As I've said before, when you go drilling for oil, you choose your spots based on likely deposits, based on plate techtonics and unquestioned (because never disproven) planetary evolution. Saudi Arabia, for example, was a forested area that got compressed after millions of years. Hence, oil.

For some reason this came to my head:



To all those Americans that just can't stand it that their country is getting more stupid by the minute: Why don't you move to Canada or Mexico? I heard Canada's a good place, and Mexico is getting the exact opposite cultural/social movement that the US has (and no Paris Hilton worshipping here, thank God).

/No, really. Escape stupidity
//Please, do it
/// Don't loose your precious IQ
////Slashy

QuietSound
I'll pretend i didnt notice you dredging up this very link earlier today... it is a doozy though.
/congrats on the green light

Hahahaha!

Brilliant.

I am a physics minor from CMU. Gravity is pretty cool. 9.86 m/s^2. And some rocket science is easy.

I also know God exists, Jesus is Lord. He spoke to me,"Good News", then I recieved a Good News bible. Thats the only time God ever spoke to me, and it wasn't just my imagination since I recieved a Good News bible soon after. You can claim I'm a lying, but if I was lying, I'd be going against God, and there isn't anything to gain in it.

In the Creation Story states that day and night was created before the Sun and the Moon. It does sound odd that the plants were created before the Sun, but many pieces of God's work mystify us.

Umm, if NASA used physics to hit a comet millions of lightyears away, then I sorta think they know what they're talking about.

/waiting for someone to catch it

this is by far, the dumbest thing I've read in a long, LONG time...

Gravity is a theory, straight out says so. aero major by the way. It is useful in describing certain things. Couple things though...Jupiter has rings, the 2nd law of thermodynamics isn't violated by planets b/c they're not hitting a measureable amount of particles in their path. In other words big planet, small object, no change for the purpose of calculations. We can't measure things that accurately.
Imaginary numbers have a use in simplifying calculations, used for electrical engineering and for analyzing singularities/black holes/sources of water/sinks of water/weird small places in a system.

If anyone knows please tell me why planets rotate/revolve, and dont tell me it's cause they have tangential velocity. where did they get their tangential velocity. dont say its cause the sun captured them. in all likelyhood pluto was captured, but the other planets were not. they're in nearly the same orbital plane/inclination.

mistergecko
Millions of miles away.

/caught it.

A theory is a super good guess, sometimes that we'll never be able to prove ie theory of gravity. othertimes we'll be able to prove it someday ie molecules exist, atoms exist, mabye something smaller exists with a super awesome microscope. Sometimes a theory becomes a law when they believe it's proved, and can be violated and still be a law. Matter cannot be created or destroyed. Unless you're dealing with nukes, this holds.

crazyjim

Isn't gravity 9.81m/s/s?......

The reason that most of them do not move to Canada is that they do not allow felons.

All though this guy is a bit of a loon and a warning label is over the top he does raise interesting points.

How can we be so arrogant to know everything about the universe that we can call it fact? Everyday, things that we once accepted are not as they appear anymore.

An example of our understanding of the universe collapsing is "Zeno's paradox"(GIS it) . It's a cool little failing of our concept of space and time that's been known for centuries. We just ignore it because we have no way of explaining it at this point in time.

New Group Hopes To Break Monopoly On Gravity Theory

A Georgia group calling itself Teachers for Equal Time has asked that stickers be placed in all new physics textbooks which note that mutual attraction and relativity are not the only theories available to explain gravity and should not be taken as fact.

Teachers for Equal Time hopes that the addition of the warning stickers will pave the way for the teaching of its alternative theory, Intelligent Grappling, the theory that certain intelligent and conscious agents "push" things together.

Dr Elf M. Sternberg, the originator of the theory of Intelligent Grappling, or "IG" as some call it, and president of Teachers for Equal Time, announced the group's plans to seek legislation requiring the stickers at a Cobb County school board meeting.

"Mutual attraction has had a monopoly on the truth for too long," said Dr. Sternberg, "it is time we let children see all of the theories."

Dr Sternberg founded Teachers for Equal Time soon after getting his PhD from the Alabama School of Divine Motion.

Most mainstream scientists have concluded current theories of gravity are sufficiently capable of explaining such things as the motion of planets and why things fall.

