Recent content by Rodney182

And yet chocolate and such is very bad for them. Fascinating.

Oh, right. In the sense that I can't see (very well) without my glasses. Thank you! Now I understand the formula you posted before. I was just missing the context :smile: Ah yes, like mold. I do still wonder - how come the ability to resolve bigger or smaller things depends on the size of...

This is a little advanced for me. Would you mind breaking it down? Let me know if you need to know where you lost me. Never seen bacteria in a petri dish... would be so fascinated by it, I'm sure. I'd probably also stop drinking water after I see living things in it. That's true! But the...

Apologies if this is too basic of a question, but it's something I've wondered. We can potentially turn this thread into a discussion as to why or what theories there are, if any. I understand that we have 'reactions' to bacteria (in the sense of when things are dirty, we want to stay away; I'm...

Reverse the polarity! My gripe is basically when the thing is a technobabble answer that just means ''okay try something else now that we just made up'' with zero pre-explanation or logic behind it. EDIT: Oh! Oh! And cables. In extremely futuristic settings. At that point we should've invented...

I'm having fun with the author. Some of my interest in physics comes a lot from wanting to see if things I see in sci-fi movies and books could actually be realized. I know it's not supposed to be used for study, and that Douglas Adam's isn't a mathematician or real physicist. Same with Red...

You're absolutely right. I checked this later with another friend of mine who has great mathematical reasoning. Thank you for the patient explanations on the thread so far.

Basically what you said - Adam's statement is based on the assumption that if you take a set of an infinite set of numbers, you end up with a finite set. Which is false - because the set of natural numbers are infinite. So the whole thing doesn't follow. Hm, but you also said: How could you...

Doesn't that go for even numbers as well? Or any number?

I heard he did read some physics to prepare for the writing, then basically threw the concepts together in a way that doesn't make any sense. But it's an absurdist type of media. I think that's rather the point and that's why I enjoy it so far haha. Oh, I see. Yep this is where you lost me. I...

Oh, I see. That's actually fascinating. But I'm failing to understand how that connects to this:

I was going over this a few times as well. If the amount of worlds is infinite, but not every one of them is inhabited, then the number of inhabited worlds is finite - my guess would be because it falls 'below' infinity. But then again what does that even mean? I can't tell you.

I'm not. I just enjoy trying to answer questions from a science-fiction book, that's all. That's a good point. That would be the lore of the book, I suppose. The worlds are inhabited because that's what they are in the lore and the author of the Hitchhiker's Guide presumably knows this. Could...

Can't believe that didn't occur to me. Thanks!

Beginner math person here. I was reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when I ran into this: ''It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be...