Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:falsifiability (Score 1) 1251

How is evolution or the big bang falsifiable in a practical sense. .

Theoretically, it is not really that hard to imagine something that would disprove those. The big bang can easily be disproved by demonstrating that the universe is not expanding. This would however be almost impossible to show in reality, but only because you would also have to show that the enormous amount of evidence which shows the exact opposite is wrong, not because big bang is somehow inherently unfalsifiable.

Comment Re:Soon? (Score 1) 312

How fast is the Earth moving through space? Not toward or away from Betelguese as in red and blue shifts of that particular star but just how fast are we moving through space in general. Can we look at one part of the sky and see everything red shifted and another part of the sky and see blue shifted and extrapolate the total speed from that (obviously we would need a series of measurements)? Do we know how fast the galaxy is moving, or even the speed that the sun moves around the center of the galaxy? For instance if I'm driving a car east at 60 mph, can we take all those factors, add them together and determine the total speed of me and my car.

One of the fundamental principles of relativity is the fact the speed is relative, which makes it meaningless to speak of something have a speed without also saying what that speed is relative to. The only thing that matters here is our speed relative to Betelgeuse.

Does that combined speed cause a time dialation effect (even a tiny one) on Earth? I know time and mass becomes distorted as you approach the speed of light, but I've never heard how steep that gradient is or if there is a lower limit. Would a hypothetical stationary cup of water cooled to absolute zero experience time differently then a similar cup boiling at 100 degrees (obviously the difference would be very tiny, but would it be there or is there a cut off)?

As a rule of thumb, relativistic effects (time dilation, etc.) can pretty safely be ignored at less than 10% of the speed of light. Here's a graph illustrating how time dilation increases with speed, if you're interested: http://www.thebigview.com/spacetime/tdgraphformula.gif

If the universe is expanding in the sense that there is more space between all particles (this was how it was explained to me: that with each passing moment the distance between all particles increases as the fabric of space-time slowly expands) wouldn't the speed of light be slowly increasing (or decreasing) as well. Would a lightyear 600 years ago be the same as it is now?

The gravitational forces within a galaxy are more than strong enough to counteract the effects of the expansion of the universe, so the distance between Earth and Betelgeuse is completely unaffected by it.

Comment Short answer: No (Score 5, Informative) 93

Long answer: Dark matter wasn't invented just because someone saw some anomalous behavior that didn't agree with theory, and said to themselves: "Oh, there has to be something mysterious at work here, we'll call it dark matter.". There are several reasons for believing in dark matter, for example that when measuring gravity we notice gravity coming from directions where we can't see any matter. However, the source of this gravity behaves a lot like matter would. For example we can observe these "invisible gravity sources" being thrown around when two galaxies collide. Because these "invisible gravity sources" acts a lot like matter, except for the fact that we can't see it, it's called dark matter.

If you're not yet convinced, take a look at this recent blogpost by a professional astrophysicist: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2010/11/the_simplest_argument_for_dark.php In this post, he basically explains how we can derive the existence of dark matter from: A) Assuming that the theory of general relativity is valid, B) assuming that the big bang theory is valid, and C) our observations of the cosmic microwave background.

Firefox

Submission + - Mozilla Releases Firefox 4.0 Beta 1 (conceivablytech.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla has quietly posted the first Beta build of its Firefox 4 browser early this morning. The “chromified” browser leaves a solid first impression with a few minor hiccups, but no surprises. If you have been using a previous version of Firefox 3.7, which now officially becomes Firefox 4.0, you should feel already comfortable with this new version. Mozilla has not posted detailed release notes yet, but there seem to be no major changes from Firefox 3.7a6-pre, with the exception that the browser is running more smoothly and with fewer crashes.
Google

Submission + - Why Google, Bing, Yahoo should fear ACTA (itnews.com.au)

littlekorea writes: A top US intellectual property law expert has warned that Silicon Valley's search engines, hosting companies and e-commerce giants have much to fear from the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), negotiations for which continued in Switzerland today. The fear for search engines in particular is the erosion of 'fair use' protections and introduction of statutory damages, both of which could lead to more copyright claims from rights holders.

Comment No violence or cruelty in the new testament? (Score 1) 1318

That is history prior to Christianity. No where in the New Testament will you violence being condoned for the followers of Christianity to participate in.

After a quick search on the internet I found plenty of counter-examples to that claim. One example: "For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death." (Matthew 15:4). How is telling people to kill disobedient children not condoning violence? Perhaps you should try listening to you own advice:

you should at least research the facts before you make claims

Comment Publishing Research in Newspapers? (Score 1) 706

From the article:

The results, which he shared exclusively with TIME , represent the largest study of financial incentives in the classroom — and one of the more rigorous studies ever on anything in education policy.

I was under the impression that research like this gets published in peer-reviewed journals, not in newspapers. Saying the study is rigorous and what the results are won't do you any good unless it's actually possible for others to verify those things.

Comment Re:Big Bank and Evolution (Score 1) 495

the fact that the Big Bang does not explain the state of existence at T(Big Bang) - 1. It does not explain creation

Neither does evolution, relativity, quantum electrodynamics, or any other scientific theory. Do you suggest we shouldn't trust them either?

Big Bang is not meant to explain creation, it simply explains that the universe was at one point very small and very hot, and explains how it developed from there. It does a very good job of explaining our universe based on the model that it was once very small and hot. It is in fact the basis for much of modern astronomy. If you're not convinced, try taking a look at some of the evidence.

Big Bang is a ridiculously strong theory, it's really hard for anyone to not "accept" it unless they do so based on ignorance.

Slashdot Top Deals

"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house." -- George Carlin

Working...