'The Problem with the Big Bang Theory' (cnn.com) 141
So how exactly did the universe come into existence? "A recent astronomical measurement recorded in a laboratory at the South Pole is causing scientists to revisit their theories..." writes Don Lincoln, a senior scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory:
In the intervening decades [since 1929], observations have only strengthened the case for the Big Bang theory, but they have also made it clear that the theory is incomplete. For instance, in its earliest incarnation, the Big Bang couldn't explain why the universe was so uniform. Astronomers in the Northern Hemisphere who looked deep into space see the same thing on average as ones that live in the Southern Hemisphere. Traditional Big Bang theory predicts that there should be small differences in temperature, clumpiness of large clusters of galaxies and other properties. But both sides look the same.
However, in 1980, physicist Alan Guth proposed an extension to the theory that could reconcile some of the inconsistencies between theory and observation, including the unexpected uniformity. His extension is called cosmic inflation theory and it claims that in the first moments of the birth of the universe it expanded faster than the speed of light.... However, if inflation is true, we should be able to prove it. Although the universe was once glowing hot, the expansion of the universe has cooled it off and that glow has morphed into microwaves that astronomers have been able to detect since 1964. This relic of the Big Bang is called the cosmic microwave background, or CMB. Inflation theory predicts that the microwaves of the CMB should be polarized...
The CMB can be polarized in two ways: B-modes, which are swirly patterns, and E-modes, which are more of a straight-line pattern. And, if inflation theory is correct, we'd expect to see some mix of B-modes and E-modes, while if it isn't correct — in other words, if the expansion of the universe did not happen as quickly as the theory suggests — researchers should only see E-modes... Astronomers used a telescope facility called BICEP-3 (short for Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) to study the CMB and its polarization. The telescope's South Pole location, with its altitude of nearly two miles above sea level and incredibly dry air, is an ideal place to conduct this kind of research. BICEP-3 scientists combined their data with measurements at other facilities and found no indication of B-modes originating from the CMB. If B-modes are present in the CMB, they are very small.
So, does that mean that the theory of inflation must be thrown out? No, although the data has disproved some of the simpler theories of inflation, it isn't sensitive enough to rule out the more complex versions. Still, the failure to observe CMB B-modes is unsettling, causing some scientists to go back to the drawing board.
However, in 1980, physicist Alan Guth proposed an extension to the theory that could reconcile some of the inconsistencies between theory and observation, including the unexpected uniformity. His extension is called cosmic inflation theory and it claims that in the first moments of the birth of the universe it expanded faster than the speed of light.... However, if inflation is true, we should be able to prove it. Although the universe was once glowing hot, the expansion of the universe has cooled it off and that glow has morphed into microwaves that astronomers have been able to detect since 1964. This relic of the Big Bang is called the cosmic microwave background, or CMB. Inflation theory predicts that the microwaves of the CMB should be polarized...
The CMB can be polarized in two ways: B-modes, which are swirly patterns, and E-modes, which are more of a straight-line pattern. And, if inflation theory is correct, we'd expect to see some mix of B-modes and E-modes, while if it isn't correct — in other words, if the expansion of the universe did not happen as quickly as the theory suggests — researchers should only see E-modes... Astronomers used a telescope facility called BICEP-3 (short for Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) to study the CMB and its polarization. The telescope's South Pole location, with its altitude of nearly two miles above sea level and incredibly dry air, is an ideal place to conduct this kind of research. BICEP-3 scientists combined their data with measurements at other facilities and found no indication of B-modes originating from the CMB. If B-modes are present in the CMB, they are very small.
So, does that mean that the theory of inflation must be thrown out? No, although the data has disproved some of the simpler theories of inflation, it isn't sensitive enough to rule out the more complex versions. Still, the failure to observe CMB B-modes is unsettling, causing some scientists to go back to the drawing board.
I think around season 6 or 7 (Score:4, Funny)
I think around season 6 or 7 the actors and writers just gave up and things started to trail off. Everybody was just flopping around. By season 8 stick a fork in it. But man did they beat that dead horse.
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I'm pretty sure it was about the time when shorthaired Penny appeared.
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I figured it was when they all got girlfriends.
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It was when the writers decided that all the main characters had to have children, and that everyone involved had to like it, even it they didn't want children not that long before.
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It happens. The other alternative is to just end the show on a high note and tell everyone they can't milk millions an episode by creating my seasons riding past success. Very few in Hollywood would do that and especially not when it's a group effort. I believe the "official" reason it ended was Sheldon Cooper saying he didn't want to continue any more.
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The other alternative is to just end the show on a high note and tell everyone they can't milk millions an episode by creating my seasons riding past success. Very few in Hollywood would do that and especially not when it's a group effort.
