The end of understanding?

[Macavity]

FAP, SAP and CR** (apparently). I knew it wouldn't allow the last.

Anthropic principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We still seem quite far from this "Omega Point" though. And even that concept was a new one on me...

[Budding Star Gazer]

the human race has evolved in great leaps, 250-400k years ago at the birth of h.sapien, h.erectus and neanderthal where still walking the earth in the 10k years we co existed we went from simple grass eaters to the dominent species, thanks given to our larger brain capacity and the ability to use it.

the next great leaps being stone age, iron age etc. then came the ages of discovery astronomy, chemistry, maths etc. the industrial revolution being the last great leap until the technology age began in the late 50s which continues to this day.

i dont think we are at an end of understanding i think we are just at the start, the next great leap forwards if you like.

if you think about what we are doing today we are at the frontier, every day more and more intel floods back to earth from hundreds of probes so much intel it will take a life time to understand it all . every successful mission is born from 50 disasters, but we learn from our mistakes and with the intel we gain from every successful mission the more questions are answered and even more raised which send us in directions we couldn't have thought about before.

we are living in the age of great discovery the only limits to our understanding are the ones we put in place.

[abumuhannadh]

.....

Of course, the alternatives to an evolved mind/brain are beyond the boundaries of SGL's cosy walls, and best discussed over a glass of wine or two on a pleasant summers evening Suffice to say that given the extended understanding of the complexity of the human body, at a molecular and cellular level, not to mention the millions of other flora and fauna we share the planet with, many other 'thinkers' are arriving at the conclusion that current evolutionary theory requires more blind faith than intelligent design does.....

Cheers

Tim

lol.

Understand the universe..I cannot even understand my wife.

[toml42]

many other 'thinkers' are arriving at the conclusion that current evolutionary theory requires more blind faith than intelligent design does.

'Thinkers', perhaps, but not those who've studied it or the evidence.

[ollypenrice]

'Thinkers', perhaps, but not those who've studied it or the evidence.

Yes, I also wonder who these folks might be. I see little blind faith in evolutionary theory. Bearing in mind that its first author was persuaded rather reluctantly to believe in his own theory...!

Olly

[Earl]

I see it like this.

Some of us can design rockets and machines to land on distant planets.

Some of us can farm the food to keep us all alive.

All in all its the same thing.

[Teddy]

The thing that freaks me out, is that even if we could set off at the speed of light, in our lifetime we would hardly get past our nearest neighbours, let alone out of our own galaxy......and yet there are billions of galaxies............awesome!!

:)

What a thought !!!

[themos]

The thing that freaks me out, is that even if we could set off at the speed of light, in our lifetime we would hardly get past our nearest neighbours, let alone out of our own galaxy......and yet there are billions of galaxies............awesome!!

That is not the case due to the relativistic effect known as Lorentz contraction.

The distance between us and Andromeda galaxy, for example, is a few million light years. But that is only true for observers with small speeds (relative to the galaxies centre of mass).

At high speeds, close to speed of light, the distance shrinks and it does so without limit. There is, for example a speed at which the distance will appear to be only one light-week. At that speed, we would only be about 13 nano-meters/second behind light.

In comparison, the protons in the Large Hadron Collider fall behind about 652 meters/second. They would cross the gap to Andromeda galaxy in a few thousand years.

[Teddy]

Sorry themos i just dont get that. maybe i am missing something

i thought that

1 light year is how far light travels in a year. andromeda is 2.5 million lights years away so there for traveling at the speed of light (which i believe is constant) will take 2.5 million year ????

if we were to travel slightly behind the speed of light then it will take slightly longer.

how can the distance shrink ??

i am not saying you are wrong i just would like it explaining as i am learning !!

Cheers

ps now my head is starting to hurt

[Teddy]

ps

sorry to go off topic or hijack the thread. i had copied and pasted(poorly) something that TJ said earlier in the thread as i really liked it.

[themos]

Sorry themos i just dont get that. maybe i am missing something

i thought that

1 light year is how far light travels in a year. andromeda is 2.5 million lights years away so there for traveling at the speed of light (which i believe is constant) will take 2.5 million year ????

if we were to travel slightly behind the speed of light then it will take slightly longer.

how can the distance shrink ??

i am not saying you are wrong i just would like it explaining as i am learning !!

Cheers

ps now my head is starting to hurt

Here's the lesson of Einstein' Relativity theory: space and time have no independent existence. So it's perfectly ok for two distance measurements to be different depending on who is doing the measuring. The same with time differences. That's how distance shrinks.

But that doesn't mean that there are no constraints: there are. The constraint is this: Event A and Event B are measured to have a space interval X and a time interval T. Let's take:

Event A is the departure from Earth of a spaceship bound for Andromeda Galaxy and Event B is its arrival.

Earth observer gives X = a couple of million light years and T = a couple of million years minus a small bit (because the spaceship is going at the speed of light minus a tiny bit).

Spaceship passenger sees the distance as shortened to a light-week so X = one light-week and T = one week minus a small bit (because the galaxy seems to be going at the speed of light minus a tiny bit). We ignore the accelerating and decelerating bits of the journey as they don't really matter for this.

The constraint from Relativity is that X*X - c*T*c*T must be the same for the two observers. In this case, that quantity is a very small number as the journey was done at almost the speed of light.

If we go very slowly, on the other hand, at speeds given by chemical rockets, say, then X*X - c*T*c*T is a very large quantity. This means that it's dominated by the X*X part. So, at low speeds, it feels as if the distance-in-space is the invariant and that tallies with our "common sense" that the distance is the same, whatever the speed.

[Staypuft]

Mdstuart - one word for you mate - DITTO!

[Theinvoker]

I don't think the evolution of the brain is as big a deal in terms of understanding as many may feel. We will probably never know everything, and certainly not in the near future; however, it only take 1 person to figure out the big questions such as those which currently require metaphors today.

Evolution works like statistics, it applies to the masses and the majority. There are plenty of examples of human traits which apply to the individual (or a minority) and have no benifit to humanity as a whole. It only take one person who is able to comprehend what the majority can't to unlock mysterys which currently seem unsolvable.