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No Shadow From the Big Bang?
ultracool writes "In a finding sure to cause controversy, scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) found a lack of evidence of shadows from "nearby" clusters of galaxies using new, highly accurate measurements of the cosmic microwave background (WMAP). Other groups have previously reported seeing this type of shadows in the microwave background. Those studies, however, did not use data from WMAP, which was designed and built specifically to study the cosmic microwave background."
The Vorlons were found travelling through Minbari space.
liqbase
Maybe there are mini-big bangs going on. Maybe there wasn't one large one. Maybe, just maybe, there are bangs in the void of space which create our galaxies. Then, this would simply explain where our radiation comes from, the galaxies themselves, always radiating.
(I'm sleepy. I hope I didn't mess that up too badly with poor grammar.)
How can the big bang cast a shadow if there's nothing outside thereof on which to cast it? Now that you've centered yourself, you're sure to win that corporate mini-golf tournament.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
How do we know that the ±0.0001 K (or whatever it is exactly) fluctuations in the CMB isn't just from nearby galaxies? How do we know it is truly background information? No subtraction algorithm is THAT perfect.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
What happens when you mix dark energy with dark matter?
First get this in your head. At this point in history, evolutionary biology is a certainty in the way that gravity is a certainty. We may reconceptualize certain parts of it from time to time, but it is clear and obvious that it is there and happening.
The big bang is NOTHING like this. This is because, unlike in biology, in physics at the moment we have massive unknowns (dark matter, dark energy, no clue what the elementary building material of the universe is, no way to connect quatum mechanics to relativity). At this point the best we can say is all clues seem to hint toward a big bang and that seems the most likely explanation to explain currently observed phenomena.
Big difference!
P.S.: Most Christian fundimentalists don't actually understand the difference between evolution and the big bang. They often see the two in their own heads as linked and think by argueing against one, they are arguing against the other as well. See Kent Hovind and his crazyness, for example.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
http://www.blacklightpower.com/theory/Cosmology%20 050506.pdf
Evolution is a phenomenon that has been observed directly. The big bang is not. The problem with the big bang is one similar to the problem plaguing black holes: the singularity. It's the elephant in the room.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
My favourite explanation is that light and dark travel at different speeds...
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
As a physicist (but no cosmologist or astrophysicist), I'm surprised that shadowing was expected. As far as I understood the article, the shadowing effect is expected not due to absorption/inelastic scattering (where I could understand the shadow effect), but due to elastic scattering (the photons just change their direction).
Now it is obvious that the number of photons reaching us from behind is reduced by the elastic scattering process. However one of the basic properties of the cosmic background radiation is that is is nearly isotropic. And that means there should be an about equal amount of radiation scattered into our direction which would not have reached us otherwise.
So is there anything I'm missing?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Not very convincing when you link to a free-energy crank site.
On the other hand, are there decent alternatives to the Big bang theory these days? All I can remember from college are the steady state and oscillating ones.
For that matter, this news doesn't disprove the theory either. AFAIK other factors like the distribution of stellar matter are still suggestive of a Big Bang.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
When has evolution been directly observed?
This is HUGE news.
Before this date, there had been no recording of a mutation that has resulted in a new structure, organ or other mechanism that makes an organism more fit to survive. So far people have only seen bacteria or viruses in a petri dish cycling through pre-existing immunity combinations, or some natural selection cases like peppered moths.
Can you please point me to the relevant scientific paper? Thanks.
A little shadow anomaly isn't going to seriously dent the Big Bang theory. There is so much evidence for the Big Bang and predictions based on it have been observed that it will take more than a little inconsistency to make the theory suspect. You need something more substantial than shadows to expect a rehauling of the Big Bang.
Remember that there were serious questions about the applicability of Newtonian Dynamics on a large scale too when it was determined that galaxies could not have kept their structure if calculations were based on ND only. However, rather than modify ND, scientists chose to posit an unseen dark matter just to save ND. As it turns out, there is indeed dark matter!
Don't sound the death knell on the big bang yet.
I think the big bang gets attacked more in the sense of attacks on exactly what the initial thingy was. There's no real doubt that the universe is exploding and has been for most of physically evident history. It may not be the initial event, the universe could be eternal, cyclical, or whatever -- but it's certainly exploding now, and seems to have been for at least 12 billion years.
There isn't so much an attacking of the big bang as trying to nail down what exactly the big bang was. In other words, it's the same kind of attacks that people like Stephen Gould and Lynn Margulis make on evolution. They don't doubt that evolution is a real phenomenon for a second; they just want to nail down what exactly evolution is, what makes it tick, how it happens. It's the good kind of attacking, and it's what makes science jump.
Fundies, in turn, seem to assume that the big bang was invented for the sole purpose of trying to support evolution, which is so ridiculous that it defies the belief of real people. In fact, they seem to think that every branch of science exists solely to provide support for an otherwise untenable theory of evolution. This despite the fact that many of these ideas preceded Darwin (in a few cases by millenia).