As an example, the creator of The Good Place [wikipedia.org] (one of my favorite shows) originally envisioned the series running four seasons [newsweek.com] and stuck to it. While I would have liked the show to continue, and some things felt a bit rushed at times, I can't really imagine how the show could have been stretched (milked) out over more seasons w/o losing a lot of what made it good. On the upside, the show is a good length for repeated binge-watching (53 22min hour episodes), and I seem to notice something new each time thr
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When I was thinking of shows that actually ended where they were should The Good Place came up. They ended it where they should have to tell the story.
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When I was thinking of shows that actually ended where they were should The Good Place came up. They ended it where they should have to tell the story.
Farscape was able to wrap things up fairly well via the (enraged fan inspired) mini-series after it was canceled after season 4 ended -- I'm in the middle of re-watching season 4 on DVD now... Thinking about that, I'm not sure what they would have done in S5 anyway.
Other shows get canceled too early. One of my other favorite shows, Defying Gravity [wikipedia.org] only ran one season with 13 episodes and got canceled after only airing 8 episodes. I bought it on DVD just to watch those remaining episodes. The final sce
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That is often the British Formula - don't jump the shark.
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That is often the British Formula - don't jump the shark.
Also, it's makes a pretty nice callback to The Good Place. On The Good Place, the character Tahani has a favorite show: Deidre and Margaret, which she says ran for ran for 16 years on the BBC and "did nearly 30 episodes".
Re:I think around season 6 or 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say in the first few episodes.
It was built on reinforcing nerd stereotype. A lot of the humor relied on the male characters not having traditional masculine attributes, and that humor was based on us laughing at the characters, not with them.
The show is basically framed that despite their intelligence, the academic and professional success, that mainstream Americans should not feel threatened by the four geek characters because they are pathetic. Hell, sometimes the humor relies on it - Sheldon's a misogynist, and Howard is a pervert, but it's funny because we're supposed to see both as powerless to be a threat.
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I'd say in the first few episodes.
It was built on reinforcing nerd stereotype. A lot of the humor relied on the male characters not having traditional masculine attributes, and that humor was based on us laughing at the characters, not with them.
The show is basically framed that despite their intelligence, the academic and professional success, that mainstream Americans should not feel threatened by the four geek characters because they are pathetic. Hell, sometimes the humor relies on it - Sheldon's a misogynist, and Howard is a pervert, but it's funny because we're supposed to see both as powerless to be a threat.
I only saw a couple episodes, and to me it felt a lot like being part of the "in" crowd that was bullying someone. It didn't make me laugh, it made me wonder what was wrong with us that this was a popular show. I'm willing to grant the possibility that there were other episodes written with more empathy for the characters, but I'll never see them.
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Unlike the show, the jokes just write themselves for this thread.
No, the problem was the laugh track. (Score:2)
If for no other reason than this (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting.
Science, unlike other explanations for the great questions, can question itself without bringing down the whole belief set like a house of cards.
Re:If for no other reason than this (Score:4, Insightful)
"can question itself "
I'd like to emphasize that science MUST question itself. Peer review is essential.
But why limit self-questioning to scientists? Shouldn't we all be examining our opinions, beliefs, attitudes and choices? I'm not trying to say that Republicans are wrong to follow slogans, bumper stickers and pseudo religious dogma. Well maybe that is what I'm saying. Socrates put it this way: "The unexamined life is not worth living."
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Not speaking more than a few hundred words of ancient Greek - the legacy picked up by anyone who has been following the sciences for a few decades - I gloss that as "navel-gaze, sceptically and often".
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"can question itself "
I'd like to emphasize that science MUST question itself. Peer review is essential.
But why limit self-questioning to scientists? Shouldn't we all be examining our opinions, beliefs, attitudes and choices? I'm not trying to say that Republicans are wrong to follow slogans, bumper stickers and pseudo religious dogma. Well maybe that is what I'm saying. Socrates put it this way: "The unexamined life is not worth living."
Sure. Here's what happens though.
I can question matters of electromagnetics and physics. I can ask questions and get answers about things I'm not well versed in from experts.
I can (and am) skeptical, and some times very skeptical. So I might question some things that don't sound right to me.
This is completely different from a person who believes in perpetual motion, or that he can heat his house using zero point energy generated by tea candles and earthenware flower pots. Or that the second law of th
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I once had a guy claiming that Radio works by particles that physically flew off antennas and landed on other antennas
Photons?
Granted, waves are a much more useful way of looking at microwave radiation than particles, but both are technically valid...
