They've shown that increased temperatures causes a release of CO2, but they have NOT shown that CO2 increases temperatures
Nonsense. Kids in grade 5 are performing experiments which confirm this effect. Here, you can try this one at home:
1. Obtain 2 glass jars, 2 thermometers, and a lamp. 2. Place thermometers inside jars, and place jars under the lamp (either with lid on, or upside-down). 3. After 20 minutes, check the temperature. Both readings should be identical. 4. Fill one jar with C02. After 20 minutes, check the temperature. Compare to initial readings.
I'm sure your children could have shown this to you if you had asked them, but, just on the off-chance that they haven't seen it, you might want to talk to them about it. It could be a fun science-based activity for the whole family!
in some studies the placebo is actually more effective than the drug being tested, and its not because the drug sucks or that people are faking it
That's one of the silliest things anyone has ever written on slashdot. If your medicine works worse than a placebo (which, by definition, does not work), then you're damn right it's because "the drug sucks". You're probably feeding your patient poison.
there is a huge misconception and stigma surrounding placebos... sure, its basically fooling your brain, but whats wrong with that?
The only misconception here is yours: placebos don't fool your brain. They don't do anything. YOU fool your brain. The placebo - whether it be a pill, a liquid, goofy crystals, acupuncture, or prayer - does nothing other than put a dent in your wallet.
placebos should be preferred as they dont have side effects.
I hope your girlfriend takes a placebo birth-control pill.
Eh? Asking the wrong questions is a crime now, is it? Orwell would have LOVED you!
Not to mention requiring it for a job application
It's a questionable practice, but it's not invasion of privacy. It's just asking questions. Anyone can ask you any question they want in any circumstances. Whether you answer or not is your decision.
Those choices are given to you by a controlled, regulated market.
Nonsense - they're choices provided by a free nation. The market has nothing to do with it.
For certain values of 'capitalist market', i.e. ones which have enough regulations to keep cartels, monopolies and other protection rackets restrained, this holds roughly true.
A market regulated by cartels is hardly capitalist. It doesn't really matter whether the control comes from the government or from monopolistic firms - the result is the same.
In a completely free unregulated capitalist market, the man who starts with the biggest stick wins, until someone even more brutal comes along. See Somalia.
More nonsense. Obviously you don't actually believe that controlling commerce and controlling violence are the same thing, but you're hoping that nobody will notice that you're equating the two. Did you really think that would work?
How are there even 2% that don't consider it an invasion of privacy?
Probably because when you voluntarily give up information it's not considered an invasion of privacy. Like if you regularly masturbate in front of an open window, you don't get to act surprised and offended that everyone knows you have a teeny weeny peeny.
Those 2% are the only ones who actually understand what the question means - the rest are answering a completely different question.
When the choice is, 'work for me (or someone else rich like me) or starve,' then that is coercion
Very true. Isn't it great, therefore, that we have so many other choices?
In an anarcho-capitalist system, non-owners are at the mercy of resource owners.
It depends on the availability of resources, of course. However, in any capitalist market "non-owners" have the opportunity to acquire resources, thereby creating new choices. The only ones who seem to have a problem with that are those who are unable or unwilling to be productive.
Actually, ignore that last bit. I wasn't aware of the discrepancy between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. And, going back through what you said, apparently you did bring that up, I just skipped over it. Next time, give me something to click:)
Of course, it may turn out that general relativity works fine and that there's a problem with quantum mechanics. That would make me happy since there's still a lot abut quantum mechanics that doesn't make any sense to me:) Still, I guess odds are that Einsteins model was just a useful approximation, and that either quantum mechanics or M-theory will provide a better explanation. I'll have to do some more reading before I can say any more on the subject. Thanks.
Nonsense. That wasn't what is being said at all. It's that we manipulate PI and use it.
We don't manipulate it. We can't manipulate constants. That fact is implicit in the definition of the word "constant". We make use of it, sure, just like we make use of gravity.
What we know about gravity, the driving force behind it, is not a proven fact
We don't know why Pi is the value it is, either, but that doesn't mean that we don't know what it's value is, or how we can make use of it.
Now, is it possible that we'll learn more about gravity as our understanding of the universe grows? Sure. In my opinion, it's quite probable. But that doesn't mean that what we know about it now isn't "fact", it just means that our understanding of it is probably incomplete. You can make the same statement regarding just about everything we know on any subject. We don't need to understand every possible aspect of every phenomenon in order to say that we know what it is.
