When I was a kid, we had to wait for the newspaper to find things out. And we didn't read it then, either. Except for the funnies. And there were only three TV stations, and they showed soaps all day.
Then there are places like remote Venezuala where it takes Michael Douglas ten years to find out the Doobie Brothers broke up.
And I'm still waiting to hear who really shot Kennedy. I couldn't figure it out from that movie.
Man, the world was a weird place when I was a kid, just like one of those science fiction novels.
There are a lot of wannabe SF writers out there. I know, I was one of them once before I broke in, and have done my time in critique groups, workshops, etc. Even in those groups where there were usually some more experienced people, there were those who got desperate and would grasp at any hope at all.
Even though it would cost them hundreds of dollars in one of these scams.
Over the years, there have been many fake book doctors associated with sham publishers. It's hard for me to believe there's all that much money to be made off of desperate writers, but I guess there is enough.
If someone wants to vanity publish, and knows the score, fine, I don't care. No one will buy the book for the most part unless you're one in a million (in which case find a real publisher!), but hey, it's done, and Christmas presents are easy that year. But stealing a few hundred dollars from (often) poor writers and dashing their dreams when they do figure out they've been fleeced, that's awful.
I hope the publicity this produces will help save a few writers from such a fate.
Also, when I say evolution, I mean "The Theory of Evolution," and assume everyone else does, too. They should at least, because they often then go on about how it's "just a theory" and again are being sloppy about the definition of a scientific theory. You can't nitpick enough on this, since this is the kind of crap that shows up in school board meetings where someone tries to slip in some version of creationism as also "just a theory" when it isn't scientific and hasn't passed any tests. Nitpicking back.
The assumption of 1/10 of a bacterium is outrageous, for instance. The primitive Earth can make amino acids, easy, and other moderately complex organic molecules. From there you need merely the minimum self-replicating unit to get going, a piece of RNA perhaps, and there are scenarios to construct it that are plausible. Not necessarily likely, but much more plausible than the numbers you're slinging. You might check out this NASA page with more information.
OK, I like this post better than your previous one. I read the previous one as very disingenuous, arguing that evolution was accepted primarily because scientists were athiests and that they thought there was infinite time for it to work. I called crap, because I disagreed strongly with those two notions, especially the "primarily" part.
If you want some more math, assume a 10% error rate is acceptable, and use something one tenth as complex as the simplest known bacteria (60,000 base pairs) as the target. Then we have 54000^6000*4^6000 ~= 4^47162*4^6000 == 4^53162 correct combinations of 60000 base pairs. (explanation of figures 54000^6000 is the number of places you can put an error to the power of the number of errors, 4^6000 is the number of possible errors if placed in series ~= means approximately equal and if you don't know what I did there don't bother talking to me) Now 4^53162/4^60000 = 4^-6838 ~= 10^-4116 is the probability that a string of 60000 base pairs will be close enough. Again with a generous one try per atom in the known univers per second since the big bang, this is 10^106*10^-4116 == 10^-4010, which is still well within the "impossible" range. Of course, feel free to tell me I suck at math if you can correct me. Although I do think my little overestimate with regards to hom many trys chance gets should make up for any inaccuracies.
Now, the problem here isn't your math, but your assumptions. You're doing a calculation assuming that somehow this entire bacterium, or at least its DNA, self-assembles from random. First, evolution does not address the origin of life. It addresses the origin of species. Therefore such math has no direct relevance to the core ideas of evolution (mutation, natural selection, variance across a population, changing environmental pressures). Second, no non-Creationist would make the claim that bacteria self-assembled from random processes. Presumably selection processes would have been involved and you don't do it all at once, and you don't do it from random. There are theories for how it could have happened, none of which are as robust as evolution, but with much more reasonable "odds" than what you suggest.
But that whole topic is beyond the scope of a slashdot thread on Hubble.
I appreciate your thoughtful comments, since many holding similar sentiments don't bother to voice them clearly at all. Usually it's something like, "Hey, that billion dollars would be better spent feeding starving people."
