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[Il Palazzo]

Because your robotic self will need a place to grow his petunias? Nostalgia-induced terraforming. Sounds good to me.

[Micro102]

It's not the mass being warped nor wraped, it's the space. It's also not about signals sent by sciencists, it's about signals from the beggining of the universe reaching us - and it's exactly due to them being warped(read: redshifted) that the theory holds.
In short, assuming the Big Bang theory is right, the universe at the begging must've been very hot, filled among other things with very high energy radiation(i.e.short wavelenghts). These days, what we can detect coming from every part of the sky(and which is assumed to be remnants of that primordial radiation), is quite "cold" light - just infrared. There really aren't that many ways to redshift a lightwave so much, and the only sensible theory that explains it is the expanding space one.
If this doesn't help, perhaps going to the "physics and mathemathics discussion" thread would let you ask this question to somebody more learned than me.

it is physically impossible to have the universe accelerating out like that, so they base it on some sort of force or material like dark matter. But anything that is capable of sustaining the universe's acceleration will also have an effect on any type of wave since energy and matter share similar qualities. So if they think a force or something is keeping the universe accelerating then it should also be affecting those energy signals they are picking up.which means those energy signals are wrong.

[dragnar]

Terra-forming Mars is out of the question, as it has no magnetic field to keep the atmosphere. It would vaporize after a while from the Sun's rays. Also, no planet would be it's "own" nation, as there was a law passed that makes it illegal to claim land in outer space.

1. The mere existence of that law is lunacy. It seems to assume we will NEVER want to have any significant presence in space. With any luck it will be removed once any significant advancement is made in space travel.

2. I believe that it actually says no government on earth can own land in space. There might be a loophole allowing non-terrestrial government's to claim it. Earth government's trying to control colonies in space could not possibly end well anyway.

3. How the heck does this law get enforced anyway? Besides, not every country on earth is part of the UN, so they can't really create true international laws.

[Micro102]

as far as i can figure out, in order to terraform, you would need to have some sort of machine to convert matter into other matter. You can't just go adding tons of air to mars and not expect it's orbit to change, then you need amino acids and proteins and that type of stuff.

[Il Palazzo]

it is physically impossible to have the universe accelerating out like that, so they base it on some sort of force or material like dark matter. But anything that is capable of sustaining the universe's acceleration will also have an effect on any type of wave since energy and matter share similar qualities. So if they think a force or something is keeping the universe accelerating then it should also be affecting those energy signals they are picking up.which means those energy signals are wrong.

Those signals wouldn't be "wrong". On a contrary, they would be right, because they'd bring with them some information about how they got "affected" by something unspecified, which we could call e.g."dark energy" or somesuch. And guess what, they got affected, and since to our best knowledge there is nothing we know of capable of redshifting wavelenghts to such a degree as observed, somebody came up with an explanation that it's the expanding space that caused it.
And it's a good theory, because it's calculations fit with the observable data, and it explains not only the observed background radiation's properties, but also the observed increase in velocities of expansion, the farther you look(Hubble's law).
No, it doesn't mean it's a perfect, complete, or even "true" cosmological model. It's just the best model we've got, and as of yet, nothing appears to disprove it.

[Micro102]

Black holes completely seal off red waves so I'm sure 94639694865931583689579840 light years of dark matter will have a pretty big impact.

Acceleration is shown through red waves growing in frequency, since they are like other wave lengths you can get the same results by shining a flash light through water and onto a mirror.

[Il Palazzo]

Ok, I admit I don't understand you. Do you mind explaining a little bit more? What do you mean by "sealing off red waves"? Like how? Do you mean the event horizon? Why only the red wavelenghts though? And how should it affect the light that does not fall into any black hole(probably some 99,99999999999% of it)?
And for that matter, what do you mean by that other statement? You mean Doppler shift? That's red or blue-shifted depending on the direction of velocity. And what's got shining light through water got to do with it? And what it's supposed to support anyway?

[Micro102]

Black holes have a dense enough body that they capture light itself and fling it in random directions, so red waves will be caught in it too (all light has the same mass(photon), 99% of it doesn't avoid capture of a black hole) and while they are released eventually they will be of no use for gathering information on the universe. But that doesn't really have anything to with this it is just to show that things can effect light waves to a large extent.

Shining light through a denser substance will decrease it's frequency, and the mirror will reflect it back, if there is anything like that in space, then it could give a false reading that the universe is accelerating. Heck dark matter might be dense enough to decrease the frequency enough.