If you're trying to argue that we have a better understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum than we do of gravity, then sure, that much is true. Maybe we're just arguing about definitions.
We don't know the value of Pi. It isn't an irrational number we shorten it to be useful to us
It IS an irrational number, and we can calculate it's value to any digit you like since it's derived from a formula with specific measurements. The accuracy of the measurements might be a limiting factor, but that's beside the point. Your argument is ridiculous. It's the equivalent of saying that I don't know the width of my desk because I can't measure it down to the subatomic level.
And yes, we have changed the speed of light
No, we haven't. We've slowed down beams of light, but that's irrelevant since it happens naturally in any medium. By your "logic" you could shine a flashlight through a glass of water and claim that you've slowed down light. The speed of light in a vacuum is a constant, which is what I said earlier. The speed of light in various mediums is also a constant, but it's different in each medium.
To say that we can control the speed of light because we can shine it through different mediums is equivalent to saying that we can control gravity because we can assemble matter into lumps which exert their own influence on spacetime. Even if we use your own brand of logic, your initial argument still falls apart.
Now, do you have any specific criticisms about our understanding of gravity, or are you going to keep pulling unrelated arguments out of your ass? Because, if it's the latter, I think I'm done here.
Oh, I understand you. Essentially, you're trying to tell me that:
1. Science isn't the "only way of knowing". 2. Everyone should be more open-minded. 3. We can't ever really know anything.
Now, leaving aside the fact that points 1 and 3 seem somewhat contradictory, and the fact that I often hear these same complaints from proponents of pseudo-science, I can almost agree with you. However, I'd have to change the list to something like:
1. Science isn't the only way to know things, but it is the single most reliable method for making new discoveries and separating fact from fiction. 2. Everyone should be more open minded, as long as your definition of open-mindedness does not involve believing claims based on poor or insufficient evidence. 3. We can't ever know anything with 100% certainty, but we can still make reliable models of the universe which allow us to not only improve our technology and quality of life, but correct our own mistakes as we go along.
As for your dislike for slashdot... well, it's not for everyone. Do what you have to do.
Your ability to analyze and think does not impress me if you're that lazy and impatient.
When your very fist sentence is right out to lunch, it doesn't give me much incentive to wade through the rest.
My college physics professor was quite adamant that if... we got results that weren't expected, we had to carry through with the rest of the lab... until we had at least some believable explanation for why we got the results we did.
Sure. And the first believable explanation that should occur to you is "my observations may be mistaken". That doesn't mean you abandon the experiment, but it does mean that you're going to have to repeat it, and that a double-blind experiment may be in order.
It's not considered reliable because many observations yield an "average" or "normal" result
You're misrepresenting what I said. Averages have nothing to do with it, but consensus does.
Scientific methods can't do anything to improve the quality of your senses - all they can do is...
Make the quality of your senses (and your mind) irrelevant by involving others who may not share your limitations. There have been dozens of cases of highly regarded scientists coming to unjustifiable conclusions due to personal bias or self-delusion. Blondlot is one famous example. Jacques Benveniste was another. The strength of the scientific process is it's ability to expose even the failures of prominent experts by creating a transparent process which is open to examination by anyone. Your personal senses and your thought process become irrelevant to the question of truth, since validity of your results hings on your methodology and the reproducibility of those results rather than your qualifications and reputation.
The scientific method is overrated as a method of knowing, in general. Programmers all think that shotgun debugging is a bad idea...
Well that's a load of crap. If you think that "the scientific method" and "the shotgun approach" are the same thing it's no wonder you seem to be so confused.
Software development has taught us the hard way that even in primitive software systems, the scientific method by itself is a pretty bad way to figure out what's going on inside.
So what do you do instead? Hold seances and pray to the Redmond Gods? Take every statement on faith? Take hallucinogenic drugs and meditate on the higher meaning of Code?
One of my points in the handful of words you didn't read is that it wouldn't hurt people to admit they can't know anything for certain
I've never met a scientist who didn't. Scientists generally try to incorporate error bars in their results, in order to give an estimate of the accuracy of their findings. Science also encourages the questioning of established beliefs - some of the greatest honours in science have been awarded to those who showed the errors of accepted models. Einstein didn't get famous by constantly proclaiming the infallibility of Newton.