Here's a post I've made before to this:
Are Americans, or most people in the world, hungry and unsheltered because of a lack of money? No, they're not. Politics, and other issues, are the major obstacles. Astronomy is pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things. It's ridiculous to prioritize the problems of the nation, or the world, and then apply all resources to solving the first one, then the second one, ad infinitum. That's not a wise thing to do.
One of the things that makes human civilization great, in my opinion, is that we care about this sort of knowledge. We value it for it's own sake. There are ways to determine the nature of the universe and our place in it. A culture that fails to look past its immediate physical needs of food and shelter is a short-sighted one that isn't any greater than a troop of baboons.
Life isn't just for food, sex, sleeping, and being comfortable. Not in my opinion. There are things to do in this lifetime we have, and learning about the universe we live in is one of those worthwhile things.
Astronomers actually do a really good job of trying to get the most bang for the buck out of Washington. Every ten years, we assemble a panel, have a lot of discussions and input, then prioritize the needs and costs of the entire community. This IS good science, and not pork barrel politics (although Senator Barbara Mikulski is undenaibly a huge Hubble advocate in part because the institute is in her state).
Hubble has been rated to have the best science per dollar across all of astronomy (there was a detailed paper comparing the number of papers and the scientific impact of the papers for a wide variety of astronomical projects). Hubble has produced great science, and we know many things now that would be impossible to know without Hubble.
We're always trying to find better, cheaper, and more innovative ways of doing things. Review panels (and I've sat on my share) reward such proposals. The James Webb Telescope will be bigger than Hubble, AND cheaper. No one throws money at us. We have to argue for it. A lot. And astronomy is a small science, with little practical application, and in the grand scheme of things (the US Federal Budget), we get a very tiny amount.
For my own personal Hubble time where I have been the principal investigator, I've had a six-orbit project and a five-orbit project, both to study quasar host galaxies. I've also gotten a $55k grant from Hubble to study archival data concerning quasar spectral energy distributions. We've published papers on these projects and advanced our understanding. Would I spend $55k of my own money to do this? No, of course not, because that would be all my take-home pay for a year, maybe a bit more, but would I spend the same fraction out of my own pocket for astronomy that the government does, absolutely. And a lot more. Most of my disposable income goes toward entertainment or science books, travel, stuff like that without much practical return to my finances, house, or world at large, but I don't want to live like a baboon either.
Of what value is knowing the age of the universe? Or understanding how stars explode? Or how the universal expansion is accelerating? Or how planets form? I think answering these and other fundamental questions is important and should be supported at some small but consistent level similar to what has been done historically.
How do you explain away the many successful scientists who are both out-and-out Creationists and dare to say so despite the risk of being branded heretic and burned at the academic stake for it?
I don't have to, because there are not "many" if by "creationist" you mean disbeliever in evolution, natural selection, etc. Rare, rare, rare. It's possible to get a PhD in science and hold any number of irrational beliefs, but most scientists don't because irrational beliefs are the antithesis of scientific thought. How about we instead talk about the overwhelming number of scientists who are secure about evolution? I'm sure you've heard about Project Steve?
Again, most of the creationist hacks I come across usually argue against what they think evolution is, rather than what the theory actually is. For instance, evolution says nothing about the origin of life, just of species. That's "uneducated" in my book.
Personally, you should peddle your creationist non-science someplace other than slashdot, and, at the least, some thread other than one about the Hubble Space Telescope.
Plenty of UV expertise at Wisconsin, where I almost went for grad school. I was a FUSE post-doc for a few years, and have written more than one paper on ultraviolet spectroscopy. Lots of transitions there that provide important diagnostics. A good friend of mine is at Boulder with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) group (COS is one of the instruments that was slated to go onto Hubble, before). They'll get by, but we're definitely losing unique scientific capability.
No, your two points are also CRAP. Darwin himself pushed no theology with evolution, and to the extent the theory flew in the face of widespread religous beliefs, that would tend to make the theory HARDER to accept, not easier. Darwin was raised Christian, moved to theism, and settled into agnosticism. Alfred Wallace, a co-discovered of natural selection was also agnostic and was quoted as saying "I cared and thought nothing about [religion]." I think the years of careful observation coupled to the twenty years Darwin spent working on his ideas prior to publication was a bit more important to the acceptance of evolution than their religous implications. The implicit assumption in your point is that all scientists are athiests out to somehow disprove religion, which again, is CRAP.
