Dark Energy Camera Shows Stars 352 Quintillion Miles Away

[willard]

[citation][nom]face-plants[/nom]Don't forget the object will also approach infinite mass the closer it gets to light speed so besides infinite energy, you're gonna need some anti-gravity suits to keep anyone onboard from being spaghettified from the massive gravity of their own ship.[/citation]
Yeah, mass-energy equivalence is a bitch like that. Chances are you'd incinerate yourself through any tiny inefficiencies in your propulsion system long before, though. For instance, it takes the equivalent of 50 gigatons of TNT to accelerate a 10,000 kg spacecraft to 0.5c. A 0.0001% inefficiency in your propulsion means the ship must absorb and dissipate the equivalent of 500 kilotons (more than 30 times more energy than was released by the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima).

Not sure how we got on this tangent or if you kept the original question in mind when you answered why the relativistic velocities aren't simply additive.

Yeah, a bit off topic from the question I was responding too. While the equations I gave do describe the addition of velocities quite well (convert the velocity to energy, combine, convert back to speed using gamma) it doesn't actually explain why photons do not exceed the speed of light. Photons have no mass, and thus no energy resulting from their velocity regardless of what it is.

As far as I'm aware (could be wrong, I'm an engineer, not a physicist), the constancy of the speed of light is axiomatic, but required for our current understanding of physics to make sense.

It's worth noting that there are hypothetical particles that can go faster than the speed of light. You'll notice that if you substitute an imaginary number for mass in the equations I posted, you get a solution that has a lower bound as the speed of light, and no upper bound. These kinds of hypothetical particles are called tachyons (and no, there is no evidence that they exist).

Glad Einstein's still going strong.

Me too, because modern physics would be fucked if he was wrong, which is probably why there are so many people looking to poke holes in the parts of relativity they don't understand, like the relativity of simultaneity and time dilation.

The time dilation deniers are the funniest. Apparently all the experimental verification of time dilation (and the fact that GPS satellites have to account for it) just isn't good enough for the crackpots and armchair physicists of the world.

 

[Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer]

[citation][nom]face-plants[/nom]Articulate enough?[/citation]
Fairly articulate, yes, though I was asking the dude I quoted specifically, because his post had that air of someone who expresses support for something without actually being able to articulate it (or, indeed, fully understand it).
[citation][nom]willard[/nom]If you're competent at high school algebra...[/citation]
Oh, I think I'm competent at more than high school algebra...I took Calc II and Physics just a few years ago as part of the CS degree I recently finished, and somehow managed to get an A in both. 🙂

I kind of feel like I just pulled an xkcd.com/356/ here ha ha.

The problem is, though, both of your responses are guilty of "begging the question." You assumed that Special Relativity is valid and based your answers on that assumption. I didn't specifically ask my question this way, but what I was really driving at was, "Can you explain why Special Relativity has to be true?"

Well, really, I guess I was asking, "Why are you so certain that Special Relativity is true, and what arguments convince you of its fundamental accuracy?"

 

[jecastej]

What I know about finding dark matter in the universe is it distorts the light behind it and this effect is "visible". But I don't know what makes this dark matter camera different in its optics or CCD sensors.

 

[festa_freak]

I'm a Christian. I think God created the universe. I don't think the universe is 6k years old. We see stars thousands of light years away, that light had to travel in that time.

I have also heard that light isn't completely constant as believed from sources other than creationists, its still theory. So either light WAS indeed faster back then, God created the universe in a state most of the way through it's 'evolution,' the universe is 6k old, or it is indeed billions old. I do star gaze through telescopes and binoculars and love it but I don't wonder about the origins of the universe all that much. I'm here now and what I do with my life now is all that really matters to me. Not much of a history buff.

 

[razor512]

has anyone figured out the flavor of dark energy and dark matter, and if so, how does it compare to nutella?

 

[lordstormdragon]

It's so amusing to see everyone spit out the mainstream "consensus" rhetoric. Dark Energy Camera? It hasn't detected dark energy, dark matter, and most likely never will. Because all of those constructs are based on poor mathematics and ad-hoc theories to hold the Newtonian/Einsteinian "universe" together.

http://www.holoscience.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/BB-vs-Plasma.jpg

In the modern plasma-electrical model, there's no need for such vagaries. No ad-hoc math-only "theories" need be presented. All that extra "stuff" in the universe is quite simply plasma: ionized particles creating and interacting in an electric field. Plasma in space is more conductive than copper wire. It's really quite simple, once you apply Occam's Razor.

http://www.holoscience.com/wp/a-nobel-prize-for-the-dark-side/

Dark energy, dark matter, black holes - none of these mathematical constructs have ever been observed to exist, and any evidence is simply paper-math with no ties to reality.

