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Astronomy and Cosmology
Cosmology
Age of Universe: Big Bang, Braneworlds & Perspective
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[QUOTE="vela, post: 6827346, member: 221963"] It's quite possible that some of the popular science you've consumed said as much, but you just missed the point. There are a lot of intriguing ideas and concepts in cosmology, and it's easy to lose sight of what's understood vs. speculation. In addition, you need to recognize that our understanding of cosmology has evolved over time. It's not always obvious what the equations are telling us, and I think this has been particularly true in GR. Also popular science is necessarily imprecise by its nature—there's a reason why scientists use a lot of math. Finally, scientists are human, and some may not understand all aspects of the science correctly. They can often have the same misconceptions non-scientists have. Despite all that, I don't subscribe to the cynical view [USER=310841]@phinds[/USER] has about popular science. Feynman, Weinberg, and others didn't write books simply to cash in. They found their work really interesting, and it's very human to want to share their work with everyone, not just other scientists. Communicating the ideas and concepts to a general audience is always going to require compromises, so it's almost never going to be 100% accurate. But hopefully it gets the general ideas across. As a consumer of popular science, you just have to be aware of these limitations. [/QUOTE]
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Astronomy and Cosmology
Cosmology
Age of Universe: Big Bang, Braneworlds & Perspective
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