In an attempt to drastically shorten my interaction with you, I've reduced it to only one topic.
Slenn said:
In that case, you can accelerate the ship at 1 g up to relativistic speeds, and it'll be fine. This would be nice for long term travel as well since the distances between stellar objects are quite large. Another thing, I know you mentioned something about "moving really slow." But we're not seeing objects move slower due to special relativity. What's happening is the time dilation. People on the ship will have their clocks tick normally, while the people on Earth appear to have theirs tick slowly. Strictly speaking, we like to refer to these things as events.
One would assume with some sort of fusion or nuclear reactor on a ship coupled with a photon drive to remove the need for traditional propellants and enough time a ship in space could eventually reach any speed with a stable rate of acceleration. I wonder if there is some sort of built in physical mechanic that prevents a traveler from going faster than light from their own perspective even if relative to us they appear to be doing so. That would drastically change my perception of space travel at these speeds.
Hmm, that gives me an idea, I hadn't considered time dilation of the traveler at the speed of light as a function of the mechanical ability to accelerate. The working theory [https://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/timedial.html] is that time dilation at the speed of light is for the traveler to experience zero time in relation to a static observer. At 0.9 v/c the static observer would only experience 2.29 days for every 1 day the ship experiences. But at something like .9999999999 c it is 70710 days per one day on the ship and it just keeps climbing exponentially with every additional digit leading up to 1.0 v/c. So I suppose if you could ever reach that 1.0 v/c you could not accelerate faster because you are technically no longer able to do anything in 0.00~ seconds and that includes expending energy to continue accelerating. Functional perfect stasis. Weird to think of photons as all being in that state. I wonder if they experience time when slowed down through special mediums or if from a photon's own perspective if it would perceive itself as traveling that fast?
Thanks for helping me through that thought experiment. You've been extremely helpful. Wow. Next I'll have to figure out what this means in relativity since "speed" is only a relative idea. So hypothetically you could be moving faster than the speed of light in relation to one static observer but not in relation to another static observer. I wonder how that could work since that means one galaxy would expend billions of years when another could be experiencing infinite years which really can't hold up because infinity is so much more than any number. Does it imply that the universe has inherent boundaries that are irrelevant to observer relativity and is only relevant to the traveler's relativity?
Thank you for getting me this far. Oh well, looks like it's some kind of highly theoretical Alcubierre drive or bust. Here's to the prospect of negative mass matter!
One would assume with some sort of fusion or nuclear reactor on a ship coupled with a photon drive to remove the need for traditional propellants and enough time a ship in space could eventually reach any speed with a stable rate of acceleration. I wonder if there is some sort of built in physical mechanic that prevents a traveler from going faster than light from their own perspective even if relative to us they appear to be doing so. That would drastically change my perception of space travel at these speeds.
There have been proposals for using a fusion reactor by the British Interplanetary Society to get to relativistic speeds (speeds that are a sizable fraction of the speed of light).
Adding relativistic speeds gets a little complicated. If a ship fires a projectile at 0.5c pointing away from Earth with respect to itself, and the ship is moving at 0.5c away from observers on Earth, then the projectile appears as 0.8c from observers on Earth.
Hmm, that gives me an idea, I hadn't considered time dilation of the traveler at the speed of light as a function of the mechanical ability to accelerate. The working theory [https://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/timedial.html] is that time dilation at the speed of light is for the traveler to experience zero time in relation to a static observer. At 0.9 v/c the static observer would only experience 2.29 days for every 1 day the ship experiences. But at something like .9999999999 c it is 70710 days per one day on the ship and it just keeps climbing exponentially with every additional digit leading up to 1.0 v/c. So I suppose if you could ever reach that 1.0 v/c you could not accelerate faster because you are technically no longer able to do anything in 0.00~ seconds and that includes expending energy to continue accelerating. Functional perfect stasis. Weird to think of photons as all being in that state. I wonder if they experience time when slowed down through special mediums or if from a photon's own perspective if it would perceive itself as traveling that fast?
We can only assume so much. By the current model, light and things that move at light speed don't move at any other speed. It is an interesting way of thinking about it. You are correct in assuming that light cannot accelerate or decelerate.
Photons don't change their nature when they pass through mediums. They only exchange between different atoms.
