Initial Tests Fail To Find Gravitational Waves 553
eldavojohn writes that though gravitational waves are "predicted to exist by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, the initial tests run by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory Scientific Collaboration (LIGO) failed to find anything. It doesn't disprove their existence although it does rule out a subset of string theory. From the article, 'For example, some models predict the existence of cosmic strings, which are loops in space-time that may have formed in the early universe and gotten stretched to large scales along with the expansion of the universe. These objects are thought to produce bursts of gravitational waves as they oscillate. Since no large-amplitude gravitational waves were found, cosmic strings, if they exist at all, must be smaller than some models predict.' The scientists working in Washington and Louisiana (in tandem to rule out flukes) will now move on to Advanced LIGO which will analyze a volume of space 1,000 times larger. If they don't find any gravitational waves in that experiment, the results will be more than unsettling to many theorists."
I think I see the problem. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I think I see the problem. (Score:4, Funny)
Can't find the button that you have to hold for five seconds. Besides... would you want to press it? I can't guarantee that my laptop will turn on again next time, let alone the Universe.
Hex (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I think I see the problem. (Score:5, Funny)
Have they tried reversing the polarity of the main deflector array?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Have they tried reversing the polarity of the main deflector array?
You're supposed to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.
Re:I think I see the problem. (Score:5, Funny)
You fool! You'll destroy us all!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It may be an intermittent Heisenberg compensator...
Re:I think I see the problem. (Score:4, Informative)
Have they tried reversing the polarity of the main deflector array?
That only works if one first applies an ionized tachyon pulse to clear the emitters.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Have they tried turning it off & back on again?
And now you know why LIGO doesn't hire engineers away from Microsoft...
Re:I think I see the problem. (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, they turned it off and back on, but they forgot to blow out the cartridge! It's like they just don't know how these things work, didn't they learn ANYTHING in college?
Re:I think I see the problem. (Score:4, Informative)
Oblig. XKCD: Lisp [xkcd.com]
Linearization (Score:2, Interesting)
As far as I remember from my course on general relativity, gravitational waves follow from a linearization of Einstein's field equations. Thus, if they failed to find them, it wouldn't falsify the theory as a whole but only the linear approach to the field equations.
Re:Linearization (Score:5, Interesting)
Puslars (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Here's some pedantry for ya (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, I'm having a party tonight and I want to make sure it wraps up by 1 o'clock. Could you stop by at about 12:55 and bore everyone out of the place for me?
Re:Linearization (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as I remember from my course on general relativity, gravitational waves follow from a linearization of Einstein's field equations. Thus, if they failed to find them, it wouldn't falsify the theory as a whole but only the linear approach to the field equations.
This isn't exactly right. The equations describing gravitational waves do result from a simplifying approximation of Eintstein's equations, but it's the sort of simplifying approximation that really has to be quite accurate in many circumstances. If they don't find gravitational waves of a certain magnitude then either Einstein was wrong or, more likely, the sorts of astronomical phenomena that could create the waves don't exist.
Re: (Score:2)
and why do we think we can detect them this deep inside a Gravity well?
honestly, looking for something like that needs to be outside the gravity well of the sun.
Just a bit of brain farting in the morning... I haven't had my 2nd cup of coffee yet.
Re:Linearization (Score:5, Insightful)
and why do we think we can detect them this deep inside a Gravity well?
honestly, looking for something like that needs to be outside the gravity well of the sun.
There's a pebble on top of Mount Everest. Using my trusty ruler, I measure the pebble as being 1.3 inches tall.
"Aha!", says my colleague. "Now we know that the top of the pebble is exactly 6 miles, 1.3 inches high!"
"No, silly!", says my other colleague. "The only way that we can measure the height of the pebble precisely is by bringing it down to sea level! Being on a mountaintop confounds any precision measurement!"
Oddly enough, the pebble turns out to be 1.3 inches tall. A most remarkable coincidence, I'm sure.
Re:Linearization (Score:5, Interesting)
Which always made me wonder, how do gravity waves escape a black hole?
Re:Linearization (Score:5, Informative)
> Which always made me wonder, how do gravity waves escape a black hole?
They don't. While systems involving black holes may emit gravitational waves, the waves don't come from inside the hole.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Citation please.
After reading this post a couple of times, I've decided that the first line is not referring to the parent, but is rather an abstract of the remainder of the post. It all makes sense now.
