Electric Universe

[el_flesh]

Scientists are people who do and use Science. I'm in that group. The fact that you make an accusation of lying on my part about credentials is not lost on anyone.

EPIC FAIL OF BOVINEWASTE BEARER:
http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=2015 PROOF OF GRAVITATIONAL LENSING
http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.2441 PROOF OF GENERAL RELATIVITY
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0511087 PROOF OF GENERAL RELATIVITY
http://www.astronomynotes.com/relativity/s4.htm WARPED SPACETIME PROVEN
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/1997/blackholes OBSERVATIONAL PROOF SPACETIME CURVES (If you drag a triangular flat frame with vectors (or, light from a far star) coming at you from each tip, they will point in the same direction no matter where the frame is dragged. If spacetime is curved, however, they have to point in a different direction after being dragged. Guess which one happens? Go on, guess.)
GRAVITATIONAL LENSING PROVEN:
http://astronomyonline.org/Cosmology/GravitationalLensing.asp
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1997/ast06nov97_1/
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~ger/ASTRO-110_sp08/Lecture28_DarkMatter.pdf

But of course, we're talking to a blithering eediot who will say the proof is invalid because... conspiracy theory! Who is a crackpot?!?

Also, this:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/education/dropout-nation/by-the-numbers-dropping-out-of-high-school/
http://www.rogersyouthfund.com/the-facts.html
http://www.voxeu.org/article/educated-america-college-graduates-and-high-school-dropouts

Not so accurate as claimed, I am sure; nevertheless I obtained 139 on http://www.free-iqtest.net/. And I don't consider myself smart; just educated to the minimum acceptable level: a Bachelor's degree.

As mentioned, bovinewastebearer hasn't made ONE LINK to actual proof. Because it doesn't exist.
Keep restating your fantasy BWB. This thread will one day be referenced for a big laugh at your conspiracy theory ignorance.

[Anderas]

Black Holes, same story. While it is not possible to use relativity to calculate things crossing the horizon, they themselves actually have been a prediction of this theory.

And they've never been observed, how could they be? I think they do exist but GR obviously doesn't give a good description of them and can't be claimed as a complete description of gravity if it can't fully describe them.

In fact they have.

They observed the center of our galaxy for about 15 years, ten photos a year, and made a small film of it.
Here, very short, the pure (calculated) result
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3qSr5HmGkI

If it is not a black hole, then it is something else which is invisible and able to throw stars around like tennis balls.

If you want some more details, have some more time and if you also want to see the optical effect of the gravitational lensing of it, i would recommend rather this video.
http://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso0846a/

[Big Bene]

It's impossible to prove a model correct, all you can do is fail to disprove it by showing that it works within the specific set of conditions imposed by the experiment.

That is what I have learned repeatedly, in classes, university courses, and reading up different topics myself, from natural sciences to philosophy.
It stands to common intuition that this is how every last one of us should see the world and sciences dealing with it.
It's a great personal loss if you regard anything as a final irrefutable truth. It will make you a believer in science which is when your scientific model is on par with a sect.

I also think this genral rule to be true, but as it has been used in this discussion repeatedly, I'd like to point out that of course it only relates to empiric proofs, not to hermeneutic or deductive ones.

I. e. you cannot proof something by evidence. You can show a thousand white swans, you can never be sure that swans are white in general. But showing a single balck swan disproves this theory.
But of course you can proof that something is a crime by citing the law (if the text of the law is sufficiently precise), and you can proof a mathematical theorem if the premises are clear.

You see, you hit a nerve with me. This probably comes from the many discussions relating religion and scepticism that pollute the internet these times.

[Big Bene]

Is a dolphin a fish? Is a bat a bird? The bible "thinks" so.

Well, the bible doesn't mention dolphins at all*, but in general, old books, including religious, but also scientific ones, file dolphins and whales under fishes, and bats under birds, well into early modern times.
This is not an error, but a different system of biological classification. Animals (and plants) were not classified by their grade of (belived) relationship (and before Linné there was no practical system to do so), but by more simple characteristics, like "land-dwelling", "swimming" or "flying". Sometimes, even insects were classified as "birds". Great biologists of early modern era, like Conrad Gesner, clearly saw that bats are mammals and are more closely related to other mammals than to birds, and described them as such, but still included them in the "Book of Birds", not the "Book of Animals".

*There is one unclear verse which a minority of translators think to refer to dolphins, describing the source of the leather a ritual tent is made of. Of course, the animal in question is not classified as a fisch, mammal or what else.

