Amazing Light Show, with NO 'audience scanning' (just a few gamma-rays! ;)

[sunbear]

I agree that too .
but curiosity always drive us to know more

[Jem]

I know it's reviving an old thread but I thought this was quite interesting and a simple(ish ) way of starting to understand alternative dimensions.

http://www.tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php

Jem

[thesk8nmidget]

WOW cool video!!

and thanks for the thread revival!

those pictures are amazing!

[James Lehman]

That video about the Ten Dimensions is way cool. It really put things into "perspective".

James.

[Jem]

That video about the Ten Dimensions is way cool. It really put things into "perspective".

James.

Couldn't have put it better myself

Glad you like the link.

Jem

[steve-o]

Thanks Jem- That was great. A real mind-opener (even tho it's toddy-hour) -I'll have to watch it again

[heroic]

Weirdly, I suspect this may be partly in the wrong forum.

A friend of mine has recently completed a paper on astronomical lasers- that is, laser action that's actually occurring in astronomical objects. It turns out that lasers are everywhere if you look with the right kind of eyes. Most of them are at microwave and IR, though. Huge molecular clouds emitting vast quantities of coherent "light" of one kind or another.

One final question.... can anybody explain the string theory to me in layman terms?

I can try.

It's actually pretty simple if you think of it this way.

Einstein explained gravity as a deformation of the Universe- that is, there exists a slope around every piece of mass in the Universe, in a dimension we don't see, which means that the curved paths we see matter obeying (for example, as the Earth orbits the Sun) are actually the straightest paths they can take.

If you extend that to say that, say, magnetic fields are also deformations of the Universe, stresses and strains in space-time itself, so that the reason it's hard to push two magnets together is that you're effectively pushing them "uphill" in that extra dimension, then you can say that magnets have some property in that dimension- they affect things in a way that can't be easily described in the three-dimensions-plus-time of our normal perception.

Now, this could be explained by saying that, well, electrons (which are negatively charged) have a property such that they extend into the "magnetism" dimension, and protons (which are positively charged) extend the same amount in the opposite direction. When you have some matter where the spinning electrons happen to match up with the protons in a certain way, the net imbalance results in what we call a magnetic field, which is a net deformation.

This leads us to think, well, maybe the electron is a piece of "stuff" that happens to vibrate in a certain way in this multidimensional space, such that it pops out in that one direction. And if electromagnetism works that way, and gravity seems to work that way, then maybe all the other forces work that way too. So you end up with gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force and the strong force (which hold atomic nuclei together) all having their own dimensions to work with.

What's the simplest shape that can vibrate in such a way? Well, it's a little loop of springy string. So you end up thinking that maybe all the fundamental particles (the electron, the photon, the quarks, the neutrinoes, etc.) are actually loops that vibrate in different combinations of dimensions. Some of them vibrate in a way that gives them mass, some of them vibrate in a way that gives them electric charge, and so forth.

String theory doesn't really work out, though. What seems to be much more promising is M-theory, where instead of strings you have little bubbles of "membrane" which have different vibrational modes... which is really cool

None of this seems to be provable yet, so I have high hopes for LHC actually showing us that some of these possible models are wrong- it would certainly advance our understanding!

[James Lehman]

Check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson

This is the so-called "God Particle".

If we can either prove or dissprove its existance, it will be the most important discovery of "what is reality made of" yet.

Don't tell anyone, but I have a bunch of them stashed in my sock drawer.

James.

[dsli_jon]

Hey Cats -

My laser-friendly Mom sent me these via email - will have to post 2x to fit them all in... I absolutely LOVE #2 and #5... want to BE there...

space...
j

[dsli_jon]

...I guess the last one is: (pasted quote...)

A FIRE RAINBOW.
THE RAREST OF ALL NATURALLY OCCURRING ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENA.
THE PICTURE WAS CAPTURED THIS WEEK
ON THE IDAHO / WASHINGTON BORDER.
THE EVENT LASTED ABOUT 1 HOUR.
CLOUDS HAVE TO BE CIRRUS, AT LEAST 20K FEET IN THE AIR,
WITH JUST THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF ICE CRYSTALS.
AND THE SUN HAS TO HIT THE CLOUDS AT PRECISELY 58 DEGREES

..pretty cool... though I think sun dogs are even wilder (in the strato-illusion dept. that is... ...but I guess, technically, this 'rainbow' is a 'parhelion', too.... but that is one weird-lookin dog!

njoy...
peace...
j