Useless information thread

[borg number one]

Thanks TheNightHunter.

NEW YORK — Whether you believe our universe is unique or one of many coexisting realities, there's a scientific model that backs up your views. Cosmologists on both sides debated the issue June 1 here at the "Multiverse: One Universe or Many?" panel at the World Science Festival.

"Is the multiverse idea something that's implied by deficiencies in existing cosmological theories, or is it something some scientists need to help them explain certain unresolvable problems in existing theory?" journalist John Hockenberry asked, acting as moderator to scientists Andreas Albrecht, Alan Guth, Andrei Linde, and Neil Turok, who took the stage at New York University's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.

The possibility of a multiverse is raised by the theory of cosmic inflation. This idea posits that the universe grew exponentially in the first fraction of a second following the Big Bang, expanding even faster than the speed of light. Some versions of this theory suggest that certain areas of the universe expanded faster than others, creating separate bubbles of space-time that might have developed into their own universes.

The universe we live in may not be the only one out there. In fact, our universe could be just one of an infinite number of universes making up a "multiverse."

Though the concept may stretch credulity, there's good physics behind it. And there's not just one way to get to a multiverse — numerous physics theories independently point to such a conclusion. In fact, some experts think the existence of hidden universes is more likely than not.

Here are the five most plausible scientific theories suggesting we live in a multiverse:

1. Infinite Universes

Scientists can't be sure what the shape of space-time is, but most likely, it's flat (as opposed to spherical or even donut-shape) and stretches out infinitely. But if space-time goes on forever, then it must start repeating at some point, because there are a finite number of ways particles can be arranged in space and time.

So if you look far enough, you would encounter another version of you — in fact, infinite versions of you. Some of these twins will be doing exactly what you're doing right now, while others will have worn a different sweater this morning, and still others will have made vastly different career and life choices.

Because the observable universe extends only as far as light has had a chance to get in the 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang (that would be 13.7 billion light-years), the space-time beyond that distance can be considered to be its own separate universe. In this way, a multitude of universes exists next to each other in a giant patchwork quilt of universes.

Space-time may stretch out to infinity. If so, then everything in our universe is bound to repeat at some point, creating a patchwork quilt of infinite universes.

2. Bubble Universes

In addition to the multiple universes created by infinitely extending space-time, other universes could arise from a theory called "eternal inflation." Inflation is the notion that the universe expanded rapidly after the Big Bang, in effect inflating like a balloon. Eternal inflation, first proposed by Tufts Universitycosmologist Alexander Vilenkin, suggests that some pockets of space stop inflating, while other regions continue to inflate, thus giving rise to many isolated "bubble universes."

Thus, our own universe, where inflation has ended, allowing stars and galaxies to form, is but a small bubble in a vast sea of space, some of which is still inflating, that contains many other bubbles like ours. And in some of these bubble universes, the laws of physics and fundamental constants might be different than in ours, making some universes strange places indeed.

3. Parallel Universes

Another idea that arises from string theory is the notion of "braneworlds" — parallel universes that hover just out of reach of our own, proposed by Princeton University's Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada. The idea comes from the possibility of many more dimensions to our world than the three of space and one of time that we know. In addition to our own three-dimensional "brane" of space, other three-dimensional branes may float in a higher-dimensional space.

Out universe may live on one membrane, or "brane" that is parallel to many others containing their own universes, all floating in a higher-dimensional space.

Columbia University physicist Brian Greene describes the idea as the notion that "our universe is one of potentially numerous 'slabs' floating in a higher-dimensional space, much like a slice of bread within a grander cosmic loaf," in his book "The Hidden Reality" (Vintage Books, 2011).

