How Do We Know the Timeline of the Universe? 153
StartsWithABang writes The history of the Universe happened in a well-known order: inflation ends, matter wins out over antimatter, the electroweak symmetry breaks, antimatter annihilates away, atomic nuclei form, then neutral atoms, stars, galaxies, and eventually us. But scientists and science magazines often publish timelines of the Universe with incredibly precise times describing when these various events occur. Here's how we arrive at those values, along with the rarely-publicized uncertainties.
We don't (Score:4, Funny)
We pretend we do, but it was actually re-created yesterday after the reboot of God's Second Life server farm.
Re:We don't (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is a theological way to define what Douglas Adams described on why the universe is so elusive to explain.
Another aspect is also - how do we know that the Universe was created at Big Bang. What if it was an empty void that suffered a spontaneous mass appearance.
Or do we live on the inside of a giant black hole?
Re:We don't (Score:5, Insightful)
What if it was an empty void that suffered a spontaneous mass appearance.
And somehow that's not a big bang?
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"epimonious "??? Googled it.
define: epimonious
Nothing found.
Did you mean:
eponymous
adjective
adjective: eponymous
(of a person) giving their name to something.
"the eponymous hero of the novel"
(of a thing) named after a particular person.
"Roseanne's eponymous hit TV series"
Um, what? Do you know something about the Big Bang no one else does?
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And somehow that's not a big bang?
No...before the "Big Bang" there was no void. Before the "Big Bang" there was no time. I know it's hard for us to visualize, but that's what the theory describes.
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You are correct only by stating the obvious fact that we don't/can't know...but the math, and the theory both suggest that a spaceless/timeless condition existed before the initial event. The trick we all play on ourselves when we visualize "an empty void" is just a reflection of our inability to see in our mind's eye what a spaceless/timeless condition "looks" like. But an empty void is most certainly a mental cheat and not what current theory suggests was there "before".
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We should have a "-1, repetitive" mod option.
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That explains the lag I had all weekend.
Re:Doesn't really answer the question (Score:5, Funny)
Think of it as a perfect sphere.
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On the back of a giant turtle.
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It's turtles all the way down
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Wrong. All the way down it's turtle shit, also known as 'dark matter'.
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A spherical turtle of uniform density in a frictionless vacuum.
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We Really Don't (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the comic book version of what happened.
We do not know that it happened in that manner. This is the popular version of what our current guesswork is and no more.
It should not be taken as "canon" or "real" any more than 2001 The Space Odyssey intro with apes inventing the use of bones as tools.
Because "science" --- the one with hypothesis, testing, reproduction of results is different than the speculation one --- which is very often quite wrong. If you want a recent example, there were many theories about the surface of Titan before we landed a probe there. They were quite wrong. So were a great many of the prevaling theories about Mars before we send probes there.
Early Universe ideas? Not fact. Not "well-known". Guesses.
Humans have made bad models from guesswork fit perfectly in the past, there were very orderly models of the geocentric model of the universe that accounted for the movement of Venus and Jupiter, etc quite well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... [wikipedia.org]
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This is the comic book version of what happened.
Like all esoteric fields of study, we outsiders can't understand it because we don't have The Right Stuff.
(Presumably that's something they smoke.)
Re:We Really Don't (Score:5, Informative)
You can understand it to the level of detail you are willing to spend on. So in this case "The Right Stuff" is mostly time.
You want to spend 5 minutes understanding cosmology, you're going to understand it at the comic book level, same as any other field of study.
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Sorry... I was going for the joke and didn't pitch it very well. My actual views are more like yours.
As for the reality of the subject matter, I would borrow the concept of "probably approximately correct" from machine learning, and give it a 90-95% chance of being ~80% correct. (The 80% is lower to allow room for some more big discoveries like inflation.)
Unfortunately, people will be (hopefully) studying this for thousands of years on top of the <100 we have so far, and none of us will live to see how
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All the stuff is just hydrogen, helium and time. Not just the good stuff.
Re:We Really Don't (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the comic book version of what happened.
Well, it seems to be simply a high-school essay with glossy graphics; what did you expect? It doesn't look like Stephen Hawking's style, or even Brian Cox' - it's just some guy that's mighty pleased with his ability to make his website look like an issue of the Hello magazine and who's out to attract traffic to his site, that's all.
