Is the Big Bang Running Out of Steam?

[Chronos]

nereid, appreciate your frustration. science without math is vodoo. ideas without math are.. just ideas. that does not mean they are wrong, just unsubstantiated. i kinda wish this forum had more math than conjecture. i would have more difficulty following those arguments, but, they would make more sense. savov makes no sense whatsoever. it is easy to poke fun at those who do not have to make a living on grant money and being forced to submit to peer scrutiny.

 

[Nereid]

nereid, appreciate your frustration. science without math is vodoo. ideas without math are.. just ideas. that does not mean they are wrong, just unsubstantiated. i kinda wish this forum had more math than conjecture. i would have more difficulty following those arguments, but, they would make more sense. savov makes no sense whatsoever. it is easy to poke fun at those who do not have to make a living on grant money and being forced to submit to peer scrutiny.

I love ideas just as much as anyone else, and I suspect that just about everything new in science begins as some kind of vague (or not so vague!) idea. However what comes next really does matter; could be 'OK, so how can we get at least an OOM handle on this puppy?', or 'how does that stack up against what we already know about {X}?' The peer-reviewed journals are absolutely chock-a-block full of ideas that have gone through this stage - look at the cottage industry on inflation, or primordial black holes, to pick just two examples.

Then too there are folk who take some left field idea and really run with it; think of Hoyle and his spinning iron whiskers (giving rise to the CMBR), or panspermia (a rich and complex subject; just one aspect: Hoyle - at one time - attributed flu epidemics on Earth to cosmic bacteria/viruses), or some of the 'plasma cosmologists'. (I will come back to Arp, turbo1, et al I really will; it's just that I have so little time right now).

Too, there's nothing wrong in principle with super-grand ideas (like Savov's), but IMHO the proponents lose credibility if they still haven't addressed even OOM quantitative aspects after several *years*, when it seems to me that only a few *hours* are enough to do a handful of key OOM reality checks.

Finally, as HPS students learn, the real-world nature of science can be messy, with false starts and wrong turns that may consume hundreds of researchers and decades of time. I mean, who remembers "N-rays"? or "nematode memory molecules"? On the other side, recall continental drift/plate tectonics, or snowball Earth.

 

[Thallium]

A digression:

The Bible actually says that the Universe is expanding. Any religious discussion belongs in the reilgion forum, yes, yes, yes, but there is a lot of science in the Bible too!

Peace

 

[shrumeo]

nereid, appreciate your frustration. science without math is vodoo. ideas without math are.. just ideas. that does not mean they are wrong, just unsubstantiated. i kinda wish this forum had more math than conjecture. i would have more difficulty following those arguments, but, they would make more sense. savov makes no sense whatsoever. it is easy to poke fun at those who do not have to make a living on grant money and being forced to submit to peer scrutiny.

yes, we need math to quantify our ideas, but that's all math in science is, a quantification of ideas. if the ideas are flawed but the math that represents them doesn't seem to be (it's "elegant") then that will lead us off track in terms of our understanding of nature.

if i have an equation to calculate the number of times the whole universe blinks out of existence and back again, it seems to have a somewhat regular pattern, i can label that rate B, for the rate that the universe goes in and out of existence, and then base further equations on that value. but what i failed to understand is that it's just my eyelids cutting out the light. Maybe this is a bad example, the best i could come up with just sitting here. But I think I'm trying to say that the math doesn't MEAN anything without a qualitative understanding of phenomena.

So, it seems ideas in science without math to back them up are meaningless and math without ideas behind it is equally meaningless.

(Note: I am not agreeing with Eugene Savov. But, I do appreciate Halton Arp's efforts to keep everyone sane.)

Edit to add the note.

 

[russ_watters]

yes, we need math to quantify our ideas, but that's all math in science is, a quantification of ideas. if the ideas are flawed but the math that represents them doesn't seem to be (it's "elegant") then that will lead us off track in terms of our understanding of nature.

The math needs to come first and if it is accurate, how can it lead us off track? A great example is the Lorentz transformations. The concept is now considered flawed, but the math fits observations and is useable in the theory that replaced it.

I really think objections like this come from a simple lack of acceptance of reality at face value. People don't want to believe what the math says.

 

[Phobos]

(I will come back to Arp, turbo1, et al I really will; it's just that I have so little time right now).

ditto...hang on, Turbo1

 

[shrumeo]

The math needs to come first and if it is accurate, how can it lead us off track? A great example is the Lorentz transformations. The concept is now considered flawed, but the math fits observations and is useable in the theory that replaced it.

