Just how big do you think?

[LONDONER]

Do you think as big as this?

http://www.youtube.com/embed/XE0aAZE0kp4...r_embedded

[sillyboy86]

Or my mom. LOL actually she's not fat but I love compare her to whales (and Wales LOL)

[MisterTinkles]

I love this kind of stuff.

It just amazes me how these "scientists" think they can measure something billions, if not trillions of miles away!!!

Thats like me trying to measure a human cell with a stick ruler (with me in Texas) on a glass slide in London.

[Chase]

I love this kind of stuff.

It just amazes me how these "scientists" think they can measure something billions, if not trillions of miles away!!!

Thats like me trying to measure a human cell with a stick ruler (with me in Texas) on a glass slide in London.

Those same scientists just happened to send a probe BILLIONS of miles away.
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

I am going to assume you trust microscopes (more like hope you do) and just be astounded that you would trust them and not telescopes. If scientists couldn't work with millions and billions, the calculations the scientists and engineers make for the Martian rovers and Voyager probes would not work. The fact that it takes a while for Voyagers radio signals to reach us is evidence enough scientists had apparently knew what they were talking about when they calculated the vast distance of the solar system.

[MisterTinkles]

Those same scientists just happened to send a probe BILLIONS of miles away.
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

I am going to assume you trust microscopes (more like hope you do) and just be astounded that you would trust them and not telescopes. If scientists couldn't work with millions and billions, the calculations the scientists and engineers make for the Martian rovers and Voyager probes would not work. The fact that it takes a while for Voyagers radio signals to reach us is evidence enough scientists had apparently knew what they were talking about when they calculated the vast distance of the solar system.

They can calculate whats in our solar system, because of the space probes that have been sent out. But they cannot use whats in this solar system to measure whats in other systems, simply because they have no other information to substantiate it with.

Thats like me saying, "Ok, Im 6 feet tall, so all those other people 50 yards away are all 6 feet tall". These scientists cannot judge what is what out there just by using what TINY, INFINITESIMAL, pretty much negligible information they have.

These people are preaching this incorrect information as FACT, when it is at best, nothing more than a guess.

And if the power cells of ANY of these probes last long enough to reach another solar system, and it is able to send back that information, it wont get back here until about the year 2500 - 3000 at the earliest.

Any scientist of any honest caliber knows you CANNOT measure something unknown without many different/opposing pieces of fact. These "scientists" do NOT have any facts, because NONE of them have been to other solar systems, stars, or gas clouds to measure them.

"One size does not fit all"!!!!

[Chase]

... Thats like me saying, "Ok, Im 6 feet tall, so all those other people 50 yards away are all 6 feet tall". These scientists cannot judge what is what out there just by using what TINY, INFINITESIMAL, pretty much negligible information they have. ... "One size does not fit all"!!!!

Really? Because guess what, if I was 50 yards away from someone I could estimate their height to a close proximity using trigonometry. Knowing they are 50 yards away from me, without having to get right in their face and measure them from head to toe, I could use a protractor to measure the angle of elevation and angle of depression and then use the given trig ratios to calculate their height.
You fail again, MisterTinkles.

Scientists use multiple methods to find measurements, and come up with the same results.
You, MisterTinkles, correctly assume the Laws of the Universe remain true when you fly in an airplane or fill your car up with gas yet incorrectly assume the Laws may or may not be true millions of miles away from you.
All one needs to know is that massive stars will burn brighter, thus we can understand stellar sizes through plotting their luminosity.* We can also know that as a star in a binary system moves away from us, its spectrum is shifted towards red wavelengths. As it
moves toward us again, the spectrum is shifted toward the blue wavelengths, because of the Doppler Effect.* Then use calculations based on the brightness and dimness of the binary star system during the two stars eclipse (known from the Doppler Effect) two measure stellar diameters.*
http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~sheinis/ast10...12.ppt.pdf

Maybe you should go back to college to become mathematically and scientifically literate, taking classes in the physical sciences. Then, maybe what your opinion on astronomy is will have merit.

[MisterTinkles]

Really? Because guess what, if I was 50 yards away from someone I could estimate their height to a close proximity using trigonometry. Knowing they are 50 yards away from me, without having to get right in their face and measure them from head to toe, I could use a protractor to measure the angle of elevation and angle of depression and then use the given trig ratios to calculate their height.
You fail again, MisterTinkles.

Scientists use multiple methods to find measurements, and come up with the same results.
You, MisterTinkles, correctly assume the Laws of the Universe remain true when you fly in an airplane or fill your car up with gas yet incorrectly assume the Laws may or may not be true millions of miles away from you.
All one needs to know is that massive stars will burn brighter, thus we can understand stellar sizes through plotting their luminosity.* We can also know that as a star in a binary system moves away from us, its spectrum is shifted towards red wavelengths. As it
moves toward us again, the spectrum is shifted toward the blue wavelengths, because of the Doppler Effect.* Then use calculations based on the brightness and dimness of the binary star system during the two stars eclipse (known from the Doppler Effect) two measure stellar diameters.*
http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~sheinis/ast10...12.ppt.pdf

Maybe you should go back to college to become mathematically and scientifically literate, taking classes in the physical sciences. Then, maybe what your opinion on astronomy is will have merit.

