>No amount of bluster or confidence in your own (seeming lack
>of) education will change it.

LOL. I gave you the correct definition of "infinity" after you used it incorrectly. I certainly do not need your revised definition and life story. Seems your education needed rekindling and I obliged you, that is all. ;)

Frankly, I find your passive aggressive insults hilarious and indicative of your insecurity/inability to disagree with someone without resorting to insults. You know who does that? High schoolers that haven't been taught how to manage their emotions and ego yet, ironic how your life story included tales of your high school experience, coincidence?

I wish you the best of luck in this department old sport.


>>>But you're the one putting 'eternity' into the mix - I
>>>wouldn't have invoked infinity if you hadn't. Because of
>>>infinity's irrational nature it completely ruins your
>>theory.
>>

Light will travel infinitely unless it is obstructed. Photons do not decay, you can deny this if you wish, makes no difference to me.

There is absolutely no way to test the Inverse Square Law against infinity, the best we can do is use data that is available to us.

Earlier in this post you said that visible light will fade and be inaccessible to us. Your exact words were:

"after a couple of billion light years your light wouldn't be visible light anymore, just infra-red and microwaves."

I countered by raising the Hubble Deep field. Hubble was pointed at a pitch black part in space, with no visible light, and we discovered thousands of galaxies, thereby, rendering your point moot and incorrect. A couple of billion years? Try almost 12 billion years and we still have a highly clear and detailed image.

Look for yourself:

http://spacetelescope.org/static/archives/images/screen/heic0406a.jpg

It is true that we can look further by resorting to infrared, and all this does is illuminate that there is more data to be decoded if we know how to read it, well beyond our senses and well beyond our visible spectrum.

It is demonstrably evident that our imaging will grow in clarity as it has over the past 100 years, reaching further, with ever increasing detail, due to our evolving technology and refined instrumentation. To put a limit on that as you have is asinine, unscientific, and close minded. 100 years ago we weren't even aware of infrared. What do you think the next 100 years will illuminate? There are truly no limits in this universe.

>
>A star is so intensely bright that it takes a huge amount of
>time for the inverse square rule to render them invisible -
>currently the Universe doesn't appear big enough, so we can
>feasibly look back to the very earliest stars in the Hubble
>Deep Field. They were so intensely bright that their photons
>are still being received in great enough numbers to tell that
>they came from a star. They're feint, but they're together.

Once again, you are assuming and speculating. The Hubble Deep Field captured entire galaxies in the thousands, hardly an example of tightly packed photons. Have you any idea how large a single galaxy is? The distances between stars are impossible to comprehend.

Also, the Inverse Square Law states that the light that is being omitted by an object spreads.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Inverse_square_law.svg

Keeping that in mind, the Hubble Deep Field captured thousands of galaxies that are highly detailed, with easily recognizable spiral arms, and axis orientation. Think about the profundity of that even when coupled with the inverse square law. Almost 14 billion years has not been enough time to blur the clarity of the spiral arms.

>
>The Universe is young, however. I seem to remember
>recommending you John D. Barrow's Book of Universes a while
>ago (if you forgot, here's a reminder - it's EXCELLENT!) and
>although we can't be sure, it's likely that the Universe has
>way longer to live than it has already. 14Bn years is a long
>time to us. It's nothing to the life of the Universe. There is
>likely thousands of trillions of years left for the stars to
>get further and further apart. Eventually, the farthest
>galaxies will be so far apart that the density of light will
>have dropped to below the amount needed to make the image of a
>star.


Once again, you are speculating. What is the eventual time limit? 15 billion years? 20? 25? how will you test this when a 12 billion year old image is clear as day?

>
>Although the Heat Death of the Universe contains speculation,
>the inverse square rule does not. Stars can be visible for
>VAST distances because of the density of the light they emit.
>You emit NO light. You only reflect a very, very tiny fraction
>of the light given out by our Sun. The inverse square rule
>(and yes, the 'real' light physicist above agrees) means that
>due to the already tiny amount of light being reflected by
>your body and all the obstacles in its way before it can even
>get out of the planet (our atmosphere absorbs a LOT - that's
>why Hubble is in orbit!), you will be visible from a
>comparatively tiny distance.
>

There are perfectly clear images of people taken by satellites. The light reflecting of our bodies was able to penetrate the atmosphere, imagine that.


>It's not speculation, it's logic. Bright = more dense = longer
>to get less dense. Stars are just visible further. Same reason
>I can't see you from my desk, but I can see same Sun
>

Weak example. If we were both on a flat plane and you had a powerful enough telescope, you would see me just fine. The light reflected of my body will travel infinitely past you unless it is obstructed as photons do not decay. Also, the sun is also millions upon millions times bigger than I am. 1.3 million Earth's can fit into it. Of course you are going to see it!

To recap:

1. Light will travel infinitely unless otherwise obstructed
2. Photons do not decay.

The light reflected of any object is encoded with the likeness of that object. That is why we can see.

By the way, remember how much fervor you used to dispute my "Alcohol is the hardest drug" claim? complete with passive aggressive insults and condescension? The post is still up if you have forgotten, but the reason I mention it is because I am sure you will enjoy reading this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/02/23/marijuana-may-be-even-safer-than-previously-thought-researchers-say/?tid=rssfeed

Better luck next time, old sport.