Astronomers Find Unusual Star

Well then by coreboarder · 2011-09-01 17:09 · Score: 4, Funny

That is unusual.

Re:Well then by repapetilto · 2011-09-01 17:18 · Score: 3, Insightful

So the next question is: How would someone go about mining a star?
Re:Well then by game+kid · 2011-09-01 17:21 · Score: 2

Magic.

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You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Re:Well then by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 17:23 · Score: 0

The Gathering
Re:Well then by SharpFang · 2011-09-01 17:28 · Score: 3, Interesting

That's no star. It's artificial sun.

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45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Re:Well then by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 17:37 · Score: 0

"That's no moon, its... space a station!"
Re:Well then by Anachragnome · 2011-09-01 17:41 · Score: 1

"So the next question is: How would someone go about mining a star?"
Are you suggesting that we go mine it for Helium, or suggesting that some other race has already been there and pretty much cleaned the place out?
Re:Well then by game+kid · 2011-09-01 17:45 · Score: 1

space a station

Ah, that line from the classic blockbuster Star Wars: Attack of Charles Martinet gets me every time.

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You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Re:Well then by The_mad_linguist · 2011-09-01 17:46 · Score: 1

A proximity trigger would be the most useful.
Re:Well then by repapetilto · 2011-09-01 17:47 · Score: 3, Interesting

Someone mined the heavier elements.
Re:Well then by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 17:54 · Score: 0

Here you go http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting
Re:Well then by repapetilto · 2011-09-01 18:00 · Score: 1

Yes, this is almost exactly what I was thinking.. Dyson sphere then induce solar flares then collect somehow. Thanks.
Re:Well then by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 18:09 · Score: 0

So the next question is: How would someone go about mining a star?
Simple, spin it up and all the heavy elements float to the surface.
Re:Well then by Architect_sasyr · 2011-09-01 18:16 · Score: 1

I just thought he was quoting the new blue ray "special edition" release. Nooooooooooooooooooooo.

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Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
Re:Well then by repapetilto · 2011-09-01 18:23 · Score: 1

So rather than dealing with the star directly, lets say it was possible to push.pull all the planets further and further away... how would that affect the rotational velocity? (assuming a Sol-like solar system)
Re:Well then by DarwinSurvivor · 2011-09-01 18:33 · Score: 1

You mean this one?
Re:Well then by mitashki · 2011-09-01 18:33 · Score: 0

I have a very bad feeling about this.

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"When all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail."
Re:Well then by Canazza · 2011-09-01 18:55 · Score: 1

The one with "Jodar", the bastard child of Yoda and Jar Jar, in place of Chewie.

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It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Re:Well then by maxwell+demon · 2011-09-01 18:55 · Score: 1

I just thought he was quoting the new blue ray "special edition" release. Nooooooooooooooooooooo.
They now decided that Han didn't shoot at all. :-)

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The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Re:Well then by wierd_w · 2011-09-01 19:06 · Score: 1

What about artificially increasing gravity momentarily?
Reduce the circumference, and rotational velocity increases proportionally. If enertial mass is uneffected, the heavier elements would spin out to the sides, leave the artificial gravity well, and fly off?
Re:Well then by Mindcontrolled · 2011-09-01 19:25 · Score: 1

Sounds suspiciously like
1. ???
2. ???
3. ???
4. ???
4. Profit!

;)

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Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Re:Well then by JasterBobaMereel · 2011-09-01 20:06 · Score: 2

Stellar uplift ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_uplift

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Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Re:Well then by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 21:11 · Score: 0

Min[e]d over matter
Re:Well then by mbone · 2011-09-01 23:13 · Score: 1

Mine the Giant Molecular Clouds where stars are made. If you wanted to make lots of Dyson sphere habitats, O'Neil Cylinders, or Jupiter Brains, that is where you would do it. The resulting stars would lack whatever elements you really needed.
The real question is, why would they want all of the lithium ? Maybe for fusion power (as Castle Bravo showed, lithium-7 captures a neutron and splits into an alpha particle, a tritium nucleus, and the captured neutron, and tritium / Helium fuse well). Either such mining is rare, or the need for lithium is rare, as this star is pretty unusual.
Re:Well then by somersault · 2011-09-01 23:26 · Score: 1

What about artificially increasing gravity momentarily?
Reduce the circumference, and rotational velocity increases proportionally. If enertial[sic] mass is uneffected, the heavier elements would spin out to the sides, leave the artificial gravity well, and fly off?
I'd be careful with a technology that powerful, you might end up creating a black hole :p
Perhaps it would be easier to just transmute other elements into the ones we need?

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which is totally what she said
Re:Well then by flappinbooger · 2011-09-01 23:39 · Score: 1

Well, since Stargate Universe was a documentary, must have been some ancient civilization that used the star to power their intergalactic ships. Duh.

Or, conversely, as someone has already mentioned Occams Razor, maybe they got the size or other readings wrong, and it's not small or the elements aren't missing?

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Flappinbooger isn't my real name
Re:Well then by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 23:53 · Score: 0

Not unusual at all... It is simply that we are detecting the exhaust of a huge ion drive spaceship.
They are coming...
Re:Well then by TheRaven64 · 2011-09-02 00:08 · Score: 1

At the end, it's a question of energy. Stars are big. If you're accustomed to the scale of a planet, they're really big. You could transmute all of the hydrogen in Jupiter into more useful elements, but the energy required would be huge. The sort of energy that you'd get from... a star. And if you're going to the effort of tapping a star's energy at that level, then you may as well skim off the elements too. Additionally, if you're capable of inducing gravity, then a star is a pretty good place to perform transmutation of elements. Collect the heaviest ones together somewhere, and they'll be bombarded with neutrons from the surrounding reactions. I wouldn't be surprised if you could get pretty much any elements you wanted 'just' by creating a pool of lithium inside a star and keeping it contained.

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I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Re:Well then by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 00:29 · Score: 0

I'd like to think a little more majestic. What about siphoning hydrogen from other sources and constricting it in a magnetic field until it collapsed on itself, creating an article star? Could even theoretically use something that to keep it stable if its not heavy enough upon fusion starting.
Re:Well then by trum4n · 2011-09-02 02:01 · Score: 1

I rolled a 20, so its your turn to order pizza.
Re:Well then by pianosaurus · 2011-09-02 03:49 · Score: 1

That's no star.
It's a Death Moon!
Re:Well then by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 04:20 · Score: 0

The same way one does Paris.
Re:Well then by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 04:32 · Score: 0

This is "insightful"? There NEEDS to be a -"1 delusional psychotic" mod here.
Re:Well then by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 04:43 · Score: 0

*ERRR* You require more vespene gas.
Re:Well then by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 04:54 · Score: 0

Or did they just keep going?
Re:Well then by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 05:24 · Score: 0

Easy, you go at night.
Re:Well then by Jeremiah+Cornelius · 2011-09-02 06:27 · Score: 1

Unusual star?
It is David Bowie?
How about Crispin Glover?

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"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Re:Well then by Genda · 2011-09-02 09:51 · Score: 1

You wouldn't mine a star, well you might mine a black dwarf or cold neutron star, provided you had a means for landing then taking off from a gravity well hundreds to millions of times stronger/deeper than the earth's. For stars still in the active process of fusion, there simply isn't any form of matter that wouldn't immediately evaporate and ionize into plasma. Your only possible way to work on mining a star would be to create some kind of force field powered by the star itself, that somehow isolated you from the stars plasma and radiation such that you would be able to access the matter of the star without being consumed in its nuclear fire.
Thinking about it and the shear difficulty involved in mining a star, it would be many orders of magnitude easier to collect the solar wind and mine that for hydrogen. Then fuse it to make your helium and get some energy while you're at it.
Of course, If you were going to mine helium and hydrogen, you would be far more likely to succeed by doing quick skips into then out of a gas giant's atmosphere, this too would be a dangerous and turbulent process, but at least there is some tiny fraction of a percent possibility for success.
The only thing you could meaningfully do with a star is mine its energy and gravity well... "Can you say Dyson Sphere?"
Re:Well then by grep+-v+'.*'+* · 2011-09-02 17:35 · Score: 1

So the next question is: How would someone go about mining a star?
Why that's easy -- Woman claims ownership of Sun.

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If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?

have direction, but not distance by rubycodez · 2011-09-01 17:27 · Score: 3, Informative

I always like to know how far away something is from us. Most articles on the web give direction toward Leo, but for distance I only found one reference that said it was hovering 3,500 light-years above the disk of the Milky Way. So it's near our Milky Way

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/4690/impossible-star-discovered

Re:have direction, but not distance by SplashMyBandit · 2011-09-01 17:47 · Score: 3, Interesting

That's because it is so damn hard to measure distance, so sometimes even an approximate distance is not given (but as you imply, distances should be given when known or a reasonable guess is available). That's because the most straightforward way requires you to know the 'extinction' of light towards your particular star. That means, you need to have a measurement of blocking effect of (non-emitting) gas nearby and hope it applies to your (hopefully nearby) object of interest. If you are lucky you'll get a reasonable estimate for distance that is probably within an order of magnitude of the true value, and sometimes you might even get down to a factor of two in uncertainty. And this is just for stuff relatively close in our galaxy. Getting distances elsewhere can be even harder. Disclaimer: IAAFA (I am a former astrophysicist).
Re:have direction, but not distance by Michael+Woodhams · 2011-09-01 18:33 · Score: 5, Informative

For a main sequence star, the procedure would normally go something like this:
From the star's spectrum, you know its temperature. (With a good enough spectrum, you can also confirm that it is main sequence.) From the temperature and the fact it is main sequence you know its intrinsic luminosity pretty well. From its temperature you know its intrinsic colour well. Comparing this to the observed colour, you infer how much dust there is between you and the star. (Dust blocks blue light more strongly than red light, so more dust means redder colour.) Knowing how much dust there is, you know how much its observed brightness has been reduced by the dust. Knowing what its brightness would be without dust and its intrinsic luminosity, you use the inverse square law to figure out how far away it is.
However, this star would have a really weird spectrum. If I recall correctly, hydrogen and helium only show spectral lines in much hotter stars, so presumably the only lines are calcium (the only metal they did detect). I don't know how well they can determine temperature with just calcium lines. I'm also not sure how precise this procedure is on ordinary stars, but I'd guess the uncertainty in distance would be about 10-30%.
IAAFA also, but I've never actually used the procedure I describe above.

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Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Re:have direction, but not distance by Mindcontrolled · 2011-09-01 19:31 · Score: 1

IAAFA? I am a fucking astronomer? ;)
No, seriously, thanks for the explanation. Regarding the H and He lines - as a (bio)chemist, who admittedly hasn't done much optical spectroscopy lately, I still think that you should at least see the absorption lines regardless of temperature. Not sure how that would figure into temperature determination, but hey, I used to work with single molecules. Stars are way to big for me ;)

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Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Re:have direction, but not distance by SplashMyBandit · 2011-09-01 20:23 · Score: 1

Of course, that's if the star is bright enough to do spectroscopy. Most of them are good only for photometry, no?
Re:have direction, but not distance by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 23:22 · Score: 0

of course they did spectroscopy it or they would not have its composition. duh
Re:have direction, but not distance by O('_')O_Bush · 2011-09-01 23:45 · Score: 1

That's for close stars though right? How would you distinguish reddening from dust and reddening from red-shift caused by expansion at greater distances?

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while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Re:have direction, but not distance by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 00:04 · Score: 0

IAAFA? I am a fucking astronomer? ;)
No, seriously, thanks for the explanation. Regarding the H and He lines - as a (bio)chemist, who admittedly hasn't done much optical spectroscopy lately, I still think that you should at least see the absorption lines regardless of temperature. Not sure how that would figure into temperature determination, but hey, I used to work with single molecules. Stars are way to big for me ;)
IAAFA - Inter-American Air Forces Academy
Re:have direction, but not distance by mangu · 2011-09-02 01:01 · Score: 1

Red shift only appears for other galaxies. In our galaxy relative movements of stars are much bigger than the effect of the expansion of the universe.
Re:have direction, but not distance by mangu · 2011-09-02 01:05 · Score: 1

Sorry for replying again, but Slashdot doesn't allow one to edit comments.
Another relevant factor is that in red shift the spectral lines are shifted towards the red end of the spectrum. The reddening from dust does not shift the lines, just makes the blue part of the spectrum fainter.
Re:have direction, but not distance by nusuth · 2011-09-02 01:09 · Score: 1

I am not an astrophysicist but red-shift shifts all absorption lines in the same proportion while preferentially absorbing blue light would not have such an effect.

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Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Re:have direction, but not distance by dotancohen · 2011-09-02 01:31 · Score: 1

Thank you for the very informative post.
This procedure seems very well thought out, and I assume that its validity has been tested by other methods, such as parallax. Do we have similar methods for non-MS stars?

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It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Re:have direction, but not distance by rubycodez · 2011-09-02 02:57 · Score: 1

yes, great stuff. but in this particular case they seem to know a rough approximation of distance but instead only gave us equivalent of projection onto one coordinate axis. So let's see, galactic center is about 19 hour RA and -25 degrees down. Leo (and so roughly this star), is 11 hours RA and +15 degrees up. the main thing being that this is roughly 40 degrees up from galactic center which we'll call the plane of the galaxy. So we make a leg 3,500 light-years up to the star from the plane if that one article I linked is true. Then the hypotenuse is 3500 / (sin 40 degrees) or roughly 5500 light - years away?
Re:have direction, but not distance by Teancum · 2011-09-02 08:57 · Score: 1

The issue that comes from stellar spectra is that you have different layers emitting/absorbing light, so you get different characteristics depending on the temperature of the star and the temperature of its surface. So you get both absorption and emission lines, sometimes of the same element and certainly a healthy mixture of a great many elements simultaneously.
A whole lot of information is packed into stellar spectra together with the ability to "repeat" the measurement literally billions of times for other stars that you have a pretty good body of data available for comparison as well... or to crunch through if you come up with a strong theory to explain what it is that you are seeing. One thing astronomy generally doesn't have a problem with is a lack of data for comparison or refining theories.