...Just in case anyone else was wondering.
Re:Linearization (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the part that I find interesting. The whole gravity/space-time curvature is merely an abstraction of gravity into a new dimension.
Ancient people's idea of gravity was simple. Stuff goes down.
Then people figured out that the earth's surface is curved, and "down" didn't work anymore. The new theory of gravity said that stuff moves toward other stuff, and the earth is a big blob of stuff that all our little stuff moves toward. Kinda simple, but you don't have the nice, straight, linear sort of system. You've got a radial one, and other planets and stars have their own gravity fields that pull stuff toward them, and it's a bit more complex.
So, with this notion of mass curving the surface of space/time in some higher dimension, we envision space/time as a sort of elastic surface. Mass sinks into the surface, and smaller mass will "roll" into the depression caused by the larger mass. Why does the "mass" roll downhill? Well, there's the kicker: this higher dimension apparently has its own sort of gravity, and, like the ancients' theory, it's nice and straight: it always goes down!
Re:Linearization (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, it's easy to explain: It conveys the wrong message. While the curvature of space is indeed similar to the curvature of a rubber hose when a mass is on it, the image you get is wrong at quite a lot of counts:
I hope those explanations did help a bit.
Re:Linearization (Score:4, Informative)
The visualization is sound, for a 3d representation. The problem is that space/time involves the 4th dimension, and we are 3rd demensional beings. It is impossible for us to visualize anything in the 4th dimension in a literal sense - we have no frame of reference.
We can think about it abstractly, in ways we can somewhat understand. That is what the "rubber sheet" model is. Space/time is obviously not a 2d plane in a 3d world, it's a 3d plane in a 4d world. What is actually happening is that rubbersheet exists in every direction - forward, backward, up and down. It's not many sheets, it's not a sphere surrounding everything, it is a plane that exists in all three dimensions. It's a difficult abstraction to make, and it is impossible to accurately and literally conceptualize because we have no 4d frame of reference.
For a good explanation of why that is, check out Carl Sagan's [youtube.com] explanation, it's rather enlightening. He steps it down to a 3d object interacting with a 2d world, so that we have a frame of reference to understand what is happening.
You won't come out understanding the 4th dimension, you'll come out understanding why you can't understand the 4th dimension, and since Space/Time is a 4th dimensional concept, why the explanations don't make sense.
Re:Linearization (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course Einstein was wrong.
He was, at best, as right as any human could have been given the evidence available at the time. If he was as true a scientist as the world portrays him, then he expected to have his model refined over time as new evidence comes to light, eventually being completely replaced by something much more accurate.
Whatever new theory we build based on this new evidence will also be wrong, for the exact same reasons.
But it will be right enough to be useful as a stepping-stone to an even righter theory. That is how science works, and that is also why find science zealots to be even more annoying than religious zealots...science zealots have accepted as absolute truth a model that is just a stepping-stone, in direct contradiction of the very methods that they proclaim to be the ultimate determiners of truth.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Linearization (Score:5, Funny)
The, uh... differential manifold part...
Everybody knows (Score:4, Funny)
Gravity sucks.
Re:Everybody knows (Score:5, Funny)
Gravity sucks.
It always lets us down
Re: (Score:2)
not if you are in australia
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Everybody knows (Score:4, Informative)
Gravity sucks.
It always lets us down
Ergo, Gravity != Rick Astley.
Success! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Success! (Score:5, Insightful)
An experiment is only a failure if you don't learn anything from it.
There are still degrees of success.
I tend to consider it a failure if all I learned is: "I should wear fireproof clothes for all my pyrotechnical flamabilities experiments.
Especially after the third time I learn the same lesson.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a valuable lesson, but that would indicate that the first two times were failures...
Re:Success! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
My advice to you is to stay out of medical research. Or at least keep a safe distance if you expect a positive result.
Re: (Score:2)
So Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage are now doing experiments to verify general relativity and string theory?
Re:Success! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Go talk to some older chemists about the days before strict lab safety. Days gone by were pretty exciting.
Just because they failed to detect any (Score:4, Interesting)
Doesn't mean the gravitational waves aren't there.
Maybe they've just got the detection method wrong.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This goes along with some of the greatest scientific discoveries .... "HUH!?!?!?!?! THATS ODD?!?!?!"
It is these moments of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot that often give us the greatest insights. The ramifications of these types of discoveries can take decades to fully decode and understand.
