| AUGUST |
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| 09/05/01 Ok, it's already September, but these questions were all asked last month while I sat around doing nothing, so I'm putting them in the August question. The first 4 are from Schran 1. "Why is the expansion of our universe accelerating, instead of decelrating? (Although decelerating is the same thing as accelerating, I mean acceleration in the sense of increasing velocity, not turning or decreasing velocity.)" Ok, we're not sure yet on whether or not the expansion is accelerating. Anyway, back in 1998, a couple of teams of astronomers were observing some supernovae about a billion lightyears away. Now, these supernovae were of a well-known type, so these astronomers expected certain peak luminosities for them, but the distance they computed from their observations did not match their expectations. So, they're a bit further away than ordinary cosmology (without the cosmological constant) would predict. However, if you look at the data with a cosmology that includes the cosmological constant (Einstein's self-declared biggest mistake), the observed data matches the predicted data....except if we do that, we get a universe that has been expanding faster in the past billion years that previously predicted. This space-dilation effect implies an accelerating expansion of the universe. Of course, for all this to work out, we have to accept the cosmological constant...or do we? No, not really. Some more time went by, and scientists said "hey wait a minute, we won't need a cosmological constant if we have dark energy (like dark matter, but uniformly distributed instead of half-assedly thrown around the universe). So, the answer to your question is: Dark Energy. You can look it up for more detailed info, there was a Scientific American, I think in January, that had a spread on dark energy and quintessence, some wicked pretty stuff. |
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| okay, on to Andy's 2nd quesiton. "Is the 4th dimension one of space or time? What is the hypercube? What would the next measurement of the 4th dimension be, after "length", "height", and "width"? And finally, assuming the 4th dimension is one of space, wouldn't we have to not exist? My logic is this: a 1 dimensional object cannot exist, as while it has length, it doesn't have height or width, and thus it cannot be taking up any space at all. Likewise, a 2-dimensional object cannot exist either, because although 2-dimensional objects have height and width, they do not have length, and thus they cannot be taking up any space either (they are totally flat). For example, a line you draw on a chalkboard or whiteboard with chalk or a dry-erase marker is not a line at all but rather a very, very, very thin rectangular prism (assuming it is perfectly straight). So if there is a 4th dimension of space, although we have length, height, and width, we do not have whatever the 4th dimension's 4th measurement is, and thus we do not actually take up any space at all. How can this be?" Depends on which dimension you choose to number 4th. A 4-space-dimentional-cube. I don't know, I'd call it Kletus. You're logic is a bit off, a two dimensional object can exist in a two dimentional world...the same way, we 3-dimensional guys and gals exist in a 3D world without much trouble. |
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| Okay, #3. "Is a worldwide surveillance network like Echelon really feasible with current technology, or was it just made up by conspirators?" The government doesn't deny the existence of Echelon, a computery thing under NSA control that scans emails, phone calls, etc. for key words that have some association with terrorism or other matters of naitonal securty. |
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| Okay, the last one from Mr. Schran. "How does compression (for example, zipping a file with WinZip) actually work? I know how to do it, and that it makes files smaller, but how exactly are the files made smaller? If different compression formats use different methods, use zip compression for an example." Okay, there are two basic methos, one is to cut out unneeded bits of code, the other is to scan for repeated code segments and replace them with shorter symbols which will be used instead. I don't know much about computer code, so I'll use regular language as an example: lets say I want to send "how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? A woodchuck could chuck much wood" Right now, there are about 103 characters there. If I make a little dictionary where "1=wood 2=could 3=chuck" my message becomes "how much 1 2 a 13 3 if a 13 2 3 1? A 13 2 3 much 1", which, including the dictionary, is only about 73 characters long, so I compressed it to about 2/3 of it's original size. So, I send you this compressed message and dictionary, and your compression program (like WinZip) checks it out and replaces 1 with wood, 2 with could, and 3 with chuck; and you've got the original message back. This is called the Lempel & Ziv Adaptive Dictionary Based Algorithm and is used by most compression programs. Of course, lets say this was part of a bigger message, and as it's scanning the program recognizes that wood and chuck appear together a lot more than seperately (say there's an entire paragraphs of "woodchuck" repeated, it would change it's dicitonary so that woodchuck is 1 so as to save room on 13, hence "adaptive". Lempel and Ziv are the people who came up with the algorithm (which just means "math thing that tells you how to do stuff"), and dictionary-based is pretty self-explanatory. |
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| Mike Billet, the guy who runs the www.whatshouldIputonthefence.com sght (you've got to check it out), asks "What should I put on the fence then?" Put up a giant banner advertising The Shack of Knowledge...or maybe a few Johnny Thunders posters. |
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| And our last question, "Why are dalmations used by fire departments?" I don't think they are, they're pretty stubborn when it comes to doing what they don't want to do, so they wouldn't be good fire-dogs. They look fancy though, so during parades and stuff they're always placed in wagons or fire-trucks, hence the association. parents, don't let your children grow up to be cowboys....actually, cowboys are ok, but make sure they get high-school diplomas. |