General Chat

Hello Lindy and Dorothy.

I spend a lot of time scratching my head, wearing away the hair follicles, and I feel it would be a waste of energy if only heat but no thoughts came out of it.

len

Hello Len

wow!! You certainly give us something to think about when you do contribute - so just keep paying that membership!

Hope you're well!

Long ago in lecture halls and books I discovered physics; more advanced and mind-blowing than I had done in A levels at grammar school. I learned about relativity and cosmology and wished I had done tensor calculus at school, rather than trigonometry (about which I now retain nothing) and been more dedicated to my studies.
I read that when Albert Einstein first published his paper on relativity, just about 100 years ago, the number of scientists who understood it could be counted on the fingers. But it was the building blocks of nuclear physics.
His equation was E=mc². Not much to look at but mind shattering. E is the energy equivalent of mass (m) and c is the speed of light. Light is the form of electromagnetic radiation that makes things visible to us and travels at 186,281 miles a second in tiny packets (quanta) of photons (particles). Squared, the size of the figure (11 digits) takes it outside of our mental grasp.
Mass and energy are interchangeable. Energy and mass are interchangeable and indestructible. The equation is the basis of all nuclear physics and has subsequently been verified experimentally. Moreover, although energy may change to another form, or to mass and vice versa, matter cannot be destroyed, only metamorphosed.
The world about us changed from then on. We had been used to three dimensions, up and down, side to side and backwards and forwards. Now we had to cope with a fourth - time. It doesn’t stop there, as it turns out there may be any number of dimensions. Those not wishing to believe in what the eye cannot see should leave now.
In more recent times, there were Newton, Darwin, then Einstein, Crick, Hoyle and Hawkins but possibly Darwin and Einstein made the most impact on our senses and beliefs. My feeling is that something more wonderful and mysterious lies ahead. The field of exploration will be quantum mechanics, the study of the infinitesimally small.
Space-time is not something from science fiction but the here and now. Its governing force is that weakest of force-fields, gravity
In fact, in physics, space-time and gravity mean the same thing and it permeates the whole of the cosmos. Shut down gravity and the universe disappears. Electro-magnetism is also a force-field but, together with time is a part of gravity. There’s no point in trying to figure out the meaning of these terms as even scientists cannot yet do this or substantiate them mathematically. Just one of those things; you know damn well it is there but cannot prove it mathematically - yet.
Gravity can, though, provide us with a local sense of dimensional space to which most of us grab onto, denying anything outside our own personal experiences. We hang on grimly to our walls, floors and clocks and except, perhaps after imbibing too rashly, can tell which way up we are, even with our eyes shut. Some of us admit to sensing “something great” out there whilst others feel safer by shutting their minds to it.

Len,

So great to see you posting again...even if I am not on the same plain as you are...Mine being down ther somewhere...... echo...echo..ooo...

Hope Mary is well!

Lindy in the very humid Algarve

Hello Jenny, hello Christine. Glad to find you still here. I do not recognise many of today's contributors. frankly, I do not like the "new look" of GR and find it more difficult to navigate around.
I decided to allow my membership to lapse when it was due for renewal earlier in the year - but GR had retained my credit card number and renewed for me. As it's not expensive I let it go on.

Joyous Joy. PM me if you would like further information on any point.
Len

In 1997 Professor Saul Perlmutter opened another can of worms. While looking at the expansion of the universe, he accidentally discovered that not only were all stars and galaxies moving away from each other, they were doing so at greater and greater speeds.
This meant that our future selves might one day look up to a sky without stars (they'd all be too far away). It also meant that 'something' was pushing the stars apart. This anti-gravity force was completely new to science, but again what it actually was remained a mystery. It did however have a name: dark energy.
It turned out that the universe is 4% ordinary matter, 21% dark matter and 75% dark energy. That's a lot of stuff that no one understands.
Every civilisation since the year had its own cosmological model. Every few decades or centuries, it has been replaced by something better.
Whether we are the privileged generation living in the time of the right idea remains to be seen. Is dark matter here to stay?
It is a fact that quantum mechanics tells us that the world we inhabit depends for its meaning and reality on our perception of it.
Let’s seriously consider any solid object, perhaps the chair on which you are sitting, and think of it afresh.
Firstly, using stored knowledge, we can examine the chair with our normal senses, sight touch and smell and maybe tap it, bringing in our hearing. We may deduce that it is made of wood and not metal, plastic or some other substance. We may go on to deduce the existence of a tree and, subsequently, soil, water, sunlight and air so necessary for the production of wood. But then think of the transmutation of all these forms of matter and energy into a living tree.
But don’t stop there; it is composed of cells and molecules. A molecule is the smallest unit of a compound that can take part in a chemical reaction and is made up of a group of atoms electrically bonded together. An atom has a tiny nucleus surrounded by electrons whizzing round it as the earth and planets whiz round the sun. None of these components, from the atom downwards is touching. Indeed, relative to their size, the spaces are astronomical. To illustrate this, if the electrons and protons circling the neutron ( the nucleus) at set distances made the shape of a football, the nucleus (which as we all know can be split into smaller components) could be compared to a grain of sand in the centre.
Had it been a metal or plastic chair we would still have arrived at molecules, albeit of a different sort – but let’s not digress.
So how about your chair or any other “solid” object? It’s quite ghostly, in fact, if you zoom in close enough. We are just used to perceiving it as hard and solid. Since the advent of quantum mechanics, over the last few decades, the physical world has lost its old solidity and permanence, certainly as observed by most physicists.