I love it when experiments have unexpected results, because those are the most exciting to a scientist.
Re: (Score:2)
Good for your karma that this is a discussion about physics and not theology.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Either theology is a subset of physics (the atheistic view) or physics is a subset of theology (the theistic view). If the latter, there comes a point where the two might be hard to distinguish.
I'm reminded of the Jastrow quote, "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sit
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, theologians detected gravity waves for centuries.
Re:Just because they failed to detect any (Score:4, Informative)
I think you completely missed the point. If there is a God, then studying what He/She/It created is of far lesser importance than studying God Himself. Once God is found, everything else pales in comparison. The secrets of the universe are not in what it does, or how it works; but who made it. I think that's what Jastrow was saying, anyway.
Open or Closed String Models? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
This comes down to how long it is. A cosmic string isn't the same thing as a string in string theory. A cosmic string is very long macro scale topological feature of the universe while a string theory string is a model for subatomic particles. However you can investigate cosmic strings in string theory leading to the theory of stringy cosmic strings of Vafa et al..
Re: (Score:2)
And can you test for it if you are inside one of those strings?
What if our solar system is inside one of those loops?
They exist. (Score:5, Informative)
It should be noted that the existance of gravitational waves is pretty much certain - measurements of pulsars like the Hulse-Taylor binary match up perfectly with the predictions of GR.
What LIGO is about is trying to observe them directly, rather than just observing the effects of them.
Re:They exist. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They exist. (Score:5, Informative)
Intelligent falling! (Score:5, Funny)
This is obviously because gravity does not exist, but the observed effect is a result of an higher intelligence pushing things down.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512
Re: (Score:2)
I always though the expansion of the universe is pushing us upwards at an increasing rate, to give the impression to us that we were always being pulled down. Of course simulations of that theory doesn't seem to account for orbital patterns.
Of course... (Score:2, Informative)
Gravity is related directly to space, which in turn is directly related to time. Time, as we know, is an illusion. Lunchtime, doubly so. Therefore, gravity is an illusion. Q.E.D.
it could be (Score:2)
Failure to find gravitatoinal waves = good (Score:3, Insightful)
wonder how many careers this just ended (Score:2)
I'd be very curious to see how many career paths this experiment just derailed. How large is this subset of string theory that just got wiped out? Also, what does it mean if the bigger version of this test doesn't find gravitational waves? Does it poke a big fat hole in relativity?
The LISA mission (Score:5, Interesting)
Please see the LISA mission:
http://lisa.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov]
LISA can be thought of as a giant Michelson interferometer in space. The spacecraft separation sets the range of GW frequencies LISA can observe (from 0.03 milliHertz to above 0.1 Hertz).
Maybe they can't be detected (Score:4, Interesting)
My own "pet theory" for this was that they would never be detected because although they do exist, they perturb the measurement device to the same degree that they do everything else, ie a gravity wave may perturb one arm of a LIGO detector, but it also correspondingly perturbs the waves of the laser beam passing through it. As a result it isn't detected.
An analogy: It would be like measuring everything in a room with a ruler, then scaling the whole room including the ruler up or down. You wouldn't see a change with the same scaled ruler; you'd have to bring one in from outside.
I bounced this idea off a few physicists (including Bruce Allen who runs the Einstein@Home project on LIGO) but they don't seem to like it. :^) Maybe it will turn out to be correct, who knows. It certainly seems to be turning out to be more difficult to detect gravity waves than was initially predicted.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This is why the laser is split, and sent down two perpendicular paths. Sure, a wave might stretch the spacetime of the X axis... but that same stretching wouldn't effect a similar increase in the return time of the Y axis. This very stretching of the measuring device itself against one axis(thus modifying the round-trip time of the split laser as compared to a perpendicular path) is the very thing that they are measuring.
Your pet theory, and their experiment, match. :)
Yes! My theory still holds up! (Score:4, Funny)
Clear up a bit of confusion here: (Score:5, Informative)
Disclaimer: I don't work on LIGO, but I work with people who do.
LIGO didn't expect to see a signal above the noise here. What it has done, is largely rule out a lot of 'exotic' sources - sources with equations of state that don't fit the normal matter we see, but some of the more ambitious parts of string theory thought might be possible. What they have achieved is a phenomenal reduction in their 'noise curve' - the background above which a signal must register to be considered real. So far it's only been a one-way test - just ruling out exotic sources, but nothing that we think should necessarily be there.