The second point. While there some may have believed in an infinite universe at the time, and I'm not at all sure that this opinion prevailed, it wasn't based on science. There was certainly no consensus. The sun's power source was unknown. Radioactive dating, and radioactivity itself, was unknown. More importantly, all the nonsense about probabilities and bases pairs is CRAP, since DNA was not recognized until the middle of the 20th century. Who was to say in Darwin's day what was slow or fast, or about how much time was needed? Even though geology couldn't put hard numbers on the age of the Earth, geology alone was sufficient to question a young Earth of 6000 years.
So I'm calling crap. Especially if you "can't do the math." Cite some serious sources, not creationists or their lackeys. I'm not an atheist, but I am a scientist who defends critical thinking and accuracy. I don't even know why you're bringing this up other that to perpetuate myths that hurt science and scientific literacy. The fact that evolution was accepted, and the fact it is still accepted, is that it is scientific and testable, and meets the tests.
Why don't you think evolution was accepted on its merits? Why create this myth that it was initially accepted for political and philosophical reasons, if not to discredit it?
In astronomy, early scientists like Copernicus and Galileo either lived in fear of the church, or were outright destroyed by it, because they pursued better explanations in the face of authority. Nothing sticks in science because it contradicts a religous belief, but rather because it passes experimental verification.
Why not post something thoughtful related to the Hubble Space Telescope rather than spreading misinformation about evolution???
Sure, we can do a better optical space telescope, and we will. Hubble is likely to fail completely in the next 2-3 years (and in fact a key instrument, STIS, failed last August). There's no other game in town for certain science projects.
I've submitted proposals to use Hubble each of the last 7 years, most recently last month. I've gotten several of those projects through. If there was another telescope in existence that could complete those projects, I would use it. Most proposed projects get turned down, because there's usually about 7-8 times as many projects proposed each year as there is telescope time. We can keep Hubble well used and productive quite a bit longer, providing UNIQUE data sets obtainable in no other way.
When you have unique capabilities, you don't just say "this is old and therefore worthless." If a Hubble replacement/successor was scheduled for sooner than about 2011 or 2012, I'd agree that Hubble should be let go. Since that's not the case, I'm in favor of going ahead with the repair/refurbishment mission as originally planned.
Hubble was conceived in the era that saw the shuttle as a convenient truck to/from space with missions every week. Didn't quite turn out that way, did it?
Hubble is the only telescope ever built and intended to be serviced like this. There are no others currently, and no plans to build another. They are all being done since Hubble based on the "disposable" model as you suggest.
Not very much at all...which is why they were installed in the first place. They did decrease the throughput, which is why all the new instruments have been designed with optics to compensate for Hubble's flawed primary.
Hubble has some advantages that Keck with AO can't touch. For instance, the AO systems work in the infrared, not the optical, and for sure not in the ultraviolet (which is blocked by the atmosphere). There are some other technical issues, too, to consider (e.g. the specific shape of the point spread functions). Hubble also has a huge advantage in background light, and in platform stability (Keck cannot point and stare so fixedly at one patch of sky for ten days straight like Hubble).
I'm not sure this is worth the money versus building ten Kecks, or a couple of new super-duper ground-based telescopes (e.g., 30 meters), but it is important to consider what unique capabilites are being lost.
I'll add that the James Webb Telescope will work at longer wavelengths than Hubble, and will not duplicate Hubble's UV capability. In that sense, I would support the proposed Hubble "copy" that would fly the to-be-orphaned new Hubble Instruments, especially as seeing as how there's no ultraviolet spectroscopic capability in the near term.
I suspect this idea is dead in the water given where James Webb Space Telescope is at the moment. It is viewed by Washington and most of the astronomical community as Hubble's replacement, and attempts to propose new ultraviolet telescopes to advance Hubble's current science have not fared well.
Crap should be shouted down, always. Evolution, no matter what you or 44% of Americans think about it, isn't religous or a bad scientific theory.
Those who do not accept the basic tenets of evolution are usually not well educated about what it is and isn't, or are not careful thinkers. Such people will not succeed in science, except for perhaps in some minor way, so no great loss.