Thanks for helping me through that thought experiment. You've been extremely helpful. Wow. Next I'll have to figure out what this means in relativity since "speed" is only a relative idea. So hypothetically you could be moving faster than the speed of light in relation to one static observer but not in relation to another static observer. I wonder how that could work since that means one galaxy would expend billions of years when another could be experiencing infinite years which really can't hold up because infinity is so much more than any number. Does it imply that the universe has inherent boundaries that are irrelevant to observer relativity and is only relevant to the traveler's relativity?
Presumably if we ever achieve light speeds, no doubt there would be effects that would depend on one's frame of reference.
Our perception of the universe is restricted because light has a finite speed and we can only view so much with optical telescopes. If I'm understanding your query correctly.
Dovetailing off a previous article here, about scientists being able to teleport data at the longest distance yet:
1. Is it possible (eventually or theoretically) to transmit this data without the need of wires or cables? I ask because one comment in the thread was basically "ok, so what good is this technology going to be? To instantly transmit data over long distances" And I thought that if it was possible to accomplish without the need for cables/wiring, it could help remote operation of probes and unmanned vehicles in hostile environments, or on distant planets. Not sure if this is even possible though, given the way the tech works for data teleportation as it was described. The idea of being an interplanetary Rigger is super appealing to me personally. xD
Regarding the issue that what we see is not the universe as it is now, but as it was in a different time due to the time it takes for light to travel through the universe: Is it possible that that is throwing off our calculations? We have to look at the past from the perspective of the present, but a lot changes over the course of billions of years. Also, could the dispersal of light waves and particles over time be distorting our view of the distant reaches of the universe?
Perhaps. But take a step back and remove "parallel dimensions" for now, and let's go over the reasons why it only interacts through gravity. The dark matter is pure mass and has no other properties. It has no color charge, so it can't interact via the strong nuclear force. It has no electric charge, which means it can't be seen, touched, or interact with the EM force. And it has no flavor, which means it can't interact through the weak nuclear force.
But what you're postulating is that it could have something like electric charge, but that property is "screened" in some way so that our universe sees just the mass. Is that what you're referring to?
2. Could you theoretically make an handwavium generator that disrupts the Higgs-field disabling its ability to interact with your mass. In effect make an inertial dampener. And if so would the removal of internal gravity have any effect on your body even though gravity is so mindbogglingly weak?
The problem with that is that the Higgs interacts on many levels. Gluons and photons are massless, and they need the Higgs so that they can interact with particles that do have mass. And gluons are responsible for holding atomic nuclei together. The EM force uses (virtual) photons to hold the structure of the atom together. Photons are exchanged between protons and electrons via the EM force. And photons are also exchanged between protons in the nucleus, since they repel each other. So I would say that creating an inertial dampener would require a little more complexity. Not saying it's impossible, but it would be tricky to create without any repercussions.
I hope this helps!
RUINER ACTUAL said:
I wonder if I can use you as a source...
How many cosmological decades have passed? and How many will the Universe when it 'dies'?
Dovetailing off a previous article here, about scientists being able to teleport data at the longest distance yet:
1. Is it possible (eventually or theoretically) to transmit this data without the need of wires or cables? I ask because one comment in the thread was basically "ok, so what good is this technology going to be? To instantly transmit data over long distances" And I thought that if it was possible to accomplish without the need for cables/wiring, it could help remote operation of probes and unmanned vehicles in hostile environments, or on distant planets. Not sure if this is even possible though, given the way the tech works for data teleportation as it was described. The idea of being an interplanetary Rigger is super appealing to me personally. xD
There's a book out there called "Profiles of the Future." In which Arthur C. Clarke goes over his rules for how to predict the future and its technology. One of the things he says you have to watch out for is "failure of nerve" which is declaring a future invention to be impossible by our standards. At this point I could say we'll figure something out. But we won't know anything until we dive much deeper. I would strongly recommend you check out that book at a library, it's a nice "food for thought" book.
retsupurae yahtsee said:
Regarding the issue that what we see is not the universe as it is now, but as it was in a different time due to the time it takes for light to travel through the universe: Is it possible that that is throwing off our calculations? We have to look at the past from the perspective of the present, but a lot changes over the course of billions of years. Also, could the dispersal of light waves and particles over time be distorting our view of the distant reaches of the universe?
Most, if not all, of all astronomers are aware of the fact that it takes time for light to reach us. You'd have to ask an astronomer for the specifics, but I'm sure that they know what's going on and they're factoring in the arrival time of the light.