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I once had a guy claiming that Radio works by particles that physically flew off antennas and landed on other antennas
Photons?
Granted, waves are a much more useful way of looking at microwave radiation than particles, but both are technically valid...
Photons or quanta are indeed what most of us consider electromagnetic radiation. Most think of photons as light, but they are just the visible part of the spectrum. Some times I use the term quanta to avoid confusing people.
His particles actually had physical mass. He had some very unique laws of physics. 8^)
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Yes. That is why the designers of my secondary school physics course carefully led it's pupils through all the stages of developing the laws of physics through individual discover of relationships, all the way to observing - with the Mk-1 eyeball and apparatus they built and understood themselves - the wave-particle duality. Then (and I think this was the cunning bit) they didn't mention it - they merely got the student to use
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Yes. That is why the designers of my secondary school physics course carefully led it's pupils through all the stages of developing the laws of physics through individual discover of relationships, all the way to observing - with the Mk-1 eyeball and apparatus they built and understood themselves - the wave-particle duality. Then (and I think this was the cunning bit) they didn't mention it - they merely got the student to use their own data, from their own apparatus, to show that the light must be arriving as discrete quanta (photoelectric effect - it works in eyes as well as vacuum tubes) but that each quantum must travel from source (a very dim LED - calculate the number of quanta in transit at any one time), through two slits simultaneously and interfere with itself to produce a diffraction pattern by flying into your eye. And it does that before the next quantum of light is generated by the source. And ten years later, the realisation that you have seen the wave-particle duality with your own eyes.
Reality isn't interested in what humans find comfortable. I still find it uncomfortable, and I've known it's true for over a quarter-century.
That is a good course! My high school science courses were all vetted out by religious fundamentalists, (I am not kidding) and so much was left out.
I mean they went through and wouldn't allow anything they found that didn't agree with their worldview, and made it verboten. Can't have radioactivity that has a half life longer than the fact that the world was created in 4004 B.C.E. Light itself was kind of iffy, as the huge distances between stars violated that dictum. And slightly off topic, the required
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That's somewhere in the Taliban-controlled parts of the third world isn't it? Or Tittiban. Something like that. It would almost be worth having children, to be able to ban them from breeding with such organisms.
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That's somewhere in the Taliban-controlled parts of the third world isn't it? Or Tittiban. Something like that. It would almost be worth having children, to be able to ban them from breeding with such organisms.
Seemed almost like ti to me. Imagine - it was illegal to have a store open on Sunday in this town. Eventually they would "Allow"stores to be open for a couple hours after church so people could get their Sunday papers locally instead of driving 15 miles to the next town. finally, the blue laws as they were called, tunbled like a stack of cards.
It was almost like the town was trying to go Amish before cooler heads prevailed.
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Interesting.
Science, unlike other explanations for the great questions, can question itself without bringing down the whole belief set like a house of cards.
You know what's funny? The big bang theory was resisted by many when it was first proposed, because of the plainly theistic implications of an absolute beginning.
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Interesting.
Science, unlike other explanations for the great questions, can question itself without bringing down the whole belief set like a house of cards.
You know what's funny? The big bang theory was resisted by many when it was first proposed, because of the plainly theistic implications of an absolute beginning.
Here's a nice piece about that. http://curious.astro.cornell.e... [cornell.edu]
It's difficult enough to wrap one's head around the big bang itself, so the concept of "before" is tough. But it isn't that there was nothing before. So it gets a bit understandable that those of theistic bent might get stuck on what could seem like their deity created everything out of nothing.
Re:If for no other reason than this (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people don't have the background to question science. They just bitch about things they don't like. So go ahead and question Fauci, but don't expect anyone to take you seriously. First, publish your epidemiologist credentials.
Re:If for no other reason than this (Score:4, Insightful)
Fauci worked for the Reagan administration. That in itself should give him a pass with the republican party. It’s also sad and funny how Fuaci is made out to be the bad guy here. But why the fuck is OP talking about Fauci in a story about the big bang? Living rent free in his head I guess.
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Do you maybe have a specific crime that you think he should be on trial for, or do you want to just pull something out of a hat? Maybe spin a wheel?
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Gain of function is the new ...But her emails! talking point.
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Complaining about a "new virus" originating from an area where the government paid to create "new viruses" is an inconsequential "talking point".
First you cry tears that people aren't taking the pandemic seriously.
Then when we look into it and point out causes it's cover your ass mode.
Please go back to your boss and apologize to him for being bad at your shilling job. If he wants to pay some low effort employee to spread FUD he can pay me to stop spreading the truth. He may actually get more value for his
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The whole thing is ridiculous. The NIH was not funding gain of function research in Wuhan under the NIH's definition of gain of function. Assertions by a bunch of second-rate conspiracy mongers.