I submit that if 44% of the US population do no accept evolution, science and science educators need MORE SUPPORT, not less, and that perhaps the largest degree of blame falls with extreme popogandists (e.g. pathlights.com, not exactly the NAS is it?).
Re:Wait a sec, this story isn't about "dark matter
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Hi Andy -- been too busy as usual, and down with the flu this week. I just use the powerpoint web default, even though I have similar problems looking at the slides from my linux box without explorer (mozilla there). No student complaints yet! Microsoft has conquered the college campus at least.
Re:Wait a sec, this story isn't about "dark matter
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It's more like 10 times as much non-baryonic matter. The numbers to compare are Omega_matter = 0.28 (total matter) versus the Omega_baryon (0.024). The Omega parameter is proportional to density, so you can work out the relative ratios of the two types.
We're still working out just how dark matter is distributed, and on what scales. Some are easy. Some are hard.
Neutrinos, by the way, are present in large numbers from the early universe just like the background radiation (and neither comes from stellar activity). There's also a "neutrino background" we can someday, in the very far future, hope to study.
Re:Wait a sec, this story isn't about "dark matter
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Wayne Hu at the university of Chicago has a great set of webpages that explain these results. If you don't have much of a background, start with the lowest level and work up. To get to the hard numbers (two significant figures), check out the "experiments and data" link. They're based on the relative amplitudes of the acoustic peaks in the microwave background.
Re:Wait a sec, this story isn't about "dark matter
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Yeah, that is funny in the context of this discussion, isn't it?!
Re:Wait a sec, this story isn't about "dark matter
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Yeah, at least part of them. You can go to my website above, hit "Astronomy Work" link on the left, and be taken to http:physics.uwyo.edu/~mbrother where you'll find links to three recent courses I've taught. The intro astronomy course (1050) is currently in session and so the slides for that one are incomplete. These are slides, meant to accompany lecture, so they aren't enough on their own, but you might enjoy looking anyway.
I'm an astrophysicist, too, and think we've crossed paths here before. I'm also a science fiction writer, and I'm exploiting some of the exotic, non-baryonic dark matter for my second novel (under revision now, working title is SPIDER STAR).
While we have some ideas about the non-baryonic dark matter that might pan out soon, indeed, we're clueless about the dark energy in a very profound way.
Re:Wait a sec, this story isn't about "dark matter
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Cosmologists, primarily based on data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, are now willing to put pretty hard numbers on the ratios of baryonic and non-baryonic matter (about 1:7 or so). ALL of the non-baryonic matter is dark. A good fraction of the baryonic matter is dark, in the sense that it doesn't emit much light (e.g., very cool stars, non-accreting black holes, planets, etc.).
There sure is dark matter out there that we don't understand well at all, and probably more than one kind. Neutrinos are one form, since recent experiments indicate they do have some mass. Neutrinos are pretty exotic compared to normal baryonic matter. There may well be weirder stuff.
Agree with you though, that Star Trek overdoes it.
Re:Wait a sec, this story isn't about "dark matter
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If you just think astrophysics is math, you'd flunk the heck out of my astronomy exams no matter your mathematical sophistication. Probably every level of astronomy, from non-major to graduate level. At least the way I teach it.
Math is a very useful tool in astrophysics, but there's a reason that math is a separate department from any physical science.
Good work but the headline is overheated
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First, this result only applies to BARYONIC dark matter, which is only a fraction of all the dark matter out there. Second, we already knew that a lot of it at the epochs in question was in the form of hot intercluster gas.
The current work is an improvement over previous studies, and is good work. But the headline rather sucks. I thought we'd detected axions or something, even though I'd already read about this result.
I teach techniques to estimate cluster masses based on X-ray emission, and have used the Chandra X-ray Observatory myself. A headline about such work shouldn't trick me.
" If old people are not allowed to drive, then what is the justification for allowing anyone to drive?"
How about younger than 16?
Everyone, at some time, has to pass an exam where they demonstrate competence driving. Not perfection, but competence, and there is a minimum acceptable level. As long as a driver can achieve that, they should be able to drive.
