i think this is unfairly flagged
The Big Bang didn't happen: What do the James Webb images show?
61–70 of 112 posts
Re: The Big Bang didn't happen: What do the James Webb images show?
#62I have no idea if this is true or not. But for a moment I was just imagining a world where scientists agreed that the Big Bang never happened. How many physicists' work would be thrown in the trash? How many high school science books would have to be updated? How would the general public's trust in science change? Would be such an interesting thing to observe.
> “the general public’s trust in science”
Science is /= fact or truth. Science is a process.
There should never be a “trust in science.” In fact, science only works if nobody trusts anything and every experiment is questioned and repeated. If this doesn’t happen, then that’s when the general public should be concerned.
Re: The Big Bang didn't happen: What do the James Webb images show?
#63> One paper’s title begins with the candid exclamation: “Panic!” Completely burying the full title "Panic! At the Disks: First Rest-frame Optical Observations of Galaxy Structure at z>3 with JWST in the SMACS 0723 Field" which is the best Panic! at the Disco pun I've seen in a long time.
Not just burying, but very disingenuously so. Than you for looking that up, it speaks volumes.
"Looking that up" is giving me too much credit, I just clicked the link :)
I don't think it's disingenuous, just out of touch. The author is 75 years old; he probably didn't recognize a 2000s-2010s pop culture pun.
Re: The Big Bang didn't happen: What do the James Webb images show?
#64Author's Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lerner I get the impression he's regarded as something of a crank in astrophysics communities.
I think he's the very model of a crank - he's been actively pushing a hypothesis mainly defined for what it isn't for at least 30 years that's been kicking around for over 60 years that's failed to make a single successful prediction and repeatedly gets falsified and instead cherrypicks new results and goes "See! Everything about that model is wrong and therefore mine must be right." The Big Bang just broke some people.
Re: The Big Bang didn't happen: What do the James Webb images show?
#65Author's Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lerner I get the impression he's regarded as something of a crank in astrophysics communities.
He doesn't write like a crank. He's clear, concise, and has a history of work without sounding overly egotistical. I don't want to get prematurely hyped, but this could be the real deal.
He does write like a crank. He deliberately misquotes the "Panic!" title of a research paper, and misconstrues what Kirkpatrick is referencing when she talks about being kept up at night - her original quote is just her speaking broadly, not about The Big Bang possibly not being real.
That's two things he's bent to support his position within the first two paragraphs of this piece. Right out of the gate he's shown that he can't be trusted with data.
Re: The Big Bang didn't happen: What do the James Webb images show?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
the point was that "the unpopular, unconvincing hypothesis is right" need be treated as a possibility only if the probability is high enough, and knowing that the vast majority are wrong is an important bayesian input in properly estimating that probability
help me out. historically, at what point in bayesian probability estimation did "there is no such thing as ether" theorists go from crank to lets pay attention to these guys
This is cherry-picking.
Your interlocutors have already stipulated that on occasion, the scientific establishment has been wrong, and the cranks have been right.
Their point is that this is almost never the case. There are and have been cranks who dispute the scientific consensus on almost every point since the scientific method was first developed.
Are you also suggesting we should believe the anti-vaxxers who still back Andrew Wakefield's paper?
Are you also suggesting we should believe the people who say climate change isn't real?
Are you also suggesting we should believe the people who say the earth is flat?
Are you also suggesting we should believe the people who say that our current trees aren't "really" trees, and all the "real", giant, trees were killed long ago? [0]
All of these are cranks who disagree with the established scientific consensus—sometimes in bizarre but harmless ways, sometimes in extremely damaging and disturbing ones. If your point is genuinely "we should listen to cranks because they have a good track record", why not them, too? Why not all of them?
Or is there, in fact, something specific about this one that makes you think it's got something going for it besides "they might be actually super smart and seeing something the rest of us are missing"? If so, maybe lead with that, instead?
[0] https://www.inverse.com/article/21098-flat-earthers-trees
Re: The Big Bang didn't happen: What do the James Webb images show?
#67what does the [flagged] mean? any theory that gets rid of dark matter is better than what we have now. the cosmological constant was one thing (turns out Einstein found the quantized minimum energy of empty space, before quantum mechanics). This dark matter folly is taking fudge factor to the extreme. it's lazy.
It means that the topic was controversial enough that some people flagged it.
Re: The Big Bang didn't happen: What do the James Webb images show?
#68Author's Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lerner I get the impression he's regarded as something of a crank in astrophysics communities.
I should think that after all these centuries we had learned to listen to the cranky physicists.
Re: The Big Bang didn't happen: What do the James Webb images show?
#69“ If the universe is expanding, a strange optical illusion must exist. Galaxies (or any other objects) in expanding space do not continue to look smaller and smaller with increasing distance. Beyond a certain point, they start looking larger and larger. (This is because their light is supposed to have left them when they were closer to us.)” Interesting misunderstanding of inflation.
I think it's a real effect.
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2622/
Unofficial Explanation: https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2622:_Angular_Diamete...
Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_diameter_distance#Angu...
Re: The Big Bang didn't happen: What do the James Webb images show?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
help me out. historically, at what point in bayesian probability estimation did "there is no such thing as ether" theorists go from crank to lets pay attention to these guys
This is cherry-picking. Your interlocutors have already stipulated that on occasion , the scientific establishment has been wrong, and the cranks have been right. Their point is that this is almost never the case. There are and have been cranks who dispute the scientific consensus on almost every point since the scientific method was first developed. Are you also suggesting we should believe the anti-vaxxers who stil…
im not suggesting any of that. the burden of proof should be on the presenter sure. but calling this guy a crank is stretching the definition of a crank a fair bit. hes been funded by nasa and was published (once ?) in an astronomy journal
personally i dont think big bang theory deserves to be held up to same regard as classical and quantum mechanics, electro and thermodynamics, and relativity. and i dont think questioning it is anywhere close to flat earthism or creationism. still i happen to believe it is the currently best supported model, albeit one with plenty of questions to answer