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Powerful Blast Confuses Astronomers
eldavojohn writes "Astronomers are still speculating as to what could have caused an abnormally strong five millisecond burst to be detected six years ago when it completely saturated their recording equipment. From the article: 'The burst was so bright that at the time it was first recorded it was dismissed as man-made radio interference. It put out a huge amount of power (10exp33 Joules), equivalent to a large (2000MW) power station running for two billion billion years.'"
I heard this story on NPR yesterday. I'm inclined to believe that it was...
Absolutely nothing.
It happened one time, six years ago, for less than five milliseconds, and no one else in the world can corroborate that it happened. To me, it sounds like either an equipment malfunction or something much more mundane that interfered with the measurement for that split second in time. Science is about repeatable, testable, observable results, not one-off flukes.
Now, having said that, I think it's probably worthwhile to see if it happens again. As the article says, "The astronomers estimate on the basis of their results that hundreds of similar events should occur over the sky each day." If that is the case, then get to looking, and maybe I'll change my mind once they have more evidence.
Until then, though, let's not get so caught up in the coolness of the possibility of something we've never seen before that we don't do due diligence and make good science.
It was only the end of a war.
So, something happened 6 years ago, and nobody knew what it was.
No, something happened 3 billion years ago. An instrument recorded it six years ago. Someone re-analyzed the data recently, and discovered something they couldn't explain. They published a paper yesterday.
Where's the fucking news?
The "news" is that there's likely something very big going on we don't understand. It's kind of sad that you and others only think it's news once we understand what's going on. Science isn't just the end product you read about in textbooks. It's a process by which we understand the universe. This is part of that process, and if this isn't just radio interference, it's extremely interesting.
AccountKiller
Because it's something new that they didn't understand. Hence, in the literal form, news. New data! Something that might be a deep and meaningful key to the universe! Or statistically unlikely interference from an old bit of stray noise. I wouldn't say anything that's science is necessarily news for the masses--some people simply don't care when we discover something new unless it impacts their work day or family life.
But this is news for nerds, not news for Thoreau.
I find your lack of humility disturbing. </obStarwars>
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
I use to joke that, while I do not believe there is a God, I lack the faith required to be an atheist.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
The sentence is awkwardly worded, and took me a few reads to understand the OP's intent.
The sentence is:
"Astronomers are still speculating as to what could have caused [an abnormally strong five millisecond burst] to be detected six years ago."
The structure is:
"Astronomers are still speculating as to what could have caused [it] to be detected six years ago."
The fact that "it" is so long, makes it seems as though "caused" and "to be" are separate.
You do realize, don't you, that there's a fundamental difference between shouting "THE SKY IS BLUE!" or "WE DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD, THIS IS WHY YOUR ARGUMENTS ARE WRONG, NOW LEAVE US ALONE!" and shouting things like "If the evidence contradicts my beliefs, the evidence is wrong"? (I know, bad grammar, but I'm too tired to mess with it)
Anyways, "atheism is a religion like bald is a hair color" says it best here. Atheists may have banded together in vocal groups that act in a similar manner (denouncing the gods of others, etc.), but this does not make them religious. Helium has a pretty good little article on this.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
This only makes atheists more comfortable when theists realize that non-believers, the most hated group in America, are not members of a religion or cult.
Nope, sorry.
When you ask a Jew or a Christian or a Wiccan what an Atheist is, they won't say "someone who doesn't believe." They will say "someone who believes God doesn't exist." It's a fundamental difference.
And if you ask a Christian how old the earth is, he might say "6000 years", but this does not make him correct. There is, of course, an argument over the definition of atheism. It seems clear to me that atheism should mean a lack of belief, rather than an active disbelief, but we can use the more exact terms of strong and weak atheist.
Science can neither prove nor disprove the Christian God, nor any tenable modern deity. This means that the default answer is "I don't know", not "that's a fairy tale!" (snip)
I'm glad we agree. You can't disprove the existence of anything, but it is quite easy to prove the existence of most things. Unicorns, leprechauns, and Big Foot are great examples of things that probably don't exist but can't be disproved. And the default answer, assuming no evidence in either direction, is, indeed "I don't know". Every supernatural "theory" must be evaluated and weighed against the evidence to establish some sort of probability. My evaluation, having read several versions of the Christian bible, is that it is extremely unlikely that the Christian god exists. I started out by saying "I don't know, but I'll look into it." Given the lack of any evidence that should be quite bountiful if their evidence were true, and the inherent logical contradictions involved, I estimate the probably of the Christian God's existence at less than 1%. As such, I'm about 99% certain that that god does not exist. This makes me more certain than Richard Dawkins, but I still admit that I could be wrong, and I would happily re-evaluate the situation if I ever saw new evidence.
Very few atheists actually go so far as to say "I know that there certainly are no gods", they simply think it's more likely that there's a community of underwear gnomes and a demon that feeds off of socks in the dryer. I would like to see some sources saying that even a sizable minority of believers admit that they don't actually know.
It's only those few anti-believers that most everyone hates -- "theists" because they're so obnoxious about it, and "not-knowers" because they make them look bad.
(If you believe that God doesn't exist -- not that it's beyond knowledge, or that you simply don't believe -- then you're a capital-A Atheist, and you have a religion.)
What angers strong atheists is that theists attempt to discredit or simply deny any evidence that contradicts their beliefs. Why should we leave the Intelligent Design "Theory" alone when they try to discredit or replace our evidence and theories simply because they don't like the direction the evidence points?
I used to be an apathetic agnostic. The whole argument seemed absurd and like a waste of time to me. Then I got into an argument with somebody, and she asked me whether I specifically believed that the Christian God didn't exist. I said "Oh, I highly doubt that one exists." It was at this point that I realized that I was both an atheist and an agnostic.
Admitting that I was an atheist and couldn't simply ignore the argument because it was stupid forced me to start really weighing the evidence (and lack thereof) and making up my mind. I have come to the conclusion that the Judeo-Christian god is about as likely leprechauns, but less likely than extraterrestrials visiting earth. Genesis is most certainly a myth, but it's possible that there is some truth in the bible. I don't know whether the Buddha was a higher form of human, or if he was just a glorified philosopher.
In short, I t
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
So, this is usually, the last defense of someone who realizes that religion is just a coping mechanism, and it might be right. The question is: how would you know? It's not clear to me that if Dr. Martin Luther King were an atheist that he would not have come to the conclusion that peaceful protest was the way to change the world. Same goes for Gandhi and his religion. It's just not clear to me that men aren't capable of the good ideas that they manifest without the underpinnings of religion.
That said, I'm always frustrated that people don't act on their religions' philosophies more. How can you be a Christian, read the Book of Matthew and take part in a war? How can you read the 10 commandments and kill your neighbor in cold blood? Religion doesn't actually seem to to its job if its job is to teach the lessons of civilized behavior.