easel wrote on Jan 1^st, 2009 at 6:46pm:


Well it teaches that we cannot create or destroy it. Maybe other things or processes we have not yet encountered or understand can. Also quantum mechanics disagrees with this.

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Why did it have to come from somewhere?

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There's plenty out there. Just nothing that leads me to believe there is a magic fairyland afterlife for the clever clothed apes on planet earth, in the far outer spiral arm of one of the billions of galaxies in the known universe. Bit on the arrogant side for us to say its all here for us. If our lifespan is extended by medical science sufficiently (say into the thousands of years) we might grow out of our tendency to create mystical afterlifes in our brains.

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Who knows what is in a star - not like we can go and check.

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Life is just a chemical reaction, with an infinite universe, there is a good chance there is a lot of life out there. Most of its probably pond scum goo however. Some of it would be advanced. And some of it, of necessity, will not be friendly. Thats why it seemed to me to be remarkably stupid to send Voyager into the universe carrying a map of where earth was, saying 'Hello, evil aliens, here is the location of a very primitive planet for you to destroy or takeover.'

All of that seems pie in the sky stuff, but it would only need to be one group headed our way and we'd be stuffed. And then the inherent unlikelihood of it happening just wouldnt matter anymore, now would it?

Energy and matter are the same thing, according to Einstein (relativity). That's what E=mc^2 is about.

I don't think that you can rationally relate anything to infinity.

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No I dont accept that. Just because the container is infinitely large, does not mean that what is contained within it is infinite.

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Nobody has found it yet - it seems. Voyager still travels on its merry way. It was just a dumb thing to do.

freediver wrote on Jan 2^nd, 2009 at 11:45am:


Now maths definitely wasn't my strong suit, but looking at that equation;

Energy = (matter x speed of light)^2

Therefore energy is larger than matter by a huge margin. If the theory is correct.

And you would think that it would travel much faster than the speed of light. But that theory might be applicable only to energy contained within matter.

But then, if that energy leaves the matter it is contained in, you would assume it has more speed than light, and therefore would be able to travel faster than the hypothesised expansion of the universe.

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No, it means energy is matter. It's like saying 1 dollar equals 100 cents. They are both currency. Charging $1 or 100c is the same thing. The apparent size really just reflects the units we use. If the designers of SI units had had more forsight, the equation may have read E=m.

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I'm with Calanen on this one. Infinite in size does not mean infinite in mass, or anything else. It could just be an infinite vaccum. As the diameter of your sphere of observation increases, the mass (or number of life forms or any other proxy) could approach the total mass asymtotically. Infinite space does not have to imply that anything else is infinite. I suspect that the big bang theory suggests a finite mass. I also think that relativity implies infinite space in a cartesian sense, but that in a real sense space folds back in on itself and has a finite size, but you can't reach the edge. That's about the limit of my memory of high school physics.

Mass and matter are different, google just told me.

I'm not good at physics so go slow if you want to discuss this one with me.

Ok.

I was in the low class for maths at school.

E=MC^2

So you are saying energy is mass x (speed of light)^2 or whatever?

That still doesn't make energy equal to mass.