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Has Cosmology Been Solved?
An anonymous reader writes "In 1998, Dr. Michael Turner published a famous paper titled 'Cosmology Solved? Quite Possibly!' where he outlined seven major issues cosmologists should address in the following ten years. Nine years later, he revisits the list in an interview with the Slackerpedia Galactica podcast. He summarizes progress on each issue, adds some new goals for the next ten years, and even suggests that cosmology is now more interesting than science fiction."
seven major issues cosmologists should address in the following ten years
1. Move to a better hosting service.
Welp, that was cosmology. Now on to human diseases, followed by understanding women....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
is "solved," is the day that field of inquiry ceases to be science, and BECOMES science fiction
science is a never ending inquiry into the unknown. there will always be the unknown
however, some of the higher level stuff of cosmology strikes me as a little too far out there to be called completely science. it is in many ways an intersection of philosophy, and math, and astronomy, and even religion
i think of cosmology as a sort of soft science, like sociology
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well Tammy Fay baker certainly showed us the extreme upper limit of the field. Or are we talking about something else?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
God created the world in 6 days. He rested on the 7th. (What? You think it was easy?!?)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Perhaps you've hit on one of the ways that religion is an asset from an evolutionary biology perspective. By giving nice canned answers to these unsolvable problems, you free people up to focus on things that are more directly relevant to their survival.
Any pre-religion cavemen who were sitting around wondering where we all came from probably either starved or got eaten pretty quickly...
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It's random, but my posting it here is probably considered illegal to someone.
They "don't like admitting"? I have never heard that -- the story is there. Now, people may differ as to the interpretation or the literary harmony, but I've never heard someone claim that the text isn't there.
A pet peeve of mine is that people who post here tend to believe that they're the first to identify a potential inconsistancy in the Bible. These have existed more or less unchanged for a couple thousand years. It's not as though all the minds contemplating the Bible simply skipped over that, and all of a sudden someone on slashdot points it out and "disproves" the Bible.
Well, technically, it you believe in creationism then it is no stretch to believe that oil was put in the "propper" place, etc. For example, there are religions that believe that Earth was built modeled after another world. If that was true, you would expect normal geology even if it was built in 7 days.
On the other hand, the true test is:
1) find a black hole 50,000 light years away
2) build a telescope big enough to see Earth at 100,000 light years distance
3) look at the edge of the black hole, using it as a mirror to reflect back the light that left Earth 100,000 years ago
Who says that creationism is untestable? Not me!
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Will always be more interesting IMO. It is the human element (emotional, political, and intellectual) that dictates our advancement of research, application of technology, and willingness to integrate new understandings of our universe into the social fabric through education.
The human element is what separates a good science fiction story from an excercise in mental masturbation. On many occasions a solid sci-fi short or novella (my preferred lengths) have helped me gain a new angle on modern day issues.
While religious fervor is a huge culprit in the scisms developing in modern society (I only can speak for the American communities I am familiar with), it should be noted that many scientists spurn the importance of popularizers like Sagan. If anything we need more focus on making scientific progress a matter accesible to non-scientists who otherwise have access only to religious cosmologies.
Presenting new science in layman's terms does not have to = dumbing the information down. Good science fiction can accomplish this.
Regards.
While in principle, I agree with most of what you are trying to say, though I don't understand why you say that a thoroughly known science becomes sci-fi...
But in practice there are many fields, that while questions remain, the field itself has become very stagnant because, quite frankly, there isn't a whole lot of new and exciting knowledge or conceptualization to be done. Consider, for example, that nearly all of the Human Anatomy departments of US medical schools have either folded, or, more usually, mutated into something else, like departments of Cell and/or Developmental Biology. Its not because there aren't new findings in anatomy, nor new unanswered questions, and certainly not because human anatomy isn't taught anymore (every med student still needs to know it), but rather there really isn't enough new knowledge in anatomy per se, to warrant a continuing academic dept, or new faculty, or new graduate students -- we/they/the field has MOVED ON to related, but different branches of science.
You can also ask the question another way: Do we, as a society, ever learn/understand enough about a field of inquiry that we no longer deem it wise to continue funding and using precious resources to further vigorous inquiry, instead of moving on to other, more promising, less well understood fields of inquiry ? Well the answer from the NIH, the NSF, the private foundations, the university, the scientists, the Congress, etc, etc is most certain YES.
