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Post by asariel on Aug 4, 2010 12:55:04 GMT
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Post by da professor on Aug 7, 2010 18:34:02 GMT
I hope they publish a layman's version soon, I may be a geek, but I'm no cosmologist.
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Post by Curufea on Aug 17, 2010 1:55:23 GMT
I think one of the points is - that universally speaking, we've observed not much, but have extrapolated plenty, so there is still much room for variation in theory.
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Post by knasser on Aug 17, 2010 10:02:12 GMT
Laymans versions of these sorts of things tend to lag behind the actual research by quite some margin. Popular awareness of "Quantum Physics" really hit in the Eighties and suddenly popular culture was filled with alternate universes, every two-bit alternate belief system was trying to explain itself with how scientists now agreed that "quantum entanglement" meant telepathy was real and marketing people across the West started talking about "Quantum Leaps" as if they were really, really big things, instead of really, really, really little things.  Laymans versions often lead people to think they understand things when they don't. For example, many many more people think they understand the Big Bang than actually do. For example, someone was getting rather militantly atheistic at me a while back (because I am religious, some people take this as an invitation to quote Richard Dawkins at me in a very rigteous manner). I asked them where they thought the Universe came from. "The Big Bang" they immediately pronounced confidently. "And how does that work," I asked? "Well," he said, trying to dredge up secondary school science lessons from his memory, "in the beginning, everything was really close together, and then it expanded outward". "Why would it do that," I asked? "Gravity pulls everything together". "I'm not sure." "Where did all the stuff come from and why was it all together in the first place." "I'm not sure." "So basically, you don't know how it works but you have faith in what some people you've never met have told you." Now I I know there are counter-arguments and answers to what I said. The only point I was making to this guy (mainly because he had started off so arrogantly and insulting toward religious people), was that he didn't know them. Reading a layman's summary is a lot different to wading through pages of maths and actually understanding things yourself. There have always been some alternative theories to the Big Bang. My favourites are variants of the Continuous Creation model. In this, any big old empty region of space has matter spntaneously appear in it. The expansion we witness is the result of local creation. Although I do like the current models of the Big Bang because they let me use phrases like "Dark Energy" which sound cool. Anyway, Dark Energy reminds me of Einstein's notorious "fiddle factor". When he was toiling with General Relativity, the equations kept only worked if the Universe was expanding. So he added an extra bit to make it work without this. And then later observations of the red-shifting of light in different directions from Earth implied that the Universe really was expanding so he had to take it out again. Einstein (I think) described it as one of the biggest mistakes of his career. He'd actually worked out the basis for the Big Bang theory and assumed it was a mistake in his equations. And that is what Dark Energy reminds me of - a somewhat arbitrary "fiddle factor" to make our preconceptions work. That said, the implications of discarding it are pretty big. K. |
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Post by da professor on Aug 17, 2010 12:15:03 GMT
There's different degrees of layman.
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Post by Curufea on Aug 18, 2010 1:24:38 GMT
However, the wonderful thing about science for these kinds of things are - it's perfectly fine to not only a) not be able to explain something and b) not know the answers but also c) change the reasons for something based on new science.
If the person had faith in the big bang, they obviously aren't approaching it scientifically. Faith is belief in something despite the lack of evidence (and in some cases in denial of evidence). If they were more scientifically inclined they should have said "I don't know".
If they were me, for example, I would have also answered "I don't care". Aside from idle speculation, how the universe started has no impact on my life in any format other than trivia - and is therefore irrelevant. Not only that, I am not willing to put in the necessary hours of research to find the relevant evidence and theories in order to create a viewpoint of what I regard as the most likely cause. It doesn't interest me.
Whether someone has a religion or not does not negate the possibility of them having faith and belief in things.
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Post by knasser on Aug 18, 2010 6:57:43 GMT
If the person had faith in the big bang, they obviously aren't approaching it scientifically. Which was the point I made and the sole point of the anecdote. If someone's going to go around insisting that others share their belief, they better be able to support that belief. Anyway, I only wished to show in practical terms with an amusing illustration that the gulf between layman and expert is a lot larger than people sometimes think. If you're an expert in any area, then the simplifications and incorrect summaries that appear when your subject gets discussed in popular media will make your eyes swivel. I've had a bit more of a chance to read through that paper. There are some fascinating ideas in there. The concept that the Universe has periods of acceleration and deceleration is bogglingly wonderful. But I'll wait for peer-review if it gets published, before I decide how much to credit it. However, his model makes singularities impossible which, I'm sorry to say, puts it in direct contradiction of Doctor Who cannon. I wonder if he's considered this problem?  K. |
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Post by Curufea on Aug 18, 2010 9:06:56 GMT
Having lived on this earth for forty years and not once hearing about an alien invasion I kinda think that justifying real world science to Doctor Who is lacking a punchline.
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Post by knasser on Aug 18, 2010 9:56:05 GMT
Having lived on this earth for forty years and not once hearing about an alien invasion I kinda think that justifying real world science to Doctor Who is lacking a punchline. I'm not quite understanding this. Are you implying that I meant my last bit seriously, or that it just wasn't funny?  |
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Post by Curufea on Aug 18, 2010 11:55:35 GMT
Just needed a bit more to be funny  |
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Post by knasser on Aug 18, 2010 12:44:03 GMT
Just needed a bit more to be funny . |
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