I hope these new discoverys will........................

[TimStrange]

I have been hesitant to post on this thread; you know what they say about politics and religion. But I’m gonna throw my 2 cents in, not that it’s worth that much even.

First my religious preferences have run from one extreme to the other. There have been times when I would have celebrated yesterday as a religious holiday and times when I’ve been a born-again Christian . These days, I lean more towards the light then the darkness. If I had to label myself, I would simply say I’m a Christian, but I am by no means a devout fanatic.

That being said, I am very much a man of science and logic. I don’t take everything in the bible as pure fact, it was written by men and they have been known to get things wrong sometimes. But I have no problem believing in “God” and accepting the truths of science. I look at it this way: God has a degree in physics. To me the theory of the “Big Bang” supports my theory of God. The bang was Him snapping His fingers.

[fjgiie]

Hi Tim,
This is a friendly post. Sometimes it's difficult to tell.
Boy, I've preached in our church as youth minister, and been baptised, and studied the bible. I am now a strict or hard atheist, (if I must be labeled). All the things I ever prayed for fell through pretty bad. Not a single one of the people that I prayed for lived. None of the things I asked for were answered. So... "HE" may as well not exist as far as I am concerned.

I do like your attitude or approach though. You sound open minded about the whole thing, and that is important. You would not want some new discovery to be "proof" or evidence against your faith.

Also, I have no problem at all respecting the faith of others, so there is no trouble getting along with me. It's just that myself as a person could no longer live on faith alone.

I hope you the best, and can you do anything to get the movies so we can begin this project? I'll be going to confessional if the movies don't hurry up. Ha, Heh, Har

__________________________
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[Sun Tzu II]

Maybe I should have said fusion was going on in the Sun. I figure it is a kind of chemical reaction.

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~soper/Sun/fusionsteps.html
http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~soper/Sun/fusion.html

The same protons, neutrons & electrons that existed in the big bang should be still here today. The types of elements and chemicals they make up might be different, but it is very hard to destroy matter.

Hi, no offence but just wanna point out that fusion in the sun is a nuclear reaction, not chemical. As you can see in the links you've provided, the elements you started with became another element. This is unique to nuclear reactions. Chemical reactions only make or break bonds between atoms, no new elements are formed.

Protons, neutrons and electrons are not created in the Big Bang, but some time after, when the universe cooled down. The first atom is the hydrogen atom, which is still most abundant in the universe.

It is not very hard to destroy matter. Its impossible . However, matter can be converted in energy (and vice versa).

PS:
There is no distiction between matter and energy, as far as the teory of relativity is concerned.

Thanks

[Wolter]

Matter can be annihilated when brought together with it's counterpart anti-matter. In that case matter and antimatter both disappear producing a certain amount of energy.
Striktly speaking this is destruction of matter as it no longer exists.
CERN in Switserland has a great site: http://livefromcern.web.cern.ch/livefro ... ntimatter/ on the subject.

[Aquila Hawk]

Most importantly, whether one believes that the big bang can be explained through brane theory or god himself, this does not change the fact that, if taken literally, the bible invalidates the voluminous amounts of evidence that our universe emerged from an enormously dense and hot state around 13.7 billion years ago.

Actually, as I discussed with a friend last week, if the Bible were to be taken literally, it would still fit nicely with the Big Bang theory. First of all, it only describes really the formation of our own solar system. Second, the original Hebrew text for Genesis states that the world was created in seven "periods", not days. Hence, the problem of translation after translation of a book that started out in oral tradition. Most of the orriginal context remained, but some of the words could have changed over time. As for what triggered the Big Bang, we may never know, unless we somehow learn to trigger one.

As for the whole nuclear reaction vs. chemistry thing. Nuclear science is technically a chemistry science. People who study Nuclear reactions study Nuclear Chemistry. It's actually kind of an interesting science that mirrors Alchemy. For hundreds of years, alchemists (including Sir Issac Newton) tried to convert lead into gold. Now, theoretically, we could do it with Nuclear Chemistry... if you wanted a radioactive piece of gold. In the end, chemistry is really about the interaction of particles of matter and the energy around them. Everything from quarks to quasars.

[DustTrailFinder]

As for the whole nuclear reaction vs. chemistry thing. Nuclear science is technically a chemistry science.

A chemical reaction does not change atoms from one element to another, but either joins them into molecules, changes molecules to new molecules, or separates atoms from the molecules. A nuclear reaction, as you say, does change atoms into new elements.

[Sundevil]

I had always heard that it was seven 'God' days, not 7 human(Earth) days.

And I was thinking about anti-matter when I suggested that it was really hard to destroy matter. Thanks for clarifing that and the nuclear chemistry thing.