oh len i have so many questions,i could be here all nite.xxx

These mysterious energies that remain unseen and unknown in the 21st century first began to emerge in 50 or 60 years ago. Since the 1940s, astronomers, astrophysicists and mathematicians have, bit by bit, winkled themselves into a much bigger and more complex universe than was ever imagined, even in the realms of science fiction. Only recently has the concept of “other dimensions” (let’s not call it the paranormal – yet) been explored. The world about us seemed quite adequate and normal with three dimensions but the logical progression of research seems to lead to others.
Although the mathematics of space dealt with abstractions, discoveries made by George Riemann and others make it irresistible to think that our worldly, physical space may be just as weird, complicated and wonderful as demonstrated by Einstein in his “General Theory”. We cannot have the slightest conception of what space out there in the cosmos is about. Many, therefore, shun it. “We cannot comprehend, therefore it cannot exist”.
There is, though, a deeper mystery to the void first hinted at by Minowski, Albert Einstein’s tutor. Space and time form a continuous mathematical entity which encompasses dimensions at present unknown to humanity but which is gradually being revealed.
Our brains have been tuned for the left hemispheres to do all the conscious thinking and organising for us. But our right hemisphere (in some) is probably more adept at visualising and making intuitive sense of the whole picture. This has been so since pre-history, even to the authors of Genesis.
In most primitive “Creation” stories we have dark primordial oceans with hidden forms waiting for the spirit of God to sweep away the darkness and bring life. No one knew where this spirit or intelligence came from but it was always visualised as a vast, all-knowing intelligence. The Old Ones may have been on to the truth, intuitionally. Scientific insight is now bringing the “Creation” stories back but with words so new (e.g. “distant intentionality” and “precognition” etc) as to not yet being part of everyday language.
We are entering into new methods of gaining knowledge of our universe. Eventually all things will be translated into common terms. But with such information that consciousness (spirit/soul) is not a brain function but may exist outside the body, we are once again moving in the direction of ancient wisdom. The miracle of the new theories now emerging from universities and research establishments is such that it fits in with the rough outlines of the old stories.
There seems to be a guiding hand at work; a supreme intelligence from which our consciousness is drawn.

Fully understand what you are telling us all Len.

Lovely to see you around. Wishing you and Mary well.

Jenny xx (Mommylonglegs)

We have found out there in the void (and here on earth), an energy called electromagnetism which comes in many and varied forms. It acts as an invisible force marshalling and moving matter. Electromagnetism is an energy requiring neither matter, time nor dimensions to support it. Physicists have failed, so far, to find any unity among the different fields and particles that skein throughout space-time but it appears to be connected, in a very subtle form, with consciousness and the power of the mind to affect animate or inanimate objects.
In this universe of ours, there’s a tantalising prospect of finding unification of all space-time theories. In the meantime, since the 1940s, astronomers, astrophysicists, mathematicians, thousand upon thousands of them, have continued the task of understanding the cosmos, using a variety of techniques. By the 1980s vast skeins and voids have emerged in intricate mathematical patterns but there are still vast regions beyond, full of billions upon billions of galaxies each full of billions of stars where laws of physics may differ from our own. The vastness and intricacies of the voidare incomprehensible Nothing in our collective knowledge can prepare us for what may be found in this cosmic abyss.
The cosmos is controlled by vast reservoirs of “dark matter” and mysterious energies unknown to science. It is said that “dark matter”, a specialised form of energy that has the attributes of mass and extension in space and time, comprises 96% of what is out there. Eternity of time and infinity of space are concepts that the intellect can’t fully grasp - except, perhaps, that the void is not empty as a vacuum.

Every now and then, usually not within a normal lifespan, an idea is formed that turns the world on its head. In more recent times, there were Newton, Darwin, then Einstein, Crick, Hoyle and Hawkins but possibly Darwin and Einstein made the most impact on our senses and beliefs. My feeling is that something more wonderful and mysterious lies ahead. The field of exploration will be quantum mechanics, the study of the infinitesimally small.
Space-time is not something from science fiction but the here and now. Its governing force is that weakest of force-fields, gravity In fact, in physics, space-time and gravity mean the same thing and it permeates the whole of the cosmos. Shut down gravity and the universe disappears. Electro-magnetism is also a force-field but, together with time is a part of gravity. There’s no point in trying to figure out the meaning of these terms as even scientists cannot yet do this or substantiate them mathematically. Just one of those things; you know damn well it is there but cannot prove it mathematically - yet.
Gravity can, though, provide us with a local sense of dimensional space to which most of us grab onto, denying anything outside our own personal experiences. We hang on grimly to our walls, floors and clocks and except, perhaps after imbibing too rashly, can tell which way up we are, even with our eyes shut. Some of us admit to sensing “something great” out there whilst others feel safer by shutting their minds to it.