--------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 180 ASTRONOMY Ref: F3H00003 Date: 03/12/98 From: PAUL M. DAVIS Time: 01:19am \/To: JOHN PAZMINO (Read 1 times) Subj: Anthropic cosmology On 8 Mar 98, John Pazmino was discussing "Anthropic cosmology" with Barton Paul Levenson. JP> Actually Topler's book 'The Anthropic Principle' (or similar) is a JP> worthwhile read. If you consider the matter a bit, the entire series of JP> events and the whole history of the universe seems to be one colossal JP> suite of accidents all conspiring to make the world safe and sound for JP> humans. I don't go for that. It makes it sound as if the appearance of a planet that can sustain life, as we know it, is somehow an inevitable consequence of the history of our Universe. What evidence is there of this inevitability? JP> It takes but the minor shift in any one of the almost JP> numberless features in our universe totoally upend the chances of JP> humans springing forth on Earth. Indeed. However, we have the features we observe. Please provide evidence that our appearance is an inevitable consequence of the laws of our Universe. JP> As a born-again Christian this is a JP> very fundamental pricnciple. Otherwise, why the hell would God go thru JP> all the trouble to make a universe if in the end no one is around to JP> adore His work? This isn't science. It's belief. First you must demonstrate the existence of a god who went to the trouble of creating a Universe, before you can argue that it would be senseless to create a Universe where life has not, or cannot, evolve in order to appreciate said god's creation. Paul ... Caution:High Pressure!!! Contents are LHA'ED!! --- Spot 1.3a #1413 * Origin: If at first you don't succeed, redefine success. (2:254/524.18) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 180 ASTRONOMY Ref: F3H00004 Date: 03/12/98 From: MIKE ROSS Time: 11:18pm \/To: ALL (Read 1 times) Subj: A 5th force? Hi, Just came across another blurb on the universe expansion accelerating: : WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Understanding the universe, already hard to do, : just got a little harder on Thursday with news that a strange force : seems to be pushing it apart. The unusual repulsive force seems to be : working against gravity to speed up the expansion of the universe, they : said. : : "We are scratching our heads to think if there could be a alternative : explanation for it -- something more mundane than a repulsive force," : said Adam Riess, a cosmologist at the University of California at : Berkeley. : : Riess and other members of the High-Redshift Supernova Search Team, an : international group of astronomers from the United States, Latin : America, Australia and Europe, were looking at supernovae. : : These exploding stars are so bright and so common that they provide : useful information about the universe. Because space is so vast, the : light and other radiation from objects that are very far away take : millions of years to reach Earth. : : Astronomers can compare information from distant supernovae to ones that : are closer to get information about what the universe is doing. "The : supernovae tell us how fast the universe is expanding now and can tell : us how fast the universe was expanding some 5 to 7 billion years ago," : Riess said in a telephone interview. : : Robert Kirshner, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for : Astrophysics in Massachusetts, said it means the universe is even more : complicated than anyone thought. "If it's confirmed by other results and : other approaches to the problem it's going to tell us there is something : important,another constituent to the universe," he said. : : It would be something very strange. Unlike matter, which slows down and : creates less pressure as it fills space, this would move faster. : "That's very weird," Kirshner said. "But it's not unprecedented that : weird things might be true things." : : The team expected to find that the expansion of the universe is slowing. : Big Bang theory holds that the universe burst from a pinprick of matter : between 11 and 15 billion years ago and is still exploding out. What : cosmologists want to know is will it keep expanding forever or will : gravity slow it down, perhaps into a Big Crunch? : : To their surprise, Reiss and his collaborators found the universe is : actually expanding faster now than it was 5 to 7 billion years ago. "It : actually seems to be accelerating so it will be expanding forever," he : said. Kirshner said a fifth