LIGO primer and vast oversimplification:
LIGO is an interferometer. The way it works is that a laser is split into two parts, each of which goes down an equal length tunnel, at right angles to one another. If the light went the same distance, when it is reflected back, it should still be in phase, and should interfere constructively (think back to intro physics and the way waves on a string add). If a gravitational wave which had the right polarization passed through the region in the time of detection, one tunnel will have been 'shorter' due to the contracting geometry caused by the wave, and hence the beams will no longer be in phase when they return, so will not interfere constructively in the same way.
So why is it so hard to see waves? Well, all kinds of things (drilling, trucks going by, someone sneezing!) can cause a minute wobbling of any part of the equipment and thus will cause the waves to interfere in the wrong way. What LIGO looks for is a specific 'signature' measured at three sites concurrently, the signature being the waves predicted to occur from certain galactic events (two black holes spiraling into one another, for example). They do some pretty impressive data processing to look for this, but so far have only found that they can't see anything above the noise. We've ruled out some of the less likely things that could be going on - types of matter that some string theories allow, but certainly aren't predicted to exist by established theories (like GR).
However, over time with a few additions to 'advanced' LIGO, or the amazing LISA project we should have a two-way test: Either we'll see the wave that GR predicts to exist from standard black hole collisions, or theoretical physicists have a lot of explaining to do.
Re:Clear up a bit of confusion here: (Score:4, Informative)
You're almost there - what we're looking for is a contraction along one axis, and an expansion along the other (for the simplest case). Therefore to your observers (remember speed of light is a constant in all reference frames) you would see the light ray along the shorter distance get back before the one along the longer distance. The observer watching from within the system won't see the light go perfectly straight. The curvature of space itself is very much observable to someone living within that space.
An example that might help illustrate this is the first real experimental test of GR - photographs of the sky during a solar eclipse. Here it was seen that stars appeared out of place from where they 'should' be if the light had traveled through a straight (flat/Euclidean) geometry. This effect was the effect of the sun's gravitation bending the light rays.
More recently we've been able to see light from distant stars that goes on either side of a large mass that bends them both towards us, the light from one side traveling further than the other. The lensing effect is now quite famous and is very useful in examining distant events that would otherwise be hard to see (somehow having something 'in the way' of our sight actually improves our ability to see it!).
I hope that helps, though I realize that it might not be as clear as you'd like.
Re:what to do, what to do (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:what to do, what to do (Score:5, Insightful)
Intelligent Design has theories? What, if anything, does it predict? How could it be falsified?
This is like that Babbage quote: I am not able rightly to comprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:what to do, what to do (Score:5, Insightful)
Intelligent Design has theories? What, if anything, does it predict?
That is actually the wrong criticism of ID. ID can certainly predict things. If the 'designers' are a bunch of bored aliens that like to do anal probes, you could predict that the aliens will cause changes in animals DNA such that they tend towards having ass holes. If the FSM is the designer, than you will predict that creatures will be designed towards higher spaghetti creating lifeforms. If the designer is an all powerful omnipotent god that thinks beetles totally kick ass, you will predict that there will be a crap ton of beetles (which there in fact are).
And hey, all of the above might very well be true.
If someone wants to go out and try and prove it, more power to them. The issue is that ID is nothing more than an attempt by religious nuts to try and teach about baby Jesus in the schools. If there were people that were taking the 'study' of ID seriously, they would sit around designing experiments to catch whatever the mysterious force is that manipulates DNA to force evolution and create their spiffy designed universe. Further, when they pondered what the force was, they would have to constrain themselves to theories based upon real physics. This would handily rule out 'magic' and 'god juice'. If they want to show that the force is god juice, they then need to go ahead and reinvent physics to try and explain how the force of god juice works. At no point does 'magic', 'just cause', or 'humans can't understand because they are not Jesus' acceptable.
The issue with ID is that science doesn't accept 'magic' as an answer. If you say a designer is forcing evolution, you need to go and figure out the force being used, and it either needs to conform to current theories or you need to find new ones that explain all observable events. This is what makes the ID folks nothing more than religious whack jobs. When Darwin declare that natural selection was the answer, people went to work figuring out how natural selection works and didn't just decide it was a magical force that just happens. They tore it apart by from a macroscopic level that studied how animals compete and co-opt, they tore it apart on the biological level understanding how cells reproduces, and they keep on drilling down until they are looking at atoms and figuring out how quantum affects influence evolution. At no point was anyone ever satisfied with 'magic' as the answer.