 

[Flying Sq]

[citation][nom]fuzzion[/nom]Someone has been watching way too much men in black[/citation]
Nope, just existentialism

 

[willard]

[citation][nom]Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer[/nom]Oh, I think I'm competent at more than high school algebra...[/citation]
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be condescending, I merely meant it as a statement of fact about the simplicity of the equations. I assume anyone capable of carrying on a discussion about relativity is more than intelligent enough to handle the basic math to calculate relativistic gamma, and understand the implications.

I took Calc II and Physics just a few years ago as part of the CS degree I recently finished, and somehow managed to get an A in both.

Congratulations, it's good to be a software engineer. We got ranked as the #1 job for the second year running, and prospects are looking better every day. Free tip, if you're good at C++, put that front and center on your resume. I got two job offers straight out of college based solely on the fact that I was a die-hard C++ developer.

The problem is, though, both of your responses are guilty of "begging the question." You assumed that Special Relativity is valid and based your answers on that assumption. I didn't specifically ask my question this way, but what I was really driving at was, "Can you explain why Special Relativity has to be true?"

Do you really expect one of us to prove special relativity for you in the Tom's Hardware news comments? Why don't you just look at this catalog of experiments that have tested the validity of the predictions of SR, instead. Or maybe the Wikipedia article.

Well, really, I guess I was asking, "Why are you so certain that Special Relativity is true, and what arguments convince you of its fundamental accuracy?"

I accept SR because I have no reason not to. The presence of an alternative theory cannot be considered a disproof of the currently accepted theory. We can't just accept theory B because it's newer, the current theory has to be disproved, or a more convincing case be made for B.

SR has stood for more than a hundred years, and nobody has disproved it. Predictions thought to be impossible have been experimentally confirmed again and again. The overwhelming majority of physicists accept this model as the one that is most likely to be correct.

I think a better question is why do you have such a big problem with SR?

[citation][nom]lordstormdragon[/nom]It's so amusing to see everyone spit out the mainstream "consensus" rhetoric[/citation]
Oh, one of these "I just heard about this alternative cosmological model and now I'm smarter than Stephen Hawking" guys with his honorary doctorate from the University of Wikipedia.

Also, are you not familiar with how science works? It's consensus based. That's the whole "peer review" thing you hear so much about.

dark-side/Dark energy, dark matter, black holes - none of these mathematical constructs have ever been observed to exist, and any evidence is simply paper-math with no ties to reality.

Story time.

At the dead center of our galaxy is an incredibly dense object called Sagittarius A*. This object has been very extensively studied. It is the consensus (yes, the 'c' word again) that the best explanation for the observed phenomenon is that the object is a supermassive black hole. Using the acceleration of the stars orbiting the object, its mass has been estimated to be 4,000,000 times the mass of the sun. These stars are orbiting space that appears empty (aside from the evidence in gravitational interactions). Even the accretion disc has been observed giving off intense radiation, exactly as expected. We've even measured the diameter of the disc.

If I cared to do the research, I could write you page after page about the mountains of evidence that Sagittarius A* is a black hole. But if you wanted to hear the opposing viewpoint, then you'd have just done the research yourself before making up your mind about which model to subscribe to.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck.

I think I'll start calling people like you "hipster physicists."

"Pfft, dark energy? How passe. I'm into tired light. It's really obscure, you've probably never heard of it."

 

[lordstormdragon]

The Scientific Method is "consensus based"? Oh, your precious "peer review", because democracy has something to do with facts. And you actually went to school, indoctrinated in the mainstream "consensus view", and are still unable to think for yourself. You distrust your own mind.

To you, science is a popularity game, like High School. To science, itself is a methodology for discovery. That's why it's called "science", son.

"The overwhelming majority of physicists accept this model as the one that is most likely to be correct." Hypothetical physicists, sitting in labs with paper, calculators, and computer models. Crap in, crap out. If your precious math and computer models work so well, how come nobody has ever discovered dark matter, dark energy, or black holes yet? Ever. Never. Nobody's ever detected these things - they are purely mathematical constructs on paper, and still don't explain the cosmos as it's observed.

But you see, electrical engineers actually working with electricity, plasma, and real science don't care about your precious little magazines and paid science workers hanging on dearly for their worthless, resultless jobs. Every news article you see shows how "surprised" the NASA folks are at what they see. "It must be _____ ! Because we can't think of anything else it could be, because we lack any other perspective on the topic. So we'll claim that's 'fact' and the teeming masses will just believe us, because they don't use their own senses and rely on ours."

