All I was doing was, “hey look here’s something cool to consider”…
Personally, for the moment I do believe black holes exist, but I think it’s interesting that people are looking at the problem deeper and drilling down on the math.
And you are right, we cannot “prove” the Sun is the center of the whole solar system. We could be part of a vastly large binary system where the Sun as we know it, is not the center of the solar system. It is the center of gravity for everything from the kuiper belt to Mercury, but beyond that? Well we don’t know… We suspect that it’s the center of the solar system, as all evidence, including the Sun itself seems to indicate that.
Or hell, we could just be swirling a mass of Dark Matter making us think we are orbiting the Sun.
Oh, it’s a good deal stronger than that I’d say. I reckon no educated person harbors any doubt re the truth-status of the heliocentric model of the solar system. My point is that even concepts as rock-solid as this have never been ‘proven’ in a formal, objective sense. (Nor can they be.)
Of course not. There is a simple explanation for that. Science is subjective, by default. The goal of science is in a nut shell that ‘the probability of ‘X’ being true is greater than the probability that ‘X’ is not true’. There is a term for it which escapes me for the moment. But in dealing with the physical (as we know it), there are always outliers.
It’s not binary like objective reasoning, where either ‘X’ is true or it’s false.
Why? It’s a topic in have a lot of interest. The fact that Drew couldn’t understand plain English is not my problem.
Anybody who believes I put forth a judgement or opinion about Blackheads clearly can’t fucking read. That’s not my problem.
Tell me you are not discriminating because of my religion?
Your welcome to test my scientific knowledge.
The goal of science is not what you claim. Science is not subjective by default. As far as your religion goes, you should probably stop posting about that as well.
Don’t presume to tell me what I should or should not say or discuss. I’ll say what I want within the prescribed rules of this forum. No requirement for you to engage, participate or understand.
And science is based on ‘a posteriori’ logic. Which is subjective. Not, in the semantical way you tend to think about it. But meaning, ‘not objective’.
This is far from news, it’s always been that way. That’s how the scientific method works… since Aristotle.
Since you don’t know these basics about scientfic philosphy, maybe you shouldn’t post about it anymore? But I shall not presume to tell anybody that.
Here’s a quick test, name a single objective scientific fact that is not the scientific method itself?
On a long enough time line all PWI threads devolve into the same circular conversation - kind of like back in the day every SAMA thread ended up just a bunch of pictures of beautiful asses - man I miss SAMA
Wouldn’t sending probes into their atmospheres’ and surfaces’ suffice? I mean if we can track them hurtling through space well enough to land on them… I think the eggheads understand the orbits they go through.
Trying to refocus the thread. Organic matter found on Mars. Building blocks of life, not proof of life. The coolest thing was the seasonal variations of methane levels which could suggest organisms living in the seas that used to exist.
This is a good question, and it gets to the heart of the problem regarding the word proof. In everyday parlance, we say something has been proven if it is so obviously true that no reasonable person could think otherwise. And per this usage, there’s no doubt that the incredible predictive power of the heliocentric model more than suffices to ‘prove’ it.
But strictly speaking, prove requires that no other conclusion is even possible–all competing conclusions must have been vanquished from the field. Proof does not tolerate the continuing existence of a competing idea, however implausible it may be. And with respect to the solar system, the Ptolemaic (geocentric) model of the solar system can be tweaked to allow all of the same predictions the helio model provides. Such tweaking would be tortuous and inelegant; no reasonable person would find the method or conclusions compelling. But as ludicrous an idea as it is, the Ptolemaic conclusion would remain.
The point: Accuracy of prediction is obviously a very important quality of any successful theory, but it can’t be said to prove a theory correct. We can always come up with another theory to make the same predictions.
Thank you. Although polo is right about the survival timeline of any PWI thread, I’m still going to request that others here not take that route. I’d like to use this thread as a repository for interesting science papers and their discussion much like the required reading list is for periodicals and books.
On that note, here’s an interesting review for biochem geeks on melatonin and cancer. Research on that topic has been ongoing for a while with several very good papers and some very encouraging results.
It’s VERY IMPORTANT to note that the proposed role for melatonin is as 1) a preventative and 2) an adjuvant therapy along WITH traditional cancer treatments and not as a standalone by itself. That would be malpractice.
This is 100% correct. That’s why science cannot and never will fall into this category of absolute proof.
As Hume stated, unless you can prove that every single observation that has been, can be and is made, you cannot prove it’s absolute-ness.
This is the basis for a posteriori reasoning…