The problem comes down to definitions. If your definition of the word "know" requires me to assign a probability to every aspect of life, then your definition is useless. I KNOW that I'm sitting down right now, typing on a computer. Now, sure, there's a infinitesimal probability that I could be wrong about that, but only a complete pedant would insist on bringing it up. The word "know" allows for a small margin of uncertainty. That's why I can say that we know lots of things, while never being 100% certain of anything.
Science can tell you how to create a bomb that will kill lots of people. Religion can try to tell you whether or not creating such a bomb is a good idea.
If you need to re-define religion in order to have it fit better into our modern, secular society, hey, fill your boots. On the other hand, if you actually care about the truth, you'll look back through history (or look at the Texas school board today) and see how often religion and science have come into conflict because they were asking the same questions.
Not only does religion like to stick it's nose into scientific questions - such as how old the universe is, whether the earth spins around the sun, and how life arose - but it often gets even the questions of morality wrong. If religion were a good way to determine morality, we would never have had slavery. We wouldn't be persecuting people because of their sexual preference, or forcing women to cover themselves in black potato sacks, and we certainly wouldn't be waging war over the question of whose god is more righteous. The very fact that all religions seem to come up with completely different ideas of morality should tell you that religion is a HORRIBLE way to answer those questions. We can do better.
Science requires a belief which there is no way to prove, which is that what you sense is reliable.
I didn't read the rest of what you wrote because it's way too long, and I've got a major problem with your very first sentence. In fact, science doesn't require "what you sense" to be reliable, otherwise the existence of magicians would have rendered science invalid. The scientific process exists exactly because we understand that individual perceptions are fallible.
Now, what you probably meant is that science relies on the idea that the combined senses of many individuals working on the same problem through repeated experimentation will generally produce reliable observations. And in some ways, this IS a valid criticism... but the problem is that we HAVE to make that assumption in order to be able to say anything about our universe. It's the old "brain in a jar" conundrum - sure, it's possible that I'm an isolated entity in a lab somewhere which is being fed invalid sensory information, but I have no way to confirm that hypothesis. As long as we have no data to support it, we have to act as if it's not true, or at the very least suspend belief until more data becomes available. It's the same reason why we can ignore gods, and all other types of superstitious nonsense; there are an infinite number of unprovable hypothesis which can be formulated and the only rational choice is to reject any which aren't supported by evidence.
Is there any particular reason why we have five fingers on each hand, and not six?
It's not just us - most mammals do, including such varied species as bats, horses, and dolphins. The most likely explanation for this is that at some point we all had a common ancestor which randomly evolved five fingers, and it's descendants spread out to fill various niches. That's why we have so many other traits in common, as well, such as 4 limbs (although marine species have lost the hind pair), two eyes, similar internal organs, etc. The traits that work are retained, and major changes are rejected unless they provide a significant advantage.
Incorrect. The evidence since then has shown him not to be incorrect. There is a difference, while it supports his theory and doesn't prove him wrong, it also doesn't prove him right.
That is, of course, bullshit. While your words are accurate in a strictly technical sense, they are completely wrong when it comes to the way we judge knowledge and fact. Using the same vacuous reasoning, you would have to say that there is no evidence proving absolutely any concept ever devised, including simple mathematical equations (eg. "2+2=4").
What you're arguing for is a sort of permanent agnosticism, in which no claim is ever accepted as true. And while this can be a fine thing in science, it's completely unreasonable in day-to-day life.
If we know what it is, then we can manipulate it, we can adjust it, we can do several things with it that means we can get it.
How the hell did you come to that conclusion? We know exactly what the value of "Pi" is, yet we can't manipulate or adjust it in any way. We know what the speed of light in a vacuum is, bet we can't change it in any way. Why in the world would you expect us to be able to modify gravity when we cannot modify any other universal laws or constants?
Provable will show gravity exists, nothing we know can prove how or why, the are not yet provable
Nonsense. Einstein figured it out 60 years ago, and all the evidence since then has shown hm to be correct.
But we don't know how to get it or create it or manipulate it once it is there, at best we can only manipulate other things with it.
