Black holes & quantum physics.


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I think the term "god-fearing" originally meant God-respecting but our use and understanding of language has changed over time. There's also the thorny issue of what may have been given a bias in translation!

Going to hell for being a blood donor? I wouldn't worry about it. Hell, in my book, is a state of mind. If you don't believe in it, it doesn't exist!

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Over the usual Sunday afternoon pint with my physicist and scientific pals it was decided that I did have a purpose in life after all. If we were shipwrecked and in a lifeboat with no means of navigat

I remember when I was only nine or ten, sitting in a classroom looking out of the window and wondering - for the first time - whether I was really there or was all my life a dream, and how could I kno

Schroedinger holds no mystery in this household. If there's a box, there's always a cat in it. That's a probability of 1. When I receive a wine delivery, there are usually 2 boxes...one inside the oth

To tell the truth I hadn't noticed the "Loopylugs" spelling. Some would probably say it was a good way to spell it. Eh Ben? :-)

I don't think anyone is going to hell for having a blood transfusion. That sounds Jehovah's witness to me and they don't believe in hell anway! Go figure. I really don't know why they bother going door to door, they don't have much to offer. I feel sorry for 'em.

Here we have an example though, Jill, of the dilemma a believer like myself faces. I can do the politically correct thing and just say nothing. Or, I could say we can't both be right. Either there is a literal hell. (Or heaven for that matter) and certain choices we make determine our destination.

As an electrician if I am working in a panel I can test it to see if it is live. That we can call science. Or I can believe with all my heart that the power is turned off and dive in there. My belief, no matter how sincere would most likely kill me!

My feelings can be good but I need objective reality.

BTW my rotten Ipad does the same thing re. Spelling.

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There was an episode of the original Star Trek series entitled, I believe, Spectre (Specter) of the Gun. In it, Kirk, Spock, Scottie, McCoy and Chekov find themselves living through the gunfight at the OK Corral. Except it isn't real. It's only an illusion. However, Spock points out that any doubt about the illusory bullets will kill those who don't possess his certainty about the unreality of the situation. As you might guess, it's my favourite episode! Spock has always been my hero but, sadly, he isn't real either.

I went through teacher training college with a girl who was a Jehovah's Witness. Nice enough person and a science graduate, but her mind was closed. She tried to convert me but I told her not to waste her time. I prefer to keep an open mind but not to the extent that my brains fall out!

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Fascinating programme about The Sun on Sunday night BBC4.

Just shows how much things have progressed since I was at school.

Stuff that can be explained now.

Things like Sun Spots, Magnetic storms, Solar Winds.

Great programme.

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That's one of the things I like about us Baptists, Jill. We allow for an open mind we do not expect anyone to check their brains at the door. :biggrin:

I teach an adult Bible study class and we have a very diverse group. A couple of teachers, a lawyer, a guy with a Phd. in Theology, a cop. I was a bit intimidated by 'em at first, but we have some good lively discussions with a few laughs. We really haven't had a go at objective reality yet though. That could get interesting. kickme As long as our coffee and Donuts are real we are o-k.

With regards to translations. There is no doubt that our language has changed somewhat over time, but the oldest texts have proved very reliable. I am no language scholar but have a basic understanding of New Testament Greek. Our versions are very much in line with the originals.

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Each to his or her own. I was thinking that, to me, if I found myself in a place where there was no silence, no Bach, no cats, no garden and nothing but constant rap music, football and reality tv shows, I'd consider myself in Hell. However, I quite accept that many people, finding themselves in such a place, would consider it Heaven!

As John Milton wrote: "The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven".

It's sometimes said that adherents of different religious beliefs can't all be right...but they could all be wrong!

Perhaps we each create our own heaven in accordance with our beliefs. Thought is energy and perhaps we'd be well advised to take more care over what we permit our thought processes to do?

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Fascinating programme about The Sun on Sunday night BBC4.

Great programme.

I meant to record that program but forgot, hope it's on BBC i-player, I'll have a trawl through when I get chance..

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Hell Ain't a Bad Place to be....... AC/DC...... Oh, wrong topic or what?

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In my experience, cats always get their revenge. Mine tend to do it by breaking into bags of cat biscuits in the early hours of the morning or upending large tubs of dried mealworms (hedgehog food) all over the kitchen floor! Then they look at you with that innocent, angelic, wide-eyed expression. "It wasn't me, mum. Honest!"

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We Ham's tend to learn about sunspots, magnetic storms and all those sort of things, mostly so we don't waste time calling CQ Europe, the higher the sunspot number, the better long range propagation of radio signals is, geomagnetic storms and solar ejections kill radio propagation.

When I first got licensed I spent many a happy hour chewing the fat with other hams around the world, but one morning, I switched my radio on, nothing, from one end of the short wave spectrum to the other, I thought my radio had died. Turned out we had had a major solar event.

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Been reading that in 5 billion years with the acceleration of expansion of the universe, galaxies will be traveling away from each other so fast that the light from them will be so red shifted that light from them will be in the single figures or even fractional hertz range. Makes you think doesn't it? Well it does me, I'll be awake all night thinking it through..

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I don't understand why the expansion of the universe is accelerating - I thought it should slow down and then collapse back in again back to its origin. Don't think that's based on anything I've read, just my own idea (which is probably rubbish!). And, as I've mentioned before, if the galaxies are moving away from each other - like on the surface of a balloon that you keep inflating - is there a larger and larger empty space in the 'middle' where they all started from?

I doubt it will keep me awake at night if no-one has an answer but I would really like to know

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The scientists were very very surprised when they found out in 1998 that the universe expansion was speeding up as they, the same as you & me, expected it to be slowing down. But it's speeding up & NO ONE on earth (not even Stephen Hawking) knows why. But nature never seems to do what we expect or want it to. I wonder what they'll discover next? I say extra dimensions, I'm almost certain to be wrong. :)

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So what about my 'empty space' in the middle?

Perhaps there's a force attracting all the galaxies to make them accelerate towards it?

If they keep on speeding up then we'll never be able to reach them - it would be like running after an accelerating bus!

Is the distance between the stars in our own galaxy increasing as well? (not just the distances between different galaxies)

And why are there galaxies anyway? Could a star escape from one galaxy and be captured by another?

Think I'll go out and do a bit of gardening to get myself back down to earth!!

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Clever thinking, Margie. That's what I thought - that some enormous body is creating the gravity to draw the galaxy towards it creating an acceleration. Never mind, gel, we'll be OK, God will stop it. lol

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Could a star escape from one galaxy and be captured by another?

They have found orphan stars in intergalactic space, & galaxies are colliding & robbing each other of stars all the time...... They have found a mega mega massive void with bugger all init, that could be the hole you refer to...

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Brilliant idea about the void, colly. It seems a reasonable explanation to me. I like it! Thank you for that.

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Just think..... in a few decades time when a definitive answer has been found for life, the universe and everything, someone may read these posts and be amazed that a couple of oldies (Sorry colly, I don't know your age!!) had discovered the secret way back in 2016. We could get a blue plaque on our houses ......

Right..... daydream over.... I'd better go and wash the kitchen floor and perhaps find another universe in a speck of dust.

I am REALLY going to wash the floor as I've been gardening nearly all day - didn't do any housework - and we've got visitors coming over tomorrow

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