Recent content by sWozzAres

Since measuring the mass of the universe is 'frightfully difficult', is it possible that with more accurate techniques, we might discover that the observable universe is contained within it's Schwarzschild radius?

it should be obvious from context that I mean observable universe! :) "Both popular and professional research articles in cosmology often use the term "universe" to mean "observable universe". This can be justified on the grounds that we can never know anything by direct experimentation about...

I have heard various figures, but what is the mass of the universe and what is the margin of error? Also, since dark matter and dark energy seem hypothetical, shouldn't this be included as part of the margin of error?

Is it the case that when a photon "travels" from point A to point B, then due to length contraction, the distance from A to B effectively shrinks to zero. The photon then has no distance to travel, therefore it takes no time to get there. Also, since a photon gets absorbed by an electron and...

But is violation of conservation laws one of them? ok then let me try again! CTC's work for individual particles but if an entire body could somehow traverse a CTC back in time a million years then that body would simply be scattered across space as individual particles, therefore a CTC...

Not sure superposition qualifies since we are really talking about stuff that has been measured, but virtual particles might be classed as stuff from nowhere, even if they are short lived.

Are you saying that if CTC's exist then the conservation laws hold across space-time but don't neccessarily hold at any particular instant, allowing the universe to appear as if it has gained energy from nowhere (since it's actually gained/lost it from another time).

Doesn't traditional time travel violate conservation laws? If I could in effect materialize in the past, then the universe, being an isolated system would have suddenly gained matter/energy out of nowhere! Also, the atoms that make up my body would then be in two places at once since they...

Does mainstream thinking, following the crowd as it were, produce breakthroughs in science, or is it "out of the box" thinking that gives impetus to progress?

As I understand it, blackness is not due to the absense of light - rather it more like a background signal that your retina sends to the brain to signify that there is nothing there. Without it you could see hallucinations, or think you were dreaming, you would be very confused so this...

Colours (qualia) exist in the mind. You can say light at 700nm causes you to experience the colour red but colour is more than that. If I shine red and green light at you, you don't perceive red and green, instead you perceive yellow, even though there is no yellow light out there! We seem to be...

yeah I was just trying to demonstrate "out of the box thinking" if you define cutting as restraining you to a box then trimming frees you to be more creative. In the same way can think about attacking roots and not just the blades, assuming there is a correlation between root depth and blade...

Interesting since that fits in with evolution of colour vision where the mammals that ran about during the age of dinosaurs, lost colour vision due to being noctural. They then regained colour vision as dichromats. Most mammals are still dichromats but catarrhine apes and Old World monkeys are...

You don't need to cut grass to trim it! For instance, a "thin hot wire" fixed across the width of the machine might trim grass. It might also burn the grass which might not be so good for it but in my experience a lawnmower doesn't produce a clean cut anyway and the ends of the grass leaf still...