Another Triumph for Lancashire

[wolsty]

To start the ball rolling down the inclined plane..........

Try 'A View of the Universe' by David Malin, Cambridge University Press. A wonderful, illustrated book on the use of photography in astronomy. Well written and, to make my joy complete, written by a fellow Lanc (Summerseat, near Bury).

What Manchester thinks today, the world will think tomorrow.

 

[Burnt Chips]

I think that the universe as we see it is the atoms and molicules,and electrons, of some gigantic beings airy Rse ole, I think if we see a BABE walkin down the street we should just be able to jump on Her and do what come naturally, I think we should be able to walk into any bank and make a cash withdrawel
without having an account, and i think work should be outlawed.
GUESS WHERE I`M FROM

 

[wolsty]

Surrey?

 

[mikeey]

Wolsty i was just reading wether there is an ultimate set of laws

that govern the universe or if any theory is necessarily incomplete.

what do you think and Chips think about that.


C H. maybe have a good try and explaining that,

because he is up there with U and Professer Hawking.


regards mikeey

 

[Channel Hopper]

Laws are in place so that they can be bent a little anyway

Makes life a bit better

I prefer hypothesese, these can be fabricated down the pub, modified each session, but never seem to be discarded competely

They are therefore more resolute than laws

 

[wolsty]

@ Mikeey

Taking that question seriously, Mikeey, yes there probably is a 'Theory of Everything', but no-one's found it yet. Einstein spent a great part of his later life trying to find a Grand Unified Theory or GUT, as it's normally known. He failed to find an explanation for how the four forces of Nature (gravity, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear) interact largely, I suspect, because he refused to accept many of the implications of Quantum Mechanics. His famous phrase about God not playing dice with the Universe derives from his refusal to accept the Uncertainty Principle.

More recently, work in Qauntum Mechanics, particularly the areas known as (Super)String Theory and, more recently M(embrane) Theory (which involve 10 or 11 dimensions!) have succeeded in showing that the Stong Nuclear, Weak Nuclear and Electromagnetic forces are derived from the same force and differentiated in the milliseconds after the Big Bang. These forces operate at the atomic and sub-atomic level. Gravity, by contrast, is a very weak force and is noticeable only at a much larger scale ie the world we can see up to astronomical distances. It has very little effect at the (sub)atomic scale.

So we still have a problem. One way round it might be to accept the proposal that Gravity is repulsive (rather than attractive) at very large distances. At this point the Maths and Physics go well beyond my level of understanding, but the thought of Gravity pushing bodies APART boggles my rather feeble mind.

So I'm inclined to follow CH's suggestion and go down the pub to talk football.