Good by Aerorae · 2011-09-01 17:29 · Score: 1

In a sense this is a good thing. It shows that when you really get down to it, we still really understand very little about the universe and how things are formed/created. A little humility never hurt.

Re:Good by GNUman · 2011-09-01 17:55 · Score: 1

Exactly! My theory is that god must have ran out of lithium when he created this specific star.
Re:Good by pushing-robot · 2011-09-01 18:35 · Score: 4, Funny

Many parts of the bible lend credence to your theory that He runs out of lithium from time to time.

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How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Re:Good by Wolfling1 · 2011-09-01 19:04 · Score: 1

Nice.

+1 Internets to you, sir.
Re:Good by msheekhah · 2011-09-01 22:07 · Score: 1

he was stockpiling the lithium in case his insane earthly children needed it

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Mark Anthony Collins

Being far enough... by Lisandro · 2011-09-01 17:30 · Score: 1

...we could easily confuse an exhaust with a star...

Re:Being far enough... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 17:45 · Score: 0

That presumes, of course, that there would be such a craft that would propel itself with some kind of fusion-based drive. Tell me, how does one propel a vehicle with fusion?
Re:Being far enough... by LordLimecat · 2011-09-01 17:52 · Score: 1

We do it with conventional explosives, why not with nuclear explosions? :P
Re:Being far enough... by Lisandro · 2011-09-01 17:54 · Score: 1

That presumes, of course, that there would be such a craft that would propel itself with some kind of fusion-based drive. Tell me, how does one propel a vehicle with fusion?
Check this out. I was being humorous, but propelling vehicles with fusion is completely plausible. In fact, the design discussed in that very link expels hydrogen.
Re:Being far enough... by mbone · 2011-09-02 02:18 · Score: 1

That's a fission rocket. There are at least two detailed designs for fusion spacecraft, Discovery II and Project Daedalus / Icarus.
Neither, however, would look anything like a star, unusual or otherwise, even if the exhaust happened to be pointing in your direction.
Re:Being far enough... by Talderas · 2011-09-02 05:45 · Score: 1

Fusion. Not fission.

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"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Re:Being far enough... by Janek+Kozicki · 2011-09-05 06:52 · Score: 1

and the spacecraft described in "Fiasco" by Stanisaw Lem

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# #\ @ ? Colonize Mars #
Re:Being far enough... by Janek+Kozicki · 2011-09-05 06:57 · Score: 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%81 letter disappeared. Without polish accents the name is: Stanislaw Lem.

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# #\ @ ? Colonize Mars #

maybe by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 17:33 · Score: 0

...some aliens had a party nearby and some of balloons got away?

So, it's like Jupiter? by BenSchuarmer · 2011-09-01 17:41 · Score: 3, Interesting

Jupiter is also like 99.7% hydrogen and helium, but I guess they're assuming that the Sun gobbled up most of the heavier elements when our solar system was forming.

Re:So, it's like Jupiter? by sFurbo · 2011-09-01 18:35 · Score: 5, Informative

The mass fraction of elements heavier than helium in this star is less than 1ppm. The sun is 99.9% H and He and only 0.1% heavier stuff, this star has some 50.000 times less than that. Compared to this star, Jupiter is solid iron, so no, not like Jupiter at all.

I understand by matt3k · 2011-09-01 17:58 · Score: 0

If it weren't for the arrow I would of been confused on the location.

Maybe its just bulimic by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 18:00 · Score: 0

Maybe it had those elements inside it at one point, but then decided after ingesting them that they were making it too fat and vomited it out.

They by JustOK · 2011-09-01 18:03 · Score: 1

They took all the lithium for their laptop batteries.

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rewriting history since 2109

Supplies!!!! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 18:08 · Score: 0

The star's composition is surprising since standard theories of star formation require heavier elements in small stars in order to allow the stars to be heavy enough to come together.

God made it that way to test your faith.

Re:Supplies!!!! by thej1nx · 2011-09-01 18:51 · Score: 3, Insightful

>>God made it that way to test your faith.

If god wanted to test our faith with impossible stuff, he could have simply made a huge mountain-sized boulder magically float in air over the vatican, defying gravity. Miracles are more appreciated when they are closer home.
Re:Supplies!!!! by Boronx · 2011-09-01 19:02 · Score: 1

Ye of little faith.

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Play Command HQ online
Re:Supplies!!!! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 20:20 · Score: 0

It's impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God with miracles.
A huge mountain-sized boulder magically floating in the air over the Vatican would only be seen as a miracle as long as it didn't happen. Otherwise, it would be normal.
PS: Does anyone know if the captchas are chosen based on content? I just got "stigmata" and it's the third relevant one in a row.
Re:Supplies!!!! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 20:21 · Score: 0

... over the vatican ... closer [to] home.
I always suspected that there were some atheists in the vatican.
Anyhow, I don't think something like a levitating mountain over Rome will make believers out of most atheists. Since it is already a given for them that no god exists, other explanations would have be found, perhaps: elaborate hoax, it evolved to be that way, or we don't have sufficient data yet to explain the phenomenon, but there WILL be a natural explanation - eventually. Of the approximately 0.005% that will start believing, most will probably be of the "Cool! Can your pet pocket magician also make me a pink pony with a unicorn horn?" variety.
Re:Supplies!!!! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 21:01 · Score: 1

Atheists will believe in a natural phenomenon like a god once there's proof he exists.
Atheists oppose blind, rigid, proof-less faith in divine superpowers, not super power per se. Much of our current technology would be miraculous to a man born 200 years ago.
Re:Supplies!!!! by digitig · 2011-09-01 22:30 · Score: 1

The AC had an important point, though. What would they accept as "proof" of the existence of God? If they want scientific proof (as usually understood) of the Judeo-Christian God (as usually understood) then it's likely that it couldn't possibly exist. Any finite explanation of any set of observations would be simpler than an infinite God, and so would be preferred due to Ockham's razor. Some statements of the scientific method explicitly state that any explanation involving God or gods is to be rejected. So even if such a God existed, He/She would be unable to prove His/Her existence to such atheists. For those atheists "atheists will believe in a natural phenomenon like a god once there's proof he exists" is an empty statement because they understand "proof" in such a way as to make "proof he exists" an oxymoron.

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Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Re:Supplies!!!! by alex67500 · 2011-09-01 23:31 · Score: 2

He put one in Mecca, but he got tired of it and dropped it after a while...
Re:Supplies!!!! by John+Bresnahan · 2011-09-01 23:47 · Score: 1

What would they accept as "proof" of the existence of God?

Anyone who is interested in this topic should read "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan. (For that matter, anyone who loves a good science fiction book should read it.)
Note that the movie barely touched on this subplot, nor did the movie include the dramatic climax of the book.
Re:Supplies!!!! by JoshuaZ · 2011-09-02 00:10 · Score: 2

I think you mean "Contact". Contact is the Sagan scifi novel that touches on this and was made into a movie. Cosmos was the TV showed he starred in that was about astronomy.
Re:Supplies!!!! by John+Bresnahan · 2011-09-02 00:42 · Score: 1

Oops! You're right! I did mean "Contact"
Re:Supplies!!!! by silentcoder · 2011-09-02 01:33 · Score: 1

", He/She would be unable to prove His/Her existence to such atheists"
Allmight....unable...
You don't see the problem with your own claim ?
If a God really wanted to prove his existence to such atheists he would have no problem, about half of Genesis is full of him manipulating the thoughts and feelings of Pharao to make him act stupidly just to prove a point !
Clearly changing somebody's mind and notably their reaction to observations is something he already claims to have done.
So he would have no problem getting them to accept the evidence if he chose to gave it since he could just control their minds.
The reality is, that the bible says God doesn't want anybody to have evidence. It says outright that faith must be based on nothing to be faith at all.
This is what makes religious explanations by default unscientific. Religion by default rejects belief based on evidence while science by default rejects belief NOT based on evidence.
God would have no problem making people belief if he so wished or giving absolute and irrefutable proof if he so chose. He chose instead to give a universe where we can trust very little - our common sense is mostly wrong, our instinctive logic usually false and our senses prone to faillure and easy to fool. So we rely on multiple observations, technology and a process called the "scientific method" to study the universe and get reliable explanations about it since anything not based on lots of evidence and testing is almost always false.
After choosing to put us in a universe where we can't trust anything we didn't test he then says "except me"...
Well.. frankly that sounds just a bit childish to me, but if believing that makes you happy who am I to argue. I can't prove it didn't happen, but since you can't prove it did and God's refusal (according to your own claims - or rather those of your holy book) to prove his existence by default implies that he's existence or lack thereoff can never influence anything we study in science... well who cares ?
Having said that... a god who is that petty wouldn't be worth believing in, in the first place. Going to hell on those grounds would be an act of noble rebellion against a universally bad (pun intended) case of the child-king syndrome.

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Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Re:Supplies!!!! by silentcoder · 2011-09-02 01:40 · Score: 1

Sorry, minor brainfart needs correcting: I was reffering to Exodus of course, not Genesis.

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Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Re:Supplies!!!! by digitig · 2011-09-02 06:11 · Score: 1

", He/She would be unable to prove His/Her existence to such atheists"
Allmight....unable... You don't see the problem with your own claim ?
No, no problem. Theologians decided many centuries ago that prefixing a meaningless statement with "Can God...?" doesn't make a meaningful question.

If a God really wanted to prove his existence to such atheists he would have no problem, about half of Genesis is full of him manipulating the thoughts and feelings of Pharao to make him act stupidly just to prove a point !
I wouldn't consider manipulating thoughts to be a proof. Rather, it gets around the need for proof, and they would no longer be "such atheists".

It says outright that faith must be based on nothing to be faith at all.
[citation needed]

This is what makes religious explanations by default unscientific. Religion by default rejects belief based on evidence
No, religion by default accepts belief based on evidence (Psalm 34:8). It just has accepts as evidence more than science does, and the additional things that they accept as evidence in very rare cases leads them to different conclusions.

God would have no problem making people belief if he so wished
Presumably true, if such a God existed.

or giving absolute and irrefutable proof if he so chose.
Probably not.

He chose instead to give a universe where we can trust very little - our common sense is mostly wrong
Actually, it's mostly right for things that matter to everyday life. Common sense tells me that if I'm hungry eating will make me feel better, that jumping off a cliff will hurt (at least) and so on. It's only on the more esoteric stuff that it's not so good.

our instinctive logic usually false
Again, it's usually true but there are a few situations it doesn't do well with.

and our senses prone to faillure and easy to fool.
But again are not usually fooled in everyday life -- not in ways that matter, anyway.

So we rely on multiple observations, technology and a process called the "scientific method" to study the universe and get reliable explanations about it since anything not based on lots of evidence and testing is almost always false.
[citation needed]

but if believing that makes you happy who am I to argue
Why do you assume I am religious? I find religion to be as full of bullshit as strong atheism, and I call it against both sides.

your holy book
My holy book? What would that be? If I could find a good text on modal logic I suppose it might be that.

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Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Re:Supplies!!!! by Oligonicella · 2011-09-02 06:26 · Score: 1

As a fifty year atheist, I can tell you that it would take a discussion with God to convince me.

Anything else is just a matter of how someone figured out how to manipulate energy.

