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Comment Re:It's not limited to the US (Score 2) 220

I believe that too. Parasites and disease evolve so that they don't kill their host, since they would die too then. But they weaken their hosts. The combination of several ones can be deadly due to this.
Leprosy disappeared in Europe when some big Tuberculosis epidemics came. People with Leprosy got infected quickly and died. Does is make sense to blame their dead on just one of the two diseases?
You can take any of the factors which are weakening bees away to solve the problem. Best would be to reduce all of them, but neonics are the only factor that can be reduced easily.

Comment Re:4th Dimension? (Score 1) 236

To make it more confusing, could that 4th dimension be the time? Meaning that a galaxy feels gravity from itself in earlier times.
Because of relativity this long-term gravitational effect has to move linearly with the objects through space, so it would kind of wobble with the galaxies when they moving relative to each other. When the galaxies collide the past gravitational effect would keep moving linearly.
Objects of all sizes would have this effect. But since planets moves around stars and stars don't move straight for long either the gravity can not build up over a long time, as it can on the scale of galaxies.

Comment 4th Dimension? (Score 1) 236

I was wondering if dark matter could be matter in a 4 (or more)-dimensional space, so instead of coordinates x,y,z it is w,x,y,z. Ordinary matter is at w=0, while dark matter has some distance to ordinary matter in this 4th dimension. Adding a 4th dimension to gravity formulas is straightforward. We would feel the gravity of such matter on distances comparable to the w value of this matter.
If the dark matter's w value would become similar to ours it would suddenly appear in our 3-dimensional space. Since we never observed it the w value might be fixed. For example this could be galaxies in parallel universes. They would feel each others gravity and drag each other along with ech other, but otherwise they are invisible to each other.

Comment Re:Tilting at Windmills (Score 1) 347

When you give an estimate you give your boss something to plan with. He can get things prepared and plan what is done after you finish. It allows to use the time well, and it assures that it will be fixed, but is not done yet.
I think it does not matter so much that you take a bit longer that way. He can make plans for the rest of the company with that estimate, so it allows everyone else to make better use of their time, and it brings things into order.
At least that is what I think.

Comment Re:a little brighter (Score 1) 203

I think you are right, it must be the flux, not the light intensity. I think the light density of the quarter moon is not that much compared to e.g. Sirius, but of course the flux is considerably larger.
But it is hard to imagine a star with the whole flux of the quarter moon, that must be an extremely bright tiny spot, maybe like a laser.

Comment Re:The whole idea is crazy (Score 1) 288

I've heard it said that our our universe is definitely not the inside of a black hole but I have never heard the reasoning for that claim beyond the "maths says it's a singularity". As with a black hole, light cannot escape our visible universe and the inflationary period embedded in the BBT could be interpreted as the initial collapse into a black hole, ie: I like to speculate that it's black holes all the way down (and up, sideways, etc).

Damn, that is what I am also wondering about. Would be really nice to see a good explanation for that.
I mean there must be some relation between the singularity that a black hole is and the singularity at the big bang. In one case the mass collapses and in the other one it inflates and forms a universe. But what is the difference, or isn't there any, and it is just looking at it from outside and from inside?
Below the article here is a link to an article about a theory related to that.. The theory is that the universe is at the surface of a 4-dimensional black hole, which would explain these things. Though I still don't know why it isn't just a 3-dimensional black hole.

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