Year: 2014

The final outcome from the previous How Does it Feel?

Interesting post from Ted Lumley at Aboriginal Physics – To be clear, I can never quite follow Ted’s full reasoning or his dependence on his storm-cell analogies – but I find we are both sympathetic to many of the same sources. Interesting however in light of the “centrism” indications in current cosmology; current dumb cosmology we agree. (A long post in need of unpicking – over-objectification of intellectual constructs is the recurring point at issue.)

Good to hear Rabbi Lord Sacks piece on BBC R4 Today this morning. Plenty of doomed to repeat history if we don’t appreciate it angles to the current Syria / Iraq / Iran sectarianism between Sunni vs Shia and comparisons with divided mono-theistic histories generally.

His primary point however – disestablishment.

Civil rule cannot, must not, ever, anywhere, be based on legal application of religious lore as law. And that BTW – Sacks’ wisdom – is why we need representatives of the Lords Spiritual in the non-elected / earned-influence second-chamber.

One to add to the list http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27935479

Still intent on laying the doubt on local errors, rather than the theory itself – because to give the creationist nutters an inch by suggesting there was no big bang would be to give them a politically incorrect mile.

Science as politics with an agenda set by nutters, not by real science.

[And it had been …. Nobel prize-worthy said Alan Guth. He he.]

Rick Ryals commenting on others commenting on UK Creationism teaching ban story:

“It isn’t a creation debate, it is about dishonesty in science that squashes real science that draws similar but purely naturalistic conclusions about some of the evidence that creationists use, and is therefore destroyed by the herd of rabid atheists who would pretend to be on the side of science… And then of course, there are many like yourself who don’t know the relevant science (probably most by a long shot) who eagerly join the rampaging herd of ideologues in science because 99% of those established activists are on your side politically.”

I’m not an expert cosmologist, nor even a physicist. And as someone already said in a comment in the thread that posed me the above question, few people in such threads are actually experts.

[Aside: I’ve probably 120 posts over 14 years on this blog alone highlighting sources of doubt – eg arising from CMBR evidence – not all of them empirical, as I say. My previous post includes links to 3 other posts which themselves include links to many more. But let’s address the one doubt here before we unpick the whole story:]

As soon as you get into the area of some specialised theory within the domain, the maths becomes even more specialised. And even if interlocutors were sufficiently expert in any objective sense, conducting a sufficiently nuanced dialogue in such an environment within which neither has any history of mutual respect and understanding of the other in the subject matter is pretty risky anyway.

The request was actually for “empirical” evidence. A pretty tall order at the extremes of the known and knowable cosmos, where pretty much all evidence is indirect. But here goes:

The simplest starting point of empirical doubt for me is the apparent CMBR alignment with the ecliptic of our home solar system. Of which Larry Krauss said back in 2006:

[T]here appears to be energy of empty space that isn’t zero! This flies in the face of all conventional wisdom in theoretical particle physics. It is the most profound shift in thinking, perhaps the most profound puzzle … … when we look out at the universe, there doesn’t seem to be enough structure — not as much as inflation would predict … … when you look at CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That’s crazy. We’re looking out at the whole universe. There’s no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun — the plane of the earth around the sun — the ecliptic … … telling us that all of science is wrong and we’re the center of the universe, or maybe the data is simply incorrect, or … maybe there’s something wrong with our theories on the larger scales.

Larry has never responded to my later questions as what later evidence or interpretation has explained that “crazy” observation, or removed the suggestion of doubt “maybe there’s something wrong with our theories”. (And Larry has of course suffered the slings and arrows of those accusing him of actual “geocentrism” – much amusement and defensive arguments against the spurious accusation of course – but never any sign of Larry actually addressing his own original point.)

I could stop there for now. But it’s important to note that for me the above is simply an observation confirming existing doubt. Doubt arrived at by other non-empirical philosophical, logical and theoretical arguments. And also to note that there are several other reported observations looking for missing “mass” and “echoes” of energetic events in the boundary conditions of the cosmos, and the inflationary processes since in what we can observe now, which cast doubt on the theory.

As I’ve concluded before reasons the doubts are downplayed are political, in a climate where to concede an inch risks headlines proclaiming the opposite. Like the hyped article that initiated the thread which raised the question at the head of this post, itself a response to a hyped original claim. [For more, see the links in the aside above.]

Good to see Laura Mersini-Houghton’s work recognised as important news on Newsnight. The work of a scientist not hidebound by fictions of the standard model, unlike the emperor’s new clothes over at CERN.

Cosmic Continuity https://www.psybertron.org/?p=7006
Bang Goes The Big Bang https://www.psybertron.org/?p=6970
Cracks in the Cosmic Egg https://www.psybertron.org/?p=6911

Hopefully we’ll see funding diverted to real science in future.

—–

Re-watched this morning (I came across it by accident yesterday, and didn’t catch the whole thing). Jeremy asks the right question – isn’t this really about the limits of what science can know, and how much this kind of science is relevant to human knowledge. (I’ll have to see if I can rip the video.)

Aside:

Different piece, from Rick commenting on Facebook. Big Bang Blunder Burst Multiverse Bubble. (Hat tip to Dawkins Foundation whose hint of a saving grace is the and between science and reason.) (I think this is the “twisty B-mode CMBR polarisation” evidence against the big bang Penrose referred to in Bang Goes the Big Bang above.)

… should make the scientific community contemplate
the implications for the future of cosmology …

Some interesting points in the comment thread too …

… pure politicking …
… skeptical that science reporting is reliable and helpful to scientific enterprises …
… etc.

The one thing people can agree on is that science is not religion, but sadly most reported science is not science either. Wake-up science.

From the Beeb today, on the start on a new Tungsten mine down in the UK West Country ….

“Tungsten is an extraordinary metal.

“It’s almost as hard as a diamond and has one of the highest melting points of any mineral.

“Adding a small amount to steel makes it far harder, far more resistant to stress and heat. The benefits to industry are obvious.”

Dr John Emsley
Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry

If Dr Elmsley really is FRSC, then I’m guessing he didn’t actually say it like that, if he did ….

Anyway, the first and third sentences are true enough. The second would be true if he were talking about Tungsten Carbide as opposed to Tungsten at the time.