And if anyone wants to put forth the old 'sufficiently advanced aliens' stuff, any friggin' alien that can convince me face to face that it meets the requirements that I logically understand to constitute the minimum basis for God with a capital G makes that argument purely academic and I'll tell God you said so.
Re:Supplies!!!! by John+Bresnahan · 2011-09-02 07:14 · Score: 1

As a fifty year atheist, I can tell you that it would take a discussion with God to convince me.

forty-year atheist here (I was raised Catholic, but it didn't take).
Actually, even a "discussion with God" wouldn't convince me (since a more reasonable explanation is that I was hallucinating).
I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't read it yet, but "Contact" by Carl Sagan has plot that covers this in a (IMHO) brilliant way. Again, the movie minimized this particular plot line, and it ignored the dramatic climax of the book, so don't base your opinion on the movie.
Re:Supplies!!!! by silentcoder · 2011-09-02 08:22 · Score: 1

>[Citation needed]
Hebrews Chapter 11 verse 1 âoeNOW FAITH IS the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things NOT SEENâ.
Citation given.
>No, religion by default accepts belief based on evidence (Psalm 34:8). It just has accepts as evidence more than science does, and the additional things that they accept as evidence in very rare cases leads them to different conclusions.
Now you're arguing semantics (stupidly). If I replace "evidence" with "empirical evidence" then you're entire argument falls flat.
>Presumably true, if such a God existed.
Since no god at all exists, this is purely hypothetical anyway. I merely pointed out that the contention in the parent post was false based on what is believed about this god persona.
>Probably not.
This is an absolute. The people who believe in god, believe he is almighty, ergo if he so chooses he could so do. If he doesn't, he chose not to - or he doesn't exist.
>Actually, it's mostly right for things that matter to everyday life. Common sense tells me that if I'm hungry eating will make me feel better, that jumping off a cliff will hurt (at least) and so on. It's only on the more esoteric stuff that it's not so good.
Which is fine if all you care about is surviving, if understanding, knowledge and perhaps even a bit of truth is your goal - then you must recognize it's massive deficiencies. Each of our eyes has a blind spot so big that we cannot see the moon if it's right in front of us - smack in the middle. We never see that blind spot because our brain just fills in what it thinks should be there from other clues (mostly memories from when our eyes last moved and the area in the blindspot was visible). What our senses are is data-collecting sensors - what we perceive as reality is that data mashed up with a massive amount of processing which is heavily tilted by past experiences and prejudice. It's remarkably INaccurate in fact. Frankly that's a good thing for survival. "There is a radiation with a wavelength of 400nm coming from there, adjacently up to there, and upwards up to there and and and and and is useful for cognition... "there's a blue flower over there" is useful, so we SEE a blue flower, but that is NOT what our eyes detected.
>Again, it's usually true but there are a few situations it doesn't do well with.
This time you're completely wrong. Logic is NOT some innate process and most people have almost NO skill at all at it. Logic is the foundation of maths and has strict rules. If our innate ideas of logic were worth anything at all then fallacies would not exist as they would never be convincing at all. Logic is a practiced and disciplined skill we developed over millennia exactly to PROTECT ourselves from the mental traps we are otherwise so very prone to.
>But again are not usually fooled in everyday life -- not in ways that matter, anyway.
See my previous bit on this - we're fooled all the time. We literally live in a dreamworld, this is a survival feature. By lying to ourselves we take too much data to process and limit our conscious minds to making decisions on what it actually needs to know. We barely begun to understand the levels of unconscious thought that actually prepares that need-to-know briefing we think of as reality, we have no idea what dark or wonderful secrets it holds - what we do know for sure is, we don't see reality. In fact, if we did- magic shows would be no fun at all (and wouldn't work), optical illusions wouldn't exist...
>[citation needed]
Human history - all of it. Oh and just about EVERY idea about the universe that was ever advanced prior to science coming into maturity in the last 2 centuries.
How much more of a citation than you need ?
>Why do you assume I am religious? I find religion to be as full of bullshit as strong atheism, and I call it against both sides.
I didn't, that's why the sentence started with "if". I just stated that it's no skin of my back if you are, just don't push i

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Re:Supplies!!!! by digitig · 2011-09-02 08:43 · Score: 1

>[Citation needed] Hebrews Chapter 11 verse 1 âoeNOW FAITH IS the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things NOT SEENâ.
Citation given.
Oh look -- it talks about evidence.

>No, religion by default accepts belief based on evidence (Psalm 34:8). It just has accepts as evidence more than science does, and the additional things that they accept as evidence in very rare cases leads them to different conclusions.
Now you're arguing semantics (stupidly). If I replace "evidence" with "empirical evidence" then you're entire argument falls flat.
It doesn't fall flat. You say that religion rejects evidence. It doesn't. It doesn't reject empirical evidence either. It fully accepts empirical evidence and modifies its beliefs based on empirical evidence.

This is an absolute. The people who believe in god, believe he is almighty, ergo if he so chooses he could so do.
No. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of omnipotence that was dealt with in the early days of Christianity. As I have already explained, putting "God can" in front of a meaningless statement doesn't make it meaningful, and "Proof of God in a system that excludes proof of God" is meaningless.

Which is fine if all you care about is surviving, if understanding, knowledge and perhaps even a bit of truth is your goal - then you must recognize it's massive deficiencies.
Recognising that there are massive deficiencies is not the same as saying that it's usually wrong. It's usually right, but it's well worth exploring those cases where it isn't.

Each of our eyes has a blind spot so big that we cannot see the moon if it's right in front of us - smack in the middle. We never see that blind spot because our brain just fills in what it thinks should be there from other clues (mostly memories from when our eyes last moved and the area in the blindspot was visible). What our senses are is data-collecting sensors - what we perceive as reality is that data mashed up with a massive amount of processing which is heavily tilted by past experiences and prejudice. It's remarkably INaccurate in fact. Frankly that's a good thing for survival. "There is a radiation with a wavelength of 400nm coming from there, adjacently up to there, and upwards up to there and and and and and is useful for cognition... "there's a blue flower over there" is useful, so we SEE a blue flower, but that is NOT what our eyes detected.
But it's completely accurate.

This time you're completely wrong. Logic is NOT some innate process and most people have almost NO skill at all at it. Logic is the foundation of maths and has strict rules. If our innate ideas of logic were worth anything at all then fallacies would not exist as they would never be convincing at all.
What, our innate ideas of logic are worthless if they're not infallible? The existence of fallacies doesn't show that we don't get it right most of the time. The failures are interesting, but we have to get logic right to form a view of the world that is sufficiently coherent to get by.

Human history - all of it. Oh and just about EVERY idea about the universe that was ever advanced prior to science coming into maturity in the last 2 centuries.
If "anything not based on lots of evidence and testing is almost always false" we wouldn't have made it through human history.

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Re:Supplies!!!! by silentcoder · 2011-09-02 19:50 · Score: 1

>It doesn't fall flat. You say that religion rejects evidence. It doesn't. It doesn't reject empirical evidence either. It fully accepts empirical evidence and modifies its beliefs based on empirical evidence.
I didn't say it doesn't accept evidence, I said it ALSO accepts truths WITHOUT empirical evidence. That's incompatible with science which demands evidence for ALL things. If you believe ONE thing without proof, or EVERYTHING without proof is completely unimportant - the results are exactly the same.
>No. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of omnipotence that was dealt with in the early days of Christianity. As I have already explained, putting "God can" in front of a meaningless statement doesn't make it meaningful, and "Proof of God in a system that excludes proof of God" is meaningless.
But that's not what I did. I said God excluded proof of his existence - by choice, and declares it to be a choice, ergo he COULD have made a different choice and those of us who look at religion from the outside can judge the psychology of those who came up with it by the attributes they gave their god's persona. One of which is that they created a god who - right from the start when things like lightning was still held as proof of his actions already declared that he refuses to give proof. That's quite prescient, or perhaps it means our ancestors were a little more sceptical than we give them credit for.
>But it's completely accurate.
No it's not. A bee sees something completely different when it looks at that flower - because it sees a wider part of the spectrum, a dog sees less than we do... who sees the truth ? None of us. We all see what we want to see, or rather more correctly - what we NEED to see.
>What, our innate ideas of logic are worthless if they're not infallible? The existence of fallacies doesn't show that we don't get it right most of the time. The failures are interesting, but we have to get logic right to form a view of the world that is sufficiently coherent to get by.
We have no innate logic. We have a pattern matching brain which laymen call logic (these days) because they don't KNOW what logic is. Unless you can recite aristotle's laws of logic - and more importantly construct an argument that obeys them you are not being logical AT ALL.
>If "anything not based on lots of evidence and testing is almost always false" we wouldn't have made it through human history.
Why not ? We didn't NEED acuracy of information to survive. We needed useful bullshit. We needed enough information for flight or fight decisions.
In our world today - most of our problems can be attributed to that out of place response. We see somebody that looks different we react as our ancestors did to a strange shape in the grass - we try to work out if we should run, or fight back. Instant racism. Scale it up and it's what culture is and why cultures take so long to get along and learn respect for one another. We associate "like me" with "safe" and "not like me" with "danger". A great conclusion for an ape in a tree - a horrible way to think in today's world.
Ironically - the moment we formed civilizations the rules changed. The biggest threat to us is not strangers - 90% of crimes are committed by somebody the victim knows and trusts. Our entire response system is backwards - because it was built on the presumption that threats can be recognized by how they look. It works if "threats" mean lions and tigers. It doesn't work when threats are other people - because people who look different are LESS likely to harm you than people that look just like you.
Our instincts were built for a world we DO NOT LIVE in - and we can only do anything good or useful when we override them with conclusions based on evidence. All of politics even today is filled with the false assumptions that come from ancient evolved behaviors masquerading as logic.
Indeed, anything not based on evidence is usually false because the only other things we have to base things on are imagination a

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Re:Supplies!!!! by digitig · 2011-09-02 23:37 · Score: 1

>It doesn't fall flat. You say that religion rejects evidence. It doesn't. It doesn't reject empirical evidence either. It fully accepts empirical evidence and modifies its beliefs based on empirical evidence.
I didn't say it doesn't accept evidence, I said it ALSO accepts truths WITHOUT empirical evidence.
No, that's what I said. What you said was "Religion by default rejects belief based on evidence", which is false.

That's incompatible with science which demands evidence for ALL things. If you believe ONE thing without proof, or EVERYTHING without proof is completely unimportant - the results are exactly the same.
Incompatible? It certainly places it outside science, but when pushed even science has to accept things without proof. It has no (scientific) answer to the solipsist who insists that the material world is an illusion. All attempts to eliminate metaphysics from science so far have failed dismally. And as I was arguing last week in a different thread, there are unresolved arguments in science over what counts as an observation, which leads to arguments over what is proven.

>No. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of omnipotence that was dealt with in the early days of Christianity. As I have already explained, putting "God can" in front of a meaningless statement doesn't make it meaningful, and "Proof of God in a system that excludes proof of God" is meaningless.
But that's not what I did. I said God excluded proof of his existence - by choice, and declares it to be a choice, ergo he COULD have made a different choice and those of us who look at religion from the outside can judge the psychology of those who came up with it by the attributes they gave their god's persona. One of which is that they created a god who - right from the start when things like lightning was still held as proof of his actions already declared that he refuses to give proof. That's quite prescient, or perhaps it means our ancestors were a little more sceptical than we give them credit for.
>But it's completely accurate.
As I've said, it doesn't seem to be rejection of proof so much as rejection of coercion to belief. Not the same thing. In the Christian account God provided evidence (not the same as proof) -- John 20:27, for example. Yes, Jesus said that it was better for those who did not require such proof, but that seems to be a matter of trust. If you employ a PI to find out that your wife is not cheating it indicates a lack of trust and could sour the relationship when she finds out -- even if she's a scientist and is in favour of evidence-based decision making.

No it's not. A bee sees something completely different when it looks at that flower - because it sees a wider part of the spectrum, a dog sees less than we do... who sees the truth ? None of us. We all see what we want to see, or rather more correctly - what we NEED to see.
We see the same thing differently. We all see a flower.

>What, our innate ideas of logic are worthless if they're not infallible? The existence of fallacies doesn't show that we don't get it right most of the time. The failures are interesting, but we have to get logic right to form a view of the world that is sufficiently coherent to get by.
We have no innate logic. We have a pattern matching brain which laymen call logic (these days) because they don't KNOW what logic is. Unless you can recite aristotle's laws of logic - and more importantly construct an argument that obeys them you are not being logical AT ALL.
That seems a ridiculously narrow view of logic to me. I routinely use predicate calculus and shout at the TV when an advertisement affirms the consequent, but I can't recite Aristotle's laws of logic. And even those who have not studied formal logic (which I have, at university level -- they didn't bother including Aristotle's laws of

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Re:Supplies!!!! by silentcoder · 2011-09-03 22:28 · Score: 1

>Incompatible? It certainly places it outside science, but when pushed even science has to accept things without proof. I
No, it doesn't - the closest you'll ever see is "we are still looking for proof of something that makes sense". Dark matter is an example - the moment we came up with it, our very next response was to start FINDING ways to detect it - very quickly we learned that it does bend light. We may not be able to observe it directly but this was NEVER an excuse to accept something that's mathematically perfect without proof, it was only an excuse to look for proof elsewhere.
>it has no (scientific) answer to the solipsist who insists that the material world is an illusion.
Actually, yes it does - several. You my friend are about 2000 years out of date on your science. The "material world is an illusion" argument has been held as a proven fallacy since the time of St. Augustine.
> All attempts to eliminate metaphysics from science so far have failed dismally
[Citation needed] - and you won't find one that isn't biased. On the contrary - any mention of metaphysics will automatically get your theory rejected. If it can't be proven, tested and repeated it is NOT science. Nothing that relies on something like that is every considered science and scientists give NO real credence to any such hypotheses - unless they believe they have found a way to test them and make them BECOME science.
>And as I was arguing last week in a different thread, there are unresolved arguments in science over what counts as an observation, which leads to arguments over what is proven.
Yes, this only strengthens my argument about the weakness of human observation - the reason we develop technology that is better at it than us. As our technology improves further our ability to observe improves as well, and these arguments become smaller. Just because they aren't (perhaps can't be) settled doesn't demean science. it only means scientists are self-critical which is a crucial part of the scientific process. Religion on the other hand opposes criticism, it doesn't say "question even our base assumptions" - no priest has ever (publicily) questioned the existence of god - if you do you're not being religious, a scientist however questions HIS base assumptions all the time. A (good) scientist spends most of his time trying to prove his own theories FALSE and the only thing that gives a theory TRUE credence is a consistent fallure by all of science to do so. The only religion that actively encourages it's followers to question the religion ITSELF is budhism - it's interesting that it's the most popular religion among scientists of a more spiritual frame of mind, because it's a belief system that is compatible with science. There is NOTHING in it that you aren't allowed to question or reject.
>As I've said, it doesn't seem to be rejection of proof so much as rejection of coercion to belief. Not the same thing. In the Christian account God provided evidence (not the same as proof) -- John 20:27, for example. Yes, Jesus said that it was better for those who did not require such proof, but that seems to be a matter of trust. If you employ a PI to find out that your wife is not cheating it indicates a lack of trust and could sour the relationship when she finds out -- even if she's a scientist and is in favour of evidence-based decision making.
If she really is, she would actually be asking you "what made you think you had to check ?". That's not only the proper scientific response - it's the mature one that lets relationships survive. That said you're giving a false dichotomy. Human behavior is not subject to fully empirical research. We cannot with absolution predict it. The reaction to pull your hand out of a fire lies in the spinal column, it happens fast - before our conscious minds even know about it, yet we can consciously override and choose to burn. Nothing in human behavior is absolute because all brains are programmed in subtly different ways. This doesn't mean psychiatry an

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Re:Supplies!!!! by digitig · 2011-09-04 01:46 · Score: 1

>Incompatible? It certainly places it outside science, but when pushed even science has to accept things without proof. I
No, it doesn't - the closest you'll ever see is "we are still looking for proof of something that makes sense".
Yes it does. I'm not talking about the things that science hasn't explained yet, I'm talking about the unavoidable metaphysical assumptions science has to make, such as the assumption of an external reality to be observed (the rejection of solipsism).

