tons (see xkcd).
I hadn't realized he died. My wife read the several hitch hikers's guide books (omnibus edition) to ou r kids as bed time stories.
British wit is wonderful. Have you read any Terry Pratchet? (not the earl y books, those weren't as good.. "Wyrd Sisters" might be a good start.)
George H.
A very untimely death indeed.
IMNSHO, by far the best versions are, in decreasing order,
- the original radio broadcasts; the voices ensure the pictures are perfect, and the sound effects improve on that
- the stage show, which captured the irreverence, e.g. the two-headed Zaphod Beeblebrox was played by two men in one very big jumpsuit, one behind the other
- the books
The films should be ignored, as should any of the many non-original voice-only versions.
The TV series wasn't bad, apart from the execrable prosthesis second head, and the excellent graphics, because they were so goo that they distracted from the commentary.
Americans have a pretty good sense of humour too, especially when it isn't eeked out to fill a schedule.
One of my favorites has always been:
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go past."
It's worth noting that, as far as we know, the universe (all the matter, energy and distance in the connected region of space we inhabit) is infinite, or at least much larger than the observable universe.
Also, the fact that the "observable universe" is something like 45 Gly across, is resolved by the extraordinarily rapid expansion of the universe (in the first couple... nanoseconds, was it?). At that time, the objects were only 13.7 Gly away; they're much further away now.
Also, it's a property of an infinite universe with even distribution of matter, that it has an overall expanding (or collapsing, or asymptotic) behavior, depending on things. The universe expands, not because of the propulsive or kinetic energy of the matter within, but because that's simply the solution of the field equations for that distribution.
Tim
-- Seven Transistor Labs, LLC Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com
Are you saying the universe expanded faster than the speed of light?
-- Rick C
No part that we can observe did (for obvious reasons), but there is nothing we have observed that suggests that we are in a special location here,
-- This email has not been checked by half-arsed antivirus software
Spacetime itself is allowed to do weird things like expand "too" fast, or violate conservation of energy (there's no force driving the matter apart, in and of itself; it's being pulled along by the waves).
Tim
-- Seven Transistor Labs, LLC Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com
I'm not familiar with that part of Relativity. I had always understood it was universal. Which waves are you referring to?
-- Rick C
Special relativity is a limiting case of general relativity. It is the solutions of the Einstein equations that gives us Big Bang cosmologies.
There are parts of our universe forever inaccessible to us. Try from UCL London Astronomy department (assumes some knowledge of tensor calculus but you can still look at the annotated illustrations).
This may be somewhat too mathematical, but offhand I know of no popular treatments of this aspect of Cosmology that are at a popular level.
This isn't too bad on Guth's Inflation but short on the details.
-- Regards, Martin Brown
Following up own post but this by Guth on recent observations that appear to confirm his inflationary Big Bang theory is better.
-- Regards, Martin Brown
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