Let me be clear: the data is the data. The interpretation of the data is why mainstream science (you can call it "The Standard Model") is so flawed. Electromagnetism is outright up to 10^39th power greater in force than the observed force of gravity, and yet is completely ignored by the Standard Model. Gravity alone cannot even create spiral arms in a galaxy - and yet, there they are for us to see. In your Standard Model, 75% of the universe is made of unknown, unobserved "dark stuff". In the Electrical-Plasma Model, 100% of the universe is accounted for. I'm hoping you know what percentages are, at least.

The sun itself, right in front of your face in the daytime, is electrically powered from the OUTSIDE. There is no fusion within the sun - it's an electrical plasma event, not a fusion-mass event.

But don't take my word for it. Study up. Do the research. You blindly cling to a Copernican dream, instead of charging forth and looking into new territory. Your straw-man argument that I'm just another "now I'm smarter than Stephen Hawking" guys" is erroneous and irrelevant. Google me, Willard. Then Google yourself. I do more math every day than you have in your entire life, son.

 

[rebel1280]

[citation][nom]lordstormdragon[/nom]The Scientific Method is "consensus based"? Oh, your precious "peer review", because democracy has something to do with facts. And you actually went to school, indoctrinated in the mainstream "consensus view", and are still unable to think for yourself. You distrust your own mind.To you, science is a popularity game, like High School. To science, itself is a methodology for discovery. That's why it's called "science", son."The overwhelming majority of physicists accept this model as the one that is most likely to be correct." Hypothetical physicists, sitting in labs with paper, calculators, and computer models. Crap in, crap out. If your precious math and computer models work so well, how come nobody has ever discovered dark matter, dark energy, or black holes yet? Ever. Never. Nobody's ever detected these things - they are purely mathematical constructs on paper, and still don't explain the cosmos as it's observed.But you see, electrical engineers actually working with electricity, plasma, and real science don't care about your precious little magazines and paid science workers hanging on dearly for their worthless, resultless jobs. Every news article you see shows how "surprised" the NASA folks are at what they see. "It must be _____ ! Because we can't think of anything else it could be, because we lack any other perspective on the topic. So we'll claim that's 'fact' and the teeming masses will just believe us, because they don't use their own senses and rely on ours."Let me be clear: the data is the data. The interpretation of the data is why mainstream science (you can call it "The Standard Model") is so flawed. Electromagnetism is outright up to 10^39th power greater in force than the observed force of gravity, and yet is completely ignored by the Standard Model. Gravity alone cannot even create spiral arms in a galaxy - and yet, there they are for us to see. In your Standard Model, 75% of the universe is made of unknown, unobserved "dark stuff". In the Electrical-Plasma Model, 100% of the universe is accounted for. I'm hoping you know what percentages are, at least.The sun itself, right in front of your face in the daytime, is electrically powered from the OUTSIDE. There is no fusion within the sun - it's an electrical plasma event, not a fusion-mass event.But don't take my word for it. Study up. Do the research. You blindly cling to a Copernican dream, instead of charging forth and looking into new territory. Your straw-man argument that I'm just another "now I'm smarter than Stephen Hawking" guys" is erroneous and irrelevant. Google me, Willard. Then Google yourself. I do more math every day than you have in your entire life, son.[/citation]
You just threw out some serious implications! Honestly, the discussion between you and willard have been more than educational. Enough so that I am driven to question what you both have said and research on my own. I am by no means any kind of physicist or electrical engineer but i find these types of discussion enlightening and fun to read. So thanks guys, both of you

 

[Pherule]

[citation][nom]Zingam[/nom]How do you know that one?[/citation]

Quote:
"One of the first things Setterfield set out to do was to determine the best curve to fit the observed light-speed measurements. This would enable one to make projections back into the past and see what the speed of light was at earlier times and, more importantly for our purposes, to obtain an estimate of when the whole process began and thereby make an approximation of the age of the universe.

Of all the decay curves that could be fitted to the existing data, one stood out clearly as the best fit. Setterfield's jaw dropped as he viewed the curve. It indicated an origin of the universe about six thousand years ago—the traditional figure based on analysis of biblical chronologies and genealogies! At some point a little beyond 4000 B.C., the curve approaches infinite light speed and thus the ultimate origin."

Source:
http://www.creationism.org/ackerman/AckermanYoungWorldChap08.htm

Ba dum tsss! The universe is ~6000 years old.