>it has no (scientific) answer to the solipsist who insists that the material world is an illusion.
Actually, yes it does - several. You my friend are about 2000 years out of date on your science. The "material world is an illusion" argument has been held as a proven fallacy since the time of St. Augustine.
You are about 300 years out on your history and totally wrong on your philosophy. Solopsism is still an active position in philosophy; it hasn't yet been shown to be a fallacy. The closest to a disproof of solipsism you are going to find is arguments for why it isn't interesting which is not the same as it being false (amusingly, the arguments are usually based on a secular version of Pascal's wager).

> All attempts to eliminate metaphysics from science so far have failed dismally [Citation needed] - and you won't find one that isn't biased. On the contrary - any mention of metaphysics will automatically get your theory rejected. If it can't be proven, tested and repeated it is NOT science. Nothing that relies on something like that is every considered science and scientists give NO real credence to any such hypotheses - unless they believe they have found a way to test them and make them BECOME science.
Only by scientists who have no idea about the underlying foundations of science. The last attempt to exclude metaphysics from science was logical positivism, which was thoroughly demolished over the course of the 20th century (notably by Karl Popper), and all of its advocates abandoned it -- not least because logical positivism was itself based on metaphysical claims. In his Logic of Scientific Discovery Popper argued that the distinction between objective and subjective was a social convention; there is no absolute boundary (that's not to say that there's no distinction, it's saying that the distinction is fuzzy). That's the same work that gave science falsifiability as a criterion, and all the detailed rules needed to make falsifiability work (which many of its proponents don't seem to know about) are based on that. If you have a foundation for science that avoids metaphysics then publish -- you'll become famous and make a fortune on the lecture circuit. But first be aware of past attempts and why they failed.

>And as I was arguing last week in a different thread, there are unresolved arguments in science over what counts as an observation, which leads to arguments over what is proven.
Yes, this only strengthens my argument about the weakness of human observation - the reason we develop technology that is better at it than us. As our technology improves further our ability to observe improves as well, and these arguments become smaller.
Again you're missing the point. All that is doing is transferring the problem. The issue isn't over how good our observations are, they're about what counts as an observation.

Religion on the other hand opposes criticism, it doesn't say "question even our base assumptions" - no priest has ever (publicily) questioned the existence of god
That claim is easily falsifiable. I take it you've never read Paul Tillich, a Lutheran minister who argued that talk of the existence of God was a category error, or Don Cupitt, an Anglican priest who has argued not only that God does not exist but that all means -- including deception -- should be used to prevent b

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Re:Supplies!!!! by silentcoder · 2011-09-04 04:32 · Score: 1

>Yes it does. I'm not talking about the things that science hasn't explained yet, I'm talking about the unavoidable metaphysical assumptions science has to make, such as the assumption of an external reality to be observed (the rejection of solipsism).
Reject insanity is not assumption.
Having said that - here is the rejection of solipsism -I prefer: it doesn't MATTER. Let's assume it's true: all of reality is a delusion - either we're all the delusion of one "person" - or the delusion is absolutely consistent since we all report the same things. Our experiences vary but more accurate tests than that all converge on the same data.
What is the difference between a "true" reality, and an illusion so consistent and strong as to be absolutely impossible to distinguish from a true reality ?
Answer: there isn't one. You can build the entire edifice of modern scientific knowledge just as effectively on solipsism as on it being false. There's NO difference, it has no impact on anything - which makes it nothing but stupid speculation and raises the very important philosophical question that if the consequences of two ideas are absolutely and entirely impossible to differentiate - then are they really different things ?
Either there is an objective reality - or there is an lllusion of one so perfect as to make absolutely no difference. Either way science stands - and occam's razor can be CORRECTLY used to reject the second "either" as being needlessly complex.
A real reality has far fewer dependent variables for exactly the same outcome. In the end - solipsism isn't so much rejected as ignored because the entire line of thinking is completely and utterly useless and right or wrong about it changes NOTHING about anything else. Ergo, who gives a shit ?
>That claim is easily falsifiable. I take it you've never read Paul Tillich, a Lutheran minister who argued that talk of the existence of God was a category error, or Don Cupitt, an Anglican priest who has argued not only that God does not exist but that all means -- including deception -- should be used to prevent belief in God. There are strands of religion that discourage questioning (and they tend to be particularly vocal) but there are also strands that actively encourage it. On the other hand, quite a few scientists seem resistant to questioning of science's base assumptions (both Stephen Hawkins and Richard Dawkins in recent years).
I said religion - not specific people who claim to be religious - when their actions are decidedly NOT religious. An atheist priest is a contradiction in terms. You cannot believe AND not believe at the same time. Aristotles FIRST law of logic: the law of identity - a thing cannot be other than itself.
In deductive logic a typical example would be written as
Premise one: A = B
Premise two: B = C
Premise three: A C
Is a false argument, A cannot be other than itself, so if A = B and B = C then A MUST equal C. Remember deductive logic gives required truthful consequence (if the premises are true the conclusion MUST be true).
In short those case you cite don't disprove my claim at all. All they prove is that some people give up the faith of religion without giving up the job. That's a completely different concept.
>Theories != base assumptions.
Theories != hypotheses. Hypotheses != base assumptions.
Theories in science = base assumptions.
Technically you should only use the word theory for a hypotheses that has been so resilient that there is no reasonable doubt left about it's truthfullness. Newton's laws didn't become a theory until three hundred years after his death. Darwin's theory only really became a theory in the 1960's when DNA became a well known concept in science. Scientists still question both.
You however expect them to waste their time questioning things completely useless. Like solipsism - it's a case of - even if you're wrong it changes NOTHING about the outcome of any research... ever. Ergo - it's a waste of time to worry about it. Religions are welcome t

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Re:Supplies!!!! by digitig · 2011-09-05 01:26 · Score: 1

>Yes it does. I'm not talking about the things that science hasn't explained yet, I'm talking about the unavoidable metaphysical assumptions science has to make, such as the assumption of an external reality to be observed (the rejection of solipsism).
Reject insanity is not assumption. Having said that - here is the rejection of solipsism -I prefer: it doesn't MATTER. Let's assume it's true: all of reality is a delusion - either we're all the delusion of one "person" - or the delusion is absolutely consistent since we all report the same things. Our experiences vary but more accurate tests than that all converge on the same data. What is the difference between a "true" reality, and an illusion so consistent and strong as to be absolutely impossible to distinguish from a true reality ? Answer: there isn't one. You can build the entire edifice of modern scientific knowledge just as effectively on solipsism as on it being false. There's NO difference, it has no impact on anything - which makes it nothing but stupid speculation and raises the very important philosophical question that if the consequences of two ideas are absolutely and entirely impossible to differentiate - then are they really different things ? Either there is an objective reality - or there is an lllusion of one so perfect as to make absolutely no difference. Either way science stands - and occam's razor can be CORRECTLY used to reject the second "either" as being needlessly complex.
Rejection of solipsism isn't the only metaphysical assumption that science makes. Does science lead towards any sort of objective truth? If you believe that it does then that's a metaphysical assumption -- you can't prove it with science. If you don't then any claims that science has disproved the existence of God are meaningless because science can't prove or disprove anything.

A real reality has far fewer dependent variables for exactly the same outcome. In the end - solipsism isn't so much rejected as ignored because the entire line of thinking is completely and utterly useless and right or wrong about it changes NOTHING about anything else. Ergo, who gives a shit ?
Solipsism isn't totally ignored, because it remains a useful check against the arrogance of thinking that we can definitely know the truth. We can ignore it and say that we have enough confidence that what we think is the truth is good enough for our everyday lives, but we can't say we know the truth.

>That claim is easily falsifiable. I take it you've never read Paul Tillich, a Lutheran minister who argued that talk of the existence of God was a category error, or Don Cupitt, an Anglican priest who has argued not only that God does not exist but that all means -- including deception -- should be used to prevent belief in God. There are strands of religion that discourage questioning (and they tend to be particularly vocal) but there are also strands that actively encourage it. On the other hand, quite a few scientists seem resistant to questioning of science's base assumptions (both Stephen Hawkins and Richard Dawkins in recent years).
I said religion - not specific people who claim to be religious - when their actions are decidedly NOT religious. An atheist priest is a contradiction in terms. You cannot believe AND not believe at the same time. Aristotles FIRST law of logic: the law of identity - a thing cannot be other than itself.
Now you are changing your claim -- and showing your ignorance of Paul Tillich (who was not an atheist) and the Church (which in supporting these people -- even if they are atheists -- is supporting questioning of their own beliefs).

In deductive logic a typical example would be written as Premise one: A = B Premise two: B = C Premise three: A C Is a false argument, A cannot be other than itself, so if A = B and B = C then A MUST equal C. Remember deductive logic gives required truthful consequence (if the premises are

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Re:Supplies!!!! by silentcoder · 2011-09-05 03:24 · Score: 1

> Does science lead towards any sort of objective truth?
No, and it doesn't, and never has, claimed to. Science promises only greater understanding. Objective truth is only promised by religions and charlatans (often the same person) who aren't burdened by having to be consistent or open to new ideas.
Science is under no obligation to prove a claim it doesn't make.
>Solipsism isn't totally ignored, because it remains a useful check against the arrogance of thinking that we can definitely know the truth. We can ignore it and say that we have enough confidence that what we think is the truth is good enough for our everyday lives, but we can't say we know the truth.
And we have no need for solipsism to do so. Science already rejects absolute truth on much simpler grounds. Human brains are simple relative to the universe. Science makes things understandable by creating simple models of how things work. These models can get progressively more complex and so our understanding grows but they are not truth and never claimed to be. Thermodynamics is a very useful model but it's decidedly NOT truth. Gravity is a great model, but it isn't truth either. The more complex we make the model, the deeper our understanding goes - and the fewer people can understand it - but it never approaches the complexity of the reality, that's essentially what science never claims. Science has never promised anybody truth. Unlike all the people and concepts that promise truth - science is honest enough to admit that truth is beyond human comprehension and almost certainly will always be.
We only come close to claiming objective truth in matters so highly abstract that their existence and all their properties can be entirely quantified. Mathemeticians can discover objective and absolute truths. Scientists aren't dealing with something a simple as mathematics.
>The actual structure of the argument is:
>Premise 1: No A is B (your claim)
>Premise 2: There exists at least one A that is B (observation)
>This leads to a contradiction, so one of the premises must be false.
Yes, premise 2. People who claim to believe in God and then question that same belief are lying, there's no way around that.
At best they may be called agnostic - at least agnostics are honest enough to admit they haven't decided though.
>How do you know that science is actually improving our understanding of the universe? Can you show that with science (without begging the question) or is that a metaphysical claim?
Yes I can. Every single time we EVER do an experiment and it does what the theory predicted it would that's the proof.
>No. In terms of logic the base assumptions would be axioms, not theories/hypotheses. What are the axioms of science?
Logic has axioms. Science does not. Science has a method with rules for investigation and explanation of the universe. nothing more, nothing less. I suppose you could call the rules of the scientific method "axioms" but it's seriously stretching the word - they are rather the rules as adapted over countless challenges and mistakes. They are the precautions we've learned from bitter experience to apply to our thinking to protect ourselves against three terrible sources of falsehood:
1) Believing what we want to believe
2) Believing what has always been believed
3) Believing what those in power wants us to believe.
This is why science has forever been at war with religion and governments - because science assaults their very foundations - both depend on people taking their ideas from those three sources and science is absolutely designed to not be subject to any of them.
>Sorry, but that's still a circular argument. Instead of using logic to prove logic, you are using logic to prove mathematics and mathematics to prove logic. Putting in an extra step (which I would dispute anyway) does not remove the circularity.
Nor does that make it false. We don't prove mathematics with logic anyway - we moved past that a long, long t

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Re:Supplies!!!! by digitig · 2011-09-05 04:18 · Score: 1

> Does science lead towards any sort of objective truth?
No, and it doesn't, and never has, claimed to. Science promises only greater understanding.
Understanding of what?

Human brains are simple relative to the universe. Science makes things understandable by creating simple models of how things work.
Is there an objective "how things work" that science works towards, then? Or are they just simplified models of nothing?

but it never approaches the complexity of the reality, that's essentially what science never claims. Science has never promised anybody truth.
So the claim that there is no God is not an attempt at a truth claim, then? Remember, I am not arguing for belief against atheism, I am arguing for agnosticism against atheism and belief.

