[quote]vroom wrote:
For the theologists among you, if God gave us intelligence, don’t you think it would be suitable to use it to develop an understanding of his creation? I mean, it’s okay if we make mistakes and correct them over time, but wouldn’t it make sense that this is what we are supposed to be doing?[/quote]
Vroom, by God, I couldn’t agree with you more.
A true sign of the apocalypse - Professor X, Vroom, and me in agreement.
Bury your horses upside down!
All of the astrophysist just make it up. Secretly they laugh at eveyone who belives them and their magical predictions. Damn the mathmatics and astronomical observations that go with them. They use the same math and the same theories in making computer chips, launching space probes, and composite materials. I guess relativity and quantum mechanics works well when it develops the playstation 3 but is all “faith” when used in astrophysics.
I belivied I stated it wrong. The big bang theory predicted that there would be back ground microwave radiation leftover from the big bang. The fact that it was there when no one else predicted it was a strong boost to the theory. The temperature of the universe as a whole and our understanding of the life cycles of stars also give astronomers some insite into the age of the universe.
these sites explain it better:
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101bbtest3.html
[quote]Mr. Chen wrote:
Flop Hat wrote:
By calculating the diference between the original wave lenght of the energy released in the big bang
And how do they calculate the wave length of the energy released in th big bang?[/quote]
[quote]Professor X wrote:
All I got from that article is “we don’t know what the fuck happened”.
…[/quote]
Exactly. It seems like some of these guys are just pulling shit out of their ass just to justify their jobs and grants.
This type of activity has a valid role in pure research as well…
You don’t learn without making mistakes, without making wrong guesses and finding out why they are wrong.
Oh oh, guess what, science is an evolutionary process… where the strongest ideas eventually win out!
[quote]vroom wrote:
Exactly. It seems like some of these guys are just pulling shit out of their ass just to justify their jobs and grants.
This type of activity has a valid role in pure research as well…
You don’t learn without making mistakes, without making wrong guesses and finding out why they are wrong.
Oh oh, guess what, science is an evolutionary process… where the strongest ideas eventually win out!
;)[/quote]
Good point. These guys can’t be expected to produce day in and day out.
They can work 20 years before they hit with one big idea that is correct and is a huge advance.
Unfortunately that also means they have produced 20 years of questionable crap.
This looks more like the questionable crap than a true advancement.
[quote]Unfortunately that also means they have produced 20 years of questionable crap.
This looks more like the questionable crap than a true advancement. [/quote]
Could be.
As is often the case with me, I find it very odd that people who don’t know the first godamn thing about astrophysics are questioning these findings.
Questioning things is great, but only if you know something about it. I don’t, so I’ll stay out of this discussion, but I really am wondering why so many people are quick to call bullshit. Someone said “we don’t know if there’s a 10th planet in our own solar system but we know the make-up of the universe?” Unless you know and understand the methods scientists use to find either planets or the make-up of the universe, you have no right questioning this.
Advanced science is godamn weird. Electrons don’t “move,” they disappear and reappear in random places. String theory contests that all matter is made from vibrating strings of energy, based in something like 23 dimensions. Now I never believed this blindly, but I didn’t question it either until I learned something about it.
[quote]danmaftei wrote:
Electrons don’t “move,” they disappear and reappear in random places.[/quote]
This is news to me. From all of my biochemistry and Organic chemistry classes, this was never brought up.
I remember reading something to this effect. that the motion of electrons isn’t so much a trackable motion / path but rather an expression of probability as to where they will appear and disappear… sort of a blinking in and out of existence.
When I hear shit like that I scratch my head and resolve to leaving it to the white-coats
[quote]mrdav2u wrote:
danmaftei wrote:
Electrons don’t “move,” they disappear and reappear in random places.
I remember reading something to this effect. that the motion of electrons isn’t so much a trackable motion / path but rather an expression of probability as to where they will appear and disappear… sort of a blinking in and out of existence.
When I hear shit like that I scratch my head and resolve to leaving it to the white-coats
[/quote]
I am very interested because I have never been taught this. While they may be difficult to track. I have never heard anyone refer to them as if they were truly popping in and out of existence.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
Moriarty wrote:
Maybe it just existed, in nothingness, for no reason and had no creator. Is that not plausible? Maybe God created it. No one knows…
How could condensed matter that somehow combined all matter into a marble sized confinement exist for no reason?
[/quote]
What do you mean how? By just existing…Things needing a “reason” to exist is a human construct. Things needing a “beginning” is a human construct, based on our limited existence. We live short lives and see things around us “beginning” and “ending” and thus infer that everything in the universe behaves the same way. I know of no such universal constraint.
You’re applying newtonian mechanics to a situation where it clearly doesn’t apply.
