In article <477d216a@news.povray.org>, war### [at] tagpovrayorg says...
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > >   I don't think the brick would expand because forces which are much
> > > stronger than gravity are keeping it together.
> 
> > In other words, space expands, but then the brick collapses again? Sure
, 
> > it's possible.
> 
>   No. Space expands, the brick doesn't.
> 
> > It still doesn't explain why space expands but the matter 
> > in it doesn't. It's like saying "time slows down, but the spring in the
 
> > clock keeps it running the same speed". :-)
> 
>   Hey, I'm just repeating what they are saying. Don't blame me.
> 
>   Things like expansion of the universe still make a lot of sense when
> compared to the wackiness of quantum mechanics, which has all kinds of
> things akin go magic. (For example particles being in two places at the
> same time. This includes the possibility of a particle being inside and
> outside the event horizon of a black hole at the same time. Go figure.)
> 
> > I don't think this works for celestial objects. If you added space 
> > between the sun and the earth without slowing the orbit of the earth (i
n 
> > absolute velocity terms), you'd make an unstable system where the earth
 
> > would tend to move even farther from the sun.
> 
>   AFAIK space doesn't expand inside galaxies.
> 
You keep repeating this, but other theories imply that, yes it does, its 
just that the force that makes the universe expand is *huge*, but weak. 
I.e., its like 10 billion hand fans waving at a sail. That amount of 
force *might* have the effect of making the boat move, but its effects 
on a fly passing in front of any given fan isn't going to do much. By 
the same token, gravity is sufficient, for now, to prevent any obvious 
expansion of places where it dominates, but we are talking about an 
expansion rate, where it dominates, of like 1 gazillionth of a 
millimeter per billion years, or some absurdly small change. Small 
enough that its not going to be detectable, using any known instrument, 
until like 10,000 times to time its going to take for the sun to burn 
out.

It rather depends on "which" of the current theories you look at, and 
who is discussing them. There are a lot of attempts to fit the math 
together to work, and none of them have a clear picture, so all we have 
is approximate guesses. Some of what you say fits, some of it doesn't, 
so its is possible that the universe will die heat death, by *very 
slowly* being ripped apart, including atoms, but at a rate that will 
leave 99.9% of all suns dead by the time it starts to happen anyway, 
but, at this point, slightly less possible, according to some people in 
the field, that matter will remain intact, but the universe will just 
keep expanding at an accelerating rate.

-- 
void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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