Again, nonsense. Judging by the way you phrased that, you probably don't even understand what gravity is. FYI, it's not a thing that we can "get", it's a curvature of space-time. Saying that we don't know how to "get or create gravity" is like saying that we don't know how to get or create time. It's a meaningless phrase, and a ridiculous concept.
Absolutly, meteorites get nice and fiery hot in the upper atmosphere while
No, they don't. Or, at least, most of the meteorite generally doesn't. What actually happens is that the forward surface heats up enough to cause an impressive light show, but most of that energy doesn't travel to the rest of the meteorite, which remains at sub-zero temperatures. If the meteorite is slowed to terminal velocity while it's still fairly high off the ground, even more of that heat can radiate off of it during the rest of the fall so that by the time it reaches the ground it will actually be quite cold to the touch.
It's the same idea with the space-shuttle - the outer surfaces glow, sure, but the crew doesn't get cooked. By the time they reach the ground the outer surfaces are at a much lower temperature. Now, imagine how much lower that temperature would be if the interior of the shuttle was full of frozen matter, as is the case with meteorites.
Slashdot Mirror
That comment was a parody, right? :) Thanks, you've brightened up my morning!
Ok then, thanks for clarifying.
Nonsense. Kids in grade 5 are performing experiments which confirm this effect. Here, you can try this one at home:
1. Obtain 2 glass jars, 2 thermometers, and a lamp.
2. Place thermometers inside jars, and place jars under the lamp (either with lid on, or upside-down).
3. After 20 minutes, check the temperature. Both readings should be identical.
4. Fill one jar with C02. After 20 minutes, check the temperature. Compare to initial readings.
I'm sure your children could have shown this to you if you had asked them, but, just on the off-chance that they haven't seen it, you might want to talk to them about it. It could be a fun science-based activity for the whole family!
I hope your girlfriend takes a placebo birth-control pill.
That's one of the silliest things anyone has ever written on slashdot. If your medicine works worse than a placebo (which, by definition, does not work), then you're damn right it's because "the drug sucks". You're probably feeding your patient poison.
The only misconception here is yours: placebos don't fool your brain. They don't do anything. YOU fool your brain. The placebo - whether it be a pill, a liquid, goofy crystals, acupuncture, or prayer - does nothing other than put a dent in your wallet.
I hope your girlfriend takes a placebo birth-control pill.
The plural of "anecdote" is not "data". By the same standards, there are "widely reported verified stories" of bigfoot.
Eh? Asking the wrong questions is a crime now, is it? Orwell would have LOVED you!
It's a questionable practice, but it's not invasion of privacy. It's just asking questions. Anyone can ask you any question they want in any circumstances. Whether you answer or not is your decision.
Nonsense - they're choices provided by a free nation. The market has nothing to do with it.
A market regulated by cartels is hardly capitalist. It doesn't really matter whether the control comes from the government or from monopolistic firms - the result is the same.
More nonsense. Obviously you don't actually believe that controlling commerce and controlling violence are the same thing, but you're hoping that nobody will notice that you're equating the two. Did you really think that would work?
This kind of retarded hyperbole doesn't actually lead to productive conversations. Why don't you try saying something rational, for a change?
Probably because when you voluntarily give up information it's not considered an invasion of privacy. Like if you regularly masturbate in front of an open window, you don't get to act surprised and offended that everyone knows you have a teeny weeny peeny.
Those 2% are the only ones who actually understand what the question means - the rest are answering a completely different question.
Very true. Isn't it great, therefore, that we have so many other choices?
It depends on the availability of resources, of course. However, in any capitalist market "non-owners" have the opportunity to acquire resources, thereby creating new choices. The only ones who seem to have a problem with that are those who are unable or unwilling to be productive.
Thanks, Data. Now perhaps you can get someone to explain humor to you.
Actually, ignore that last bit. I wasn't aware of the discrepancy between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. And, going back through what you said, apparently you did bring that up, I just skipped over it. Next time, give me something to click :)
Of course, it may turn out that general relativity works fine and that there's a problem with quantum mechanics. That would make me happy since there's still a lot abut quantum mechanics that doesn't make any sense to me :) Still, I guess odds are that Einsteins model was just a useful approximation, and that either quantum mechanics or M-theory will provide a better explanation. I'll have to do some more reading before I can say any more on the subject. Thanks.
We don't manipulate it. We can't manipulate constants. That fact is implicit in the definition of the word "constant". We make use of it, sure, just like we make use of gravity.
