Horizon - How Big Is the Universe
Discussion
PW said:
Derek Smith said:
If every explanation is proved wrong then one must accept that the likelihood is that those who put forward the ideas as proven fact are a bit off beam.
Nice soundbite, but every explanation is not proved wrong, and they aren't put forward as proven fact.You may be a bit off the beam yourself when it comes to understanding science, if you really think it is a bunch of loons throwing s
t at the wall to see what sticks.Newton, one of the all too rare geniuses the world produces in a position where it can be of use, defined the universe in Principia. Everyone was happy. Newton was all but worshiped, and for good reason. Indeed still is for shepherding in the real enlightenment. And then along comes Einstein. Whilst we can fly to the Moon using Newtonian physics we need Einstein to navigate with our TomToms. Newton was wrong in his theorising. His experiments were, of course, spot on but his interpretation of them fell short.
Still a genius, still one of the most remarkable of men if one goes on what he produced during his lifetime, but you'd end up further from your destination than a Ryanair flight if you used IsaacIsaac satnav.
What about:
Caruso said:
An interesting article on the BBC today:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-2149...
A concept known as vacuum instability could result, billions of years from now, in a new universe opening up in the present one and replacing it.
"It turns out there's a calculation you can do in our Standard Model of particle physics, once you know the mass of the Higgs boson," explained Dr Joseph Lykken.
"If you use all the physics we know now, and you do this straightforward calculation - it's bad news. What happens is you get just a quantum fluctuation that makes a tiny bubble of the vacuum the Universe really wants to be in. And because it's a lower-energy state, this bubble will then expand, basically at the speed of light, and sweep everything before it."
The strength of science is that it changes. This is what makes it so dependable. What we always have is the best available at that time. The fact that it is in a perpetual state of change means that we can believe it if, like the best scientists, we keep an open mind.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-2149...
A concept known as vacuum instability could result, billions of years from now, in a new universe opening up in the present one and replacing it.
"It turns out there's a calculation you can do in our Standard Model of particle physics, once you know the mass of the Higgs boson," explained Dr Joseph Lykken.
"If you use all the physics we know now, and you do this straightforward calculation - it's bad news. What happens is you get just a quantum fluctuation that makes a tiny bubble of the vacuum the Universe really wants to be in. And because it's a lower-energy state, this bubble will then expand, basically at the speed of light, and sweep everything before it."
Throughout recent history we have been told by the media and poor scientists that 'we', meaning the scientists being quoted, have got a grip on the universe and from now on it is downhill all the way.
Darwin, despite revolutionising the way we consider biology, was wrong in a number of his assumptions. How could he be otherwise without knowing about DNA? When we. i.e. certain scientists, understood the concept we were told that we now knew everything about inheritance and evolution, and what we didn't know will be easy to find out by the drudges. Now we find it is not that simple.
In my time what has been accepted as final has changed many times, and not all that often on building on previous theories. Continental drift was derided and then, when I was around 10, a teacher at my junior school got us to cut out the continents. In my biology text book it said that dinosaurs died out because their brains were too small, a human-centric way of looking at what made an animal 'the fittest'. Our biology teacher, my first crush, said that you would have thought they would have taken them less than 150 million years to find out. But this was the major theory at the time the book was published.
Now we 'know' what drove them to extinction. Everyone is happy that we have conclusive proof. Until an open-minded scientists comes up with another theory. And probably already has.
My earlier comment was in praise of the scientific method and those scientists with open and adventurous minds. The one thing the scientific method has proved over many, many years is that the one thing they don't know is any answers. That is why they keep looking.
Derek Smith said:
In my time what has been accepted as final has changed many times, and not all that often on building on previous theories.
One of the earliest 'theories' of course was that an imaginary creature called God made the Earth in six days... plenty of people believed it because it was the best theory they had. Assorted Gods of various shapes and sizes have been used for millennia to fill gaps until something more definite comes along.Simpo Two said:
One of the earliest 'theories' of course was that an imaginary creature called God made the Earth in six days... plenty of people believed it because it was the best theory they had. Assorted Gods of various shapes and sizes have been used for millennia to fill gaps until something more definite comes along.