Evolution of a new enzymatic function by recombination within a gene. Hall BG, Zuzel T, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 1980 Jun 77:6 3529-33
Abstract: "Mutations that alter the ebgA gene so that the evolved beta-galactosidase (ebg) enzyme of Escherichia coli can hydrolyze lactose fall into two classes: class I mutants use only lactose, whereas class II mutants use lactulose as well as lactose..." (Obviously, in a lactose-rich environment, this makes E. coli more fit.)
Now that I pointed you to the paper will you give up your unfounded belief?
I'd also suggest reading this to start and maybe this to learn a bit more about evolution.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
The theory, if I understand it, is that since the CMB and the energy from the nebula should have taken the same time to reach from where they were then to where we are now, and assuming that the CMB was not somehow generated "in front of or "at" nebula (which we currently deduce from its very red-shifted frequency and distribution), then we should see the nebula's emissions, but not the same strength of CMB that is measured from the "background" at very small angular displacements from the nebula.
I need to read the REAL article, since the "Science Daily" was a joke, but, here are some issues with the research as described:
#1 the universe has no "edge" in any layman's sense of word. We're no more in the middle than some galaxy 8 billion light years away in any direction.
#2 the CMB is NOT "pointed at" the Earth. It's going in every direction at the same time, including very, very small angles to "straight away" in any direction.
#3 the WMAP antenna is very good, but it is NOT 100% unidirectional, so it will pick up energy from a very narrow cone, not a line straight away.
Therefore the WMAP data will rarely show a "shadow" of much change in intensity, since the antenna will pick up significant CMB from off-axis of the line between the Earth and the nebula, even if the nebula is resolved to nearly all of the sample point. For that matter, it could be lensing on- or off-axis causing some of the intensity variation described in the artice.
The variations in CMB are incredibly small in the first place, and we don't have THAT many significant digits of intensity in the measurement range. We only really detected them when we got WMAP up there. Any additional small variation in CMB co-incident with an ionized nebula is going to be difficult to unambiguously assign to "shadowing", and the even smaller variations of variations from nebula to nebula are very close to the statistical noise values of the original samples.
As I said, maybe the "Astrophysical Journal" article is better presented, but so far, this doesn't sound well thought-out.
"I hear sentiments like this frequently from people."
Hey! Whatever generates page views for slashdot.*
*And yes, articles that mention science/religion always generate greater numbers than any other type.
That's why I avoid discussing either subject around here. Both because most don't understand the subjects enough to discuss intelligently.
This is slashdot, readers here have never experienced a big bang.
What exactly is wrong with observing "natural selection" cases? Aren't these exactly cases of evolution in action?3 27083737.htm)
* peppered moth: selection for wing coloring
* mutations in HIV after it jumped species to humans. Many other mutations are observed in bacteria and other pathogens that make them resistant to drugs. We are currently waiting in fear for the birdflue to undergo such a change.
* Invasive species: many mutations are observed in invasive species that make them more adapted to the environment.
* Recently, direct observation of the evolution of beak size in Darwin's finches was reported (Science 14 July 2006: Vol. 313. no. 5784, pp. 224 - 226)
* Evolution of RNA sequences: many experiments have evolved RNA sequences that perform various functions. One example among many is converting an RNA enzyme to a DNA enzyme (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060
* Artificial evolution: in many experiment run in computers, evolution is able to create new structures, from bridges to sorting algorithms
Finally, I think it is worthwhile to mention one important piece of evidence that has recently been completed. When Darwin suggested in the 19th century that humans and apes had a common ancestor, he was ridiculed. Till then humans were seen as different from all animals, having been created on a different day of creation. In that time, nothing was known of the DNA. Today, we managed to sequence the human and the chimp genome. We know that humans and chimpanzees differ in 1% of their DNA sequence. In fact, the DNA sequence of a human is closer to that of a chimp than the chimp is to an Orangutan, or than the chimp is to any other living species, with the exception of the bonobo. The human is the chimp and bonobo's closest relative.
I think that is quite an amazing prediction to make more than 100 years in advance. In fact, predictions like this are the strongest corroborations in science: making a prediction that is absolutely unthinkable based on the current belief.
I don't think so.
I never heard of the direct observation of a monocellular organism evolving into one as complex as a mamifere.
We never observed the big Bang but the CMB and the expansion is as good a data as the evolution of the flu virus every year.
But all of those are indirect observation of the general theory.
Yeah it's an AC, but it contains about the only interesting information I actually learned from this entire thread, and it's at 0.
Why do you only get mod points when noone has anything worthwhile to say? Sigh.
Someone had to do it.
I'd suggest reading The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins. You may find it interesting.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
That being said, there is no reason to believe in the existence of dieties of any sort. Richard Dawkins gives a nice short explanation of this in his documentary, The Root of all Evil.