I really think objections like this come from a simple lack of acceptance of reality at face value. People don't want to believe what the math says.

Math coming first? I don't understand. All the theoretical equations that I have ever seen have a bunch of variables and constants in them. These did not come first, to us they represent something in the real world. We had to have those real world things and ideas in place first before we could relate them in an equation.

All I'm saying is that if we think "A" represents so-and-so, but all the while we didn't realize that "A" really represents who-and-who, a slightly different interpretation of so-and-so, then the math isn't flawed but our understanding is. Hmm, not doing a good job of explaining.

Then, in the red-shift example. I am under the impression that as a rule of thumb astronomers calculate the distance to distant objects by their redshift. This is based on the assumption that the redshift is due entirely to the Doppler effect, or space expanding, or whatever. The math is right. The formulas all give checkable answers. Did that just prove that we understand the nature of the redshift?



Edit:
Wait, I just read your reply more carefully and you exactly expressed what I was trying to say. Math can be right all along, but we can't rely on it entirely to build our concepts.

 

[russ_watters]

ditto...hang on, Turbo1

Oy - fasten your seat-belt, turbo1. You don't know what you just got yourself into...

Math coming first? I don't understand. All the theoretical equations that I have ever seen have a bunch of variables and constants in them. These did not come first, to us they represent something in the real world. We had to have those real world things and ideas in place first before we could relate them in an equation.

I'm talking about in the creation of a theory. A theory that describes a real-world phenomena consists of a mathematical model and a qualitative explanation. The qualitative explanation comes from the mathematical model.

Science itself arose for exactly this reason: before Galileo, people had it backwards. Starting with Galileo, scientists started making observations, recording data, and fitting the data to mathematical models, then evaluating what those models said about reality. Thats how we got rid of non-theories like the "chrystal spheres," geocentrism, and the unscientific ideas of Aristotle.

 

[Chronos]

well put russ. i too dislike the idea that our understanding of the universe leaves us basically stranded in our solar system. sailing off into the great void is much more attractive, but, not realistic. given the current economic climate [consuming the energy equivalent of our entire solar system to travel across the galaxy will probably not reach a vote in a senate subcommitee] attacking the 'guards' seems to be the only way we can escape this prison. we may not be alone in the universe, just forbidden to contaminate it.

 

[big-egg]

“yes, we need math to quantify our ideas, but that's all math in science is, a quantification of ideas. if the ideas are flawed but the math that represents them doesn't seem to be (it's "elegant") then that will lead us off track in terms of our understanding of nature.”

I fully agree with you Shrumeo. It seems that some members of the forum have never considered the qualitative nature of the foundations of the math models and the scope of their application.

 

[chroot]

While this thread seems to contain some interesting discussion, the original poster, as well as other members, seem intent on focusing it on crackpot nonsense. Off to TD it goes... let me know if you have an objection.

- Warren

 

[shrumeo]

I'm talking about in the creation of a theory. A theory that describes a real-world phenomena consists of a mathematical model and a qualitative explanation. The qualitative explanation comes from the mathematical model.

Science itself arose for exactly this reason: before Galileo, people had it backwards. Starting with Galileo, scientists started making observations, recording data, and fitting the data to mathematical models, then evaluating what those models said about reality. Thats how we got rid of non-theories like the "chrystal spheres," geocentrism, and the unscientific ideas of Aristotle.

I'm also talking about in the creation of a theory.

Doesn't what you said about what folks did before Galileo apply to inflationary BB theorists now? They took some observations and interpretations made by Hubble, et al, fit the data to a mathematical model and came up with a non-theory called "Inflationary BB theory".

I remember watching NOVA one time talking about how some guy noticed how a 200-year old equation of Eulers's also applied to the strong force and described it mathematically. Which came first here? The math or the concept of the strong force? Of course, chronologically the math did, but in the course of matching theory to observation it would be no different if the guy derived the equations himself instead of finding them in a book. The realization that the math fit the observations came after the concept of a strong force.

Also, these same equations, apparently (from the same NOVA show ) led folks to string theory and its progeny. Now, here is definite case of the math coming first. It would be very nice to see what is pretty much pure math predicting the structure of "everything." If it were supported experimentally that would be astounding. I'm sure this sort of thing happens all the time in particle physics though.

So, I agree with you that a lot of the time, especially for you physicists, that the math will come first, but also a lot of the time, the observations will come first.

 

[Nereid]

While this thread seems to contain some interesting discussion, the original poster, as well as other members, seem intent on focusing it on crackpot nonsense. Off to TD it goes... let me know if you have an objection.