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Care to be any more specific?
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If they came up with a conclusive experimental result I wouldn't really care about their credentials. They don't though.
Fauci didn't lose his credibility because people don't like what he says. He lost his credibility when the rest of the federal government put him on a pedestal as a truth teller, and promptly sacrificed his truth teller status to try and cover up the fact there weren't enough masks to go around.
Re:If for no other reason than this (Score:5, Insightful)
What you're referring to is actual science. Where a mostly self taught Albert Einstein can become the most influential in his field based on uncovering truth rather than defending the established ideas.
Einstein already had the equivalent of a bachelors degree - technically a teaching degree, but from a four year post-secondary school, so a bachelor's degree) - and was a doctoral candidate during his so called "miracle year" when he published the papers that put him on the map. A few years later he was given a professorship. While, like most high-achievers in academics he was "self-taught" in that he actively studied math and physics beyond what was assigned in his classes, he most certainly had a formal education and letters after his name. It sounds like maybe you've fallen for some urban myth like the classic "Einstein flunked math!" one. His reputation did come from his exceptional discoveries as a physicist, rather than the letters after his name, of course. He was still very much a part of traditional academia, however.
Scientists are not a cult, they're scientists. One thing you could definitely say about Fauci is that he's clearly been a manager rather than a researcher for decades. I don't think he's published any pure research that he took part in for decades either. In his role, most of his publications have been policy and opinion pieces and official NIH statements, etc. He's very definitely not some high priest of some science cult as you appear to be implying. He does not dictate to other scientists what to think. They study the research and make up their own minds.
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Science, unlike other explanations for the great questions, can question itself without bringing down the whole belief set like a house of cards.
That remains to be seen.
True, since we are not clairvoyant, everything remains to be seen. But (hard) science rests on pretty good foundations. F'rinstance, Newtons stuff didn't become useless just because he was unaware of spacetime. Einstein's stuff is way too inefficient and pointless for most everyday activities, because we travel at a minuscule percentage of the speed of light.
There are always other possibilities. (Score:2)
What if our physical constants haven't always been so constant? We've only know the universe in it's current state and while we've seen glimpses of the past, we can't really be sure that everything has always been as it is now. I'm not saying this is it but I think it's worthy of consideration.
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What if our physical constants haven't always been so constant? We've only know the universe in it's current state and while we've seen glimpses of the past, we can't really be sure that everything has always been as it is now. I'm not saying this is it but I think it's worthy of consideration.
Scientists tend to assume that the basic constants of the universe are in fact constant. We have no hard evidence otherwise and allowing them to vary would allow you to create a model that would explain anything and consequently explains nothing. If cosmic inflation did not occur (and there is no mechanism that I know of to explain why it occurred and if it did why it stopped), then we need a new theory. There are enough holes in our understanding of the basic physics that I am sure someone will come up
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"...would allow you to create a model that would explain anything and consequently explains nothing..."
Welcome to string theory 101 ;).
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"...would allow you to create a model that would explain anything and consequently explains nothing..."
Welcome to string theory 101 ;).
String theory is more religion than science. Need to explain something? Just invent more and untestable dimensions.
Re:There are always other possibilities. (Score:4, Informative)
Does antimatter exert antigravity.
We know that antimatter has positive inertial mass, so if it has negative gravitational mass, that will be an astonishing result and overturn general relativity, which is fundamentally based on inertial/gravitational equivalency.
The experimental evidence is weak since it is so difficult to measure how gravity affects individual particles, but at least statistically, the evidence points toward AM having positive gravitational mass.
Gravitational interaction of antimatter [wikipedia.org]
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See:
Antimatter gravity could explain Universe's expansion
https://phys.org/news/2011-04-... [phys.org]
A repulsive force in the Einstein theory
https://academic.oup.com/mnras... [oup.com]
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Scientists tend to assume that the basic constants of the universe are in fact constant.
As they should... at least for things in the stellar scale. It is mostly on the intergalactic scale that our understanding of the universe is lacking, so I think considerations should be made in areas beyond our understanding.
We have no hard evidence otherwise
I'm not saying invent something arbitrary, I'm saying look at all the evidence we have and consider what could be different and still result in data we have.
allowing them to vary would allow you to create a model that would explain anything and consequently explains nothing.
Newton modeled a heliocentric world which made our observations makes sense and solidifying that that gravity "pulled". The why
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It is often paraphrased as "Hubble pictures are too crisp".
