We're not far from seeing it with our own eyes. The universe has existed for around 14 billion years, and the furthest star which our telescopes have discovered is around 13.2 billion light years away, meaning we are seeing the light from something which existed relatively very near to the beginning of the universe. They have also found that there is microwave radiation filling the universe which possibly predates the big bang itself: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11837869 The theory may still not have been totally figured out, but we are getting there. We're even capable of reproducing it at Cern. Exciting times people.
Dinosaurs, Big Bang, Evolution, the Paranormal - All mysterious in their own way but what I want to know is why you still think Warnock is a good guy and how that makes me a ****er? Test your telepathy now. Can you guess what I'm thinking?
I like Warnock at times, but most of the time he winds me up. And just for the record: dinosaurs - fact; big bang - theory; evolution - fact; paranormal - fiction.
Quite..! Although I think the question was why dinosaurs first..? The answer to that was that specific conditions suited them rather than anything else, and they thrived. They were amazingly successful, considering how dumb they were. Just shows how the environment plays such a big part in a species success. Here's comes a link you might like... The environment at Leeds might just be the right one for Warnock. I think he'll drag Leeds into the playoffs, and if not, they'll be very tough next season. On the whole I don't think I like Warnock.
Last night I was watching the game on TV in the pub and there was this guy sat all by himself listening to his MP3 or whatever and reading the paper when suddenly he jumps up and yells "Lambert's scored" and a couple of seconds later blow me down if we didn't see exactly that for ourselves on the telly. I can tell you I was very disturbed by this guy who had mystic powers enabling him to fortell the future with such powerful accuracy. If this was the 16th century I am sure we would have dragged him from the pub and burned him at the stake. As it was it only took us a few moments to realise he was listening to the match on analogue radio which is a couple of seconds ahead of the digital TV broadcast. The reason for recounting this incident is to reinforce the view that every strange event has a perfectly rational explanation.
Wow, this sooo off topic, so perhaps those who fell out last night on the match-thread could carry on the insults by PM so we don't have read it? Anyway, since we are discussing the superstitions, the feeling which Adam had is reasonably easy to explain as we have all sorts of feelings from mild indigestion to a vague feeling of well being, or gloom. Nothing usually happens so we forget and move on. Humans are hard wired to recognise patterns which might be useful. There is plenty of research to show that we associate things quite easily which are not related, hence the extraordinary amount of lucky socks or behaviour in sport particularly. It's just a misfiring of a useful humans trait.
Indeed. It's often why I can type 1-0 Lambert and post it before anyone else has reached for their keyboards. Trouble is, some others are catching onto the idea.
Something that stumped me a bit the other day was a study that conclusively showed that human beings can feel when they are being watched. I'm not sure about the scientific explanation for that one.
I'd give that one a hundred years. Either it will be explained by then, or humans will have completely lost the trait. Oops, how 1st World of me..!
Yeah I think everyone feels it now and then, but I always assumed it was just your mind "playing tricks". Turns out it's some instinct we've evolved. No idea how it works though.
I went to the cinema the other evening to watch The Woman In Black. For the past couple of nights, when I've gone to bed I've felt as if I was being watched. It's an ancient trait of the jungle or the wild, where a human, as prey, is under constant threat of being maimed or killed. Mine has obviously been misfiring, as Channonfodder so excellently put it, because I was under absolutely no danger at all.
I see no reason why psychic phenomena such as Adam experienced shouldn't have what you call a "scientific" explanation. To put it a different way, what if most people weren't able to see, but a minority were. How would the unsighted majority explain what the few who could see described to them? I imagine a lot of them would refuse to believe it was happening because there was no explanation for it. So what if there is a psychic sense which allows some people to communicate telepathically? Just because you can't explain it doesn't mean it isn't happening.
The military certainly believe it. Men who stare at goats even made it onto the big screen. Now there's 90 minutes of my life I'll never get back.
Sight can be explained by science. To explain it to your hypothetical unsighted majority would be difficult but possible, in the same way that Hawking has attempted to explain how the fourth dimension could be perceived. We can't imagine it ourselves, but we still know that the science is there.
Some superstition is nothing of the sort. "it's unlucky to walk under a ladder" (yes, the man on top is not very careful with the paint he's applying) "It's unlucky to pass on the stairs" (because one of you is likely to trip over and break their necks in the fall) If humans have an ability to sense when we are being watched then I can see how that would useful, from an evolutionary perspective, but I dont see any reason to use a supernatural explanation. As for stuff like throwing salt over your shoulder, that sort of thing suggests a mind which never questions "why?" and an early viral campaign by the Reformation Salt Council.
