uncleclover

If reality actually is splitting into different probable sequences of events so that all probabilities occur "somewhere" (i.e., alternate timelines), that means our mass is constantly expanding into ever-growing expressions of our various probable trajectories through time. As we move forward, "other probabilities" also move away from us "sideways" (and we from them) through time. Could gravity possibly be conducted through this "direction", so that what we experience as dark matter is simply the interaction via gravity of mass in our timeline with mass in neighboring timelines?

Most of us know at least one person we would gladly die to protect or save. But what if instead of death, all you could do for that person was to assume a lifetime (average in length, starting from now) of unimaginable pain?

To die for someone is easier than to suffer for them, at least when the pain is so horrific. I sometimes can't help but to wonder if instead of sacrificing your life, assuming unbearable pain isn't the -true- "no greater love".

I'm throwing around this little idea about starting a database/catalog of completely unretouched images. What kinds of challenges would I be facing in assuring the "pure & natural" quality of the images included therein?

Taking semi-seriously for a moment the "ancient aliens" angle, it seems that if there's anything to the "ancient alien" theory, the stars "they" are said to have come from would then be interesting places to direct our seti (collective, small-case, not SETI). Just what kind of plausibility would you give such a suggestion? :-?

My mother's been a diabetic for several decades, and in the past two years her eyesight has begun to decline rapidly. She's already hard of hearing and is quite naturally depressed over that and her other assortment of health problems.

I know there is a way to adjust a picture's contrast to make them easier for a color-blind person to see the details of, and she is losing the color as well as the focus. I'm hoping that if it's at all possible, there might be some way to help mom to enjoy family photographs et al for at least a little while longer - they expect her blindness to be total eventually, a bit of a delay in the loss of her ability to see family photos enough to appreciate them should give at least a -little- more time to adjust.

Any help/advice appreciated. Thanks! :-)

Suppose we could somehow create a box - say 1 foot cubed - and line it with material that's both perfectly reflective and perfectly insulating so that it absorbs no heat. There would have to be one flaw in its design, of course - some sort of opening would be needed to permit the introduction of light into the chamber.

If that opening could somehow be made one-way so that all light to enter the chamber was forced to stay there, what would happen as you introduced a steady stream of more light into the chamber?

To address the realism of such a thing, suppose the box is formed by intense force-fields, since no matter exists (that we are aware of) that would be capable of having such properties, but in theory it -might- be doable with fields if one had enough energy.

Would the input light beam eventually begin bouncing back out at some point, reflected by photons already crowded at the entrans point? Or since the light has no mass, would the energy just keep building up forever?

Even the Catholic church has had its breakups over the years - other churches that have branched off from the church viewed today as "The" Catholic church. These offshoot churches should still have their own popes even if unrecognized by Rome, should they not?

I have a friend who thinks it might be, but I don't see how. It's well-known that some Thai people eat dogs. It's not like I look down on them for it - if I were in a country where it were customary to eat dogs or cats, and there was all this dog or cat meat laying around anyway, I'd probably even try some, and wouldn't automatically hate it just 'cuz of what it is. Why in the world would that be "racist"?

I ask this in jest, mostly, but yet I am actually kinda' curious. My guess is it would take tens of thousands of them. I wonder if it would be any good? :-?

I mean on a genetic level, of course I know they're not true clones. I just think the concept of what they are is just clone-"ish", in a way. Almost like parthinogenesis.

Just curious. I had read somewhere that in places, virtually the entire population of those albino "feeder" or "lab" mice had become heterogenous through such extensive inbreeding.

Along a similar vein, would that make such mouse communities something akin to a queen-less "ant colony", as all ants of the same species in a particular region also tend to share identical genotypes.

Just querious. You can't talk about explosions and massive amounts of energy these days without at some point hearing a comparison to Hiroshima. Was there any single event commonly used prior to that? :-?

I know Earth is bigger, and as a result one might expect there to be a higher actual number of meteorites of terrestrial origin on the surface of Mars than those of martian origin on Earth. But I don't often hear them talking about Earth rocks existing on other bodies in the solar system. I only recall hearing of Earth rocks identified on the moon. I'm just curious what speculations exist regarding terrestrial rocks to be found on Mars.

I know we have to presume "innocent until proven guilty", and I'm all for that - the system has to be allowed time to work.

However, that doesn't stop us from having opinions before everything is said and done. That said, is there anyone who believes right now at this moment that Casey didn't murder Chelsey? :-? So far, I haven't heard anyone say so.