Dr Sternberg denies this conclusion and claims the popular theory of gravity "doesn't explain why objects fall, it just describes what they do."

"There are theories by atheists and secular humanists that try to explain gravity," explains Dr Sternberg, "but they all lead to crazy conclusions no human being has ever seen, like black holes and the so-called "Big Bang". Intelligent Grappling only deals with the visible world."

Daniel Mason, a Georgia science teacher, is critical of Intelligent Grappling Theory and claims "IG theory isn't at all scientific. It appears to just be a thin veneer for the idea that 'little angels' push things around. This is a religious idea, not a scientific one, and as such has no place in science class."

"I'm not saying they're little angels," says Dr Sternberg, "Intelligent Grappling only says that conscious agents are the cause of all apparent 'gravitic' phenomenon. There's no religion involved."

and there he is...

That site is satire, right?

I am definitely printing that out and giving it to my friend at NASA. I want to see him have an aneurysm.

"There are numerous other flaws. For example, astronomers, who seem to have a fetish for gravity, tell us that the moon rotates on its axis but at the same time it always presents the same face to the earth. This is patently absurd."



Uhh, the author's statement is easily proven wrong. Just from logic alone, put an X on a ball and move it around an object with the X pointing towards the object at all times. Voila, you have something rotating on its axis, but showing only one side to the object it rotates around...

crazyjim doesn't know what he's talkin bout
9.81 m/s^2
32.186 ft/s^2
stupid english units gimme kelvin, stupid rankine

2005-07-06 10:14:52 PM billsil


A theory is a super good guess, sometimes that we'll never be able to prove ie theory of gravity. othertimes we'll be able to prove it someday ie molecules exist, atoms exist, mabye something smaller exists with a super awesome microscope. Sometimes a theory becomes a law when they believe it's proved, and can be violated and still be a law. Matter cannot be created or destroyed. Unless you're dealing with nukes, this holds.

AFAIK, people don't really like labling things laws as much nowadays, after Einstein was all like "Well, this Neuton fellow was rather smart, but he missed a bit". Plus there's the whole dichotomy between the theory and the phenomenon. For gravity, you have the theory (all the equations and such) and the phenomenon (things fall, usually). For electricity, you have the theory (equations, again) and the phenomenon (your computer works, sometimes). For evolution, you have the theory (natural selection and such) and the phenomenon (things in the ground look different from things not in the ground, except for the things that don't look as different). And so it goes for the rest.

davidshi123: Uhh, the author's statement is easily proven wrong.


I think that's the whole point.

theToadMan
An example of our understanding of the universe collapsing is "Zeno's paradox"(GIS it) . It's a cool little failing of our concept of space and time that's been known for centuries. We just ignore it because we have no way of explaining it at this point in time.

I was given to understand that the fallacy in Zeno's paradox lay in an assumption of a quantified universe as opposed to a continuous universe. An easy solution that makes use of a continuous universe: redefine the halves.

OPM: "Well, this Neuton fellow was rather smart, but he missed a bit"

I like that. The next particle they find should be called a Neuton.

The real problem is that these religious whackos don't live in the real world and they don't really understand what science is. The concept of a scientific theory is just too complicated for them. These are people who have been trained from birth to think that asking questions is sinful.

The moon points towards the earth all the time cause of a gravity gradient. Basically there is more mass to the moon on the side we see, than the side we dont. lagrange points are cool. They're a couple points in between the earth and the moon where net gravitational force is effectively zero. You still got the Sun, other planets to worry about, but really close to zero.

billsil

please tell me why planets rotate/revolve

Short Answer: conservation of angular momentum.

Bevets:

The difference between evolution mythology and the theory of gravity is that the theory of gravity was not devised soley to exclude God.

Gravity doesn't exclude God? The Theory of Gravity means that God isn't the one keeping you from floating away, but instead, it's the force between two bodies of mass.

Btw, for everyone who is saying it's satire/the guys crazy, it's actually just a rather accurate anallogy to the opposition of evolutionary theory. Gravity is used with sarcasm because it is such an obvious, and apparent penomenon that the author assumes thinking people know it to be true. Just as evolution is an observable phenomenon that actually happens in our world.

