Avian Gamers Network

I thought it would be fun to have "Science Discussions" in Avian, perhaps a different topic every week. We could post our own thoughts, ideas, opinions, or even theories about certain subject matters.

We could start a list of possible topics, and then could either go down the line, or pick the ones that we'd want to talk about.

Would anyone be in favor of doing this?

.....well...I thought I'd start a list anyway....and here are some that I've thought of thus far...


- Dark Matter
- Time Travel
- Lightspeed: Traveling faster than light
- New forms of Energy/Power: Fusion, Cold Fusion, Conversion of Regular Water into Pure Energy - The movie called "Chain Reaction" used this idea.


p.s. Does anyone subscribe to the Popular Science Magazine?

timetravel was a good movie..funny thing..my Grandpa is a lawyer and he gets for free tons of magazines every month that he has never subscribed to..so on occassion he brings home PC gamer and popular science national geographic and some others

_________________
Ryric Krael
Former Vice President AGN
Former Director, Section 6
Former Head of Department of the Treasury
-------
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"Gone Section Five"

That's really nice. My brother subscribes to PC Gamer, my parents, National Geographic, and of course myself, Popular Science. Popular Mechanics is also a great magazine.

"Traveling faster than light is impossible" a wise man said long ago.
But I don't belive him.
Latest research has proven that there is something smaller than protons, neutron and electrons. They are called quarks and are faster than the speed of light. Now thoose quarks might be the matter refered to tachyon in the Sci-Fi movies. Making a michine that can transform a specified matter from atom construction to quark construction should make it possible to travel faster than light.
I don't know with matter vs. anti-matter, but when the to kinds of matter are put together they release an enormous amount of energy. If that energy could be focused to point in one direction it might be possible to overcome the speed of light.
The most difficult part is to stop moving.

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1st Feb 2008

I fear you are mistaken about faster than light speed.

If you have ever studied Einstein's theory of relativity, you will come to a conclusion, that traveling faster than light also means that you can thus travel through time. If that was possible, the world would stop making sense, as the events would not follow their logical order. Some radical group in the furture could decide that taking the land from the Native Americans was wrong and go and equip them with superior guns. Just an extreme example. It would be impossible to prevent such incidents, as patroling space is hard enough, let alone time and space. Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy sums up the confusion that readily accessible time travel might bring about.

Einstein's theory does allow for us to reach stars far away, however. If you are travelling very near the speed of light, the time flows slower. Look up the problem of identical twins, where one goes on a near-light speed voyage, while the other stays at home. The voyager ends up younger than the home-boy. Thus, travelling near the speed of lightwould enable you to reach even far away stars in your lifetime.

About quarks - those are the smallest particles known. They make up all matter, if you split the protons and neutrons in the nucleus of the atom, you eventually find quarks. More elusive are neutrinos, which were at some point thought to have a mass AND travel at the speed of light - an impossibility by Einstein's theory. They were also thought to comprise the dark mattter. However, AFAIK, some of the most exciting things about neutrinos have been disproven.

I guess it would be possible to travel through time, if by each such action you would create a parallel universe that would be a copy of the selected time frame, however I do not beleive the Universe behaves in such an egocentric manner.

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Retired Weaponsmith

I will have to inform all of you that I am no where as smart of Einstein, so I admit I could be wrong. But Einstein’s stuff on the speed of light and its effects on time it does not make sense to me. I just do not see why speed and time are related as he puts it.

I know about the photon pendulum and the increased distance photons would have to travel when traveling at or beyond the speed of light... but to me anytime we travel at any speed less than light the same thing would happen, just at extremely smaller amounts.


You need food to grow…. But eating extreme amounts of food will not make you grow taller. See the above sentience is apples and oranges, they may be related, but that does not mean anything you say about them are true. That is how I feel about Einstein’s time travel.


I am not saying I do not believe time travel is possible, I just do not think speed and speed alone is the answer to it.

Cyrus, to answer that, you do not need equations or math


Light is a way of passing on information. In fact, light is the fastest any information travels. So if you look at a clock and travel away from it faster, than the speed of light, you will see the hands of the clock go back, because you will have passed through the photons of light emitted by the clock at previous times.

In that sense, your perception of the world, goes back in time. And since perception of the world is what makes you exist in it (If a tree fals in the forest, but nobody hears it, has it happened? , you have traveled back in time.

I think there is some sort of equation, that tells you how the time scale gets reversed above speed of light, but I forgot that... been long since high-school.

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Retired Weaponsmith

I guess that is where I am stumbling... I do not equate perception with actuality. To me the tree fell even if I did not see it. Someone else may have seen it, a bird, a squire, maybe no one, but I know full grown trees are not born mature, dead, lying on their side.

