[Gooracouppy]

Originally posted by DaShi
The Universe will eventually collapse back into itself. Then another Big Bang will occur and events will transpire exactly as they had before. Great ... not only am i going to make mistakes in my lifetime, im going to make them for all **ckin eternity !

unless i can somehow get the molecules to remember events and which decision to take hmm but then again, maybe its a false memory of events which will cause me to make the same mistake, argh i hate considering the future.

[mvjvz]

Originally posted by VJ



What you don't know could fill several books. No wonder you vote republican. implying that what you don't know would not fill several books?

[bypeTeenehalT]

Originally posted by Lorizael


And, as with most other things for which PHDs are available, a simple understanding of it is almost useless.

[AricGoffgog]

Do middle school and elementary children understand ANY concept they are taught to the degree that they can answer analytic questions about it not already learned by route in a class room?

Children can handle the concept if properly taught-from limited anecdotal evidence I remember they taught it to us for the first time in sixth grade, I was already familiar and understood the idea and while I wouldn’t say that was the majority, I was far from alone in that understanding. I went to a typical New York public school.

Saying that the understanding of evolution has and continues to change greatly as Geronomo said(and is correct) is implying that it has changed so much that it is not simple to understand, and requires a great deal of study. That is incorrect. Our continually new discoveries about evolution do not fundamentally change our understanding about it or require massive study to understand the basis.

And as also said, a simple understanding IS enough. You do not need a PHD to understand evolution, a low level understanding of its basic principles are enough, because its basic principles ARE basic.

[sbrpkkl]

I don't think I am a monumental genius, I do though like you said, think I am above average.

If you give me *twenty minutes* to sit down with any American over the age of 14 who is of average intelligence, I could teach them a working knowledge of evolution.

Actually I'm adding one other condition... they can't be a creationalist or religiously hostile to the idea of evolution-it will take more then 20 minutes because then I have to convince them, not just teach them.

[Dyslermergerb]

So you would agree that almost anyone could be taught evolution, in a small amount of time, with minimal effort?

[lorrieholdridge]

The Ekpyrotic Model:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekpyrotic_universe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_model



The ekpyrotic universe or ekpyrotic scenario is a cosmological theory of the origin of the universe. The name comes from a Stoic term for "out of fire". The ekpyrotic model of the universe is an alternative to the standard cosmic inflation paradigm, both of which accept that the standard big bang Lambda-CDM model of our universe is an appropriate description up to very early times. The ekpyrotic model is a precursor to, and part of the cyclic model.

Brane cosmology assumes that the visible universe lies on a three-dimensional brane which moves in higher dimensional space. Our brane may be one of innumerable others moving through these extra dimensions. The ekpyrotic scenario was proposed by Khoury, Ovrut, Steinhardt and Turok in 2001. It suggests that the visible universe was empty and contracting in the distant past. At some time, our brane collided with another, parallel "hidden" brane, which caused the contracting universe to reverse and begin expanding. Hot matter and radiation was created in the collision, which started the hot big bang from which the present-day universe originated. The brane collision, from the four-dimensional perspective of the visible brane, looks like a big crunch followed by a big bang.

The scenario is appealing because it replaces cosmic inflation with a theory that achieves many of the same successes in a framework that seems compatible with string theory. An important distinction between the ekpyrotic scenario and cosmic inflation is that in the ekpyrotic scenario, the primordial nearly scale invariant spectrum of quantum vacuum fluctuations, which is the seed for all structure in the universe today, is generated in a contracting universe, before the big crunch. In cosmic inflation they are generated immediately after the big bang, in an expanding universe.

--------------------------------------------------

The cyclic model is a brane cosmology model of the creation of the universe, derived from the earlier ekpyrotic model. It was proposed in 2001 by Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok.

In the cyclic model, two parallel orbifold planes or M-branes collide periodically in a higher dimensional space. The visible four-dimensional universe lies on one of these branes. The collisions correspond to a reversal from contraction to expansion, or a big crunch followed immediately by a big bang. The matter and radiation we see today were generated during the most recent collision in a pattern dictated by quantum fluctuations created before the branes. Eventually, the universe reached the state we observe today, before beginning to contract again many billions of years in the future. Dark energy corresponds to a force between the branes, and serves the crucial role of solving the monopole, horizon, and flatness problems. Moreover the cycles can continue indefinitely into the past and the future, and the solution is an attractor, so it can provide a complete history of the universe.