[el_flesh]

It's entirely an error, because it was a "classification" based upon ignorance from a pre-Science age. Just like 95% of the rest of the material. The bible also claims that Clouds are god's footprints in Heaven and are made up of the dust from his feet, NOT water vapor; birth defects are caused by god and NOT by genetic code; thunder is the sound of it's bellowing voice, lightning is a deadly force it deliberately hurls at various places, and NOT the product of electrical potential differentiation; rainbows are to remind it that it promised not to brutally kill all the men, women, children and unborn children of the Earth again, NOT refraction of light through water vapor; tornadoes are for killing sinners when it wants a quick result, (as opposed to the somewhat slower means of plagues and pestilence) NOT a cyclonic function of pressure differentiation; some women (but not all) being unable to have children primarily as punishment for adultery, and NOT due to various PROVEN medical reasons; haemmeroids being yet another of god's countless methods of punishing sinners, and also NOT being due to various PROVEN medical reasons; earthquakes being inflicted on sinners when god is really angry, and NOT due to tectonic forces; rivers and springs drying up due to the 'sin' of those nearby, and NOT due to changing geologic and human influence.
This list, (thanx to http://www.landoverbaptist.org) is NOT exhaustive. But it demonstrates not only utter bullshit on the part of the bible; but also the groping in utter darkness ignorance of a pre-Science, Cu-age society.

While we're at it,

The Hebrew word used here is tachash, which has been defined in a number of ways, including the seal, dolphin, badger, porpoise or manatee.

-Thomas Figart, who claims a "doctorate"; presumably in religion. None of those are pisces.

[Anderas]

Please, this is not religion against science.
Up to now EU is not a religion.

People wanted an explanation 2000 years ago. Someone had to deliver. Church people claimed responsibility for everything what was difficult to explain. So, someone delivered. No problem. We shouldn't take these parts of the bible serious today.

The content of the bible was decided in a bureaucratic process 300 years after Christ. There were a lot of "new testaments" to choose from, plus the "ancient stuff". The ancient stuff was mainly included in respect for the history, so that it won't be forgotten; and four of the "new testaments" to give an overview. It was not intended to be followed letter-by-letter.

The letter by letter rules are imposed by the vatican and can be changed every year, every day, by the pope. They are different from the bible, and you have to decide yourself if you want to follow the pope or rather your president. For that, you have to question everything before deciding. This is called enlightenment and is one of the main foundations of the western civilization.

In this respect, this thread is quite good, because here the science is the object of questions - and it should be! So, it really is totally different from religious strange stuff.

[Big Bene]

@El Flesh
I will not head into a discussion about biblical "errors". As Pinchas Lapide once said: "You can take the bible literal, or you can take it serious". And of course I don't read it as some "proto-scientific" try to explain natural phenomena.

But I will answer to your first sentence, as it (other than the rest of post) really refers to my previous entry.

Classification - including biological classfication - is not an intristic feature of a natural group of objects (anmals, in this case), but a completely artificial means of simplifying discussion and research. Classification is a matter of definition.
You can classify animals by their phenotype, by their genetic relationship, or by their habitate. The latter system may be less precise and not allow for as many sub-classes as the genetic one, but it is not erratic or "ignorant", not even if you state it in bold letters. It was used for centuries, including by biologists who did empiric research.
As I wrote (did you even read this?) Gesner did describe bats as mammals, but did still file them under "birds". If you define the term "bird" by genetic relationship, as we do today, this would of course be a contradiction in itself, but given the classification system that was in common usage at the time, it was not.
I would dare to say that even in antique or biblilcal times, people did observe animals, and it is not too hard to find that bats have fur, don't lay eggs and suckle their young. But that was not the criteria to name them "animal" or "bird". The criteria was that they can fly.

While we're at it,

The Hebrew word used here is tachash, which has been defined in a number of ways, including the seal, dolphin, badger, porpoise or manatee.

-Thomas Figart, who claims a "doctorate"; presumably in religion. None of those are pisces.

Most scholars vote for "badger" or "seal", or that the term doesn't refer to an anmal at all but simply to a blue-ish tint of the hide.
And of course, none of those animals are fishes. The verse in question doesn't call the "Tachash" a fish. It simply sais that the outer cover of the tabernacle shall be made of "Tachash" fur.

[Big Bene]

People wanted an explanation 2000 years ago. Someone had to deliver. Church people claimed responsibility for everything what was difficult to explain. So, someone delivered. No problem.

Well, I have studied Geistesgeschichte and religious history for many years and I would respectfully disagree.
The interpretation of religion as a means to "explain" natural phenomena that are not understood scientifically is a misunderstanding. It reflects a "modern" point of view that is about questions that were simply not very relevant for most of human history.

