Yes if you believe in a homogenous and isotropic Universe.
You can construct all sorts of universe where there are "matter" only in some parts and not others. But they violates our observations (we see stuff everywhere). Of course you can say "oh we don't see the parts where there are no stuff". You are allowed to say that, but then "why bother if we never see them?". Basically, postulating that there are "empty" regions that we cannot see violates Kant's principle that theories need to be falsifiable.
BBN is a robust theory. It's so robust that if you tried to even modify it a bit, you'll get nonsense. Basically, it uses a very very simple idea (the Boltzmann equation, which statistically evolve a set of particles in phase-space with any arbitrary interaction terms), put it into a large computer, and churn out the results.
(Some) People question the validity of Einstein's General Relativity, but the confidence in BBN is unshakable. The simplicity of it (you can teach it to a bunch of people in an hour), and the fact that it actually predicts to extreme accuracy what we see in the Universe (eg. it predicts 75% Hydrogen, which we see), makes it an extremely hard theory to break.
Oh yeah, Bekenstein is of the Hawking-Bekenstein Fame. He is the guy who suggested the Entropy/Area correspondance. So I think he's smarter than Hawking (who set out to prove it wrong but ended up proving it right).
Modified Dynamics that you talked about have no covariant formulation (i.e. the theories are all coordinate-system dependent, which is bad since physics should not care about coordinates).
(I spent a year looking around for a covariant formulation...with no success of course.)
Excellent questions. Only problem is that it has no relevance to the "Creation of Normal Matter" the article is talking about.
The "normal matter" they were talking about are baryons (electrons, protons, neutrons etc and their composites). And the "creation" they talk about is "Big Bang Nucleonsynthesis", which is when protons and neutrons and electrons and stuff fuse together to make H, He and Li. The ratio of the production rates of these stuff implies certain "wiggles" in the CMB spectrum, so gives us a gauge (with lots and lots of caveats the scientists don't tell you) to the so-called "baryonic density". (Dark matter, by definition, do not interact with baryons, so it's hard to measure them since all the tools we have are made out of baryons.)
Big Bang Nucleonsynthesis (despite its name) can occur without a Big Bang : we just need the Universe to be Very Hot and Dense at some point.
Your questions about the origins of Big Bang is a much deeper and harder question. While it seems a philosophical argument, it is recently being attacked by some theorists. Most of the time, they just ask the question : do we need a Big Bang that starts from a singularity? The answer, with our current observations, is a BIG NO. But then they have to figure out a better alternative that can give us a very hot and dense Early Universe (so we can have Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, which is a very very very very well observed and constrained theory : i.e. it's fucking correct.)
You sound like somebody who really wants rigority and logic in formulating your worldview, but would not take the final step of embracing the scientific method.
Because, according to the scientific method, the jury is still out about the existence of a creator/first cause.
I just learned recently that this form of philosophy makes you a "gnostic theist". Nothing wrong with that, of course.
You may not like this binary definition, and hey: it's just a semantical construction. But they do ask an honest and specific question, and "agnostic" doesn't even answer the same question that was asked.
It seems that dichonomistic logic is the only one people are familiar with:(. I have to keep telling people (in this on thread!) that "It's OK to sit on the fence!".
Well, yes. But so... do you then have a belief in god then, or not?
I don't know if I have belief or not. It's OK to defer judgment until further evidence. This issue is too important to make a snap decision without clear evidence either or.
For eg, you are sick and the doctor couldn't decide if to operate on you or not because she hasn't figured out if that's going to help. Are you going to keep insisting "So do you believe that operating on me will save me or not?"
I'll take an "I don't know" anytime from the doctor if that's her honest answer.
Personally, I cannot believe in anything unless I have a good reason to (and then, I don't really call it "belief," but rather knowledge, which, being conditional and inferential, seems much more honest anyway).
Well, you have answered the question for me there!
Also, I think "I don't know" is a fair answer to the "Do you believe?" question. It is saying that "I don't know if I believe or not." Like, eg, "I don't know if I like ice cream or not."
It's OK not to make any commitment for or against. Like I said in another post, sitting on the fence is a delicate business. But it's something that I have gotten used to.
Well, I guess I add extra stuff to the word "agnostics" because that's how I categorise my own brand.
When you say "I am an agnostic" you don't actually answer the\question of "do you believe in god or not." One can still ask you: "yes, I understand that you have no knowledge of god, but do you believe anyway?"
Isn't that annoying?:). People just got to have an instantaneous answer! The answer to the next question (for me) is usually "I don't know." If they persist "Yes, but what is your gut feeling?" Then my answer would be "My gut tells me there is no God, but I don't trust my gut as a thinking apparatus."
