What RPG are you playing right now?

[MrPopo]

Oh god damn it, I tried to split this out into a separate thread and cocked it up and deleted your posts.

[Jmustang1968]

Oh god damn it, I tried to split this out into a separate thread and cocked it up and deleted your posts.

Why would you need to do that? The discussion started a few oages back anyway, thid wasn't a good transition point. But I think that discussion was done anyway.

[elmagicochrisg]

I was just starting to feel the vibe...

[MrPopo]

Ok, I'm going to address your points here and leave it to another mod who is better at this than I to split it out.

Yes, there are problems with the existing Big Bang cosmology. This makes it a good approximation that still is the best explanation we have for the early universe. Similarly, Newton's gravity was fantastic for hundreds of years until we got General Relativity. But even that we know to be incomplete, as it breaks down at the quantum level. The incompleteness doesn't mean you should throw out the whole thing, however. As I mentioned, it has made verified predictions, so it captures a facet of how the universe works.

imaginary constructs like dark matter, dark energy, and inflation (for which no real mechanism exists).

Dark matter has nothing to do with the Big Bang; it's the explanation for the discrepency between mass due to gravitational effects and mass due to the light coming off of stars. You better believe that scientists hate that there's this mystery stuff out there. Similarly, dark energy is the current explanation for why the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, not just that it is expanding. The Big Bang merely predicts that the objects would be moving away from each other; the rate should be constant or slowing. I'll definitely give you inflation is the weakest aspect of the current Big Bang cosmology. As we learn more we'll either gain more mathematical evidence for it, or we'll discard it for something that fits the data.

@ CBR - Even though there are ~14 billion years involved with this model, it's still not enough time. If the Bang distributed the energy in the universe randomly the same way the matter was, there hasn't been enough time for it to radiate uniformly through the universe.

See, I don't think you quite understand random. If you have an old tube TV with an antenna you've seen the "snow" when you aren't on a real channel. That snow is random. It also looks like the pictures of the CBR. The standard bell curve distribution of a random set means that you're going to get a fairly uniform level.

I have no idea what this Francis Fragment you're talking about is; Google doesn't help with it or the Dr. Francis you cite. I'll need a source other than the website you listed; wikipedia or an educational institution will suffice.

It's even hard for rival evolutionary theories.

I swear, if you're talking about intelligent design I'm going to be pissed I spent all this time writing this out.

Where did stars come from? My textbooks say from hydrogen, which can't even form stable molecules (molecular hydrogen is destroyed by UV and needs heavier elements to form). How could they have formed from clouds of hot gas when the gas is too hot to condense?

Gravity is a harsh mistress. If you have a sphere of constant density (say a sphere of water) and keep adding mass to it, the Schwarzschild radius increases proporitionally to the mass, whereas the radius of the sphere increases proportional to the cube root of the mass. So inevitably, if you keep adding mass the Schwarzschild radius increases past the radius of the sphere and it becomes a black hole. Now, a gas of hydrogen will not maintain a constant density, and as the density grows from the gravitational attraction fusion begins. The pressure from the fusion is what keeps supermassive stars from collapsing down to black holes; when that pressure eases too much (run out of fuel) you get a black hole.

Why are there laws of physics, and when did they appear? How could an explosion create them, or if they existed before the Bang, why were they there? Basically, why do things make sense?

The Big Bang model does posit a beginning, which makes it a problem for philosophical and commonsense logical reasons (turtles anyone?) Other theories replace the beginning with an infinite regression, which is just as bad if not worse.

I think quantum physics has shown us that commonsense logic fails mightly when we want to explain the universe. Why the universe exists is an interesting existential quandary, but it's not scientifically interesting. The universe is a space-time; the notion of time only exists so far as the universe exists. As for why do things make sense, the anthropic principle states that things make sense because we exist. You could construct a universe with different physical laws, but then we wouldn't exist to catalog them. It's a somewhat unsatisfying answer, but it's the best we've got. The universe is fundamentally weird. We have things like virtual particles which cause black holes to radiate. It's literally something from nothing.

@God: The universe has to be dependent on something outside of time, because time can't have caused itself. Everything that has a beginning has a cause, but God exists outside of time. He created it, so how could he be bound by its rules? God needs no cause because he has no beginning. That's why God is different.

And see, this is the part where you've said "I can't come up with an answer, so I'm going to make something up completely". Every single question you have posed about how the universe could have a beginning can be applied to God, and your only out is "Because God is special". You're making an appeal to authority.

Scientists DO entertain other theories. The fact that so many get rejected is because most of these alternate theories are 100% bullshit.