Of course, at a certain point of cultural developement (in the western culture this would be Greece around 500 b. C.) the mechanics of nature are discussed, and this is also reflected in religion. I will come back to this. But this is not what religion is about. If religion would have developed as an explanation of natural phenomena, this should be found in the purest form in early forms of religion. We should have a look on religions of indigenous tribes of hunter-gatherers or forest gardeners. Here we shold find a cultural background where most natural phonmena are still not understood scientifically, and a religion in an "original" state of developement without superstructure of philosophical theology, that should reflect the background or "reasons" of its developement.
Now, these religions have their myths that "explain" certain facts of life, including some natural phenomena, but they are relatively rare and don't play any role in religious practice. What they have in abundance are rules, lots of taboos, rituals etc.
They don't tell how the world works, but how people should behave.
They are a guideline of human life.
Now when you take a look on the myths again, you will find that if they are explaining some part of life, they also do so with the purpose of ruling social behavior - "and this is why we do this like this".

Now if we turn to the religions of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia or India, we will find that they are still very close to the indigenous ones. In fact, they are "indigenous", as they are the result of an unbroken local cultural developement, not of some revelation or foundation, or of some intentional theological efford. These religions have much more elaborated rituals and much deeper theological texts than the primogenical ones, but still very few myths (compared to the later Greek or Norse religions). The few egyptian mythical texts we know are relatively late.

And if you have a closer look on antique judaism, the same is true. The creation, the deluge or the tower of Babel are "myths": religious stories that tell how something came into being or became the way we know it (this does not necessarily mean they are "true" or "untrue"), and we, as modern people, can relate to them, so these are the parts of the bible we remember. But actually, they make up only a very small part of the book.
In traditional judaism, they are not important. The story jewish traditions and rituals refer to is the Exodus, which does not deal with any natural phenomena or to genaral human conditions (like the tower of Babel which "explains" the diversity of languages), but with the people of Israel becoming a nation. It is all about society. And it is explicitely used to justify rules: "remember how the Lord has led you from Egypt". The ten commandements are at the center of this story. And in practice, traditional judaism is all about rules.

Now when we come back to the classical Greeks, if you read a book about their religion, you will find lots of fun-to-read myths, most of them "explaining" some part of the world (mostly politics rather than nature, but still). But if you really do some research, you'll find that this was not the real everyday religious practice. The myths were told, and set on stage, but this was rather a form of pious edification. Actual, lilving, religion centered around rituals, offerings, oracles, and festivities. This was what the gods wanted, and the people felt necessary.

In christian times, everyday religion also was defined by rules and related social phenomena. "Scentific" research was left to the philosophers, whose main source for that matter until the renaissance was Aristotle. The church, the (christian) people or any other religious instance never had a problem with nature being explained by the writings of a pagan philosopher. It was simply another field of interest.

Sorry for going so far off topic.

[el_flesh]

Sorry for calling out baloney, but those posts are full of it.
From our point of view; the strict letter as written is ludicrous; but for the people of the time, it was entirely TRUE then. In fact, it is still held by the similarly uneducated as true NOW. That's why we have fundaMENTALists. That's why the catholic church burned people at the stake for disagreeing with what was written. You cannot lie about the documented past. You cannot change it to suit your apologetic position. It was meant to explain the natural world and shut the uneducated masses up; otherwise, they would have seen the failure in knowledge of their so-called "holy" leaders who should have had all the answers; since they had a direct line to their god. It's been PROVEN a sham and a manipulation. You don't get to continue it.
So-called 'divine' knowledge should have had no problem teaching classification to the uneducated masses. The fact that it is an entire failure is just one more nail in the coffin of religion.
Too bad the damn scourge on humanity dies so hard.

Regardless of what "tachash" really was, it certainly ISN'T a fish. There's another nail in the coffin of "divine infallible knowledge".

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/04/14/g2_new_observations_show_it_survived_a_black_hole_encounter.html yet another FAIL for the Eckeltrecktrick yUun-vinerse.

[cornixt]

This one keeps coming up, so I think it is worth pointing out how wrong it is:

Why is the solar system stable for billions of years when the gravitational interaction between the planets should cause chaos in a matter of centuries

The amount of gravitational influence that the planets have on each other is tiny in comparison to the Sun (which contains 99.8% of the entire mass of the solar system). Planets would have to pass significantly closer to do more than slightly nudge the orbit of each other. It's a fairly common astrophysics programming exercise to create a model of the solar system using the equations for gravity.

and why are the planets distances from the sun at perfectly regular intervals as if they're being attracted to evenly spaced charge separations at period distances from the sun if there's current flowing through the solar system as a whole?

The planets aren't at regular intervals at all, nor are they evenly spaced. Current flow is caused by electrons moving between charge separations, current flow doesn't create charge separations. This whole thing is both nonsense and false.