Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Hipster_Nebula wrote:

karlypants wrote:

Sluffy wrote:

rammywhite wrote:

Sluffy wrote:

rammywhite wrote:Where did all that gas and the star come from?

The stars came from the gas collapsing in on itself until they self combusted.

The gas came from the sub-atomic particles - such as the protons and neutrons (the smallest particles thought to be possible) forming into atoms and creating elements - the most basic of which being Hydrogen and Helium.

You know what's coming next......where did the sub atomic particles come from?

They've always been there - otherwise everything - me, you, space itself could never exist.

Unless of course God created them and if so who created him/her?

But it can't have always been there, It must have come from somewhere.

This is what I can't get my head around, in fact all of it to be honest.

If there wasn't all these universes etc then what would there be?

I don't think we know enough about our planted and space, universes etc.

I think I'm right in saying it was Laurence Kraus who has suggested that "nothing" in space terms isn't what you would generally think of as "nothing" 

But you're right we know absolutely nothing about almost everything, thats the beauty of asking questions. It's those who pretend to know everything that are the most dangerous.

Think they have also worked out recently that the mass of our galaxy does not account for all the gravitational forces, and that has led to the theory of dark matter, think this is the nothing that isn't actually nothing but is really something.

boltonbonce wrote:I read somewhere that travelling at 'warp speed' as in Star Trek,would one day be possible.
You'd be able to travel light years in an instant.

I've read that too but the big obstacle is apparently going to be avoiding crashing into planets and stuff because you can't make course corrections whilst "at warp" because it's a bit of an all or nothing concept - you hit that button and you're gone. In a straight line.

So whilst the theory is fine, the practical application is probably always going to be too difficult to master.

Shame.

According to the theory,you simply 'bend space' until your destination meets the starting point.
Two dots at either end of a sheet of paper will come together if you fold the paper in half. 
A simplification of course,but you get the idea.

Yeah, I get that but the thing I read (which I can't bloody find now!) said that everything between the two dots is potentially still there, so it's not as simple as instantaneously plopping from one dot to the other because there's (potentially) still stuff in the way.

I may have misunderstood it and it may have been written by a 12 year old kid who was talking out of his arse because it was on the web, afterall, but that was the impression I got.

Space is scary.

I think you'll find that space is, in fact, ace:

All I know as a conspiracy theorist is that Wallace and Gromit never landed on the moon.

We all know that the moon is made out of Stilton and not Wensleydale.

Sorry Sluffy. We've arrived at Frank Sidebottom.

It was inevitable.

I suppose so. Could have been worse of course.

You know the score.

The new Xfiles on 5 now I love it

Fabians Right Peg wrote:aren't protons and neutrons made up of smaller sub-atomic particles called quarks?

Yes but they are meaningless on there own apparently.

It is only when quarks can be glued together by strong nuclear forces to form protons and neutrons that elements can exist.

The simplest element Hydrogen consists of one proton. Helium the second simplest element consists of two protons and one or two neutrons.

Mass however depends on quarks.

I think that is where we might be differing but I can't pretend that I understand all this stuff, this is just my best guess as what all the text books are saying about the quantum mechanics.

Gets you thinking - well it does me.

Didn't see the first episode of the new xfiles Any good?

They say Duchovny has something alien on his head.

Its getting better must go adverts over

Sluffy wrote:

Fabians Right Peg wrote:aren't protons and neutrons made up of smaller sub-atomic particles called quarks?

Yes but they are meaningless on there own apparently.

It is only when quarks can be glued together by strong nuclear forces to form protons and neutrons that elements can exist.  

The simplest element Hydrogen consists of one proton.  Helium the second simplest element consists of two protons and one or two neutrons.

Mass however depends on quarks.

I think that is where we might be differing but I can't pretend that I understand all this stuff, this is just my best guess as what all the text books are saying about the quantum mechanics.

Gets you thinking - well it does me.

 Indeed when you start looking into these tiny particles and the forces involved it's completely mind blowing. I looked at some stuff on this when they where making a big fuss about the Higgs boson particle, there was a clever chap.

Predicted the presence of a field of what I think you could call energy that could only be proved to exist by creating a disturbance which would generate a higgs particle.

So some clever chaps at CERN built the hadron collider and also invented the internet so we could chat about football.

Not satisfied with setting up somewhere for us to chat about the footie, it's likely that looking at these tiny particles will one day answer how the universe was created and how it will all likely end.

If only they could look at the higgs boson and see how the bolton takeover saga is likely to end, now that would be impressive.

Breadman wrote:I think you'll find that space is, in fact, ace:

Do you know that there is a Frank Sidebottom statue in Timperley?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAEVFGAiXqg

Another thing to get your head around - is that everything in the universe was already there - right from the very start.

Energy can not be created or destroyed so everything that is going on - stars being created and blown apart, the galaxy's accelerating away from each other black holes bending light and time, absolutely everything, as been there from the beginning.

I don't mean everything existed as they are now and will continue to be as they are but the 'power' that drives everything along - including time - existed from the very beginning.

The way the universe will come to an end is when the energy can no longer be transmitted around and that will happen when the universe eventually cools to an even heat throughout its being.

Then all the lights will go out and time will simply stop!

Sluffy wrote:Another thing to get your head around - is that everything in the universe was already there - right from the very start.

Energy can not be created or destroyed so everything that is going on - stars being created and blown apart, the galaxy's accelerating away from each other black holes bending light and time, absolutely everything, as been there from the beginning.

Nothing was there at the beginning, everything came from somewhere.

scottjames30 wrote:

Sluffy wrote:Another thing to get your head around - is that everything in the universe was already there - right from the very start.

Energy can not be created or destroyed so everything that is going on - stars being created and blown apart, the galaxy's accelerating away from each other black holes bending light and time, absolutely everything, as been there from the beginning.

Nothing was there at the beginning, everything came from somewhere.

That is one theory the other is that nothing can't exist as we interpret it, nothing being the absence of everything. How can you prove nothing exists, there would have to be something there to measure it? and therefore you would have something, i.e. what you are measuring, you also have the issue of if we did somehow measure nothing is it truly nothing or something beyond our ability to measure /quantify..

If you think about the last statement that everything came from somewhere, somewhere is not nothing. if you say everything was there from the start then you have to ask what the start is and we probably mean the form in which the universe currently is in which we measure time but it's highly likely that the energy making the universe up was always there just in a different form.

If you think about it too long gives you a blinding headache.

The chemical symbol for nothing is Ng.

It's all here in this useful Table of the Transitional Elements. 

You can probably still get one by writing to 'Look Around You', BBC Television for Schools and Colleges, Broadcasting House, Shepherd's Bush.