Starship Asterisk*

In a word no. The outer parts of stars are held up by the pressure of the inner parts, this pressure is produced by the heat being given off within the core by fusion. Stars are stable because they balance the inwards force of gravity with an outwards pressure force, if either force changes the othe...

Fine Harry. Seeing as your not interested in the BBT and hence in most of cosmology how about you let those that are carry on a discussion without the repeated unsubstantiated claims and constant reposts of highly dubious websites? Unless you feel like trying to come up with something like a cogent ...

Hi ipaqgeek good questions. I didnt make it very clear but the 250m was for an optical telescope, essentially a telescope that covered the same range as the HST, so a big HST. In the Infrared you need a telescope of 1000m, just because it has a wavelength 4 times longer. But you are correct, you cou...

The third star is probably too faint, or close in to one of the other stars to be resolved individually. Like the problem of spotting planets around other stars if the planet or smaller star is much fainter than the others it can be difficult to seperate from the brighter component. For things to be...

Several points with your last post Michael. First of all, why is it mysterious that BHs should emit light? We see it all around us in the present day Universe, though of course it isnt the BH that is emitting the light but the accretion disc of material around it. Now of course nobody has really exp...

My understanding of the situation is that the atmospheric pressure on Mars is not enough to support long lived liquid water. In the Nasa briefing they mentioned that the water (if thats what it is) would be boiling as it flowed down the slope, even though the temperature would be far below 100C. As ...

Hi Michael I want to focus on one point from your previous post if I may because its a very important point. No, not really. Space/time involves mass. Mass cannot move faster than light according to Einstein, though "space/time" could theoretically "spread out" as the mass of the...

So essentially you personally have "faith" that inflaton fields are somehow related to the quantum field of gravity? Is the only evidence to support this idea based on the acceleration we see in the universe itself? How did you personally rule out more "mundane" explanations lik...

It looks to me like there is some dust to be seen, in the rocks there are regions that look exactly the same as the surface dust, as if dust has collected in cracks in the rocks. I think the answer is that the rocks that you can see do not have flat tops, they are pretty much all inclined so even wi...

You wouldnt trust badastronomy.com? Just curious why not, its about as rational as you can get.

Phil Plait has been over this topic in his excellent Bad Astronomy site before the specific link for the answer is http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#stars . In brief the reason you cant see stars is because of the contrast between the very bright objects being imaged (ie the surface ...

I have 5 minutes to spare so I'll waste it replying to Harrys comments. Harry what exactly do you expect so see? Do you think that because space is expanding you should be able to look through a telescope and see it happen as you watch? These things are incredibly far apart, you would have to wait 1...

Im afraid too much of what you require is beyond my meagre understanding of particle physics, I cannot explain to you what causes the inflaton field or even the DE because no one knows. With DE we at least have observational constraints that will allows us in the next few years to tie down exactly w...

The obvious problem here however is that even before the first atom formed, the mass of the universe would have sucked the whole thing back together again. Not if the expansion was rapid enough, remember the expansion we see now is what is left after gravity has worked to slow it down, in the early...

Hi Michael Here's where I'm having a problem with the expansion issue. Assuming that even subatomic particles have "mass", then the mass and gravitational force of the universe would have swallowed up everything the moment things got started without some undefined force to "push"...

In response to Harrys post Mon Dec 04, 2006 1:35 am. Harry, you have revealed repeatedly that you understand nothing about astronomy. Your "knowledge" comes from a wide range of nuts, pseudo scientists and attention seekers. How many lecture courses on the physics of stellar evolution have...

Unfortunately Michael I'm not really sure what definition could be used to decide whether an object is mature. I know some people that model spiral formation so I'll ask how long it takes for recognisable spiral features to appear. I guess one of the least arbitrary choices would be to ask how much ...

Just got time to explain one point here. I'm going to have to chew on that speed number for awhile, particularly since the universe is thought to be greater than 27.4 light years across. It seems to me that hydrogen atoms would have to move faster than 51 km/sec for the any hydrogen atom to be furth...

I'll try now to address Michaels other points within the limits of my knowledge. So how much "time" did it take for *any* galaxies to form in your opinion? That depends entirely on your opinion of what constitutes a galaxy. From the ages of the Globular Clusters of galaxies we know that st...

Well Harry I have to take my hat off to you there, you have managed to make a huge post which adds absolutely nothing to the discussion as usual. You seem to have missed the point entirely its not that anyone of those lines of evidence proves the BBT its that taken together they make it almost impos...

Firstly apologies for the slightly disordered replies. Secondly I'm still waiting for Harrys input here. From my perspective, this statement is purely a statement of faith. You are absolutely right, but not in the way that you think. I have faith that those that have looked at this and thought about...

There are a few things in your last post that betray a lack of understanding of the intricacies of the topic Michael so I'll try and clear a few of them up. Yet Hubble has seen galaxies that are more "mature" than our own galaxy at a far greater distance that Z>2. You're "generalizing...

You haven't answered the question Harry. I asked for explanations of those observed facts that don't rely on the BBT and that hopefully aren't mutually exclusive. You want evidence, fine here you go. 1) The SDSS list of galaxy redshifts http://www.sdss.org/ The 2dF list of galaxy redshifts: http://w...

Alright Harry how do you expect us to act? Taking four very simple observations (I could list about 20 but that would be overkill): 1) That all galaxies outside the local group are observed to be moving away from us. 2) That the further into space you look the less galaxies look like those seen toda...

Those "important" issues seem to be almost identical to the "important" issues in your list of problems with the Big Bang that have already been discredited on at least 3 occasions now.

I'm still waiting for one observation that cannot be explained within the BB framework.