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Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#91

Post by mensetmanusman »

litoE wrote: post #51
gerdesj wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Please move away from the DV button - I like to encourage discussion around here] You forgot the conclusion. The prevailing opinion about the world's age is not 6000 years. I think some fundamentalist Christians might try for 4004 BC so 6000 years ... ish but I don't even know anyone who subscribes to that nonsense. I'm sure there are some who do but they are not my mates. They are certainly not general population.

I've heard the argument that God did create everything about 6,000 years ago in HIS reference frame but that due to relativistic time dilation/contraction its been 13+ billion years in OUR reference frame.

Humanity learned only in the last century that time is truly relative. After enough inflation, the earth will be alone.

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#92

Post by perilunar »

saagarjha wrote: post #88
litoE wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard the argument that God did create everything about 6,000 years ago in HIS reference frame but that due to relativistic time dilation/contraction its been 13+ billion years in OUR reference frame.

God must’ve been a hadron shot out of a particle accelerator then, because He’s going pretty fast…

Or maybe she's just really, really massive.

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#93

Post by tempestn »

gerdesj wrote: post #69
tempestn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't even say it's nonsense. Edit: just realized the precise word you used was in fact 'bollocks'. I wouldn't say it's that either. The logic behind the sun not burning a fuel like coal is entirely sound. From there an alternate theory is proposed based on the limits of understanding of the time. Not as fact, but as a best guess theory that fits the evidence at that point. The theory was wrong of course, but it…

"The logic behind the sun not burning a fuel like coal is entirely sound" That is precisely why I called it "reasoned bollocks" - perhaps a bit colourful for HN. As you say the theory was wrong but the article was describing current theory at the time and is of course ... science. I really am praising a long running science magazine as best I can. I am a massive fan.

Yeah, makes sense. Just a different way of describing the same thing. Sound logic that led in the right direction if not (yet) to the right destination.

More generally, probably a useful distinction to keep in mind, between when science is offering us a direction and a theory vs when we really do have the evidence required to be fairly confident we're at the destination.

Of course even then there are often deeper layers—floors within the destination building say, to torture the analogy. But that kind of distinction is different from the one between a guess that fits the evidence so far and something that is reasonably known.

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#94

Post by ars »

dang wrote: post #22
kristianp wrote: post #2

(1863)

I added it. In a way it's dodgy though, because SA isn't providing the original article or even a photo of it. This is just a single-paragraph quote, and they've milked that cow before: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1jym5d/in_the_s... , which I ran across while failing to track down the original article.

Perhaps use the link posted by: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23075544 instead.

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#95

Post by DonHopkins »

hedora wrote: post #27
_bxg1 wrote: post #7

My personal favorite "old science" theory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether > Luminiferous aether or ether[1] ("luminiferous", meaning "light-bearing") was the postulated medium for the propagation of light.[2] It was invoked to explain the ability of the apparently wave-based light to propagate through empty space, something that waves should not be able to do. The assumption of a spatial plenum o…

It’s also the namesake of ethernet.

And before Ethernet, there was Chaosnet!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaosnet

Define by CHAOS ORDER:

http://sv.svensson.org/SYSDOC%3BCHAORD

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#96

Post by thaumasiotes »

saagarjha wrote: post #87
gerdesj wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assume a spherical planet. OK an ablate spheroid. OK a ... Now assume Lord Kelvin is talking bollocks. Just because you invent "really cold, bordering on quite nippy" doesn't mean you can overlook things like half lives and red shift. If Lord Kelvin lived now I suspect he might have other conclusions - he evaluated the evidence available at the time. I was deliberately provocative and I'm glad I was. I've got far bet…

> I was deliberately provocative and I'm glad I was. I've got far better responses as a result. I would tend to argue that this isn’t something we need on Hacker News. (Also, it’s “oblate”. To “ablate” is to erode.)

> (Also, it’s “oblate”. To “ablate” is to erode.)

Perhaps, but the item "ablate" in "an ablate spheroid" is obviously not a verb, so it's hard to see how that's relevant.

"Ablate" isn't really well-formed for a verb, and indeed I see that the modern verb is a back-formation from the better-formed "ablation". If it had started as a verb, you'd expect "aufer", in the same way that we have the verb "offer" rather than "oblate".

Of course the meaning of "offer" doesn't tell you much about the meaning of "oblate", so once again it's hard to see why the meaning of the verb "ablate" should indicate anything about the meaning of a hypothetical adjective "ablate".

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#97

Post by projektfu »

whymauri wrote: post #55
zamadatix wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'd be surprised about how many really do believe the Earth is nearly that young https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creati... "People you know" is a very unreliable way to get an idea about various populations. Regardless I think the comment was about applying current "solutions" to prior times and seeing if agrees with what we'd call a good solution in retrospective, not what people beli…

My older brother has founded two separate isotope dating companies, one for C-14 dating and the other for rare isotopes. At this point, he has about 15 years of experience in the field and a decent clientele. He believes the Earth is 6000 years old, though. He rationalizes the science he works on as (the biblical) God testing his faith. My father, who works at his C-14 company, also believes this. I will never unders…

I cannot tell a lie. I put that envelope under that pile of garbage. —- Arlo Guthrie

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#98

Post by Ono-Sendai »

_bxg1 wrote: post #7

My personal favorite "old science" theory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether > Luminiferous aether or ether[1] ("luminiferous", meaning "light-bearing") was the postulated medium for the propagation of light.[2] It was invoked to explain the ability of the apparently wave-based light to propagate through empty space, something that waves should not be able to do. The assumption of a spatial plenum o…

The aether exists, we just call it the electromagnetic field.

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#99

Post by projektfu »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #23
empath75 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not all that far off from the electromagnetic field.

Not only that, cosmic plasma filaments carrying charged dust around is the most likely explanation for the "missing" matter and energy that two Nobels were handed out for the, continued, non-discovery. I do not understand why the Aether was ridiculed, but Dark (Matter|Energy) are not. They both depend on something we can't see or detect in any way, and Occam's Razor dictates that, without further evidence, I have to…

Technically you can detect dark matter because the motions of things don’t add up based on radiative matter. But that doesn’t really explain it.

Re: Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

#100

Post by erik_seaberg »

earthboundkid wrote: post #46
_bxg1 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean this isn't the original web page? :)

When I worked for The Atlantic, I learned that Django/MySQL was not made to work for dates in the 1850s... I forget what the exact nature of the bug was, but you had to be careful which date class you were using because some can’t go past 1900.

I'll always remember discovering that from_unixtime(-1) would crash MySQL.
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