Yes, premise 2. People who claim to believe in God and then question that same belief are lying, there's no way around that.
But people who claim to believe in quantum mechanics and then question that same belief are not necessarily lying? How come? I know lots of religious people, and all of them question their belief, to greater or lesser degrees.

At best they may be called agnostic - at least agnostics are honest enough to admit they haven't decided though.
If they believe in God, whey should they be called agnostic? And if they believe in God, why should they stop examining that belief?

>How do you know that science is actually improving our understanding of the universe? Can you show that with science (without begging the question) or is that a metaphysical claim?
Yes I can. Every single time we EVER do an experiment and it does what the theory predicted it would that's the proof.
No, it's evidence (not proof) that science is self-consistent, not that it corresponds to any "understanding of the universe".

>No. In terms of logic the base assumptions would be axioms, not theories/hypotheses. What are the axioms of science?
Logic has axioms. Science does not. Science has a method with rules for investigation and explanation of the universe. nothing more, nothing less. I suppose you could call the rules of the scientific method "axioms" but it's seriously stretching the word - they are rather the rules as adapted over countless challenges and mistakes.
So you must have something against which you can test methods, to determine which ones are more prone to mistakes, and to determine whether they are actually giving an "explanation of the universe".

>Sorry, but that's still a circular argument. Instead of using logic to prove logic, you are using logic to prove mathematics and mathematics to prove logic. Putting in an extra step (which I would dispute anyway) does not remove the circularity.
Nor does that make it false.
I know it doesn't make logic false (that would be an argument from fallacy fallacy), but it makes your claim that logic is proven and validated false.

We don't prove mathematics with logic anyway - we moved past that a long, long time ago (try reading up on the history of information theory) - in fact the very existence of computers (and computational theory) has it's origins in the search for empirical ways to test mathematics. That was what Lambda, Turing and Bool were working on and their work combined from the bases of all computers programs. We test mathematics through functional equivalence. More-over mutual reinforcement is NOT circular reasoning, it is circular in process but it's not WRONG for that. Mutual reinforcement is the essence of all science.
Try proving mathematics without logic, and see how far you get. And even if you manage, try proving logic without using logic. It simply can't be done. The validity of logic is a necessa

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Re:Supplies!!!! by silentcoder · 2011-09-05 05:17 · Score: 1

This is no fun anymore if you're going to be all reasonable. :p
Here's a Shorter reply :
Religion demands unquestioing faith and even admonishes that this is impossible then warns to battle and dispel doubt. That some religious people question their faith in public changes nothing.
Solipsism, post modernism etc are really jus boring to me. Even if true it provides no useful new theories or lines of inquiry and there's no way to satisfy curiosity on a question we can't answer.
Everything you say about brains depends on them being deterministic. This is not proven and the assertion depends on rejecting the widely reporte observations off free wil. This is I think still contentious.
Science. Rules are based on experience and subject to change. Indeed they have changes over time.
I believe consistency of experiments prove a consistent reality you do not.
Law of the excluded middle applies to deductive logic only. Deductive logic only applies to the abstract. Maths is deductive science is inductive.
We'll never convince each other here. But ill grant that your arguments are interesting.

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Re:Supplies!!!! by digitig · 2011-09-05 06:01 · Score: 1

Religion demands unquestioing faith and even admonishes that this is impossible then warns to battle and dispel doubt.
It depends on how you define religion. If that is your definition of religion then of course it's tautologically true but then it says nothing about God (but it might say something about politics and even about those scientists who demand an unquestioning trust in the scientific method -- "scientism"). If your definition of religion is more about belief in a God or gods then some religion demands unquestioning faith and some religion encourages questioning.

That some religious people question their faith in public changes nothing.
Well, it means that being religious does not exclude questioning one's faith in public.

Solipsism, post modernism etc are really jus boring to me. Even if true it provides no useful new theories or lines of inquiry and there's no way to satisfy curiosity on a question we can't answer.
You do realise that Karl Popper was a postmodernist, and the introduction of the notion of falsifiability into science was a result of postmodern philosophy, don't you? I'd call that a useful line of enquiry.

Everything you say about brains depends on them being deterministic. This is not proven and the assertion depends on rejecting the widely reporte observations off free wil. This is I think still contentious.
It certainly is, and one of the most interesting areas of overlap between science and philosophy. Even if the brain is not deterministic it's a puzzle where the will can come from. If the brain is purely material then there doesn't seem to be any way for the will to arise. If there's a "ghost in the machine" then there doesn't seem to be any way for it to interact, so the best scientific theories at the moment seem to be that free will is an illusion. But if that's an illusion, what does that say about the remainder of the model of the universe that we have built?

Science. Rules are based on experience and subject to change. Indeed they have changes over time.
But what are you testing them against? If you are testing them against science then all you are testing for is internal consistency because they are science. The religious can have an internally consistent world view too (they don't always, but they can).

I believe consistency of experiments prove a consistent reality you do not.
No, I believe that consistency of experiments proves (or at least gives sufficiently strong evidence of) a consistent reality too. But that's a metaphysical belief. That's why science can't afford to instantly reject claims because they're metaphysical. It depends on metaphysical claims too.

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Re:Supplies!!!! by silentcoder · 2011-09-05 06:51 · Score: 1

We test scientific rules against their goal : do they protect us from thinking wrong things that are very tempting. Such as "what people who can kill us want us to believe ". That's what it's for. To protect us from ourselves and others. If its doing that it's working. You can't just think what makes you feel good when you must do reality checks.

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Re:Supplies!!!! by digitig · 2011-09-05 08:17 · Score: 1

We test scientific rules against their goal : do they protect us from thinking wrong things that are very tempting.
So you need an independent way of identifying "wrong things". Otherwise you could just identify "wrong things" as "disagreeing with the authorities" and you wouldn't need science.

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Re:Supplies!!!! by silentcoder · 2011-09-05 17:09 · Score: 1

That's what science is. An independent way of identifying wrong ideas. Even your own.

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Re:Supplies!!!! by digitig · 2011-09-05 21:18 · Score: 1

But you don't know that it's doing so correctly unless you have something to check it against. Otherwise it's just an article of faith.

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Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Re:Supplies!!!! by silentcoder · 2011-09-05 21:52 · Score: 1

>But you don't know that it's doing so correctly unless you have something to check it against. Otherwise it's just an article of faith.
We do have something to check against: experimental result.
That's our reality-check system. Your argument is that thinking experimental result proves IS a reality check is unproven, frankly that argument is impossible to settle. Either you conclude that experimental consistency means there's a consistent, objective universe that can be understood (at least partially) or you do not. There's no OTHER way to check, so if you reject the only check we have as "an article of faith" then you have an argument that can't be won. A statement which cannot be tested. There's no rational way to argue with an irrational believe. And you can just about define "irrational believe" as "belief not based on evidence".
Since there's only one possible way to check for a reality, and you don't accept that check - we'll never get anywhere. I think the check has made it's point. All our technology built on what we learned by trusting it has been purely beneficial.
In the end, you may call it trite but the bible says Jesus healed less than 10 sick people, and saved 3 lives (if you include his own). Louis Pasteur's germ theory of disease and his pastuerization process combined saves about a billion lives every single day (if you add in every person who doesn't get an infection today because of something based on either of those).
That's the difference in my book.

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Re:Supplies!!!! by digitig · 2011-09-05 22:21 · Score: 1

>But you don't know that it's doing so correctly unless you have something to check it against. Otherwise it's just an article of faith.
We do have something to check against: experimental result.
That's circular again. Experimental results are a part of science, so all they are checking is consistency, not correctness.

That's our reality-check system. Your argument is that thinking experimental result proves IS a reality check is unproven, frankly that argument is impossible to settle. Either you conclude that experimental consistency means there's a consistent, objective universe that can be understood (at least partially) or you do not.
Agreed. That's a metaphysical assumption that you have to make to do science. The consistency that you then get supports the view that it was a credible assumption, but not that it was a correct assumption -- other metaphysical assumptions might also lead to consistency.

There's no OTHER way to check, so if you reject the only check we have as "an article of faith" then you have an argument that can't be won.
I don't reject it as an article of faith. I accept it as an article of faith.

A statement which cannot be tested.
It's a statement that can't be tested whether you accept or reject it. That's why it's an article of faith.

There's no rational way to argue with an irrational believe. And you can just about define "irrational believe" as "belief not based on evidence".
But that still leaves the problem of what counts as evidence...

Since science recognises only one possible scientific way to check for a reality, if you don't accept that check - we'll never get anywhere.
FTFY

I think the check has made it's point. All our technology built on what we learned by trusting it has been purely beneficial.
Well, some might question whether nuclear, chemical and biological weapons have been purely beneficial. Anyway, very few of the religious doubt that science is good at what it does, they just dispute that it's the only game in town. As Socrates observed (anticipating Hume by a couple of millennia) science can't tell us how we should live our lives but it can help us to implement what we've decided.

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Re:Supplies!!!! by silentcoder · 2011-09-05 22:56 · Score: 1

>Agreed. That's a metaphysical assumption that you have to make to do science. The consistency that you then get supports the view that it was a credible assumption, but not that it was a correct assumption -- other metaphysical assumptions might also lead to consistency.
And that's our only disagreement. I see nothing metaphysical in doing experiments with the PHYSICAL world to verify abstract hypotheses. Experiments are part of science but it's not circular as you suggest. The very REASON it's part of science is to force science to remain physical. The reality would be the same with or without science, the experiment would have the same results with or without the scientific edifice. Experiments are mandated BY science for exactly that reason. It doesn't prove science consistent - it tests science against reality. A completely abstracted field can be entirely consistent (mathematics) - but science is NOT abstract or metaphysical exactly because it forces itself to check it's results against physical reality - that process is called experimentation. Calling it "part of science" is accurate in general - but it doesn't make it part of the consistency there-off, it's the ENFORCEMENT of REALITY there-in. A different concept altogether. Experiments aren't MEANT to check consistency but to check ACCURACY. In fact it's an important point that science is often NOT consistent. We occasionally have theories that match observed reality in a given scenario perfectly - but contradict one another. Ultimately we strive to reconcile them in a new and improved theory (this is the current state of physics where quantum physics and relativity have several major contradictions but each in their area is showing immense success). But this happens exactly because science doesn't offer truth - only a greater understanding of the universe. A theory is just a mental model to understand the universe with. Experiments is way to make sure the model really DOES fit the universe we try to understand. This is why both quantum physics and relativity remain useful even though we have glaring evidence that one of both is making some major mistakes. Fixing those mistakes are important, but they don't invalidate the usefulness of the theories in the meantime for that segment of reality they DO accurately model. Your argument breaks down exactly because science is NOT consistent. In fact Einstein once said the most remarkable thing about the universe is that it makes any sense at all - that we can understand it at all. There is no compulsion on reality to be understandable, sensible or even logical (let alone consistent) - yet it is, and that is remarkable. Taking advantage of that fact is what science is FOR.
In fact, you may recall this discussion began due to our discovery of an observation that is highly inconsistent with not only current theory but also all previous observations- the inconsistency is what lets us find NEW knowledge. It's unlikely... but what if in trying to solve this conundrum -we find the explanation for the inconsistency of quantum and relativistic physics ? For all we know - the key to the Grand Unified Theory is figuring out why this star is so odd...
>I don't reject it as an article of faith. I accept it as an article of faith.
I do reject it as an article of faith. I accept it as a matter of fact. What we disagree on is just that. For you it's a matter of faith. I consider it long proven to be a matter of fact. I say the checks we use have proven it enough, you say they don't prove it (to your satisfaction) hence you deem it a matter of faith.
>It's a statement that can't be tested whether you accept or reject it. That's why it's an article of faith.
Not quite what I meant. I believe we HAVE tested as a matter of fact that there is an objective reality that can be understood. You reject the test and declare the existence of that reality a matter of faith. What I meant is - there is no OTHER way to test if that reality exists. If you accept the test that science has as valid, then it's

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The reason the star is so odd by DaRyuujin · 2011-09-01 18:20 · Score: 1

Its not a star..its a power source created by an advanced alien specials that they use to fuel their light speed engines...silly scientists missing that :-P

Some star had some plasma ripped off by user+flynn · 2011-09-01 18:31 · Score: 1

A star had some of its plasma ripped off by a black hole (or another star) moving by. For whatever reason, the heavier elements were captured by the 2 larger bodies and the leftover H and He slowly coalesced into the freaky star.

Scenario 2- The freaky star formed at the Lagrangian point between 2 huge stars and was dislodged from the system by a passing star.

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In the distance you hear an ominous moo.

Re:Some star had some plasma ripped off by The+Master+Control+P · 2011-09-01 18:34 · Score: 1

Wouldn't happen. L1 point is unstable.
Re:Some star had some plasma ripped off by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 19:19 · Score: 0

maybe it actually coalesced *around* a rather small black hole?
Re:Some star had some plasma ripped off by FormOfActionBanana · 2011-09-01 19:39 · Score: 1

Oh, then I guess all the Lagrange points must be unstable. Thanks for your input!!

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Bipolar aliens? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 18:34 · Score: 0

Makes sense, they would need a large supply of lithium to treat their mental disorder.

Artificial? by Arancaytar · 2011-09-01 18:50 · Score: 1

Or possibly strip-mined for the Lithium?

Bill o'Reilly by mutherhacker · 2011-09-01 19:10 · Score: 1

I bet he could explain it.