Because "science" --- the one with hypothesis, testing, reproduction of results is different than the speculation one --- which is very often quite wrong.
Well, in a sense we know that science is ALWAYS wrong - we propose a theory, and if its predictions survive comprehensive testing, it is accepted as being not far off the mark, but we know that is it not the final truth. The scientific method has arisen on this background as a way to make the discrepancy between theory and reality ever smaller.
Re:We Really Don't (Score:5, Insightful)
Early Universe ideas? Not fact. Not "well-known". Guesses.
That's... really selling science - and the scientific method - way short.
It's not "guesses", it's hypotheses, which are by their nature our best explanations of something given our current understanding of how those things work.
Calling these "guesses" reduces all the science that's actually going on and puts it on the same level as Joe Schmoe's wild-ass guessing on subjects he's not familiar with.
There is a world of difference between Joe guessing what happened in the early days of the universe and a scientist that has devoted several years of his life studying the matter putting forth a hypothesis of what happened.
Please don't paint these as the same thing, it's just doing the anti-science folk a service, and the rest of us a disservice.
Re:We Really Don't (Score:5, Informative)
LOL. Hypothesis is just a fancy way to say "here's my guess". Whether put forward by Joe Schmoe or Johnatan P. Schmoe, PhD it means the same thing.
It really doesn't.
A hypothesis has to make sense, has to be based on observation and/or our best current knowledge of the subject matter. Ideally it is testable somehow, even if only mathematically or theoretically.
A guess doesn't have to have any of those constraints. "Aliens did it" is a guess, but it's not a hypothesis.
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The thing is our knowledge of the universe is so infinitesimally small that really it would be far fairer to call it a guess than a Hypothesis.
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Do you believe the periodic table of elements is local to the Earth, or is it the same elements all over the place?
Thing is, you're assuming the universe is huge... because science told you so. Not even 100 years ago, we still thought the entire universe was the Milky Way.
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"Do you believe the periodic table of elements is local to the Earth, or is it the same elements all over the place?"
I'd say they woould have different names on other planets, and in some parts of the universe there may not be many of the heavy elements, which need a supernova to be made.
(even on this planets, there are some places where Element #13 is called Aluminum, (the proper spelling is Aluminium)
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You're sidestepping the question. As Shakespeare said "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet".
We're not ignorant (Score:2)
The thing is our knowledge of the universe is so infinitesimally small that really it would be far fairer to call it a guess than a Hypothesis.
What makes you say that? Just because there are things we don't yet know doesn't automatically mean we are wrong about the things we do know. We're perfectly capable of building models that predicatively describe the world around us. If you build a model that accurately describes something and how it will (or did) behave then that is not a guess.
The big bang theory is basically a consensus picture of what we think happened based on the evidence we currently have. Some of the evidence we are extremely co
Re:We Really Don't (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is our knowledge of the universe is so infinitesimally small that really it would be far fairer to call it a guess than a Hypothesis.
How do you know it is "infinitesimally small"?
That's sound bite cosmology. We don't ever know what we don't know.
The idea that there are certain types of stars that have certain compositions, and certain sizes and will likely have a lifespan of a certain number of years is a theory that has worked pretty well. We add to it when we find something that doesn't quite fit, and we modify to it as needed. Wanna see scientists get excited? When something doesn't fit, and they have to go back to figure out why. That's a happy scientist. Wouldn't be a happy politician or theologian though
But we do know some things about the universe. We'll never know it all, thank goodness, but a lot of physics pieces are falling into place.
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It really doesn't.
In which field? In cosmology? It sure does, cosmology is mostly wild guessing based on unfounded assumptions, that is, more guesses. In astrophysics? It sure does and then the guessing is beyond ridiculous, e.g. the Schwarzschild metric is a 'solution' of the Einstein tensor with mass basically set equal to zero, and somehow black holes that have non-zero mass fall out of it. In quantum mechanics? It is even worse, the models there are just descriptions of accelerator observations with a bunch of meaningles
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the Schwarzschild metric is a 'solution' of the Einstein tensor with mass basically set equal to zero, and somehow black holes that have non-zero mass fall out of it.
It is a solution with zero angular momentum... not zero mass. It describes not just black holes but radially symmetric masses with no charge and no angular momentum, and had no connection to black holes in the beginning, but of ordinary planets and stars.