For a longer an more detailed explanation I'd recommend The Blind Watchmaker.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Actually, it's the elephant in the other room. Which is the problem - if it were the elephant in this room we could decide to look at it.
A scientific model doesn't need to be "right" to be useful.
For example, light can be modeled as particles or waves. Actually, neither may be an entirely acurate description of light, but both theories may make useful predictions. They both describe light in very good (if not complete) ways.
More than one model of the shape and origin of the universe may contribute to a view that helps explain observations and make predictions.
These models are not for "believing in". That would prevent us from considering other possible explanations. Two or more models taken together may in some sense seem to contradict each other. But they may both contribute to a yet-to-be-discovered unifying theory. They may both help to shape better approximations of the state of the universe.
Thank you for putting together this text so well. You might find this article interesting, the Pope recently held a conference with several scholars, they conclude the same thing. They will soon be releasing text describing their discussions. See this link.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14681924/
Ok, just go ahead and post your favorite "Your momma is so fat" joke about the big bang here and get it out of your system.
For those of you who want to read more on it. I'm currently ploguhing through his paper and and a few others but if anyone of the top knows whether Lieu used sigma8 from the WMAP 3yr results and how he selected clusters and estimated cluster mass... Skimming Lieu's paper his conclusion already claims that it is not inconsistent with previous SZE data for individual clusters. Anyways back to digesting papers.
Linkys
A primer on the SZE
[PDF WARNING]
Their paper on astro-ph
The WMAP 3 year results paper
[/PDF WARNING]
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in a sample of 31 clusters - a comparison between the X-ray predicted and WMAP observed CMB temperature decrement".
He's absolutely right. I too am a Christian. If there's one thing that the rest of us should learn is to open up our heads and try, try to understand the other side of things. Even (and especially) if we do not agree with it. There's always another side, and who's who to decide what's wrong or what's right?
Things unacceptable today were normal a few centuries, even years ago. That, my friends, is called evolution. We evolve, our society evolves, the whole world evolves. Animals need to adapt themselves to changes to the environment. The human species is one of the most adaptable in the world. Why the fuck is it so absurd, and against the Bible?
Uncopyrightable: The longest word you can write without repeating a letter.
Your peppered moth was bad science and a hoax. Not taking shots, but the facts don't support the oft-repeated story.
Mutation is observable and observation makes for good science. Extrapolation allows for the possibility of mutation combining to make new types of creatures, but that has not been observed - just postulated.
Of course mutations occur. Frankly they are almost always "less fit" and become a failure.
Adaptation through natural selection appears to make "more fit" creatures and does create specialization. Interestingly, while it makes creatures more fit for a specific environment, the narrowing of the gene pool (in general) makes the overall creature less fit for general purposes - if conditions change, the genetic information allowing for more fitness for the new conditions is less present in the gene pool of the survivors.
While observation of variation through adaptation and natural selection is reliable and repeatable, this does not make for creation of new species, just new variants which are extremely similar.
We can even look to smart naturalists who can help discredit evolution. Gould said that "phyletic gradualism" was "never seen in the rocks" which is why he created the theory of punctuated equilibrium. This has never been observed, either, but it shows that lack of evidence doesn't necessitate discrediting conventional wisdom.
I'll admit that there is evidence which appears explainable via evolution, but there are other explanations as well. Things which have not been directly observed leave evidence - the cause of which is fodder for speculation. Evolutionists, naturalists, and creationists agree on the data. What we disagree about is the root cause and mechanism of the evidence.
I believe in a God who created order and who created us with the capacity to study the universe to understand it - something which we have done, and will continue to do.
Some of the best scientists of antiquity have been men of deep unwavering faith. Why is that so upsetting to so many today?
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
You know, while the parent seems fairly reasonable and I truly wish more religious folk took a similar stance, I feel that I still have to say this...science and Christianity aren't compatible. No way, no how. You can cast creation as a metaphor, argue that God set the wheels in motion, etc., and that's fine and all, but let's be honest: you're not a bona fide Christian unless you accept the virgin birth as an actual historical fact. No metaphors allowed - if you call yourself Christian (at least from any normal branch of Christianity), you accept that Mary did not get pregnant through intercourse. But no modern theory of science will admit the physical possibility that baby Jesus popped out without insemination of Mary's egg, and to an extremely high degree of certainty, that means that Mary had sex (turkey baster aside - I think that would ruin the whole "Son of God" thing anyhow). So let's admit up front that there is an irreconcilable divergence between Christianity and science - if you want to accept the former, you must reject at least part of the latter. For what it's worth...
What you describe is called Day-Age creationism, as opposed to young Earth creationism. Some people believe in Day-Age; others believe in young Earth.
You call that a troll? Weak, dude.
But if you're in any way serious, just look at Penicillin. Why are bacteria increasingly resistant to it with each passing year? The fittest survived and reproduced. Evolution at work.
