You should watch the vid called Secret Space.....amazing :) http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-66929529309962...

And why wouldn't children love this stuff like they love Dr Who? It's clusters, clumps and lumps It's a skeleton, it's glue, it's a scaffold. Supernova and quasar and colliding galaxies blow away visible matter and there's be no life without it and no universe either and it's all happening at 100 million lightyears.... hey! count me in.

Wow! Great news, everytime Science conucts a new experiment we get closer to losing the religious cancer that has caused us so many problems.

We need to thank the people who conduct these experiments, they really are amazingly talented people!

Media 1 -- when are you going to play? Isn't there a great similarity between science and religion? "We are all of us in the gutter but...."

I hope they find the answers they're looking for. What good it will ultimately do us is questionable - it is costing billions to answer these questions. Let's face it the universe is unimaginably big. The nearest star (excluding our sun) is a mere 4 light years away and there are only 107 within a 20 light year radius.
The probability of finding a habitable planet we can actually get to is next to / adjacent to impossible.
Earth is all we've got at the moment. Let's look after it.

perhaps the eu would like to try and take it over, give them something else to think about

Scientests can say what they like, it's merely
an attempt to secure more funding. What exactly are we going to be looking for in space?Just as soon as we master this tricky taking off and landing safely
lark . Colonising other planets ? Give it a rest.

Billy a lot of people in Colunbus' time said the same thing. Closer to today a lot of people in the 1960s said going into space at all was wrong "while we still have problems here on Earth". Do you think Earth's problems would be lessened if we didn't have communication & weather satellites?

As regards what we should be doing in space - we should be funding x-Prizes
http://9percentgrowth.blogspot.com/2006/09/x-prize-founda...

http://9percentgrowth.blogspot.com/2006/09/scottish-space...

Luddites everywhere, I really want to hear what the creationists have to say. There is nothing inherently wrong with the quest for knowledge, just for the sake of expanding humanities fronteirs, just because there is no immediate application for the knowledge does not mean there won't be. That which will be possible is only limited by our present imagination. But I fear for the benefit of Media 1 there will always be those who will cling to the superstitious fear of the unknown, being even more fearful of taking responsibility for themselves and their kind.

Neil, the money they are spending on investigating dark matter, dark energy etc etc is in a bid to understand how did it all start and how will it all end. Pearing back in time some 13.7 million years using highly expensive technology in orbit around the earth is completely different to those sattelites which provide better communication gps etc etc here on earth - for which we see a direct benefit.
Billy in Germany I agree with you - it's always all about money.
Whilst the answers to the ultimate questions would be interesting (if we ever get them) is it really worth spending the £billion's to find out? Even if we do find "answers" the thing we know for sure already is that ultimately our sun will turn into a red giant and engulf the earth long before the universe "ends". So what's the point in spending all that money???

Sorry, folks. Correction - should have said 13.7 BILLION years (the scientists best guess as to the age of the universe)

As for creationism no scientist has yet created life in a laboratory. They've managed about everything else including splitting the atom - however, the creation of life remains elusive.

Oh sorry I forgot, all those Billions were not wasted,
they did give us velcro. What a leap forward.

However, Rosford, that should not be taken as automatically meaning that Creationists are correct.

Absolutely Guthrie, it should also automatically mean that the creationists are incorrect?

Sorry, not incorrect!

Rosford 11 said "Pearing back in time some 13.7 million years using highly expensive technology in orbit around the earth is completely different to those sattelites which provide better communication gps etc etc here on earth - for which we see a direct benefit"

To labour the point - at the time the Luddites didn't see any direct benefit from communication & weather satelites either (or the discovery of America but lets not go into that).

Surely your call (#13) for scientists to create life before you give up creationism goes against your objection to scientists having money to investigate things.

Neil, what use is knowing we are part of the Milky Way galaxy (100,000 light years across) which contains over 200 billion stars? Or for that matter that there are billions of galaxies? It's just nice to know - isn't it?
Our scientists are spending billions on investigating much more distant objects in an attempt to "map" the observable universe. These billions will result in more "nice to know" soundbites.
I'm not against spending money on scientific research - it is an equation of opportunity cost.
The money would be better spent in other areas of research which would benefit mankind.

