FE Big Bang?

Nevertheless, the force of gravity for such small masses is considerably weaker than the strength of the material the asteroids are made of.

Nevertheless, the force of gravity for such small masses is considerably weaker than the strength of the material the asteroids are made of.

No such animal.  All forces will change the structure of any object, given time.

Think metal fatigue at a glacial pace.

Um... Reverend, you're forgetting one teensy weensy detail. Steel and other metals change their shape on earth. You know, where we have an atmosphere. Well, this atmosphere tends to cause oxidation and winds and other such forces break small parts of the metal off, wearing it down. However, out in space, oxidation does not occur. Besides, I never said that they stayed the same shape the whole time.

If asteroids are moving at high enough of a speed, small particles will break off of them from time to time. However, there is not going to be any change in shape that is caused by their own gravity. And no amount of time is going to change that fact. That's what I meant. The gravity that is genereated by that asteroid will never get stronger. And if it is getting smaller because it's moving fast enough, then the gravity will get even weaker.

Um... Reverend, you're forgetting one teensy weensy detail. Steel and other metals change their shape on earth. You know, where we have an atmosphere.

Are you suggesting that metal fatigue requires an atmosphere?

Quote from: "Aralith"

Um... Reverend, you're forgetting one teensy weensy detail. Steel and other metals change their shape on earth. You know, where we have an atmosphere.

Are you suggesting that metal fatigue requires an atmosphere?

No, not at all. Like I said before, when I made the comment about the shape never changing, I meant that the shape will never change because of its own gravity. That's it. I am not trying to say that the shape of the asteroid is not ever going to change from anything, whether it be from movement, or metal fatigue, or whatever other concept you can think of to throw at me. At this point, you're just argueing the semantics of a phrase that I used to make me seem stupid. It is a technique called a strawman, and I would appreciate it if you would stop using it. If you are going to actually dispute my point about gravity causing things to take a spherical shape, if the gravity is strong enough, then please do so.

Are you suggesting that metal fatigue requires an atmosphere?

No, not at all. Like I said before, when I made the comment about the shape never changing, I meant that the shape will never change because of its own gravity. [/quote]

Why not?  Earth's terrain has, as has the moon's.

What don't you understand about not having enough gravity? The earth and the moon are large enough to pull themselves into spherical shapes. But an asteroid does not do that. Do you know why? Because gravity is equal to mass. Asteroids do not spontaneously grow, therefore their gravity will never become stronger. If anything, it will become weaker as the asteroid becomes smaller over time because of numerous things in the universe. So no, an asteroid's gravity will never in a thousand freaking years, change the shape of the asteroid.

What don't you understand about not having enough gravity? The earth and the moon are large enough to pull themselves into spherical shapes. But an asteroid does not do that. Do you know why? Because gravity is equal to mass. Asteroids do not spontaneously grow, therefore their gravity will never become stronger.

No, but the material in it gets weaker.

Do you understand nothing about gravity? As the material gets weaker, so too does the gravity. Gravity is directly proportional to mass and structural integrity of material. So, as material gets weaker, gravity does, and thus the object's shape is not changed by gravity.

I'm pretty sure structural integrity has nothing to do with gravity, friend.

Umm... yeah, I actually have no idea what I was trying to say there. Somehow it ended up as structural integrity having to do with gravity, when I was trying to say that structural integrity decays because mass is being lost. And thus the gravity will still become weaker. Sorry about the confusion there. I have no freaking clue how I ended up saying what I did.

I'm pretty sure structural integrity has nothing to do with gravity, friend.

Hmm... I'm not sure exactly what "structural integrity" means on a quantitative level .... except on the Enterprise, of course, where one often is forced by dire circumstances to reroute power from life support to structural integrity, implying that it is some sort of service provided aboard military vessels.

However it is a fact that in GR the curvature of spacetime is related not only to the masses of objects present, but also to their energies, momenta, and "stress", whatever that means, represented by ten independent numbers in an object known as the "stress-energy tensor".  While this doesn't sound like it means "gravity is related to structural integrity", it seems to me that an object with greater structure integrity can withstand greater stresses and thus curve spacetime more.

I admit not really understanding what stress is, and hope that perhaps An Engineer can enlighten me.

