[lbo-talk] Depression, black holes, dark energy...

Jon Johanning jjohanning at igc.org
Sun Dec 28 09:31:36 PST 2003


On Saturday, December 27, 2003, at 08:38 PM, Chuck Grimes wrote:


> When it can be shown that 96% of
> everything is not covered by a theory, isn't it about time to question
> the theory?

No, it just means that cosmologists have a heck of a lot of work ahead of them. But they always knew that. The universe is still a very mysterious place.


> Beyond that intuitive disbelief, there is this. The oldest quasar
> known (according to google search) has a redshift of z = 6.4,
> and its light is presumed to be about 13 billion years old. That gives
> the universe after the big bang less than one billion years to get up
> and running, and evolved to the state of generating a galaxy with a
> supermassive black hole and quasar at its center.

Hence the inflation theory. (For details, consult google again; I don't remember all of them. But this "inflation" is different from the economic kind!)

On Saturday, December 27, 2003, at 09:06 PM, Devine, James wrote:


> SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN has (had?) a column titled "anti-gravity" in which
> the editors surveyed bogus science. If anti-gravity itself isn't
> bogus, they'll have to change its name.

This "anti-gravity" isn't the kind that would help you to fly around without wings. It's a general force throughout the universe, accounting for its expansion despite the activity of gravity, which by itself would cause contraction, of course.

Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ When I was a little boy, I had but a little wit, 'Tis a long time ago, and I have no more yet; Nor ever ever shall, until that I die, For the longer I live the more fool am I. -- Wit and Mirth, an Antidote against Melancholy (1684)



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