Message Boards Wish
22 Mar 2005 0:04:58 UTC
Topic 188663
(moderation:
I'm a newbie, both to BOINC and physics. Well, not strictly a physics newbie - I did it in UK high school until I was 16. I'm starting to get back into it, though, and I'm looking at starting a degree course in a couple of years after a few brush-up courses.
So, with that in mind, how about a newbie science forum, for people like me to ask really dumb-ass questions and get really sound answers?
Message Boards Wish
)
> I'm a newbie, both to BOINC and physics. Well, not strictly a physics newbie
> - I did it in UK high school until I was 16. I'm starting to get back into
> it, though, and I'm looking at starting a degree course in a couple of years
> after a few brush-up courses.
>
> So, with that in mind, how about a newbie science forum, for people like me to
> ask really dumb-ass questions and get really sound answers?
>**********************************
glennog:
It's a great idea in theory. The trouble with open forums like this, you'll have to be careful of the replies you get because physics not always being intuitive you could get answers worse than the questions.
I don't know I would characterize any question about physics as "dumb." It isn't the question that is dumb, it's the motive for the question. Anyone who is curious and wants to now the truth will ask good questions however elementary that deserve a good and respectful answer. A question about the foundations of physics will not be dumb.
Why don't you try one and see what happens?
I have one--
I understand and accept that the further one looks in space the "further back in time" one sees. But I have a problem with this since it's not quite intuitive. Let's say that the universe has been expanding at the speed of light for lo these 15 billion years or thereabouts. All the universe is the same age, all the light travelling at its own speed all that time, so if light from 15 billion light-years away has been travelling for 15 billion years, how come it's only getting to us now? 15 billion years ago the universe was that theoretical singularity, all the parts of it occupying essentially the same space (probably. I realize that the math breaks down at that point and we really don't know what was going on then), so the light from 15 billion years ago shouldn't actually have come from something that was 15 billion light-years away. It should have come from right next door. But you see the problem. Light doesn't slow down when shining from a receding object, it only gets red-shifted. It still ambles along at nearly 300,000,000 KM/sec. It can't be because of inflation, for inflation would have to boost the universe a very long way even by cosmic standards in a very short time, and it didn't burst outward at many times the speed of light for a while...did it?
Any answers to this?
If you acknowledge that the
)
If you acknowledge that the universe expanded, then the next-door light has already met us and passed. Just because everything's separated doesn't mean light can't be aged anymore.
"My other computer is a virus farm."