Anyways, we've wandered a bit, and I want to know if any true FE'er can tell me their beliefs on the evidence I presented in my initial post. How is it possible that the Big Bang could result in a flat earth with two flat objects ending up mysteriously orbiting (even though neither of them generates gravity to do so) and have just the right condition for life. Now, I know that some FE'ers believe in a God and that will probably be their answer: "God did it." However, I know for a fact that there are some, for example Dogplatter, who do not believe in a God. Care to explain how this could happen by random chance?

I admit not really understanding what stress is, and hope that perhaps An Engineer can enlighten me.

I assume you are referring to me.  

On a general level, stress (in the engineering sense anyway) is a force per unit area. There are actually many different forms of stress that stem from this idea.  Namely, axial, bending, torsional, and shear.  A simple example of stress is a a weight (say 5 lbs.) suspended by a cable (1" in diameter).  The axial stress is (all other things negligable) is found by force/cross sectional area.  So, 5lbs/pi(.5")^2 = 6.4 psi.

"stress", whatever that means, represented by ten independent numbers in an object known as the "stress-energy tensor".  

I don't deal with things that have a velocity over just a few thousandths of a percent of c, so I can't say that stresses at relativistic speeds are my specialty.  There is a fundamental idea in structural mechanics that is called a "stress tensor" that consists of 9 independent vectors (It should be noted that stress is a scalar, but it is easier to think of the stress acting on the cube surface as a vector, to see the direction).  

Think of taking a differential volume (a cube) of any structure (a steel beam, a piece of wood, an asteroid).  Now, there are three stress vectors that act on every surface of this dV.  There is one that is normal to the surface and two that are orthogonal to each other and the normal vector.  These other two act along the surface and are called shear stresses.  While there are six sides to this dV, there are only 9 vectors that are needed to state the stress at a point since this dV is in equilibrium.  

Now, is this the "stress" part of the "stress-energy tensor"?  I have no idea.

Think of taking a differential volume (a cube) of any structure (a steel beam, a piece of wood, an asteroid).  Now, there are three stress vectors that act on every surface of this dV.

Yeah, I've read about that somewhere.  I was worried that stress might mean something different in relativity, and it's starting to look like it does.  The tensor you're describing is rank three -- there are three vectors involved -- whereas the stress-energy tensor in GR is rank two.

I think it has something to do with the gigaflop transductor matrix.

I think it has something to do with the gigaflop transductor matrix.

What the deuce? Is that a real term, or did you just make that up, because I honestly can't tell.

I think it has something to do with the gigaflop transductor matrix.

1.21 jiggawatts!

Hey, um... I would really like to here an FE'er explain this one. Not the tangent we went off on about gravity and metal fatigue. I would like an FE'er to demonstrate how and why they believe that a Big Bang could have resulted in their perception of the earth. The chances against it are just astronomical!

Quote from: "DiegoDraw"

Just what I've concluded.

I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed you had concluded it  I was wondering what specific reasoning was involved in coming to the conclusion.

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I meant it stretched infinitely in each direction. As in "X, Y, Z."

Aha.  Well, that creates some problems.  First one that comes to mind is Olbers' paradox: if the universe is infinite in space and time, then the total intensity of the light reaching any point in space would be equal to the average luminosity at the surface of a star.  You can justify this by calculating the intensity directly or using a thermodynamical argument.  Olbers tried to resolve this by postulating a tenuous gas permeating space that would absorb light, but the problem with that is that if the universe didn't have a beginning then by now the gas would be in thermal equilibrium with the stars, so it would glow just as brightly.  Apparently even if you assume that the universe is spatially bounded you get the same result (though I don't know the reasoning why).

In any case, the picture of an infinite-in-time-and/or-space universe is just not tenable.

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Obviously, the world being created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster has far less evidence and "education" than others...at least one would hope.

I figured the FSM comment was tongue in cheek... I'm referring to comparison of the other three theories.  The Big Bang, Intelligent Design, and FE theory are not equally educated guesses.

They're also not equally accepted. The Big Bang is widely accepted by almost everyone. Intelligent design is a theory which is accepted by a variety of religious groups and others. Flat Earth is accepted by almost nobody..

They're also not equally accepted. The Big Bang is widely accepted by almost everyone. Intelligent design is a theory which is accepted by a variety of religious groups and others. Flat Earth is accepted by almost nobody..

While this is true, I almost don't care about it at all; I want not to be affected by arguments ad populam.

Nope, I debunked a lot of the atmosphere stuff (and pretty much most of the entire theory), right here.