I think if the changes are guided then it isn't quite considered evolution, or if you prefer, Darwinian evolution. I don't think many people would consider the breeding of a new dog breed to be Darwinian evolution as the mate selection and traits selected for have nothing to do with it's ability to survive. Some smaller breed have such big heads that they can only give birth by c-section. That animal, as a species, would not do to well in the wild. If an AI was selecting it's own changes it is quite similar. It goes even further from what we think of as evolution because the changes can be implemented in it's own self. It does not have to have offspring that compete for resources and mates. It can decide what changes it wants and reprogram itself to have them. Quite a short cut from the standard model of evolution.

It doesn't matter what you download. I wanted to get Chrome for my PC after a fresh install. IE/Bing led me to an infected version to download. I'm sure that Microsoft is just fine with people who install Chrome ending up with viruses, but I know who is really at fault and that is why I detest MS to the core. If it weren't for the games I wouldn't even use it. And even then, I refuse to give them money for their lock in.

The top of a large mountain would have a faster rate of time than at the base, according to relativity. So over a million years, the top will have moved into the future in relation to the base. But the planet spins once each day. The base and the top align to a certain star at the same time each day. How can they experience a different time if they spin an the same rate. Perhaps we are measuring time with things that do not keep constant. If we made a clock based on the spinning of the planet, it would not change based on gravity or speed.

It is true that he said some pretty stupid things on Facebook. But from what I heard on public radio this morning, he did have disclaimers on the pages saying that it was only ranting and venting of his frustrations and not to be taken seriously. That seems to show that he did not mean the threats seriously. If you let anybody take offence to anything said, then I have plenty of stuff to through all the politicians and even the President into jail for!

And why don't you care about the suffering of the plants? Do you think they don't feel pain? They certainly do. They even communicate to each other when being attacked by insects or bacteria and viruses. You care about one life form over another, but that does not mean anything in the grand scheme. You probably have no problem swatting a mosquito that is biting you, or pulling a tick out of your skin and killing it. Life feeds on life. Get used to it!

Well I know for a fact that they can live on their own in the walls of your house just fine! I came out one night to feed on my brother. Nasty little bloodsucker!

On the flip-side of this though is the MPAA. They are not a government organization, nor are they mandated by the government. They do possess quite the power to stop certain things from being shown in movie theaters though. Plenty of producers have forced the editing of movies so they could avoid certain ratings. And we are not even allowed to know who the people are who produce the ratings, or how they are created. It is a black box that controls what gets shown in theaters. Check out the movie "This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006)" [imdb.com] if you want more details.

Why do all the comparisons involve a non-powered ballistic object like a bullet or in this case a hammer. The Rosetta probe does have thrusters on it and can adjust it's trajectory to hit the comet. It would be more like a heat seeking missile shot at a flare.

They originally thought there would be no shadows because comets are very smooth and round. It wasn't until the Rosetta probe came close that they saw what it actually looked like.

If they knew it was craggly, then why were they surprised at how irregularly shaped it was. I remember them saying how they suspected comets would be much more smooth than this was and they had a tricky time trying to find good places to land.

The mysterious "Band of Holes" seems like it could be the result of an automated drones that left foot prints or bore holes during it's operation here on Earth. http://www.crystalinks.com/ban...

I might be a customer of the game company, but I refuse to be a customer of Microsoft. If I am required to use their system to play games I can at least pirate it so they get no monetary consideration from me!

Unless you don't happen to be in a "Free Speech Zone" while doing it.

It may work out mathematically the same way. But, if the universe was rotating around the earth, then there are a whole lot of stars and galaxies out there that are travelling much faster than the speed of light. Since nothing can travel faster than that speed, doesn't that mean the two are not equivalent?

Thanks for all of the info. I read up on this stuff, but it is nice to have someone who understands it better put things into another way to look at it that makes things a little easier to understand.

Your point about gravity being a conservative force where the object speeds up the same amount that it slows down when leaving makes sense. I should have thought of that as I do know that objects in space aren't just captured in orbit without making some sort of changes to their velocity. This then makes me wonder how the dark matter ever gathered together in the first place with the galaxies.

The exact GR you speak of sounds interesting. Is that related to calculating the gravity in the galaxy more accurately than treating it as all the mass being in the center? Because the matter at the edge of the spiral is getting pulled by all the other matter around. And with it moving toward some of the mass and away from some other mass, it could be seeing some sort of gravity red-shift that causes a further speed up (I am thinking of the speed of gravity and the searched for gravity waves). I don't quite see how that would hold the elliptical galaxies together in the same fashion as they are all moving pretty randomly as I understand it.

And thinking about the idea of dark energy, after watching some videos on these subjects, makes me wonder if the big bang isn't just a mis-interpretation of the expansion due to this dark energy phenomenon. There is the cosmic microwave background radiation that supposedly comes from the early big bang. But if there was another place that could come from. . . I guess it still leads to a smaller universe in the distant past and you don't quite get around it leading back to a point in space. Unless new matter is created somewhere in between the current matter. Then you could have expansion indefinitely where it didn't start at one point or one time.

The universe is a pretty interesting place. From the quantum scale where totally weird things take place, to the cosmic scale where unexplained things are observed. I just hope we find some answers to this stuff because it sure would suck to stay in the dark for the rest of my life. And it seems like dark matter and dark energy should be two aspects of one think somehow. Like if we really understood how gravity worked, perhaps quantum gravity, they would both be explained there.

Again, thanks for the time you have given posting your very informative text.