A Place for Conservatives

LogGrad98 said:

The big questions that really have no answers in regards to the big bang center around why, and what happened before.

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Yeah, I get all of the arguments for the big bang, starting with the doppler (red shift) effect, and the microwave background noise, measuring helium, and the fact that we don't get new stars appearing in the sky. It would point to the fact that every distant measurable body in the universe is moving away from us.

What we don't have is the ability to measure and observe things from a point distant to us, nor the ability to see things 10 thousand years from now. We assume the redshift is constant despite distance in space, we assume we know exactly how light works, we assume the properties of the things in our models follow the laws of physics as we know them. We assume our spectrographs are perfectly accurate. We assume we know how time works. we assume the last few hundred years was enough to make the correct observations.

But like I said, it also has to assume that objects move faster than light. It has to assume energy was created from nothing, it has to assume that there was a starting point to time. These things have yet to be proved. In fact, evidence runs contrary to these points.

There is so much that we just don't know, and every foray we make into space shows us that some of our beliefs were just darts on a dartboard. Sometimes we get close to the bullseye, other times the dart winds up under the couch.

Some scientists are the Zach Lowes of the profession, others are the Colin Cowherds. The Colin Cowherds make more money and get more airtime. If you look at the Big Bang science, there are plenty of dissenters, many making great cases that fit with current observations. They are not ostracized or shunned. They are challenged, as they should be. Big Bang is the consensus among astrophysicists. But it isn't a damn religion (well except for alfalfa, I guess.) Einstein was challenged, often with hostility, on every singly paper he published. That is how science is supposed to work.

With climate science, it just doesn't work that way. Don't agree with Michael Mann, and it will ruin your career. There is no acceptable skepticism. Now we have all of the press and money going to people on the extremes of the discussion, either "Civilization will END!" or "There is no such thing as Greenhouse Gasses." The middle has been squashed, indeed murdered with malice, when obviously that is where the truth lies.

^^ fish's poop emoji.

I'm sorry, I don't understand why it means that things have to move faster than light? Also don't understand why it means that energy was created from nothing. My understanding is that the singularity contained all the matter that the universe is made up of and when it went "bang" it released a massive amount of energy which was essentially being stored in it.

I won't pretend to know anything about the existence of time defore, during and after the big bang, but I've always just assumed that "big bangs" are cyclic.

silesian said:

A few notes on how the scientific process and peer review works. The author provides a draft article to a scientific journal. The journal seeks peers to review and comment on the article. This feedback is given to the author who can choose to make changes or not. The journal then determines if the article is worthy of publication. The peer comments are not published.

Journals reject articles (peers reject nothing)

Peers send their comments to journals, who give them to authors (they are not published)

Scientific theories are supported by a large array of experimental data. When experiments are conducted to challenge the theory, the results are either support the theory (in most cases) or not. So for example, Newtonian physics was considered a universal scientific theory until the 20th century when we learned that tiny things and fast moving things do not follow newtonian physics (gross oversimplification). So now it is a theory, but one that has limits to its applicability.



So yes, the scientific method has been applied to reject theories. Plate tectonics revolutionized geologic theory in the 1960s, for example. You can read Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" for others.

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So we are going to pretend that scientific theories live in a cloister until they are shared with a few dozen people? It might of worked that way a few hundred years ago, but now every damn hypothesis is press released. You recall "Cold Fusion," yeah? What was the peer review process on that? Keeping secrets and humility doesn't attract grant money. Even when Einstein released a theory, there was knife fighting in the press and larger scientific community before, during, and after the testing process. And it was healthy.

There are plenty of climate change theories that fall short of hysteria, and they are suppressed. Theories that would easily survive the first level of examination and testing. There just isn't any money, press, or prestige associated with that line of research.

Bulletproof said:

I'm sorry, I don't understand why it means that things have to move faster than light? Also don't understand why it means that energy was created from nothing. My understanding is that the singularity contained all the matter that the universe is made up of and when it went "bang" it released a massive amount of energy which was essentially being stored in it.

