Some humour, yes, in yesterday’s article by Graham Richardson
· Graham Richardson
· July 12, 2011
One thing this package demonstrates is that the government has faced up to the fact it is on the nose. No one trusts the government or its leader. There is no faith whatsoever in their promises being kept. There is therefore a big tick politically for giving nine months of compensation in advance to millions of Australians. No one has to believe in a promise being honoured because the money will be in the back pockets of most low to middle-income punters before the tax has even come into effect.
There is money to protect jobs. There will be billions going into renewable energy projects while huge sums will be spent to close the dirtiest power stations. This raises two issues. First, if I lived in the LaTrobe Valley I would be dialling up SEEK on my computer and searching for jobs in Queensland or Western Australia. If brown coal produces the most carbon, the power stations in Victoria must close first. Second, there will have to be miraculous advances in renewables in double quick time to replace this baseload power generation. I have never seen any evidence that renewables can make even a small dint in our base load at the present time.
There seems to be an element of religion in this. It's like believing in God or the Holy Trinity or the immaculate conception. You have no empirical evidence, you have to have blind faith. If there is evidence that renewables can deliver on replacing big coal-fired power stations it has been remarkably well hidden.
Given the brilliance of our scientists who operate largely without adequate funding, it is about hoping that with limitless sums thrown at them, the breakthroughs will come thick and fast.
Despite the Prime Minister's personal views on belief in God, she seems to have fallen back on the power of prayer. My problem with that is that most of those who return to God do so on their deathbed.
Watching Labor during the past six months has been like watching a very slow moving implosion. What communication has come from the government has been abysmal. For the first time in a long, long time Gillard, her colleagues, the Greens and the independents have come up with a package that just may be able to be sold to a very sceptical electorate.
Labor supporters should not get carried away yet, but finally there is a tiny ray of hope.
;-)
And while talking about a “big bang” yes, that is certainly coming to this government, here’s that web site I was reading yesterday, a Q & A on space and time, put together by Dr. David P. Stern
http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/StarFAQ8.htm#q135
The matter and energy of the
universe are filling all the space available to them, and have always
done so. That space, however, is itself expanding. The big bang is not
an explosion in space, like that of a bomb, but an expansion of
space itself.
A common analogy is the surface of an expanding rubber balloon. The rubber is
filling all the area available to it, but that area is itself growing, and as
it grows, the thickness (in our case, the density of matter in the universe) is
gradually decreasing. The way 3-dimensional space is expanding can be described
mathematically, but it is not otherwise intuitively graspable, except by that
analogy--or perhaps (not sure how well that works) as expansion inside a higher
dimensionality.
http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/StarFAQ14.htm#q234
You would think that the expansion
would slow down, because stars and galaxies attract each other, and overcoming
the attraction requires energy. To keep the expansion going at a fixed rate,
something has to pump energy into the universe, or else we might see the
expansion slow down, maybe even reverse.
The latest observations suggest that indeed, something IS adding energy all the
time--"dark energy" is a popular name--because the expansion,
far from slowing down, seems to have gradually speeded up over those
13.7 billion years. Stay tuned--we still don't understand everything.
And this rather interesting query
Hello Dr. Stern, I am just a
normal guy that is fascinated by science. I have a decent understanding of
conceptual physics and I am trying to get an answer to a question that I have.
Supposing time travel is possible, wouldn't you be hopelessly deserted in space
if you traveled just 1 second back in time? The Earth would already be 30 km
away from you. That is not even taking into account that the solar system
itself is moving. It just seems to me that the location you started from is
will be long gone when you arrive at another time.
Thanks for any light you can shed on this!
Dear Casey
Time travel would create many paradoxes, of which the one which worries you is
just a mild case!
The physical universe depends on 4 coordinates: 3 give position in space, and
one is time. Time is a different kind of dimension--in the basic equations, we
can put it in a role analogous to coordinates (x,y,z), but only if we use a
wider class of numbers which include the square root of –1. Using that broader
class, everything happens in a 4-dimensional universe of space-time--3
dimensions of space and one of time (there may be more dimensions, but if so
they are represented by very small quantities).
Your imagined time travel moves the traveler in time, but not in space relative
(say) to our galaxy. In the actual universe, you cannot move in space and time
independently!
Imagine moving instantly to Bermuda, changing position but not time. By the
laws of physics, you cannot do so! "Instantly" would mean traveling
faster than light, and the laws of physics demand you arrive in Bermuda with at
least a minimum delay, the time it takes for light to travel from where you are
to Bermuda.
And just as you cannot move in space without changing your position in time,
you cannot move in time without changing your position in space. You ARE moving
in time just now--but moving in space too. Relative to distant galaxies, you
may be moving at almost the speed of light.
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Hmm, so we’re perhaps skating along (relative to distant galaxies) at almost the speed of light inside an “expanding rubber balloon”, with the sure promise of the Lord’s return, yes, the Lord who created this universe, yep, surely makes this carbon issue a non-event.
Blessings ☺ Steve
Stephen
Williamson Computing Services Pty Ltd
www.swcs.com.au/aboutus.htm