Stargazer

And this is an appropriate moment for another CGP Grey video, this one about Vatican City:

This seems to be appropo for the current event. I wanted to make a corresponding video for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Don't know if I ever will.

That's kind of inevitable due to the age-limit for cardinals able to vote on who's going to be the new pope. Only cardinals who had not passed their 80th birthdays on the day on which the Holy See became vacant were eligible to participate in the conclave. Although it's not a formal requirement, the cardinal electors invariably elect the pope from among their number. Given that it is always the Q12 member who is longest serving as such who becomes church president makes it inevitable that the church president is quite a ways along in age, compared to any new pope.

One knows one is getting OLD when the new Pope is younger than one.

As I understand it, the MTC facility has its own meeting facilities, and dispersing the missionaries to student and family wards is unnecessary. Probably also distracting, both to missionaries and ward members. I did not attend the MTC in Provo, but its predecessor the Language Training Mission, which had its own meeting room that served as cafeteria and chapel. We didn't have a bishop in our section, for the German/Dutch/Afrikaans missionaries, but a director and his staff, who seemed to have served that function.

Interesting questions! Aside from the "I have no clue" and "how can we even know," all else is speculation. But there is this story in the book "Saints at War: Inspiring Stories of Courage and Valor": Told by Gerald Mervin Bolton (World War II, Europe, Army): "Gerald was with another GI who was a Latter-day Saint. This was unusual; there were very few men he had found in his regiment that were Mormons. The two men were behind some rubble and could see a German soldier creeping toward them from a path below with his rifle ready. Gerald’s companion fired and killed the German. They went down to search him and found he had papers on him that identified him as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Gerald’s buddy sat and cried. He was so devastated because he had killed another Mormon. He was so overcome that he couldn’t stop crying, and Gerald feared that he would have a mental breakdown and requested that he be sent back of the line for a few days rest. "A couple of nights later he had a dream. He told Gerald that it was so real he wasn’t sure if it was a dream or if the man was actually there. The German soldier came to him and said 'Please don’t mourn for me. You’ve done me a favor, for now I am out of the war and have found happiness as you will never know on earth. I thank you, and am sorry that you still have to endure the hell I have been so fortunate to leave.' From that night on the GI was alright and his faith had been strengthened." Freeman, Robert. Saints at War: Inspiring Stories of Courage and Valor (pp. 9-10). Cedar Fort, Inc.. Kindle Edition. Was it real, or a delusion? Gerald's buddy seemed to think it was real. The German soldier wasn't a relative, or even a friend, and yet the visit was either authorized or requested by someone.

I imagine that the size of VC would militate against bothering to conduct that survey there. And I suppose that the answer would be a foregone conclusion, anyway. Something along the lines of 100% religious nationalist (though I suppose it might not be quite that high)! I wonder why they didn't survey Saudi Arabia? Seems the religious nationalism value might be rather high there, it being the cradle of Islam, after all. Maybe that's why they didn't survey SA? Because like VC the results might have been seen as a foregone conclusion?

I guess so. I didn't write the title of the series. Maybe they're trying to present something in opposition to all the fake stories. You're welcome to not care one way or the other.

Being a poster on the publisher's Discord server, I tried to entice Barnes to come to this forum to discuss his book, but obviously failed because he hasn't shown up, nor did he answer my message. Sigh. I don't even know if he read it.

The following video isn't really connected with the topic, but since it dealt with a paper explaining electric force as part of gravity, and to my mind, at least, would seem to lead to artificial gravity if true, it seemed vaguely relevant. But especially since the video is from my favorite living physicist, Sabine Hossenfelder, I thought I would post it here. TL;DW -> Sabine debunks them gently. She says they saved her from the labor of debunking them by doing it themselves. Link to paper -> Electromagnetism as a purely geometric theory

That's all very nice, but what he's smelling are the materials that we out in space, exposed to vacuum and unfiltered sun, but then brought into a place with breathable atmosphere, where the outgassing from the material can be detected olfactorially. He's not smelling space. I just sniffed at my mobile phone. No discernable smell. But if I applied vacuum and heat to it, it would begin outgassing from the heat, and when I brought it out into the air I would definitely be able to smell it. It would smell like overheated plastic. Space has no smell. There's nothing there to smell.

Having visited Medford several times due to relatives in the area, applying the term "metropolitan" to it seems quite the exaggeration! 😁 Like referring to the part of my village where one finds the pharmacy, curry shop, and the news agent as "downtown."

The video references a few occurrences of it, out in the "wild."

Here is Part 2

This is just starting, and as of this post only the first 2 videos have dropped. Jacob Hansen is tĥe narrator. My interest is enhanced by the fact that one of the producers was my youth home teaching companion over a decade ago before he served his mission. I'm quite proud of him! It's good to know that I didn't ruin him! 😀

LOL, outer space doesn't smell. Period. Vacuum has no smell. The smell that is referenced is the smell of materials that have been baked in sunlight and the odor is their outgassing.

