Number two: the so called horizon problem. Well, inflation has solved that. And inflationary models accurately predicted how the Universe's microwave background should look, which indicates that they're probably valid.

That Belfast homeopathy thing smells of hokum.

Dark matter is a mystery, but that accounts for about 25% of the mass of the universe. 5% is regular matter. The rest might be composed of the so called "dark energy". This ratio was predicted by inflationary theory by the way (it's the amount of mass necessary to get to the so called critical density of the Universe, which is needed for inflationary models to make sense). So if inflationary theory is wrong, this ratio doesn't apply and there goes the dark energy problem...

Anyway, that list stinks of bad scientific journalism...

[ 18 March 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

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Originally posted by Nanuq:
There's no mystery as to why naloxone blocks the placebo effect. The body controls pain by producing endorphins, biochemical substances with the same chemical structure as opium. It's why morphine and heroin are such effective analgesics. It's been known for decades that naloxone counteracts endorphins. We were taught this when I was an undergraduate in the 1970s. So much for the first thing that doesn't make sense. Anyone want to take a crack at the others?

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Originally posted by Mike Keenan:
I suspect it's like this: Both morphine and the placebo stimulate the release of endorphens. Naloxone blocks endorphens. Interesting, but not earth shattering.

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Well, inflation has solved that.

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Correct me if I'm wrong but: It's solved it *in theory*. No one has come up with a mechanism for it, it's just calling upon a sequence of events of the Big Bang that would account for it.

Ie, inflation accounts for what we see, but no one can explain what could have caused the inflation.

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Originally posted by aRoused:

Correct me if I'm wrong but: It's solved it *in theory*. No one has come up with a mechanism for it, it's just calling upon a sequence of events of the Big Bang that would account for it.

Ie, inflation accounts for what we see, but no one can explain what could have caused the inflation.

Anyway, flame if you like, I'm off for a week-ish now so I won't be able to feel the heat.

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Actually, under certain very weird and specialized conditions gravity can be repulsive, and this can be proven in general relativity. Brian Greene explains this in his second book.

www-ctp.mit.edu/~guth/iccs/iccs-guth.pdf

By the way, inflation in the early Universe is the best way physicists have found to explain the homogeneity and flatness of the the Universe. There other issues with the Big Bang model that inflation solves quite elegantly. With inflation, the big bang becomes something a lot less arbitrary and a lot simpler. The Big bang needs inflation to make sense!

Don't ask me about the math either: I'm a geologist, damn it, not a cosmologist.

[ 21 March 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

[ 21 March 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

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Homeopathy: The Test - transcript

NARRATOR (NEIL PEARSON): This week Horizon is doing something completely different. For the first time we are conducting our own experiment. We are testing a form of medicine which could transform the world. Should the results be positive this man will have to give us $1m.

JAMES RANDI (Paranormal Investigator): Do the test, prove that it works and win a million dollars.

NARRATOR: But if the results are negative then millions of people, including some of the most famous and influential in the world, may have been wasting their money. The events that would lead to Horizon's million dollar challenge began with Professor Madeleine Ennis, a scientist who may have found the impossible.

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Another case of 'working' homeopathy (Jacques Benveniste), and the results of a real test are examined in this show transcript.

However, on to Madeleine Ennis:

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NARRATOR: Ennis knew that the memory of water breaks the laws the science, but she believed that a scientist should always be willing to investigate new ideas, so the sceptical Ennis ended up testing the central claim of homeopathy.

She performed an experiment almost identical to Benveniste's using the same kind of blood cell. Then she added a chemical, histamine, which had been diluted down to homeopathic levels.

The crucial question: would it have any effect on the cells? To find out she had to count the cells one by one to see whether they had been affected by the homeopathic water.

The results were mystifying. The homeopathic water couldn't have had a single molecule of histamine, yet it still had an effect on the cells.

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They went on to set up very strict tests:

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NARRATOR: So Horizon decided to take up Randi's challenge. We gathered experts from some of Britain's leading scientific institutions to help us repeat Ennis's experiments.

Under the most rigorous of conditions they'll see whether they can find any evidence for the memory of water. We brought James Randi over from the United States to witness the experiment and we came to the world's most august scientific institution, the Royal Society.

The Vice-President of the Society, Professor John Enderby, agreed to oversee the experiment for us.

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The conclusion was:

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NARRATOR: Rachel Pearson identifies the tubes with a C or D. If the memory of water is real each column should either have mostly Cs or mostly Ds. This would show that the homeopathic dilutions are having a real effect, different from ordinary water. There's a hint that the letters are starting to line up.