As to the original topic, I hope that we will be able to find left-handed particles and right-handed particles. Right-handed ones make up rocks and minerials, left-handed ones make up organic compounds. There should be a lot more right-handed particles out there though.

http://go.hrw.com/resources/go_sc/sp/HP1PE346.PDF

[Aquila Hawk]

As for the whole nuclear reaction vs. chemistry thing. Nuclear science is technically a chemistry science.

A chemical reaction does not change atoms from one element to another, but either joins them into molecules, changes molecules to new molecules, or separates atoms from the molecules. A nuclear reaction, as you say, does change atoms into new elements.

Believe it or not, Nuclear chemistry is covered under chemistry. And it's a pain in the butt. Esspecially in geology.

[Ferrum]

Aquila, that's exactly my point, that one must interpret the meaning of period or day to mean billions of years, rather than take the term day literally. Putting even that aside though, the bible states that the stars were created on the fourth day, sometime after the earth began to produce grain. Perhaps our atmosphere only became clear enough to see the stars after the fourth 'period'...but this is once again an interpretation/extrapolation.

Oh, and classically, I was always taught that chemical reactions encompass changes that strictly involve the motion of electrons in forming and breaking chemical bonds and are characterized by a chemical change, although the general concept of a chemical reaction (the notion of a chemical equation for instance), is applicable to transformations of elementary particles, as well as nuclear reactions.

[Aquila Hawk]

Oh, and classically, I was always taught that chemical reactions encompass changes that strictly involve the motion of electrons in forming and breaking chemical bonds and are characterized by a chemical change, although the general concept of a chemical reaction (the notion of a chemical equation for instance), is applicable to transformations of elementary particles, as well as nuclear reactions.

Classically, matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but the advent of special relativaty sort of showed that not only can matter be created and destroyed, but that it was in fact a form of potential energy (a very concentrated form at that). But yeah, most people don't think of Nuclear chemistry as a chemistry because they were taught the same. However, chemisty also includes interactions between molecules such as solutions.

[Ferrum]

We are almost starting to get into semantics now Aquila (and believe it or not, I have heard of special relativity), but what I'm trying to say is that although nuclear reactions can be considered a subset of chemistry, I almost never hear them described as chemical reactions. Even the most basic science websites state this, including the ones below.

http://home.att.net/~cat4a/nuclear_V.htm

http://www.rwc.uc.edu/koehler/biophys/7b.html

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/prog ... ysics.html

http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Chemical_reaction

[DustTrailFinder]

We are almost starting to get into semantics now Aquila (and believe it or not, I have heard of special relativity), but what I'm trying to say is that although nuclear reactions can be considered a subset of chemistry, I almost never hear them described as chemical reactions.

I certainly don't pretend to know what is taught in chemistry and physics courses nowadays, but when I took chemistry in High School and college about 40 years ago, these terms were well defined. Chemical reactions did not involve changing any atoms from one element to another on the periodic chart, while nuclear reactions did. Even our president is more concerned about Iran learning "nucular" processes and doesn't show much concern about their ability to use chemical processes.

[Aquila Hawk]

Ah, now I see what you mean Ferrum. Yeah, there aren't many that would consider nuclear reactions chemistry, but a lot of it is as much symantic as calling Pluto a planet or ice dwarf. Ok, maybe not the same, considering there is a general understanding of what a chemical reaction is while planets are still somewhat undefined.

Dust: I can definately see that, considering a lot of nuclear science was still hush hush 40 years ago. How long was it before the US publicly said that it was an atomic weapon that wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

[DustTrailFinder]

Dust: I can definately see that, considering a lot of nuclear science was still hush hush 40 years ago. How long was it before the US publicly said that it was an atomic weapon that wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

I don't honestly know the answer to that, but I suspect that it was well advertised to scare the hell out of Japanese defenders at the time. That was before I was born. I can also tell you that it was not hush hushed 40, or even 50 years ago. Many American citizens were building atomic bomb shelters underground in their backyards at that time. The critical technology was a closely held secret, not the general knowledge that it existed or the theory to explain it. The cold war really started in the 50's when the US, UK, France, and the USSR started building their large arsenals of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, ICBM's, with nuclear warheads. It was no secret.

[DustyStar]

Carl Sagan said that the chance of man evolving was 1 in 10 to the 2,000,000,000th power. Fred Hoyle expressed it another way: The chances of man evolving are equivalent to those of a twister passing through a junk yard and assembling a 747. It wouldn't matter if it was here on Earth, or a trillion lightyears away, the laws of physics and of mathematics would remain the same.

Also, evolution requires that things go from being less complex to greater complexity, by random chance. This is contrary to the law of entropy, which requires that all things tend toward greater randomness, rather than greater order.

Oh, ye of little minds...