A further wrinkle on this theory suggests these brane universes aren't always parallel and out of reach. Sometimes, they might slam into each other, causing repeated Big Bangs that reset the universes over and over again. [The Universe: Big Bang to Now in 10 Easy Steps ]

4. Daughter Universes

The theory of quantum mechanics, which reigns over the tiny world of subatomic particles, suggests another way multiple universes might arise. Quantum mechanics describes the world in terms of probabilities, rather than definite outcomes. And the mathematics of this theory might suggest that all possible outcomes of a situation do occur — in their own separate universes. For example, if you reach a crossroads where you can go right or left, the present universe gives rise to two daughter universes: one in which you go right, and one in which you go left.

"And in each universe, there's a copy of you witnessing one or the other outcome, thinking — incorrectly — that your reality is the only reality," Greene wrote in "The Hidden Reality."

5. Mathematical Universes

Scientists have debated whether mathematics is simply a useful tool for describing the universe, or whether math itself is the fundamental reality, and our observations of the universe are just imperfect perceptions of its true mathematical nature. If the latter is the case, then perhaps the particular mathematical structure that makes up our universe isn't the only option, and in fact all possible mathematical structures exist as their own separate universes.

"A mathematical structure is something that you can describe in a way that's completely independent of human baggage," said Max Tegmark of MIT, who proposed this brain-twistin gidea. "I really believe that there is this universe out there that can exist independently of me that would continue to exist even if there were no humans."

[Sentinel]

TheNightHunter is currently in a parallel universe

[borg number one]

Originally Posted by Sentinel

TheNightHunter is currently in a parallel universe

Ha ha. I hear you Sentinel. Nice avatar by the way!

Wimbledon Facts
14 strange but true things you never knew about the annual tennis championship

1) Don't complain about rain
During World War II, a bomb ripped through centre court and 1,200 seats were lost. Fortunately, they weren't filled at the time. Play finally resumed in 1946 but it wasn't until 1949 that the area was back in top shape.
2) No time for matchmaking
The last married woman to win the women's singles championship was Chris Evert Lloyd in 1981. Married to the jobs perhaps?
3) A short introduction
In 1930, Brame Hillyard became the first man to play wearing shorts. That was on court 10 - and Bunny Austin was the first to do so on centre court three years later.
4) By the letter
Goran Ivanisevic is the only Wimbledon champion whose entire name alternates consonants and vowels. We're not sure who did the research into that, but we're glad it wasn't us!
5) British bad boys
Tim Henman was the first-ever person to be disqualified from the men's doubles in 1995, after hitting a ball in anger and striking a ball girl in the process. Andy Murray, in turn, became the first British player in 106 years to be fined after swearing at a match official - although that was in a different tournament.
6) Champion eats words
Despite predictions of half a million visitors this year, when Spencer Gore became the first Wimbledon champion in 1875, he said he doubted whether the game would catch on - perhaps unsurprisingly since it cost just one shilling to watch the final and Gore received 12 guineas for his triumph. (If you're wondering? The pot now stands at 12.6m)
7) Name that game
The name 'tennis' is thought to come from the French 'tenez!' ('take' or 'receive'), a server's warning shout.
New balls please
Ever wondered why tennis balls are yellow? They weren't always - white balls were replaced in 1986 because they are more visible to TV cameras. Incidentally, one ball is only in play for about twenty minutes of an average two-and-a-half-hour tennis match.
9) Not just a pretty face
Maria Sharapova, one of the top earners in female sports, broke the record for the loudest grunts on court - recorded at a deafening 101.2 decibels!
10) Time for a break
Venus Williams won her 2005 final against Lindsay Davenport in the longest ladies' singles final ever played at Wimbledon lasting 2 hours and 45 minutes. Time for a sit down? Chairs were only provided for players to rest when changing ends in 1975.
11) Young starters
British player, Laura Robson, is not only the junior champion but, at 15 years and 152 days old on Monday 22nd June, was the youngest woman to play in the senior competition since Martina Hingis in 1995.
12) Strawberries and cream
Last year, 23 tonnes of strawberries were served to visitors. When laid end-to-end, these berries would stretch almost 60km (37 miles), i.e. from Wimbledon to Reading. A slippery slope when you include the 7,000 litres of fresh cream racked up each fortnight.
13) String theory
At least 40 miles worth of string are fitted to 2,000 rackets over a fortnight at Wimbledon. That's just under six laps' worth of centre court - what? We were curious!
14) Hark the halk!
Hamish the hawk flies for one hour every morning of the championships before the gates open to ward off the local pigeons. He starts his duties at 9am on the dot.