Perhaps "aliens took it" was what you said about your homework assignment when that class came around....
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It really doesn't.
A hypothesis has to make sense, has to be based on observation and/or our best current knowledge of the subject matter. Ideally it is testable somehow, even if only mathematically or theoretically.
A guess doesn't have to have any of those constraints. "Aliens did it" is a guess, but it's not a hypothesis.
Your statement should be embroidered, hung on the wall, and required reading before anyone is allowed to post on matters of science.
Way too many people, here and elsewhere, seem to have the idea that observation is somehow not a part of science. It is how we get some of these asinine statements of evolution not being science, or weather change not being science. And cosmology is probably not science in their view then.
Science is not simply Theory, Hypothesis, testing, confirmation or rejection.
Observ
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It really doesn't.
A hypothesis has to make sense, has to be based on observation and/or our best current knowledge of the subject matter. Ideally it is testable somehow, even if only mathematically or theoretically.
A guess doesn't have to have any of those constraints. "Aliens did it" is a guess, but it's not a hypothesis.
Your statement should be embroidered, hung on the wall, and required reading before anyone is allowed to post on matters of science.
Way too many people, here and elsewhere, seem to have the idea that observation is somehow not a part of science.
You want to hang on a wall a statement that a hypothesis is "ideally" testable somehow, even if only mathematically (he did say "or"), and herald it for stressing the importance of observation?
Being testable against observations is an essential characteristic of a hypothesis. If it isn't testable against observations, it isn't a "non-ideal" hypothesis, it is pseudoscience. Sure, any hypothesis should be mathematically consistent if it relies on math, but that isn't sufficient to make it a hypothesis.
I'm f
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Being testable against observations is an essential characteristic of a hypothesis. If it isn't testable against observations, it isn't a "non-ideal" hypothesis, it is pseudoscience.
How adorable that you can simply throw away the observational sciences. Because for as many on earth experiments as we can perform, we will never ever ever know exactly what is happening on that star, or across the universe, or things that happened in the past when we were not there to conform what happened.
Cosmology, physics, evolution are all theories, and until we can touch the stars, or have a time machine to go back to the earliest life forms, or the time of the big bang (if that was indeed how this
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Being testable against observations is an essential characteristic of a hypothesis. If it isn't testable against observations, it isn't a "non-ideal" hypothesis, it is pseudoscience.
How adorable that you can simply throw away the observational sciences.
I said that a hypothesis has to be "testable against observations." Presumably the observational sciences have observations. If their theories aren't testable against observation, then they aren't science.
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the problem is, most of the physics we know is just theories based on theories based on hypotheses. its one big circle jerk.
so your taking mostly scewed data
You have that wrong data?
Physics and especially cosmology, do not spring forth like Venus fully formed from the waves. So yes, we go through a transition from less right to more right. And the wrong ideas are not even bad, they just let us know what doesn't work.
A lot of old theories, like Phlogiston, Celestial Spheres, flat earth were proven wrong. It just means they were wrong, not that anything and everything that came after them is wrong.
And even if a theory is wrong, it serves as a platform fo
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Early Universe ideas? Not fact. Not "well-known". Guesses.
That's... really selling science - and the scientific method - way short.
So, the problem with his pointing out the lack of "testing, reproduction of results" in prehistoric history tales is ... that it isn't good sales?
And that's your scientific objection? To his scientific objection?
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So, the problem with his pointing out the lack of "testing, reproduction of results" in prehistoric history tales is ... that it isn't good sales?
And that's your scientific objection? To his scientific objection?
No, that's my non-scientific objection to his anti-science rant. A plea against ignorance and the wilful discrediting of a lot of hard-earned science, if you will.
This guy [slashdot.org] put it a lot better than I ever could; in short, calling these hypotheses "guessing" is ignorant as well as insulting, both to the scientists in the field and to everyone's general level of intelligence.
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Do we really need to establish a cult of science in which the gods are displeased if we don't use enough syllables in our word for "guess"? The words can be used interchangably. A "scientific hypothesis" does often catch more suggestion of testable, derived predictions, but it's also frequently used in a more general sense, just as "guess" can be used in a more noble sense.
I am all about respecting the scientists who invest a lot of work, but the fact they've done a lot of work doesn't make them more likel
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We don't need to scheme and manipulate to make sure our presentation of science leaves them on the poorest footing to rebut us, because, unless they are using science, their rebuttal is irrelevant.