We as a society recognize that vision may deteriorate over time, and force people to provee their vision is still good enough to drive. Similarly, some form of "competence" check also makes sense in the same way, since driving ability (regardless of vision) may also deteriorate over time.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was a kid, we had to wait for the newspaper to find things out. And we didn't read it then, either. Except for the funnies. And there were only three TV stations, and they showed soaps all day.
Then there are places like remote Venezuala where it takes Michael Douglas ten years to find out the Doobie Brothers broke up.
And I'm still waiting to hear who really shot Kennedy. I couldn't figure it out from that movie.
Man, the world was a weird place when I was a kid, just like one of those science fiction novels.
There are a lot of wannabe SF writers out there. I know, I was one of them once before I broke in, and have done my time in critique groups, workshops, etc. Even in those groups where there were usually some more experienced people, there were those who got desperate and would grasp at any hope at all.
Even though it would cost them hundreds of dollars in one of these scams.
Over the years, there have been many fake book doctors associated with sham publishers. It's hard for me to believe there's all that much money to be made off of desperate writers, but I guess there is enough.
If someone wants to vanity publish, and knows the score, fine, I don't care. No one will buy the book for the most part unless you're one in a million (in which case find a real publisher!), but hey, it's done, and Christmas presents are easy that year. But stealing a few hundred dollars from (often) poor writers and dashing their dreams when they do figure out they've been fleeced, that's awful.
I hope the publicity this produces will help save a few writers from such a fate.
I don't find your assumptions reasonable at all.
Also, when I say evolution, I mean "The Theory of Evolution," and assume everyone else does, too. They should at least, because they often then go on about how it's "just a theory" and again are being sloppy about the definition of a scientific theory. You can't nitpick enough on this, since this is the kind of crap that shows up in school board meetings where someone tries to slip in some version of creationism as also "just a theory" when it isn't scientific and hasn't passed any tests. Nitpicking back.
The assumption of 1/10 of a bacterium is outrageous, for instance. The primitive Earth can make amino acids, easy, and other moderately complex organic molecules. From there you need merely the minimum self-replicating unit to get going, a piece of RNA perhaps, and there are scenarios to construct it that are plausible. Not necessarily likely, but much more plausible than the numbers you're slinging. You might check out this NASA page with more information.
OK, I like this post better than your previous one. I read the previous one as very disingenuous, arguing that evolution was accepted primarily because scientists were athiests and that they thought there was infinite time for it to work. I called crap, because I disagreed strongly with those two notions, especially the "primarily" part.
If you want some more math, assume a 10% error rate is acceptable, and use something one tenth as complex as the simplest known bacteria (60,000 base pairs) as the target. Then we have 54000^6000*4^6000 ~= 4^47162*4^6000 == 4^53162 correct combinations of 60000 base pairs. (explanation of figures 54000^6000 is the number of places you can put an error to the power of the number of errors, 4^6000 is the number of possible errors if placed in series ~= means approximately equal and if you don't know what I did there don't bother talking to me) Now 4^53162/4^60000 = 4^-6838 ~= 10^-4116 is the probability that a string of 60000 base pairs will be close enough. Again with a generous one try per atom in the known univers per second since the big bang, this is 10^106*10^-4116 == 10^-4010, which is still well within the "impossible" range. Of course, feel free to tell me I suck at math if you can correct me. Although I do think my little overestimate with regards to hom many trys chance gets should make up for any inaccuracies.
Now, the problem here isn't your math, but your assumptions. You're doing a calculation assuming that somehow this entire bacterium, or at least its DNA, self-assembles from random. First, evolution does not address the origin of life. It addresses the origin of species. Therefore such math has no direct relevance to the core ideas of evolution (mutation, natural selection, variance across a population, changing environmental pressures). Second, no non-Creationist would make the claim that bacteria self-assembled from random processes. Presumably selection processes would have been involved and you don't do it all at once, and you don't do it from random. There are theories for how it could have happened, none of which are as robust as evolution, but with much more reasonable "odds" than what you suggest.
But that whole topic is beyond the scope of a slashdot thread on Hubble.
I appreciate your thoughtful comments, since many holding similar sentiments don't bother to voice them clearly at all. Usually it's something like, "Hey, that billion dollars would be better spent feeding starving people."