My high school biology teacher used to say (actually, he'd often sing it... he was an odd fellow) that he was a part of the luckiest generation on the planet today, because his lifespan has generally coincided with the effectiveness of Penicillin. By the time it's no longer useful, he'll likely be dead.
http://publicvoidlife.blogspot.com
And they do this by shedding genes. Under my personal interpretation of young Earth, each family of animals was created with genes for all niches, set in mutual inhibition during the first week. Mutations corrupt genes and allow their inhibitors to be expressed, and natural selection helps these mutations propagate in habitats where the inhibitor would allow the animal to thrive in a niche. However, those genes can't as easily come back. You're not going to breed Dalmatians back into wolves because they've devolved to fit the niche for Dalmatians, and the mutations that inhibit Dalmatian-ness are too corrupt.
Micro-evolution has been observed. I don't know any one of ANY religious persuasion who disputes that.
The real issues are whether humans evolved from apes, whether life as a whole evolved from single-celled organisms, etc, etc.
Many people find it easy to dismiss religious folks by saying they reject the concept of evolution, period. No, by not differentiating between evolutionary theories and referring to them as one whole, people find it easier to dismiss those religious people by not understanding what they believe.
"Big Bang", whatever.
When one tracks an animal or a person, one typically starts from the last known certainty. "It was here, maybe yesterday."
Why don't we have the same expectations with all this investigation of origins? Why does everyone seem to be starting with some "In the beginning..." belief?
An investigation of the past from existing evidence should result in an expanding tree of possible causes. "This layer of rock could have been deposited over milions of years or in a single cataclysm." All possible causes should be explored until logically eliminated. (e.g. finding "wrinkled" or "twisted" layers of rock without fractures would eliminate the possibility that the layers solidified before the distortion.)
Where is the hierarchy of this knowledge? Is there a database which gets updated when some part is expanded or falsified?
I'm not an advocate of Creationism, but they DO make one point that should sink in... There is no mechanism for maintaining the pedigree of scientific information.
We say that the speed of light is a constant in all frames of reference. How was that measured? What assumptions did those measurements depend upon? If I think I've come up with something which defies the laws of physics (like a perpetual motion machine or something), how do I find out which experimental results it would seem to contradict?
There is a need for a comprehensive, multilingual database of theories, experimental results, and their interdependencies.
Main Entry: evangelize
Pronunciation: i-'van-j&-"lIz
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): -lized; -lizing
transitive verb
1 : to preach the gospel to
2 : to convert to Christianity
intransitive verb : to preach the gospel
Main Entry: 1gospel
Pronunciation: 'gäs-p&l
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English gOdspel (translation of Late Latin evangelium), from gOd good + spell tale -- more at SPELL
1 a often capitalized : the message concerning Christ, the kingdom of God, and salvation b capitalized : one of the first four New Testament books telling of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; also : a similar apocryphal book c : an interpretation of the Christian message
2 capitalized : a lection from one of the New Testament Gospels
3 : the message or teachings of a religious teacher
4 : something accepted or promoted as infallible truth or as a guiding principle or doctrine
5 : gospel music
Thus, I am not.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
The distinction between micro and macro evolution is faulty, there is no such distinction. Evolution occures, we have seen it, that's it. You can make the arguement that perhaps there is some unseen hand guiding it, but it is happening. We humans have not been studying this (or really been around) long enough to see the full on, ape into human evolution that is described as macro. But it is nothing more than a long series of "micro" evolutions occuring over a long span of time. Why is it hard to believe that? If you believe in "micro" evolution, is it not plausable that it happens over and over again over a long span of time and would end up looking like "macro"?
Evolution is just evolution, tiny mutations and adaptations over millions of years. We only see the little jumps because we are not millions of years old.
Finkployd
Sounds like you need to do some research into Quantum Physics.... :)
Remember when Windows were washed, mice were trapped and UNIX guarded the harem?
I take exception to your exception. :-P
* The Big Bang -- including the fact that time began at the same instant as all the matter and energy in the universe, and the fact that the laws of physics and the physical constants were set at that time (or about 10^-40 seconds after) to values within extremely narrow ranges that would permit the possibility of any life at any time or place in the universe.
This is not a good arguement for anything. This is because you first don't know that life would not be possible under alternative cosmologies. Even if it was not, however, you don't know that the current cosmology didn't just happen on its own because of properties of the universe itself, rather than a god willing it so.
* Biochemical design -- there are literal motors inside cells! They have all the parts of man-made motors. Yet humans have not even come close to replicating these naturally created motors in efficiency, and cannot even come close to producing this kind of motor at a micrometer level. Paley's watchmaker argument, anyone?
I agree that cells are extremely complex and have the machinery you describe. However, evolution explains how this machinery came to be without any need to recourse to a god or gods. I'd recommend the book The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins which takes Paley's arguement head-on and refutes it.