I know that when I look into the stars I may be seeing something that does not exist anymore. The star could have burned out, but I am still receiving the light emitted before it died. I embrace the science and that science tells me light can only travel so fast, therefore when looking at objects across vast distances, what I perceive is not always what is real.

I could watch a time lapsed segment of film showing Obo aging rapidly, yet I know, until I learn otherwise, Obo did not age rapidly; there must be something else at play here, maybe special effects. Speaking of Obo, for years I thought he was an older guy. By his words and actions I perceived him to older than I. However one day I learned he was younger than me… Therefore I ask you, what was the truth on June 14, 2001: was Obo older or younger than I? I thought older at that time, but I was wrong. The truth was independent of my perception no matter what I had thought

SO even if I were to travel away from a clock beyond the speed of light and I saw the hands moving backwards…. I would think that I am not going back in time, I am just passing the visual parts of light. I would look at another clock that was traveling with me… or ask someone else back at home.


Good conversation BTW

I agree this is the part that always tripped me up. Sure you APPEAR to be travelling back in time, but to ACTUALLY be travelling back in time you have to be next to that clock watching the hands go backwards. This of course cannot happen, since the moment you stop to go back to the clock the hands would speed up to compensate for your approach to the clock. This is not time travel, this is a shift in perception. I cannot zoom away from you faster than the speed of light, watch the light of the past, then affect the past. I have to go back to you to affect you. Same thing with communications, if we accept that the speed of light is the limit of our communications speed, then no matter how fast I go away from you to see the past, I can never communicate any part of it to you before it has has become the past for you too.

The concept of things moving slowers near the speed of light is something I have had a hard time grappling with as well. Mind you this has been far more substatiated then anything else we are talking about.

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Dr. Golga Bolg
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What am I playing now?: The waiting game

I suppose you don't want to know that everything in the universe travels at the speed of light then? Relatively speaking of course.

Do I dare inflict string theory on the discussion?

I believe they have made things (energy) travel faster than the speed of light. Which basically means that they arrive before they have even fully taken off.

I heard the explanation and my head was feeling a little bit dizzy...Where's felgar when you need a genius?

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Dalaran: Arindel - Frost Mage (Mining/Alchemy)
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Well I think it's virtually possible to travel faster than light by twisting spacetime but I don't have enough vocabulary to explain this

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Flyoc,
Farm with attitude.

Time travel is easy......

Get a telescope...

Point it at the stars...

Look...

You are seeing the past.

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SW:TOR - Mantison Gunslinger, Ironmant Trooper, Manni Jedi Knight
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Here is the basis on CNN

or

Here

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Dalaran: Arindel - Frost Mage (Mining/Alchemy)
Dalaran: Roran - Paladin (Weaponsmith/Blacksmith)
Dalaran: Baine - Rogue

I would wait until some people repeat the experiment and all that. A lot of things in science happen this way, people claiming stuff that (for some strange reason) cannot be repeated. Then they find out they forgot to switch the detector on or something.....

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Retired Weaponsmith

Travelling at or faster than the speed of light is a thoeritical impossibility. As you approach the speed of light your mass increases (something to do with that funny equation E = mc^2 I believe) so at the point that you reach the speed of light you have an infinite mass and to accellerate an infinite mass requires infinite energy which is obviously impossible.

Of course, Einsteins theories only apply to "Real" space and as such, completely break down when considering black holes. I, unfortunately, have not read or seen enough of Hawking's work to be able to comment on that.

On the subject of time, what is time? Time is meerly a perseption of a change in events and so happens to be reasonably constant as far as we see it currently. Now if time itself were a variable quantity, that would be an interesting discussion indeed!

Current theories state that time travel backwards in time to a period before a time machine is built is not possible. It appears to be possible to make some sort of wormhole thingy and send one end of it off in a journey at a significant fraction of the speed of light and then the two ends of the wormhole would be at different points in time, it would therefore be possible to travel through time by travelling through the wormhole but it would not be possible to travel back to before the wormhole itself was created.
Wormholes are, incidentally, apparently created by charging two plates with several millions of tillions of joules of energy and a wormhole forms between them. You then have to somehow move the two plates apart without collasping the wormhole and that would require some sort of anti-gravity mechanism!


There you go, just a little food for thought!

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X2-PB

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That applies to a place as a vacuum like outer space...and not all theories are fact .

But that's a discussion for quantum physics.

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The string theory is awesome; I read an article that mentioned it in my popular science magazine.

Here's a link to the article: http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/ar ... 47,00.html

Take a read at it, it’s very interesting. It also mentioned the "Brane Theory", which is another fascinating concept.