- Warren

I'm sorry to see this thread in TD. Not because a discussion Savov's ideas doesn't belong in TD; rather because a) the discussion on maths vs observations, chickens and eggs, etc in science is a good one to have (though better in HPS than Astronomy!), but mainly because b) we *really, really* should have a solid discussion of objections to redshift=expansion, quasars, etc a la Arp & Burbidge (et al). IMHO, such a discussion belongs firmly in General Astronomy.

So, in a very few words, not doing justice at all to the topic:
- in the early days, the redshift-distance data were not that good; for the longest time, many quasar datasets could be interpreted many ways
- pre-Hubble (and VLT/Keck/Gemini/etc), many of Arp's collection of nice piccies (and Zwicky's before him) did look like smoking guns - Stephan's Quintet is a wonderful example; post-Hubble (etc) things haven't been so clear for the Arp hypothesis
- appeals to 'the probability of that happening by chance are just too tiny to have any credibility' (yes, this is a strawman; turbo-1, and Arp no doubt, wouldn't state it so poorly) don't stack up when properly analysed. For example, what is the average density (per arcsec^2, for example) of <25 (Bmag) galaxies? How does this vary between the core of a large, dense Abell-type cluster and a (nearby) void?
- we now have two extraordinarily rich, unbiased* surveys of galaxies and quasars - the 2dF and SDSS; shortly powerful data mining tools such as ASTROVERTEL (sp?) will be available to the public - these provide the ability to test many versions of Arp's hypothesis, in an unbiased* fashion, to (guess) many times the depth of Arp's original work
- re quasars - PLE (pure luminosity evolution) had essentially no observational support in the 1980s; it leaps out of the 2dF result.

When I have more time, I'll write better, and include lots of links; to repeat, this discussion is a good one to have in General Astronomy & Cosmology.

*in the statistical sense, not in any way in the usual meaning of this word in everyday English

 

[shrumeo]

i am now seeing that folks are working on the problem:

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=31815

and they attribute what Arp and others see as close associations of quasars and glaxies to gravitational lensing effects

i think this means, and points my puny opinion in the direction, that we are only at the beginning in trying to understand things, get a grasp of what's going on out there.

and to keep on about the math and observation thingie:
I think old Galileo himself worked out a lot of his mathmatical theories by observation of pendulums and balls rolling down inclined planes, etc. counting, marking, and deriving the math from that:

copied from: http://www.phys.virginia.edu/classes/109N/lectures/gal_accn96.htm

Galileo's Acceleration Experiment

We are now ready to consider Galileo's experiment in which he tested his hypothesis about the way falling bodies gain speed. We quote the account from Two New Sciences, page 178:

A piece of wooden moulding or scantling, about 12 cubits long, half a cubit wide, and three finger-breadths thick, was taken; on its edge was cut a channel a little more than one finger in breadth; having made this groove very straight, smooth, and polished, and having lined it with parchment, also as smooth and polished as possible, we rolled along it a hard, smooth, and very round bronze ball. Having placed this board in a sloping position, by raising one end some one or two cubits above the other, we rolled the ball, as I was just saying, along the channel, noting, in a manner presently to be described, the time required to make the descent. We repeated this experiment more than once in order to measure the time with an accuracy such that the deviation between two observations never exceeded one-tenth of a pulse-beat. Having performed this operation and having assured ourselves of its reliability, we now rolled the ball only one-quarter the length of the channel; and having measured the time of its descent, we found it precisely one-half of the former. Next we tried other distances, compared the time for the whole length with that for the half, or with that for two-thirds, or three-fourths, or indeed for any fraction; in such experiments, repeated a full hundred times, we always found that the spaces traversed were to each other as the squares of the times, and this was true for all inclinations of the plane, i.e., of the channel, along which we rolled the ball. We also observed that the times of descent, for various inclinations of the plane, bore to one another precisely that ratio which, as we shall see later, the Author had predicted and demonstrated for them.

For the measurement of time, we employed a large vessel of water placed in an elevated position; to the bottom of this vessel was soldered a pipe of small diameter giving a thin jet of water which we collected in a small glass during the time of each descent, whether for the whole length of the channel or for part of its length; the water thus collected was weighed, after each descent, on a very accurate balance; the differences and ratios of these weights gave us the differences and ratios of the times, and this with such accuracy that although the operation was repeated many, many times, there was no appreciable discrepancy in the results.

Apologies for the length.

 

[russ_watters]

I'm also talking about in the creation of a theory.