As long as you think it is a priority for scientists to inform the public of their work, then it is necessary to some degree to address rebuttals regardless of the source of the claims. Such rebuttals become quite relevant in the minds of people who are not familiar enough with what is going on to tell the difference, especially with enough publicity. The only place it becomes completely irrelevant is if scientists should only communicate among their own spheres and journals and have no obligation to expl
Re:We Really Don't (Score:4, Interesting)
It might seem like nitpicking, but "guess" to me always implies taking a stab in the dark with little to no evidence and ending there. A scientific hypothesis, meanwhile, usually starts with some data, builds an argument that X should be true because of the initial data, and is subjected to testing to either confirm it or disprove it.
To give an example, you are presented with a clear cube filled with gumballs. A guess would be glancing at it and saying "600?" A hypothesis would be measuring the sides, estimating the size of each gumball, figuring out that there should be 1,000 gumballs, and then opening up the cube and counting the gumballs.
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My impression is that hypotheses can very well begin with guesses, and once the guy with the guess can come up with some solid reasons for it it turns into a hypothesis.
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My impression is that hypotheses can very well begin with guesses, and once the guy with the guess can come up with some solid reasons for it it turns into a hypothesis.
More like once the guy with the guess can come up with an experiment that can demonstrate the falsehood (or lack thereof) of the guess it is a hypothesis.
Obviously if the guess is already inconsistent with observations then there is no need to run the experiment since it is already falsified.
A scientific hypothesis is not a guess (Score:3)
A "scientific hypothesis" does often catch more suggestion of testable, derived predictions, but it's also frequently used in a more general sense, just as "guess" can be used in a more noble sense.
Calling theories that have been tested as much as relativity or quantum mechanics "guesses" is to deny the world in front of you. While they could be shown to be false in some manner tomorrow, the simple fact is that much of the modern world would simply not work if the words "hypothesis" and "guess" were equivalent. The computer you are typing on would not work if quantum mechanics was merely a guess. GPS could not function if relativity were merely a guess, regardless of how noble a sense you use it.
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"... the simple fact is that much of the modern world would simply not work if the words "hypothesis" and "guess" were equivalent." Incorrect. Reality doesn't give a crap how words are used. You apparently do and are taking umbrage. Fine, just don't act like what you're writing is fact. It isn't.
"... rather than mysticism and magical thinking." Or hyp
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The world would continue on, just as it did before people had a clue about quantum mechanics and general relativity. What wouldn't work is what would happen if we did certain things. GPS is an example; we made it work because what we know about relativity works in this case. Particle accelerators would not work if we were significantly wrong about special relativity or the speed of light. There's lots of electronics we use every day that works because what we understood of quantum mechanics was suffici
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Hypothesis was used in the quote. In fact "theory" doesn't appear at all. So you're arguing against some other statement.
Had you a clue about the scientific process you would know that the word "theory" as it relates to science simply means a well tested version of one or more hypothesis. The words are often used interchangeably though they are technically different mostly in the degree to which they have been substantiated.
Reality doesn't give a crap how words are used.
Engineers and scientists do give a crap how words are used because how they are used matters and affects their work.
You apparently do and are taking umbrage.
"Umbrage"? No. I'm just an engineer correcting someone who is stating something that is
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You talk about ""science" --- the one with hypothesis, testing, reproduction of results". These things do kind of apply to cosmology. Hypothese are about things like the statistical distribution of galaxy sizes and redshifts, or the exact spectrum of the cosmic microwave background or the proportions of elements in the oldest stars or ... The speculators are working out these prediction so that the observational astronomers can test them with their next set of instruments. Or in some of the other areas, a
Re:We Really Don't (Score:4, Interesting)
Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Disclaimer: I work in a cosmology department. What you've just written is total bullshit.
