Here's something I find so funny, I think we might have gone over this once, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract
Ok how exactly do we know about all these things without physical experience of being there done that? Hell I can make up my own math and my own language if I wanted, blackholes they said "they've found" Prove it to me. what I'm getting at is "art itself" what one considers their own art, is their vision, am I correct? I just make my own stuff and move on to the next thing that pops in my head, good thing I have tools to portray what I see inside my brain.

It's called mathematics I believe.

Righto, but like I said maybe I'll make my own math LOL!! The probes etc don't have any real info still, some picts, but the space programs all over the world just kinda "guess" according to their math, its a gas planet its an ice moon, the only thing we've hit was a comet the moon and mars, just kinda funny to me.

Just after thoughts, got yall's creative senses going again didn't I ? BTW I like to mess with people from time to time:-P

My brain just crashed.....................................

Clay's Theorum:

All theoretical mathematics is arbitrary, in the same way that theoretical physics is arbitrary.

Nothing wrong with that.

BTW, anyone else enjoy television's "The Big Bang Theory"?

-John

that show is the bomb!!!!!! tj

"Confusius" says:  1 + 1 = 3 for large values of 1

"confusius" also says: "man who fart in church sets in own pew" LOL!

If Stephen Hawking says there are black holes, I'm sure not going to argue. I'm just glad they've moved away from the diabolical string theory, and back to M Theory.

If a tesseract is 4-dimensional, and the 4th dimension is time, and you made a desk toy tesseract, would that involve time distortion?

Can your resonse be answerd in an algorythm or equation? LOL stephen, gotta love the Hawk, but he's so dillisional on drugs by now its not worth paying attention to, he tried to come up with the answer for everyting? seriously? string theory and worm holes and such are al theories, and their math is too.

Heresy! To the rack with you! Hawking is still the best hope for a timely untangling of quantum gravity. It makes me nervous, knowing he probably doesn't have a lot of time left for this. I'd like to see some theoretical resolution (or at least direction) before I croak. 

again "theroy"

"...he tried to come up with the answer for everyting..."

The answer to everything is of course, "42". I thought everyone knew that.

Also:

"If Stephen Hawking says there are black holes, I'm sure not going to argue."

Am I wrong to be amused by imagining what an argument with Stephen Hawking would sound like? If so, my apologies.

And why do I find the most pointless O.T. threads to be the most fun?

The Theory of Everything actually means getting physics and quantum physics to work with the same rules. And that, of course, does encompass everything.

Whatever an argument with Hawking would sound like, it would be very interesting.

Pointless? Pointless? gasp! We only have about 5 billion years to figure out how to get off this rock before our star goes red giant and swallows us! And we have to avoid going the way of the dinosaurs, dodging meteors, pulsar blasts, and niggling geological hiccoughs in the meantime.

To the stars, and beyond!

Black holes may not have been sighted, but the conditions are not totally non-existent in the universe. You theory may be crazy, but is it crazy enough to be true?...;)

Not sure if we're even to the point of knowing what we don't know yet...;)

When somebody gets around to sorting out the unification theory would you let me know please?

As for Hawking, I read Brief History of Time and then chucked it in the bin. Hawking refuses to acknowledge the existance of anything prior to the Big Bang. But the real question should be, where did the matter that existed to make the Big Bang possible come from?

Random fluctuations in the quantum..... probably.

The theory of everything, got it figured out! Who cares? just live and forgeeeet about it is basically all one can do. Do right in life and be and do the best ya can. give a hug now and again, maybe a smootch, the pets some scritches on their bellies, but just follow your creative heart.

A Brief History of Time is quite old. Hawking, among others, finds it difficult to express esoteric theory in terms everyone gets on the first read-through. Saying that the Big Bang was the beginning of time, means time as we measure it. For us, this universe, this reality, this time-line, there was nothing before it began. (Not that I comprehend any of it.)

There is not, as yet, a workable unified theory. That's why the current study of quantum gravity is so important. If we can understand how gravity functions on the very large and the very small scale, we're one step closer to seeing what's really around us.

If black holes don't exist, what's that big dark thing sucking up stars at the center of our galaxy?

I find it funny that mankind tries to explain the unexplainable and unconfirmable. Is space expanding? Is a black hole swallowing up our galaxy? With several billion years before any practical answer can affect us we will probably be extinct as a species before that happens.

I like the John theory of the Universe. The universe is a truely colossal card trick played with just one card and a super fast shuffle. The card is the God particle. Taken at rest it has just one dimension. Heck, taken at rest there are no dimensions because the particle is in it's own frame of reference. Try looking at the back of your own head and you'll understand. You just aren't fast enough, but for the god particle time doesn't exist yet, or space. In that Ohm moment, not even potential is defined yet. Its not that things are possible or impossible. There are no things, just the breath before the word is spoken.

So the god particle looks at the back of it's own head and sees itself moving to look at itself, so it looks at this new phenominum and suddenly there are thousands, millions, billions of perspectives. Like the fast fan or shuffle it looks like structure. move a point between two points you get a line. Move a point between three you get a plane, four you get volume. It looks like structure only because the one perspective is quickly infinite.

Ah! but if I stick my finger between the cards the trick stops. How are you going to do that? You are part of the shuffle. Revert back to the single particle and all the different vibrations that make you distinctly you are cancled out. Solve the riddle and cease to exist. Maybe its happened and the shuffle just started up again. Maybe it's impossible because quantum entanglement and inertia prevent it.