* Encoded information -- cells contain coded information using "letters" and "words" telling it how to do things. Only certain combinations of "letters" form valid "words". Furthermore, this information is "translated" to another form of code as it is carried from the nucleus to the part of the cell that carries out the work. Information always comes from intelligence, and this translation effect really adds to the argument.
The reason these cells' DNA/RNA work the way they do is because of the physical properties of the universe and evolution. Again, no need to recourse to gods or goddesses.
* Naturalistic impossibility of the origins of life. Life appeared too shortly after the Late Heavy Bombardment, too quickly, and in a too complex state for naturalism. The earth went from an abiotic state to fully functioning life in only 10 to 50 million years, in the hostile environments of early earth, in the complete absence of prebiotic soup.
This is true. Life did spring up rather rapidly on earth, albeit in a basic form. There are, however, numerious explanations why it might have done so, again, without recourse to a god. One possibly is that lower forms of life are common in the universe and the early earth was seeded by these (known as the Panspermia Hypothesis). Another possiblity is that certain building blocks of life, such as amino acids, were formed by the conditions of early earth. These building blocks, came together to form a very crude initial replicator. This was a very small object, related to RNA, but even more basic and lacking a cell wall. This replicators physical properties caused it to create copies of itself and all you need is a single replicator for all of evolution to take place. There are some rather interesting and plausible theories in this regard. I should note, this is an area where science doesn't have all the answers yet. However, the answers we do have make more sense than positing a creator. Indeed, the arguement is basically either that a creator made a basic replicator or that the physical universe though its own properties did. If the creator made the replicator, you have to ask how the creator came to be, which is harder problem than where the first replicator came from, which seems to at least have some plausible solutions that don't vex mythical.
* There are numerous factors that need to be met before a planet can be suitable for
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Okay. So. What does that PDF mean in English? :)
Remember when Windows were washed, mice were trapped and UNIX guarded the harem?
I agree that the distinction is faulty. The only reason there IS a distinction is to map between existing artificial classifications of animals.
The point isn't whether evolution occurs or not. It's "Where did man come from?" and "How far has life evolved, and what was its origin?"
Assuming the absence of a creator, it's natural to assume that humans evolved from their closest genetic relatives, and that all life itself began from one point, from which everything else evolved. We don't have concrete evidence of that, but barring other evidence, there's no issue with making assumptions based on suggestive evidence.
Religious folks, though, believe that there is a creator. Based on what they believe about that creator, they believe that humans did not evolve from apes and that life itself did not evolve from one point, but several (early humans being one of the original points).
But saying "x doesn't believe in evolution" is terribly unclear, and causes further divide.
* HIV is not still HIV. HIV did not exist 100 years ago, SIV existed in apes, and jumped to humans, and then changed. It has a different name, whether you want to call it a different species is upto you, because HIVs don't mate, so the regular definitions do not aply. It is different, and occupies a different niche, though.
Lets jump over your yawns to darwin's finches. How many species of finches live on the galapagos islands? I think it is wrong to call them all "one species". What about the different species of giant tortoises, are they also all one species? How come we can not recreate the species from which we have a single male left over - (lonesome george)? Before Darwin, people had no problem with calling all the different finches on the Galapagos island different species. It is just that on the Galapagos island it is so obvious that they all had a common origin, that Darwin had to conclude that species can not be stationary, they must change. And, after "on the origin of species" was published, people had to change the concept of species in order to try to still hold the immutable species concept. The changes that are observed now in one species of finches on the galapagos are similar to the changes that lead to the evolution of the different species. Are they a new species? Not yet. Will the become a new species? Who knows, but our current observations and thought do not provide any barrier that would prevent them from doing so.
* In vitro evolution, or artificial evolution are models. Just as we compute the path of a spaceship or the planets, or an atomic bomb in a model, we do a model of evolution. Without models, science would not exist. A model turns theory into predictions. These models tell us that conceptually, Darwin's idea of natural selection works. This is not clear to begin with, and certainly not all types of natural selection work.
The in-vitro models of evolution allow us to understand how the process of evolution works. There actually is a branch of the philosophy of science that believes that one can not test theories using observations. That one always needs a controlled experiment, and that observations in nature can never be controlled enough. (But I don't buy into this)
One needs to distinguish between concepts.
* Common descent
* Natural selection
* Speciation
* Evolution
Common descent is what tells us that chimps and humans had a common ancestor. Do you have any other reason for explaining why the DNA of chimps and humans are so close?
Natural selection is what creates functions in organisms. As was stated above, this is observed often - though the timescale at which things happen is quite long.
Speciation is a complicated concept. It seems that there are different ways in which a new species can arise - it can first use a different niche, and then stop being able to mate, or fist stop being able to mate (maybe because of a mountain in the middle), and then diverge in function. We do observe all stages of speciation separately, but the concept of the species is not defined well enough to point at cases where we observed a new species arising (see HIV example above).