We make predictions, and they work. I could tear apart the nonsense you've written, but instead let me just point to the facts:
http://xkcd.com/54/ [xkcd.com]
http://sci.esa.int/planck/5155... [esa.int]
http://www.astro.virginia.edu/... [virginia.edu]
I could go on an on posting pretty pictures and graphs matching data, but let me just say that we work incredibly hard to make predictions from our models, we test those predictions against observations and test many of our systems to over 5 sigma. To say that what we're doing is just guessing is frankly insulting to a lot of incredibly hard working people. We /predicted/ the CMB then observed it. We predicted the power spectrum then observed it. We predict the population densities of stars at certain redshifts, point telescopes and damned well count the things and find them to match. We predict galactic rotations, lensing effects, (integrated) Sachs-Wolfe effects and a hundred
other little things, and we damned well test them, lining up our models against observations. We certainly haven't got everything right yet - there's a lot of room for investigation as to what went on before inflation, say, or exactly what type of matter dark matter is (but before you say we know nothing about it, I suggest you educate yourself - we don't know what it comprises, but we have damned good bounds on certain properties like its ratio of pressure to density). We don't know why the cosmological constant takes the value it does, but a whole host of checks all come up with the same number.
So no, we don't have "Guesses". We have repeatedly tested hypotheses from which we observe consistent data and find heavy statistical significance. What you've done is insult a lot of incredibly hard working, very smart people who are very serious about their work.
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Everything explained by science is a model that best fits observation, for every theory testing in a lab to in the sky. If you want "Truth" with a capital T, if you want to know what "really" happens behind something, go to the philosophy department. If you want a description of what we see with predictive power, then science can provide that. This isn't specific to cosmology.
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Re:Facts (Score:1)
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
It's really hard to fit model to data that hasn't been collected yet.
Or do you not understand when they talk about why they are building a particular space observatory satellite or something like the Large Hadron Collider?
If one of these experiments doesn't verify the model or contradicts it, and the model is changed, they then go collect even more data. They always want to verify that the model can predict something that wasn't known beforehand. And obviously the model has to match what is known already or it's just crap to start with.
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And, once you've got a new theory, you use it to make predictions so you can observe more data. If you've got two new theories, you try to figure out where they differ in predictions so you can observe which is right.
Really, science is a process of pounding on models to try to break them, interleaved with building new models. Scientific knowledge is basically what we've tried to break and haven't succeeded at.
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And you chose to ignore all the content in his/her arguments, by distorting context (the comics arguemnt) trying to undermine the credibility of GP. Who's the weak-ass, AC?
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External References
Refusal to make own arguments
This is a fallacy now? Various subjects, like cosmology, have volumes already written about things, with very detailed explanations. There are tons of free literature on the topic, all the way from intro class notes to current research papers. Why must every person re-write said material every time they post, especially when some of it out there is really well written? Just because someone can half-ass rewrite something so it fits in a Slashdot post doesn't make it a stronger argument.
Plus sometimes hal
Restating for the ignorant (Score:2)
They did not establish any credibility to be undermined, and there was no substantive argument made - they only linked to external sources.
Physics is a pretty big field. You seriously expect someone to spend the time to restate a meaningful amount of here what has already been adequately stated elsewhere?
Last I checked, xkcd is not a reputable source of cosmological authority.
Did you actually read to what was linked? Do you actually understand the formula shown and why it matters? Pretty clear the answer is no.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
I know I'm probably feeding the trolls here but...
Fine. I'm a post-doctoral research associate working on inflationary model fitting comparing anisotropies in the power spectrum with the anisotropies of galaxy distribution, with a side interest in the formation of stars at redshifts of about 5. In my time here I've done a host of jobs from outreach to 14-18 year olds, fundamental research, presentation to international conferences. And I've also cleaned the toilets twice, so yeah, I guess janitor could be on my CV too, if you care about that kind of thing (our janitors, for the record, are actually remarkably nice people, far more cheerful that I would be if I had their job, but I guess they only deal with literal shit that you can flush away, not the metaphorical shit that morons post on the internet).
The link to XKCD, if you know what you're talking about (which I strongly suspect that you don't) is a fit of a black body spectrum to the CMB. The point is that the data matches to such an amazing degree. The whole point of that comic is to state that our models work. They work incredibly well, far better in fact, than most of us would have thought when we first posited them.
The other links were just the beginnings of what is a very long list of ways we've tested our models against reality. I'm not your google guide - look them up yourself. What you'll find is that we see across a host of observations from different teams, different equipment, different phenomena covered that the predictions line up with observations to a very very high degree. The final result, as posited by the webcomic you so like to deride, is the tag line to that comic.
It works, bitches.
