50/50 chance of poisoning it to death and, until you look, it is neither alive nor dead but in a state of quantum flux. But surely - something that is neither alive nor dead is actually an undead? Like a zombie cat or something.