Ric

If you want a serious answer I can give you it, although you're not going to like it.

Really?

This. I've touched on it a few time on this thread. Mankind has evolved specifically to interact with 3 dimensions, while having an abstract understanding of the 4th. That doesn't mean we can't understand higher dimensions, but it does mean we are predisposed not to.

It's not a hashtag or an abbreviation, instead it's a YT link of the tune I automatically sing in my head whenever I see the thread title "club dece" Whether the drinks are free, or if there is enough fun and sunshine for everyone I can't say, but as this has been nipping at my head I thought I'd share it.

That's the best you got? I'm disappointed...

Considering the amount of cock you suck, I'd take your word on that. Although it is true that HPV increases the risk of certain cancers.

Depends on the context, if you are talking about the basic rules which govern our Universe then I would disagree with you and say we know a surprisingly large part. This already happened. Just think how far we have come in the last century (or couple of centuries, if you wish to expand it beyond just the cosmos). We are reaping the seeds sown in the early 1900's like relativity or quantum theory. While people may laugh at that comment, but I genuinely think you are right. Again it's a contextual thing, we think the Universe is big and all our results show it to be fucking big, but I feel that there is going to be a trick in the tail which will affect how we interpret those results.

Oooft. I don't suppose "because it just is" counts? In terms of why it is the speed it is means having to go through Maxwell's electro-dynamics equations, and specifically the way waves work in a vacuum. It's quite detailed so I'll just link to it in Wikipedia... http://bit.ly/11uZHhV Edit: P&B really doesn't like URLs with hash values.

Do you want the simple or the complicated answer? The simple one is that as you reach the speed of light, time slows down. This is called time dilation. It may be possible to reach near the speed of light, but sadly the amount of energy required to do that is immense. There is also the problem that as our vision is based on light, meaning travelling near that speed would, as you'd expect, cause numerous problems for our eyesight. Edited to add: "Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws." - D.Adams

In Our Time (on R4) covered relativity today. It's not so much a detailed look at it more a summary, with it covering where the two branches, special and general, differ from Newtonian physics and how Einstein's theories were received within the scientific community. http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/iot You can get IoT via the iPlayer or podcast. I would recommend the latter as the BBC have the entire back catalogue of IoT. Not just science based these are great programs if you want to get an idea of a subject without delving too much into the minutia. Here is the list for the science based podcasts... http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/in-our-time/archive/science/all

The problem here is that fiddy has left out the rather operable word "directly". The dwarf planets directly orbit the sun, while satellites directly orbit their host planet, while technically orbiting the Sun at the same time.

I'm certainly not defending their batshitcraziness but the God botherers believe it was the second day. Light and Dark first, Earth next, then the Universe, then something about crafting waters or along those lines and by the 7th the poor lad was tuckered out and just let us go for it. I think birds and fish get a special mention, too.

Interesting read, although you can see it's American when the first slew of comments is all about God.

I didn't know that existed, I do now and honestly I haven't laughed so much in ages! It's as if she forgets the lyrics half way through... Edit: There is not enough public ridicule that this can tolerate, so up onto Facebook it goes and with luck spread around.

Cucumber () worked with Nolan on Star Trek 2 and apparently Nolan was blown away by both his acting ability and the ease of which he could be directed. Now take those two and put it together with a Doctor Who movie and, even though I am not a big fan of the franchise, I think you have a recipe for box office success as well as retaining it's "British charm". I see the BBC is claiming that John Hurt is being mooted. In many ways, I think he'd work great and is a return to the offbeat and laid back doctor like Tom Baker.

Ideal, but no. Let's be honest the biggest ticket is going to be Benedict Cumbermalarkey (can't be arsed checking the spelling). Not only is he a good actor, is typically foppish British, but with he's making quite a stir in Hollywood which is where, surely the Doctor Who franchise is headed.

I am sure if you hold the rights, you get to kibosh any cover versions released. It doesn't stop the street busker from singing the songs but it does stop the "professionals" from ruining them.

It's going to be either a woman, or someone of non-white origins. Not that I think it should be, it's just that in the current climate you'll have people saying "50 years and no women or black lead characters?"