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I can't find it now, but one poster made the point that we should ignore the anti-science crowd. My only fear is that these people vo
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I know I'm probably feeding the trolls here but...
In fact you are feeding the trolls. The original post that you replied to even had the word "troll" in the username.
Then why... (Score:2)
Mr. Siegel's wonderfully know-it-all blog post is based on inflation...i.e. the assumed explanation for an unsolved problem.
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To spell it out for the hard of thinking here:
You have n parameters to fit with a model, and d data points. If d>n you can test your model by fitting the first n points then testing if it matches the remaining d-n. This is a very simplified version of what we do. When I drop something, I don't say "Oh, I can't predict anything, because we're /fitting/ the value g=9.8!". I instead measure the trajectory at multiple points and find that constant acceleration is a good model as it matches the data across mu
Pot meet kettle (Score:2)
That's pretty cleverly-worded there. You could be a sophomore year co-op student, or a janitor for all we know. You've made an appeal to authority (fallacy) on an incredibly vague claim of authority, and then supported your argument with Internet comics.
And exactly what in his argument was actually wrong? Or are you just being an argumentative dick-head because it amuses you? What about the science did he get wrong?
Weak-ass..
Pot meet kettle...
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oops... fixing a mis-clicked moderation. move along...
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Heh. Belief and Unicrons. That'll add to the discussion meaningfully !
When did slashdot become populated with loud, uneducated Americans instead of 'nerds' who actually know at least a thing or two?
I couldn't figure out if this was trolling or just someone on acid. Maybe a troll on acid. Whatever the case, that's some crazy shit.
But yeah, been getting more worried about this trend towards hokum in Slashdot. Not sure if it's just a different crowd, or the world is just getting madder. If it keeps up, I'm out.
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Dude, relax. The Electric Universe trolls have been around Slashdot for at least a decade now. In fact, after a huge apk-esque copypasta burst in the early 2000's, they kind of faded away.
In fact, seeing an Electric Universe troll now is like spotting a baiji. Just marvel, make note of it, and move on.
Thanks man. I'm breathing a bit easier now.
This is my first sighting of one in the wild. The closest I've ever come was in my uni days, hearing someone cite Erich von Däniken in a debate on evolution.
We certainly can't read about it (Score:1)
on unreadable clickbait hipstersites.
What's next? (Score:2)
Heard a radio discussion about which major piece of science would likely crack over the next fifty years. The answer came back as the Big Bang, with one of the participants saying [rather indiscreetly, IMHO] that it was Sir Martin Rees in a pers. comms. who suggested that it was full of holes and the area was ripe for a paradigm shift.
I once saw Fred Hoyle lecture on his Steady State Theory. He was awaiting the red shift results from a twin maser in some distant galaxy somewhere and we were assured that it
Science can look into the past (Score:2)
If you ask me, the paradigm shift should be that science stops trying to answer questions which it obviously can't ever answer.
You don't know what you cannot answer until you try to answer it. Science generally speaking can (theoretically) answer any question which has observable evidence and is falsifiable. What our universe looks like and how it developed are well within the bounds of being observable and falsifiable.
The study of things that happened in the past is called history and it is not a science, no matter how much circumstantial evidence is collected.
I'm sure the scientists who study geology, archaeology, paleontology, astronomy, and numerous other disciplines will be disappointed to hear what they are doing isn't considered science anymore. Oh wait, those ARE
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The first piece of observed antimatter was the positron and it isn't an atom. The idiot is in the mirror.
give this one a pass (Score:2)
Silly me, making the mistake of reading TFA on /. ( aside: what's the proper way to punctuate a sentence ending in /.?)
You want to know how we 'know' all of those things with such great precision? It's all about the scale of temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background. The CMB is a snapshot of the universe some 30k years after the big bang, during the time of first neutralization, when the pathlength of photons quickly (on cosmic scales) went form very short in the hot plasma (think neon l
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Well....sort of. The CMB is modified by galaxies that are too faint to see, though I don't know by how much. It's filtered by intervening dust clouds moving WRT both us and the "origin of the signals". Etc. I normally assume that this is taken account of as best we can, but it's not unmodified signal. If you look at the raw (uncorrected) observations, I don't know how much noise is present, but clearly that are signals too weak to be recognized even though detected.
OTOH, I am not a cosmologist. But I
I like opening of Big Bang TV show (Score:2)