There have been proposals for using a fusion reactor by the British Interplanetary Society to get to relativistic speeds (speeds that are a sizable fraction of the speed of light).
Adding relativistic speeds gets a little complicated. If a ship fires a projectile at 0.5c pointing away from Earth with respect to itself, and the ship is moving at 0.5c away from observers on Earth, then the projectile appears as 0.8c from observers on Earth.
Why would that be problematic? Is it because it produces a scenario where a projectile could potentially appear to be going 1+c relatively? Does the perspective of the static observer really matter as long as the "traveler" is abiding by the laws of physics?
Since galaxies and solar systems run at different relativistic speeds, does this impact our ability to calculate trajectories correctly? Or since the different usually isn't anything so bold as .5c does it not make a significant enough difference to warrant consideration?
On "real" (unbended space) FTL and time travel, also known as tachyons: What does that even mean?
So I'm on Earth and you're in your spaceship traveling away from Earth. As you go faster, time passes more slowly for you. If you (somehow, impossibly) are traveling at light speed, time is not passing for you at all; you reach your destination at the same time you left, as far as you're concerned. If you exceed c ("even more impossible"), time is passing in reverse for you. You arrive, then you travel, then you leave. By this method you could carry information from the future into the past. Even a simple tachyon beam would carry information from its destination to its source, rather than vice-versa. This leads to easy paradox creation.
Tachyons haven't been discovered by any strict means. If a tachyon would give off light, it would be impossible to see the tachyon coming. Much in the same way supersonic jets pass us before we hear the sound of them passing. If a tachyon were to pass us, we would also see two images of it: one of them going backwards, and the other going forwards. The reason for this is that the light from it that reaches us first is the light created when the tachyon was the closest to us. The light that we see next would be when it was farther away from us.
What its speed implies is that it must have imaginary momentum and energy, mathematically speaking. For our instruments, this doesn't help much because we expect to measure a value that's real. It might require much different instrumentation to figure out how to perceive these quantities. I have faith that we'll figure something out.
I do hope that helps get another view as to what faster than light implies.
Why would that be problematic? Is it because it produces a scenario where a projectile could potentially appear to be going 1+c relatively? Does the perspective of the static observer really matter as long as the "traveler" is abiding by the laws of physics?
Since galaxies and solar systems run at different relativistic speeds, does this impact our ability to calculate trajectories correctly? Or since the different usually isn't anything so bold as .5c does it not make a significant enough difference to warrant consideration?
I meant "complicated" in the sense that the mathematics gets more complicated than simple time dilation. No problems really. It never really produces any such scenario with superluminal velocities.
Galaxies, stars, and planets all run at speeds that are considerably less than the speed of light. It doesn't impact much for astronauts.
Dovetailing off a previous article here, about scientists being able to teleport data at the longest distance yet:
1. Is it possible (eventually or theoretically) to transmit this data without the need of wires or cables? I ask because one comment in the thread was basically "ok, so what good is this technology going to be? To instantly transmit data over long distances" And I thought that if it was possible to accomplish without the need for cables/wiring, it could help remote operation of probes and unmanned vehicles in hostile environments, or on distant planets. Not sure if this is even possible though, given the way the tech works for data teleportation as it was described. The idea of being an interplanetary Rigger is super appealing to me personally. xD
There's a book out there called "Profiles of the Future." In which Arthur C. Clarke goes over his rules for how to predict the future and its technology. One of the things he says you have to watch out for is "failure of nerve" which is declaring a future invention to be impossible by our standards. At this point I could say we'll figure something out. But we won't know anything until we dive much deeper. I would strongly recommend you check out that book at a library, it's a nice "food for thought" book.
Oh I don't doubt it could be possible, I have the utmost confidence in the humanity's ability to come up with all kinds of stuff. It's why I never really get shocked or stunned when scientists do discover something new. It's perfectly normal for me to think that humans can do that, as we've been doing it for years. xD I just meant if there was any current theories about being able to replicate the teleportation thing without the need for connecting lines.
2. Could you theoretically make an handwavium generator that disrupts the Higgs-field disabling its ability to interact with your mass. In effect make an inertial dampener. And if so would the removal of internal gravity have any effect on your body even though gravity is so mindbogglingly weak?