To be fair, the various early bibles were a way of explaining 'things'. If you look at them in that way it all begins to make sense. How did people come about? Man was made and he, fed up with masturbating, built a woman. There is a certain logic. I'd make a woman.Looked at sensibly, there's not an awful lot of difference between that and the Fred Hoyle idea of bits being made all over the place.
Caruso said:
An interesting article on the BBC today:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-2149...
A concept known as vacuum instability could result, billions of years from now, in a new universe opening up in the present one and replacing it.
"It turns out there's a calculation you can do in our Standard Model of particle physics, once you know the mass of the Higgs boson," explained Dr Joseph Lykken.
"If you use all the physics we know now, and you do this straightforward calculation - it's bad news. What happens is you get just a quantum fluctuation that makes a tiny bubble of the vacuum the Universe really wants to be in. And because it's a lower-energy state, this bubble will then expand, basically at the speed of light, and sweep everything before it."
Thought I'd read a book about this a while agohttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-2149...
A concept known as vacuum instability could result, billions of years from now, in a new universe opening up in the present one and replacing it.
"It turns out there's a calculation you can do in our Standard Model of particle physics, once you know the mass of the Higgs boson," explained Dr Joseph Lykken.
"If you use all the physics we know now, and you do this straightforward calculation - it's bad news. What happens is you get just a quantum fluctuation that makes a tiny bubble of the vacuum the Universe really wants to be in. And because it's a lower-energy state, this bubble will then expand, basically at the speed of light, and sweep everything before it."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schild%27s_Ladder
Derek Smith said:
To be fair, the various early bibles were a way of explaining 'things'.
Indeed yes. What I find surprising, or possibly sad, is how many people still choose to believe all or part of it (ignoring the parts that don't suit them) and use it not as a real explanation but a psychological prop. Humans need something to hang on to, and the idea we are just $12 of chemicals on a rock in nowhere is unsettling! But going OT here a bit.Simpo Two said:
Indeed yes. What I find surprising, or possibly sad, is how many people still choose to believe all or part of it (ignoring the parts that don't suit them) and use it not as a real explanation but a psychological prop. Humans need something to hang on to, and the idea we are just $12 of chemicals on a rock in nowhere is unsettling! But going OT here a bit.
It is comforting to have the world explained in terms that are understandable. Some bloke made everything is comprehensible and the anomalies it raises, such as where he came from, are explainable by 'have faith'. One you start talking about singularities, branes, string and rugby balls, it is easier to opt out.I was born into a world where things were explainable. Steam engines could be demonstrated by something one could build in the classroom. Electric engines were just a bit more complex. I had a poster on my wall of the theoretical circuit of a transistor (sad I know) and I could program my computer after a few hours of research, and enjoyed playing games I wrote.
My brother and I kept a scrap book of space exploration from the first Sputnik to the first landing on the moon. We had a cut-away of the Apollo module and there were a couple of things that confused. My brother wrote to the publishers of the diagram, then got in touch with the person who drew it and he contacted NASA. We got a very nice letter back and everything was clear. You could not do that nowadays with a Nissan Micra.
iPads, TomToms, engine management and such are all black arts. I now use software rather than writing it.
It is all a bit complicated nowadays he said, clicking submit and knowing that it will be posted on the forum but having no real idea how.
Derek Smith said:
Simpo Two said:
Indeed yes. What I find surprising, or possibly sad, is how many people still choose to believe all or part of it (ignoring the parts that don't suit them) and use it not as a real explanation but a psychological prop. Humans need something to hang on to, and the idea we are just $12 of chemicals on a rock in nowhere is unsettling! But going OT here a bit.
