Recent content by nearc

i am far from an expert in Special and General Relativity, however, my attempts to learn from this forum are hampered by the large volume of posts involving common misconceptions and lack of understanding of the material. while the members of the forums patiently [usually] help our novice and...

i assume there are already several basic relativity models, at least one for mercury? i would prefer an N-body model one that would allow me to add an additional uniform velocity in one direction, but any model would be a starting point.

Looking for existing examples of or guidance on building computer simulations of simple N-bodies in relativist situations. Of particular interest is the simulation of a planet orbiting a star whilst that trivial solar system is caught in a dark flow of relativist velocity; maybe .8 or .9 C. Not...

obviously i cannot speak for mr smith, however, i like the use of his phrase "too convenient" as it gets the point across without being as blunt as i would have been, moreover, the phrase is accomplishing its goal by keeping people questioning the validity of using inflation

that's what i thought thanks for the clarification. i was tempted to use the analogy about how babies are produced during sex but babies can also be produced without sex, however, in that analogy inflation would be intercourse so there are some obvious crass images plus the very short duration...

unless I'm very confused [which is often] i thought matter forms when the temperature drops. there might also be some need for expansion or even complicated cooling/heating but ultimately once things are cool enough and there is enough room matter can form? we tie matter formation into...

for my own clarity, are you saying inflation is required to produce matter or inflation affects the production of matter?

since we are using "flatland" as the reference point you might want to explicitly restrict interactions to only the 2D. since in the book a 3D object was allowed to interact. if that is possible then the gravity of an object outside the the 2D land could change the physics of the world

not sure quite what you are looking for but i recently used this site to help me convert from silly celestial to galactic coordinates, however, points far above or below the galactic plane does not yield the correct longitude. http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/Tobias.Westmeier/tools_coords.php

i failed to find the history of RA [right ascension] and why the vernal equinox was picked as the starting point on the web or in the forums here. does anyone know the origins of RA? picking a solstice or equinox is obvious but why the vernal? maybe because spring in the northern hemisphere...

there needs to be a "i wish i was still in school" option

wow, I'm not paying attention, thanks again

i'm using http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/ui/?q=byparams to extract redshift data. while I'm very happy there is now lots of data available, data requests need to be limited in size or you get an error. i would like to examine the patterns of redshift vs longitude, but that is too much data, i...

thanks a bunch, that makes sense, however, the following figure suggests its center is around 37 DEC is that correct? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_( spacecraft )#/media/File:Kepler_FOV_hiRes.jpg

thanks for pointing out the typo, meant to say 295RA, fixed my replies but can not change original title [edit: yes, fixed original OP title] should we close this and reopen a new thread? also the link defaults to something other than i copied, but that is just one external link an only needed...