Heh, yeah, its 9.81 m/ss. Sorry for the typo. There's no way I could do 20 digits of pi, let alone 80,000.

whatshisname
I like that. The next particle they find should be called a Neuton.

The government is working on developing a Neuton bomb right now.

If evolution is outlawed then only outlaws will evolve.


Best bumpahstickah evah!

also, it is sad that at this time people cannot assume this article is sarcasm because it is conceivable that there are some people who actually think this way.

but HOW did the planet GET angular momentum?

the centrifugal force on the far side is greater than the moon's gravitational force in that area so you get the second high tide. the earth rotates through the two bulges giving two tides per day.

/edification

Can some anti-evolution person please explain to me all the other othe Homo species like the neanderthals?

Aldo Leopold
Btw, for everyone who is saying it's satire/the guys crazy, it's actually just a rather accurate anallogy to the opposition of evolutionary theory. Gravity is used with sarcasm because it is such an obvious, and apparent penomenon that the author assumes thinking people know it to be true. Just as evolution is an observable phenomenon that actually happens in our world.

That's what makes it satire.

billsil

From an intelligent creator.. Duh...

Corvus: Can some anti-evolution person please explain to me all the other othe Homo species


Don't ask. Anti-evolutionists also hate Homos.

From the same site:


Does God exist? We might believe that God exists, but are we sure? The Catholic Church states we can be sure by way of reason, as taught by Vatican Council 1. We Catholics believe that we can know truth by faith and reason. We can know things by reason alone and we can know things that reason cannot tell us. For example, we can know the Big Bang, existence of Pluto, formation of a star, and mathematics from reason alone. We do not need God to tell us these truths. However, there are some things which we cannot know by reason like the Trinity, Virgin Birth, and Incarnation. We can only know those if God told it to us, like revealing them in Scripture. Reason is like the eye.

God exists because we have no proof! can't argue with logic like that!

Corvus:

Can some anti-evolution person please explain to me all the other othe Homo species like the neanderthals?

Why do you turn to these people for "logic?" They'll either:

A. Say something that is COMPLETELY unfounded.
B. Say something that was at ONE POINT thought to be true, but had been shown to be wrong like a decade ago.
C. Say something that is COMPLETELY unrelated to your question.

2005-07-06 10:16:53 PM Bevets


The difference between evolution mythology and the theory of gravity is that the theory of gravity was not devised soley to exclude God.

I'd have to respectfully disagree with you on that point, Bevets. You're a nice, polite poster with a unique discussion style, but it seems to me that you didn't think this point all the way through. Gravity was obviously crafted to exclude God from his place in the universe.

I mean, think about gravity. Supposedly every particle on the universe, no matter how small, is supposed to pull on every other particle in the universe, no matter how far away. In other words, properties similar to omnipotence and omnipresence have been attributed to every random little bit of mass, even infinitismal specks that we couldn't possibly hope to ever directly observe. And they exert this universal force constantly, for the entire duration of their existence, without actually sending any sort of carrier particle for the force. They don't even try to give any actual mechanisms, except for relativity, which is an obvious bit of insanity. Space bending? More attributing of God-like properties to inanimate specks.

billsil: but HOW did the planet GET angular momentum?

God was bored and gave it a spin?

I'm fine with thinking there's a God, btw, even with thinking there's one that created the universe. I don't believe religious leaders (let alone religious political leaders) have any supreme insight into what an unfathomably complex and powerful God wants, or what s/he/it did in the past, or anything like that, and I think you'd have to be supremely full of shiat or deluded to claim such special knowledge of God's nature and intent. Especially basing that claim on a book of tribal myths.

Even accepting that there probably is something like a God, I don't think "God" can serve any purpose as an explanation of phenomena in the universe. Even if God did create it, and all the laws, what good does that do for us to assume? It doesn't give us so much as a splinter of useful leverage in understanding how the universe works, or what things we can do in and expect in it.

How does a planet that has no moon rotate? I dunno if I buy that the sun can torque a planet...point mass and such b/c if that were the case they'd be a net torque on the earth, and it would continually rotate faster until everything on it just flew off. We'll cept for that last part.

Alright, I thought parody would have been a better description, but after looking up an actually definition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire) I guess they both fit.