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How Do We Know the Timeline of the Universe?
StartsWithABang writes The history of the Universe happened in a well-known order: inflation ends, matter wins out over antimatter, the electroweak symmetry breaks, antimatter annihilates away, atomic nuclei form, then neutral atoms, stars, galaxies, and eventually us. But scientists and science magazines often publish timelines of the Universe with incredibly precise times describing when these various events occur. Here's how we arrive at those values, along with the rarely-publicized uncertainties.
Well, the guy didn't claim at any point he is telling the Truth, with a capital T. He is telling what we know today with the knowledge we have and the understanding we have of the physical world. Of course, to a certain extent we have no facts about the early universe (first fraction of a second), however we know how matter behaves at temperatures near these fraction of a second. We know how the cooling affect the matter. We know the universe is cooling, we know about thermodynamics, etc. So, even if it is guesswork, it is pretty much on tracks. You cannot reverse the order like you seem to think, there is no way to link these events in another order.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Which is a theological way to define what Douglas Adams described on why the universe is so elusive to explain.
Another aspect is also - how do we know that the Universe was created at Big Bang. What if it was an empty void that suffered a spontaneous mass appearance.
Or do we live on the inside of a giant black hole?
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
We don't need to scheme and manipulate to make sure our presentation of science leaves them on the poorest footing to rebut us, because, unless they are using science, their rebuttal is irrelevant.
As long as you think it is a priority for scientists to inform the public of their work, then it is necessary to some degree to address rebuttals regardless of the source of the claims. Such rebuttals become quite relevant in the minds of people who are not familiar enough with what is going on to tell the difference, especially with enough publicity. The only place it becomes completely irrelevant is if scientists should only communicate among their own spheres and journals and have no obligation to explain things to anyone outside of that.
It is the same as educating a single person, in the sense you need to adapt to their previous exposure and ideas. If trying to teach someone about black hole research who has a picture in their head of black holes that is way off, that has to be addressed regardless of if that picture has a scientific origin or not.
It might seem like nitpicking, but "guess" to me always implies taking a stab in the dark with little to no evidence and ending there. A scientific hypothesis, meanwhile, usually starts with some data, builds an argument that X should be true because of the initial data, and is subjected to testing to either confirm it or disprove it.
To give an example, you are presented with a clear cube filled with gumballs. A guess would be glancing at it and saying "600?" A hypothesis would be measuring the sides, estimating the size of each gumball, figuring out that there should be 1,000 gumballs, and then opening up the cube and counting the gumballs.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.