Evolution includes all the concepts above. You seem to want to talk about evolution as speciation - I have no problem with that. Let us talk about that for a second. However, I'll drop the species concept. I think the species concept is a historical artefact that we inherited from pre-darwinian biology. Instead I'd like to know which two organisms that we observe on earth, according to your opinion are so different that they do not share a common ancestor.
So, you do accept that HIV and SIV share a common ancestor, right? As do the finches with the shorter beaks and those with the longer beaks mentioned above?
What about the other finches on Galapagos island? Do they have a common ancestor? Which of them do?
What about the chimpanzees? Currently we have chimps living in Africa all the way from the Kongo to the western shores of Africa. It is debated
There does not need to be any contradiction between science and faith, as long as each keeps to its own domain.
Science is not about truth.
Science is a method that we have built to understand and predict the universe. However, the thing that science comes up with is not the truth, and does not approach the truth.
Thus, the truth could be that the universe was created 2 minutes ago, with a complete slashdot discussion on the big-bang/evolution, and everything else in it. And it could be that it was created so that there is no observation that can be made that would distinguish this universe from one created 15 billion years ago. Though that possibility (a universe created 2 minutes ago) can be the truth, it is not a valid scientific theory, since it isn't testable. Thus science can not, and often does not claim to be about the truth (unless we redefine the concept of truth).
Religion, on the other hand, is a belief system. It does not need proof, and is usually hurt by proof. If you have proof, you wouldn't need a belief system. religion can be about the truth - that the universe was really created 6000 years ago, or really runs as a simulation on god's computer. But usually religion is also about other things - like providing a meaning to existence, or morals, ethics, and sometimes even a system of laws (all these can create other problems which are even more off-topic). When religion does provide with the truth, then you have to accept that "evidence against" this truth might be found. But just because something is unlikely does not make it false. It could easily be that the truth is very unlikely - that why you'd need to believe in it.
You can also believe that science does approach the truth, or maybe even that it will eventually find it, or already has. That is also a belief system. It is a very convenient belief system for scientists, from the point of view of providing a motivation to do further research.
There's no such thing as gravity - the earth sucks.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
If you're really interested ... look into the research of H. Arp
... ) predictive.
The universe may just start to make more sense (it does for me) - when the science becomes (wait for it
And geology :)
>Evolution is a phenomenon that has been observed directly. The big bang is not.
Point a microwave receiver at the sky, as Penzias and Wilson did in 1963, and you're directly observing something called the "surface of last scattering", only a few hundred thousand years removed from the Big Bang.
>the singularity. It's the elephant in the room.
It's funny how confident textbook authors can get when physics can't answer questions a child would ask. At the end of the 19th century stuffed shirts were saying that physics was over except for adding a few decimal places to known quantities, but couldn't answer "Daddy, why does the sun shine?". All we have is speculation for the most interesting question we can imagine, that of how the universe first came into being. We've got reasonably supported answers to "what happened" from about a nanosecond onward after the Event but are stuck on "How" and "Why".
When one tracks an animal or a person, one typically starts from the last known certainty. "It was here, maybe yesterday."
Why don't we have the same expectations with all this investigation of origins? Why does everyone seem to be starting with some "In the beginning..." belief?
They didn't start with it. They did exactly as you suggest- They started from observations that things are receding from one another, and then just extrapolated that straight back through time so that everything wound up at a single point.
Where is the hierarchy of this knowledge? Is there a database which gets updated when some part is expanded or falsified?
There isn't a "hierarchy of knowledge"- but that doesn't mean there's no way to determine if a theory makes sense and fits the data. Most scientists just stick to the theories that make sense and fit the greatest range of data, but there *are* heretics- see MOND.
I'm not an advocate of Creationism, but they DO make one point that should sink in... There is no mechanism for maintaining the pedigree of scientific information.
Experiments don't work anymore?
We say that the speed of light is a constant in all frames of reference.How was that measured? What assumptions did those measurements depend upon?
Take a science history course. That was never "measured", It was implicit in Maxwell's theory of light, which has fit the data for over 100 years. Einstein expanded on it with the Special Theory of Relativity, which has also fit the data for just over 100 years. If an assumption leads to theories that have 100 years of data backing them up, the odds become small that it's incorrect.
If I think I've come up with something which defies the laws of physics (like a perpetual motion machine or something), how do I find out which experimental results it would seem to contradict?
You wouldn't contradict the experimental results. You'd contradict the *theory*. And if you know of a phenomenon that seemingly defies the laws of physics, you'd better damn well know *which* law it might violate, because nobody but crackpots will trust your conclusion that a law is wrong if you don't even know what the law *is*.
There is a need for a comprehensive, multilingual database of theories, experimental results, and their interdependencies.
Oh, please.
An investigation of the past from existing evidence should result in an expanding tree of possible causes. "This layer of rock could have been deposited over milions of years or in a single cataclysm." All possible causes should be explored until logically eliminated.