Read more at http://www.housetohome.co.uk/article...pzkzOE1GFrC.99

[Mike Bulgakov]

Keep on the Grass

By BEN SHPIGEL
Published: July 6, 2012

WIMBLEDON, England — The grass at Wimbledon is so lush that it feels almost sinful to walk on it. A grounds crew irrigates it and mows it. An independent turf consultant measures the surface’s hardness, its chlorophyll index and its live grass content.

Groundskeepers working at a baseline on Friday. The crew also uses a high-powered vacuum that slurps up dust and debris.
It is that devotion that allowed the grass to look as dazzling on Friday, Day 11, as it did at the tournament’s beginning, with two noticeable exceptions: the stomped, gouged brown deserts at both baselines.

The ever-expanding, ever-more-rutted blotches — by now they resemble an unwatered fairway on a budget-strapped golf course — cannot be reseeded until after the tournament. And so they remain a part of the Wimbledon experience, as inevitable as rain.

“It’s a two-week championship,” said Eddie Seaward, the longtime head groundsman. “The first week, there’s a lot of grass. The second week, there’s not as much. Players adapt.”

So do groundskeepers, who realize that not much can be done to improve a court’s appearance by this stage of the tournament. As long as players prefer slugging out points with ground strokes, the baseline will remain the most heavily trafficked area of the court.

Asked why his forehand started working better in the third set of his loss to Andy Murray on Friday, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga said: “When you have the ball above the net height on grass, it’s easier to play, and when the ball comes at you more slowly, it’s easier to play. But when a guy hits hard and deep, I think you have to have been out there playing to understand, but it’s hard to really hit the ball.

“You can’t really hit on grass. There are lots of bad bounces, so when the guy plays deep into the spot where the grass has been worn down and he doesn’t leave you the time to play, you don’t have time to play fast yourself.”

The best that groundskeepers can do is patrol those bare areas with a high-powered vacuum called a Billy Goat, which slurps up lingering dust and debris.

Mark Ferguson is one of three members of the Sports Turf Research Institute’s on-site team, which monitors the performance and the playing quality of the courts. The wear and tear sustained at Wimbledon in two weeks, he said, was not unlike what a soccer field experiences — over a full season.

“It’s inevitable, to a large extent,” Ferguson, a research manager at the institute, said. “From our point of view, we’re not as worried about the area behind the baseline because it’s off the court. It’s only when the patches that are worn out creep onto the court — we’re worried about that.”

Those patches can produce irregular bounces — obvious to the player, but barely perceptible to fans in the crowd or television viewers. If the ball strikes a bare spot, it is more likely to decelerate or bounce slightly higher than it is to skid laterally.

Agnieszka Radwanska, who will play Serena Williams in the women’s singles final Saturday, said the uneven bounces could be “really tricky.” Williams did not seem as bothered.

“I think it’s maybe a better bounce when it’s more green, but this is still a good bounce,” Williams said. “It’s not so bad. It’s kind of worn in, almost a little more hard-courty, which is always good for me.”

On the whole, the surface plays much more like a hard court than it did 15 years ago. The grass then was laden with poa annua, a weed also known as bluegrass, and rewarded players whose fast serves would skid along the soft court. It was so spongy, in fact, that Patrick McEnroe said he changed his ritual before serving because the ball would not bounce back into his hand.

In consultation with the Sports Turf Research Institute, Wimbledon in 2001 switched to a perennial ryegrass, which yields higher bounces. Underneath that ryegrass is a clay-based, loamy-type of soil that, when it dries out and the grass above is ripped away, can generate cracks.