The problem with that is that the Higgs interacts on many levels. Gluons and photons are massless, and they need the Higgs so that they can interact with particles that do have mass. And gluons are responsible for holding atomic nuclei together. The EM force uses (virtual) photons to hold the structure of the atom together. Photons are exchanged between protons and electrons via the EM force. And photons are also exchanged between protons in the nucleus, since they repel each other. So I would say that creating an inertial dampener would require a little more complexity. Not saying it's impossible, but it would be tricky to create without any repercussions.
Let me expand on that a little bit. No matter how you handwavium it, reducing the mass of an object is, in effect, releasing a rather tremendous amount of energy (E=mc2 nuclear bomb sort of thing). As Slenn describes it, you've basically got every particle in your body flying apart simultaneously until it slams back into the Higgs field. "Repercussions" was putting it very, very mildly.
Lightknight said:
Since galaxies and solar systems run at different relativistic speeds, does this impact our ability to calculate trajectories correctly?
So if time dilation prevents a ship from being able to slow itself down. Would it be possible for us to use quantum entanglement so that we as the observers could interact with the ship spontaneously? Perhaps it could perform actions instantaneously and side step the fact that there is no time on board the ship?
Hmm... that would be interesting. We would essentially be remote controlling the vessel. I wonder what meaningful actions, if any, quantum entanglement could perform on a ship that can't move itself? Any mechanism that could slow or speed up the ship would be key. At the moment we can only really enact transfer of information which would be useless on the ship that experiences no time to be able to perceive that information. So I'm not sure how it could ever be used to enact real physical differences unless we made some significant discoveries on entanglement that allowed macro impacts.
Slenn said:
Lightknight said:
Why would that be problematic? Is it because it produces a scenario where a projectile could potentially appear to be going 1+c relatively? Does the perspective of the static observer really matter as long as the "traveler" is abiding by the laws of physics?
Since galaxies and solar systems run at different relativistic speeds, does this impact our ability to calculate trajectories correctly? Or since the different usually isn't anything so bold as .5c does it not make a significant enough difference to warrant consideration?
I meant "complicated" in the sense that the mathematics gets more complicated than simple time dilation. No problems really. It never really produces any such scenario with superluminal velocities.
Galaxies, stars, and planets all run at speeds that are considerably less than the speed of light. It doesn't impact much for astronauts.
So there is no scenario where one observer traveling at whatever speed would perceive another object being fired from another vessel traveling at relativistic speeds as though the projectile were traveling at light speeds but not really doing so?
As someone who works with a camera a lot, I was wondering if you could tell me how a lens element in an adapter in between a lens and a camera body can somehow bring in more light. The science of that confuses me and I haven't found a satisfactory answer yet.
Light -> Lens body -> Adapter -> A 'stop' more light on sensor?
I don't get the science one bit but over the course of testing it with lighting conditions, it does work.
So if time dilation prevents a ship from being able to slow itself down. Would it be possible for us to use quantum entanglement so that we as the observers could interact with the ship spontaneously? Perhaps it could perform actions instantaneously and side step the fact that there is no time on board the ship?
I'm not sure how time dilation prevents a ship from slowing down. Time dilation makes it so that events that are happening aboard a ship happen at a slower rate relative to the observers on Earth. We don't see any change in the ship's speed due to time dilation.
The catch with special relativity is that events that are simultaneous in one frame are no longer simultaneous in another. I would not expect that the electrons that are being controlled through quantum entanglement would act simultaneously on a ship moving close to the speed of light. It could be that in some abstract frame of reference, the two electrons feel a simultaneous force acting on them, but to an observer on Earth the events don't appear to be simultaneous. I could be wrong.
Interesting question. I like it.
So there is no scenario where one observer traveling at whatever speed would perceive another object being fired from another vessel traveling at relativistic speeds as though the projectile were traveling at light speeds but not really doing so?
There is no such scenario. No matter what happens during any calculation with special relativity, you'll never end up with a speed that's equal to or faster than the speed of light. If you do, it's usually because someone didn't do their math properly. In laboratory settings, scientists have observed no such speeds.
I have a few doozies of a question. You do not have to answer them all at once because there are a lot!
Firstly: The ones most important to me:
(Note: These questions might seem to imply that I know a lot less about plasma (let alone what it is ) than I really do but I can understand most of what is on Wikipedia, most [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_%28physics%29)]. It is just that I cannot put all of the random tidbits I know into a cohesive picture so the gaps create questions will sound really weird) - One thing (after a thousand edits), do not be surprised if one of my questions was answered on the wiki page. I have a horrible habit of selectively missing random details, this made studying for any test hell!