We don't know why Pi is the value it is, either, but that doesn't mean that we don't know what it's value is, or how we can make use of it.
Now, is it possible that we'll learn more about gravity as our understanding of the universe grows? Sure. In my opinion, it's quite probable. But that doesn't mean that what we know about it now isn't "fact", it just means that our understanding of it is probably incomplete. You can make the same statement regarding just about everything we know on any subject. We don't need to understand every possible aspect of every phenomenon in order to say that we know what it is.
If you're trying to argue that we have a better understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum than we do of gravity, then sure, that much is true. Maybe we're just arguing about definitions.
It IS an irrational number, and we can calculate it's value to any digit you like since it's derived from a formula with specific measurements. The accuracy of the measurements might be a limiting factor, but that's beside the point. Your argument is ridiculous. It's the equivalent of saying that I don't know the width of my desk because I can't measure it down to the subatomic level.
No, we haven't. We've slowed down beams of light, but that's irrelevant since it happens naturally in any medium. By your "logic" you could shine a flashlight through a glass of water and claim that you've slowed down light. The speed of light in a vacuum is a constant, which is what I said earlier. The speed of light in various mediums is also a constant, but it's different in each medium.
To say that we can control the speed of light because we can shine it through different mediums is equivalent to saying that we can control gravity because we can assemble matter into lumps which exert their own influence on spacetime. Even if we use your own brand of logic, your initial argument still falls apart.
Now, do you have any specific criticisms about our understanding of gravity, or are you going to keep pulling unrelated arguments out of your ass? Because, if it's the latter, I think I'm done here.
Oh, I understand you. Essentially, you're trying to tell me that:
1. Science isn't the "only way of knowing".
2. Everyone should be more open-minded.
3. We can't ever really know anything.
Now, leaving aside the fact that points 1 and 3 seem somewhat contradictory, and the fact that I often hear these same complaints from proponents of pseudo-science, I can almost agree with you. However, I'd have to change the list to something like:
1. Science isn't the only way to know things, but it is the single most reliable method for making new discoveries and separating fact from fiction.
2. Everyone should be more open minded, as long as your definition of open-mindedness does not involve believing claims based on poor or insufficient evidence.
3. We can't ever know anything with 100% certainty, but we can still make reliable models of the universe which allow us to not only improve our technology and quality of life, but correct our own mistakes as we go along.
As for your dislike for slashdot ... well, it's not for everyone. Do what you have to do.
When your very fist sentence is right out to lunch, it doesn't give me much incentive to wade through the rest.
Sure. And the first believable explanation that should occur to you is "my observations may be mistaken". That doesn't mean you abandon the experiment, but it does mean that you're going to have to repeat it, and that a double-blind experiment may be in order.
You're misrepresenting what I said. Averages have nothing to do with it, but consensus does.
Make the quality of your senses (and your mind) irrelevant by involving others who may not share your limitations. There have been dozens of cases of highly regarded scientists coming to unjustifiable conclusions due to personal bias or self-delusion. Blondlot is one famous example. Jacques Benveniste was another. The strength of the scientific process is it's ability to expose even the failures of prominent experts by creating a transparent process which is open to examination by anyone. Your personal senses and your thought process become irrelevant to the question of truth, since validity of your results hings on your methodology and the reproducibility of those results rather than your qualifications and reputation.
Well that's a load of crap. If you think that "the scientific method" and "the shotgun approach" are the same thing it's no wonder you seem to be so confused.
So what do you do instead? Hold seances and pray to the Redmond Gods? Take every statement on faith? Take hallucinogenic drugs and meditate on the higher meaning of Code?
I've never met a scientist who didn't. Scientists generally try to incorporate error bars in their results, in order to give an estimate of the accuracy of their findings. Science also encourages the questioning of established beliefs - some of the greatest honours in science have been awarded to those who showed the errors of accepted models. Einstein didn't get famous by constantly proclaiming the infallibility of Newton.
The problem comes down to definitions. If your definition of the word "know" requires me to assign a probability to every aspect of life, then your definition is useless. I KNOW that I'm sitting down right now, typing on a computer. Now, sure, there's a infinitesimal probability that I could be wrong about that, but only a complete pedant would insist on bringing it up. The word "know" allows for a small margin of uncertainty. That's why I can say that we know lots of things, while never being 100% certain of anything.