Here's a post I've made before to this:
Are Americans, or most people in the world, hungry and unsheltered because of a lack of money? No, they're not. Politics, and other issues, are the major obstacles. Astronomy is pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things. It's ridiculous to prioritize the problems of the nation, or the world, and then apply all resources to solving the first one, then the second one, ad infinitum. That's not a wise thing to do.
One of the things that makes human civilization great, in my opinion, is that we care about this sort of knowledge. We value it for it's own sake. There are ways to determine the nature of the universe and our place in it. A culture that fails to look past its immediate physical needs of food and shelter is a short-sighted one that isn't any greater than a troop of baboons.
Life isn't just for food, sex, sleeping, and being comfortable. Not in my opinion. There are things to do in this lifetime we have, and learning about the universe we live in is one of those worthwhile things.
Astronomers actually do a really good job of trying to get the most bang for the buck out of Washington. Every ten years, we assemble a panel, have a lot of discussions and input, then prioritize the needs and costs of the entire community. This IS good science, and not pork barrel politics (although Senator Barbara Mikulski is undenaibly a huge Hubble advocate in part because the institute is in her state).
Hubble has been rated to have the best science per dollar across all of astronomy (there was a detailed paper comparing the number of papers and the scientific impact of the papers for a wide variety of astronomical projects). Hubble has produced great science, and we know many things now that would be impossible to know without Hubble.
We're always trying to find better, cheaper, and more innovative ways of doing things. Review panels (and I've sat on my share) reward such proposals. The James Webb Telescope will be bigger than Hubble, AND cheaper. No one throws money at us. We have to argue for it. A lot. And astronomy is a small science, with little practical application, and in the grand scheme of things (the US Federal Budget), we get a very tiny amount.
For my own personal Hubble time where I have been the principal investigator, I've had a six-orbit project and a five-orbit project, both to study quasar host galaxies. I've also gotten a $55k grant from Hubble to study archival data concerning quasar spectral energy distributions. We've published papers on these projects and advanced our understanding. Would I spend $55k of my own money to do this? No, of course not, because that would be all my take-home pay for a year, maybe a bit more, but would I spend the same fraction out of my own pocket for astronomy that the government does, absolutely. And a lot more. Most of my disposable income goes toward entertainment or science books, travel, stuff like that without much practical return to my finances, house, or world at large, but I don't want to live like a baboon either.
Of what value is knowing the age of the universe? Or understanding how stars explode? Or how the universal expansion is accelerating? Or how planets form? I think answering these and other fundamental questions is important and should be supported at some small but consistent level similar to what has been done historically.
How do you explain away the many successful scientists who are both out-and-out Creationists and dare to say so despite the risk of being branded heretic and burned at the academic stake for it?
I don't have to, because there are not "many" if by "creationist" you mean disbeliever in evolution, natural selection, etc. Rare, rare, rare. It's possible to get a PhD in science and hold any number of irrational beliefs, but most scientists don't because irrational beliefs are the antithesis of scientific thought. How about we instead talk about the overwhelming number of scientists who are secure about evolution? I'm sure you've heard about Project Steve?
Again, most of the creationist hacks I come across usually argue against what they think evolution is, rather than what the theory actually is. For instance, evolution says nothing about the origin of life, just of species. That's "uneducated" in my book.
Personally, you should peddle your creationist non-science someplace other than slashdot, and, at the least, some thread other than one about the Hubble Space Telescope.
Plenty of UV expertise at Wisconsin, where I almost went for grad school. I was a FUSE post-doc for a few years, and have written more than one paper on ultraviolet spectroscopy. Lots of transitions there that provide important diagnostics. A good friend of mine is at Boulder with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) group (COS is one of the instruments that was slated to go onto Hubble, before). They'll get by, but we're definitely losing unique scientific capability.
No, your two points are also CRAP. Darwin himself pushed no theology with evolution, and to the extent the theory flew in the face of widespread religous beliefs, that would tend to make the theory HARDER to accept, not easier. Darwin was raised Christian, moved to theism, and settled into agnosticism. Alfred Wallace, a co-discovered of natural selection was also agnostic and was quoted as saying "I cared and thought nothing about [religion]." I think the years of careful observation coupled to the twenty years Darwin spent working on his ideas prior to publication was a bit more important to the acceptance of evolution than their religous implications. The implicit assumption in your point is that all scientists are athiests out to somehow disprove religion, which again, is CRAP.