force could be at work. : : Modern physics generally recognizes four forces -- the strong force, : which holds the nucleus of an atom together, the weak force, which is : responsible for atomic decay, the electromagnetic force, which holds : electrons in orbit in an atom, and gravity. : : The idea of a fifth force has been tossed around by physicists before, : he said. "They have impossible ideas before breakfast," he added. "The : interesting thing is that some of these funny-sounding ideas might turn : out to be right." And a similar force is supposed to have existed -- a : fraction of a second after the Big Bang. : : "The physics are the same. We are talking about something that keeps : pushing," Kirshner said. Reiss said he was not surprised that no one had : noticed the new force before. "The force is very weak on a small scale : and it only becomes important when you are looking back," he said. Plus : technology was making it easier to do such measurements. "Now we have : the (orbiting) Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck telescope in Hawaii, : which are great instruments for this.'' : : Kirshner said astronomers all over the world would be trying to : duplicate the findings. "It's something that you can be sure will : stimulate a lot of thought by smart people," he said. "I don't think : serious, sober scientists are going to believe this for a while." --- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 * Origin: Juxtaposition BBS. Lasalle, Quebec, Canada (1:167/133) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 180 ASTRONOMY Ref: F3H00005 Date: 03/12/98 From: BARTON PAUL LEVENSON Time: 07:07pm \/To: PAUL M. DAVIS (Read 1 times) Subj: Planetary Alignment PMD> Someone in the PHYSICS echo has stated that all the PMD> planets in our solar system will be aligned on 5th PMD> March 2000. Can anyone verify this for me as I've not PMD> heard of this myself? Only in the loosest sense possible of "aligned." But yet, to that extent, it's true. This happens every so often and will, like all the previous times, have no noticeable effect on the Earth. --- Maximus 3.01 * Origin: SoundingBoard, Pittsburgh PA (1:129/26) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 180 ASTRONOMY Ref: F3H00006 Date: 03/12/98 From: BARTON PAUL LEVENSON Time: 07:09pm \/To: PAUL M. DAVIS (Read 1 times) Subj: S of L. TD>> .51c (in relation to the same point), but from nearly opposite TD>> directions (close to but not exactly a collision TD>> course). What would we TD>> observe as we approached each other, and after PMD> we passed each other? AGG> The speed of approach/recession would be 81% of light speed. PMD> Ah, then how I assumed one worked it out is incorrect. PMD> If you have time, could you show how you work out this PMD> result please? I for one, would be interested in PMD> learning it. :) The observed speed of one speeding object as seen from the other is w = (u + v) / (1 + uv) So for u = v = 0.51, the top is 1.02, the bottom is 1.2601, and w = 1.02 / 1.2601 or approximately 0.8094596. This is only for u and v in terms of the speed of light. If you use the S.I. or the English system, the equation is actually w = (u + v) / (1 + [uv / c^2]) which is a bit more complicated. --- Maximus 3.01 * Origin: SoundingBoard, Pittsburgh PA (1:129/26) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 180 ASTRONOMY Ref: F3H00007 Date: 03/12/98 From: BARTON PAUL LEVENSON Time: 07:13pm \/To: BOB KING (Read 1 times) Subj: Infinite mass BK> You have now accepted the possibility that some BK> objects, relative to us may have BK> exceeded the s. of l. and consequently relative to us BK> have infinite mass (plus). Not infinite, not unless their speed relative to us is exactly c. If over, their mass would be imaginary. --- Maximus 3.01 * Origin: SoundingBoard, Pittsburgh PA (1:129/26) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 180 ASTRONOMY Ref: F3H00008 Date: 03/12/98 From: BARTON PAUL LEVENSON Time: 07:17pm \/To: HAROLD GROOT (Read 1 times) Subj: Uranus orbit question Neptune is roughly where it should be; predictions of a further planet yet seem to have been based on slightly incorrect calculations during the 19th century. --- Maximus 3.01 * Origin: SoundingBoard, Pittsburgh PA (1:129/26) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 180 ASTRONOMY Ref: F3H00009 Date: 03/11/98 From: JERRY KONDRACIUK Time: 04:13pm \/To: ALL (Read 1 times) Subj: Telescopes to Purchase Hello, I am new to this message area. I have finally found a message base that interests me. I love