Heh, just open your eyes and you're seeing the past

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Flyoc,
Farm with attitude.

Yeah, I've heard all of this before. In fact, I think I read it in a magazine, and I know some famous person said it.





-Yeah...I'm sure we were able to do things like these 50 years ago, when we started reverse engineering Alien Spacecraft (UFO's) at Area 51/Groom Lake, and other bases/places. Such bases are in Roswell New Mexico, Colorado, and some other states that I can't think of off top of my head.

Honestly, my ideal job, would be working for the FBI, or being some freelancer, and investigating all the comspiracies, coverups, and UFO phenomena like Fox Mulder from the tv series, "The X-Files".

I think TV corrupted a bit your mind

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Flyoc,
Farm with attitude.

Yes, that maybe so, but I'm a hardcore science fiction fan, and I gues I can't help myself.

Area 51 is just a hyper-secretive R&D sight, nothing to do with aliens whatsoever!

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X2-PB

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That may be true currently, probably because everything has been moved elsewhere. However, I do strongly believe, from what I've read, heard, and seen, that it used to be the prime location for the storage of alien spacecraft, and bodies when the supposedly Alien spacecraft[s] crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.

I think it's safe to say that something did happen there, whether it were extraterrestrials or not.....and perhaps in the years to come what did actually happen in Roswell New Mexico during 1947 will be revealed.....and who knows perhaps those aliens are actually future humans (us) who developed a time machine to go into the past.

From what I've heard, the US government has a policy that says they need to reveal cover-ups 50 years after they occur. They did release a document about Area 51, but all it said was that they found a strange metal artifact. Something like that if I remember, and was told correctly.

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Romsuiag (Brad)
Former and Third President of Avian

Yeah, I remember hearing something about that too Rom, on a discovery or science fiction channel documentary thing. They gotta wait 50 years after an incident I think, so anyone who might object the information being released, will either be too old, or will be dead to do anything about it I think.

right, therefore all the documents are in public domain since 1997.

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Retired Weaponsmith

Yeah just the documents they want us to see.... lol


Alright time to change topics here...


Within 50 years, do you think we will be getting rid of all cars powered by gasoline? What will be the new source of car power, hydrogen, solar?

Well maybe not in 50 years but, one day or another, they're will be no more oil on Earth (I think this could end the endless Palestinian/Israeli conflict (sorry for mistyping)) so we will have to find a solution, solution which would have been found yet if the oil companies weren't so powerful...

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Flyoc,
Farm with attitude.

I think the OPEC countries have between 40 and 80 years left depending on their rate of extraction. Some pump it out as fast as they can and will consequently run empty sooner. Saudi Arabia alone has about twice as much as everyone else combined and they are in no rush to pump it up.


I doubt the palestinian/israeli conflict has anything to do with oil, its land and water (and of course history) that are the points of conflict.

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Meriander, Paladin
Rentin, Warlock
(Emerald Dawn, WoW EU server)

Yeah, the whole Palestinian/Israeli conflict was developed on the basis of religions beliefs and history. From what I understand, and this is just a very short summary, the people of Israel believe their land was given to them by God, and that they are required to do anything necessarily to defend it, because it is their holy land.


Has anyone ever seen the movie, Minority Report?

The type of cars they used was pretty cool, and I think they used a magnetic highway system, where cars would float a couple of inches from the roads or highways by use of magnetism.

Religion is just a reason given to the men to get them fight each other. At the beginning, this conflict was just another part of the wider US/Russia conflict, but now it's all oil. How do you think they get their weapons ?

Moreover, this conflict is the only reason for several other conflict in the world, and lots of people doesn't have interest for these conflicts to end (the gunsellers, for example).

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Flyoc,
Farm with attitude.

Not sure about 50 years, but I do think its possible at this rate. The way things are going now it seems Hydrogen will be the way to go.

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Romsuiag (Brad)
Former and Third President of Avian

Hydrogen and fuel cells, and I think it will happen soner than in 50 years.

The thing is, some performance might have to be sacrificed in order o use the electric cars, that's a big snag. People want to be able to get their car to go 140mph, even though they only do that once a year...

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Retired Weaponsmith

I'd like to have the types of cars, and the highway system that the movie Minority report had. Their magnetic car concept, or whatever, was pretty neat. Though in the movie, the cars were going pretty fast, I think. If you could punch in a destination in your car computer, and then it would take over and drive you there (like auto pilot) then perhaps we could raise speed limits and go 80-100 mph.

A maglev (magnetic levatation) system already exists and is used quite sucessfully with trains in Japan. I believe the maglev "Bullet" train can travel in excess of 300 kph.

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)