These are after all semantics. But one have to rely on them once in a while : especially when describing oneself to somebody who is impatient and only understand two possibilities "Are you or are you Not?"
I generally call myself an agnostic (which usually means I have to end up defining to most people what that means).
But the Truth is more than just that Million Dollar Question. And a lot more interesting.
If you are a patient one, then I am :
(a) unable to decide on the existence of Judeo-Christeo-type God due to lack of evidence
(b) unable to decide on viability of Buddhism as a world-view until the buddhists agree among themselves what it constitute to be one
(c) think New Age Religion is crap
(d) hunt for sex and love (mostly the former)
(e) think Buffy is hot, but the show is blah
(f) agree that Unicorn horns are good items to have, but don't kill the white ones
(g) think Bruce Lee rocks, Jackie Chan rolls
(h) agree that Native Americans have a intresting world view : especially their funny dilineation of what it means to be "nearest kin" but mostly think that their Element worship is misguided superstition
(i) which also means that I think superstition, magicks, seances, spiritualism, etc is all baloney (unless shown repeatable/testable proof of course)
(j) loves swamp gas too
*sigh*, another statement of faith masquerading as an argument.
God has made himself known through many ways, and it behooves us to seek Him.
Please show scientifically testable/repeatable proof.
As for agnostics being lazy, you are accusing people who have spent a lot of time thinking about the issue and evaluating the evidence but came up with the an intellectually honest answer : "We don't have sufficient evidence to decide on whether God exists" of being lazy. I think that's a strawman argument.
I am an agnostic. I spend all my time seeking the Truth as a physicist. That's my job. And if I get lazy, my advisor will kick my butt. Perhaps you should widen your views about what constitutes "Truth" and what constitutes "Faith."
Feynman once said, "It's hard to sit on the Fence." Agnostics sit on the fence all the time, and Feynman's is right : it's not easy.
Disagree. You are assuming that agnostics is making the "inability to prove god's existence" as a statement of faith. That's not true.
Agnostics have decided that it is not worth pursuing the idea of God after evaluating current evidence for it. If new evidence turns up, then agnostics are more than happy to reevaluate the situation.
And to agnostics, it does matter whether God exists or not. Basically, agnostics are people who "haven't figure it out yet". Maybe they are lazy, but there are some who have put a lot of thought into it but come up empty because there is not enough evidence.
That's not a cop-out by any means. And in my opinion (which everybody is allowed to disagree with of course), that's the most intellectually honest since it considers the evidence.
No matter how meaningful quantities hydrogen are generated, greenheads will hate the fact that mother earth will incur vast amounts of greenhouse gases.
True. However, it changes the nature of the problem. H2 cells development must go hand in hand with development of greenhouse gas/waste containment.
Or, even, use nuclear energy to make H2 fuel cells. Nukes makes lots of radiative stuff, but the bad stuff is in one nice chunk, not spread out in the atmosphere like the CO2 crap our cars spew out.
I agree with you on why we should keep pluto as a planet for funding issues and pedagogy. Besides I like Pluto:).
I do not think most astronomers debate on the status of Pluto as much as the media makes them to be. (At least not in this department of astronomy, though we don't do much planetary science.)
But I think that those who does debate (esp. those who wanted to reclassify Pluto) about it, is really doing science a disservice in putting the limelight on the wrong place. Just look at/., people worry about Pluto is/isn't a planet, and missing the point about how interesting Kuiper belt objects are.
Well, this is a special case. The reason there is no planet between Jupiter and Mars is because Jupiter's and the Sun's gravity generates a steep gravititational gradient (read:tidal), tearing apart any planets that might try to form there.
I guess planetoid formation is still an active area of research and my previous question is an unfair one. (I asked the guy next office who works on this stuff.)
Slashdot Mirror
Because, in the BBN case, we did. BBN predicts the cosmic abundances, which was then measured.
Yes if you believe in a homogenous and isotropic Universe.
You can construct all sorts of universe where there are "matter" only in some parts and not others. But they violates our observations (we see stuff everywhere). Of course you can say "oh we don't see the parts where there are no stuff". You are allowed to say that, but then "why bother if we never see them?". Basically, postulating that there are "empty" regions that we cannot see violates Kant's principle that theories need to be falsifiable.
BBN is a robust theory. It's so robust that if you tried to even modify it a bit, you'll get nonsense. Basically, it uses a very very simple idea (the Boltzmann equation, which statistically evolve a set of particles in phase-space with any arbitrary interaction terms), put it into a large computer, and churn out the results.
