<![CDATA[Christian Forums - Physical & Life Sciences]]> http://www.christianforums.com A forum for physics, biology, chemistry and other physical sciences. en Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:51:39 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.christianforums.com/style/misc/rss.jpg <![CDATA[Christian Forums - Physical & Life Sciences]]> http://www.christianforums.com Sweet :) http://www.christianforums.com/t7419226/ Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:23:45 GMT Twitter / CERN: We have captured it! First ... (http://twitter.com/CERN/status/5900287205) ---Quote--- We have captured it! First circulating beam of 2009! ---End Quote--- Twitter / CERN: We have captured it! First ...

Quote:
We have captured it! First circulating beam of 2009!
]]> pgp_protector http://www.christianforums.com/t7419226/ Lunar Water http://www.christianforums.com/t7418512/ Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:43:32 GMT The moon is hostile to liquid water. So, how it got there, for science is a mystery.

Some Christian theroists envision water from the flood having gotten into space. From there, ending up on places like the moon.

I see science is starting to catch up..:)


"
Or perhaps catastrophic asteroid or comet impacts on Earth ejected seawater into space, and the orbiting moon passed through the vapor cloud, emerging somewhat soggier.
Both of these two scenarios are theoretically possible, though Schultz admits,..."

Where Is Water on Moon From--Volcanoes, Sun ... Earth?


Apparently, for many, this is news.. ]]> dad http://www.christianforums.com/t7418512/ Interstellar space travel http://www.christianforums.com/t7418261/ Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:03:22 GMT Saw a documentary on Project Orion a couple of nights ago and it got me thinking about different methods of rocket propulsion, specifically over distances longer than our solar system - figured I'd start another physicsy thread.

Here's the two most interesting methods that I know of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet

Quote:
Originally Posted by from wiki
Bussard proposed a ramjet variant of a fusion rocket capable of fast interstellar spaceflight, using enormous electro-magnetic fields (ranging from kilometers to many thousands of kilometers in diameter) as a ram scoop to collect and compress hydrogen from the interstellar medium. High speed forces the reactive mass into a progressively constricted magnetic field, compressing it until thermonuclear fusion occurs. The magnetic field then directs the energy as rocket exhaust opposite to the intended direction of travel, thereby accelerating the vessel.
And a slightly more 50's solution, although I agree with Carl Sagan that it's a very practical way of decommissioning all those unnecessary nuclear weapons ^_^ :

Project Orion (nuclear propulsion) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Quote:
Originally Posted by from wiki
Project Orion was the first engineering design study of a spacecraft powered by nuclear pulse propulsion, an idea proposed first by Stanisław Ulam during 1947. The project, initiated in 1958, envisioned the explosion of atomic bombs behind the craft and was led by Ted Taylor at General Atomics and physicist Freeman Dyson, who at Taylor's request took a year away from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton to work on the project.

By using energetic nuclear power, the Orion concept offered high thrust and specific impulse at the same time; the optimum combination for spacecraft propulsion. As a qualitative comparison, traditional chemical rockets (the Moon-class Saturn V or the Space Shuttle being prime examples) provide (rather) high thrust, but low specific impulse, whereas ion engines do the opposite. Orion would have offered performance greater than the most advanced conventional or nuclear rocket engines now being studied. Cheap interplanetary travel was the goal of the Orion Project. Its supporters felt that it had potential for space travel, but it lost political approval because of concerns with fallout from its propulsion. The Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 is generally acknowledged to have ended the project.
Discuss.

Disclaimer: This is a thread for the joys of scientific discussion, spacefaring and lulz. Anyone preaching or engaging in my-theory-is-better-than-your-theory member-waving competitions will be forcibly ejected from the thread in a barrage of scorn and off-topic reports. Kthx. ]]> Cabal http://www.christianforums.com/t7418261/ Modern Cosmology: Science or Folktale? http://www.christianforums.com/t7418087/ Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:49:30 GMT Modern Cosmology: Science or Folktale?

Based on the number of unverified assumptions in the concordance model of modern cosmology I would say it's a Folktale. ]]> Doveaman http://www.christianforums.com/t7418087/ Today we purge ourselves of an irrational belief http://www.christianforums.com/t7417898/ Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:25:15 GMT We all have them. A belief that we hold without any evidence. We like to tell ourselves that we don't because when we focus on the big picture we try to apply logic and evidence. The problem is that we focus on the big picture too much and often miss the little stuff.
I want you to think, really think, and find a belief that you hold that is simply irrational or unsupported. We all have them stored away somewhere. Maybe it's a knee jerk response that we've held for years to a given subject line. Maybe it's something that your kindergarten teacher told you when you were young that you've never really given up. Maybe it's a favorite anecdotal story of a childhood memory, a memory that, in all likelihood, never actually happened, or even more likely, the details of that memory are probably false.

