"Isn't this subject a little intimate?"
Posted on 09/11/2010 5:00:25 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Q-balls zoom through the Universe, according to CERN physicist Brian Cox, vaporizing stars and flouting the laws of physics. Each one is like a new universe in a nutshell. Inside a Q-ball, the familiar forces that hold our world together don't exist, which means that a single Q-ball can eat the heart out of a super-dense star,causing it to self-destruct in an almighty cosmic explosion.
This was the scientific premise of the scifi thriller, Sunshine, directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, The Beach). That's the fiction.
The fact is that a Q-ball would travel through a light star like the sun like a bullet through vapor. If a Q-ball drifts into the heart of a super-dense object such as a neutron star, however, it could begin to eat away at it's core like a cancer, until the star is no longer massive enough to maintain itself and explodes in a violent explosion. Such explosions, known as gamma ray bursts, are seen in the Universe, although their cause is as yet unknown.
No one has ever seen one of these oddballs coined some 20 years ago by Sidney Coleman, a physicist at Harvard University. But a leading theory of particle physics predicts that they were created in the heat of the newborn Universe-and that they may still be common today. Finding Q-ball footprints would resolve a host of cosmic mysteries, including the nature of much of the dark matter that astronomers are convinced pervades the Universe, and perhaps the origin of the brilliant but unpredictable gamma-ray bursts.
If heavy Q-balls did form in the early Universe, they would still be around today. In that case, they could make up at least some of the unidentified dark matter that loiters around galaxies all over the Universe. We know this dark matter is there because its gravity distorts the paths of visible stars and galaxies.
The moment of truth may not be far away. The most powerful accelerator ever, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), may provide the answer. If there are sightings of supersymmetry mirror particles in the debris of collisions, the case for Q-balls-ancient or still living-will be much more compelling. And the nutshell universes in which nature's laws break down will be science fact, rather than science fiction. In short, don't throw away your sunscreen.
I found a neat video a couple weeks ago that illustrates this. Do you know how many nuclear and thermonuclear bombs have been detonated since 1945?
Check out this video which shows all the blasts between 1945 and 1998. The three flags across the bottom, from left to right, are Pakistan, India and China.
The summary at the end is the shocker. In terms of being blasted by nukes, what part of the world has been pounded the hardest by nuclear bombs? (The western United States)
“Some of what we see, seems to defy the laws of physics. And, since we refuse to contemplate anything above the physical world, we will now postulate a Q-ball which, by definition, is in the physical world but which does not adhere to the laws of the physical world. This is science. It’s not at all like that flimsy, unprovable “supernatural” stuff which Christians use to explain the universe.” [/s]
"Isn't this subject a little intimate?"
OK, speedy gonzalez, you win.
Things must be tough in the physics world. Imamobamanomics is making it tough all over, I guess.
I guess they’ve got to come up with SOMETHING to get funding...
Well put.
PING
Postulation of God as the explanation for physical phenomena is an untestable postulate that allows for no measurement or prediction, and as such is not a useful model in science.
The Bohr model of the atom may be real and it may not be. But it IS useful and predictive and allows for testing and measurement.
Most scientists in the USA are people of faith in God.
Thanks for that video. Worth a thread on its own. I usually don’t like modern art but that was way cool and very intelligent.
Some people can control cue balls.
Scientists have many areas which really cross the boundaries that they have set up for themselves:
What came before the Big Bang?
As some folks say: In the beginning, there was nothing -- and then it exploded.
Time and Space are the same thing, and if temperatures get too hot, then Time does not exist. Well, what is outside of Time and outside of Space?
Where did Life come from? Some scientists say it came from some other planet. (IOW: "It's turtles all the way down.")
String Theory, Quantum Mechanics, Q-Balls, these are areas where there seem to be no rules or defined expectations. I don't know how you test or prove something like Schroedinger's Cat. It seems like you just can't.
And I say that's fine. In the deep areas of Science, we may need to go outside time and space, and impossible things may be possible. I'm OK saying that this is Science. But that brings us back to the old-fashioned notion that we study the World so that we can see how God works.
But many scientists start gagging at that notion. I believe that the dominant Philosophy of Science in the current age is fundamentally aimed at denying God. In which case it becomes as much a dogmatic atheistic ideology as a field of exploration.
I see the shenanigans they pulled with Global Warming. I see the ridiculous leaps of faith they make in the field of Evolution. I think Science today is in bad shape. They have learned a lot, but they are blind in many ways -- they see only what they want to see.
¨For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.¨ —Richard Feynman
Years ago I read something, & I wish I’d written down the quote. It went something like this: The nightmare for scientists is they will struggle over that final mystery of the universe to find theologians already there.
D*mn, I wish I could remember where I read it. Mine is a poor paraphrase.
[The summary at the end is the shocker. In terms of being blasted by nukes, what part of the world has been pounded the hardest by nuclear bombs? (The western United States)]
Not so shocking. Can be observed via Google Earth.
37.139656,-116.063175
“I’ve learned to live with not knowing.” — Richard Feynman
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