Doesn't what you said about what folks did before Galileo apply to inflationary BB theorists now? They took some observations and interpretations made by Hubble, et al, fit the data to a mathematical model and came up with a non-theory called "Inflationary BB theory".

Why is it a "non-theory"? Because you don't like it?

 

[shrumeo]

in case you didn't notice, I was mimicking the way you dimissed past "non-theories" as you called them (not agreeing with any of them here)
i don't know if it's called sarcasm anymore

i oversimplified the creation of theory, the way you did, to illustrate the fact that there is little difference (in the way you put it) between what they did and how inflationary BB theory came about (or how a lot of theories come about)



edit:
anyway, i now have stupid questions about those papers that were linked to. the ones that explain the wacky, apparently-connected-to-a-galaxy quasars by way of gravitational lensing.

If I were an optics expert would I expect some distortion, or a lot of distortion, in the image and be able to calculate the way the image distorts? Are any of Arp's wacky quasar images distorted?

 

[Nereid]

No more distorted than other images taken with the same telescope/camera configuration!

The main source of distortion in good quality astonomical images is the atmosphere - called 'seeing'. The Hubble ST has a mirror which was ground to a shape different from that in the specs - and early images from the cameras then installed had to processed to yield useful images. Later, on a servicing mission, corrective optics were added; later still, those were removed, because by then all cameras (and other instruments) had built-in image correction.

Leading Earth-bound telescopes have active optics; the seeing is sampled, and the mirrors distorted to reduce the seeing-induced distortion (and a few other distortions too).

Why not contribute to the 'Arp' thread directly?

 

[shrumeo]

which one is the Arp thread again? :)

this one ? https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=31815

hmm, i'll just ask the same question again there, i guess
anyway...

 

[Nereid]

Yes, that thread; see you there!

 

[russ_watters]

in case you didn't notice, I was mimicking the way you dimissed past "non-theories" as you called them (not agreeing with any of them here)

Since the scientific method was basically invented by Galileo, it is perfectly acceptable to consider the ideas that came before his "non-theories." Before him, ther was no such thing as a scientific theory because there was no such thing as science.

edit: I see this coming: 'How can you say there was no such thing as science before Galileo?! Stars have existed for billions of years!'

Science is not the laws that govern the natural world, science is a process by which we find the laws that govern the natural world. That process has only been around for about 500 years.

 

[shrumeo]

Nope, wasn't going to say that.

I think we are agreeing more than it seems.

I wasn't trying to argue the validity of certian pre-Gallileo theories, like crystal spheres. (I'm guessing you mean the ones from Aristotle.) You said he applied math to his crystal sphere theory. I googled THIS to learn more about it.

I like the part where it says, "This gives a pretty accurate representation of the sun's motion, but it didn't quite account for all the known observations at that time."

If I didn't know any better, if I really believed we had a firm grasp on the nature of the universe I would think it quite daft to translate it for today as: "IBBT gives a pretty accurate representation of the behavior of the cosmos, but it didn't quite account for all the known observations at that time."

I, in my ignorance, fail to see a big difference between the orgination of crystal sphere theory and IBBT. To me, in my ignorance, both seem to stem from a lack of knowledge and understanding. (Then applying a bunch of math to the flawed mental model so that it seems to be right.)

edit:
At the end of the paragraph, it says they were able to accurately account for all the motions ofthe planets based on concentric spheres.

 

[Prometheus]

Science is not the laws that govern the natural world, science is a process by which we find the laws that govern the natural world. That process has only been around for about 500 years.

I disagree.

The ancient Greeks investigated nature, and they developed and argued theories about nature. Science has been around since the time of the ancient Greeks.

 

[Eh]

Err, no. Science is a specific method, not some vauge concept of investigating nature. It has not been around since the Greeks.

 

[Prometheus]

Err, no. Science is a specific method, not some vauge concept of investigating nature. It has not been around since the Greeks.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion. My definition, and incidentally the definition in my dictionaries and at dictionary.com, indicate that science is not necessarily limited to a specific method at all.

Might I ask where you obtained such a definition of science. Please cite a source that says that the only reasonable definition of science is a specfic methodology.

 

[Nereid]

The origins and development of science is fascinating.

There's no doubt that what we call 'science' today didn't just pop into existence last century, or 500 years ago.

"The Trouble with Science", Robin Dunbar, faber and faber (1995) has a good general discussion on this and related topics; IMHO well worth a read. (incidentally, Robin makes the point that the Greeks often suffer from a bad press; e.g. "Aristotle's biological successes in relation to his ability to investigate them for himself", a nice table on p39, strongly suggests he was a pretty good 'scientist' wrt stuff he could 'observe', even down to the methods!)

