Andromeda

We here at Andromeda Blog suspect there's more than a little "home cooking" in the latest claims that -- somehow -- the Milky Way galaxy is bigger than Andromeda. Yesterday's story conveniently adding a billion stars to the Milky Way's total out of "thin air," i.e., hot gas, fits perfectly with the even crazier story that the Milky Way is bigger than Andromeda -- even though Andromeda has many more stars -- due to this mythical, magical "dark matter."

Regular readers know "dark matter" is simply the term fancy-schmancy scientists use for "thumb on the scale." Their poor mathematics and measurements, their tiny little brains, and their crinkled forepaws, lead your puny human scientists to the conclusion that 2+2=5, so they add 1 unit of dark matter to prove their math is right. That was fine, when it didn't affect allocation of the Universe's tax revenues, but now your Earth scientists are making a grab for a bigger haul, by actually claiming the Milky Way is bigger than Andromeda and that, my little-brained little friends, is going too far.

The latest Daily Orbit Update from MPEC has new measurements for 2004 VD17, but still NEODyS has not updated, but -- oh, my, God! -- JPL now has it at 2 on the Torino scale.

The end of the world is at hand! Or, at least, in 96 years, there is a not-quite-zero possibility an object will have some sort of impact with Earth. Pull down your pants and scream, pour mustard on your head and yodel, wear your shoes on your head and your gloves on your feet -- it's time to panic.

What was he thinking? It was completely indefensible to wait day after day without saying it, but finally he has apologized. Yet the wait continues for Saddam's apology to the Bush Administration (for not having weapons of mass destruction). And who knows when those Katrina survivors will finally apologize for all the inconvenience they have caused the President?

As the most vocal, influential, and prestigious science blog to support the ideas of Alex Mayer (no link available), we are deeply disappointed and saddened to see the blinkered, pig-ignorant, Big Bang idolators, dogmatists, and doctrinarians at Stanford have not only taken down his site, but deleted his name from their listing of "Visiting Scholars." There's the end of that little visit. Just goes to show, if you don't parrot the party line in the science biz, they'll crush you like a freakin' Periplaneta americana. No matter that their precious Big Bang theory is hanging together with duct tape and baling wire, no, all that matters is that the global megacorporations keep the masses somnolent with the Big Bang fairy tale. Well, you can all go back to sleep now, that big, bad monster "gravitational transverse redshift" is all gone.

Eek! A Palermo Scale rating of -0.57 just appeared on the Risk Page for 2004 VD 17. That's Torino Scale 1. If you were just born now, you've only got 96 years to live. Assuming it hits. Which is unlikely, because even Torino Scale 1 is extremely low risk.

Oh, no! Run around in circles! The Italians have 729 observations in their calculation (JPL only has 681), but the Italians are rating it Torino Scale 2. We're all gonna die!

Which, I guess, we already knew.

Countless readers have written in to demand an explanation of Alexander Mayer's theory that time has a local direction, such that past calculations of red-shifts were fundamentally in error. In response, we say, "What do you mean 'demand'? Is that supposed to be some kind of threat? As the Iranians said to George W. Bush: You and whose army?"

We answer only out of an excess of generosity of spirit, brought on no doubt by all the holiday decorations, as the local porn shops gear up for Valentine's Day. The key to understanding this is to think in four dimensions. That is, the dimensions of space, plus the one dimension of time. But then have more dimensions of time. But these new dimensions are not orthogonal to the first. Or to the space dimensions. No, wait, they are orthogonal to ordinary space, but not to each other. They are pointed out from the surface of spacetime, but since spacetime is curved, they could point in lots of different directions. Indeed, as you follow these time arrows around the Universe, they end up pointing completely around 360 degrees, because the Universe is finite yet unbounded, i.e., in curved (Riemannian) space. To put this another way, everything old is new again. Or the first shall be last, and the last shall be first. Or the big wheel keeps on turnin, and Proud Mary keeps on burnin.

By this means, naturally, we find there was no "Big Bang" but that the Universe has always existed, due to the nature of time. Now, we will answer some specific questions:

1. Could I be my own grandfather?

ANSWER: Well, how attracted are you to your grandmother?

2. I mean, can the great paradoxes of time be resolved?

ANSWER: Yes, once one sees that time itself has multiple directions, one sees time travel is easily achieved, but since time is locally distinct, time travel does require travel in 3-dimensional space. Since this takes time, and requires packing, it would not be possible to go back in time and shoot Captain Kirk before he shoots John Wilkes Booth and returns through the time warp.

3. Seriously?

ANSWER: No. Such contradictions are freely allowed and are currently being exploited by the future you. That bastard. Oh, damn, I just got a scar from where you shot me as an infant! Damn! You just read that your first shot did not kill me!

4. Is the finite, unbound Universe round?

ANSWER: No. It looks more like a mani-dimensional crazy straw. But tell me more about your grandmother.

Readers have been clamoring for Andromeda's comments on the "new" theory by Alex Mayer that time is "a local geometric distinction" in the manifold of spacetime. Ordinarily, Andromeda maliciously ignores the urgent pleas of the bleating masses like yourself, but, this one time, it will make an exception.

First, the theory is exactly correct. Time is a strictly local measurable quantity. All of the implications that follow are exactly as he says with one exception. The dinosaurs were NOT wiped out in a periodic cooling when Earth turned into a snowball. No, they were undone by the Siren call of Health Savings Accounts, which led to the rapid collapse of the dinosaur health insurance and healthcare industries. Also the dinosaur prescription drug plan proved both incomprehensible and capable of bankrupting both the government and the patients trying to use the benefit, leaving only the dinosaur pharmaceutical industry which roamed the Earth looking for dinosaurs to overcharge, until finally it transformed back into the crude sludge from which it came.

But the point is there was no "Big Bang" and the distant galaxies we see are much older than you had previously believed. This is due to the mis-calculation of ages, owing to incorrect assumptions about red-shifts. Based on this new theory, we can now say conclusively that Madonna, for instance, is in her late sixties.