The second point. While there some may have believed in an infinite universe at the time, and I'm not at all sure that this opinion prevailed, it wasn't based on science. There was certainly no consensus. The sun's power source was unknown. Radioactive dating, and radioactivity itself, was unknown. More importantly, all the nonsense about probabilities and bases pairs is CRAP, since DNA was not recognized until the middle of the 20th century. Who was to say in Darwin's day what was slow or fast, or about how much time was needed? Even though geology couldn't put hard numbers on the age of the Earth, geology alone was sufficient to question a young Earth of 6000 years.
So I'm calling crap. Especially if you "can't do the math." Cite some serious sources, not creationists or their lackeys. I'm not an atheist, but I am a scientist who defends critical thinking and accuracy. I don't even know why you're bringing this up other that to perpetuate myths that hurt science and scientific literacy. The fact that evolution was accepted, and the fact it is still accepted, is that it is scientific and testable, and meets the tests.
Why don't you think evolution was accepted on its merits? Why create this myth that it was initially accepted for political and philosophical reasons, if not to discredit it?
In astronomy, early scientists like Copernicus and Galileo either lived in fear of the church, or were outright destroyed by it, because they pursued better explanations in the face of authority. Nothing sticks in science because it contradicts a religous belief, but rather because it passes experimental verification.
Why not post something thoughtful related to the Hubble Space Telescope rather than spreading misinformation about evolution???
Sure, we can do a better optical space telescope, and we will. Hubble is likely to fail completely in the next 2-3 years (and in fact a key instrument, STIS, failed last August). There's no other game in town for certain science projects.
I've submitted proposals to use Hubble each of the last 7 years, most recently last month. I've gotten several of those projects through. If there was another telescope in existence that could complete those projects, I would use it. Most proposed projects get turned down, because there's usually about 7-8 times as many projects proposed each year as there is telescope time. We can keep Hubble well used and productive quite a bit longer, providing UNIQUE data sets obtainable in no other way.
When you have unique capabilities, you don't just say "this is old and therefore worthless." If a Hubble replacement/successor was scheduled for sooner than about 2011 or 2012, I'd agree that Hubble should be let go. Since that's not the case, I'm in favor of going ahead with the repair/refurbishment mission as originally planned.
Hubble was conceived in the era that saw the shuttle as a convenient truck to/from space with missions every week. Didn't quite turn out that way, did it?
Hubble is the only telescope ever built and intended to be serviced like this. There are no others currently, and no plans to build another. They are all being done since Hubble based on the "disposable" model as you suggest.
Not very much at all...which is why they were installed in the first place. They did decrease the throughput, which is why all the new instruments have been designed with optics to compensate for Hubble's flawed primary.
Hubble has some advantages that Keck with AO can't touch. For instance, the AO systems work in the infrared, not the optical, and for sure not in the ultraviolet (which is blocked by the atmosphere). There are some other technical issues, too, to consider (e.g. the specific shape of the point spread functions). Hubble also has a huge advantage in background light, and in platform stability (Keck cannot point and stare so fixedly at one patch of sky for ten days straight like Hubble).
I'm not sure this is worth the money versus building ten Kecks, or a couple of new super-duper ground-based telescopes (e.g., 30 meters), but it is important to consider what unique capabilites are being lost.
I was going to post something similar to this.
I'll add that the James Webb Telescope will work at longer wavelengths than Hubble, and will not duplicate Hubble's UV capability. In that sense, I would support the proposed Hubble "copy" that would fly the to-be-orphaned new Hubble Instruments, especially as seeing as how there's no ultraviolet spectroscopic capability in the near term.
I suspect this idea is dead in the water given where James Webb Space Telescope is at the moment. It is viewed by Washington and most of the astronomical community as Hubble's replacement, and attempts to propose new ultraviolet telescopes to advance Hubble's current science have not fared well.