Hardly any cracks have appeared this tournament, Ferguson said, as much a product of vigilance as the weather. The conditions have not been favorable for the tournament schedule, delaying several matches, but the cooler temperatures and abundant moisture in the air have helped keep the grass intact.

Ferguson said that his measurements Friday revealed an average grass cover of about 75 percent on the courts, a rating he called “excellent” for this stage of the tournament. That figure drops to about 10 to 15 percent by the baseline — and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

“As it becomes more of a dirt surface, the players actually have a little more confidence moving left to right because they can feel their feet under them,” said Darren Cahill, who is an analyst for ESPN at the tournament. “The courts, those first few days, are quite lush, and you have that unsure footing. You see much more slipping in the early days than you do in the later days.”

To that point, McEnroe cited Rafael Nadal’s early round struggles at Wimbledon. Even though Nadal has won two titles here en route to a 36-6 record, it often takes him a few matches to find a rhythm. Of the eight five-set matches he has played at Wimbledon, five have come within the first week, when the grass is softer. Without solid footing, Nadal cannot generate as much racket speed to lash his ground strokes, which hindered him during a second-round loss to Lukas Rosol.

“The conditions in the first week here actually hurt Nadal,” said McEnroe, an ESPN analyst who, like Cahill, is playing in the gentlemen’s senior invitation doubles tournament. “He would much rather prefer they started the tournament with the courts being the way they are now.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/07/sp...rass.html?_r=0

[Sentinel]

4) By the letter
Goran Ivanisevic is the only Wimbledon champion whose entire name alternates consonants and vowels. We're not sure who did the research into that, but we're glad it wasn't us!

Roger Federer - okay R and F are consecutive ...

Rafa Nadal ??? Bingo !

[borg number one]

Great post Mike Bulgakov. That article is so descriptive that you feel that you're trying to deal with the bounces on Centre Court. Thanks.

[borg number one]

Originally Posted by Sentinel

Roger Federer - okay R and F are consecutive ...

Rafa Nadal ??? Bingo !

You have a great point. Yet, how about Rafael Nadal Sentinel? You have the "a" and the "e".

[Mike Bulgakov]

“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” — Henry Miller


Wimbledon’s Guardians of Grass
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/sp...pagewanted=all

[borg number one]

One of my favorite movie endings ever is from 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Beyond the Infinite). When talking movies, I can't believe some people haven't seen this masterpiece.

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIwvLJX-Olg

[stringertom]

Antebellum plantation owners in Kentucky used slave labor to cultivate the hemp product...this gives new meaning to "The Blue Grass State"!

[stringertom]

ROFLMAO material...the USGA has a "While we're young" TV ad campaign in an attempt to speed up play; first, thanks for a reprise of the classic "Caddyshack" line; second, the one with Arnold Palmer and Clint Eastwood is a pure gem with the "Dirty Harry" glare at the end the "cherry on the top"!

[borg number one]

Stringertom, did you hear/see that in Kentucky recently, hemp production became legal?

Here's an article on the hemp legislation below by the way:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3045431.html

I used to live in Kentucky when I was very young and I just loved the Kentucky Wildcats back then and I got a chance to see some great horse farms. On the blue grass thing, Kentucky really does have some beautiful grass.

See: http://www.netstate.com/states/intro/ky_intro.htm

In the spring, however, when seen from a distance, the blue-purple buds of Bluegrass lend a bluish tint to the landscape.

Also, I haven't been able to catch the U.S. Open lately. I'm not a big golf fan, yet I do tend to check out the final rounds at the majors. Nicklaus, Hogan, Palmer or Tiger Woods in your book? I was a Nicklaus fan when young. That guy could play some amazing lights out golf. It's interesting that as in tennis, you see changes in how the game is played over the years, especially with equipment changes. It seems like drivers and putters have changed the most with technology changes, yet I'm no golf expert. Perhaps the irons are much different these days too. Anyway, have fun watching the U.S. Open this weekend! Here's a guy that has tried to use a mathematical model to "compute" who is the greatest golfer ever. He has calculated that Tiger Woods needs "just needs to win roughly four more majors and 15 more PGA tournaments to become the greatest of all time. It's a different sport, but this sure sounds familiar doesn't it?