Re:what to do, what to do (Score:4, Funny)
Re:what to do, what to do (Score:4, Insightful)
That is actually the wrong criticism of ID. ID can certainly predict things.
Quite correct, that is the wrong criticism. Unfortunately, yours is, too. The argument that "science doesn't accept 'magic' as an answer", and therefore ID isn't science is a circular one. ie, if ID is magic, then science doesn't accept magic, therefore ID isn't science. Well, yeah, duh, no kidding. Heck, technically, I think that might actually be "begging the question".
No, the *real* problem with ID is that it isn't *falsifiable*. And this is specifically because any attempt to falsify the theory, by providing evidence which contradicts any "predictions", could easily be reinterpreted under the lens of "god did that, too". And if a theory can't be falsified, it simply isn't science.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You invent experiments to PROOF you theory, not to falsify it.
Sorry, no, that's just wrong. You *can't* prove *any* theory, as there may always be some case that the theory gets wrong. This would be why no modern theory, no matter how well it's predictions match experimental result, has ever been promoted to a law (see General Relativity for an excellent example).
The purpose of experiment, then, is to test the theory and see if reality matches it. If it doesn't, the theory is falsified and you go back to
Re:what to do, what to do (Score:5, Insightful)
Here you have just given away that you start with the philosophical assumption of naturalism: that is, everything that is (or everything that affects the universe) happens inside the universe. There is not, cannot be, any supernatural. That's not a proof you have, it's an assumption that you start with. And that's fine, we all make assumptions (e.g., logic works), but it's better if you're honest about it.
Let's try an analogy. Computers operate by rules, right? Everything in the computer can be defined by the state of its memory, registers, and disk (toss in whatever extra motherboard or micro-architectural state you want). How it transitions from one state to another depends only on what the state before it was, and any inputs into the system. The vast majority of those state transitions are 100% deterministic. (I know, I did my PhD thesis on this stuff.) Only a relatively small amount of input when you boot up determines whether you're playing Quake with friends or writing posts on Slashdot. In fact, for a running system overall, the less input needed to make the whole run smoothly the better designed it was.
Now, suppose there were a self-aware program living in your computer, looking at the state of the system, and trying to determine if there were such things as these mysterious "users", and if so, how they affected the state of the system. All you know is "data"; you can't see the physical world. Since these mysterious "users" don't live in data, to you they're essentially super-natural. Now ask your question: How is it that these "users" affect data?
If you do, you'll see that in this case "magic" (meaning, "something not described in the rules of the system") is an acceptable answer; in fact, "magic" is by definition the only answer. Users create the input from the keyboard, mouse, network, &c that feed into the system. Users really can decide which processes live and die; but what does that look like to a program? Some random data came in on a certain line which fed into a program, which when certain data hits inside a certain area on the screen (the "X" button on the upper right-hand-side of a window), the program sends a signal to another program which sends a signal to another program which tells it to exit. An atheist program might say those inputs were random, like states in quantum physics. Furthermore, really technical humans may have even more control: They can use in-circuit-emulators to directly change state on the CPU and use PCI bus devices hidden from the cpu to directly read and write memory. They can rewrite the register after an ADD instruction to make it look like it added 2 and 2 and got 5.
People who believe in the Judeo-Christian God believes that God has that kind of access to the universe. If he can feed 5000 people from five loaves of bread and 2 fishes, turn water into wine, and come back from the dead, surely he can twiddle some DNA at key points in history. By definition, a "miracle" is a temporary suspension or contravention of the normal laws of the universe. And thus, by definition, the "force being used" may not be detectable or describable under the laws of physics, any more than changes a programmer makes using an in-circuit-emulator would be detectable or describable by a program inside the computer trying to determine if the universe consisted only of data, or if there was a "supernatural" outside of the data.
Note that my point is not to defend any particular ID theories or people who promote them. I have a lot of biologist friends who are Christians, and think that the evidence pretty clearly supports the current scientific understanding of the development of life here on Earth. Believing that God can intervene in the natural world doesn't mean that you can't believe in and shouldn't look for natural laws and natural explanations for things. But your logic of "ID is bad because it will accept a supernatural explanation (i.e., magic)" isn't sound.