Though probably not when it initially launched, before the flawed optics were corrected. :-)
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Re:There are always other possibilities. (Score:4, Informative)
Pulsars for instance are very exact clocks, which send their clock signal in a very broad spectrum of electromagnetic waves, and we see the clock pulses in pristine conditions. So the only influences we can see are Doppler shifts from the speed the objects traveling away from us, gravitational Doppler shifts and the Doppler shifts created by the space between the sources and us expanding. We can pretty much rule out everything that night come from quantum mechanical effects, as this would be frequency depended (see E = hf), like quantum fatigue or quantization of Space and Time.
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> What if our physical constants haven't always been so constant?
Time isn't even a constant but until there were ultra precise instruments no one believed it. It's one thing to have the tools to measure with precision, but you can't know things are changing if the tools you use to measure them are also changing.
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STTNG: Deja Q
Q: Change the gravitational constant of the Universe thereby changing the mass of the asteroid.
Giordi: Redefine gravity? How am I supposed to do that?!
Q: You just do it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xdbPhnfFEI [youtube.com]
Re:There are always other possibilities. (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, what if. Let's take your thesis, and see if we can develop some testable hypothesis from it.
Which "constants" do you consider as not being constant? Directly that's going to be hard to test. We can't, for example, actually take our tape measure and a test circle to a z=9 galaxy, and there measure the diameter and radius to find that PI really is 3. (Also, fuck Slashdot's inability to step outside ASCII!) It'd be easier to go to Indiana (or whichever state has that albatross around it's neck).
But what we can do is look at certain physical parameters that are produced by the combination of multiple fundamental constants, and see if they (or things controlled by them) are variable with redshift. One such parameter is the "fine structure constant [wikipedia.org]" which can be derived in various ways to be expressed using between 4 and 6 different fundamental constants from ... well the 10-long list is on the Wiki link I just gave ; I'm not going to spend a half-hour trying to steer around SLASHDOT's STUPID INABILITY TO HANDLE NON-ASCII TEXT.
Since that physical parameter (the "FSC") is expressed by theories coming from several directions, using differing numbers of several "constants, then if any one of those constants varied, the "FSC" would also vary. However, if the FSC was seen to not vary, then any variations in the list of "constants" are highly constrained by the various expressions to have at most very small variations.
One of the physical processes controlled by the FSC is the movement of electrons within atoms (see the charge, and the electro-magnetic properties of the vacuum appearing in the list on Wiki?), and if the FSC changed, the spacing of absorption wavelengths of hydrogen atoms would vary. That gives a spectroscopic signal that would be observable.
Long story short : that variation hasn't been observed. It has been looked for, and it isn't there. Therefore, the maximum amount of variation that can occur in those "constants", since the time of emission of the light being measured, can be constrained. For measurements up to about 10 billion years ago, maximum ranges of variation are in the order of a few parts per billion to a few parts per million.
The Wiki page linked to above has a section on the use of the FSC as a probe to "constant variation, and reference 23 through 59 are mostly concerned with this topic. Reading that lot shouldn't take more than a week, so anything left uncovered by them, feel free to come back here and ask, and I'm sure we'll help.
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Exactly. Rule out what doesn't fit the data and then consider what will fit the data but we can't be sure of. At the end of it all, you might have some possibilities that we can slowly eliminate or confirm using data from future instruments.
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If you're looking for something that can allow you to accelerate an aircraft carrier to 0.1c using a strong rubber band and an tired triple-A cell, you're not going to get there from drifting "constants". You might get a spectroscopist's pulse to increase slightly though.
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What if our physical constants haven't always been so constant? We've only know the universe in it's current state and while we've seen glimpses of the past, we can't really be sure that everything has always been as it is now. I'm not saying this is it but I think it's worthy of consideration.
That was one idea that young earth creationists used to make the universe fit in with their demand that the place was created by their god in 4004 B.C.E.
The speed of light could slow down and speed up. They used things like refraction and Cherenkov radiation as proof They never came up with a good way that light was going to travel faster than light though.
I'm happy to discuss stuff with people who are respectful, and if they are asking with a genuine desire to find out or compare notes.
I am on rec
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By coincidence (unless you play C. J. A. P. Martins in Real Life (TM)), there's a paper on this that came up on Arxiv overnight :
Varying fundamental constants and dark energy in the ESPRESSO era [arxiv.org] Sounds quite relevant.
[SELF] Reads abstract.
Hmmm, I think I'm going to have to read the whole paper. Or at least as much as I can understand of it. But I've got things to do this afternoon.
The ball, as they say, is in your court.