Then once you've found something. Admit it here, purge yourself of irrational opinions and un-backed claims one step at a time. Don't say "I used to believe" that does us no good. Find something that you believe now and rid yourself of it.

I'll start us off.

My eyes change color with my mood.

This is something that I've been saying for years. My eyes do change color, that's a fact, but the correlation with my mood has always just been presupposed. I've always just applied whatever my eye color was to my mood, and when I realized that the next time I was in that mood my eyes were a different color, or that when my eyes were the original color, but I was not in that particular mood, rather than dropping the belief like I should have, I just assumed that the "settings" for the mood-color relation had changed somehow.

That my eyes change color with my mood is an irrational belief with no supporting evidence and I'm dropping it now. ]]> Wedjat http://www.christianforums.com/t7417898/ Atheists Are Weak-Minded And Gullible http://www.christianforums.com/t7417356/ Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:18:37 GMT Sorry, just wanted to grab attention with the title :), but this is an interesting article:

Look Who's Irrational Now ]]> Chesterton http://www.christianforums.com/t7417356/ Help! need help debating an evolutionist! http://www.christianforums.com/t7416593/ Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:15:42 GMT I have an ongoing debate with a kid at school about evolution.

He's presenting some pretty good arguments and he's kicking my butt, can anyone help?! ]]> outdoor_engineer http://www.christianforums.com/t7416593/ I am not a creationist. http://www.christianforums.com/t7416574/ Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:05:13 GMT I am not a creationist. I believe in an old earth as well as a new one. So what does that make me? :) In the Genesis theory: Genesis 1:1 begins with a summary of the fact that God did it. Genesis 1:2 then goes on to describe the conditions at the end of the old earth - *Now the earth... I am not a creationist. I believe in an old earth as well as a new one. So what does that make me? :)

In the Genesis theory: Genesis 1:1 begins with a summary of the fact that God did it.

Genesis 1:2 then goes on to describe the conditions at the end of the old earth - Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And Genesis 1:3 then go on to describe the beginning of the new earth – And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

Genesis 1:2 speaks of an earth that was formless, empty, dark, and covered in water which existed before the six days of creation week began in Genesis 1:3.

It was from this preexisting ‘old’ earth that the “new” earth we now live on emerged out of its preexisting water – And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so...Gen 1:6-9.

Water was not created during the six days of creation week, nor was the rocks underneath it, they both already existed. ]]> Doveaman http://www.christianforums.com/t7416574/ The Botany of Desire http://www.christianforums.com/t7413943/ Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:32:37 GMT Preview Trailer | Botany of Desire | PBS Video (http://video.pbs.org/video/1220836827/) I am a chef, a wannabe scientist and a plant geek so this concept blew me away. I had started the book about 3 times but had been sidetracked for various things. I know I will be reading the book for sure... Preview Trailer | Botany of Desire | PBS Video

I am a chef, a wannabe scientist and a plant geek so this concept blew me away. I had started the book about 3 times but had been sidetracked for various things. I know I will be reading the book for sure after watching this doc.

What do you think? ]]> ThankGodforGod http://www.christianforums.com/t7413943/ WTG Nathan Poe. http://www.christianforums.com/t7412888/ Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:44:03 GMT Internet rules and laws: the top 10, from Godwin to Poe - Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6408927/Internet-rules-and-laws-the-top-10-from-Godwin-to-Poe.html) Internet rules and laws: the top 10, from Godwin to Poe - Telegraph ]]> Spaceman_Spiff http://www.christianforums.com/t7412888/ Evidence http://www.christianforums.com/t7412840/ Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:41:42 GMT If a few thousand years ago someone spilt a cup of water somewhere it would not be surprising if no geological record of the event had been found A second cup of water would not make it a geological event either, nor a third And whether this water came from within the water cycle or came in to it... If a few thousand years ago someone spilt a cup of water somewhere it would not be surprising if no geological record of the event had been found

A second cup of water would not make it a geological event either, nor a third

And whether this water came from within the water cycle or came in to it from a volcano or a comet would also leave no evidence

