Things you want science to know

[H3LL]

Identify and correct or disable defective genes.

Find out why we can grow back our finger-tips and make it so for any body part.

Find the gene that causes death/degeneration then see above.

.

 

[Dragonrock]

Repair severed nerves.

 

[Ketyk]

I'd like to know where I stand in the universe.

Part 1: Am I in the middle, with the limits at equal distance to me? Are you, too?

Part 2: How big am I? With the universe being, I guess, the biggest thing around, and (maybe) strings being the smallest, where do I fit in? Or do things get infinitely smaller and smaller, and bigger and bigger, and again I am "Stuck in the middle with you."

 

[gnome]

I'd like to know where I stand in the universe.

Part 1: Am I in the middle, with the limits at equal distance to me? Are you, too?

Yes. Consult Stephen Hawking, as science has already answered this nicely

Part 2: How big am I? With the universe being, I guess, the biggest thing around, and (maybe) strings being the smallest, where do I fit in? Or do things get infinitely smaller and smaller, and bigger and bigger, and again I am "Stuck in the middle with you."

For an absolute answer, a ruler will suffice. For the relative philosophical question, it sounds like you've already figured it out. Lots of stuff bigger, lots of stuff smaller.

 

[Ceritus]

Yes. Travelling faster than light has the same effects as travelling back in time, i.e., you break causality. If you could travel at a sufficiently fast speed, you could go back in time and prevent Lincoln's assassination, for example.

This has to do with the fact that simultaneity is relative. Imagine two events:

A: John Wilkes Booth arrives at the theater.
B: A spaceship is travelling through a distant galaxy.

The time in our reference frame is 1865 for A and 2006 for B. But for the spaceship those two events may very well be simultaneous. Then, all the spaceship has to do is cover the distance in less time than it will take Booth to kill the president.

If you were looking through a telescope in this spaceship though and could see Booth and you were able to keep it focused while traveling back to earth faster than light wouldn't it just appear to fast forward because the data is hitting your eyes faster?

 

[Ceritus]

I'd like to know where I stand in the universe.

Part 1: Am I in the middle, with the limits at equal distance to me? Are you, too?

Part 2: How big am I? With the universe being, I guess, the biggest thing around, and (maybe) strings being the smallest, where do I fit in? Or do things get infinitely smaller and smaller, and bigger and bigger, and again I am "Stuck in the middle with you."

If it went bigger infinitely and smaller infinitely there would be no middle.

Perhaps the stars, planets and all the space in between them make up different objects at an even grander scale? Like some ultra-mega-huge kid set off the equivalent to a firecracker in a closed tin can and we formed from the interactions the explosions inside it created while it takes place all in an instant to the mega kid but feels like billions of years to us. While the mega kid exists because of a super-duper-ultra-mega-huge dog took a huge dump in a super-duper-ultra-mega-huge pond.

Would a day to the a mayfly feel like 70 years to us if the mayfly had the same intellectual capabilities and learned 25550 times quicker than us?

 

[Yllanes]

If you were looking through a telescope in this spaceship though and could see Booth and you were able to keep it focused while traveling back to earth faster than light wouldn't it just appear to fast forward because the data is hitting your eyes faster?

We have moved this discussion to another thread, to avoid killing the original motive behind this one.

 

[Walter Wayne]

Ehm, gravity moves at exactly the speed of light.

Umm, yeah, that is what the current model states. And I think it is very likely correct. But I want science to discover something much different than the current model, that's the point of my post.

Walt