 

[Eh]

You are certainly entitled to your opinion. My definition, and incidentally the definition in my dictionaries and at dictionary.com, indicate that science is not necessarily limited to a specific method at all.

It's not a matter of opinion, it's a fact. At least in the context here. Cosmology and physics are branches of modern science, which employs the scientific method and has a very limited definition. For clarity, we can say that modern science is a relatively new development that contrasts greatly with any "science" of the ancients.

The dictionary seems to use the modern definition as well.

Science

a.The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
b.Such activities restricted to a class of natural phenomena.
c.Such activities applied to an object of inquiry or study.

The above describes the scientific method, though perhaps not as precisely as you'd like.

For the scientific method:

The principles and empirical processes of discovery and demonstration considered characteristic of or necessary for scientific investigation, generally involving the observation of phenomena, the formulation of a hypothesis concerning the phenomena, experimentation to demonstrate the truth or falseness of the hypothesis, and a conclusion that validates or modifies the hypothesis.

That sums it up.

Might I ask where you obtained such a definition of science. Please cite a source that says that the only reasonable definition of science is a specfic methodology.

That is simply the definition scientists use. This modern science has only been around for a while, and I don't think you will disagree with that.

 

[Nereid]

*SNIP
For the scientific method:

The principles and empirical processes of discovery and demonstration considered characteristic of or necessary for scientific investigation, generally involving the observation of phenomena, the formulation of a hypothesis concerning the phenomena, experimentation to demonstrate the truth or falseness of the hypothesis, and a conclusion that validates or modifies the hypothesis.

That sums it up.

That is simply the definition scientists use. This modern science has only been around for a while, and I don't think you will disagree with that.

Now here a curious thing ... the more you look at what 'the ancients' actually did, esp the Greeks, the greater your sense of déjà vu. Sure, things were phrased differently (no 'empirical', 'observation of phenomena', etc), and to be sure none of the ancients codied the method in a form we now know and love ... but their actions (in many cases) speak louder than their words.

 

[Prometheus]

It's not a matter of opinion, it's a fact.

FOr you to use the term modern science shows that you are aware of science that is not modern.

Therefore, you two must recognize that science also occurred before modern times.

We do not need to say that modern science is new for the purposes of clarity. We can say that modern science is new due to the definition of the adjective modern.

Ancient science was less advanced than today. However it was still science.

You two seem to be saying that the scientific method is new, which I will not dispute, and that therefore science itself is new, which I will dispute.

Are you actually trying to tell us that you believe that science itself is new, and that the ancient Greeks did not have any science? I canot believe that you would make this contention. What possible value could there be in this contention?

 

[setAI]

Science is not the laws that govern the natural world, science is a process by which we find the laws that govern the natural world. That process has only been around for about 500 years.

all of you specialists need to open your horizons of knowledge and learn some basic anthropology- the scientific method was originally developed by SHAMANS- the many shamanic methodologies that emerged among human communities over the last 40-70 thousand years are the foundations of the very process you mention: of examining nature- building hypotheses and frameworks to explain natural phenomenology- then testing [in/on their own flesh] those hypotheses to search for Truth and Knowledge-

in the advent of modern civilization the complexities of societies required the shaman's method to branch into several different disciplines- chiefly the sciences/epistemology/ontology/philosophy/and the arts- when powerful religions formed they dominated the examination of the world and the expression of Truth in Nature for millenia- religion was sort of a perversion of shamanic truth seeking that sought control and power over others instead of an honest search for knowledge about the world- however the power of the original shamanic analytical methodology allowed the sciences to flourish and eventually readapt that method into what we now call the Scientific Method- it was the way we started out doing things in the first place before the notion of divine order- when Man had to figure out the world by using his OWN BODY and as the laboratory-

modern science is essentially a return to that original shamanic way of investigating the world-
___________________________

/:set\AI transmedia laboratories

http://setai-transmedia.com

 

[Prometheus]

all of you specialists need to open your horizons of knowledge and learn some basic anthropology- the scientific method was originally develloped by SHAMANS- the many shamanic methodologies that emerged among human communities over the last 40-70 thousand years

Hi.

I do have some basic knowledge of anthropology. Still, I wonder how you came up with shamans as the origiinal source of science. Furthermore, how is it that you came up 40-70,000 years ago. I am aware of no information on shamans that long ago, and I am not aware of them or anyone at that time as a precursor to science.