JOHN ENDERBY: Column 1 we've got 5 Cs and a D. Column 3 we've got 4 Cs and a D, so let's press on. 148 and 9, 28 and…

NARRATOR: But as more codes are read out the true result becomes clear: the Cs and Ds are completely mixed up. The results are just what you'd expect by chance. A statistical analysis confirms it. The homeopathic water hasn't had any effect.

PROF. MARTIN BLAND (St. George's Hospital Medical School): There's absolutely no evidence at all to say that there is any difference between the solution that started off as pure water and the solution that started off with the histamine.

JOHN ENDERBY: What this has convinced me is that water does not have a memory.

NARRATOR: So Horizon hasn't won the million dollars. It's another triumph for James Randi. His reputation and his money are safe, but even he admits this may not be the final word.

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Well, the last statement is a little stretched...

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JAMES RANDI: Further investigation needs to be done. This may sound a little strange coming from me, but if there is any possibility that there's a reality here I want to know about it, all of humanity wants to know about it.

NARRATOR: Homeopathy is back where it started without any credible scientific explanation. That won't stop millions of people putting their faith in it, but science is confident. Homeopathy is impossible.

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[ 21 March 2005: Message edited by: maestro ]

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Originally posted by Gir Draxon:
On the question of our galaxies falling apart...

As I understand it, while gravity is most often associated with mass, it can also be a result of intense pressure (such as in the core of a white dwarf). So objects like black holes and white dwarves can have stronger gravity than what their mass would ordinarily dictate. Thus, a very strong black hole at the center of the galaxy could be the reason for the spin not matching our conventional projections...

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"Great!" y'all say.

What's the catch?

Two:

1. The mu meson is an unstable particle, half-life about 2.2 microseconds. So your cold fusion device would need to be next to a particle accelerator that could smash off these things from a beam and a target.
2. The bigger catch is this: The catalytic process goes by the weak interaction, whose cross-section is smaller than the strong or the electromagnetic. As a result, you need lots of mu mesons for what is comparatively, a piddly result.

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Astronomers can observe how galactic cores behave, and they can infer the overall mass distribution in the centers of galaxies by looking at the stars that orbit the galactic nucleus. As far as I understand, the way galaxies spin cannot be explained by the gravitational effects of a central object (or several central objects), no matter how great their gravity is.

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Most physicists think that dark matter is something we don't know about, something "exotic".

Here's a list of candidates for galactic dark matter:

http://hepwww.rl.ac.uk/ukdmc/dark_matter/candidates.html

[ 24 March 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

Stars everywhere act according to the same principals. Nucelosynthesis in the core of a star squashes/fuses hydrogen into helium, lithium, oxygen , nitrogen....all the way up to iron. Once the iron stage is reached the amount of energy pulsating from the core of the star can't "hold back" the massive weight of hydrogen encompassing said core (A star's core dynamics are also influenced by factors from outside the heliopause(edge of solar system)...which may influence sunspots (influence el nino?)). Depending upon the gravity of the hygrogen (mostly) surronding the star...a supernovae will occur...which might turn into a white dwarf...or a neutron star/pulsar...or perhaps a black hole. "brown dwarfs" -like jupiter- have alot of hydrogen but not enough for nucleosynthesis

Time/space frequencies of particles/waves operate at radio, microwave, infrared, visible (ROYGBIV), ultraviolet, xray and gammaray cycles. There are also quark frequencies and levels.

dark matter (unexplained weight of universe) might be accounted for with quite, benign "chunks" of neutral neutrons. Most of these "chunks" of neutral neutrons were probably created in the early universe after the big bang (and influence red shift). The amount of energy potential in neutron formations might allow for tremendous information transfer and storage (heaven?). There might be a metaphysical battle at work in the universe between positive and negative energy forces. Black holes might destroy souls/metaphysical self. The slightest change in positive-negative balance had- and will have- a profound effect upon big bang/crunch. "God" existed for a brief instant after a previous big crunch and before the current big bang. "God" was all our souls-(living and dead, human and not)- in a single universal metaphysical entity for a split second. Free-will influences resurection/reincarnation and the positive/negative universal energy balance

Basically there are four forces at work in the universe:
Electromagnetism
Gravity
Strong nuclear force (quark influence)
Weak nuclear force (radioactivity)

The intersection of these four forces would lead to a grand unified theory. The forces influence the big/astro (clusters/galaxies/stars) and the small/nuclear/quantum (photons/electron/quarks)
and the meta/soul/"God"

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Originally posted by CourtneyGQuinn:
What if "God" is simply the transfer and holding of information via quark gluon plasma? What if there are 3 different levels/colors of "Godliness" and knowingness?

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