Infinite shots

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Stephanie Brim

I have Woodchuck. It makes forum reading SO much better.

---

So does Wild Turkey.;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NedL

This has been debated endlessly,and certainly there are many people who share your opinion. I do not entirely agree with you: I think the discrete and arithmetical part of mathematics reflects the discrete nature of reality. In as much as the universe consists of separate and differentiated parts, there are truths contained in the natural numbers that reflect truths about reality.

Anyway, reading this made me want to quote something humorous from a book I happen to be reading ( fiction ):

"Mathematics is the only valid portrait of reality. Everything else is delusional."

---

My favorite is from the nobel prize winner Konrad Lorenz

Quote:

---

"Philosophers are people who know less and less about more and more, until they know nothing about everything. Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing”
Konrad Lorenz

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by michaelbsc

What didn't exist was the surrounding. It's not that there wasn't anything there. It's that there wasn't any there to have nothing in it.

---

Something I tried to do as a child was to imagine nothing existing... not even a space for the nothingness to be in. I don't think our minds are capable of doing it.


Steve.

Is time infinite? If it is then why are we not there already?
And theories of entropy say we'll cool to zero degrees kelvin and the universe will be in total darkness. The monkeys will be stuffed unless they know how to use a flash and the OP didn't give them one, thereby making it impossible for them to produce an image at infinity.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dali

Honestly, think whatever you want, I don't care.

When someone mistakes infinity with "no limit" (different wording = different meaning, isn't it?), it says it all.

Now about experiment. I am sure you know what gravity is. Show me gravity! You can't. The only thing you can do is to experiment that a stone falls on the ground each time you drop it. that's all you can conclude from your experiment; when I drop a stone, it falls on the ground. And then you will build a theory to explain why and how the stone falls each time you drop it.

It is exactly (at a different scale) what happens with the universe. Observations and then theoriy to try to explain the observation. You don't buy it? Fine, but don't tell us than mathematicians and astrophysicists are intellectually dishonest and not men of science because they work on theories. Rant over!

---

Honestly, I care about what you think, but I don't grasp it exactly.

First, the difference, when talking about space, between "infinite space" and "space without limits". In my mind and I do believe in common parlance they are the same concept. I personally cannot conceive a "limit" to the universe so made that there is nothing "after" or "beyond" that limit. Not even, that is, the concept of "being empty". My mind - and I guess yours, really - cannot conceive such a thing. A sphere to me can always be inscribed in a cube. You think "a sphere" because you imagine its dimensional limits and somewhere something in which those dimensional limits exist.

Regarding gravity, of course it was observed by man since he was a monkey, with or without a Leica. Everybody observe that they fall. "Gravity" litterally means "being heavy". Weight is something that men, and animals, experience and know very well without need to go to University, or Elementary school for that matter.


@ cliveh

Galileo gave us the law of gravity stating "weight" being the product of mass x speed of "fall", and showed us that "speed of fall" is independent from mass, and has uniform acceleration of 9.8 m/s*s. This equation is the base of the science known as ballistic and in general his equation is somehow everywhere in our scientific world. He naturally gave many other important contributions to mankind, stating various laws about motion, inertia, motion quantity and other concept which I forgot since long but that are at the base of our technology.

I would certainly not debate about the relative merits of Galilei and Newton. Newton was born just after Galilei died. Newton built upon what Galilei built. They are a giant on the shoulders of another giant. Newton gave us the laws of attraction of masses in the general case. Galilei gave us the law of attraction of masses when one mass (the Earth) is so hugely superior to the other mass (the "grave", and object with a weight) the the mass of the latter is negligible. Newton gave a generalization of Galilei laws, the law of reciprocal attraction of two masses (planets, stars). They are both giants and I don't see how can one think about ranking them. Newton, I am sure, would have never thought of himself as "better" than Galilei, and Einstein (or whoever) would never think of himself as "better" than Newton.

As Leonardo da Vinci said, "a poor disciple is he who doesn't overcome his master". The disciple "starts" by having all the knowledge of his master. It is his duty to add to that.

Both Newton and Galilei gave convincing repeatable demonstrations of their equations. Their scientific discoveries form the base of all our technological progress of the last centuries.

Most of those last century's hypothesis about the universe are, on the other hand, as far as I know, resting entirely on mathematics. We have plenty of astronomical theories that do not have, possibly do not seek by evident impossibility to seek, an empirical test. They can be legitimately called "theories" or "hypothesis". Possibly brilliant and genial ones. But being confined in the realm of the hypothesis, I would not use the indicative mode of any language to express their thesis. Indicative is the mode of certitude.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by litody

Is time infinite? If it is then why are we not there already?

---

Because it takes time! Because it is time, and thus it is non-compressible by definition. You can't travel through time. You can't squeeze or zip or distill or bulk it. You cannot go backward in time by solving some mathematical equations (as Stephen Hawking says, showing that one can be a genius and still talk nonsense).

so giving the monkeys an infinite amount of time to take their photos is a flawed concept.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Steve Smith

Something I tried to do as a child was to imagine nothing existing... not even a space for the nothingness to be in. I don't think our minds are capable of doing it.

---

I don't think our minds are capable of it either.

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." Niels Bohr

"Atoms are not things." Werner Heisenberg

"You are not thinking. You are merely being logical." Niels Bohr to Albert Einstein

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Stephanie Brim

I have Woodchuck. It makes forum reading SO much better.

---

Q.: How much Woodchuck would Stephanie chuck if Stephanie chucked her Woodchuck?


A.#1: Depends on how much is in cider.

A.#2: A lot if she's Brimful.

:p