2012 - What does it mean to you?

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by WILDCAT

BUT, the exact moment of that "impact" back that year, and none of us realized it, until we spoke of it later, all at different or varying increments in [later] time: That I, at that time... who did not take afternoon naps, nor did my friends... all at (let's say) the impact what around 3:30PM or so - and whatever precise moment it was) were like friggin' robbots and got overwhelmingly exhausted and had to go and lie down. All of us had forgotten about the comet coming and whatever collision expectations that day - we didn't think too much of it. Little by little we just all discussed this, one would and then another said they had a similar reaction and went to bed, etc...

I'm curious about this. How long did this exhaustion last? I ask because there wasn't ONE impact, there were twenty-one impacts! Over an extended period of time. The largest one happened about 7:30 in the morning GMT two days after the 'event' began.

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Let me ask you AJ, when it's said that a beam of light goes to infinity, do you believe that? I kinda "don't", as the battery from a flashlight, "think?" (small beam example) only has so much power, but some would say the different levels of light never end, so still go to points of where we cannot see anymore or recognize with our naked eye, (or some such effect?). I've heard something about a candle light in a room...(?) Like the immediate flame - sure we see quite clearly, and then an outer one (ring/glow - uh huh), and then... well, really the whole room does have light affect, different levels of it to it's darkest corners. [/quote]

Well, do I believe that it goes on forever? Yes, after a fashion I do. The light from a flashlight is the same 'stuff' as the light from the sun (albeit, in the case of the former, a much more narrow band of the stuff). The light from any source (regardless of what that source is) spreads out according to the inverse square law (our old friend from a couple of days ago) such that as it travels it becomes more diffuse and as it gets more diffuse, it becomes more and more dim. To give you a sense of what is happening, think of a laser--the most focused and coherent stream of photons (light) that we know how to create. A laser pointed at the Moon starts out as a tightly focused beam maybe one or two human hairs think (40 microns or so), by the time it reaches the moon it is a beam a *mile* wide!

So does the light keep going forever? Yes, it does since photons (particles of light) have no mass they just keep moving at the speed of light. However, because of the inverse square law, they become very, very dim to the point of not being visible but the photons are still traveling. Some alien intelligence, looking back at the Earth wouldn't really notice our visible light because it would be washed out by the brightness of the Sun. In fact, most of our light transmissions would be washed out by the sun with the exception of microwave and radio transmissions. These would be *very* faint but there would be a lot more of them than one would expect from a star like ours which would be a tip-off to any aliens doing a SETI-like search.

I do love the tradition of the ancient eastern philosophies as well. Which incorporate seasonal changes, have the meridians which is amazingly accurate, on and on... some believe this, some do not. That's not religion though, yet something not always easily proved scientifically. Some scientists who have studied this affect with accupunture treatment, believe and some do not. (I saw a show recently on the History or a PBS channel regarding this, as well as herbal remedies and such.)

I know the show you're talking about. NOVA has done some pretty decent work on CAM therapies but there's only so much you can communicate in one hour. My reading on CAM therapies is that when subjected to the kind of testing we put every OTHER medical intervention through (or did before the Republicans decided that the FDA and the NIH were boondoggles and gutted them) there's no healing ability beyond what we would expect from the placebo effect.

If a meteor strikes the Atantic ocean, the ripple affect with no doubt come crashing inland. Why wouldn't that be different on any collision or ripple energy affect no matter where it is? Outside the gravity force, thus not suseptible for us - says who?

The difference here is that the meteor crashing into the Earth is actually obeying some rather simple physics. As it moves through the air, it is displacing air (thus the shockwave in front of it and the sonic boom behind) and being heated by friction (thus the glow). When it hits, all of that energy gets transferred to the Earth and using a very simple equation (Force=mass*acceleration) we can make predictions about what kinds of things we should see. If it hits the water, it will displace the water (thus a tsunami) and then when it finally strikes solid ground it will displace more earth (thus a second tsunami) causing it to eject into the stratosphere. The heat will be transferred to the ejecta and a crater will form.

The thing is, we've detected all four forces. Now, to give you an idea of just how sensitive our instruments are we can detect the strong and weak nuclear forces. These are of such short range that they ONLY exist inside atoms! You will never ever feel either the nuclear force or the weak force. Even though this is true, the gravitational force is weaker than either of those. The only reason why gravity seems so strong is that there's so damn much mass in the Earth to create it. So if there's some other force out there then it is MUCH weaker than the gravitational force and would need to be shorter range than either the strong or weak nuclear forces in order to explain why we haven't detected it so far. Might there be one? Sure, it's *possible* but that doesn't make it likely.

BUT, I'm talking about movement of things in space (on land, in space), something quite different.

Actually, these are not different *at all*. In fact, if we were in a perfectly sealed spaceship and moving at a constant velocity you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between being on the spaceship and being at rest on the launchpad! They would feel *exactly* the same, provided we didn't accelerate. There's nothing particularly special about being on land or in space when talking about movement. Acceleration and gravity are interchangeable for one another.

One thing I find really interesting about these discussions is just how much other people trust their brains/minds and how little I trust mine. I presume that my brain is error-ridden, tends to see patterns where none exists, and subject to various optical-illusions and errors in thinking. I sometimes *wish* that I trusted my brain enough to presume that if I think that, for instance, my grandmother contacted me psychically the night she died that means that she *did* contact me. However, I don't trust my brain that much which might seem odd but it isn't. My habit of thinking is to try to avoid what I *want* to be true and to always question 'why do I think this is the way things work'.

Cheers
Aj