Earth's 'Bigger, Older Cousin' Maybe Doesn't Even Exist (npr.org) 52
Ever since astronomers started to detect planets beyond our solar system, they've been trying to find another world just like Earth. And few years ago, they announced that they'd found a planet that was the closest match yet -- Kepler-452b. Trouble is, some astronomers now say it's not possible to know for sure that this planet actually exists. From a report: "There's new information that we can now quantify which tells us something that we didn't know before," says Fergal Mullally, who used to be an astronomer on the science team for NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. In 2015, NASA declared that Kepler-452b was the first near-Earth-sized planet orbiting in the "habitable" zone around a star very similar to our sun. The space agency called it Earth's "bigger, older cousin," and scientists were so enthusiastic that one began quoting poetry at a news conference. The original science wasn't shoddy, Mullally says. It's just that, since then, researchers have learned more about the telescope's imperfections.
Explanation for dimming: (Score:2)
The inhabitants of Kepler-452a all turn their washing machines on at the same time and thus the lights dimmed. This is the dangers of solar power that nobody warns you about! ;)
There is no Planet B (Score:3)
All this excitement, I know what you're thinking, and you apes need to start taking better care of what is likely the only planet in the entire universe capable of supporting life.
Ref; Fermi's Paradox.
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Well, that's one explanation of Fermi's Paradox. But I think the more likely ones are that star travel is inherently immensely dangerous, or that technological civilizations tend to destroy themselves.
You explanation is actually the more hopeful one, but unless a double planet (i.e. a moon based tidal system) is necessary to life, it seems a rather unlikely one.
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Parsimony probably wins this one; positing that "space travel is dangerous" requires 1) life on other worlds, that 2) advance to the point of recognizing "space" and then 3) develop machines of a complexity to fly in any manner at all, and then 4) decide that "space flight" sounds cool, and that they 5) find a way to do that, while not 6) at the same time wrecking themselves with some other marvelous machine they made, such that 7) they reach space and venture anywhere beyond low orbit, enough to 8) be murd
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Well the universe is infinite or so they say but how the fuck do they know
Actually science indicates the universe is not infinite, but is finite in both time and direction.
How do we know? Look up at the sky during the night. See how it isn't blinding you with its brightness? That is how we know.
If the universe was infinite in space, every possible point you could look at in the sky would intersect a star shining light at us.
If the universe was infinite in time, the light from all of those stars would have had infinite time to reach us, and would have by now.
If the universe wa
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Not strictly true, if cosmic inflation happens / heppened at a speed great than light - a popular hypothesis these days. Then the reason why the night sky isn't saturated with light is, most of the bright points are too far away to reach us, or are inflating away from us faster than their legs of light can run.
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You presume that the basic laws of physics that we experience here, in this gravity well, exist uniformly everywhere. We cannot (yet) know this. It's entirely possible that there are other cosmic laws that we cannot notice here on Earth, but which may become significant in deep space.
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No. Positing that interstellar travel is inherently dangerous doesn't require assuming that anyone ever tried it. So that argument's invalid.
And postulating that technological civilizations tend to destroy themselves it an independent variable also. We only have one example, it's a bit of a ways from even it's first interstellar flight, and we've already come within 30 seconds of all out nuclear war. This is not to exclude the various other dangers that we've been doing a drunkards walk around. If you
Science is an error-correction process (Score:5, Insightful)
The fundamental thing that everyone should understand about science -- and most people don't -- is that science is nothing more and nothing less than an error correction process.
Everything we know is wrong, at least in some way and in some degree. Science is the process by which we identify errors and fix them, but science is itself an error-prone process and all scientific results are erroneous, at least in some way and in some degree. The fact that errors are discovered is not evidence that science doesn't work, it's evidence that science does work, that it identifies and corrects humanity's errors -- including those generated by previous science.
What makes science works is that although we always introduce new errors in our understanding when we correct old errors in our understanding, the new errors are nearly always smaller. We approach the truth iteratively and asymptotically, getting ever closer but never arriving.