astronomy. I just don't know that much about it. I am taking a class in college and I am learning the nature of things pretty quickly. The question I have is about telescopes. Where can I get a good one, fairly cheap. Is there an outlet store somewhere that specializes in Telescopes. I am from Detroit, Michigan. Does anyone know of a store in Michigan, Indiana or Ohio?? Thanks.. Jerry Kondraciuk --- Platinum Xpress/Win/Wildcat5! v2.0 * Origin: Wizard's Tower, Toms River, NJ (732)-473-1933 (1:107/710) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 180 ASTRONOMY Ref: F3I00000 Date: 03/13/98 From: ARNOLD G. GILL Time: 12:31pm \/To: HAROLD GROOT (Read 1 times) Subj: Uranus orbit question Hello Harold! On 03 Mar 98, Harold Groot wrote to ALL: HG> I recall having heard something in the last few years HG> to the effect that Uranus is not moving today HG> in the same (puzzling) way as it had been moving HG> back when first discovered. AS I heard the story, the observations of Uranus made a century ago were slightly in error. There never has been the discrepancy that would have predicted Pluto's position. Therefore, the discovery of Pluto was purely fortuitous circumstance. Arnold G. Gill - astrophysician at play --- GoldED 2.41 * Origin: Got a sick star? Call the Astrophysician! (FidoNet 1:153/6.5) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 180 ASTRONOMY Ref: F3I00001 Date: 03/13/98 From: ARNOLD G. GILL Time: 12:33pm \/To: MIKE ROSS (Read 1 times) Subj: Big Bang Hello MIKE! On 11 Mar 98, MIKE ROSS wrote to Barton Paul Levenson: MR> There is always the possibility that the anisotropy has another MR> explanation. Being it is almost insignificantly tiny it may have MR> absolutely no connection with the present day clumping. Smoote had MR> previously been criticized about that. To be honest, my question has been, what relation does the anisotropy have with the observed clumping? Should we not see anisotropy in the same direction as the current location of superclusters? Now, I know that published results are Fourier spectra, meaning only the frequency/amplitude is real, not the position. But there are other ways of analyzing the data that will also result in (partial) positional information. I am wondering why this was never done. Arnold G. Gill - astrophysician at play --- GoldED 2.41 * Origin: Got a sick star? Call the Astrophysician! (FidoNet 1:153/6.5) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 180 ASTRONOMY Ref: F3I00002 Date: 03/13/98 From: ARNOLD G. GILL Time: 12:39pm \/To: PAUL M. DAVIS (Read 1 times) Subj: Anthropic cosmology Hello Paul! On 12 Mar 98, Paul M. Davis wrote to John Pazmino: PD> I don't go for that. It makes it sound as if the appearance of a PD> planet that can sustain life, as we know it, is somehow an inevitable PD> consequence of the history of our Universe. What evidence is there of PD> this inevitability? If ours is the only planet capable of sustaining life, then I would really wonder. Yet, over the last two years, planetary systems have been detected in 30+ star systems. Now, none of these planets are Earth-sized, since the detection mechanism are too crude to detect planets smaller than Jupiter at Earth-like distance from a star. However, it is encouraging to find that the existence of planets is itself commonplace. PD> However, we have the features we observe. Please provide PD> evidence that our appearance is an inevitable consequence of the laws PD> of our Universe. The only available evidence for this is from the Earth's geological record. The cratering record on the Moon shows that the inner Solar System underwent heavy sustained asteroidal bombardment for about 800 million years after the Solar System formed. About 3.8 billion years ago, this heavy bombardment period ceased. Within 200 million years, fossils came into existence on the Earth - an extremely short period of time on astronomical scales. The Urey-Miller experiment also showed that given conditions thought appropriate to the early Earth, simple amino acids form naturally within a week. Both of these results seem to indicate life will form whereever the conditions are appropriate. Our next bit of convincing evidence would be to find fossils on Mars, which had a similar environment to the Earth 3.8 billion years ago. If such evidence is found, I would strongly support the idea of life being an inevitible consequence of the properties of this universe. Arnold G. Gill - astrophysician at play --- GoldED 2.41 * Origin: Got a sick star? Call the Astrophysician! (FidoNet 1:153/6.5)