Crap should be shouted down, always. Evolution, no matter what you or 44% of Americans think about it, isn't religous or a bad scientific theory.
Those who do not accept the basic tenets of evolution are usually not well educated about what it is and isn't, or are not careful thinkers. Such people will not succeed in science, except for perhaps in some minor way, so no great loss.
I submit that if 44% of the US population do no accept evolution, science and science educators need MORE SUPPORT, not less, and that perhaps the largest degree of blame falls with extreme popogandists (e.g. pathlights.com, not exactly the NAS is it?).
Hi Andy -- been too busy as usual, and down with the flu this week. I just use the powerpoint web default, even though I have similar problems looking at the slides from my linux box without explorer (mozilla there). No student complaints yet! Microsoft has conquered the college campus at least.
It's more like 10 times as much non-baryonic matter. The numbers to compare are Omega_matter = 0.28 (total matter) versus the Omega_baryon (0.024). The Omega parameter is proportional to density, so you can work out the relative ratios of the two types.
We're still working out just how dark matter is distributed, and on what scales. Some are easy. Some are hard.
Neutrinos, by the way, are present in large numbers from the early universe just like the background radiation (and neither comes from stellar activity). There's also a "neutrino background" we can someday, in the very far future, hope to study.
Wayne Hu at the university of Chicago has a great set of webpages that explain these results. If you don't have much of a background, start with the lowest level and work up. To get to the hard numbers (two significant figures), check out the "experiments and data" link. They're based on the relative amplitudes of the acoustic peaks in the microwave background.
The page can be found here.
Yeah, that is funny in the context of this discussion, isn't it?!
Yeah, at least part of them. You can go to my website above, hit "Astronomy Work" link on the left, and be taken to http:physics.uwyo.edu/~mbrother where you'll find links to three recent courses I've taught. The intro astronomy course (1050) is currently in session and so the slides for that one are incomplete. These are slides, meant to accompany lecture, so they aren't enough on their own, but you might enjoy looking anyway.
I'm an astrophysicist, too, and think we've crossed paths here before. I'm also a science fiction writer, and I'm exploiting some of the exotic, non-baryonic dark matter for my second novel (under revision now, working title is SPIDER STAR).
While we have some ideas about the non-baryonic dark matter that might pan out soon, indeed, we're clueless about the dark energy in a very profound way.
Cosmologists, primarily based on data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, are now willing to put pretty hard numbers on the ratios of baryonic and non-baryonic matter (about 1:7 or so). ALL of the non-baryonic matter is dark. A good fraction of the baryonic matter is dark, in the sense that it doesn't emit much light (e.g., very cool stars, non-accreting black holes, planets, etc.).
There sure is dark matter out there that we don't understand well at all, and probably more than one kind. Neutrinos are one form, since recent experiments indicate they do have some mass. Neutrinos are pretty exotic compared to normal baryonic matter. There may well be weirder stuff.
Agree with you though, that Star Trek overdoes it.
If you just think astrophysics is math, you'd flunk the heck out of my astronomy exams no matter your mathematical sophistication. Probably every level of astronomy, from non-major to graduate level. At least the way I teach it.
Math is a very useful tool in astrophysics, but there's a reason that math is a separate department from any physical science.
First, this result only applies to BARYONIC dark matter, which is only a fraction of all the dark matter out there. Second, we already knew that a lot of it at the epochs in question was in the form of hot intercluster gas.
The current work is an improvement over previous studies, and is good work. But the headline rather sucks. I thought we'd detected axions or something, even though I'd already read about this result.
I teach techniques to estimate cluster masses based on X-ray emission, and have used the Chandra X-ray Observatory myself. A headline about such work shouldn't trick me.
This is a classic /. post and why I like it here!
Bravo!
" If old people are not allowed to drive, then what is the justification for allowing anyone to drive?"
How about younger than 16?
Everyone, at some time, has to pass an exam where they demonstrate competence driving. Not perfection, but competence, and there is a minimum acceptable level. As long as a driver can achieve that, they should be able to drive.
We as a society recognize that vision may deteriorate over time, and force people to provee their vision is still good enough to drive. Similarly, some form of "competence" check also makes sense in the same way, since driving ability (regardless of vision) may also deteriorate over time.