Just because we have no evidence the flood didn’t occur doesn’t prove it didn’t

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence ]]> MorkandMindy http://www.christianforums.com/t7412840/ Religion and Science http://www.christianforums.com/t7412594/ Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:03:38 GMT *Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966), a Belgian mathematician and Catholic priest who developed the theory of the Big Bang. Lemaitre described the beginning of the universe as a burst of fireworks, comparing galaxies to the burning embers spreading out in a growing sphere from the center of the burst. He... Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966), a Belgian mathematician and Catholic priest who developed the theory of the Big Bang. Lemaitre described the beginning of the universe as a burst of fireworks, comparing galaxies to the burning embers spreading out in a growing sphere from the center of the burst. He believed this burst of fireworks was the beginning of time

...Duncan Aikman of the New York Times spotlighted Lemaitre's view in 1933: "'There is no conflict between religion and science,' Lemaitre has been telling audiences over and over again in this country ....His view is interesting and important not because he is a Catholic priest, not because he is one of the leading mathematical physicists of our time, but because he is both." Source

It would seem that the theory of the origin of the universe was developed by a highly religious man, and that his theory might have been influenced by his religious beliefs.

So why is there so much conflict between religion and science?

Why can’t we all just get along? ]]> Doveaman http://www.christianforums.com/t7412594/ The Holocaust Never Happened http://www.christianforums.com/t7412593/ Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:54:51 GMT Disclaimer: In neither video does the subject turn towards anti-religion. He actually says in the beginning that he has "done that book and got the T-shirt".

YouTube - Richard Dawkins: Creationists Are Like Holocaust Deniers

Whole video (much better):

FORA.tv - Richard Dawkins: The Greatest Show on Earth


I have been saying for years that there is no difference between a creationist and a holocaust denier and since being here I have even found a few who reject both. ]]> ThankGodforGod http://www.christianforums.com/t7412593/ Deep hydroponics discovered in Genesis http://www.christianforums.com/t7412362/ Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:14:55 GMT I think a lot of people are dismissing the Genesis account of the ‘Noah Flood’ without giving it adequate consideration.

I don’t know much about biology but I did notice the bit about the dove bringing back an olive leaf:



“And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark;

And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.” (Gen 10 v10&11)



The leaves did not drop off during 10 months underwater, and there is no mention that the leaf was brown or anything. If it was fresh and green then the olive tree had been doing fine underwater, receiving energy and photosynthesising.


So thousands of years before scientists found hydroponics it was all right there in the Bible for anyone to see, something nobody back then had no way of finding out.

Explain that ]]> MorkandMindy http://www.christianforums.com/t7412362/ God Proven to Exist According to Mainline Physics http://www.christianforums.com/t7412250/ Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:41:30 GMT God has been proven to exist based upon the most reserved view of the known laws of physics. For much more on that, see Prof. Frank J. Tipler's below paper, which among other things demonstrates that the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics) require that the universe end in the Omega Point (the final cosmological singularity and state of infinite informational capacity identified as being God):

F. J. Tipler, "The structure of the world from pure numbers," Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (April 2005), pp. 897-964; available on Prof. Tipler's website. Also released as "Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything," arXiv:0704.3276, April 24, 2007.

Out of 50 articles, Prof. Tipler's above paper was selected as one of 12 for the "Highlights of 2005" accolade as "the very best articles published in Reports on Progress in Physics in 2005 [Vol. 68]. Articles were selected by the Editorial Board for their outstanding reviews of the field. They all received the highest praise from our international referees and a high number of downloads from the journal Website." (See Richard Palmer, Publisher, "Highlights of 2005," Reports on Progress in Physics website.)

Reports on Progress in Physics is the leading journal of the Institute of Physics, Britain's main professional body for physicists. Further, Reports on Progress in Physics has a higher impact factor (according to Journal Citation Reports) than Physical Review Letters, which is the most prestigious American physics journal (one, incidently, which Prof. Tipler has been published in more than once). A journal's impact factor reflects the importance the science community places in that journal in the sense of actually citing its papers in their own papers. (And just to point out, Tipler's 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper could not have been published in Physical Review Letters since said paper is nearly book-length, and hence not a "letter" as defined by the latter journal.)

See also the below resources for further information on the Omega Point Theory:

Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist (a website at 110mb.com).

"Omega Point (Tipler)," Wikipedia, April 16, 2008.

"Frank J. Tipler," Wikipedia, February 9, 2009.

Tipler is Professor of Mathematics and Physics (joint appointment) at Tulane University. His Ph.D. is in the field of global general relativity (the same rarefied field that Profs. Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking developed), and he is also an expert in particle physics and computer science. His Omega Point Theory has been published in a number of prestigious peer-reviewed physics and science journals in addition to Reports on Progress in Physics, such as Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (one of the world's leading astrophysics journals), Physics Letters B, the International Journal of Theoretical Physics, etc.