And if anyone ever tells you that science is pointless because scientists "keep changing their minds", you need only point at the wealth, comfort and plenty in which we live, as compared to the poverty, hardship and scarcity in which our ancestors lived, just a few generations ago. The fact that science has not yet achieved perfection doesn't mean it doesn't work, it just means it's not yet done (and it will *never* be done; there will always be more errors to correct).
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Well reasoned.
I suggest the mechanism by which we (in the West, at least) enjoy the wealth, comfort and plenty in which we live, as compared to the poverty, hardship and scarcity in which our ancestors lived, is not because of science per se but because of easy access to fossil fuels. I am a field Biologist, and I am the first to admit to this reality. We've come a long way indeed, but primarily because we secured for ourselves a lot more free energy to play with than the ones came before us.
That era may be
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Well reasoned.
I suggest the mechanism by which we (in the West, at least) enjoy the wealth, comfort and plenty in which we live, as compared to the poverty, hardship and scarcity in which our ancestors lived, is not because of science per se but because of easy access to fossil fuels.
Bah. Science gave us a lot of progress before we began using fossil fuels, and is providing alternative energy sources, as well as methods to be more efficient, for after we stop using them.
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That might also explain why, if there is life on other planets, we haven't heard from it. We're lucky enough to have access to reasonably easy to obtain energy sources. If not for that, we wouldn't have the technology to be attempting to communicate with other planets. We'd still be stuck in the 18th century. While there was plenty of intelligent life on earth in the 18th century, it wasn't in any position to be broadcasting or receiving messages from other planets.
Just because a planet evolves intelligent
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"The fact that errors are discovered is not evidence that science doesn't work, it's evidence that science does work, that it identifies and corrects humanity's errors -- including those generated by previous science."
No it's not. Identifying errors is not evidence of science even it applying scientific principles may lead to identifying errors. A scientist would understand this.
The fact is it's pretty shitty science when a scientist doesn't even understand his own tools. All this bloviating serves only to
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Utter nonsense. There are always errors in scientific work. In fact, much of the detail work in science is exactly identifying and controlling for errors... and it is not always done perfectly.
Wrong. The science is settled. The raw temperature data sets were perfectly adjusted downward for the past in conformance with our perfectly accurate models.
There is nothing more to discuss on the matter except legislation and how we need more funding.
Complete and utter nonsense.
Oh, the fact that anthropogenic global warming is a serious risk that we must address immediately is quite clear. We should be imposing carbon taxes, funding research into fossil fuel alternatives, and also researching more aggressive schemes for carbon extraction and sequestration and global cooling, perhaps by blocking insolation (because merely slowing -- or even stopping -- our dumping of CO2 into the atmosphere is not enough.)
BUT anyone who believes that we fully and com
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"The fact that errors are discovered is not evidence that science doesn't work, it's evidence that science does work, that it identifies and corrects humanity's errors -- including those generated by previous science."
No it's not. Identifying errors is not evidence of science even it applying scientific principles may lead to identifying errors. A scientist would understand this.
The fact is it's pretty shitty science when a scientist doesn't even understand his own tools. All this bloviating serves only to hide the issue.
I'm glad someone pointed that out. It's a hermetically sealed defense. "No matter how bad our science was, that proves it was actually great!"
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No matter how bad our science was, that proves it was actually great!
You're switching between two different uses of science there. Your first use, "science", was referring to the data of the previous study. But what the OP meant by "it" was the scientific process in general.
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Your position is self-contradictory.
Science works because it admits errors and works to identify and fix them. Even trying to remove errors before proceeding is still having to admit errors and identifying them. You can't wait for perfect knowledge before working on the science, because the science wouldn't exist at all.
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well then (Score:2)
Settled (Score:2)
The science is se
The original science wasn't shoddy, Mullally says. It's just that, since then, researchers have learned more about the telescope's imperfections
What was that about carpenters and their tools?
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Someone gets it. You're not a scientist when you fundamentally don't know what you're looking at because you don't understand your tools.
Re: "science" (Score:1)