That's a false dichotomy. The great thing about pseudoscience is that it's "experts" can sell you anything you want!
If you need to re-define religion in order to have it fit better into our modern, secular society, hey, fill your boots. On the other hand, if you actually care about the truth, you'll look back through history (or look at the Texas school board today) and see how often religion and science have come into conflict because they were asking the same questions.
Not only does religion like to stick it's nose into scientific questions - such as how old the universe is, whether the earth spins around the sun, and how life arose - but it often gets even the questions of morality wrong. If religion were a good way to determine morality, we would never have had slavery. We wouldn't be persecuting people because of their sexual preference, or forcing women to cover themselves in black potato sacks, and we certainly wouldn't be waging war over the question of whose god is more righteous. The very fact that all religions seem to come up with completely different ideas of morality should tell you that religion is a HORRIBLE way to answer those questions. We can do better.
I didn't read the rest of what you wrote because it's way too long, and I've got a major problem with your very first sentence. In fact, science doesn't require "what you sense" to be reliable, otherwise the existence of magicians would have rendered science invalid. The scientific process exists exactly because we understand that individual perceptions are fallible.
Now, what you probably meant is that science relies on the idea that the combined senses of many individuals working on the same problem through repeated experimentation will generally produce reliable observations. And in some ways, this IS a valid criticism ... but the problem is that we HAVE to make that assumption in order to be able to say anything about our universe. It's the old "brain in a jar" conundrum - sure, it's possible that I'm an isolated entity in a lab somewhere which is being fed invalid sensory information, but I have no way to confirm that hypothesis. As long as we have no data to support it, we have to act as if it's not true, or at the very least suspend belief until more data becomes available. It's the same reason why we can ignore gods, and all other types of superstitious nonsense; there are an infinite number of unprovable hypothesis which can be formulated and the only rational choice is to reject any which aren't supported by evidence.
It's not just us - most mammals do, including such varied species as bats, horses, and dolphins. The most likely explanation for this is that at some point we all had a common ancestor which randomly evolved five fingers, and it's descendants spread out to fill various niches. That's why we have so many other traits in common, as well, such as 4 limbs (although marine species have lost the hind pair), two eyes, similar internal organs, etc. The traits that work are retained, and major changes are rejected unless they provide a significant advantage.
That is, of course, bullshit. While your words are accurate in a strictly technical sense, they are completely wrong when it comes to the way we judge knowledge and fact. Using the same vacuous reasoning, you would have to say that there is no evidence proving absolutely any concept ever devised, including simple mathematical equations (eg. "2+2=4").
What you're arguing for is a sort of permanent agnosticism, in which no claim is ever accepted as true. And while this can be a fine thing in science, it's completely unreasonable in day-to-day life.
How the hell did you come to that conclusion? We know exactly what the value of "Pi" is, yet we can't manipulate or adjust it in any way. We know what the speed of light in a vacuum is, bet we can't change it in any way. Why in the world would you expect us to be able to modify gravity when we cannot modify any other universal laws or constants?
Nonsense. Einstein figured it out 60 years ago, and all the evidence since then has shown hm to be correct.
Again, nonsense. Judging by the way you phrased that, you probably don't even understand what gravity is. FYI, it's not a thing that we can "get", it's a curvature of space-time. Saying that we don't know how to "get or create gravity" is like saying that we don't know how to get or create time. It's a meaningless phrase, and a ridiculous concept.
Oh ... wait ... I think I misread your comment. On the second pass, it appears that you were saying the same thing as I am.
I probably shouldn't post comments while intoxicated.
No, they don't. Or, at least, most of the meteorite generally doesn't. What actually happens is that the forward surface heats up enough to cause an impressive light show, but most of that energy doesn't travel to the rest of the meteorite, which remains at sub-zero temperatures. If the meteorite is slowed to terminal velocity while it's still fairly high off the ground, even more of that heat can radiate off of it during the rest of the fall so that by the time it reaches the ground it will actually be quite cold to the touch.
It's the same idea with the space-shuttle - the outer surfaces glow, sure, but the crew doesn't get cooked. By the time they reach the ground the outer surfaces are at a much lower temperature. Now, imagine how much lower that temperature would be if the interior of the shuttle was full of frozen matter, as is the case with meteorites.