Neil, hope you're getting my point. All the other "stuff" you talk about is on (or in orbit around) Earth. Well worthy of thorough examination - as are the other planets we share our solar system with. I'd even go as far to say those 107 stars I was telling you about are worthy of spending a few billion on since cosmologically they're on our door step - but mapping the observable universe? Pilease!

Let's spend a sh!t load of money to either prove or disprove the big bang theory, prove whether or not the universe will continue to expand and suffer a cold death or implode to create another big bang.
What a comlete waste of money.

Rosford 20
you're not getting MY point. Earth orbit was a long way away in 1960. Indeed so far away that no human being had ever gone there. America was equally far away (if you didn't know about Leif Ericson & the Indians) in the time of Columbas. How far away something is is a function of our technology & that is ultimately a function of the effort we make to go & find out.

I don't know (neither do you & you would scoff at any guesses I made) what investigating the big bang will create. I do know it will be nothing if we don't look. I would remind you that Newton's law of gravity depended on earlier observations of the motion of the planets.

Neil, we will have to agree to disagree. Scientists appreciate the scale of the universe and rely on our own lack of understanding to secure funding for an exercise which will merely produce nice to know facts. If you had the slightest appreciation of the distances involved you would also appreciate that any comparison to Earths orbit in the 1960's or America in Columbas's time are mute points.

Nuts, I had a perfectly good post then it seemed teh Scotsman went down when I tried to post it. NEvertheless I shall try and recall what it said.

Rosford, the point is that creationism isnt science, and although they like to use the excuse that science hasnt done/ found X, Y or Z as reason to disbelief it all, doesnt mean they are correct. Or indeed entirely wrong.

Anyway, did you know that the solar system is travelling through a region of increased concentration of interstellar particles? Such particles can end up affecting the heliosphere, which in turn impacts upon how many cosmic rays reach earth, which may have implications for everything from evolution to climate change. Does that mean it shouldnt be studied?
As for further away- gravitational lensing and other techniques allow access to natural laboratories that will help cosmologists and phsyicists produce equations that better describe the universe we live in. This will probably impact upon everyday life. Remember relativity for example. Cosmology was useful for confirming it.

Ultimately, its a matter of looking, and then we might stumble across useful stuff by accident. Or do you believe that we shouldnt be curious about the universe around us?

Also, the point with regards to Columbus etc is not the paltry matter of distance, it is the mindset behind the exploring, and as I said before, the possibility of new things to do, places to get to, resources to use, etc.

Knowledge for knowledge's sake used to be a widely accepted outlook in society, as well as a central tenet of science. The history of science illustrates that breakthroughs have been achieved through ambitious, open-ended inquiry. Anyone should see that information is the most valuable assett that mankind has gained over the years. If it's possible, why shouldn't we plumb the depths of the known universe? We can only be wealthier for the effort.

Helps if you read my posts guys. I'm not saying that we should not be studying the universe. What I am saying is that there is nothing to be gained by mapping the observable universe to the cosmic light horizon.
To put this into context current technology would allow us to send a probe to our nearest star (excluding the sun) which would take around 40 years to get there and then we would have to wait another 4 years for the information to get back to us.
To put it another way if you were to set of on the same journey in your car at 65mph it would take you 44 million years to get there. (remember this is one of around 200 billion stars in our own galaxy)
Before everyone starts providing the additional funding to complete the mapping I'm suggesting the monies be redirected into exploring the stars on our doorstep in search of habitable planets which one day we may possess the technology to reach (we don't at the moment). We will certainly never be able to physically explore the extent of the Milky Way, our own galaxy never mind the billions of galaxies that lie beyond.
There are already 2 such projects underway, however they will not at present be able to detect a blue planet like earth - but will detect rocky planets.
The money spent on mapping the observable universe will provide interesting after dinner conversation - nothing else.

And the point everybody else is making is that nobody knows what you will find out from mapping the universe. Good scientific research always pays off - it is known a seredipity.

The distance argument is rather silly because nobody is suggesting we have to cross the universe to observe it. Rosford has accepted that to observe the universe we only need nasty orbiting satelites pointing outwards whereas for weather & communication we need nice satelites in orbit pointing inward. In any case complaining about the "distance" to the big bang displays an ignorance of the nature of distance in an expanding universe.

#28 - so inaccurate not worthy of reply. More appropriate post 28 goes where the sun doesn't shine.......

Well, Rosford, I think a better way of putting it is that you can't see anything to be gained by mapping the observble universe. I've already given my reasons why it may well be helpful.