Quote :

"Which means you could fit 1.44278318274463001751086738512e+59 Earths in the volume of the observable universe."

interestingly, the earth consists of approximately 1.33e50 atoms, according to this calculation http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_atoms_are_there_on_earth

Quote :

"LOL it was only a metaphor as stated above. I think most got the point of what I was trying to say."

Oh yeah absolutely man. Its a really popular metaphor. Its been in the majority of astronomy books ive read and they almost always get into how even it doesn't capture how small we actually are. I find it astonishing every time I read it so that's the only reason I brought it up; wasn't trying to call you out or anything

11/20/2009 2:18:44 PM

^lol, the Universe still wins that battle a billion times over.

11/20/2009 2:49:08 PM

That's where you're wrong. It's 3eBillion times over according to my calculations.

11/20/2009 2:57:42 PM

Well, since I turned this into a math thread I'll continue...how is that wrong?

1x10^59 / 1x10^50 = 1x10^9

[Edited on November 20, 2009 at 3:04 PM. Reason : notation]

11/20/2009 3:04:00 PM

You're not even ready to begin playing. Do you want me to refer you to a reading list? I'm not going to retype the careful thoughts and arguments on the subject from the last century.

11/20/2009 3:22:15 PM

Oh yawn.

11/20/2009 3:27:21 PM

And for even more fun.

Quote :

"4e+21 for the number of grains of sand on every beach on the planet."

Using this to estimate every grain of sand on our planet and using the estimate that the milky way has ~2e11 solar masses worth of mass (some think it can be up to 1e12) and that 1 solar mass can contain approximately 1 million earths you get 2e17 earths in the milky way. (I did that math right, right?)

So in fact we are actually a bit larger than a grain of sand in this milky way sand box.

11/20/2009 3:38:07 PM

Well, you're talking about mass and I was talking about volume. There is a lot of space between the mass in our universe.

11/20/2009 4:16:00 PM

Yeah I did realize that. I couldn't find the volume of the Milky Way very quickly

11/20/2009 4:31:39 PM

^I heard "bout tree Fiddy" was a pretty standard value

11/20/2009 4:40:25 PM

Compared to the size of the particles there's a lot of space between the mass in atoms.

11/20/2009 4:40:33 PM

"Imagine you are a teacher of more recent history, and your lessons on twentieth-century Europe are boycotted, heckled or otherwise disrupted by well-organized, well-financed and politically muscular groups of Holocaust-deniers. Unlike my hypothetical Rome-deniers, Holocaust-deniers really exist. They are vocal, superficially plausible, and adept at seeming learned. They are supported by the president of at least one currently powerful state, and they include at least one bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. Imagine that, as a teacher of European history, you are continually faced with belligerent demands to 'teach the controversy', and to give 'equal time' to the 'alternative theory' that the Holocaust never happened but was invented by a bunch of Zionist fabricators. Fashionably relativist intellectuals chime in to insist that there is no absolute truth: whether the Holocaust happened is a matter of personal belief; all points of view are equally valid and should be equally 'respected'.

The plight of many science teachers today is not less dire. When they attempt to expound the central and guiding principle of biology; when they honestly place the living world in its historical context - which means evolution; when they explore and explain the very nature of life itself, they are harried and stymied, hassled and bullied, even threatened with loss of their jobs. At the very least their time is wasted at every turn. They are likely to receive menacing letters from parents, and have to endure the sarcastic smirks and close-folded arms of brainwashed children. They are supplied with state-approved textbooks that have had the word 'evolution' systematically expunged, or bowdlerized into 'change over time'. Once, we were tempted to laugh this kind of thing off as a peculiarly American phenomenon. Teachers in Britain and Europe now face the same problems, partly because of American influence, but more significantly because of the growing Islamic presence in the classroom - abetted by the official commitment to 'multiculturalism' and the terror of being thought racist."

[Edited on November 20, 2009 at 11:35 PM. Reason : Selection from The Greatest Show on Earth]

11/20/2009 11:34:17 PM

Quote :

"^^ certainly you know near ZERO about quantum electrodynamics"

certainly my statement was meant as something other than a gag plausible only in a "cursory glance" world of science

11/22/2009 2:08:35 AM

I mean c'mon guys...EVERYONE knows an imaginary pile of ooze magically appeared from space, passed through the atmosphere and took a shit on a rock that spawned life that has DNA structures that in no way could be traced back to a single orgin...i wonder which galaxy the ooze came from

11/25/2009 7:51:57 AM

That's an overly simplistic view of abiogenesis if I've ever read one.

11/25/2009 8:56:04 AM

Quote :

"I mean c'mon guys...EVERYONE knows an imaginary pile of ooze magically appeared from space, passed through the atmosphere and took a shit on a rock that spawned life that has DNA structures that in no way could be traced back to a single orgin...i wonder which galaxy the ooze came from"

Why can't an all powerful God use physical methods like abiogenesis and evolution? Why do you doubt God's power? Why wouldn't he give us the faculties to understand the mechanisms that he uses to build our universe?

Or is it just these Christians feel threatened by science, because they see that the more an individual learns about the universe, the less compelled they feel the explain it with magic snakes and rib bones.

11/25/2009 10:09:36 AM

Quote :

"aha, you really don't...you have it "figured" out as much as they do...unless you have EVIDENCE detailing exactly how the universe came to be (heck, i'll settle for some evidence of how LIFE came to be, forget the universe), you have NOTHING figured out"

are you fucking serious?

so your stance is 'IF YOU CAN'T ANSWER THESE 2 QUESTIONS THEN YOUR WHOLE LINE OF REASONING IS WRONG!"

really? you want to do this? think first, just how much of a fool do you want to be made to look like, because that's what's gonna happen.

Quote :

"Or is it just these Christians feel threatened by science, because they see that the more an individual learns about the universe, the less compelled they feel the explain it with magic snakes and rib bones."

mostly, explanations other than "THE LORDS POWER" pretty much take power and influence away from them as the self proclaimed voice(s) of "THE LORDS POWER"....

[Edited on November 26, 2009 at 11:52 AM. Reason : s]

11/26/2009 11:50:16 AM

Quote :

"so your stance is 'IF YOU CAN'T ANSWER THESE 2 QUESTIONS THEN YOUR WHOLE LINE OF REASONING IS WRONG!" "

I don't know how the Big Bang worked, therefore, evolution must be false.

11/26/2009 5:37:28 PM