Ye Philosophers of Olde had severe problems with "deceiver" gods like this -- they couldn't even decide if Adam and Eve had bellybuttons or not. (If they did, it was indication of a past that did not actually occur, and thus God was a deceiver. If they didn't, then they weren't truly in the final human form, hence "made in the image of God" was now suspect.)
Modern religious people seem to have no problem with God being a flat-out liar doing things like making light from stars a billion light years away already be "on the way", and showing events that never actually happened.
Strange. Not only is the Devil testing you by doing things like pre-creating proto versions of Judaism that just look like Judaism derived from it centuries later, in anticipation of God giving the Jews holy writings centuries later. But now you have to deal with God himself deceiving you. And if you are misled by any of it, you get tortured for ever and ever.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Didn't scientists say just before the discovery of quantum mechanics that nature had been pretty much figured out and the rest was just details?
I wish I could RTFA. Does his list include solving the Slashdotting Effect?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
We have a version of the Bible that is almost 2,000 years old (Dead Sea Scrolls). It hasn't changed much in the last 2,000 years. From the GP's post, I have no idea if he's a Christian. He's just pointing out that a lot of Biblical scholars are well aware of any apparent contradictions, and already have explanations for all of them.
My least favorite "gotcha" is when people try to claim that the Bible calculates pi to be 3. They don't seem to be able to understand that "round" and "perfect circle" do not mean the same thing. Anyways, the GP is right. Whether or not you're a Christian (I'm not), you're not going to find any "new" contradictions in the Bible. However, that doesn't mean you won't be able to make others aware of contradictions that they didn't know exist. Personally, I'm of mixed feelings on this. On one hand, most fundamentalism is anathema to science. OTOH, à la Kurt Vonnegut (who is now in Heaven), I do not wish to deprive others of their religious beliefs.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
the universe is not static. we, ourselves, human beings, are proof that the unvierse can result in some very strange unforeseen developments: parts of space aware of itself, and aware of its surroundings, and actively seeking to mold it
if you don't understand how fundamentally weird just our existence is in the universe, you don't grasp the really weird potential for what we might do (if we don't kill ourselves or meet with a killer asteroid in the next few cneturies before we get off this planet)
you lack imagination
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Deuteronomy 13:6-10
...
So, yes, a true Christian is absolutely *required* to murder any close friend or relative who points out that their god is an idiotic delusion and they should grow up and start dealing with reality.
This is a fine example of taking quotes out of context in a subject matter one is unfamiliar with and is biased against. Perhaps you should look instead to John 8:1-11, the tale of the adultress where the Pharisees drag a woman accused of adultery before Jesus to demand that she be stoned in accordance with Deuteronomy 22:22. However, Jesus instead responds, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to cast a stone." When they leave in shame, he asks the woman if any still codemn her, and when she responsds that no one does, then he says, "Then neither do I condemn you, go now and sin no more."
There are many sections of the New Testament where portions of the Old Testament are reinterpreted or refuted. The food laws in Deuteronomy 14 are openly repealed in Acts 10. The mandate to stone to all breakers of the law is replaced by a message of forgiveness and redemption. To miss out on that is to wholly and completely miss the entire point of the gospel of Jesus. This is beyond twisting a few statements here and there. This is a blatant assertion that the message of Christianity is the exact opposite of the gospel of Jesus.
In other words: RTFB, newb. <g>
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
This is the thing that always cracked me up about the "post the ten commandments in every possible corner" sect. I mean, the Old Testament is just that, the old one, and the New Testament is supposed to be "The Law 2.0" (Okay maybe convenant when Adam in Eden is Law v1.0, covenant out of Eden is 2.0, convenant with Noah 3.0, Moses 4.0 . This was a stable build, the various prophets did release upgrades and service packs, before we get the whole new God's Law 5.0: Jesus Christ Edition [If it waS ubuntu would it be Jumpin Jesus 5.0]...;) So I digress, but anyways, the 10 commandments is the old set of rules, the new rules are the Beatitudes. The first time I hear someone saying we should post "Blessed are the merciful" in a court room , "blessed are the poor" on wall street or "blessed are the peacemakers" at the Pentagon, I'll know I've met a true Christian. Poor lonely guy, I'll probably slap him on the back and buy him some coffee.