Re:what to do, what to do (Score:5, Insightful)
Science studies that which is not "magic". A supernatural explanation may be true and it would still not be science. This is a necessary limit of science.
However, even if the answer is "God did it", if God chooses to do things according to some set of rules (as most religions would have us believe), then those rules should be apparant from the patterns observable in the universe, and science should be able to deduce those rules.
That is the point of science: to observe the patterns than events in our universe follow, and produce a set of rules -- a predictive model -- that explain those patterns. This approach only fails if there are effects in our observable universe with an arbitrary or random cause outside of it. Only a God who actually behaved in an arbitrary and random way would affect the predictive success of scientific models.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A statistical test akin to testing for a biased coin would be sufficient to create an ID test.
So then do it. Create the test and give us the results, let us verify your test methodology and your data and your results. Until such a time, ID is merely conjecture and not a scientific hypothesis.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:what to do, what to do (Score:5, Funny)
Yep. OK, enough with ID vs evolution, let's move on to the other battlefront of the science vs faith war. Climate change!
Global warming, schmobal schmwarming! Temperatures have gone done for the last 10 years (facts here [wikipedia.org]), so everything is just fine, it's just evil liberals who hate our benevolent oil companies because they're in the pocket of Big Ethanol. Discuss.
Re:what to do, what to do (Score:5, Funny)
Re:what to do, what to do (Score:5, Interesting)
ID it not a theory, it is a religious/political ideology being presented as a theory that aims to explain the perceived weaknesses of science in order to advance the interests of certain groups and individuals.
- This beautiful, complex interaction could not have possibly arisen spontaneously, therefore God's will.
- This makes no apparent sense/has no apparent purpose, therefore descent from God's will.
- You cannot explain something neatly, therefore God's will or the descent from it.
That's not a theory. The aim of a theory is to predict something that you can then test for. ID doesn't predict anything, there is no empirical test for God and deciding arbitrarily whether things are as God intended or not does not increase our understanding of them - it's merely a reactionary attitude advanced by old men who are afraid of change and what it means for their status.
Besides, even if you believe in God the creator, the ID advocacy of ignorance still seems bogus; God gave you all these wonderful cognitive capabilities, so why not use them to try to fully appreciate his grand work? You would be wasting God's gifts if you didn't. :p
Re:what to do, what to do (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:what to do, what to do (Score:5, Informative)
In a field of grain, you can grow wheat, barley, rye or oats.
That's very true, of course. But you can't grow wheat, barley, and Ford Pintos. I'm arguing that physics, philosophy, and automobile repair are fields of study, while ID is not. It is a platform. An agenda. It's like saying the people paid by the tobacco companies to falsify studies on the effects of tobacco smoke are conducting science. Apples to orangutans.
Re:what to do, what to do (Score:5, Insightful)
That isn't a valid argument. You could say the same thing about any subject. Such as:
At many levels, Mathematics is an agenda as well. Why else would there be such a push to have it taught in schools?
The simple answer is because evolutionism is actually based on scientific evidence. ID is simply a religion that is trying to make itself look scientific so it can be lobbied to be taught in public schools.
Re: (Score:2)
I guess the way you describe it, then #3 would be "get more research grants". But hey, if it's that easy please try making your own model and see if it passes the giggle test so someone will fund you. I think you'd have to work pretty hard just to find something that isn't obviously incorrect and could at least explain some of the many, many WTFs you get once you go past classic mechanics. I think it's impressive to make any kind of sense of it, really once they started introducing matter-wave duality I rea
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This kind of (extremely common) remarks strike me as frivolous. It is one thing to say that physicists enjoy being disproved, because this shows the length of the road ahead; it is another thing to say that physicists would hate to attain knowledge in one particular area or other. Science is in the business of securing truths, not in the business of idly advancing ever-refutable theories.
Re: (Score:2)
Karl Popper would want a word with you [wikipedia.org], were he still alive that is.
Re:Unsettling? (Score:4, Insightful)
. Science is in the business of securing truths, not in the business of idly advancing ever-refutable theories.
I'm sorry, science is in the business of proving theories wrong. All current scientific theories are merely those that have yet to be proved wrong. They are extremely valuable in that they can be used to predict future behavior of the universe to a significant degree of confidence. However, scientific theories cannot be proven true, they can only be proven false.