Gravitation is not universally understood to be a force, but they still treat it as if it were in many cases. I was quoting from an article that used the word force in a way that seemed (to me) to contradictive, since if it were a force then all of them should have separated from each other simultaneously. For those who reject gravitation as a force, it is understood to be a result of the distortion of space-time caused by mass. It can be visualized as a pair of masses lying upon a sheet which, depending upon the size of the mass, depress the sheet in accordance with the mass's bulk. This causes movement towards each other that is interpreted as "attraction." This visualization is useful as an aid to understanding, but at the same time it is deceptive. It may all be a huge pile of misinformation and baloney, however. As much as they like to claim that with the discovery of the Higgs Boson and its concomitant "explanation" for mass we understand what is going on, it could be nothing more than a bunch of mathematics that actually signifies nothing. That's what it said, but my question is this: if only gravitation separated out at 10E-43, leaving the others unseparated at that time, doesn't that mean that gravitation is not actually a force? It seems to me that they should all have separated out simultaneously, if they were all forces. Why do you think the universe is infinite? There's no evidence for it. I'm not sure there's any evidence for the contrary, either. On this board a long time ago a poster who didn't last long because his pet anti-religious and anti-Mormon arguments weren't being taken seriously posted the stupid question: Can God count to infinity instantaneously? Of course the answer to the question is "No, God cannot count to infinity instantaneously or in any time." This is because not even God can count to infinity, because infinity cannot be reached. That is the definition of infinity. So not even the universe can be infinite. You might be interested to hear that famous astronomer Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) rejected the Big Bang because he felt it pandered to religious arguments. He said "The reason why scientists like the 'Big Bang' is because they are overshadowed by the Book of Genesis. It is deep within the psyche of most scientists to believe in the first page of Genesis". Interestingly, the term "Big Bang" was coined by Hoyle! It was said that he intended it as a mocking term, but he said that it was merely intended as a contrasting term. Hoyle himself preferred his own "Steady State Theory," which explained the expansion of the universe by proposing that new matter was constantly coming into being all over the universe, and the "pressure" of that genesis is what was causing the expansion. It is somewhat ironic that the Big Bang theory was first formulated by Belgian physicist and Catholic priest Georges Lemaître, but its opposing theory was proposed by the British atheist Hoyle. And you seem to prefer the atheist's theory over the theist's! Fortunately, salvation is not dependent upon which theory of creation one prefers. As an aside, Hoyle later deviated from pure atheism into a kind of scientific creationism, writing: "Would you not say to yourself, 'Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.'"

That described the creation of the solar system. Every solar system, in fact. In Moses 1 we learn that we are not living upon the only earth that God had created. Our Adam and Eve were not the only Adams and Eves that were created on the many worlds that God has created and will create. But details are only given to us about our earth: Moses 1:34-38 -- 34 And the first man of all men have I called Adam, which is many. 35 But only an account of this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, give I unto you. For behold, there are many worlds that have passed away by the word of my power. And there are many that now stand, and innumerable are they unto man; but all things are numbered unto me, for they are mine and I know them. 37 And the Lord God spake unto Moses, saying: The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine. 38 And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works, neither to my words.

That's the natural best explanation, of course. 🤣

Everything is click bait. I'm working on a video for my YouTube channel about a pair of villages near me here in England, and the only exciting thing about them is that there is a wooded area near one of them (Clapham Wood) that has some relatively recent stories involving supernatural, UFO, or criminal activity (murder). And of course the title of the video will lead with the "haunting" theme, even though I will hardly cover the woods themselves. Instead of "The Villages of Clapham and Patching," which will attract few if any clicks, the title will be something like "Are Patching and Clapham's Woods Haunted?" Or maybe "Is the World Ending in Patching?" referring to the pub in Patching, called "The World's End".

So it appears. Creation, at the moment of the Big Bang, "[i]n the most common models the universe was filled homogeneously and isotropically with a very high energy density and huge temperatures and pressures, and was very rapidly expanding and cooling. The period up to 10E−43 seconds into the expansion, the Planck epoch, was a phase in which the four fundamental forces—the electromagnetic force, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and the gravitational force, were unified as one." And at that point there weren't even any particles, let alone atoms. It wasn't until about 10E−43 seconds that gravitation separated from the other forces. It wasn't until about 10E−6 seconds after the BB that quarks and gluons combined to form baryons such as protons and neutrons. So, it appears that the universe was at its minimum in terms of entropy at the moment of the BB, and began to increase in entropy beginning at about 10E-43 seconds later, when gravitation separated from the unified force. And the universe has been increasing in entropy ever since.

"[F]or certain"? Please, I would love to hear your argument for that! OK, nevermind, I see that you explained yourself already to Ted. Got it.

From a certain point of view, I suppose. Consider the entropy of Betelguese. Its mass is up to about 19 times the mass of our sun, its gravitation is extremely strong, and it's about to blow up. In about 100,000 years or so. That will be VERY disordered.

Just for the fun of it, I did a selective summary of temple naming vs temple location (mileage is as the crow flies)... The Seattle temple is located in Bellevue, 10 miles away from the Seattle Center (where the Space Needle is). The London temple is located in Newchapel, Surrey, 24 miles south of central London (where Big Ben stands). From a personal viewpoint, it's only 21 miles from my house. It would take 1 hr 41 minutes to drive to the temple from Big Ben, but only 40 minutes from my house. The Portland Oregon temple is located in Lake Oswego, OR, 7 miles southwest of Portand's downtown. The Washington DC temple is in Kensington, Maryland, a different state, about 2 miles from the DC border The Atlanta Georgia temple is located in Sandy Springs, Georgia, about 12 miles north of downtown Atlanta The Medford Oregon temple is located in Central Point, Oregon, about 4.5 miles northeast of downtown Medford The Memphis Tennessee temple is located in Bartlett, TN, about 13 miles northeast of downtown Memphis The Los Angeles temple is actually located in Los Angeles, amazingly enough