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I'm not a physicist or even particularly good at math, so forget being in my court, I'm just a guy in the stands that is wearing a shirt in support of my idea. I know there are enough smart people in these fields for enough of them to question the underlying assumptions we've made. You just have to wait until a particularly intelligent individual takes an interesting in the idea for it to really be explored. Frankly, there are far more pressing problems to solve, so I don't mind if hear about it in my li
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In the same week, there are order-of a hundred on Standard Model lambda-CDM cosmologies.
The overwhelming majority of people who are physicists, with the relevant mathematical background, don't think MOND (etc) is worth paying attention to. Since this is all paper and chalk, not building ironmongery, there's nothing much in the way of funding to choose between the two - both groups of
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Neat! Over the next century we'll probably get the observational data needed to actually narrow it down. However, in the next 400 years maybe we will get a solid lead on dark matter and then everything we thought we knew goes out the window again. :)
To be fair, I think lambda-CDM is simply easier invent alternatives to MOND which makes it more fun to play with. Instead of pointing to a particular possibility, it seems like it would be better to create a program that entale all possible ranges/sets of var
Nothing to see, move along - AKA Scientific Method (Score:3)
So, you've just describe the scientific method: postulate a theory, if data checks it then it's a Law, if not, postulate a new theory that includes the more recent data.
Not like Religion: if data doesn't check it, burn the people who defend the data.
Incomplete? (Score:2)
No shit. We still can't tell how matter can just appear, or how self awareness is even possible. And before you say "God" .. well if the universe can manifest a thing as vastly complex as God, that is even more mind boggling than creating hot gas balls and half-ass semi-intelligent life that is periodically subject to various stress (education through trauma?) and shit.
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> or how self awareness is even possible.
It's relatively simple: we evolved to be self-aware to better navigate our ever-more-complex social networks. If you don't know who is who, you don't know who to kiss up to, and I can attest that brown-nosing works in practice. I'm sure it worked in the stone-age also.
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Yeah but back then you had to literally stick your nose up their arsehole
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Just because it is convenient for a thing to exist does not mean that it must also be possible for it to exist.
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Self awareness exists in animals. God is more human centric. It seems odd he would create animals with self awareness if they were only to be used as food. Therefore god the answer and self awareness isn't that special.
https://www.world-of-lucid-dre... [world-of-l...eaming.com]
Re:Incomplete? (Score:5, Informative)
We still can't tell how matter can just appear
Actually, we can.
QFT allows for this, and it is in fact well-tested in particle colliders.
As for where did the energy come from? Now that's a problem there isn't an answer to, and frankly, the laws of physics are so fucking weird when you're talking about a universe the size of a planck-length that i'm not quite sure figuring that out is that problematic at this juncture. Big Bang cosmology answers enough questions really well, that it has value even if it's incomplete.
or how self awareness is even possible
This question always annoys me.
We have no reason to think self awareness is even something special. Life has produced it on many, many occasions. It seems obvious to me that sufficiently complex neural networks are capable of fascinating emergent qualities, and being aware of its own operation doesn't seem at all far-fetched to me in terms of an evolutionary goal for a social species, or evolutionary difficulty.
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Really? How is that obvious?
Because our own artificial neural networks come up with more and more fascinating emergent behavior the more complicated they get.
We've passed into the point where we get truly novel game solutions from them.
A neural network in a computer would just be electrons flowing around into and out of obstacles.
Uh, ya.
At a scale that can only be evaluated stochastically.
One electron being clueless of the others.
No more than one instruction of code is clueless of the others.
The "complexity" of the system doesn't make any difference.
What a nonsensical claim.
You couldn't back that reasoning up if you had bothered to try, which you didn't.
Complex is a relative term.
And this is a pointless statement.
The complexity of a system can't cause self-awareness to emerge
That is also not a statement you can b
Proof (Score:5, Insightful)
However, if inflation is true, we should be able to prove it.
Not true. The universe makes no promises that each and every aspect of physical reality can be verified by experiments which are accessible to humans.
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So, the aspects of physical reality that are inaccessible to humans could be called, for lack of a better term, "religion"?
If it's unverifiable, it's not science, pretty much by definition....
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So, the aspects of physical reality that are inaccessible to humans could be called, for lack of a better term, "religion"?
Only if you assert that some untestable things must be true, regardless of the lack of evidence.
It can still be interesting and/or entertaining to engage in idle speculation about what we can't access, and such speculation is neither science nor religion.
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Only if you assert that some untestable things must be true, regardless of the lack of evidence.
This is almost a certainty in the sciences, since it has been proven to be true in mathematics [wikipedia.org]. If this is an issue in mathematics, it is inconceivable that it is not also going to be true in physics. "Provable" is even worse, as the axioms (which exist in physics as they do in math) are by definition not things that are proven, but the beginnings you use to formulate proofs (or evidences).