(Some) People question the validity of Einstein's General Relativity, but the confidence in BBN is unshakable. The simplicity of it (you can teach it to a bunch of people in an hour), and the fact that it actually predicts to extreme accuracy what we see in the Universe (eg. it predicts 75% Hydrogen, which we see), makes it an extremely hard theory to break.
Oh yeah, Bekenstein is of the Hawking-Bekenstein Fame. He is the guy who suggested the Entropy/Area correspondance. So I think he's smarter than Hawking (who set out to prove it wrong but ended up proving it right).
Modified Dynamics that you talked about have no covariant formulation (i.e. the theories are all coordinate-system dependent, which is bad since physics should not care about coordinates).
(I spent a year looking around for a covariant formulation...with no success of course.)
Sanders : Kapteyn Astronomical Institute
Finzi : Dunno
Bekenstein : Weizmann Institute, IL
Milgrom : visiting Cambridge/Oxford/England
Excellent questions. Only problem is that it has no relevance to the "Creation of Normal Matter" the article is talking about.
The "normal matter" they were talking about are baryons (electrons, protons, neutrons etc and their composites). And the "creation" they talk about is "Big Bang Nucleonsynthesis", which is when protons and neutrons and electrons and stuff fuse together to make H, He and Li. The ratio of the production rates of these stuff implies certain "wiggles" in the CMB spectrum, so gives us a gauge (with lots and lots of caveats the scientists don't tell you) to the so-called "baryonic density". (Dark matter, by definition, do not interact with baryons, so it's hard to measure them since all the tools we have are made out of baryons.)
Big Bang Nucleonsynthesis (despite its name) can occur without a Big Bang : we just need the Universe to be Very Hot and Dense at some point.
Your questions about the origins of Big Bang is a much deeper and harder question. While it seems a philosophical argument, it is recently being attacked by some theorists. Most of the time, they just ask the question : do we need a Big Bang that starts from a singularity? The answer, with our current observations, is a BIG NO. But then they have to figure out a better alternative that can give us a very hot and dense Early Universe (so we can have Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, which is a very very very very well observed and constrained theory : i.e. it's fucking correct.)
Oog the Caveman
back after long hibernation.
Breaks head, write in CAPS.
It's his time, not yours. So what are you complaining about?
You sound like somebody who really wants rigority and logic in formulating your worldview, but would not take the final step of embracing the scientific method.
Because, according to the scientific method, the jury is still out about the existence of a creator/first cause.
I just learned recently that this form of philosophy makes you a "gnostic theist". Nothing wrong with that, of course.
Does a god exist is not answerable with current evidence.
:).
Do I believe in god gets a no answer for today.
I am happy with changing my stance on my beliefs every day or so.
God, semantics. That'll be the end of me.
The best of them is still The Onion : America's Finest News Source.
*sigh*.
Today, my answer is no. Today only.
Come ask me the same question tomorrow again for a new reevaluation of the evidence.
OK. I'll keep sitting on the fence. And if somebody ask me "Do you believe or not?" I'll just snort, laugh maniacally, and refuse to give an answer!
;).
I.e., no answer. The questioner never knows my answer, because I have none!
How's that for size
You may not like this binary definition, and hey: it's just a semantical construction. But they do ask an honest and specific question, and "agnostic" doesn't even answer the same question that was asked.
:(. I have to keep telling people (in this on thread!) that "It's OK to sit on the fence!".
It seems that dichonomistic logic is the only one people are familiar with
Well, yes. But so... do you then have a belief in god then, or not?
I don't know if I have belief or not. It's OK to defer judgment until further evidence. This issue is too important to make a snap decision without clear evidence either or.
For eg, you are sick and the doctor couldn't decide if to operate on you or not because she hasn't figured out if that's going to help. Are you going to keep insisting "So do you believe that operating on me will save me or not?"
I'll take an "I don't know" anytime from the doctor if that's her honest answer.
Personally, I cannot believe in anything unless I have a good reason to (and then, I don't really call it "belief," but rather knowledge, which, being conditional and inferential, seems much more honest anyway).
Well, you have answered the question for me there!
Also, I think "I don't know" is a fair answer to the "Do you believe?" question. It is saying that "I don't know if I believe or not." Like, eg, "I don't know if I like ice cream or not."
It's OK not to make any commitment for or against. Like I said in another post, sitting on the fence is a delicate business. But it's something that I have gotten used to.
Well, I guess I add extra stuff to the word "agnostics" because that's how I categorise my own brand.