[MrPopo]

Oh god damn it, I tried to split this out into a separate thread and cocked it up and deleted your posts.

Why would you need to do that? The discussion started a few oages back anyway, thid wasn't a good transition point. But I think that discussion was done anyway.

Short answer as to why this part was the stopping point was that the mod cp only shows so many posts per page. I was going to do it in a couple operations, so I was starting from the end of the discussion and working my way forward.

The discussion was far from done, as you can see above. I just hadn't gotten around to my post because I was busy watching Castle.

[Jmustang1968]

Oh god damn it, I tried to split this out into a separate thread and cocked it up and deleted your posts.

Why would you need to do that? The discussion started a few oages back anyway, thid wasn't a good transition point. But I think that discussion was done anyway.

Short answer as to why this part was the stopping point was that the mod cp only shows so many posts per page. I was going to do it in a couple operations, so I was starting from the end of the discussion and working my way forward.

The discussion was far from done, as you can see above. I just hadn't gotten around to my post because I was busy watching Castle.

I was just giving you a hard time haha. Wasnt really very attached to the convo. It did hurt my post count though!! ::shakes fist:: haha

[MrPopo]

It did hurt my post count though!! ::shakes fist:: haha

Curses. You've found out my real plan. At night I delete a few of Noise's posts so that I can eventually be the top poster. I have to make sure no one else tries to eclipse me.

[prfsnl_gmr]

I am not a scientist, but I find these topics fascinating. Please continue the big bang discussion so that I can follow it!

[Valkyrie-Favor]

I've got homework to do, so I'm not going to address everything. You've given me some more research to do too. Good discussion.

And see, this is the part where you've said "I can't come up with an answer, so I'm going to make something up completely". Every single question you have posed about how the universe could have a beginning can be applied to God, and your only out is "Because God is special". You're making an appeal to authority.

This is exactly the same as inflation and dark matter/dark energy. These are huge problems for the Big Bang theory, and you're going to explain them away with imaginary dark matter, energy and rules that are supposed only because of our lack of knowledge. You're calling God of the Gaps, but Whatever-the-hell-else of the gaps is fine?

The fact is you have to invoke something hypothetical once you get past the time barrier. Even if there were a way to observe the past, we could not observe anything outside the universe itself. God is a very good choice because of his timeless nature and intelligence, but others like a multiverse theory or just "who knows?"

Similarly, dark energy is the current explanation for why the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, not just that it is expanding.

I know that. It's a pretty flimsy explanation, don't you think? It's an argument from ignorance. I've been thinking, what if the redshift as actually caused by rotation? That would sure turn everything on its head.

As we learn more we'll either gain more mathematical evidence for it, or we'll discard it for something that fits the data

That's great, but for now there are big problems.

Gravity is a harsh mistress.

The current star formation model fails completely. I've studied it (and used to think it was spectacularly cool) but as I began to learn more it soon became clear that the evidence isn't there. For one thing, the early stages will be obscured by a cloud of gas, so we can't see it. Despite the lack of data it's the prevailing view in astrophysics and it's just as dogmatic as my insistence that God is exempt from causality. Millions of years is way too long for us to have observed. Not only is the gas too hot to contract, space itself is too hot.

Gas has to be cold for it to contract under force of gravity, and the sun's equivalent cloud mass, within the critical radius for condensation, would have had to be 1.6 Kelvin. That's less than the CBR! For a gas cloud of typical temperature, gravity isn't strong enough.

The anthropic principle explains nothing, it only says we shouldn't be surprised that we are able to be surprised. It's hardly our best answer, just your favorite.

I wouldn't look to quantum physics as an out from logic. The laws of identity, non-contradiction, and the excluded middle are preserved even at that level. Quantum particles certainly act differently than regular ones, but their not seeming to make sense doesn't mean we should throw sense out the window.

[brunoafh]

Is this the RPG thread? For some reason I feel like I'm in the wrong place...

I recently completed Shadow Hearts on PS2. While it was a rather enjoyable experience, was also quite average. It was time well spent for sure but for some reason I was expecting more. The characters and story didn't really do anything for me, but it was solid gameplay and that's pretty much what carried it. The game overall was easy as hell, but then out of no where the final boss was insane. Had less than three game overs the entire playthrough, then with the final boss I lost several times and had to throw everything I possibly had to down it. If nothing else it was unique though, strange mix between goofiness and creepiness.

Now I'm wanting to delve into more untouched PS2 RPGs I have shelved, looking at Xenogears, some SMT, Suikoden V, Rouge Galaxy, Tales.... can't go wrong, but too many choices. Good problem to have I guess.