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> You know that I relish asking questions which generate turmoil among the > crew. :-) Teasing the Collective again? You know what they say about teasing the animals. Other than that word of advice, well said, Dave. ;-) Since we are currently dining on a cuisine of thought experiments, let me add my own little recipe to yours. My recipe is actually related to yours, in a vague sort of way. Let me explain: We've all heard of Einstein's thought experiment of the rocket ship with a magical infinite accelerant engine onboard. The rocket's engine is constantly accelerating (thrusting) away at 1 g as it zips through outer space. The rocket has no windows. Anyone on board the rocket has no way of determining whether the rocket is accelerating or whether they are simply feeling the mundane effects of gravity at 1g. This thought experiment is, of course, Einstein's way of trying to convey to the ignorant masses the fact that the effects of acceleration are essentially no different that the effects of gravity. Both types of physical effects are essentially the same phenomenon. Of course, the effects of acceleration versus gravity is fascinating to most of us ignorant folk when space becomes warped as it does around large massive bodies like planets and suns. We observe these large masses spinning around other large masses continuously, forever. Wow! How does that happen! Why don't these planets and moons quickly lose energy and slow down, or simply fly away! Where’ the energy coming from the keeps them in orbit? As we all learned in classical physics, it takes energy to move a resting mass. Making continuous circles, regardless of the fact that it might be circling a massive body would nevertheless seem to involve the need to expend a constant amount of energy in order to continuously change the mass’s direction. But, alas, I'm getting distracted here. I want to get back to the infinitely accelerating rocket and it's passengers. Let's pretend the rocket now magically possesses a window. Passengers can peer out into the vastness of space to their heart's content. What will they observe? Well, we know that if one of the passengers drops something like a pencil within the rocket ship they will observe the object fall immediately to the ground. But what’s far more interesting, at least to me, is the astonishing fact that when the passengers peer outside the window they will observe the fact that every single bit of external matter belonging to the rest of the vast Universe is also obediently falling, relative to our rocket ship. Whoa! How did we manage that? Understanding this little twist of physics blows my mind - to realize the fact that an infinitely tiny little accelerating rocket ship appears to be capable of giving us humans this crazy illusion that seems to imply the assumption that the entire universe outside of the rocket ship is literally falling away from us. Said differently, how can our accelerating rocket ship essentially appear to be capable of INFLUENCING all of the external mass belonging to the rest of the universe. How can our little rocket (that thought it could) possess such a mind boggling influence on the rest of the universe? Remember, gravity and acceleration, according to Einstein, are the same thing. The only way I, personally, have been able to reconcile this fascinating little paradox is to stop thinking of gravity as a phenomenon that "influences" other objects. “Gravity” doesn’t influence other objects, as contradictory as this statement might initially seem to many. To me the effects of gravity, what we perceive as an “influence” is nothing more than realizing the fact that we are observing the fabric of space (3D space) being bent or warped out of shape from that of a flat 2D infinite plane. If we can ever figure out how to bend and/or warp what we perceive as the fabric of flat 2D space in a manner similar to how planetary bodies do it, but scaled down to a much smaller human scale, or allegedly as how some of those pesky aliens that the controversial character, John Lear, has alluded to, we may likely be able to start building economical space travel to anywhere within the solar system and perhaps beyond. “Make it so.” Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson svjart.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/newvortex/