I won't pretend to know anything about the existence of time defore, during and after the big bang, but I've always just assumed that "big bangs" are cyclic.

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The speed of light came into being some time after the big bang. It took time for the cosmological constants to set after the big bang. To explain certain observations about the expansion of the universe, some scientists propose something called cosmic inflation, which happened at the instance of creation. During that split second, the universe expanded at speed than could be trillion x speed of light. The theory is not universally accepted.

Energy is conserved within the universe. It is meaningless to apply the principle to how the universe came to be. Also, conservation of energy is more complicated than most think. For example, particles can fluctuate in and out of existence in a vacuum, locally violating conservation. It evens out on cosmological scales, and no work can be extracted from the localized violations. It is perfectly plausible that such fluctuation is responsible for this reality. Remember, time arrows aren't shared between realities. Our bubble might last an instant to an observer in a different reality.

Current understanding indicates that the bang is not cyclical. The eventual fate of this universe is called the heat death.

Bulletproof said:

I'm sorry, I don't understand why it means that things have to move faster than light? Also don't understand why it means that energy was created from nothing. My understanding is that the singularity contained all the matter that the universe is made up of and when it went "bang" it released a massive amount of energy which was essentially being stored in it.

I won't pretend to know anything about the existence of time defore, during and after the big bang, but I've always just assumed that "big bangs" are cyclic.

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1. In current measurements there are some bodies (galaxies, etc.) that are moving away from us at faster than the speed of light. That means that at some point there were more observable stars than there were today, and that number will continue to decrease as billions of years move on. Obviously, that means that the theory of relativity has limits, or that our measuring tools aren't entirely accurate.

2. Yes the "Big Bang" is the attempt to reconcile an expanding universe with the law of thermodynamics. But at some point you have to throw things to a dues ex machina to explain it all. You also have to assume that this was a one time process that has never and will never repeat. That is a tough row to hoe, or at least it should be.

3. The cyclic theory is one of the likely improvements of the original big bang theory, but makes you heretic according to alfalfa.

Also, @Bulletproof do you know why the speed of light is the max possible speed? It's a fairly simple concept that most don't understand. Even those with scientific understanding.

framer said:

1. In current measurements there are some bodies (galaxies, etc.) that are moving away from us at faster than the speed of light. That means that at some point there were more observable stars than there were today, and that number will continue to decrease as billions of years move on. Obviously, that means that the theory of relativity has limits, or that our measuring tools aren't entirely accurate.

2. Yes the "Big Bang" is the attempt to reconcile an expanding universe with the law of thermodynamics. But at some point you have to throw things to a dues ex machina to explain it all. You also have to assume that this was a one time process that has never and will never repeat. That is a tough row to hoe, or at least it should be.

3. The cyclic theory is one of the likely improvements of the original big bang theory, but makes you heretic according to alfalfa.

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Just painful.

Alfalfa said:

Also, @Bulletproof do you know why the speed of light is the max possible speed? It's a fairly simple concept that most don't understand. Even those with scientific understanding.

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Because as matter accelerates it takes greater and greater amounts of energy to gain additional acceleration and the speed of light is the point at which it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate beyond?

Alfalfa said:

The speed of light came into being some time after the big bang. It took time for the cosmological constants to set after the big bang. To explain certain observations about the expansion of the universe, some scientists propose something called cosmic inflation, which happened at the instance of creation. During that split second, the universe expanded at speed than could be trillion x speed of light. The theory is not universally accepted.

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I mean, this right here. The current theory means that you have to accept that there was a time, however short, that universal laws did not apply. I mean it could be true, but it smells a whole lot like theology, or that universal laws are not universal at all. If they didn't apply once there would have to be a situation when they didn't apply again.

Bulletproof said:

Because as matter accelerates it takes greater and greater amounts of energy to gain additional acceleration and the speed of light is the point at which it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate beyond?

