Nope. There is ALSO a dark matter halo surrounding all galaxies, but this is just a halo made up of a gas of regular particles. This cloud has been predicted before, but hasn't been observed until now. The "missing baryon" problem refers to the fact that predictions can be made about the amount of regular matter in…

Man... That's the worst. I balled my eyes out at TS3 anyway with the regular ending, I don't think I could have taken it if it finished like that!

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm very happy! This season is turning out to be alot of fun, and totally makes up for the disappointment that was the end of the last season. I just find it to be a rather odd format. I suppose it makes more sense narratively than having a new companion mid-season too. Plus it means that we…

Well..that explains why they moved it from the summer (actually, Moffat has been very vocal about wanting to air in the winter, something about it being scarier when it's dark out), but not why they split the season. Ain't no Olympics going on between now and Christmas.

Sorry... I was trying to explain why it appears everywhere. I didn't mean to patronize. Why it is what it is (or why it is 3.14.159....) is due to the geometry of our universe being flat, I believe.

Very well put! I'm also hopeful that knowledge, as you put it, filtering down will eventually exterminate problems like we're seeing with Evolution currently. It's very hard to see though, as the time scale for these things are much larger than we would like them to be. I mean Darwin wrote Origin of the Species in…

The Fibonacci number is an interesting one. Pi however, pops up all the time because it is a fundamentally important number for the functions we use to describe the universe. It is defined as the ratio of the diameter and circumference of a circle, and as such crops up in trigonometric functions (which are defined…

Right, but don't you think that there will always be the "why" question? Most truths of this nature come from a place of Assumption+Data=Truth. But people will always question the assumption part, and place God in the gap.

Very well put. It does, however, assume that our scientific progress is limitless. Once we have explained everything there are no "gaps" for God to fill. However, this assumption is very likely to prove untrue. As it stands, the discovery of the Higgs Particle as the last particle predicted by the Standard Model gives…

I might be showing my ignorance of the philosophy of mathematics here, but I don't understand why #8 is a question. If you begin with a supposition that you can group distinct things with similar characteristics, for example "things which are books", you then have discrete objects within a group, for example "this set…

If you are, you clearly haven't met Per Degaton, the time travelling Nazi!

The next episode already has a definite air-date as it's the Christmas special, so it's on Christmas Day. After that, who knows?

Don't take the trouble, 81% is a pretty good efficiency rating for the internet!

I probably shouldn't get involved here, but when scientists use the term "theory" they don't mean it in the sense of "hunch" or "idea", it is rigorously defined terminology. It is an unfortunate fact that the word "theory" is used in daily life to mean something more akin to "hypothesis", but please don't get the two…

In fact, if they were looking to reconcile it with scientific data, they would have no choice but to reject their hypothesis. But I think that sentence was meant to taken a little less than 100 % seriously!

Two. Next one (Power of Three) and then the final Pond episode (Angels Take Manhattan) then it's a break until Christmas, where we have the victorian-set, companion introducing, Richard E. Grant starring Christmas special. Then the second half of the season starts (I presume) sometime in January.

Just replace all the instances of "Atheist" with "Evangelical Christian" and the above might be useful advice for you!

To be honest, the level of thought required to dissect an ad campaign like this one are probably on par with the level required to dismiss creationism. So if some people aren't willing to put that level into something relatively important (like the latter), can we really expect them to put that level into something…

You're right. But unfortunately, we're not in a position to stop arguing completely. If everyone does that, evolution will cease to get taught in schools, and gay marriage won't happen in our lifetimes.

Ah right..that makes more sense! Thanks for the clear up!