[quote]
Like I’ve said before, it actually would seem to me to require more faith in science that astronomical occurances happen by chance and create this much order from supposed chaos than faith that there was a reason for its creation.[/quote]
Well it wouldn’t be chance at all…that’s evidenced by the fact that scientists just observed something that they predicted a long time ago. That means two things:
Their reason for making that prediction has a credible chance of being true.
They were able to predict an outcome based on hypothesis, making the sequence of events deterministic.
I don’t understand how it is “faith” in science when the scientists predicted something based on previous evidence, and then found additional evidence that proved the prediction correct. That is the OPPOSITE of faith, right?
I can’t say to know much about quantum theory, so maybe my choice of words was wrong.
Let me put it this way: Newton’s laws do not apply to electrons. They do not move in discernable paths, as in given their position and velocity at time t = 0, you cannot find out where they will be at time t = 5 s. I’m not sure if they “disappear and reappear,” although I think they do, but they definitely do not behave like Newtonian particles.
I think this is the main reason why quantum theory and whatever the theory dealing with huge cosmic bodies is called need a unifying theory, like the string theory. Also, on the cosmic level, Newtonian physics change slightly as well, which is what Einstein dealt with (as far as I know). Einstein didn’t “disprove” Newton’s ideas, but he needed to slightly change them, to tack on a little something extra when dealing with speeds close to the speed of light.
As far as quantum theory goes, I think Newtonian physics just has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Someone please correct me if I said something wrong. 
[quote]Professor X wrote:
mrdav2u wrote:
danmaftei wrote:
Electrons don’t “move,” they disappear and reappear in random places.
I remember reading something to this effect. that the motion of electrons isn’t so much a trackable motion / path but rather an expression of probability as to where they will appear and disappear… sort of a blinking in and out of existence.
When I hear shit like that I scratch my head and resolve to leaving it to the white-coats
I am very interested because I have never been taught this. While they may be difficult to track. I have never heard anyone refer to them as if they were truly popping in and out of existence.[/quote]
It’s been my experience that when dealing with findings like those in this article, most people misinterpret or don’t understand because they try to bring newtonian mechanics to the table to explain away ther confusion, which obviously leads to more confusion and finally disbelief.
Findings like this are always filtered through some sort of reporter and are often incorrectly reported.
These types of scientists revise their theories on a regular basis so it is hard to believe that this time they finally have it right.
I am glad they learn from their mistakes but everytime they revise their findings it just reinforces that we know far less about these things than we pretend to.
This stuff is so meaningless to everyday life that it borders on trivia.
Everyone knows that engineers, not scientists are the ones that actually design and build the things in the real world.
[quote]These types of scientists revise their theories on a regular basis so it is hard to believe that this time they finally have it right.
I am glad they learn from their mistakes but everytime they revise their findings it just reinforces that we know far less about these things than we pretend to.
This stuff is so meaningless to everyday life that it borders on trivia.
Everyone knows that engineers, not scientists are the ones that actually design and build the things in the real world. [/quote]
Yowza. You’ve covered a lot of territory! I do agree reporters are clueless and misreport things.
I think you have a point about people that present very untested theories as complete and known knowledge. I can see how people could call that type of “belief” faith… when it reality, it only represents the current best guess or most testable theory.
However, in your later points, I’ll disagree again. Science leads application by some or many years, the exact quantity is not important.
First, things must be discovered and understood, then they can be manipulated and commoditized – such as computers based on semiconductors.
We don’t always know the value of science ahead of time… or where discoveries may lead humanity. I know this sounds touchy-feely, but pure science is as important as real life application of it.
[quote]vroom wrote:
…
However, in your later points, I’ll disagree again. Science leads application by some or many years, the exact quantity is not important.
First, things must be discovered and understood, then they can be manipulated and commoditized – such as computers based on semiconductors.
We don’t always know the value of science ahead of time… or where discoveries may lead humanity. I know this sounds touchy-feely, but pure science is as important as real life application of it.[/quote]
As an engineer I feel I should take credit rather than pass it along to scientists but of course they have their place. Usually I only seem\ them slowing down progress because they think they know far more than they do. This is only a personal observation based on working with PhD types bring processes from lab scale to pilot scale to production. They are generally good in the lab but are less than competent outside the lab.
As to the rest of it I have a feeling we are getting into an area where there is a law of diminishing returns with many things. Computers are great but they have not turned into much of a time saver. The time they have saved has been wasted surfing the internet!
[quote]Moriarty wrote:
I don’t understand how it is “faith” in science when the scientists predicted something based on previous evidence, and then found additional evidence that proved the prediction correct. That is the OPPOSITE of faith, right?[/quote]
What have they proven? If you are admitting that our concept of the universe may not even be the rules by which the universe works by or the “nothingness” that held it before it was a “universe”, what have we proven? Shit, with nondescript ever changing nonstatic “laws” of physics, do we even exist?