You think that this isn't exactly how science works? You seem to have some serious misunderstandings about the scientific process. Granted, most scientists don't waste their time considering remote possibilities (Occam's Razor) but they work exactly as you suggest they should. That is the scientific process, make observations and create theories based on that. If evidence is found that contradicts the theory, fix it.
And how do scientists know what theories are contradicted by experiments? It's called education. There is a reason why it takes more than mailing in a form from the back of a comic book to become a scientist.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Now, I'm feeding a troll, but I think that this one deserves an answer...
Speed of light was compared on several directions by this (very famous) experiment: Michelson-Morley experiment. It relies on the assumption* that Earth is moving, it may be around the Sun, or just rotating, but moving.
Now, there is a mechanism for maintaining the pedigree of scientifical information, it is called 'science', and is what help us eliminate the possibilities. You seem to ignore that there are centuries of theories and experimental data helping us to grasp the origins, and thousands of (quite smart) people cooperating for hundreds of years (adding to what is probably more than milions of people-years) can get a LOT of investigative work done.
By the way, you can get the hierarchy of this knowledge on any book about science's history. It is not secret or anything like that...
*The experiment itself doesn't rely on anything, no experiment do. But the conclusion that light moves always at the same speed does.
Rethinking email
It seems to me that there should not be shadows from the big bang, because all the bits of interstellar dust should be in thermal equilibrium with the CMB by now, and thus radiate the same microwaves. Unless I've missed something, this would seem to cause galaxies and galaxy clusters not to have shadows.
what sig?
Well of course someone has to be wrong. And as in most cases where reality and religion conflict, reality is correct. When I mentioned those who attack the big bang, I was referring to scientists who attack it. That is, scientists who propose alternative models, alternative mechanisms, alternative timelines for the initial minutes of the universe, and so on.
Religious folks, though, believe that there is a creator.
Right.
Just as religious folk in Galilo's day believed in a creator.
Based on what they believe about that creator, they believe that humans did not evolve from apes and that life itself did not evolve from one point, but several (early humans being one of the original points).
Wrong.
Why is it wrong? Just put your exact same comment in the context of Galileo's day:
Based on what they believe about that creator, they believe that the earth does not move.
You are incorrectly tagging ALL religious people as ignorant and/or irrational unreasonable Fundies.
The correct statement you should have made is that SOME religious people insist on rejecting evolution. Those people are no better than the the people who insisted on rejecting the sun centered solar system.
Fortunately most Christians are NOT morons. MOST Christians believe that there is a creator and accept that evolution is His chosen mechanism for creating the diveristy of life on earth, including man. For some bizarre reason it is pretty much only here in the US that there is any signifigant movent of Fundie morons trying to wage an anti-science war.
And those Fundie morons are the ones pushing the absurd notion that there is a conflict between God and evolution. They are trying to push the absurd notion that evolution being true would somehow mean God does not exist. They are in some delusional world where the majority of Christians somehow do not exist.
They are trying to force people into a FRADULENT choice - trying to force everyone to either accept evolution and be an atheist, or to reject evolution and join their Fundie minority sect and accept the limitations they want to impose upon God and accept their limitations upon how God is PERMITTED to run His universe. They are pushing the absurd notion that you cannot choose to be an intelligent rational MAJORITY Christian and accept both God and Evolution.
And you just fell into exactly that trap. You are the one assuming that Christians cannot be rational intelligent people accepting both God and reality. You are saying that people cannot accept God unless they accept a fictional non-moving earth and they reject the sun centered solar system.
humans evolved from their closest genetic relatives, and that all life itself began from one point, from which everything else evolved. We don't have concrete evidence
We have overwhelming concrete evidence, and about 99.7% of CHRISTIAN earth and life scientists will tell you so. (It goes up to over 99.8% of earth and life scientists if you throw in the nonreligious or otherwise nonchristian scientists as well.)
Evolution is politically controversial, and it is socially controversial. But it is not scientifically controversial, not even among Christian biologists.
There are approximately as many astronomers who claim the sun is powered by electricity as there are biologists who claim evolution is wrong.
Anyone who does not accept that the earth does not move around the sun, or who does not accept that the sun is powered by nuclear fusion, or does not accept evolution, that person is *at best* uninformed/misinformed on the subject.
Man did not evolve from apes. Both man and apes evolved from a common ancestor. Just as housecats and bobcats and lions and tigers and panthers and pumas and cheetas and all other "cats" evolved from a common ancestor. Just as all mammals evoved from a common ancestor.
And 99.8+% of everyone who bothers to STUDY the subject and actually LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE long enough to get a biology degree sees that that evidence does exist and comes out of that study convinced that YES in fact that evidence is overwhelming.
Anyone who even tries to talk about some "microevolution" "macroevolution" divide doen't understand that no such divide exists, and they are in the anti-evolution group. They are *at best* ill informed.
Not hav
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Redshifting implies increasing distance.