On the first day ... (Score:5, Funny)
And still there was nothing, but at least you could see it.
Here's my problem with it (Score:3)
Every time this subject comes up I ask the same question and get the same unsatisfying answer. If we go with the idea that the universe expanded into existence, what did it expand into? The answer is invariably the universe is some type of shape without edges. Which is completely unsatisfying because it doesn't explain what that shape "sits" in.
For example, we are on Earth which exists within the Milky Way Galaxy. We have a (semi) defined area of what space the galaxy occupies and where its "edges" are. The same situation exists for all the other galaxies in the universe.
However, the same cannot be said for the universe itself. We can see this because of the ongoing expansion. All matter, as far as we can tell, is expanding outward into . . . ? Either it's expanding into empty space or the "edge" of the universe is expanding outward. If the former, where did that empty space come from, if the latter, what is on the other side of the "edge"? If we could instantly transport ourselves to the furthest reaches of matter some 13.6 billion lights away, could we watch it move toward us into empty space, or could we go beyond the "edge" into . . . ?
I'm not doubting the big bang portion, our observations show matter is moving away from us, and everything, at a uniform rate. My issue is what is the universe "in"? You can't say itself or that it simply is because then you've moved from science toward magic.
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> our observations show matter is moving away from us
Only if we insist that there can be no other explanation for redshift. For example if light loses energy as it travels, that would cause a redshift. This is called the tired light theory. And if one accepts that light is a wave travelling in a medium, well.... all waves lose energy the further they travel.
Also, you could have a read of Astronomer Halton Arp's book, "Seeing Red". In it, he shows many examples of galaxies that have visible bridges
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Also, you could have a read of Astronomer Halton Arp's book, "Seeing Red". In it, he shows many examples of galaxies that have visible bridges between them, yet one is red-shifted and the other blue-shifted. Expansion proponents basically just ignore his evidence.
Arp's theories just don't hold up to observations. Arp's theories were about quasars. There are thousands of quasars known today and they don't show the behavior Arp predicts. "Intrinsic red shift" is basically hand-waving magic and there's no evidence for matter creation in active galactic nuclei. The evidence that the universe is expanding and that distant objects are, in fact, moving away from us faster then nearby objects keeps on growing.
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Arp mainly published observations. So it sounds as if you are saying Arp's observations don't stand up to to observation, which is nonsensical.
You specifically referenced a book (a publication) by Arp. I have not read it, but it's easy enough to find reviews online which make it very clear that Arp draws conclusions from those observations. I'm saying that his conclusions don't stand up to observation and it's frankly disingenuous of you to suggest that I meant otherwise.
Please tell me: Have you read his books "Seeing Red" and his other work "Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations"? Do you have them on your bookshelf as I do? If you have, I will actually respect your opinion and consider your reply seriously. If not, I think you are just giving a "standard line" knee-jerk type response.
I don't have those books on my shelf. I also don't have a copy of "Archaeopteryx, the Primordial Bird: A Case of Fossil Forgery" by Fred Hoyle, another notable from the field of a
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I suppose in that situation some people hold out hope that they're Alfred Wegener (continental drift) and not Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (cut off mouse's tails every generation and the descendants will have shorter tails) and that science will finally accept their theories and they'll be declared unsung heroes. It seems like the same kind of instinct that makes people gamble. I can't help but think about Wegener though. He was confident that he was right, and he was right, and he was systematically building up e
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ps: expansion theory is based entirely on the assumption that redshift always indicates that objects are moving away.
All the objects that we know are moving away through other verifiable means are red-shifted. There is a very clear understanding of how red-shifting works in the case of objects that are moving away. There are no examples of objects with any extra redshift that are close to us. For some reason, if these other causes for red-shift exists, there's some special factor that causes them to only manifest in far away objects. "Tired light" would not just result in red shift, it would blur all distant objects. The
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"If we go with the idea that the universe expanded into existence, what did it expand into? "
The balloon analogy can only take you so far. The universe doesn't need to expand "into" anything. It's your assumption that there is something it expands into.
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The GP's post showcases a typical human paradoxical limitation. We have a hard time imaging the infinite. The idea of things just going on and on without end is mind boggling. At the same time, the idea of things going on and on up to a point and then just stopping is also mind boggling. We can't imagine an inside with no outside, but we can't imagine an outside that isn't contained by something either.
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The idea of things just going on and on without end is mind boggling. At the same time, the idea of things going on and on up to a point and then just stopping is also mind boggling. We can't imagine an inside with no outside, but we can't imagine an outside that isn't contained by something either.
