 Sigil Developer Tracker
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The dev tracker is no longer actively scanning, however you may continue to browse the archives collected over the past several years here.
Please remember that these developer posts
are taken out of context, so beware of any silky venom being spewed forth.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sbjnyc
Well I don't know squat about geology other than what little I remember from 9th grade earth science.
There's only three things you need to remember:
1) If the ground shakes, get beneath a door frame and stay there.
2) If a volcano is erupting, move UP and AWAY from it.
3) Orogenous zones are mountain forming regions. Ejecta comes from the mouth of a volcano. A load of schist is good for building a wall.
o
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sbjnyc
I agree but the same could also have been said for other things used to balance equations or ideas such as antimatter or neutrinos. In fact I think I had read about some calculations showing neutrinos potentially being up to one third of the total predicted dark matter in the universe now that they are thought to have some mass. While the concept of dark matter does seem a little speculative, at least there is something concrete that is being measured.
On the other hand there is dark energy which is even stranger and sounds even more like a fudge factor. Based on using type Ia supernovas as a standard candle, there is a prediction that the expansion of the universe is accelerating apparently due to large negative pressure in the form of vaccuum energy. The only problem is that the estimates of this energy are wrong by around 200 orders of magnitude. And I think I read somewhere a while back calling the standardness of type Ia supernova luminosity into question but haven't heard about it since and that would have a big impact on this idea.
Funny, Faratha and I were talking about neutrinos being 1/3 of the dark matter story this morning (yeah, we can be big nerds when we have some downtime at work). My point with dark matter is, like with uniformitarianism in geology (processes occuring now are processes occuring always, and the landforms of earth are formed entirely of these processes), that the theory is just a good placeholder until more evidence is presented. In uni*ism, we can see that it is relevant, but is only a part of the evidence about how the landforms of the earth got this way.
Likewise, dark matter may very well be a piece of the unexplained forces in the universe, but it is so riddled with holes and deus ex machina-style explanations of new phenomena that it loses credibility with me.
As for dark energy, I'm only a little familiar with it, but it seems highly speculative right now.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Malak
You mean, finally go to the moon!
*duck*
True story: In one of my rocketry classes, a parent of one of my students proudly informed me that they hoped their son would be the first man on the moon.
After a pause, I said, "You mean, the 13th man on the moon."
The parent gave me an incredulous look and said something to the effect that an educated man like myself would obviously see through the vast government lie about the moon landings.
I made sure that subject never came up again.
Now that I've hijacked the thread (sorry!) here's my take on the dark matter issue.
Dark matter is sexy. It's a fun solution to a number of thorny problems. Thing is, so was aether, and phlogiston, and pure uniformitarianism in geology.
In this case, I imagine we're looking at some gravitational interaction, and not dark matter interaction. Do I know all the facts in this case? No. But my occam's razor makes me say "gravity and shearing stress" before it says "dark matter."
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