[quote]Professor X wrote:
I am very interested because I have never been taught this. While they may be difficult to track. I have never heard anyone refer to them as if they were truly popping in and out of existence.[/quote]
They’re not “difficult to track”, they’re impossible to track precisely. That’s what the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle refers too. In the quantum world, it’s impossible for an observer to assign with precision values for both position and momentum. The more precision you have for one of those values, the less you’ll be able to have for the other.
The consequence of that is that, at the quantum level, deterministic physics goes out the window; the old Newtonian idea that if I knew all the positions and velocities of every particles in someone’s brain, I’d be able to predict their thoughts in advance is dead.
It’s what prompted Einstein’s famous “God does not play dice with the universe” quote. Einstein spent a huge portion of the end of his life trying to show that QM was wrong on that assertion, but he never could.
As for schools, as far as I know (from nephews) they’re still teaching the atom using the “miniature solar system” model of the nucleus as the “sun” and show the electrons on nice regular orbits around it. That “mental image” of the atom is extremely difficult to get rid of, and confuses the modern view of an atom.
I’m a bit worried that whatever college/university/place-of-higher-learning you attended apparently didn’t correct that misconception.
I wouldn’t describe the electrons as popping in and out of existence (although that’s still a better way to think about them than the “solar system” model) but more as a “cloud of probability” that encompasses everywhere the electron might be at any given moment. Only when an observation is actually made does the electron reveal it’s actual position OR momentum.
Reading the Wikipedia entries on “Quantum Mechanics” or “Uncertainty Principles” are good starting points for anyone interested in learning a bit more about QM.
[quote]pookie wrote:
Professor X wrote:
I am very interested because I have never been taught this. While they may be difficult to track. I have never heard anyone refer to them as if they were truly popping in and out of existence.
They’re not “difficult to track”, they’re impossible to track precisely. That’s what the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle refers too. In the quantum world, it’s impossible for an observer to assign with precision values for both position and momentum. The more precision you have for one of those values, the less you’ll be able to have for the other.
The consequence of that is that, at the quantum level, deterministic physics goes out the window; the old Newtonian idea that if I knew all the positions and velocities of every particles in someone’s brain, I’d be able to predict their thoughts in advance is dead.
It’s what prompted Einstein’s famous “God does not play dice with the universe” quote. Einstein spent a huge portion of the end of his life trying to show that QM was wrong on that assertion, but he never could.
As for schools, as far as I know (from nephews) they’re still teaching the atom using the “miniature solar system” model of the nucleus as the “sun” and show the electrons on nice regular orbits around it. That “mental image” of the atom is extremely difficult to get rid of, and confuses the modern view of an atom.
I’m a bit worried that whatever college/university/place-of-higher-learning you attended apparently didn’t correct that misconception.
I wouldn’t describe the electrons as popping in and out of existence (although that’s still a better way to think about them than the “solar system” model) but more as a “cloud of probability” that encompasses everywhere the electron might be at any given moment. Only when an observation is actually made does the electron reveal it’s actual position OR momentum.
Reading the Wikipedia entries on “Quantum Mechanics” or “Uncertainty Principles” are good starting points for anyone interested in learning a bit more about QM.
[/quote]
It isn’t that we were taught a simple “solar system” model, it is more that the unknowns were more related to quarks. It was taught that electrons were not in some predictable traveling pattern around atoms, however, they assigned certain positions in order to discuss molecules and how they were configured.
I am sure this would have confused the hell out of most students if we had to show the molecular structure of certain chemicals and we also had to account for unpredictable electrons. It was simplified and I think they are justified in doing so.
Two points:
1 - Wikipedia is not the answer to all sources. Just like to point that out. =P If someone who understands science says it’s a good starting point, I’ll agree with him, and Pookie seems like he knows what he’s talking about. But I will say that I have found many inaccuracies on Wikipedia. It’s a great website and tool, but you need more than just that to truly learn.
2 - It depends on the school, imo. At my private school, we are finishing up our AP Physics course with a quick look into Quantum Theory. At my public high school, as a freshman and sophomore in Chemistry, we didn’t deal much with the movement of electrons/atoms etc. as their make-up. But then again, I could be bullshitting out my ass, those classes were so horribly taught I remember almost nothing from them. Thank God for Berwick, it saved my education.
So I think nowadays, rather than teach the wrong concepts about atoms and electrons, schools will simply skimp by it and let AP or college courses deal with it. I’ll ask my cousin, who has been at Berwick Academy since freshmen year, how they dealt with this subject (I was only there as a junior and senior, so I took my chem class at my high school).