There is an Astronomy for Dummies book available.
Does it deal with cosmological theory like relativity and strings and the umm… whatchamacallit… Grand Theory or whatever?
don’t know…I’ve only seen it advertised…I haven’t read it
p.s. Grand Unification Theory
You could try Five Equations That Changed the World : The Power and Poetry of Mathematics
Covers special relativity only and not in much depth but I found it accessable and readable.
>>snort<< Bear, you mind if I use this as a new sig?
Hmm… some people have stars in their eyes…
I know I’ve seen Nuclear Fission for the Compleat Klutz
*Theory: The universe is expanDing in all directions really fast.
Then how come the distance between my nose and the tip of my outstreached finger isn’t getting farther? - howardsims*
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- Well, this one is easy.
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- It is because you are infinitely dense.
? - And I did see a “Web TV for Dummies” book once. - And a “Network Administration for Dummies”, too. I’m not sure what to make of either. - MC
Gosh… Thanks everybody. Especially jb_farley for giving me the setup. And tcburnett for using my line from this thread in your .sig. I feel honored that you …uhhh…lepton my hadron line.
heh heh
ha
BWAAHAHAHAHA …Get it?..lepton my hadron… ha, ha.
Oh God, I killme.
::sigh::
Nowdo you people see why you should notencourage me! Do you seewhat can happen? In the future, please try to remember that every action you take has consequences!
Isn’t that the Chernobyl edition?
Oh, and to sum up what we have so far: “When I invited her to participate in a supercolliding exeriment, she lepton my hadron and my liner accelerator shot gluons all over.”
… and a good intro to Newton and special and general relativities. Brian Greene’s “The Elegant Universe” (ISBN 0-393-04688-5) spends most of its time explaining the place of string theory and quantum theory, but does a good job explaining Einstein’s work with clear examples.
In my little corner of the universe, the rules don’t seem to be as simple as the rest of you assume them to be! My hairline is receeding in some places (have’t measured the red-shift, yet, but I assume it’s quite appreciable!), and expanding in others (when did hair start growing out of my ears??), my abdomen is expanding continously, while a bit farther south bits expand and contract seemingly at random! 
The only thing that seems to be constant is my interest in sex and beer!
If the Universe were expanding wouldn’t everything inside of it be expanding as well? if the universe and everything in it is expanding at the smae constant rate we wouldn’t be able to detect it because we would be going in sync with it
We are expanding, but at a rate too slow to notice at local distances. Hubble’s constant for the expansion of the universe is 70 m sec[sup]-1[/sup]Megaparsec[sup]-1[/sup].
This means that is you are 2 meters tall then your head is moving away from your feet at 4.537*10[sup]-21[/sup] m sec[sup]-1[/sup] due to the expansion of the universe. At that rate, it would take 7 billion years for you to grow one millimeter taller.
After previewing my post I see that Chronos had already made essentially the same calculations, but after I did all that work I’ll be damned if I’m not going to post it. Enjoy!
Isn’t that the Chernobyl edition?
Oh, and to sum up what we have so far: “When I invited her to participate in a supercolliding exeriment, she lepton my hadron and my liner accelerator shot gluons all over.” **
[/QUOTE]
What actually happened was: You hung a muon at her, which how she discovered the strange particle you are…
As for the red shift… whatever happened the Soviet Union?
Sorry, Smeghead, forgot to attribute that quote to you.
Are you feeling expansive enough to forgive me?
**My girlfriend would like to know if there’s anyway to significantly accelerate the expansion of my… er, uh – of specific hadrons.
I think she’s sick of waiting for stuff to start oscillating.
ben901
Here is a link that you may find interesting:
If the Universe is Expanding, Does that Mean Atoms
are Getting Bigger? Is the Solar System Expanding?
Nope. As said above, the expansion of the universe is only significant over huge distances (megaparsecs…millions of trillions of miles). Also, gravity, bonds between atoms, etc. is stronger than the expansion of space so you are not expanding, the galaxy is not expanding, etc. So, we do have a constant-sized reference frame to measure the expansion of space with.
It has a chapter in it about cosmology, but doesn’t go into deep into the “Am I expanding?” question.
It’s actually a pretty good book. The technical editing is brilliant… (Oh, I hate to explain jokes, but I guess I have to: I was the tech editor for AfD ;-). I found the style to be breezy but not insulting, and the explanations are pretty good.