See: http://fox5sandiego.com/2013/06/10/b...#ixzz2WL9cQ1sY

The most surprising finding, not that Nicklaus tops the list, but that as of 2011, when the book went to print, Tiger Woods ranked fifth behind Nicklaus, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson.

Eck said that’s mainly because Woods has played fewer tournaments than the players ahead of him.

“It’s difficult to equate an incomplete career versus a complete career,” Eck said.

He said Woods has already passed Watson into fourth place and also said Woods can catch Nicklaus, he just needs to win roughly four more majors and 15 more PGA tournaments to become the greatest of all time.

[stringertom]

IMO, in deference to the great one in your user name, consider Nicklaus as the greatest due to his parallel to Borg...a player who racked up majors while competing in peak eras of several other greats. Nicklaus won versus Palmer, Trevino, Watson, Ballesteros et al. He also finished second/third (18 wins, 19 seconds, 9 thirds) in majors while dueling vs those greats and more. Woods? Not so much! Consider this factoid...Tiger has never won a major without the lead entering the final round.

As to equipment changes, the biggest impact from techno advances are in the ball. Ask any pro if they could control an old balata with the new springboard clubheads and you will get a resounding "NO"!

[borg number one]

Originally Posted by stringertom

IMO, in deference to the great one in your user name, consider Nicklaus as the greatest due to his parallel to Borg...a player who racked up majors while competing in peak eras of several other greats. Nicklaus won versus Palmer, Trevino, Watson, Ballesteros et al. He also finished second/third (18 wins, 19 seconds, 9 thirds) in majors while dueling vs those greats and more. Woods? Not so much! Consider this factoid...Tiger has never won a major without the lead entering the final round.

As to equipment changes, the biggest impact from techno advances are in the ball. Ask any pro if they could control an old balata with the new springboard clubheads and you will get a resounding "NO"!

Yes, I agree stringertom. Thank you. I'd give it to Nicklaus. Your point on his competition at the top is an excellent one. The guy had some serious power too. Your take on it sounds right. Great info on the ball! That is a real good point and makes sense. So, you get more control on chips plus more power with the new balls? That would definitely make a tremendous difference. I think Nicklaus would have thrived with modern technology as well.

[Mike Bulgakov]

Guy Forget's Lacoste Equijet racquet looked like a guitar, but he played very well with the racquet. Was it shaped by Marat Safin? It may stand out as a more unusual design than the racquet that Noah used to win Roland Garros.

[Mike Bulgakov]

Watching "Blade Runner" makes me think about the Beijing air.

[stringertom]

Originally Posted by Mike Bulgakov

Guy Forget's Lacoste Equijet racquet looked like a guitar, but he played very well with the racquet. Was it shaped by Marat Safin? It may stand out as a more unusual design than the racquet that Noah used to win Roland Garros.

The French do like to do things different...vive la difference!

Imagine my take on things as a nine-year-old moving to France and seeing so many of Citroen's auto offerings so different to the big-fins rage of the early 60's American autos. Two particularly stood out...the down-and-dirty sardine-can "Deux Chevaux" and the ultra-modern "flying saucer" DS sedan that looked like it was ready for take-off to the next galaxy!

[vive le beau jeu !]

Originally Posted by Mike Bulgakov

reminded me of the streaker that crossed the court during a kournikova match at the time of this ad...

[stringertom]

Personally, I'm glad streaking did not become an addictive disorder in my life. My one-and-done performance occurred just weeks before graduation from FSU when thousands of us succumbed to mass (thankfully the babes weren't massive) hysteria and bared it all across Landis Green and the adjoining Student Union complex. BTW, if you are considering endurance-distance streaking, I encourage investment in nude-shaded support devices to avoid extreme post-event discomfort!