An earlier cyclic model of Richard Tolman failed because the universe would undergo inevitable thermodynamic heat death. However, the cyclic model evades this by having a net expansion each cycle, preventing entropy from building up. However, there are major problems with the model. Foremost among them is that colliding branes are not understood by string theorists, and nobody knows if the scale invariant spectrum will be destroyed by the big crunch, or even what happens when two branes collide. Moreover, like cosmic inflation, while the general character of the forces (in the ekpyrotic scenario, a force between branes) required to create the vacuum fluctuations is known, there is no candidate from particle physics. Moreover, the scenario uses some essential ideas from string theory, principally extra dimensions, branes and orbifolds. String theory itself is a controversial idea in physics.

Originally, ekpyrotic models described two branes separated along a fifth dimension which collide once. Crucially, both the ekpyrotic and cyclic models create the fluctuations we observe today in a contracting "ekpyrotic" phase. However, in the ekpyrotic model, while a future collision with a different brane could conceivably happen in the future, ending our epoch in a conflagration, this happens randomly, not periodically. There were problems with the old ekpyrotic picture having to do with the very special, nearly supersymmetric initial state required in order to end up with a nearly homogeneous universe: the problems solved by cosmic inflation, such as the monopole, flatness and homogeneity problems were shifted to a set of fine-tuned initial conditions. The ekpyrotic picture was not connected to the issue of dark energy.

There are other technical differences having to do with the nature of the branes. For example, in the ekpyrotic model, they are D-branes; while in the cyclic model, they are orbifold planes.

[Vigeommighica]

"monopole, horizon, and flatness problems."

From Odin's link a few posts up. Anyone ever heard of these problems before? I'd guess the flatness problem is because the universe appears flat? What about the monopole and horizon problems?

[BaselBimbooooo]

Originally posted by Geronimo
implying that what you don't know would not fill several books? It's an imitation of what chegits guevara said over a year ago. The dialogue went something like this:
Lancer: (something incredibly stupid)
random person: (a long, educating post stating things normal people learn in school)
Lancer: "Wow, I didn't know that"
Chegits: "What you don't know could fill several books" Since then, at least Jaguar has used it as a way of subtly insulting the intelligence of ignorant ppl.

[SeftyJokipl]

I quit school at the age of 17 to join the US army, too

they didn't take me in

answer the stupid questions VJ. Where?

[AutoCadPhotoSHOP]

Originally posted by Lancer
From Odin's link a few posts up. Anyone ever heard of these problems before? Yes.

I'd guess the flatness problem is because the universe appears flat? What about the monopole and horizon problems?

The flatness problem is, indeed that the intrinsic curvature of the Universe seems remarkably close to 0

The monopole problem comes from applying certain unified field theories/string theories to standard cosmology. This results in a large density of magnetic monopoles.

The horizon problem comes from the fact that if we project "normal" cosmology backward through time we can see that points well-separated on the sky are causally isolated from each other, yet are in apparent thermal equilibrium.

Dark energy corresponds to a force between the branes, and serves the crucial role of solving the monopole, horizon, and flatness problems.

Whoever wrote this is either an idiot at cosmology or English. Nothing about dark energy solves any of those problems. Inflation solves those problems, so whatever it is about these postulated branes that mimics inflation is what's going to solve them in this theory too.

I really love it when people like Odin post their support of a physical theory which they have no hope of even understanding...

[fameintatenly]

Originally posted by Lorizael
Even though there is significantly more matter than anti-matter? (a) you're guessing and (b) yep, even with significantly more matter than anti-matter, there'll still be a really big kaboooooooooom.

[Jalieteplalry]

Originally posted by Geronimo
excuse me? Humanity still doesn't yet know how evolution works. It's far from a dead area of investigation there is a wealth of insight being gained essentially nonstop on the intricacies of evolution past and present and there is little sign we will be done even decades from now puzzling out how it works and has worked in the past. We do know how evolution works in general and on various conceptual levels. However, there is still much work to be done to find out specific mechanisms and sequences of events.

Conceptually, evolution is the change in the frequencies of alleles. That's dead simple for the most part. Specific cases are more difficult. For example, how did we humans become intelligent?

[hotelhyatt]

Zribbler's Hypothesis:
The amount of matter in the universe is exactly equal to the amount of anti-matter in the universe. ...or....

Matter + Anti-Matter = 0

God likes to zero things out.

In other words..."Nothing is sacred."

[Filmania]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
In other words..."Nothing is sacred." Except energy