:). People just got to have an instantaneous answer! The answer to the next question (for me) is usually "I don't know." If they persist "Yes, but what is your gut feeling?" Then my answer would be "My gut tells me there is no God, but I don't trust my gut as a thinking apparatus."
:)
When you say "I am an agnostic" you don't actually answer the\question of "do you believe in god or not." One can still ask you: "yes, I understand that you have no knowledge of god, but do you believe anyway?"
Isn't that annoying?
See, I've got it all covered.
Semantics, don't you just love them?
Hey! Mark Hamill is GOD!
Excellent post.
These are after all semantics. But one have to rely on them once in a while : especially when describing oneself to somebody who is impatient and only understand two possibilities "Are you or are you Not?"
I generally call myself an agnostic (which usually means I have to end up defining to most people what that means).
But the Truth is more than just that Million Dollar Question. And a lot more interesting.
If you are a patient one, then I am :
(a) unable to decide on the existence of Judeo-Christeo-type God due to lack of evidence
(b) unable to decide on viability of Buddhism as a world-view until the buddhists agree among themselves what it constitute to be one
(c) think New Age Religion is crap
(d) hunt for sex and love (mostly the former)
(e) think Buffy is hot, but the show is blah
(f) agree that Unicorn horns are good items to have, but don't kill the white ones
(g) think Bruce Lee rocks, Jackie Chan rolls
(h) agree that Native Americans have a intresting world view : especially their funny dilineation of what it means to be "nearest kin" but mostly think that their Element worship is misguided superstition
(i) which also means that I think superstition, magicks, seances, spiritualism, etc is all baloney (unless shown repeatable/testable proof of course)
(j) loves swamp gas too
*sigh*, another statement of faith masquerading as an argument.
God has made himself known through many ways, and it behooves us to seek Him.
Please show scientifically testable/repeatable proof.
As for agnostics being lazy, you are accusing people who have spent a lot of time thinking about the issue and evaluating the evidence but came up with the an intellectually honest answer : "We don't have sufficient evidence to decide on whether God exists" of being lazy. I think that's a strawman argument.
I am an agnostic. I spend all my time seeking the Truth as a physicist. That's my job. And if I get lazy, my advisor will kick my butt. Perhaps you should widen your views about what constitutes "Truth" and what constitutes "Faith."
Feynman once said, "It's hard to sit on the Fence." Agnostics sit on the fence all the time, and Feynman's is right : it's not easy.
Disagree. You are assuming that agnostics is making the "inability to prove god's existence" as a statement of faith. That's not true.
Agnostics have decided that it is not worth pursuing the idea of God after evaluating current evidence for it. If new evidence turns up, then agnostics are more than happy to reevaluate the situation.
And to agnostics, it does matter whether God exists or not. Basically, agnostics are people who "haven't figure it out yet". Maybe they are lazy, but there are some who have put a lot of thought into it but come up empty because there is not enough evidence.
That's not a cop-out by any means. And in my opinion (which everybody is allowed to disagree with of course), that's the most intellectually honest since it considers the evidence.
No matter how meaningful quantities hydrogen are generated, greenheads will hate the fact that mother earth will incur vast amounts of greenhouse gases.
True. However, it changes the nature of the problem. H2 cells development must go hand in hand with development of greenhouse gas/waste containment.
Or, even, use nuclear energy to make H2 fuel cells. Nukes makes lots of radiative stuff, but the bad stuff is in one nice chunk, not spread out in the atmosphere like the CO2 crap our cars spew out.
I'm a little disappointed with how contrived the disinfectant scene was. And the way the camera paused during it was just silly
A LITTLE disappointed? Geeze, I can watch that scene 1001 times and still doesn't know what the heck the two were talking about!!!!
just "1300" reductions in job. That place employs tons of people.
At least that's what the local newspapers say.
Disclaimer : I'm from penang. But I'm not in penang.
I agree with you on why we should keep pluto as a planet for funding issues and pedagogy. Besides I like Pluto :).
/., people worry about Pluto is/isn't a planet, and missing the point about how interesting Kuiper belt objects are.
I do not think most astronomers debate on the status of Pluto as much as the media makes them to be. (At least not in this department of astronomy, though we don't do much planetary science.)
But I think that those who does debate (esp. those who wanted to reclassify Pluto) about it, is really doing science a disservice in putting the limelight on the wrong place. Just look at
Well, this is a special case. The reason there is no planet between Jupiter and Mars is because Jupiter's and the Sun's gravity generates a steep gravititational gradient (read:tidal), tearing apart any planets that might try to form there.
I guess planetoid formation is still an active area of research and my previous question is an unfair one. (I asked the guy next office who works on this stuff.)
Thanks