Re: UFOs, Aliens, Time Travel and more...
Hi, sorry was busy finishing off the January issue. Let's get back to the whole complicated mess that this thread has become:
yamraj said:
Sure, it's all fine and dandy talking about aliens, time-travel et al. Makes us feel special and gifted, doesn't it? This is exactly the point of both science and religions. Religions made us believe that we were offsprings of gods - divine and royal. That we were destined to rule the Earth and take all we ever wanted to. That the stars and other celestial bodies were revolving around us. That the whole shebang existed because we did. And the Earth was flat, so we could walk easily on our feet. Too convenient to be true, ain't it?
Science is the new religion; at least a better attempt at it. Promises haven't changed much, and neither have the believers. Now we have simple formula for everything known and unknown to the mankind. As they say, Mathematics is the language of God! Sure, there are more contradictions than proofs, but they still teach it to children much the same way their ancestors were teaching religious texts. The truth is, only a few enlightened among us truly understand what, where, how and why we are. Only a few will accept that there are no universal laws that define the mechanics of the Universe. And I doubt if there's any who can explain what exactly the Universe is, or if it exists at all. Others, like us minions, blindly believe them, because we are promised in our school days that science has all the answers to all the questions ever asked. Or does it?
You clearly do not understand the very clear difference between science and religion... let me elucidate:
Two scenarios:
1: I can use biology and chemistry to explain everything called a “miracle” in the Bible.
2: I can prove Einstein wrong using mathematics and physics.
What do you think would happen at the end of both cases? In the first case, the Church would hush me up, make up some new stories, ignore me; I’d get death threats; preachers would condemn and curse me… you get the drift…
In the second, I would be asked to prove it, and once I did, it would make front page news, I would be given a Nobel prize; I’d get millions of dollars in grant money and be written about in text books…
The difference here is that Religion is based on things that have already happened, on events, and is based solely on faith and belief. Religion does not work without this “faith”, simply because it cannot be either proven or disproven.
Science on the other hand is quite simply humans trying to understand the world around them, and using logic to do so. There is no “faith”. Even when something cannot be proven, it is estimated using current knowledge. The Earth was the center of the universe; it was flat. The sun rotated around the Earth, as did the moon and all the other planets and stars. Then we discovered that the earth was an oblate spheroid, and
rotated!.
Bottom line: Science welcomes change, so long as it is backed by concrete evidence; religion discourages it. The only way a person could equate the two is if he treated science like a religion, and just accepted what he was told instead of understanding and questioning. Perhaps it was because of lack of interest, bad teachers, rote learning… whatever…
yamraj said:
I have my doubts. I've long been called an 'unbeliever', and rightly so. There is a lot to say on my side, but respecting the title of this thread, I'm starting with a simple question. Let's see if we can find an answer, for without one we wouldn't even expect any aliens or time-travel anytime soon.
[color=“red”]What is time? And, please keep the "4th dimension" crap out of context if you can't explain it or don't understand it yourself. I want to know how many of those discussing time-travel actually understand what time really is. Because time doesn't exist, and you can't travel back-n-forth in nothingness.[/color]
I don't know either. To be frank, nobody knows but everyone pretends to know about it. We sure do change gradually, and many other things do. [color=”red”]But a change in state doesn't give birth to a new dimension. Physicists consider time as 4th dimension simply because it helps them in calculations and assumptions.[/color]
The easiest thing to do is label yourself an unbeliever, because it exempts you from having to take the trouble to understand. Let’s see if I can get a definition of time, not from “stupid” textbooks, or “religious scientists”, but from my own understanding:
Time: The first dimension for every object that exists as matter in our universe.
What this means is that, even subatomic particles, which are the closest things we know of to “nothingness” experience time, and are thus one dimensional objects.
A point is thus one-dimensional, a line, 2-dimensional, a plane, 3-dimensional, everything else, 4-dimensional — us included.
Consider this:
If you and your entire universe that you see, exist on just a plane. You are therefore a point or a line, and your universe is the plane. This is a three-dimensional universe, considering that X, Y (axes) and Time are the measurements of the three dimensions. Now, I am a 4th dimension normal human, who also experiences time, in addition to X, Y, and Z axes as measurements.
What if I were to insert a ruler into your universe (the plane). You would see a line appear, and when I removed the ruler, you would see the line disappear. No motion, no movement, just appearing and disappearing. This would stupefy you! If time did not exist, you would not see the line, you would not notice anything change, ever.
You are bound by limits: the distance you can see on the X axis, the same for the Y axis, and Time. Since these limits do not allow for a Z axis, which it does only for me (in this example), my ruler is nothing short of magic and mystique to 3-dimensional planar beings. Now consider the same trick being played on linear (2-dimensional) beings by planar (3-dimensional) beings, and then again by linear beings on point beings (uni-dimensional), and you will see that this trick of being from a superior-dimension stops at point beings. This means that the first dimension is time, and there’s nothing (currently perceivable, at least) that’s below the dimension of time.
If this is not clear, try and understand what the word “dimension” means. It is nothing but a measurement. This is why a box, 10x10x10 cm is
measured 10 cm on the X, Y and Z axes, but can also be measured as “2 years old”. If it can be measured, in a perceivable way, then it must be a dimension. Because humanity has already measured and mapped X, Y and Z axes as three unique dimensions, to avoid confusion, time is called the 4th dimension. In fact, it is the first dimension.
An interesting question this raises is that if you travel faster than light, will you actually experience the 5th dimension, or are you actually becoming dimension-less (the Zero-dimension).
yamraj said:
Hmm, so we were talking about time-travel? Anyone for a trip to "Nothingness"?
Dimension-less, perhaps, “nothingness” is the wrong word to use.
Now I’m tired of typing, and I’m sure there will be some replies and disagreements, so I’ll save the rest as replies to those…
Raaabo