Use all the big words you want. Quote all the quacks you want. Reiterate the lies you have been told.

Just because its in a book doesnt make it true. Just because its in print doesnt make it true. Just because someone has a title before their name, doesnt make them a foundation of wisdom and correctness.

If I am to believe all this stuff, then I would also have to still believe that the Earth is the center of the universe, and everything revolves around it. Because with the "science" you say you know.....that is what the basis is.

What works here doesnt necessarily work on the other side of the universe. And NOBODY on this planet has any proof otherwise (either way). You can use all the math on this planet, but its all theory, there is no proof. And that is what real science is all about. Proof.

Just because 10 "scientists" say the color red is blue.....you are going to believe them?

[ceez]

Can't wait untill we can travel to these planets.

[Sylph]

Personally, I find intelligence to be an interesting thing and quite the conundrum, However, heres this;

With intelligence comes innate human flaws and imperfections, all things measured Chase will without a doubt have some sort of flaw or error, as nothing we can do is perfect or accurate to the tenth degree as we believe them to be or that we're capable of, this is just what it is and no I am not taking a side in this, but really, how can you tell someone's exact or near exact proponents in height and what ever else from even 20 feet away?

I am no math wiz, Philosophy, History, Music, Spirituality, sure but hell if I even a lick of math in my bones, however, within any and all structures, variables can change and are not always as they appear, hence they being named Variables.

You may do all that measuring and calculating and flipping and twirling and the macarana and sun dances, but at the end of it all, how can you be accurate or near so that a person is exactly 6 foot tall, without taking into consideration factors such as slouching, arched backs, curved spines, one leg being slightly longer/shorter or even the person leaning slightly on a preferred leg, with these things changing a persons true height and sometimes from one moment to the next, as they can "straighten up" or slouch. This would be difficult to affirm from close proximity, let alone 50yards away.

Perhaps you can, I really can't give a mind to it, but I just find that to all is not as what they seem, so for presumptions and calculations to go hand in hand will inevitably result in and inaccurate result, which can then result in the Divine Tree only knows what.

Something similar to the Butterfly effect, who knows, such things are merely wishful thinking by those who wish to wield knowledge they are not yet adept at wielding... I don't think anyone is quite that ready or near....

It just ain't in de caads my pretty

Also every opinion has merit, every opinion has value, there is no right or wrong, merely agreement or disagreement.

You're both entitled to both of your opinions, just as I am now.

now calm both your pretty pussies and crawl into my Queen Puss to receive every blessed inch of your gay ass lives ^.^

[Nightcrawler]

Use all the big words you want. Quote all the quacks you want. Reiterate the lies you have been told.

Just because its in a book doesnt make it true. Just because its in print doesnt make it true. Just because someone has a title before their name, doesnt make them a foundation of wisdom and correctness.

If I am to believe all this stuff, then I would also have to still believe that the Earth is the center of the universe, and everything revolves around it. Because with the "science" you say you know.....that is what the basis is.

What works here doesnt necessarily work on the other side of the universe. And NOBODY on this planet has any proof otherwise (either way). You can use all the math on this planet, but its all theory, there is no proof. And that is what real science is all about. Proof.

Just because 10 "scientists" say the color red is blue.....you are going to believe them?

Hey I would like to contribute to the discussion, as a "kind of" a physicist :

First, it is a fact that science that allows us to do everything we do in the modern world
Of course no one ask you to blindly listen to people, but usually real scientists (not the kind that look at the stars and tell you that tomorrow will be a great day because Saturn is aligned with Venus) use the scientific method to give us more knowledge about the world, thats not only using the theory, but also making experiments again and again to verify the theory.

A nice example is in the Large Hadron Collider, they recently discovered "something that resembles the Higgs boson", they use those words to indicate that its not 100% the Higgs boson, but 99.999995%.
Scientists should be careful before they say anything, like if you remember someone said they broke the speed of light, but it was a measurement error, and the one that was responsible was fired !

This is just to give scientists some credit because they do hard work, they don't just crunch the numbers and give use results ^_^

That being in mind, I would like to point out what we know about space itself and the stars - astronomy !
Many effort have been made to discover what happens around our little planet, some people paid dearly for it in previous centuries, but all of the knowledge we have allows us to know so much about planets even far away from us.
I do not know all the methods, but some of them (you can google them or ask me if you really interested talking about it ! ^_^) :
- Doppler effect, allows you to measure the speed of objects moving away from you
- allows us to measure the heat coming from an object, this is by the way also related to night vision
- Einstein theory of relativity, allowed us to predict the motions of the stars themselves This was actually one of the things that made people start believing it because its very mind breaking by itself !

A side note about Einstein relativity - you can get the equations E=mc^2 just with two assumptions :
1) speed of light is constant in vacuum
2) Laws of physics are same everywhere
So, yes, you right by saying we need to assume laws of physics are also the same at the place we measure at, but why shouldn't we ?
Is on another planet, gravity shove us away instead of pulling us ?
Why would that happen ?
You can assume such a thing, and bring with it a theory, but right now the assumption that the laws of physics are same everywhere given us results which are true, so we have no reason to think otherwise
After all, we can put shuttles in space, build chips so small they can fit into a watch, and communicate using electromagnetic waves traveling in space



P.S.
I cant post links, but those things can be googled