World 10,000 years old say Brits

[yord]

Me

[yord]

but it wasnt one of my better efforts

[saddamy]

Maybe a female type one would have been better.

[VikingHumpingWitch]

A female type one would be great. Once a month She would stop giving one about anything and we could all have a few days off from Her.

[omnipleasant]

In response to VHW's earlier point, by the way.

I, too, find it wierd that England players are whinging about giving 10% of their IPL fees to their counties. If counties hadn't let them play in the first place, they wouldn't be getting anything at all, surely VHW?

[yord]

it would but then your hereditary preoccupation with fate and the likes would dissapear to only leave you with the lull of daily affairs to make you drowsy

[VikingHumpingWitch]

I think a more pertinent, or at least interesting, question, and one which arises frequently round these parts, is Can I use my UK driving licence after moving to Sweden? To which the answer is yes, but you must have changed your address with the DVLA to your Swedish address.

[tarrant]

The questions in the survey were leading.

The report in the Telegraph demonstrates the Prof Dawkins doesn't know his stuff.

Apart from that the survey isn't of much use really.

I've sent Dawkins an email, we shall have to wait and see if he bothers to reply and what he says,

[VikingHumpingWitch]

I think he's got more promising people to teach, but you never know your luck. Let us know if you get an answer.

[yord]

a new straw might have been slightly more appropriate

[feral]

I definitely find it a whole load easier to get my head around a no beginning and no end than a " nothing" that came from nowhere.It makes more sense to me
However, I dont know if that's just my limited understanding trying to make something appear more logical to me .

[omnipleasant]

Well the "something coming out of nothing" thing is proper scientific theory, with testable predictions that are so far suggesting the theory is correct.

Unlike the "God" theory.

[VikingHumpingWitch]

It's your limited understanding. I find it easier to regard Science as people used to regard Magic. I don't know how aircraft stay in the air despite being very heavy and not having wings to flap, but it's enough to know that it's because of Science. However, that doesn't mean that a more complex explanation is wrong.

[yord]

you cant look at say buck palace and the tyne bridge at the same time. What your trying to understand needs a shift in perception in just the same way

[tarrant]

As currently understood, the universe did have a beginning. If something existed before that there will never be any way to know for certain.

The current understanding starts just after the Big Bang. In the first few moments, these would be microseconds on our understanding, the laws of physics were laid down then energy began to transform itself into matter.

There is an opinion that suggests that all matter and energy is a single entity but existing on different frequencies. However, the nature of what these frequencies actually mean isn't clear.

As to an end that is conjecture at this time. The Universe is continually expanding. If there is sufficient mass, gravity will eventually slow the expansion to the point where it stops and goes into reverse.

If not then it should continue to expand until there is so little gravitational attraction between particles that everything disintegrates.

[feral]

It's your limited understanding.

Quite probably .However ,I find it somewhat ridiculous when people who's understanding is as limited as mine come up with different theories that they feel explains everything.It's ALL theory

[yord]

the way to test a theory is by seeing if it works. If it dosnt you drop it , if it does you use it

[omnipleasant]

Feb 3, 2009 17:04:31 GMT feral said:

It's your limited understanding.

Quite probably .However ,I find it somewhat ridiculous when people who's understanding is as limited as mine come up with different theories that they feel explains everything.It's ALL theory

Yeah but Alan Guth (the "something out of nothing" bloke) is a cosmologist whose understanding is probably a bit superior to ours.

And his theories are being tested with experiments.

[feral]

Yeah but Alan Guth (the "something out of nothing" bloke) is a cosmologist whose understanding is probably a bit superior to ours.

And his theories are being tested with experiments

Oh I've no doubt the people who come up with theories are a whole lot cleverer than I am -I'm not too sure that means they have more understanding however.By that I merely mean that I dont know whether conventional understanding can ever be applied all the way to the end .
That theories get tested and that theories get dropped or not I'm also sure happens and I'm very grateful to the ones who have proved things up to now else we'd still be worried about sailing off the end of a flat world .I just wonder how far they can take it .To just stop slightly before the big bang by saying that " it came out of nothing " seems a bit of a cop out to me lol

[omnipleasant]

It truly is fascinating stuff, this.

"Meanwhile, the time has come to contemplate inflation's largest implication, one that seemed overreaching for an unproved theory in 1979 but that now must be faced squarely. The whole universe may be, to use Guth's phrase, "a free lunch." The primordial "stuff" of inflation, he and other cosmologists contend, is very likely a spontaneous creation, a no-strings gift that boiled out of absolutely nowhere by means of an utterly random but nonetheless scientifically possible process. Now that inflation theory is approaching dogma, it is bringing science to the brink of answering one of the largest questions of all: Why is there something rather than nothing?"