Hate the Cash version of Hurt, and I hate the way people somehow associate the lyrics to being about Cash and his impending death (which I think was just a matter of weeks after it was released). It's not about a guy looking back at life, it's all about someone falling into a spiral of drug abuse. Cash did a lot of covers before his death, Rusty Cage (Soundgarden) being another. I detest anything Country and Western and for me any of those covers is like pulling my own teeth. Recently I heard a couple of cover versions of Bowie songs, one of them Ziggy Stardust the other The Man Who Sold The World, both of which were incredibly bad. I didn't catch who they were by but from the way they were presented by the radio it was by a modern and fairly recognisable X-Factor style teen success. I didn't try to find out who they were by, it was just too depressing that Bowie had allowed people to cover his song so badly but if anyone recognises this, add them to the bad covers list.

3 years though XBL. It doesn't seem that long but it's still a very decent shift and the same amount of time spent as the Doctor as Hartnell, Troughton, Davidson, Baker (Colin), McGann and Ecclestone. In fact McCoy is actually the longest serving Doctor while probably being the shittest (along with Colin Baker).

You couldn't be more wrong if you tried. If you are going to argue the case for and against quantum theoretical physics then you need to put it in a frame of reference. It's not something new, if we consider Max Planck as the origin, and was being discussed before the 1st world war. We were theorising about sub atomic particles when the most advanced weaponry was a rifle and a bayonet while charging across a muddy field on horseback. At that time almost everything was theoretical because we had not developed ways of testing and observing the results. As time has passed the simplest theories have been observed, documented then used to build further theories. Essentially this is why places like CERN exist, because the theories need vast amounts of energy to do the tests necessary. However when achieved this technology is providing evidence for theories that were devised 50 or 60 years ago. The Higgs Boson is a prime example of this. The Standard Model (which, to put it in it's most simplest of terms is effectively 'E=mc2 for the quantum world') defines the particles at a sub atomic level. As part of this we realised that there was a problem in terms of mass and how it is generated the subatomic particles in the Standard Model didn't have the properties to provide it and as we all know everything must have a mass, no matter how minuscule in size. The Higgs sat there being theorised since the mid 60's with people claiming it a flight of fantasy, or that it was (as your argument suggests) there to make up the numbers. It wasn't until we had the capability to perform experiments with extreme levels of energy, the LHC, that was started to see results that would hint towards the existence of the Higgs. What's interesting is that the observations matched the maths, but not quite in the way expected. I had argued for some time that there was likely to be more than just one type of Higgs (this is not some massive leap on my own, it was a recognised viewpoint within the field) and this has come to fruition it seems, at least with the data we have now, as there seems to be a Higgs field rather than a single boson (a boson is just a subatomic particle type) and we will see what the results are when the LHC is revamped and provided with more power. There are certain scientific criteria that need to be met in order to officially announce something as "real" or "true" and that hasn't quite been matched with the Higgs. Not officially. The mass (no pun intended) of evidence behind it though will mean that the revamped LHC will probably tick that off the list sometime in the next couple of years. However the theories and the mathematics to back them up was solid, and the results were as expected it's just that as an analogy we've theorised where in the haystack there is a needle, we've then found that location but it turns out to be a pin. Both meet the criteria of what was needed; metal, sharp, tiny, surrounded by lots of hay, etc. That example shows us that theoretical physics is built up on a base of a multitude of other results, theories and observations. It's simply not possible to come out with a credible theory just by saying "Well we need a value of 4 at the end of this and if we somehow squeeze these two 2's into the other side of the equation then we're sorted". These things are studied intensely and built on (as well as dismissed - I am in no way suggesting that every new theory is valid and just waiting confirmation) until we get to a point where we can actually do some sort of experiment to provide observations and results to back the theory up. TL;DR: It's totally incorrect to suggest modern quantum theories such as Dark Matter are somehow scribbled on the back of a fag packet, and is fine so long as the numbers add up.

Best answer? Listen to the show, it covers it in quite a bit of detail.

Material World on Radio 4 today did a great discussion on multiple universes and the big bang based on the recent Planck results. Not only that the other half of the programme is all about time. A really good listen for anyone interested in this subject. You can catch it on the iPlayer here... http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01snlsw/Material_World_Multiverses_Culturedriven_Evolution_Lee_Smolin_on_Time/

Without wishing to start an argument, that isn't true. Black Holes emit radiation, as theorised by Hawking. He even gave his name to it... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation

Dece is dece? Well I'm tots emosh...