Re:Bill o'Reilly by kno3 · 2011-09-01 21:20 · Score: 1

Exactly! Science has failed and this clearly means it is all false. What we need is clear thinkers like Bill who haven't muddied their head with fancy science degrees!
Incidentally, I believe it is clear this is an artificial star created by a cosmological super-race.
Re:Bill o'Reilly by Sockatume · 2011-09-02 01:39 · Score: 1

Fusable nuclei go in, heavy nuclei and radiation come out. Never a miscommunication.

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No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?

Any speculation on ET civilization? by m.alessandrini · 2011-09-01 19:25 · Score: 0

I don't really believe that's the case, but a scientist (cannot find links) once proposed a method for looking for ET life by looking at strange-behavior stars, that could be the result of a massive planetary system colonization, like for example enclosing a star with a "shell" to generate energy and so altering the spectrum we would say.

Astronomers Give Star the Pluto Treatment by tinkerton · 2011-09-01 19:41 · Score: 1

You know. you're a bit less than a real star. You may think you're a star but you're not.

Re:Astronomers Give Star the Pluto Treatment by maxwell+demon · 2011-09-01 19:50 · Score: 1

You know. you're a bit less than a real star. You may think you're a star but you're not.
A starlet?

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The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Re:Astronomers Give Star the Pluto Treatment by tinkerton · 2011-09-01 20:04 · Score: 1

I was hoping for something stronger but it does convey the required sense of humiliation.
Re:Astronomers Give Star the Pluto Treatment by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 21:10 · Score: 0

A B-list star? Or even C-list.

That's no star -- it's a... by GPS+Pilot · 2011-09-01 19:41 · Score: 1

That's no star -- it's an extragalactic surfboard flare!

(Ok, that wasn't very witty. Superior replies encouraged.)

On a more serious note: given that the Milky Way's diameter is ~100,000 light years, this thing being only "3,500 light-years above the disc of the Milky Way" would make it a straggling member of our galaxy, would it not?

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That that is is that that that that is not is not.

Re:That's no star -- it's a... by TheRaven64 · 2011-09-02 00:11 · Score: 1

The milky way is a disc (as your quote says). It's only 1,000 light years thick, so 3,500 light years is quite a long way away from the galaxy.

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Re:That's no star -- it's a... by GPS+Pilot · 2011-09-02 02:19 · Score: 1

It would be interesting to know how many "standard deviations" it is from the plane of the galaxy.

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That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Re:That's no star -- it's a... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 08:19 · Score: 0

Star Wars: That's no Star, that's a Space Station!

We've gone too far... *sigh* by erroneus · 2011-09-01 20:09 · Score: 1

They found a new star and they didn't even make a wish?! Sheesh! Whimsy is dead...

Re:We've gone too far... *sigh* by ErroneousBee · 2011-09-01 20:59 · Score: 1

I'm pretty sure someone on the team said something like "I wish we knew why this star is heavy element deficient"

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Re:We've gone too far... *sigh* by erroneus · 2011-09-01 21:11 · Score: 1

Why not steal someone else's sig? You already borrowed from my nick. :)
Re:We've gone too far... *sigh* by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-03 23:18 · Score: 0

Why not steal someone else's sig? You already borrowed from my nick. :)
Except, you know, he has a lower # than you.
Re:We've gone too far... *sigh* by erroneus · 2011-09-04 13:25 · Score: 1

611028 < 253617 ?

Reason may be more mundane ... by MacTO · 2011-09-01 20:23 · Score: 1

It is probably safer to say that they did not detect lithium in the star's atmosphere.

The light that we see from a star tends to fit a blackbody curve, which says a lot about the temperature of a star but nothing about the composition. However, the stellar atmosphere will contain absorption or emission lines that tell us about the composition of the atmosphere. It doesn't say anything about the interior of the star.

Now my recollections of stellar models is quite hazy, but I do recall that different processes happen within the star. Some stars have convective regions, which means that there is a mixing of the material inside the star. There are also radiative regions, where there is no mixing of the materials so the star ends up stratified.

The statification doesn't really tell us why there is no lithium in the atmosphere, since that should have been around since the big bang. Now this doesn't really tell us why there is no Lithium in the atmosphere, but if does suggest that there are cases where it would not be replenished even if the star it was orbiting had a surplus of resources.

Artificial? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 20:24 · Score: 0

It probably is a Dyson sphere ;)

I wish!!!!

Occam's Razor by fyngyrz · 2011-09-01 20:36 · Score: 1

It's considerably more likely that our theory(/ies) of star formation are lacking.

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Re:Occam's Razor by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 21:18 · Score: 0

No. See, God created Hydrogen, Helium and Lithium first. In this case, He wanted to play a practical joke on us.
Re:Occam's Razor by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 22:11 · Score: 0

Or, our capacity to detect elements is not as sharp as we thought.
Re:Occam's Razor by tgd · 2011-09-01 23:16 · Score: 1

I've always found Occam's Razor an interesting thing to invoke in cases like this. While I agree with the contention that the simplest explanation is likely the right one, that statement means nothing at all if you don't have a pretty good sense of the situation.
The assumption that its considerably more likely our theories of star formation are wrong is based on a couple presumptions that may be correct, but may not:
- life is uncommon
- intelligent life is even more uncommon
- intelligent life goes extinct before it can spread out
Particularly the last one -- if that isn't correct, then you can't really assume the liklihood that the simpler explanation is that our understanding of star formation is lacking. (Now, generally I agree with you -- that seems more likely, but science isn't about "seems" and we humans are pretty hard wired to draw conclusions like that.)
So, Occams Razor, IMO, is never a good argument to use when it comes to events involving assumptions we have no data on at all.
Re:Occam's Razor by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 23:56 · Score: 0

Going from your explanation, I think it's unlikely Occam's Razor is a bunch of steaming horse shit.
Re:Occam's Razor by TheRaven64 · 2011-09-02 00:03 · Score: 4, Informative

While I agree with the contention that the simplest explanation is likely the right one
Why would you agree with something so nonsensical? And why would you state such a belief in the context of Occam's Razor, which says nothing of the kind. Occam's Razor says that, if a model works without one of its factors, then it is safe to remove that factor. It's a rule about logic, not about science. If you start with a set of axioms and develop a system, then there are an infinite number of axioms that you can add without changing the validity of any of your interred rules, but adding these does not gain you anything.
An example of its application in science is the idea of guided evolution. One model suggests that species change via random mutations. Another model suggests that these changes are not random, that they're guided by a higher power in such a way that is indistinguishable from random change. Occam does not say that the second hypothesis is wrong, merely that it adds nothing useful to the model. You could also add another factor to that saying that it's guided by a higher power who makes decisions based on what an angel tells him. You could go on adding extra layers to this hypothesis forever, without altering the predictions that are made. You can, therefore, save yourself some mental effort by ignoring the factors that are irrelevant.
That doesn't mean that the first theory is 'right', or true, it just means that it's simpler and equally useful.

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Re:Occam's Razor by Sepodati · 2011-09-02 00:31 · Score: 0

Don't worry... Scientists will just make up "dark" something that can be plugged into equations but never detected in order to explain this. Let's start with "dark lithium". If they use that I want royalties!
John
Re:Occam's Razor by boristhespider · 2011-09-02 00:55 · Score: 4, Insightful

Jesus.
1) People calling something "dark" doesn't mean they literally believe that, for instance, "dark energy" exists. What they know is that observations cannot be accounted for without something that acts the way "dark energy" acts, in the equations they currently employ. There is enormous research in this field pursuing a wide range of approaches to reproducing the observations theoretically. The simplest models employ a "dark energy" -- literally, something that does not interact with light, and which has a pressure sufficiently negative as to accelerate the expansion of the universe. No-one -- and I mean NO-ONE -- who works in the field treats these as anything other than toy models. Phenomenology, to use the jargon. More complex models attempt to see what changes to the assumed laws of gravity are necessary to reproduce the effect. No-one who does this pretends that their model is anything other than a toy model. (Indeed, most modifications to gravity can be rephrased as a dark energy of the first kind anyway, albeit a really weird, ugly one. It's the motivation that's different.) More controversial models attempt to reproduce the observations by changing one of the fundamental assumptions that lead to the standard cosmological model: homogeneity. Violate homogeneity and you can influence the paths of photons around us in ways that mimic "dark energy". No-one working on this pretends that it's anything other than a toy model. Yet another approach is to point out that the universe is intrinsically inhomogeneous and anisotropic and attempt to reconstruct the homogeneous universe we employ in cosmology from that. No-one working on this pretends that the models studied so far are anything other than toy models.
It's not "scientists" "making up" "dark" "somethings" that can be "plugged into equations" but "never detected", it's people tagging a puzzling observation with a placeholder ("dark energy" for the anomalous acceleration of the universe; "dark matter" for the apparent necessity across a massive range of scales for large amounts of clustering matter that doesn't interact with light) and then exploring potential explanations.
I don't care if you were trying to joke. This kind of accusation really annoys me because it suggests that either we're terrible at explaining what's going on, or people simply aren't listening to us;, or both and people who argue this way tend to insinuate that those of us in astrophysics are a pack of idiots or charlatans fraudulently inventing arbitrary and unobservable physics in order to screw millions upon millions of euro from the honest taxpayer. And that's frankly offensive.
Re:Occam's Razor by boristhespider · 2011-09-02 00:56 · Score: 1

2) There are no royalties. We don't earn money from specific models, we just get paid to research.
Re:Occam's Razor by silentcoder · 2011-09-02 00:59 · Score: 2

>It's considerably more likely that our theory(/ies) of star formation are lacking.
It's even MORE likely that our theories are generally correct but some specific unknown circumstance caused this particular star to follow a different and unexpected path. This star is not matching the previously observed observations on which our theories are based. The most likely explanation is that something highly unusual (perhaps entirely unique) happened here - we don't yet know what, something that cause it not to do what usually happens.
This is not so much a shortcoming of theory then - theories are generalized models of how the universe behaves which are true most of the time, when all the variables are the same. What we see here is a very clear case that one of those variables must have been very different. We don't yet know why. Finding out why is a challenge and worthy one. It could disprove the theory (one failed experiment does - but only if the variables are the SAME) - more likely we'll end up amending the theories to also include the particular type of star formation that caused this.
That doesn't make the theory false for all the other stars - it could, it could be that we were wrong all along, - but that is doubtful we've got lots of observations of stars of various ages that follow the predicted paths of the theory, this exception should therefore raise an expectation of something unique happening differently.
An object falling should accelerate at 9.2 m/s2 - that's a valid scientific theory. If there's air resistence it won't reach that though, and depending on how much the impact will vary - a more refined theory talks of terminal velocities in earth atmosphere (and those aren't perfect since air density is not a constant). Throw in a parachute and your prediction of how fast something will fall is now way off.
That's not because the theory of gravity is wrong, it's because the parachute is an unlikely additional factor that doesn't usually enter ito the equation - but we can write a theory of how parachutes will change the prediction (once observed) and deal with that situation seperately.
So the smart money is that we'll see a new theory to explain how some small stars can exist without heavier elements, which doesn't replace the usual heavy elements are needed in small stars theory, it just adds an "unless" clause.

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Re:Occam's Razor by silentcoder · 2011-09-02 01:10 · Score: 1

None of those assumptions remotely approximate the least degree of scientific consensus - the debate is still strongly happening on them.
The evidence we do have can support two conclusions:
1) Life is very fragile and that it happened on earth at all is rare, unique and may never have managed to happen anywhere else.
2) Life is very resilient and has survived despite everything the universe has thrown at is (mostly giant, icy rocks) and continues to survive everywhere it can and everywhere it can't.
The extinction record can logically support BOTH those conclusions even though they are contradictory and until we have more premises (that is to say -data outside of the extinction record) we can't rule one out. This is difficult - the strongest evidence for conclusion 1 is that we've yet to find any conclusive proof that extraterestial life exists (let alone intelligent life). But that's not proof until we've looked everywhere (which is not going to happen soon). The strongest evidence in favor of option 2 is the existence of things like extremeophile bacteria and viable, proper scientific theories that predict life likely existing on some of our solar neighbours and likely having existed in the past on others. There's still some evidence of possible bacterial life on Mars though possibly no longer alive, strong evidence in favor of theories that life may exist beneath the frozen surface of Io exist as well.
Again these theories have other possible explanations - but since their simplicity is no different we can't even us Occam's razor. We won't know till we go look, and even doing that must be done carefully lest we destroy the very thing we're trying to find.
I agree with you -since there's no data that can give us an answer, the data we do have supports either conclusion and we as yet lack the technology to change that Occam's razor simply doesn't apply here.

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Re:Occam's Razor by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 02:13 · Score: 0

Horribly off-topic, but gravity acceleration on Earth is 9.8ish m/s2, isn't it?
Or has my memory of high school physics failed me?
Re:Occam's Razor by fyngyrz · 2011-09-02 02:14 · Score: 1

No, it's based on how difficult it would be to mine elements from a star. We *know* that is difficult to the point of near-impossibility; we *guess* that the universe started with a big bang (and we are trying hard to make a theory with a lot of holes fit better, since it fits the best of the various pretty bad theories we have.)
The OP said the star was mined. I responded by questioning our star formation theories instead because it's a much simpler and more likely place to find an answer. As opposed to aliens mining a star, you see.

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I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Re:Occam's Razor by Gilmoure · 2011-09-02 02:53 · Score: 1

*golf clap*
Very well said.