The fourth state of matter and weapon applications:
Can plasma be composed wholly of negative or positive ions or is it always a combination of both?
Can a cloud of plasma exist at room temperature if kept in a vacuum?
How would it differ from superheated plasma?
Can plasma be maintained inside of an atmosphere if contained inside of an electromagnetic field? - How powerful would this field need to be, how much energy would be consumed maintaining it and how many watts of energy would be needed for a cubic meter of helium to be heated to a plasma state?
What does its charge need to be relative to the positive or negative charge of plasma?
The reasons I ask is because I envisioned a projectile based plasma weapon that fires a three layer slug (a 0.5KG magnetic plastic outer layer with two 1KG layers of metal). An Eletro-induction field is used to superheat the plastic outer layer into a cloud of plasma around 6000K while one or both of the two inner layers are made to spin/counter spin with each-other to produce an electromagnetic field to sustain the cloud of plasma around it. The slug does kinetic external/armour penetrating damage while the plasma does heat/electromagnetic internal damage like expanding in a crew cabin.
Now, what material would be best for the two metal layers of the slugs in order to produce an appreciable electromagnetic field?
Would both slugs need to spin and how fast, even if it was impossibly fast, in order to maintain a meter wide cloud of plasma while traveling at Mach 5 though the atmosphere at sea-level?
Would a Gauss cannon or Railgun be best as a firing mechanism or would would their electromagnetic fields be so similar as to negate any differences they have in disrupting the projectile?
Any other issues with this weapon you can see off the top of your head beside the incredible energy requirements and recoil?
Now these questions you can answer if you want but the previous ones are the ones I am most interested in.
The first one is kind of personal
I find asking many questions of educated people often result in snarky remarks or dubious counter-questions, mostly based upon relative observation. For example, asking about the unmovable object verses the unstoppable one often results in being asked about the unmovable object being relative to what (instead of the implausibility of the scenario itself) when most people I know would assume relative to you and the ground you are standing on. Or asking something about the fourth spacial dimensions and tesseracts I will always be stopped and told their are no numerically quantifiable spacial dimensions like 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Dimensions still exist but you simply cannot point at a direction and say it is THEE X dimension.
While reasonably statements and questions I feel that they are seldom answered in good faith and only serve to convolute and bog down the hypothetical questions and thus resulting in much more complex answers (do I really need to know all of the above to find out if a 2 dimensional person's hand could cut through me (being infinitely thin) and would it be even capable of interacting with my matter along its infinitely thin axis, would this scale up with me and a tesseract?). This became painfully obvious after watching minute physics after having already asked these question before minute physics was even a thing. Is this a common teaching tactic or examples reiterated in various textbooks, am I just running into people who like to show off how much more they understand the nuances of the topics at hand by being disingenuous, or do they know so much more about the topic at hand that the simplicity of the questions genuinely confuse them? What is your opinion?
The uncertainty principle states (paraphrasing here) that the closer you are to finding the exact location of a particle the more inaccurate the calculations. I initially believed that it was a similar scenario to trying to keep your cross-hairs on an erratically moving target while zooming in with a sniper rifle . The closer you zoom in the narrower your field of view and thus it would require only the slightest change in direction of your target before you lose them in your sights. Zooming back out your field of view increases and well as your margin of error. Furthermore you have enough space in your field of view to predict where the target moves to.
Researching the topic more, it seemed to be a case of the particle have no real definitive boundary or center. Essentially you could freeze the particle in space to the point where it was no longer moving (relative to you and your equipment), zoom in until it was the size of your computer monitor and still not be able to point at any spot of it and say definitively that that was where the particle was or where it began. The concept of having an exact location in space and time fundamentally and intrinsically did not and could exist for anything at those scales, even when stationary relative to you.
This confused the hell out of me before I found another explanation. Essentially you had to bother the system to get a measurement. Taking a tire pressure reading usually meant that you would have to let some air out when you checked with a pressure gauge so you had some uncertainty as to how much air was still left in there after measurements. Measuring the position of a particle usually meant we were observing something interacting with it (like electrons and em waves) and that creates the uncertainty of the particle's position.
