371–380 of 547 posts
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Correct, as I understand it. No matter can travel at the speed of light, and no light can travel faster than the speed of light. But the rule doesn't extend to the rate of expansion of the "field" on which those things exist.
When I read this, it seems to me like this is more or less the same as saying that the speed of light is decreasing, but I am probably wrong?
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Nobody says cosmology is not making progress. People dunk on cosmology because cosmologists have consistently, over decades, insisted, in public, that they knew more than they did, and are continually obliged to abandon what they insisted they knew. If they were more forthright about how much they don't know, they would get less criticism. They have much to learn from the biologists, who know they know practically no…
>cosmologists have consistently, over decades, insisted, in public, that they knew more than they did Exactly, and each time the theories are proven wrong, it's explained as a never-ending series of "oddities", yet the theories are never altered in any meaningful way other than ad-hoc additions to explain each "oddity". At some point there needs to be a reckoning that, for instance, the current theories of star forma…
So the solution? There was some very specific period of acceleration, faster than light acceleration to some very specific degree, at some specific point right after the big bang which then ended at some other very specific point, at which point everything returns back to normal. What's the logic for it? Well if we do this, then what we see matches what we expect to see. It's an absolute retrofitting of numbers to make a model fit reality. And not only does that constitute good science in cosmology, it was sufficient to win a Nobel Prize.
It is literally unexplained magic being taken as a fundamental concept of science. And the worst part of it all is that it's completely unfalsifiable. We only have one universe to observe. So if it turns out that the discrepancy is actually being caused by many smaller effects we stand near 0 chance of ever discovering because each one of those small effects will have a million flaws, while the perfectly retrofitted inflation theory has "none." At worst they'll even get absorbed into the inflation theory model magic. Just add more epicycles!
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> because the light from it won't reach us. This is one of the most interesting aspects to the universe. It's not, "because the light from it hasn't reached us yet but is on the way and will get here eventually." Rather it's that the rate of expansion of the universe is accelerating, so that we're moving away from parts of it faster than its light can cover the distance to us. It will never reach us. That's mindboggl…
Something that’s even more mind boggling than that, at least to me is that the universe is still within the first few seconds (or minutes) of its life in terms of relative time we can comprehend. As stars collapse and black holes consume everything, the universe will spend 99% of its life in complete desolate darkness. An endless sea of black holes for billions and billions of years. The fact that we exist, in the sp…
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>Certainly there are many unexplained effects in solid state physics Wait for it… Why ice is slippery? Usual explanation is completely incorrect. Actual semi-conclusive research just recently happened.
I had to look that up. Here's research[1][2] from 2019 about "why ice is so slippery", including some of the apparent surprises. I dunno. I'm not a physicist so some of the surprises seem like very minor things to me. Spoiler: According to this research, ice is slippery because of a thin layer of water. (As we expected, no?) But the water layer is 1) thinner than expected, 2) more viscous than expected, and 3) contai…
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I always wondered if we could somehow get a James webb telescope revolving around all planets of our solar system in the next 1000 years. That should give us pretty awesome visuals.
What would be the benefit of the telescope orbiting other planets than earth?
This was predicted by astronomer Stacy McGaugh on his super interesting blog as a natural consequence of modified Newtonian dynamics ( https://tritonstation.com/2022/01/03/what-jwst-will-see/ ). McGaugh came to support MOND over dark matter reluctantly for just such reasons—MOND routinely predicts things in advance that dark matter struggles to justify ex post facto, usually by adding additional moving parts to the m…
I think this is a bit of a mistake. I believe that simplicity itself is evidence. Dark matter theory is starting to feel like the epicycles of Copernicus.
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I know it is considered increasingly unlikely, but: What a parallel to flat Earth ideas people had (...) hundreds of years ago, until they realized we are on a sphere. Maybe in a few hundred years people will laugh about our limited ideas of the universe as well.
This is wrong by an order of magnitude. It was already known thousands of years ago that the Earth is more-or-less spherical. The idea that people in recent history believed in a flat Earth is a myth.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth
The way you've worded this, you're incorrect. There are people today who believe in a flat Earth, crazily enough.
Of course, the idea that most of society (namely educated people) believed in a flat Earth is a myth. From your link:
"The myth of the flat Earth, or the flat earth error, is a modern historical misconception that European scholars and educated people during the Middle Ages believed the Earth to be flat."
What the typical serf working in the fields thought about the shape of the Earth is probably unknown.
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I was just thinking about video games where vegetation, animals, and hills spring into existence when you get close enough. Far away, and they don't bother to render the little things. Depending what generation tech we're running on in the parent reality, JWST may be causing a noticeable jump in system load.
I had the same idea about magic. Back in the day people could do things that we can’t because nobody looked into details and the universe had enough “possibility space” to allow it. Once you turn your gaze into atomic or galactic workings, this space shrinks tremendously and further research becomes much harder because you glued the puzzle from its sides in a particular way and there’s not much left to hope for, exce…
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We know very well how carbon dioxide interacts with infrared radiation (easily tested with an IR spectrometer), and we know human activity releases enormous quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which does not magically disappear. Precise predictions are hard, but the general direction of travel cannot be seriously disputed without arguing against the above simple facts.
Carbon dioxide is actually a relatively weak greenhouse gas. At least compared to water vapour, or even methane. Btw, CO2 does 'magically' disappear. Into the oceans. Alas, from what I've read it'll take about 2,000 years to do so. > [...], but the general direction of travel cannot be seriously disputed without arguing against the above simple facts. I don't want to argue against global warming, but I want to argue…