It is comforting to have the world explained in terms that are understandable. Some bloke made everything is comprehensible and the anomalies it raises, such as where he came from, are explainable by 'have faith'. One you start talking about singularities, branes, string and rugby balls, it is easier to opt out.I was born into a world where things were explainable. Steam engines could be demonstrated by something one could build in the classroom. Electric engines were just a bit more complex. I had a poster on my wall of the theoretical circuit of a transistor (sad I know) and I could program my computer after a few hours of research, and enjoyed playing games I wrote.
My brother and I kept a scrap book of space exploration from the first Sputnik to the first landing on the moon. We had a cut-away of the Apollo module and there were a couple of things that confused. My brother wrote to the publishers of the diagram, then got in touch with the person who drew it and he contacted NASA. We got a very nice letter back and everything was clear. You could not do that nowadays with a Nissan Micra.
iPads, TomToms, engine management and such are all black arts. I now use software rather than writing it.
It is all a bit complicated nowadays he said, clicking submit and knowing that it will be posted on the forum but having no real idea how.
Roscco said:
RealSquirrels said:
it's not expanding into anything, it's just expanding.
That right there is a paradox within itself my good sir.For something to expand (according to understood laws of physics) there has to be something for it to expand into.
Be damned if I know what though
I think the obvious answer is that we just don't know.
I mean, it wasn't so many years ago that we "knew" the earth was flat.
I think it'll be a good while yet before anyone actually figures it out - maybe not in our lifetimes.
If I had to guess I'd point towards other dimensions, dimensions our human brains just can't comprehend - but it'd be just that - a guess.
I mean, it wasn't so many years ago that we "knew" the earth was flat.
I think it'll be a good while yet before anyone actually figures it out - maybe not in our lifetimes.
If I had to guess I'd point towards other dimensions, dimensions our human brains just can't comprehend - but it'd be just that - a guess.
It appears that we have never thought the Earth was flat, it was known in ancient times that it was a sphere. A daft journalist simply wrote a sentence in a paper saying people thought the Earth was flat in the past without even bothering to check his facts, his stupid story has now wormed its way into our lives and keeps getting retold as if it is a fact when its total rubbish.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Eart...
When Columbus was trying to get funding to sail to the Far East via the Atlantic, people did not laugh at him because they thought the Earth was flat, but because they thought it was to far and everyone would die and the money would be wasted.
Back on topic current scientific thinking is not just a guess, if it was "Best guess" is what it would be called. Proper theories will explain currently known things and most importantly make predictions about things that are currently not known. These get tested and the theory gets accepted until something is discovered that disproves it. Every modern scientist knows his theories will get disproved at some point as its been a long time since the community has thought everything in a subject area is known and explained (I guess newtons gravity theory getting disproved ended that lot of nonsense).
The problem at the moment is the unknown things in physics are really not very easy to visualize and they require really really big and expensive machines to test for them. LHC is just the latest in what will be an ever larger set of massive machines as that is what is required to test current and future theories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Eart...
When Columbus was trying to get funding to sail to the Far East via the Atlantic, people did not laugh at him because they thought the Earth was flat, but because they thought it was to far and everyone would die and the money would be wasted.
Back on topic current scientific thinking is not just a guess, if it was "Best guess" is what it would be called. Proper theories will explain currently known things and most importantly make predictions about things that are currently not known. These get tested and the theory gets accepted until something is discovered that disproves it. Every modern scientist knows his theories will get disproved at some point as its been a long time since the community has thought everything in a subject area is known and explained (I guess newtons gravity theory getting disproved ended that lot of nonsense).
The problem at the moment is the unknown things in physics are really not very easy to visualize and they require really really big and expensive machines to test for them. LHC is just the latest in what will be an ever larger set of massive machines as that is what is required to test current and future theories.
Edited by PlankWithANailIn on Saturday 23 February 19:35
PlankWithANailIn said:
When Columbus was trying to get funding to sail to the Far East via the Atlantic, people did not laugh at him because they thought the Earth was flat, but because they thought it was to far and everyone would die and the money would be wasted.
Weren't his ill-educated sailors afraid that thy would fall off the edge of the Earth, ie go over a giant waterfall to oblivion?
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