Can you perceive that which is neither someting nor nothing? What color is nothing? Not black. that's something. Clear then. That's something as well. Look up at the sky you see the blue beyond. Look into the water, see the fish and the riverbed. You always see through clear to something beyond, never the clear itself.

You will never have the answer to the universe because answers are a construct of the universe. You can discern the structure and the motions that the answer leaves behind. To have the whole answer you would have to be the whole universe. You are a human, play your part and look at the back of your neighbor's head. The answer will reveal itself in time.

Well, life in 10th century Europe was, indeed, less stressful between plagues and marauders, I guess. I prefer the inquisitive nature of the ancient Greeks and Sumerians. There is some sort of order directing all this apparant chaos, and it is possible to figure it out.

Whether or not the black holes at the center of galaxies eventually consume said galaxy, or why it doesn't fly apart,  is part of the gravity conundrum, and lead to the theories of dark matter and dark energy. Spiral galaxies, anyway.

Black holes cause distortion in space, observable by the light from the stars behind them. Just like the refraction of water tells you it's there. Things you can't see can affect you. Things like gamma rays.

It comes down to "you'll never expand knowlege, if you don't ask questions". People are curious. That's how we got this far. This is an exciting time in physics, and it leaves me scratching my head why Snookie makes headlines, but results from the Large Hadron Colliider don't.

Physicists believe there are 11 dimensions. If a woman puts a dress on will it make her butt look big in all of them, or is it possible to lie and say no relative to the characteristics of one of those dimensions?

11 Dimensions? I thought there were 5.

1st Dimension = the LINE. It contains an infinite number of points.

2nd Dimension =  the PLANE, such as a square. It contains an infinite number of straight lines.

3rd Dimension = the SOLID, such as a cube. It contains an infinite number of planes or squares.

4th Dimension = space-time continuum, is reality. In the fourth dimension the infinite number of solids in the Universe are in relationship with each other through time and energy.

5th Dimension = an American popular music vocal group, whose repertoire also includes pop, R&B, soul, and jazz. The 5th Dimension were best-known during the late 1960s and early 1970s for popularizing the hits "Up, Up and Away" and "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In".

-John

In 11 dimensions, you can have different answers. One aspect of M Theory is that there are different timelines, and different decisions can be made in each one. Comforting, really, because there's a good chance I didn't hose my life in at least one of them. ;) 

I think there are an infinate number of dimensions and that we regularly slip from one to another without realising it.

How many times have you been say driving along the road and notice a house or a tree that you could swear was never there on previous journeys? Or perhaps you wake up in the morning and things just don't feel right. Perhaps you can't ever remember the Moon looking quite like that before...............

umm.... Bryster... you feelin' ok? Not that I'm the most observant person, but, nope, things pretty much look the same every day. Maybe it's a Mars thing?

Anybody understand the Higgs thingie? Every explanation I've heard is, like, well, it's sort of like, but not really, hmmm... no, that's not it...

Scanmead, you just made my point.

'....things pretty much look the same every day.'

But they don't look EXACTLY the same.

I have to go with Chris on this one. Everybody knows Bob Dylan died four times. He toured through Nashville Oct 19th of last year. I can think of several people like Robert Preston, Ernest Borgnine, Henry Kissinger, who I heard Obits twice years apart or once but are still living.

How many times has something been renamed? Not the school you went to every day but the places you have never been, only heard in passing.

How many times have you argued family facts? We went to the lake and these two people where there. No it was these three and it rained. No he wasn't there and we left before dark. I bet you let it go even though you could see everything clearly.

Ever has a book or your glasses disappear? Set something down and come back It was in a different place? Are the lights on or off in a room you left hours ago but no one else is home? Did you see someone walk behind you in the bathroom mirror when you are alone and turn around to find nothing? Ever seen five people going down the street, turn away, look back and see three or see six?

I've seen lots of times where the universe slipped a little. I always used to shrug it off because I know the world is a certain way. Hundreds of years ago everyone thought the world was flat and the sun went around it.

Well, maybe that's why lawyers don't like to depend on eyewitness accounts? They're seeing things through different dimension slippages? Or it could be the human brain interprets things from its own unique bent. If there really were slippages, wouldn't two or more cameras record different versions?

Why, yes I do mislay things on occasion. Fewer now that I'm currently without a dog. (They do move things around.) We're straying into Ghost Hunter territory here.. and who's to say all those wandering spirits aren't shadows of people who died in this time line, but are alive and well in others?

It would be exciting to think some of these things could be happening around us. It would be something different. Unfortunately, being a pessimist, it's just the same old thing day after day. I was even hoping that Y2K stuff would happen. Now it's the 2012 thing that may provide some relief.

And, honest to god, if I saw a shadow pass behind me in a mirror... the house would be up for sale the next day. Quantum strangeness is cool. Paranormal strangeness is not.

Wow! You guy's make my head hurt. tjohn is right: The answer is 42, period.

It's not the answers that are important - it's the questions................

And thank you guys soooo much! I'm now questioning everything I pick up. Did I leave it there? Is this where it's supposed to be? Did I really miss the table with the glass, or did the table move? Is that the wind at the door, or did the Matrix just hiccup?

A nice, cold glass of Kahlua should fix this, right? ;)

Just a few different threads and we all could be watching Ronald Regan in Casablanca. The Universe was a botch job you see, they only had seven days to put it together. I just got this horrible picture of Steven Hawking having phone sex. I can just hear that robot voicebox saying, "Ohh ba ba ee Ya es ga ive it tu mee" Somewhere it's happening. in the myriad paths of probability. There are some things that mankind was not meant to know.

ewwww.....