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KosKallah
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- TL;DR Summary
- Questioning implications of the media coverage of the paper "Gargantuan chaotic gravitational three-body systems and their irreversibility to the Planck length", by Boekholt et al., specifically on their implications on time symmetry of physical systems.
Recently, a paper has taken some scientific dissemination media coverage, at which journalists claim the authors have proven a breach in time symmetry for a three-body system composed of black holes.
This is the paper's address at Arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.04029
Initially, I would like to point out that the actual subject of the paper is to analyze the effect of computational precision over the observed time symmetry in numerically-simulated three-body experiments. Very relevant to notice is that all time-irreversibility found is considered to be the effect of exponential sensitivity to approximation errors, as described in the text: "If the tracking time [the maximum number of iterations at which the system still retains causal relation to the initial conditions, i.e.: has not been fully converted into another system by the buildup of initially infinitesimal approximation errors] is shorter than the escape time [the time it takes for the three-body system to degenerate into a two-body system or into three free bodies with uncorrelated trajectories], then the numerical solution has diverged from the physical solution, and as a consequence, it has become time irreversible." ("Results" session of the paper, second paragraph - explanations between brackets are my own).
My point is that that science dissemination media has taken the paper backwards and that can damage a layman's (such as myself) understanding of the research and the subject itself, thus hurting what it should nurture.
That is a recurring event and I remember seeing, in the frontpage of a science dissemination magazine in my country, an artistic depiction of the "Daedalus" (a conceptual nuclear spaceship) with windows in the spheres where it should only store fuel.
My question is: considering that scientific dissemination media depends on public interest and techniques such as "click baits" and other forms of sensationalism are tempting to use, how could we make scientific dissemination media less tending towards "explosive", yet incorrect, coverage and more faithful to the studies themselves?
This is the paper's address at Arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.04029
Initially, I would like to point out that the actual subject of the paper is to analyze the effect of computational precision over the observed time symmetry in numerically-simulated three-body experiments. Very relevant to notice is that all time-irreversibility found is considered to be the effect of exponential sensitivity to approximation errors, as described in the text: "If the tracking time [the maximum number of iterations at which the system still retains causal relation to the initial conditions, i.e.: has not been fully converted into another system by the buildup of initially infinitesimal approximation errors] is shorter than the escape time [the time it takes for the three-body system to degenerate into a two-body system or into three free bodies with uncorrelated trajectories], then the numerical solution has diverged from the physical solution, and as a consequence, it has become time irreversible." ("Results" session of the paper, second paragraph - explanations between brackets are my own).
My point is that that science dissemination media has taken the paper backwards and that can damage a layman's (such as myself) understanding of the research and the subject itself, thus hurting what it should nurture.
That is a recurring event and I remember seeing, in the frontpage of a science dissemination magazine in my country, an artistic depiction of the "Daedalus" (a conceptual nuclear spaceship) with windows in the spheres where it should only store fuel.
My question is: considering that scientific dissemination media depends on public interest and techniques such as "click baits" and other forms of sensationalism are tempting to use, how could we make scientific dissemination media less tending towards "explosive", yet incorrect, coverage and more faithful to the studies themselves?
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