Goblin Squad Member
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I hope all of you are enjoying your time with friends and family as much as I am. I'm mostly skimming over posts just trying to make sure I don't miss anything from Ryan or the devs, so forgive me if I'm slow to respond or even completely miss something that's directed to me.
And raise a glass to the New Year that will hopefully have many of us actually playing this game we've been so excited about. It's hard to believe that January 5th will mark my second year of posting, and that February 20th will mark the second anniversary of our announcement of The Seventh Veil on these forums.
It's been a pleasure being a part of this community, and I thank you all for your patience in putting up with my flaws, and for your encouragement and appreciation for my efforts maintaining the Guild Recruitment & Helpful Links list.
Merry Christmas to you all, and especially to Ryan and Lisa and all the Goblins who are working hard on this fantastic gift to us.
It's hard to believe that January 5th will mark my second year of posting, and that February 20th will mark the second anniversary of our announcement of The Seventh Veil on these forums.
Yes, Merry X-mas, and remember, check out The Seventh Veil, they're an awesome guild!
May we all satisfy our desire for materialistic gain under the pretense of goodwill toward one another. :)
And on that note, don't forget T7V!
And of course, Merry Saturnalia everyone.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I love Saturnalia!
I do too. I've talked before about Immanuel Velikovsky. His theory is that Saturnalia (a Festival of Lights that lasts 7 days) began in remembrance of "[t]he Deluge and the seven days of brilliant light immediately preceding it" - the Deluge being the Biblical flood of Noah - when the planet Saturn had a mini-nova that caused it to shine very brightly until, after 7 days, the earth passed through the trail of ejected matter causing the Flood as well as a massive dissemination of plants, Saturn also being known as the god of seeds.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Season greetings to those who have holidays of the season (all ten varieties (tough a few are the same).
Nihimon, do you really place any …. in Velikovsky. He is not even religion much less than not even being wrong.
Velikovsky was very imaginative and quite fun to speculate over, much as Robert Graves is regarding the origins of the Celts in ancient Troy, or Von Danikin in Chariots of the Gods.
Its okay to be human and have fun.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Merry Christmas all!!
Enjoy the season. I find the prefix: "Xmas-" comes into it's own for such occassions as:
"I'll just help myself to another "Xmas-beer".
"Well they are "Xmas-chocolates", afterall."
"Time for a 4th straight "Xmas-movie".
Though early morning light runs/swims/cycles are recommended in cases of excessive use.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Nihimon, do you really place any …. in Velikovsky. He is not even religion much less than not even being wrong.
I find Velikovsky utterly fascinating. I think there is a very strong bias to accept conventional wisdom when it comes to science. That translates to a reflexive dismissal of anyone who suggests that there might have been a time in human memory when the planets had different orbits, or when the moon was not a satellite of the earth. I personally tend to reject that kind of bias, and prefer to keep an open mind. I think that our current "scientific" understanding of the formation of the solar system will undergo profound changes as new facts reveal themselves.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Nihimon, do you really place any …. in Velikovsky. He is not even religion much less than not even being wrong.I find Velikovsky utterly fascinating. I think there is a very strong bias to accept conventional wisdom when it comes to science. That translates to a reflexive dismissal of anyone who suggests that there might have been a time in human memory when the planets had different orbits, or when the moon was not a satellite of the earth. I personally tend to reject that kind of bias, and prefer to keep an open mind. I think that our current "scientific" understanding of the formation of the solar system will undergo profound changes as new facts reveal themselves.
I don't think that the disposition to accept 'conventional wisdom' of science is a bias- I think that the conventional wisdom of science almost always follows the overwhelming weight of evidence.
I would find it extraordinarily surprising if I found out that the rules governing planetary movement were time-variable, and it would cause me to reevaluate almost literally every result that scientific experimentation has failed to replicate.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would find it extraordinarily surprising if I found out that the rules governing planetary movement were time-variable
The "conventional wisdom" is that our solar system has been in its present configuration since before life appeared on earth. It doesn't require some kind of "time-variable" mechanism to falsify that, only the passage of a large body through the solar system disrupting orbits. Would such a thing truly be "extraordinarily surprising"? Would it be "extraordinarily surprising" that such a thing occurred in human memory?
An international team of astronomers, led by a University of Arizona graduate student, has discovered the most distantly orbiting planet found to date around a single, sun-like star. It is the first exoplanet – a planet outside of our solar system – discovered at the UA.
Weighing in at 11 times Jupiter’s mass and orbiting its star at 650 times the average Earth-Sun distance, planet HD 106906 b is unlike anything in our own Solar System and throws a wrench in planet formation theories.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't think that the disposition to accept 'conventional wisdom' of science is a bias...
a particular tendency or inclination, especially one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question
It is clear to me that Catastrophism is generally dismissed out of hand - that is, it is not given unprejudiced consideration. There are other scientific controversies in which one side is treated like religious heretics for daring to question the conventional wisdom.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would find it extraordinarily surprising if I found out that the rules governing planetary movement were time-variableThe "conventional wisdom" is that our solar system has been in its present configuration since before life appeared on earth. It doesn't require some kind of "time-variable" mechanism to falsify that, only the passage of a large body through the solar system disrupting orbits. Would such a thing truly be "extraordinarily surprising"? Would it be "extraordinarily surprising" that such a thing occurred in human memory?
An international team of astronomers, led by a University of Arizona graduate student, has discovered the most distantly orbiting planet found to date around a single, sun-like star. It is the first exoplanet – a planet outside of our solar system – discovered at the UA.
Weighing in at 11 times Jupiter’s mass and orbiting its star at 650 times the average Earth-Sun distance, planet HD 106906 b is unlike anything in our own Solar System and throws a wrench in planet formation theories.
I've read up on said planet, and I don't think it really is that far outside of planet formation theories. I see it as less of a planet, and more as a failed binary star. If it had as little as 150% of it's mass, it likely would have ignited fusion and become a star.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A joyous Crystalhue to all! Try not to catch too many venereal diseases this year!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't think that the disposition to accept 'conventional wisdom' of science is a bias...
I recently read an interesting article on the age of Saturn's rings.
Cassini's measurements that "the main rings would be [extremely] old, rather than hundreds of millions of years old," Sascha Kempf, of the University of Colorado in Boulder, said.
...
Kempf and his colleagues used Cassini's Cosmic Dust Analyzer instrument to measure just how frequently such tiny particles cruise through the Saturn system.
They found that a surprisingly small amount of dusty material comes into contact with the rings. On average, just 0.0000000000000000001 grams — or, in scientific notation, 10^-19 g — of dust per square centimeter zooms through space every second at a distance of five to 50 Saturn radii from the planet.
Having measured this low rate of dust recruitment, the team then calculated that the rings have likely existed for about 4.4 billion years.
(emphasis mine)
It seems obvious to me that there might have been a period of time when the rate of dust accumulation was significantly different, but instead of maintaining a scientific attitude about the discovery, the article's headline reads "Age of Saturn's Rings Revealed", and the title of the web page, probably based on a previous headline, reads "Age of Saturn's Rings Pinned Down".
Why would they write headlines this way if not due to a bias towards accepting "probability" as fact?
For the record, the scientist's actual quote is properly couched with an appropriate level of uncertainty.
"It would be consistent with an old ring system," Kempf said.
(emphasis mine)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just in case anyone wants to continue this conversation - which I personally find fascinating, but which is probably not very interesting to most - here's an article about the asteroid Ceres venting plumes of water vapor. It seems like this is not an extraordinary process, and the idea that Saturn might have done something similar in the past seems not terribly outlandish to me.