Prof. John A. Wheeler (the father of most relativity research in the U.S.) wrote that "Frank Tipler is widely known for important concepts and theorems in general relativity and gravitation physics" on pg. viii in the "Foreword" to The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986) by cosmologist Prof. John D. Barrow and Tipler, which was the first book wherein Tipler's Omega Point Theory was described. On pg. ix of said book, Prof. Wheeler wrote that Chapter 10 of the book, which concerns the Omega Point Theory, "rivals in thought-provoking power any of the [other chapters]."

The leading quantum physicist in the world, Prof. David Deutsch (inventor of the quantum computer, being the first person to mathematically describe the workings of such a device, and winner of the Institute of Physics' 1998 Paul Dirac Medal and Prize for his work), endorses the physics of the Omega Point Theory in his book The Fabric of Reality (1997). For that, see:

David Deutsch, extracts from Chapter 14: "The Ends of the Universe" of The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes--and Its Implications (London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1997); with additional comments by Frank J. Tipler. Available on the Theophysics website.

The only way to avoid the Omega Point cosmology is to resort to physical theories which have no experimental support and which violate the known laws of physics, such as with Prof. Stephen Hawking's paper on the black hole information issue which is dependent on the conjectured string theory-based anti-de Sitter space/conformal field theory correspondence (AdS/CFT correspondence). See S. W. Hawking, "Information loss in black holes," Physical Review D, Vol. 72, No. 8, 084013 (October 2005); also at arXiv:hep-th/0507171, July 18, 2005.

That is, Prof. Hawking's paper is based upon empirically unconfirmed physics which violate the known laws of physics. It's an impressive testament to the Omega Point Theory's correctness, as Hawking implicitly confirms that the known laws of physics require the universe to collapse in finite time. Hawking realizes that the black hole information issue must be resolved without violating unitarity, yet he's forced to abandon the known laws of physics in order to avoid unitarity violation without the universe collapsing.

Some have suggested that the universe's current acceleration of its expansion obviates the universe collapsing (and therefore obviates the Omega Point). But as Profs. Lawrence M. Krauss and Michael S. Turner point out in "Geometry and Destiny" (General Relativity and Gravitation, Vol. 31, No. 10 [October 1999], pp. 1453-1459; also at arXiv:astro-ph/9904020, April 1, 1999), there is no set of cosmological observations which can tell us whether the universe will expand forever or eventually collapse.

There's a very good reason for that, because that is dependant on the actions of intelligent life. The known laws of physics provide the mechanism for the universe's collapse. As required by the Standard Model, the net baryon number was created in the early universe by baryogenesis via electroweak quantum tunneling. This necessarily forces the Higgs field to be in a vacuum state that is not its absolute vacuum, which is the cause of the positive cosmological constant. But if the baryons in the universe were to be annihilated by the inverse of baryogenesis, again via electroweak quantum tunneling (which is allowed in the Standard Model, as baryon number minus lepton number [B - L] is conserved), then this would force the Higgs field toward its absolute vacuum, cancelling the positive cosmological constant and thereby forcing the universe to collapse. Moreover, this process would provide the ideal form of energy resource and rocket propulsion during the colonization phase of the universe.

Prof. Tipler's above 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper also demonstrates that the correct quantum gravity theory has existed since 1962, first discovered by Richard Feynman in that year, and independently discovered by Steven Weinberg and Bryce DeWitt, among others. But because these physicists were looking for equations with a finite number of terms (i.e., derivatives no higher than second order), they abandoned this qualitatively unique quantum gravity theory since in order for it to be consistent it requires an arbitrarily higher number of terms. Further, they didn't realize that this proper theory of quantum gravity is consistent only with a certain set of boundary conditions imposed (which includes the initial Big Bang, and the final Omega Point, cosmological singularities). The equations for this theory of quantum gravity are term-by-term finite, but the same mechanism that forces each term in the series to be finite also forces the entire series to be infinite (i.e., infinities that would otherwise occur in spacetime, consequently destabilizing it, are transferred to the cosmological singularities, thereby preventing the universe from immediately collapsing into nonexistence). As Tipler notes in his book The Physics of Christianity (New York: Doubleday, 2007), pp. 49 and 279, "It is a fundamental mathematical fact that this [infinite series] is the best that we can do. ... This is somewhat analogous to Liouville's theorem in complex analysis, which says that all analytic functions other than constants have singularities either a finite distance from the origin of coordinates or at infinity."

When combined with the Standard Model, the result is the Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics. ]]> James Redford http://www.christianforums.com/t7412250/