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I drank what? -- Socrates
Re:Occam's Razor by Teancum · 2011-09-02 04:04 · Score: 1

Or, our capacity to detect elements is not as sharp as we thought.
Considering that Helium (derived from the Greek name for the Sun, Helios) was first detected on the Sun and other stars well before it was found on the Earth, I would say that the ability to detect elements from an incandescent body to be rather good. We certainly know more about the minerals inside distant stars better than we do rocks underneath us more than a mile or two deep.
The detection of elements in stars is as close to an exact science as you can get, where the mathematical relationship for how that detection happens is also well defined. Or perhaps you have never taken any chemistry classes nor studied even in outline electron orbital patterns? Yes, that is related to the issue of stellar spectra and element detection.
If those basic principles are somehow being challenged, you can pretty much kiss almost all "hard" science goodbye as pure mythology.
Re:Occam's Razor by Teancum · 2011-09-02 04:57 · Score: 1

Horribly off-topic, but gravity acceleration on Earth is 9.8ish m/s2, isn't it?
Or has my memory of high school physics failed me?
It does vary a little bit from location to location due to altitude, physical geography, presence of mountains (or lack thereof), and other factors, but in general you are correct with that measurement.
BTW, that makes for a great high school physics assignment to calculate within 2-3 decimal points the local gravitational acceleration rate. Using a sports timer or photo-optical timing device, or even simple stop watch and dropping something off a roof can give you some pretty accurate values for calculation.
Re:Occam's Razor by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 05:00 · Score: 0

Occam's Razor says that, if a model works without one of its factors, then it is safe to remove that factor. It's a rule about logic, not about science.

Actually, what Occam is alleged to have said was "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" ("entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity"), which is a theological statement (see Ockham/nominalism on Wikipedia) rather than a proposition in philosophical logic.
Re:Occam's Razor by danlip · 2011-09-02 05:45 · Score: 1

"fragile" really isn't the right word for your first statement. The question is what are the chances of a bunch of molecules coming together in just the right way for life to happen (ignoring panspermia or divine intervention, both of which I consider equally (un)plausible). This is hard to answer, so life could be everywhere or nowhere but earth. Once it occurs it rapidly diversifies which makes it very robust.
Re:Occam's Razor by repapetilto · 2011-09-02 05:50 · Score: 1

True, but, since I don't know much about the technicalities of star formation, the mining thing seemed like a more interesting question to ask.
Re:Occam's Razor by silentcoder · 2011-09-02 07:55 · Score: 1

Except we have at least 8 viable theories on abiogenesis - none of which are proven - all of which are possible.
Who says there is only ONE right way for life to start ?

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Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Re:Occam's Razor by Teancum · 2011-09-02 09:02 · Score: 1

Who says that amino acids and proteins are the only possible form of life? I have to clean out digital lifeforms out of my computer at least once a month, sometimes much more often.
Re:Occam's Razor by danlip · 2011-09-02 09:56 · Score: 1

like I said, hard to answer. But I still wouldn't call it fragile.
Re:Occam's Razor by danlip · 2011-09-02 10:00 · Score: 1

I don't think anyone said that in this thread. But spontaneous generated life will probably be carbon based, even if it is not amino-acid based. Those digital "lifeforms" did not arise naturally and never would, and need a digital world to already exist. Carbon has properties that are not even remotely matched by any other element - nothing else forms complex compounds like it does.
Re:Occam's Razor by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 11:54 · Score: 0

This is all probably just a residual effects of the mathematics wars a la Kronecker vs. Cantor, that is direct constructive proofs versus indirect existential proofs. The way dark energy and matter is approached and criticized resembles this feud.
It's time for the children's authors to incorporate some of the current patterns of thinking in their books as generations after another seems to be locked in the 18th and 19th century. After all, we still fight in these arenas over something from the first half of 19th century, that is the theory of evolution!
Re:Occam's Razor by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 16:40 · Score: 0

I've always preferred one of Occam's lesser known quotes : "Why the hell do you people keep breaking into my house and stealing my 5-blade razor?"
Re:Occam's Razor by silentcoder · 2011-09-02 19:56 · Score: 1

But there are many other parts of the cycle that could conceivably be replaced by other chemicles. Oxygen can be replaced by Amonia and create cells that are otherwise identical and function just like ours for example. Wikipedia has a page on alternate lifeform theories that lists all the variations, things that make them more or less likely etc.
Interestingly - we may have already spotted proof of ammonia breathing lifeforms... finding the articles is left as an excercise for the reader (hint: it's on NASA's site)*
*Yes I'm aware there is another theory about what may have caused the observation - that's why I said "may have"

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Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Re:Occam's Razor by silentcoder · 2011-09-02 20:06 · Score: 1

You're right, it's MY memory that failed me :P that or I made a typo ...

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Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Re:Occam's Razor by RockDoctor · 2011-09-03 20:56 · Score: 1

Considering that Helium (derived from the Greek name for the Sun, Helios) was first detected on the Sun and other stars well before it was found on the Earth, I would say that the ability to detect elements from an incandescent body to be rather good.
Yes, helium was initially detected in the Sun by spectroscopy, though it was a number of years before they worked out what was happening (because at that time, spectral emission/ absorption patterns were observational facts without a theoretical footing). But helium is around 25% m/m of the Sun. Lithium is a few parts per million.
Qualitative detection is relatively easy ; quantitative measurement of concentrations is considerably more difficult. It can be - and is - done on a routine basis, but it is a more complex problem than qualitative detection.
There was a recent paper about a star dusted with debris from a (putative) planetary collission discussed on Slashdot which, if you'd read the paper would have given a lot of detail about how difficult these things are.
For lithium, a complicating problem (and I haven't RTFP yet - that's my over-lunch treat) is it's possible consumption in sub-fusion reactions which can reduce it's concentration below the primordial level.

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Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Re:Occam's Razor by Teancum · 2011-09-04 01:23 · Score: 1

I'll admit that quantifying ratios or percentages of a particular element is a bit more difficult as opposed to simply detecting if it exists in a star. What I was trying to get across is that the theory under which spectral data is calculated is pretty sound and has been subjected to numerous experiments to back up that theory where a suggestion that spectral analysis needs a whole new theory to explain what is being seen is quite a bit of a stretch.
Yes, trying to get increased precision in measurement data is difficult, and there are other examples in astronomy where the theory is very sound but measurement data is still approximate. Stellar parallax is one of those areas where only recently has data for even nearby stars been able to get beyond a single digit of accuracy or even been able to get the order of magnitude down to any precision.
I should note that increasing precision of measurement has resulted in a number of scientific breakthroughs, with a classical example of how the work of Tycho Brahe (using naked eye measurements and not even a telescope) was able to provide a data set which allowed Johannes Kepler to more accurately determine the orbit of Mars and established the theories in Kepler's Laws. I see what is happening here with this particular star to be precisely that sort of breakthrough, and how pushing back the frontiers of science can and does result in increased knowledge about our universe.
Re:Occam's Razor by RockDoctor · 2011-09-04 02:50 · Score: 1

There is an old saying that "today's noise is tomorrow's measurement and next week's calibration" ; several of the better demonstrations of that can be found in the interplay between physics, chemistry and astronomy through the last couple of centuries.

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Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Re:Occam's Razor by Coren22 · 2011-09-07 03:35 · Score: 1

If that is the case, you need to change how you use your computer.

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APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Re:Occam's Razor by Teancum · 2011-09-07 07:39 · Score: 1

I made a mistake in installing a virus on my computer in the first place. It is called Microsoft Windows with an internet connection. The rest, as they say, is history. Otherwise, you are correct that if I used an operating system I wrote myself and my own compilers, as well as avoided a network connection, I wouldn't have to worry about that stuff. Good luck with that.
Re:Occam's Razor by Coren22 · 2011-09-07 08:14 · Score: 1

Sounds like you need to upgrade off of XP than. Vista and 7 both have significantly less virus problems for those who are at least careful in what they do on the computer.

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APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?

An incredibly old black hole by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 20:51 · Score: 0

What if it was a small black hole left over from the early days of the Universe? The point is the heavier elements would have either been blown off and absorbed by neighboring systems or drawn back in billions of years ago. If the area was rich in Helium and Hydrogen then what they are seeing is actually the event horizon of a black hole that happens to be feeding on what is at hand.

Re:An incredibly old black hole by f()rK()_Bomb · 2011-09-01 21:16 · Score: 1

then there would be jets from the poles

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"The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." - Arthur C. Clarke ~1980

We have a few other solutions to the issue by aglider · 2011-09-01 20:51 · Score: 1

1. The star doesn't belong to this multiverse.
2. A few (astro)physical laws need an overhaul
3. The observations are wrong
4. All the three above.

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Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.

They should check to see if it's bipolar. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 22:16 · Score: 0

Maybe it consumed the lithium because it was depressed?

big bang theory discredited? by vmaldia · 2011-09-01 23:01 · Score: 1

some creationist is gonna say "big bang theory discredited"

Re:big bang theory discredited? by Attila+Dimedici · 2011-09-02 00:16 · Score: 1

Why would they do that? The Big Bang Theory is more consistent with Genesis than any other Cosmological theory of the origin of the universe.

Big Bang Theory: once there was nothing, then Bang there was an explosion of energy
Genesis: God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

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The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Re:big bang theory discredited? by Jaborandy · 2011-09-02 08:51 · Score: 1

It seems the Creationists are the ones clinging to the Big Bang theory as proof that science agrees with their ancient book of truths. They would be the last to claim it's been disproven.

You, a non-religious pedant who believes that faith in the Big Bang makes you scientifically literate, are no scientist. Scientists are open to new theories and will evaluate any theory against observation. If you still believe in the Big Bang after all the observations that falsify it, then you have some catching up to do if you want to be a good scientist.

I am a man with a scientific mind, and in my investigations I have seen sufficient evidence that the Big Bang is an obsolete theory that fails to fit the observations accurately enough. It is based on assumptions and circular logic, supported by the popular belief (both religious and secular) that we must know how the universe began. Too many things, like this article, show that our models for stellar lifecycles are inaccurate. According to standard stellar theory, this star shouldn't exist. According to the Big Bang theory, this start shouldn't exist. It does. We observe it. Now let's work together to update the theory, and let's start by evaluating our assumptions for anything that we can throw out and reconsider.

--Jaborandy

Unusual Star by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 00:33 · Score: 0

Scientists crack me up, they don't know everything. That's the difference between science and faith..

Fantastic! by Vidar+Leathershod · 2011-09-02 00:35 · Score: 1

"The only elements created shortly after the Big Bang were lithium, hydrogen and helium".

Wow. I can't believe people actually say this stuff. And from the looks of it, they believe it.

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The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.

Re:Fantastic! by Sockatume · 2011-09-02 01:21 · Score: 2

Why? The quantities of heavy atoms made in the original big bang nucleosynthesis are widely accepted to have been miniscule. Non-trivial quantities of elements heavier than beryllium didn't exist until stellar nucleosynthesis started. And beryllium itself was produced in such hilariously tiny amounts that it's usually forgotten.

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No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Re:Fantastic! by canajin56 · 2011-09-02 03:23 · Score: 1

By mass, the amounts of lithium and beryllium created during BBNS should be around the same order of magnitude. That may be very small, but nevertheless, the quote in the OP indicates that ONLY lithium hydrogen and helium were created. If your argument is that the amount of beryllium was so small that you can just pretend it's zero and use absolute language, then "no" lithium was created, either.

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ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Re:Fantastic! by JoshuaZ · 2011-09-02 03:55 · Score: 1

Yes ok. You are correct. I didn't mention beryllium. I'm not an astronomer or an astrophysicist but my impression is that the beryllium created was primarily in unstable isotopes like Beryllium-7 which have such a short half-lives that it would all decay before star formation even got started. Is that correct? If so, then this really doesn't matter for star formation issues. Although yes for technical accuracy I it probably would have been better to say something like "the only stable elements" or something like that.
Re:Fantastic! by Vidar+Leathershod · 2011-09-02 14:53 · Score: 1

I guess the point I was making was unclear as a result of your perspective on the "widely accepted" postulations.
It's entertaining and depressing at the same time. People engage in mental self-gratification, using wacky unproven theories by astrophysicists who have never even gotten out of the solar system as a proxy for knowledge. Science actually doesn't work that way, despite the fantasy land that has been constructed around the field of astronomy.
I already knew it was extreme, but I must acknowledge my ignorance of the fact that they are trying to insist that not only were there only 3 elements created shortly after the big bang, but that they know which ones they were. Talk about taking a leap! Here's a plan: immediately revoke any public funding for any "scientists" or organizations who try to foist a wild assumption on an unsuspecting, parroting public by presenting it as a fact.