[Il Palazzo]

Oy, matey, what?
Black holes capture light and fling it? Alright, their mass can bend light, sure, but that's: one, without changing it's frequency; two, it's such an impossibly small fraction of photons coming from outside space that you're unlikely to notice those unless you look for them, e.g.gravitational lensing - you know, black holes being tiny-tiny dots in the universe; three, even if it wasn't such a minuscle fraction of observed light, it doesn't involve changing wavelenghts, so it's of no use as an argument here.
There is no medium through which light could lose energy in space. The dark matter/energy has got no observed influence on anything at all, apart from presumably exerting the pressure defined by cosmological constant(I hope I remember this right) and gravitational pull.
And come on, you've got problems with visualising an expanding universe, but you're ok with a giant universe-encompassing mirror reflecting light?
Besides, photon has a mass? Come now.

[beorn080]

as far as i can figure out, in order to terraform, you would need to have some sort of machine to convert matter into other matter. You can't just go adding tons of air to mars and not expect it's orbit to change, then you need amino acids and proteins and that type of stuff.

Mars currently has a fairly "heavy" CO2 atmosphere right now, and it is covered in Iron Oxide sands. Just a simple breakdown of those sands would release O2, as well as iron. Granted, it wouldn't be a quick process, but its not impossible even by todays standards.

Also, as for other planets being run from earth, yeah that wouldn't work. Earth has a pretty heavy gravity field, and rock + acceleration = BOOM. If earth ever tried to run the moon or mars, they would simply need to start throwing rocks at it. The moon could use an electromagnetic launcher to fire large boulders sheathed in metal, and mars could hop over to the asteroid belt and redirect a few.

[Micro102]

You watched the slide show thing right? It says that a photon is made up of 2 quarks, which has mass. And mass ad energy have similar features anyway, if dark matter can effect mass it can effect energy such as light.

Like i said black holes were just mentioned to show that we know of things that can dramatically change light. And yes it can change it's frequency because that's just a fancy name for how many photons are collected together.

The giant mirror was a passing thought but is still possible (but i don't believe it myself even though i said it  ) and the dark matter having mass is still possible.


TERRAFORMING

but how would you get hydrogen on mars? and carbon and nitrogen and all those other elements needed for life? Take them from earth? How long is that gonna last?

[Sowelu]

You watched the slide show thing right? It says that a photon is made up of 2 quarks, which has mass. And mass ad energy have similar features anyway, if dark matter can effect mass it can effect energy such as light.

Do you mean the part where it says a PROTON is made up of 2 up quarks AND 1 down quark?

[Il Palazzo]

@micro102:
Yes, I've watched it, and no you haven't, apparently.(ninjad by Sowelu)
Mass and energy might be related in the E=mc2 equation, but it doesn't mean they're the same. They're actually quite different in many more ways than they are similar. Also, you need to be precise about how mass affects light. Bending it's trajectory is not redshifting.
Frequency has got nothing to do with the amount of photons in any sense. It's a property of an individual photon. You might've been thinking about the amplitude.
The dark matter having mass is pretty much the only thing we actually know about it, so it's pretty certain feature.

edit:spelling

[Agdune]

I actually found this: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pale_Blue_Dot.png) single image to be more profound than anything else. Mostly 'cause it's real.

(That's Earth.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot

The flash animation and the neat video clip have their problems though - the flash while being thorough, doesn't really show anything in direct comparison to anything else of a different scale (which I love) and the video clip reeks of 80ies science :p

[Micro102]

@micro102:
Yes, I've watched it, and no you haven't, apparently.(ninjad by Sowelu)
Mass and energy might be related in the E=mc2 equation, but it doesn't mean they're the same. They're actually quite different in many more ways than they are similar. Also, you need to be precise about how mass affects light. Bending it's trajectory is not redshifting.
Frequency has got nothing to do with the amount of photons in any sense. It's a property of an individual photon. You might've been thinking about the amplitude.
The dark matter having mass is pretty much the only thing we actually know about it, so it's pretty certain feature.

edit:spelling

I watched it but I was thinking from memory. Either way, quarks = mass. Higher frequency means more photons.

I don't know how much mass effects light, but mass and light having similar qualities is high school level stuff. and just like water which is denser then air, since dark matter has mass, it WILL change light.