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Topic: Rookie questions (Read 14042 times)
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Tiberian
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I can't wait for the first extra-terrestial life samples brought back to earth from Europa. At first we are happy that our germs have not killed the Europa's bacteria, but when tables turn and we get a 'The dead walk' scenario here...
Naturally it would be cool to find life on Europa. AGAIN religions would have to re-think their ways. And mostly all the people who state clearly "There is no extra terrestial life, period." see the error of their ways and hopefully we will see mass-suicides.
It wouldn't surprise me if a large number of new religious factions were formed and mass-hysteria would start to spread all over the world. It would be cool.
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Bultro
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And this is just for bacteria.
Imagine if they bring back a 15 Kg salmon. And it tastes good 
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Defender
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lets also not forget the lessons of 911, operation desert storm, and war of the worlds. no wait, skip war of the worlds, that really happened 
~DEFIANT
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Michael Martin
Core Team
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I don't think Jesus ever said anything about the existence of life on other worlds, or, indeed, if He was dying for their sins too...
... or if He did, the guys writing the Gospels didn't think it was important enough to write it down.
Just speaking from people I know personally, plenty of Christians find no conflict between the concept of extraterrestrial life and their religious doctrines. If there are Christians who can't stand it, it's their problem, not Christianity's. 
Also, silly boy. America exists. It's DELAWARE and SOUTH DAKOTA that don't exist.
Sure, they show up on maps. But have you noticed that all maps are made by cartographers? What do they need to hide?
(Oh, and yeah, lightning is totally random, and firetrails aren't. Both can eventually be defended against, and this is The Real Answer for both.)
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Art
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Um, there shouldn't *be* any difference on globes -- if there were the globe would be actively inaccurate in a way that would make keeping directions and such constant very difficult (and if you can't at least use the globe for seeing what direction something is from something else it's useless as a globe)..
On maps, yes, the size of the North American continent depends a lot on the projection used. I think it's silly to claim that this difference is because of local prejudice, though -- all projections of a 3-D globe onto a 2-D surface will involve some distortion. The old-fashioned Mercator projection that you're probably referring to (which was originally a *European*, not American invention) is useful because it maintains an absolutely undistorted relationship between north, south, east and west as two directional axes, allowing you to accurately navigate by compass bearings, even though it ignores the effects of there being a north pole and south pole.
In that one, yes, North America is much larger than it should be compared to South America, mainly because spreading a globe into a flat surface that way stretches things out immensely if they're closer to the poles, and North America is closer to the North Pole than South America is to the South Pole. I should note that northern Eurasia is similarly stretched, and the most obvious problem with the Mercator projection is that it makes Greenland look bigger than Australia (which it isn't). It's purely a mathematical result of the projection used, not some Greenland nationalists' desire to make Greenland look important.
The more modern projections (wherever you buy them) are usually picked because nowadays most maps are for educational purposes rather than being used as nautical charts, so some distortion of north, south, east and west is acceptable if the continents are more realistic in size. You'll notice that on most world maps that show size accurately, the directions are "bent"; the meridians curve, so that you can't just point upwards on the map and call it "north". That would be really inconvenient for a sailor, but it's the only way to accurately show the curved surface of the globe so that things don't get stretched out of shape when you draw them.
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Death 999
Global Moderator
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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heck, it took around 100 years for the NYT to print a correction for their assertion that Goddard's idea of 'rocket propulsion' was impossible because there was nothing to push against in space.
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« Last Edit: September 28, 2004, 09:48:21 pm by Death_999 »
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