A caller to "Free Talk Live" being heard on KDX this morning caught my attention when he said, "Space doesn't exist."
My brain did a huge U-turn because I am one of the many who think "space is a place." Yet we also know there is nothing in space. To the best of my knowledge "nothing" is the same as "not existing".
If space is the thing that doesn't exist, what is the thing that has no space in it.. we apparently call both things by the word "space".
Space = the nothing located in itself.
But they say (reference "They Say"- the book) radio waves pass through space. That means radio waves pass through nothing.
How much nothing is there? Or, using other language, how much non-existence is there within nothing?
The absence of a thing cannot be measured, yet radio waves can be measured.
But not really, because no one is in space with measurement tools or portable radios.
The International Space Station? Or, "The International Nowhere Station", since nothing cannot have location.
Wait 'til the ALPB gets hold of this one.
K've always wanted to know how many watts would it take on FM to reach from the space station above earth to reach the moon. If I were to have a FM transmitter in space and set it to 100.1 Mhz how far would it go with say 300 to 500 mW? That would be a fun thing to try.
Carl, you have proven by your post above that "nothing" is something.
Which, interestingly, is what my lady tries to convince me of when she has a headache.
TheLegacy after all I've said you actually believe in the moon?
marosborne you clearly know what I'm talking about... and your wife's headache remind's me of the saying- "You can't prove a negative."
No? Have you ever met marosborne's wife?
woww.. talk about syncronicity! I was reading an article about this last night in Discover.
It gave me a headache, which is kind of a good thing, because it means something is in there.
"...... its nature has turned out to be mind-bendingly weird: Empty space is not really empty because nothing contains something, seething with energy and particles that flit into and out of existence. Physicists have known that much for decades, ever since the birth of quantum mechanics. But only in the last 10 years has the vacuum taken center stage as a font of confounding mysteries like the nature of dark energy and matter; only recently has the void turned into a tantalizing beacon for cranks. As one blond celebrity heiress and embodiment of emptiness might say, nothing is hot."
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/aug/18-nothingness-of-space-theory-of-everything
I say that because of this article and many others i have read in the past, our signals do make it beyond Earth, only trouble is , the signals are attenuated or often absorbed by stars whose magnitudes (there power to which it takes to produce energy and light) is so powerful they jam our signals.
Radio Telescopes focus that energy, whether it is sent or received and engineers can adjust for signal loss by turning the dish or making adjustments on a large panel with dials and switches.
One such story years ago was of a tv station in Texas that was off the air and eventually dismanteled. A year later, signals from that TV station were suddenly taking over TV sets, many calls were made and no one could come up with a reason or rhyme why or how this could happen. Later it was theorised that it was merely and echo of that tv station caught either in our atmosphere and bounced around or it made it into "space" and was sent back by ET or a weird worm hole.
That station was KLEE TV which was later KPRC TV and of course that story is a hoax. Sometimes space does exist in the hollow heads of some people out there with nothing better to do with their time than to make up some outrageous story just to get some attention and stir the pot.
In other news, echos of radio signals are often heard by HAMs and are a product of our signals being trapped in the atmosphere, bouncing around before returning to earth.
Can you imagine what the opening dialogue of Star Trek would have been if there was NO Space? " Nothing, The Final Frontier, These are the continuting voyages of the star ship Enterprise, her ongoing mission yadda yadda "
It's funny about "Nothing" being the final frontier in Star Trek.
One of the books I cannot understand is titled "Being and Nothingness" by John Paul Sartre.
Some people believe it is written by the owner of Part15(dot)us.
I found some words on page 47 that might apply to our subject:
"Non-being is not the opposite of being; it is its contradiction. This implies that logically nothingness is subsequent to being since it is being, first posited, then denied."
Perhaps that will help.
uh-huh, yeah, thanks a lot.
What really gave radio its kickstart?
Vacuum tubes.
What are vacuum tubes?
Little fish bowls full of nothing.
How do they work?
They are like little space samples with energy flashing around until it comes out bigger.
It means that if we're not careful, the International Space Station might amplify and the astronauts on board will come back as giants.
This discussion is getting rather heavy. I think someone needs to open a window to get some ventilation. 🙂
Talk about empty spaces, did you know the absense of an electron, called a hole, is a positive charge. Move an electron from here to there-the hole it left behind is a positive charge.
Which charge moves faster? The negative electron or the positive hole it left behind.
Engineers deal in "hole" flow while technicians deal in "electron" flow. Electrons are real while holes are the absense of electrons.
Wow; nothing is really something.
MRAM said: "Wow; nothing is really something."
I said:Who said the Arabs have done nothing for mankind? They gave us the zero.