Evolutionists (read: sheep) will thumb this down of course.

 

[lordstormdragon]

I am not an Evolutionist, I'm a scientist - and I thumbed you down. And Pherule, you're an idiot if you think reality is seriously only 6,000 years old. Again, this is just math on paper and has no bearing to reality - the Universe doesn't care about the math, and actual observations of reality itself show just how fucking stupid that idea is.

Are you not aware of archaeology? Sure, carbon-14 dating has proven to be inaccurate and imprecise, and not always a valid form of testing. But you are aware that the Earth is spherical in shape, and not a flat plane, are you not?

That said, the "Big Bang" has been falsified since the 1950s, yet pseudo-scientists still prattle on about redshift. So unless you're able to open your eyes and do your own research, you really have no business spouting off other people's BS math as if it were even applicable.

 

[Pherule]

[citation][nom]lordstormdragon[/nom]I am not an Evolutionist, I'm a scientist[/citation]
Yet you don't disagree with evolution, I'm sure.

[citation][nom]lordstormdragon[/nom]And Pherule, you're an idiot if you think reality is seriously only 6,000 years old.[/citation]
...and you're an idiot for making that statement. Your view is so closeminded it's hilarious.

[citation][nom]lordstormdragon[/nom]Sure, carbon-14 dating has proven to be inaccurate and imprecise[/citation]
Thank you for stating the obvious.

[citation][nom]lordstormdragon[/nom]But you are aware that the Earth is spherical in shape, and not a flat plane, are you not?[/citation]
Is that supposed to be condescending or trolling? You're being ridiculous.

[citation][nom]lordstormdragon[/nom]So unless you're able to open your eyes and do your own research, you really have no business spouting off other people's BS math as if it were even applicable.[/citation]
You're the "scientist". Why don't you tell us what research you've done on the matter? (Actually don't. I hate long, drawn out arguments.)

 

[lordstormdragon]

Pherule, you're proposing that some super-evolved magical monkey in space created existence.

The burden of proof is upon you to provide any evidence at all. And also, while you're at it, please provide any shred of data or evidence that Jesus even existed. There has thus far to date been zero.

You can believe whatever you like, of course. It's no skin off my back if you remain retarded for the rest of your life, wallowing in self-imposed mental servitude.

"...surely it must be admitted that these distant objects are far in excess of a few thousand light-years away."

No, surely it must not be admitted. There's no reason to "admit" anything of the sort, it's purely supposition. Where's the data?

Redshift is not an indicator of distance, the Big Bang is bullshit. But at the same time, Creationism is purely mythology. Keep on truckin' though, Sunshine. Just stay the hell away from my children and we won't have a problem.

 

[face-plants]

Willard, we will never win with some of these people, and I'm perfectly happy with that. When the process of peer review itself is misunderstood and over-simplified as just a democracy, there's no hope of having them accept anything further no matter how thoroughly it may be vetted through, and supported by others in the scientific community.

It's as if people think those of us in the scientific community just need popularity to arrive at a consensus on the validity of a theorem (instead of evidence or scientific results that can be verified and reproduced). A very important part of the peer review process is that most theories would be completely invalidated with just a single experiment or observation that shows something contrary to what said theory predicts.

Many of the things Relativity Theory (both general and special) implies cannot currently be found, or proven absolutely with our level of technology, or our level of open-mindedness. Until it can be absolutely proven, it can only be theory. This is called the scientific process. This does not mean that it will not one day become fact in its present or modified form or that the scientific community just decided we liked it and voted it 'into power'.

When a theory has gone for decades without being dis-proven, it is quite acceptable to use that theory to describe other phenomenon observed in the natural world. So if you nay-sayers really think that relativity (and all the processes and effects it implies) is a bunch of bologna, all you need to do is find one single observation that disproves it (or come up with a better explanation) and have it pass the rigors of peer review. Oh, and you'll almost certainly have a Nobel prize coming to you as well.

 

[Pherule]

[citation][nom]lordstormdragon[/nom]you're proposing that some super-evolved magical monkey in space created existence.[/citation]
No, I'm proposing that God created the universe.

[citation][nom]lordstormdragon[/nom]The burden of proof is upon you to provide any evidence at all.[/citation]
The burden of proof is upon you to provide any evidence at all. Right back at you.

[citation][nom]lordstormdragon[/nom]Just stay the hell away from my children and we won't have a problem.[/citation]
I guess it's true when they say Atheism is a religion. Your children might not thank you after they're dead though (50 - 100 years from now, depending on their current age of course)