How accurate is this explanation and do the previous two factor into it as well?
Even still, are these variables not quantifiable and thus predictable thus potentially negating the uncertainty principle through more powerful and accurate equipment? Does the movement of the particles that make up the equipment also influence this)
Is this the same reason that observing electrons in the double slit experiment change their behaviour when observed? Are there such thing as passive particle sensors and would their observations have the same effect of making the particle behave like matter instead of a wave or are there only active sensors and their emissions interact with the electron?
Traveling faster than the speed of light means that you are traveling faster than the fields that hold your particles together (big rip scenario) and you would disintegrate. Does this mean that materials become weaker the faster to the speed of light they get? Could radiation itself blow the craft to pieces because it is so delicate?
Wording this next question is hard-sauce!
Do the fields that bind the particles not also travel at a speed relative to the time frame of the craft and thus the potential of the particles moving faster than the field itself become negated as it is moving with the craft i.e. Do the particle binding fields not also move at the same speed relative to the craft and thus would traveling faster than the speed of light do nothing to affect them or does the universal constant still take over?
If you have two ships traveling more than half the speed of light and are moving away from each other the distance between them is growing faster than the speed of light. Any other areas or though experiments where similar things occur?
In the Battletech universe Battle Mechs are powered by fusion reactors that essentially create a small star of hydrogen that rotates at enormous speeds inside of the chambers essentially acting as a dynamo to generate tens of megawatts of power. How feasible is this, how efficient, and how well would it scale?
Are there any hypothetical theories for a device that could absorb energy directly from a nuclear reaction (a solar panel for nuclear reactions) thus bypassing the need for steam turbines?
Lastly I read a question someone had about manipulating the Higgs field in order to create inertial dampeners. The answer stated that doing so would have devastating consequences as the field also allowed other particles to interact with each other and/or bind. Is there a safe threshold where you could decrease the force of the Higgs field without affecting atomic stability i.e. Decrease the force of a bullet's recoil by 50% before the Higgs field becomes so weak that the bullet disintegrates? Also, would said disintegration be a blast of radiation, matter, or a combination of both, and would it happen explosively? Would it be uniform relative to the surface normals or random given the uneven dispersion of elements and density in the alloy/element?
Wooo!!! That is a lot of questions, I hope I do not scare you away! ^^
The sun is a plasma, but it also should be electrically neutral. It just means that electric charge inside the sun is acting more as a fluid. Conversely you can have a cloud of ions that are the same charge, like in a lightning bolt.
Can a cloud of plasma exist at room temperature if kept in a vacuum?
Sure thing. Electron beams in CRTs are the same way. But it has to be contained with a magnetic field otherwise the charges will repel each other away.
I wouldn't expect it to differ all too much. I would expect it to be a little more volatile than its cooler counterpart.
Can plasma be maintained inside of an atmosphere if contained inside of an electromagnetic field? - How powerful would this field need to be, how much energy would be consumed maintaining it and how many watts of energy would be needed for a cubic meter of helium to be heated to a plasma state?
I cannot give exact figures at this moment. It's because the math involved is complex enough. I'll answer some simple calculations, but plasma is in a league of its own in electromagnetism. But from studying statistical mechanics I can tell you that the plasma would dissipate fast inside our own atmosphere. Much in the same way blue food coloring would dissipate fast if you dropped it in water; the electrons on negative ions would move outwards. And the vacancies from positive ions would attract electrons from elsewhere. There's a reason why our CRT monitors are kept in a vacuum.
What does its charge need to be relative to the positive or negative charge of plasma?
One question I've always wondered about, and never had a particularly satisfactory answer on, is how reliant are the scientific consensus on dark energy/dark matter (and other big weighty topics) on relatively old pieces of unchallenged wisdom? e.g: Standard candles, Hubble's constant, the main sequence of stars. If we turn out to actually be mistaken in some major way for one of those things, how much impact could it have?
The reason I ask this comes from me originally receiving a bad explanation of the doppler red-shift as "The further away it is the faster it's moving away" which sounded too trite to me for explaining the reality of a chaotic universe! And then I read that many of our distance calculations are based on the red-shift, and our views of how much matter there is depend on the distances involved which depends on the previous answer, and so on and so forth! I've since had much better explanations of how distance is calculated, but the nagging doubt has remained - what if we're wrong about the basic stuff that form the assumptions that everything else is built on? p
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