Science on the BBC
Discussion
XM5ER said:
"Jupiter pushing rock out of the way" I too had a WTF moment.
They were simply putting the mechanism in laymans terms for the sake of brevity. They weren't claiming that Jupiter actually 'pushes' anything.In reality the rocks get a gravitational slingshot if they come into close proximity with Jupiter - or their orbits get disrupted by orbital resonance. Either way - rocks can end up in totally different locations and can even be ejected from the solar system entirely.
I think it is referred to as the Nice (as in the French city) model.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_model
Eric Mc said:
I think it is referred to as the Nice (as in the French city) model.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_model
Did you know Nice has the largest refractor telescope in the world available for public viewing?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_model
The Observatory fell into disuse for a time but has now been totally refurbished for public access, a beautiful building and telescope of course.
Factoid. The building was designed to "float" on antifreeze to reduce vibration!
And yes, the weather is also "alright"
photo ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ericd
Edited to add OT and photo ref.
Edited by Mojocvh on Thursday 19th March 13:45
Moonhawk said:
They were simply putting the mechanism in laymans terms for the sake of brevity. They weren't claiming that Jupiter actually 'pushes' anything.
In reality the rocks get a gravitational slingshot if they come into close proximity with Jupiter - or their orbits get disrupted by orbital resonance. Either way - rocks can end up in totally different locations and can even be ejected from the solar system entirely.
Why? They had plenty of time to show what they meant and explain it with a simple graphic, it really wouldn't have been hard. As it was, a reasonably intelligent person with a strong interest thought "do these guys actually have a clue".In reality the rocks get a gravitational slingshot if they come into close proximity with Jupiter - or their orbits get disrupted by orbital resonance. Either way - rocks can end up in totally different locations and can even be ejected from the solar system entirely.
don4l said:
Tonight I sat down to watch a Horizon programme about dark matter.
I gave up after a short while.
They started off by suggesting that we fully understand the Big Bang.
According to Horizon, the Big Bang is a fact, as opposed to a theory.
Dark matter is made up of difficult to detect Weakly Interacting Massive Particles "WIMPs). This isn't a theory. It is a fact. Horizon admits that nobody has ever actually detected any evidence of a WIMP, but they expect us to simply believe the "scientists".
Recently, I tuned in to watch a programme about the formation of the solar system. This was devoid of anything that might challenge anyone with an IQ above 40. As a result, it was pure drivel. They advertised the programme saying that it would reveal new theories about the formation of the solar system. So, what was new? Well, Jupiter might have changed its orbit.
Not only did Jupiter change its orbit, but it also pushed "rocky objects" out of its way. WTF? Doesn't Jupiter have massive gravity? I'm not saying that Jupiter couldn't have "pushed" rocky material, but I would like an explanation of sorts.
The BBC used to do some decent science. Not any more, it would seem.
BBC content has certainly dumbed down over the years; David Attenborough even stated this repeatedly in a debate on the subject a while ago, and I completely agree with him. However, I thought the programme on dark matter was especially good, much better than other Horizons I've watched recently.I gave up after a short while.
They started off by suggesting that we fully understand the Big Bang.
According to Horizon, the Big Bang is a fact, as opposed to a theory.
Dark matter is made up of difficult to detect Weakly Interacting Massive Particles "WIMPs). This isn't a theory. It is a fact. Horizon admits that nobody has ever actually detected any evidence of a WIMP, but they expect us to simply believe the "scientists".
Recently, I tuned in to watch a programme about the formation of the solar system. This was devoid of anything that might challenge anyone with an IQ above 40. As a result, it was pure drivel. They advertised the programme saying that it would reveal new theories about the formation of the solar system. So, what was new? Well, Jupiter might have changed its orbit.
Not only did Jupiter change its orbit, but it also pushed "rocky objects" out of its way. WTF? Doesn't Jupiter have massive gravity? I'm not saying that Jupiter couldn't have "pushed" rocky material, but I would like an explanation of sorts.
The BBC used to do some decent science. Not any more, it would seem.
To answer your points in turn:
You seem to have some confusions over the way science works. As stated in the first reply on this thread, a Scientific Theory is an explanation for something that has a considerable body of evidence behind it. As evidence builds for a conjecture/hypothesis, we move towards a 'fact', but no scientific topic will ever be as certain as a mathematical proof for example - you need to be comfortable with that idea of nothing being certain. Personally I love that idea, and it's why I studied science in the first place.
The whole idea of science is that it is made up of a myriad of ideas that are proven to varying degrees and build on each other as time goes by. This is where scientists need to be careful when talking to the general public. As we see with creationists, they pounce upon the notion that Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is called a 'theory', whereas in truth it is extremely close to a fact, so much so that when talking to the general public I think it's acceptable to use the word 'fact' with EbNS - that's all that Horizon were doing with the Big Bang, which is fair enough. The problem comes if you then want to continue that conversation further and talk about things with less evidence behind them, like dark matter. Regarding dark matter and WIMPS, the Horizon programme should have stated that as a fact we know something odd's going on with how we observe the distribution of mass in the Universe. As far as I remember, they did that very well, showing first the galaxy rotation problem (very well described I thought), and secondly, evidence of gravitational lensing (again, as well described as can be without delving into General Relativity too much). WIMPs are just a candidate for Dark Matter, so a 'theory' in the everyday parlance sense of the word.
Nobody is expecting you to 'believe' anyone as you state. Belief as a concept is nonsense. You should weigh up the evidence and see how certain or uncertain something is. Belief requires you to extrapolate evidence of less than 100% and use faith to fill the gap, which is not scientific at all.
The Solar System programme was moving back towards more typical Horizon - take a theory and spin in out into an hour's programme, and it was a bit dull, yes, but basically the new theory is that the planets have moved from their original places, and they certainly covered that (over and over again!). Jupiter 'pushing' things was probably badly worded, but they were avoiding a lengthy explanation of gravitational interactions.
I agree that Horizon is very dumbed down, but it is a very tricky thing to try and explain the latest scientific research to an un-educated audience. The only people to have success at this are people like Brian Cox or Jim AK with their programmes, where they generally talk about things with greater certainty behind them. Horizon is, as far as I know, intended to present new scientific ideas. The trouble is, in doing that it makes some people think that the whole of science is as unproven as the very latest ideas. That's a gross mis-understanding, because as time goes by, ideas either get stamped out or bolstered, that's the whole point.
Somewhat rambling, but I hope that helps!
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