It's not imaging infinity, it's asking a perfectly reasonable and logical question. If all matter in the universe expanded outward from a point, if the universe itself expanded out from a point, what was that p
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It's not imaging infinity, it's asking a perfectly reasonable and logical question. If all matter in the universe expanded outward from a point, if the universe itself expanded out from a point, what was that point sitting in?*
The problem there is that you're talking about a point that the universe expanded outward from as if there's some sort of absolute cartesian coordinate system you can use to define that point. If there is such a system, it's hidden from us and defines a system that isn't space as we know it. In the universe we know, it appears that everything is relative.
When the example of a balloon expanding is used to show how the universe is expanding, there is clearly an inner side and an outer side. To say the universe, and everything in it, does not follow this example is essentially an appeal to a faith. "Trust us. This is the way it is."
The balloon analogy is just a crude analogy. It may be the case that our 3 dimensions are actually the "surface" of a 4d "bubble" or some kind, but no-one
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Here's an equivalent.
Imagine two-dimensional beings on the surface of a balloon. A 3-D being starts to inflate the balloon. The 2D beings see their universe expanding. From their POV, what is their universe expanding into?
Same thing. I suspect that our universe is a 3D hypersurface expanding in a 4D space.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a cosmologist.
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Dude, SpaceTime is created when Energy is "condensed" into Mass. There is NOTHING being expanded in to. Reality as we know it only exists where SpaceTime itself exists. There are aspects to Reality that we can't see/experience that are not tied to SpaceTime, but as a human, SpaceTime is a prerequisite for anything.
TL;DR, SpaceTime is all of Space and it may be expanding in an internally measurable way, but there is no "external" to grow in to.
Meanwhile, on the couch. (Score:2)
Ok that's all fine and dandy. When can we have aliens.
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More to the point, when can we have alien women.
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Ok that's all fine and dandy. When can we have aliens.
If they don't exist now, and it's truly a barren universe, devoid of life, then that depends on whether it's possible for us to colonize the universe. If we can, then the answer is probably anywhere from a few thousand years to a few tens of millions, to never depending on what you're willing to accept as "aliens". With bioengineering, we can make all kinds of custom lifeforms, both humanoids and completely non-human and spread them all over the place. For terraforming, for other kinds of work, as pets, jus
more complex isn't always the answer (Score:2)
I remember an old theory of how the Universe worked, it explained the motions of the planet and the stars in a simple and elegant system of great perfect crystal spheres that rotated around the Earth as they carried the Planets and stars in their ordained paths.
And then some people noticed that the observed paths of the Planets didn't match what they expected if it was on a perfect crystal sphere.
But the theory wasn't wrong the knowing ones cried,this alternate theory that adds crystal wheels to the crystal
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There are plenty of alternate theories. Many of them revive the ether, at least a dynamic version of it. The difficulty is getting them past the high priests of modern "scientism" who maintain iron grips on journals, grants, textbooks, curriculums, and steadfastly ignore any evidence that contradicts orthodoxy. Young people are taught the standard model as if fact, and it is considered career suicide to deviate, so it has become self-perpetuating.
Some other theories off the top of my head:
Modern Mechanic
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heard of some of those, never heard of most of those
They sounds interesting, thanks for the leads :)
A whole TV Show (Score:2)
Oh no, all those Star Trek episodes!
Interpretation in scientific vs. popular media (Score:2)
(The limited subject length made it hard to explain it in the title alone.)
It's funny how scientific media looks at this as a solution and popular media (CNN) looks at it as a problem.
The scientific point of view is: great, we're narrowing down what theories are actually valid. This type of measurement can't falsify inflation anyway.
Popular media: Big Bang Theory is under attack! Inflation might not be true! We need to go back to the drawing board! Or do we? Don't go away, we'll back back right after these
Nothing unique about the big bang (Score:2)
The problem with Big Bang Theory... (Score:2)
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see title
I will see your title and raise you a laugh track
The cosmic shart (Score:2)
The Big Bang is like expecting pure energy in an ethereal fart and getting some matter.
Inflation is like a buoyant turd the floats too well to go down and circles the toilet bowl, rising as it overflows.
Religion is just the sharted undies sitting apart in the laundry basket passing the time till being reunited after the great flood cleanses and it can be reunited with undies that went before in the great clean underwear drawer.
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No. In fact when the Pope wanted to claim the Big Wang (it's Chinese now) was creation, Lemaitre argued (successfully, I might add) against it. And the BW is merely the result of carrying Einstein's theory to its logical conclusion. And if you bothered to check the physics, the only thing physics says about the BW is that our theorems fail there, something of which Lemaitre was aware. Now go slay some other windmills.