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Comment: Re:What does it mean for Christians? (Score 3, Informative) 129

by Mogster (#38847129) Attached to: North Star May Be Wasting Away

Hrmm I'm Catholic and have a degree in theology. And this is the first time I've ever heard that the star of Bethlehem is supposed to be Polaris - it's certainly not part of the general 'mythos' as you put it

General teaching is that the Star of Bethlehem only hung around until not long after the Wise men left. And from a more scientific viewpoint if it's true then it was likely a supernova

Comment: Re:bad info (Score 1) 257

by Mogster (#38454110) Attached to: Hobbit Film Trailer Posted Online

I disagree...

The Bombadil/Barrow-wight sub-plot was easily left out. It made for a good read but it's exclusion didn't detract from the overall story.

The Scouring of the Shire however is a major part of the story and ends the War of the Ring back in the Shire amongst Hobbits. Remember the LotR is a story about Hobbits. It says so in the prologue. And JRRT actually stated the TSofS was one of the earliest parts of the book to be written.

To my mind the movies focused too much on Aragorn/Arwin which was only a sub-story in the books.

I did enjoy the movies - however I feel PJ, et al missed the overall point.

Comment: Re:Something is fishy (Score 1) 379

by Mogster (#37082146) Attached to: CERN Physicist Says Dark Matter May Be an Illusion

As the antimatter is repulsed by the normal matter, wouldn't this require the introduction of another force (the "dark force"?) – that should be even stronger than the strong force – to explain how come we are not seeing flows of antimatter originating from the core of the galaxies?

Do not underestimate the dark side of the Force.

Comment: Re:Leak DRM? (Score 1) 287

by Mogster (#34453964) Attached to: With Better Sharing of Intel Comes Danger

For the record it is not particularly easy to use a printer to duplicate, say, 250,000 diplomatic cables and walk out with them under your arms.

True, however if said documents were already in deadtree format then all one needs is a camera.

And a microSD card is a lot less painfull than a roll of film... or so I would imagine ;-)

Science

Kiwi scientists make atomic 'breakthrough' ->

Submitted by Mogster
Mogster writes ""University of Otago scientists have made a "major physics breakthrough" with the development of a technique to consistently isolate and capture a fast-moving single atom. A team of four researchers from the university's physics department are believed to be the first to isolate and photograph the Rubidium 85 atom"

Good to see Kiwi's following in Rutherford's footsteps"

Link to Original Source

Gravity Theory Mod May Rule Out Dark Matter 2

Submitted by pupitetris
pupitetris writes "Newton may prove himself right again when he stated that we should better find the forces that explain the movement of the stars, rather than claiming the existence of misterious and undetectable substances: S. Mendoza and X. Hernandez, two mexican astrophysicists, postulate a modification to the equation of the theory of gravity that explain the current observations of large-scale phenomena that couldn't be previously explained using gravity alone, while still retaining consistency with medium and small scale observations. This renders the Dark Matter theory unnecessary, and provides a cleaner and more ellegant solution to outer-space observations that have startled scientists for decades."

Comment: Re:Darwin +1 Creationism +0 (Score 1) 293

by Mogster (#33671404) Attached to: Plants Near Chernobyl Adapt To Contaminated Soil

By that logic, Creationism = Big Bang Theory.

I would suggest splitting Creationism into two parts
1) Initial creation
2) Flora, Fauna, etc created as they are today

The first part can fit nicely into the theory of Evolution - belief dependent of course

One of the early pioneers of the Big Bang theory was also a Catholic Priest. Georges_Lemaitre

And before someone else brings it up there is also 'Intelligent Design'. However I can't speak for that as I'm not overly familiar with the tenants of its proponents and am not in the mood for a flamewar :-)

Comment: Re:This is why science rocks. (Score 1) 311

by Mogster (#33656180) Attached to: LHC Spies Hints of Infant Universe

Didn't they tally up the numbers in 1650. So it's at LEAST 6360 years old now.

Given all the monkeying around with the calendar over the years, taking into account leap second adjustments every-so-often and the uncertainty of when the year 0 was based on Jebus' actual DOB, etc

It's now roughly 6314.15926535897932384626433832795 years old

You mean you don't want to watch WRESTLING from ATLANTA?

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