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The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
Re:Fantastic! by JoshuaZ · 2011-09-02 15:48 · Score: 1

Hmm, interesting. So you didn't care about canajin56 and sockatume's more technical complaint. I'll try to briefly clear up some of these issues (with the disclaimer that I'm not an astrophysicist so I may get some details wrong.)
It's entertaining and depressing at the same time. People engage in mental self-gratification, using wacky unproven theories by astrophysicists who have never even gotten out of the solar system as a proxy for knowledge. Science actually doesn't work that way, despite the fantasy land that has been constructed around the field of astronomy.
Actually, science does work that way. We work with the best evidence we have and we make simulations and models of those. And then we test it against new data. But you do raise a good question: we've never been outside our solar system, how can we have good ideas about the rest of the universe? Well, there are few different methods. The primary method is looking at the colors in stars. To the naked eye, stars all look almost completely the same. But every element gives off light at slightly different frequencies and absorbs light at certain specific frequencies. So, we can look at stars and get data about what elements they are made of. We can also get temperature data from this by studying these lines very carefully. From that, we can get (approximate) distances by looking at how bright the stars are. There's a lot of other stuff going on in this (for example for nearby stars we actually can use essentially highschool geometry to get their distances if one has very sensitive telescopes. This was done in the early 19th century and allowed us to start gathering the data necessary to do what I just described). So, we can get a lot of information about stars while not leaving the comfort of our own solar system.
We can get other data also that helps confirm that our models for stars aren't too far off. For example, in 1987 there was a very close supernova, SN 1987A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A (the A means it was the first supernova found in that year). Now, we detected neutrinos from this supernova. What's more, these neutrinos arrived before the light from the supernova arrived. At this point you should be saying something like "that doesn't make any sense! Nothing travels faster than light." And here's the neat thing: neutrinos don't like interacting with almost anything, but the neutrinos produced in a supernova are produced in the core of the star, they then don't do much to the rest of the star and immediately can stream out. The light produced in a supernova is produced at the edge of the star. So the neutrinos get a tiny head start. In the case of 1987A that headstart was enough for them to arrive about three hours before the light did. Cool stuff. Here's the nice thing: the neutrino levels detected were within experimental error in line with theory. This is one example of many ways that astronomers and astrophysicists have confirmed that a lot of our basic picture of the universe is correct even without leaving our little solar system.
I already knew it was extreme, but I must acknowledge my ignorance of the fact that they are trying to insist that not only were there only 3 elements created shortly after the big bang, but that they know which ones they were
They've been thinking about these issues for a very long time. The original paper discussing elements formed right after the Big Bang is the Alpher–Bethe–Gamow paper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpher%E2%80%93Bethe%E2%80%93Gamow_paper. If you can get access to a copy I recommend that you take a look. The paper is highly readable. How do we have a good guess that those three elements are the elements created after the Big Bang? First of all, the easiest check is simple abundancy: there's a lot more hydrogen and helium in the universe than almost any other elements, an
Re:Fantastic! by Vidar+Leathershod · 2011-09-04 16:42 · Score: 1

In fact, it means one shouldn't make sweeping statements about things one does not actually know. Which is exactly why the "3 elements" statement is so ridiculous. It is almost guaranteed (not just possible, but almost guaranteed) to be WRONG. Repeating such silliness on the notion that the little scraps of information we have are sufficient is actually a disservice to science. It leads to a general mistrust of those in the field, and taints the reputation of the work that might actually have some value to it.

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The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
Re:Fantastic! by JoshuaZ · 2011-09-06 09:34 · Score: 1

The three elements thing is actually something we have a very good understanding of. This isn't an example of a new theory with tentative evidence. Question: If you think this is deeply wrong then you presumably think it is much more likely that the scientific consensus about this will change yes? Do you want to make a bet on whether or not it will change in some timespan? Say whether this will change in the next few years or more longterm like 20 or 30 years?

Some of us are easy, actually by Moraelin · 2011-09-02 00:48 · Score: 2

Actually, some of us are pretty easy about it. Although the Christian God is contradictory enough to be impossible to fully demonstrate, I for one would settle for a much less powerful being as God. Or as a god.

And it's not just me. For 99% of the existence of the human species, we lived just fine with much less omnipotent gods. Even the Jewish God of the OT, actually promised a lot less. Heck, until very late, he didn't even promise an afterlife at all. (In fact, Genesis even spells it out that God _didn't_ want humans to have eternal life.) Other civilizations were perfectly OK with Gods of limited powers, or not immortal (see the Norse Gods), or even already dead (see Osiris.)

I mean, take the traditional supposed powers of a Pharaoh, as an incarnate of Horus. He was supposed to bring fertility and prosperity by just being there, bring Ma'at (justice, orders, etc) to the land, etc. And of course, be the representative of some guys who can give an afterlife.

Let's say some dude came forward and claimed that he is the new incarnate of Horus. How would we go about testing it? Well, for example, let's see if he can influence the fertility of some plots of land, in a double-blind experiment. He gets 100 randomly selected farms he has to boost the production of, 100 he must lower the production of, and 100 more are chosen as control. Repeat that for 2-3 years.

Nobody else knows which farms, until it's time to compare results.

Ma'at? Same deal. Get a list of 100 random cities where the criminality must drop faster than the nation average. Can he pull that stunt?

If he wants to go for even more god points, let's see, Rameses II at Kadesh claimed to have been at some point deserted by all his soldiers and that he personally, with his divine dad Ra as help, repelled the assault of the Hittite chariots at the crucial point of that battle. So it seems to me like there is precedent that the incarnate Horus could use his superhuman powers in battle. Well, we can test that too. We set the guy against a few remote controlled drones or vehicles with belt-fed beanbag ammo, and he must destroy some of them without getting beaned.

If someone can do that, personally I'll cheerfully proclaim him a god. Maybe not THE God, and I may have my doubts about whether it's actually supernatural (as opposed to, you know, it being natural that someone is a god like that;)) but I'll cheerfully grant that guy a minor god status. I might even volunteer to pull rocks for his pyramid, because, hey, it can't hurt to get on a god's good side.

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A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.

Re:Some of us are easy, actually by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 05:23 · Score: 0

Actually, some of us are pretty easy about it. Although the Christian God is contradictory enough to be impossible to fully demonstrate, I for one would settle for a much less powerful being as God. Or as a god.
I'm would be already planning to exterminate or at least to pose a all-out rebellion from the first sign such a creature emerges. After all, who knows what does it have attached over its brain stem?

Not Fraud by earls · 2011-09-02 01:01 · Score: 0

There's no fraud, only incompetence.

Re:Not Fraud by boristhespider · 2011-09-02 05:21 · Score: 1

Fine. Send me a copy of your proposal and I'll see what we can do with it. You'll get first author status on the first paper, which will be to take your non-incompetent alternative and extract from it the CMB -- its monopole and its higher multipoles. If it can also explain the dipole then that's even better. The fit has to be significantly better (quantifiably significant; that means I have to be able to find the Bayesian evidence and find it to be significantly better on a well-defined scale, rather than a random unjustified statement) than that of the current, unsatisfactory model. The second paper will be to attempt to account for structure formation; in particular I want to get out the matter power spectrum of large-scale structure, and to account for the oscillations on large scales.
But I have to see a theory, clearly and mathematically written down, that looks like it would be a viable alternative to the current model. That means it has to fit the data better. At present, that means it has to fit the CMB (temperature and polarisation), matter power spectrum, baryon acoustic oscillations and supernova datasets. Despite some fairly severe, and unknown, systematics in some of those datasets the agreement between them and the standard cosmological model is impressive. Any alternative, including those proposed by people who know their arses from their elbows, struggles to do this, which is unfortunately why we still have "dark energy" - which any of us will happily admit we can't explain.
If your wonderful alternative can't do this - if, for instance, you don't even have an alternative, or if it's so fuzzily phrased that there are no quantifiable predictions out of it as is typically the case when people think they've got an answer - then you've got no grounds to go around calling people incompetent.
Re:Not Fraud by RockDoctor · 2011-09-05 12:21 · Score: 1

Now, now Boris, holding him (whoever it was I've forgotten already) to your standards of evidence is acting like a scientist, not like a wisecracking retard.
This is Slashdot - wisecracking retardery seems to be the new "stuff that matters".

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Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"

That's no mo... star.... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 01:07 · Score: 0

That's no star...

It's a death star.

We need the fifth element...

Re:That's no mo... star.... by maxwell+demon · 2011-09-02 05:05 · Score: 1

That's no star...
It's a death star.
We need the fifth element...
But the astronomers didn't even find the third element!

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The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.

Not surprised by slapout · 2011-09-02 01:24 · Score: 1

"Astronomers Find Unusual Star"

That's not surprising, I mean with all the reality shows we have these days...

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Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad

Is it red-shifted? by Old+Sparky · 2011-09-02 01:52 · Score: 2

If so, then it could be the exhaust plume of a Bussard Ramjet.

Oops! Sorry! Wrong reality...

Really? by hesaigo999ca · 2011-09-02 01:56 · Score: 1

Wow, what is so unusual, you think you know what a star is made up of, especially when you can just take a sample and test it right there and then,
not we have been hypothesizing at all here....

If we really knew what a star was made up of, then I would agree, however, the fact is we still have yet to be able to take real samples, and even so,
we should not think that all stars are the same, or even that we have come across all possible star types.....

Just another day in space continuum for me....

First, dig a hole in the star... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 02:08 · Score: 0

To Mine a Star:

1. Land your converted 2002 Toyota Landcruiser on the stellar surface.
2. Turn on your boom box and crank out some AC/DC (e.g., Back In Black).
3. Get a shovel and start digging up the stellar surface.
4. As soon as you hit Lithium, put it in a bucket.
5. When you're done, fill in the hole so you don't leave a damaged environment.
6. Bring your bucket to the assayer and get your money.
7. Go to the saloon and watch the burlesque show.

I'm confused. by Requiem18th · 2011-09-02 02:41 · Score: 1

The article makes it seem that start formation requires the presence of heavier elements (besides lithium) for a star to form, but aren't heavier elements (besides lithium) only formed within stars?

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But... the future refused to change.

Re:I'm confused. by shoor · 2011-09-02 03:21 · Score: 2

I'm not an anstronomer either, but the article summary did specifically say small star. The wikipedia article on red dwarfs mentions that as of 2009 there is a 'mystery' as to the absence of red dwarfs with no metals, and the preferred explanation is that without metals only large stars can form. So that theory allows for the bigger stars forming, creating heavier elements, and then exploding, spewing those elements out into the universe. Even if red dwarfs had been created at the beginning, they are so long lived they would not have exploded and released heavier elements into the rest of the universe yet anyway.

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In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)

ancient alien theory by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 03:01 · Score: 0

"Thats not a star, but a starship" Giorgio A Tsoukalos

Meh, how bad can it be? by Moraelin · 2011-09-02 06:20 · Score: 1

Meh, how much worse can the Goa'uld be than the existing politicians we got? :p

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A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.

New Star is Consistent with Electric Sun Theory by Jaborandy · 2011-09-02 09:00 · Score: 1

In the nuclear model for stellar lifecycle, only large stars can form without heavier elements like this star. It does not allow small stars to form (and be an active/bright/visible star) without an abundance of heavier elements.

In the Electric model for stellar lifecycle, stars such as this an be visible in an area with higher-than-usual charge differential. Smaller lighter stars have a lower escape velocity, so there is a smaller difference between the escape rates of electrons and protons, so there is a corespondingly lower positive charge on the star as a whole. This means they are less likely to cause enough electric current to be bright/visible. This small star is visible, so according to the Electric Sun theory, the ambient galactic environment around that star must have a stronger negative charge than usual.

Just another piece of evidence that the Big Bang and Nuclear Star theories fail to account for real-word observations, and should be considered falsified.

--Jaborandy

Composition by frisket · 2011-09-02 09:19 · Score: 1

The star's composition is surprising (Pdf)

Damn, I never knew you could make a star out of PDFs. Clever.

The universe is a busy place... by Genda · 2011-09-02 10:08 · Score: 1

Look at the planets in our own solar system. The gas giants and actually good models for stars forming in a collapsing solar nebula. We have Jupiter rich in all kinds of elements, with each planet becoming less enriched as you move out to Neptune which is almost entirely helium and hydrogen. There are all kinds of effects that may be part of close interaction with other large planets, The relative position of the planet and its development in the young stellar nebula that determined what elements would be abundant and which would be rare. Not the relative abundance of heavier elements as you get closer to the sun. Imagine also the impact of the young sun first turning on and pushing its birth nebula away and all that hydrogen and helium freezing out there in the Oort Cloud.

Stars most often form in large nebulae in clusters, that is they form alone. Imagine a super massive star like Eta Carina forming, a star more than 100 time larger than our sun, blasting its nebula away and concentrating vast amounts of hydrogen and helium separated from heavier elements. Imaging other new young stars in a large nebula interacting gravitationally with dwarf stars and gas giants, possibly robbing them of heavy elements or at least concentrating heavier elements away from where the star formed. Star formation is a complicated process and we are just now getting some clue as to how complicated planet formation is, we still don't have the foggiest idea of what can happen to a star in its developing phases.

This star is certainly rare, however I would dare guess that anything that can happen to a star in a universe with hundreds of billions of stars in a galaxy, and hundred of billions or even trillions of galaxies in the universe has or will happen, and that we haven't even scratched the surface of what is weird or rare. The universe is a busy place, and we've only had eyes to see it for a paltry few decades.

Star mining by rossy · 2011-09-03 03:06 · Score: 1

It's not too hard to consider mining a star here are some examples:
1) Wait until the star is bar hopping, and steal the bling from their jewelry box.
2) Remove the heavy elements from the outside of the stars Bentley.
3) When the star enters rehab, file a leon on the heavy elements, then pay to have them delivered to you.
4) After the big bang, when the star is asleep, take a few heavy elements.

--
Ross Youngblood

Duh: wormholes by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-03 12:59 · Score: 0

Obviously the heavier elements hitched a ride on a wormhole that passed through the star. Pesky stargate travelers.

IANAA but... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-05 15:35 · Score: 0

isn't this what might be expected after the star has been subjected to a very strong neutron source? All of the atoms decay into essentially protons and neutrons, and hydrogen forms, producing helium? Just a guess.

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