The great weakness of science is that people have a tendency to view theories that have been around for a long time and not proven false to be true. All it really means is that they are reliable predictors of the behavior of the universe insofar as our technology allows us to observer the behavior of the universe. Sometimes this means that they are good theories that are very useful (say General Relativity), other times it merely means that our technology has not yet reached the point where we can reliably test any of the theory's predictions (say the various String Theories).
Re:Cart before the horse. (Score:5, Insightful)
More like a cycle... observe, theorise, observe to check results, refine theory.
In this case, this is exactly what's happened - the observations looks like they may not fit the theory perfectly - hence, once that's been double-checked, go back and revise the theory and try to find out why.
If you don't test the theory, it's worthless. And if you posit a theory, only observation will definitively "prove" it. Science is about positing theories, observing results, and if they fit the theory - WONDERFUL... you just "predicted" part of the universe that nobody has before.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless horses get so expensive and building carts so cheap you'd rather prepare a thouosand different carts just to be absolutely sure of which kind of horse you're going to invest all your effort trying to find.
Re: (Score:2)
Not exactly.. you make some observations about the world around you, use that to come up with a theory, and then you perform experiments and observations to test that theory. One of the core components of a theory is it's ability to make predictions about things that we haven't observed yet; observing them a posteriori, we can determine whether the theory is at least plausible. A theory that makes no predictions is, to many academics and scientists, the equivalent of mental masturbation.
If you deal only wit
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really. String theory is based on observations like any theory. You can observe things, see that it lines up with your theory, and you can falsify string theory. The problem with string theory, and the reason why people complain about it, is that most of its observations are also true of the boring old theories we have right now or true of other variations of string theory. People get a little annoyed when you come up with a dozen contradictory string theories and according to all known observations
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
String theory in its various permutations could be (partial) theoretical solutions to this, but coming up with testable predictions of such theories (such as large-amplitude gravitational wa
Re:Sending the theoreticians back where they belon (Score:5, Insightful)
Now maybe the string theorists, such as Michio Kaku, will spend a little more time back at the drawing board and a little less time pretending to be Carl Sagan crossed with Alan Alda.
I doubt it. There is no such thing as "String theory". It should be more accurately called "String Theories". It's like a multi-headed hydra that lives forever. Falsify one part of it and 3 other theories pop up to replace it.
The only thing that can really kill String Theories is a experimentally verified competing theory that's unifies quantum mechanics and general relativity. Kill the body and the head will die.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you talk to a string theorist, it feels like you are talking to a religious person.
Re:Sending the theoreticians back where they belon (Score:5, Funny)
I like to see string theory crumbling as much as the next man, but err.. that :
dark matter can be explained by the evolution of advanced technological civilizations based on *known* physics (through molecular nanotechnology and extreme engineering)
If given the choice between these two propositions, I think I'll stick with string theory and its 26+ space dimensions. But kudos to you for pioneering a new approach to astrophysics that consists in claiming "space aliens did it".
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why 17 years after "Nanosystems" was published do we still not have an complete atomic level design for a molecular nanoassembler?
Patience, young grasshopper. Game of Life rules published in Martin Gardners column in October 1970, first turing machine in GoL that I'm aware of, April 2000. Wait at least another 13 years or so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life#cite_note-0 [wikipedia.org]
http://www.rendell-attic.org/gol/tm.htm [rendell-attic.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You *are* aware that Dark Matter has been observed, right? Or did you just miss the announcement of the Bullet Cluster results (among others)? As for Dark Energy, that isn't really a theory, so much as an observation with no explanation. Specifically, the rate of expansion of the universe is increasing. This is a fact. *Why*, we don't know, so we just call it Dark Energy for now. It's a placeholder, nothing more.
So please, take your trolls and go back into your basement, as it's pretty clear you don't
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Wow, great insight, random Slashdotter! If only those physicists visited Slashdot more often they'd know what's wrong with their results and conclusions!
Re: (Score:2)
Desiring a specific result does not make that result any more real, or coherent. Physics is built on philosophy, not the other way around. Until you understand the underlying concepts, you haven't understood a thing. Of course, it is
Come again? (Score:3, Insightful)
How does *failing* to find the thing which was predicted to exist by Einstein, prove Einstein right? Granted, they weren't *expecting* to see gravitational waves at this point, because they were only looking for waves which would have been at such a high magnitude that they weren't expected to exist *except by string theorists* because of part of string theory. So, that part of string theory was *dis-proved*, but Einstein's theory has not yet been proved correct (though they expect it will be 'soon' when th