Again, this isn't about "due process", it's "personal opinion". The only one's not allowed to have an opinion at this stage are the jurors. The rest of us are free to speculate. :-)

I've thought of a procedure for exoplanetary analysis that may be able to yield decent results in resolving details of stellar disks. I'm curious if this is actually workable or not - it would take a very extreme degree of sensitivity in the telescopes capturing the data, but we seem to have come quite far in that regard and so for all I know, it might just be possible.

Stellar disks are seen via telescopes as a sort of "radial spoke-like" pattern because the illumination by the central star casts shadows out from it in all directions. If it's a variable star and reaches a low enough point in its luminosity, the light of nearby stars would be more visible and if you're really lucky, one of the nearby stars will be a recent supernova. If you can catch an image of a stellar disk just as it's being lit up by a supernova, you should be able to get picturs of the stellar disk with the shadows being cast in a significantly different direction. Combining that image with an image of the stellar disk as illuminated by its own sun and applying various filters, one should be able to have a pretty firm lock on the positions of many objects within the disk that one couldn't get from just the radial picture alone.

The noise-removal I speak of is used for instance in the freeware audio processing program, "Audacity". You basically take a sample of sound from your recording in which only the background hiss is ocurring, and it subtracts that sound profile from the entire recording. It can clean up the sound very well if you know what your doing and reveal background sounds you wouldn't have been able to notice before.

If you apply this technique to the light emitted by the target star - filter _its_ specific light from the image - what little illumination there is from background stars should be more easily detected. For a variable star, you can generate a profile of its behavior and subtract the predicted level of that star's particular spectroscopic signature at that point of its cycle from the image, which would leave any light of similar quality from other stars remain in the picture instead of being filtered out due to similarity. If you can take the image when the target star is at its lowest luminosity, I think you might be able to see something worthwhile.

Naturally as indicated, a nearby supernova would be ideal. But even if the star is just located in a region of fairly high star density, our instruments might be sensitive enough to exploit this trait.

:-?

One of those for which I suspect there's more than 1 right answer. :-/

I'm just curious. I admittedly don't know very much about the specifics of his rule or the objections Egyptians in general have against him. That's not really what I'm curious about anyway. I am curious to know, though, if he really had anything to lose by resisting. Would he have been treated with any more respect or dignity by his country if he had done so?

Again, I have no opinion either way and so am not trying to imply anything or hint at an opinion above & beyond curiosity.

Thanks... :-)

Not that we could possibly survive the experience to begin with. I guess my main curiosity is more relevant towards the notion of future "skydiver" sports - with suits a few generations removed from the kind currently in development for extreme _terrestrial_ skydiving (skydiving from low earth orbit instead of "just" a plane), the surface of either of these worlds would actually be fairly tolerable I would imagine. I'm wondering if the atmospheres on either might possibly be thick enough to eliminate the need for a parachute. I remember the last Venusian probe sailed down niced and slow through the Venusian clouds almost like they were a thick, soupy broth of molasses. Could a lighter human body eliminate the need for a chute entirely by simply spreading out, flattening themselves and using their own body as an aerobrake? They can -almost- do it on Earth, with a terminal velocity of 120 mph - that's why occasionally people will survive falls from tens of thousands of feet in the air (in combination with other unlikely circumstances, of course, but that ANY survive is short of a miracle).

Before I explain further, I just want to say that I certainly think cruelty to animals _should_ be against the law. However, our laws appear inconsistent, and so I'm just trying to understand the legal theory of it all. We can't do things to animals for "fun" (however sick and twisted an idea of "fun" that might be) that we _can_ do to them in raising and preparing them as food. Overcrowded "concentration camp" farms, for instance, where a caged animal can be forced to have litter after litter of offspring, all while never being able to move, for the duration of its entire life - all to be slaughtered in rather gruesome fashion afterwards. Or the way we can feed live animals to other animals, but yet if we want to kill those same kinds of "live food" critters the same way (i.e., by crushing them to death, for instance, as a snake does its prey), that's illegal.

Again, I think it should be. It's the technical, legal "why" of it that is a bit fuzzy-looking to me. Things are considered "cruel" in one case, but the exact same treatment is considered "perfectly fine" in another. I don't get it. :-?

It's also not consistent from animal to animal. We can kill large rats any way we might want to when exterminating them as "pests", but we can't do the same to equal-sized cats or dogs, even though rats have been proven to have more human-like emotional lives than cats or dogs. Shouldn't our treatment of similar animals be held to similar standards? :-?

That's all. Not trying to start a fight or even to make a point, just trying to understand the arguments from all angles. Merci. :-)