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Sure. That's right. But why can't it be more than 3*10^8? It's because there MUST be a maximum allowable speed for reality to be possible. If things could accelerate infinitely, there would be no seperation between cause and effect (time must pass between correlated events). There are two things that can slow **** down; mass and having something in the way. If you remove both factors (like a photon in a vacuum), then the object can ONLY travel at the maximum possible speed. Nothing can accelerate to a higher number because it would violate causality.

framer said:

I mean, this right here. The current theory means that you have to accept that there was a time, however short, that universal laws did not apply. I mean it could be true, but it smells a whole lot like theology, or that universal laws are not universal at all. If they didn't apply once there would have to be a situation when they didn't apply again.

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So what do you think the people who have devoted their lives to studying astrophysics are up to? Are they intentionally deceiving all of us for some sort of nefarious purpose?

Bulletproof said:

I'm sorry, I don't understand why it means that things have to move faster than light? Also don't understand why it means that energy was created from nothing. My understanding is that the singularity contained all the matter that the universe is made up of and when it went "bang" it released a massive amount of energy which was essentially being stored in it.

I won't pretend to know anything about the existence of time defore, during and after the big bang, but I've always just assumed that "big bangs" are cyclic.

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There are a few theories. The cyclic thing is one of them. They have also seen that our universe appears to be somewhat lop-sided so another theory is we "bubbled" off of another universe somehow. There are a couple others as well. Of course no one really knows. It's all theory.

LogGrad98 said:

There are a few theories. The cyclic thing is one of them. They have also seen that our universe appears to be somewhat lop-sided so another theory is we "bubbled" off of another universe somehow. There are a couple others as well. Of course no one really knows. It's all theory.

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No that's not true. And stop talking about theories like it's guys shooting the ****. The current model indicated a forever expanding universe. The big crunch theory was accepted before the discovery of dark energy in the 90s.

NPC D4617 said:

Thats a good post until the last part(Ill get to that in a second)

I agree with with most of what you said. I feel the same way. I still like to see you as a liberal though. I need a target to fight the ideas that I dont like from the left.

So you are opposed to gay conversion therapy and repulsed by it, but you are not opposed to teaching kids to choose their gender, and transition as a child? The left is teaching that. Why didnt you mention it?

Is teaching your kids to stay in a state of being able to reproduce worse than teaching the opposite of that? Is reproduction not important?

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I'm confused by the analogy you're trying to make between conversion therapy and transgender children?

I think what is being advocated is allowing transgender children to express themself according to the gender they identify with. Spinning that to mean adults are telling kids they aren't really boys or girls and they can just casually decide for themselves which gender they want to be is not even close to what's going on.

I have mixed feelings about starting hormone replacement in very young children.

Alfalfa said:

No that's not true. And stop talking about theories like it's guys shooting the ****. The current model indicated a forever expanding universe. The big crunch theory was accepted before the discovery of dark energy in the 90s.

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Lol

LogGrad98 said:

Lol

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lol indeed. Just because you read something on popsci doesn't mean all theories are equal and you get to adopt which ever random one you like.

Bulletproof said:

So what do you think the people who have devoted their lives to studying astrophysics are up to? Are they intentionally deceiving all of us for some sort of nefarious purpose?

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Nope, I just don't think they know. Big Bang science isn't politicized, but very few people are going to say "I don't have enough information to make that determination." It is likely we will never know for sure. Not knowing doesn't get you published either.

There's a theory that the earth is filled with ice. It's all theories. Which means it's all meaningless, you guys. Just believe whatever.

#epistemologicalcrisis

I mean look at the certainty alfalfa is displaying. He has no damn idea and isn't an astrophysicist but he KNOWS damnit!!! I mean he may have more pieces than the average dude, but his certainty is bullcrap. There are people with more knowledge and accolades that disagree with his learned (not arrived at) conclusions, that aren't treated like heretics by the people that currently believe as he does.