First, redshifting is not about distance, it's about how fast things are moving away from you. It's about distance increasng, not just distance. Second, light waves don't stretch out as they age, so age isn't really at issue here either. Red shifting would occur even if the radiation sources in question were only ten seconds old and only ten metres away, so long as they were moving away from us at a goodly speed. Thirdly the phrase "if and only if" doesn't mean what you think it does. All of physics could be completely wrong, and the universe could still be exactly the age that the big bang model predicts. If it truly were if-and-only-if, then disproving the big bang model would actually mean that it is impossible for the universe to be 13 billion years old while any other age whatsoever would still acceptable. That's insane. The term you are looking for here is "implies". If-and-only-if is a very, very different relationship. Don't worry, it's a common mistake among people who haven't actually studied reasoning, logic, mathematics, or computer science (all subjects in which one eventually has to learn what words like "if", "implies", "only", and "unless" actually MEAN).
The real issues are whether humans evolved from apes, whether life as a whole evolved from single-celled organisms, etc, etc.
Every time I read this it makes me angry. We and the chimps did not evolve from apes, we *share a common ancestor*. Subtle difference but all the "evolved from apes" thing does is make the Krazy Kristians froth at the mouth. so don't do it any more.
""Big Bang", whatever. When one tracks an animal or a person, one typically starts from the last known certainty. "It was here, maybe yesterday.""
The big bang theory started from the observation that all galaxies were "here" yesterday and have moved a bit further away today. It was developed the same way as every other scientific theory...
Observation => new/modified/stronger theory => prediction => observation, rinse and repeat.
"I'm not an advocate of Creationism, but they DO make one point that should sink in... There is no mechanism for maintaining the pedigree of scientific information."
"Pedigrees" mean nothing to science but are sometimes maintained through citation records.
"If I think I've come up with something which defies the laws of physics (like a perpetual motion machine or something), how do I find out which experimental results it would seem to contradict?"
Try the traditional publishing method, others will soon let you know what you have found / misunderstood.
"There is a need for a comprehensive, multilingual database of theories, experimental results, and their interdependencies."
You are free to join the existing "database" by educating yourself as to what science is/isn't.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
haha oh man... thanks for the laugh!
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Here come the cops! Quick, scatter!
The solution you're looking for here is called a library. Books. Journals. You know the stuff real science generates for precisely the reasons you state.
Science is probably the best documented human endeavor, period. The interdependencies and 'pedigree' is embedded through direct references to other books and journal articles (ie. author(s), journal/book, volume/edition, publisher, page number, year). This kind of documentation is so ingrained in the hard sciences that even 'letters to the editor' have referenced statements.
Hit a science library on campus sometime and check out the journal section, or floor, or often floors. The bigger/better the institution the more documentation is on-site. Of course there is currently a large move to get all this stuff on the net. This allows following reference chains forward and backward with a simple click rather than all that tedious walking around and photocopying -- fantastically useful.
I'm not contesting the facts, I'm trying to point out that a hierarchical or dependency-related organization of that knowledge is necessary... especially for educational purposes.
Some new idea is proposed, predicting some outcome from some set of conditions. Over what range of conditions does this apply? Over what range of conditions has it been tested and to what accuracy, or what concrete evidence appears to support it? Who did the testing or found the evidenced, where, and how?
If a comprehensive, organized database of information like this existed for public reference, scientific theories wouldn't have to stand on reputation or belief and perhaps science textbooks could include a link to up-to-date errata published on the web.
Because such a system doesn't exist, old theories which have been demonstrably falsified tend to hang around forever. Have you seen advertisements for "magnetic healing" products? Did you know that Benjamin Franklin published his research showing that those products had no effect about 200 years ago?
We need a database of scientific knowledge, showing the "why" and the "how" and the "how certain" of each part along with what other parts they depend upon.
That's the same, lame response I always get. "Go read the published material." That's essentially like telling someone to "go read the web without a search engine."
Digging through yellowing documents and hunting down all their bibliographical references by hand is NOT the best way to do science any more.
"That's the same, lame response I always get."
Could it be that it's because it's the correct answer? With apologies to BadAnalogyGuy, it's like asking what is 2+2 and then complaining about the answer being 4 all the time. Science is not a pile of factoids you can just dive into, it is a methodical approach accompanied by a long history and seemingly odd customs.
"Go read the published material"
Perhaps you are dyslexic or something, you quote my answer in your post and then (directly under it) you start ranting on about a different answer?
"Digging through yellowing documents..."
Nobody does that unless they are very very interested or they are actually thinking of publishing something. Like I said above, you are arguing against something that I haven't said. However that doesn't mean you can escape the boring part of science, as Eienstien is reputed to have said: "Genius is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration".
BTW: The way science works is that if you still feel "There is a need for a comprehensive, multilingual database of theories, experimental results, and their interdependencies", nobody will stop you building one. And if you can convince scientists it would be usefull, most will gladly jump on your bandwagon. One thing you might have trouble with is content, getting your hands on the archives of Nature and all the other journals out there won't be easy.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.