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Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

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Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#101

Post by mmooss »

gosub100 wrote: post #91
gentle wrote: post #85

I'm always fascinated by the posters here who insist on second-guessing the writers and the scientists who spend their whole lives studying a topic like this. No one needs to read your post fessing up to your profound ignorance and the fact that you didn't really read the link.

Science cannot be trusted anymore. Journals don't validate anything they submit. Departments are rewarded by how much money they wring out of the government, not by whether what they say is true. Next week they'll publish another paper about how they were wrong. Also you don't sound "fascinated", so if you're complaining at least be honest about it. There are many more descriptive words than "fascinated".

> Science cannot be trusted anymore. Journals don't validate anything they submit. Departments are rewarded by how much money they wring out of the government, not by whether what they say is true. Next week they'll publish another paper about how they were wrong.

What do you feel when you post that?

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#103

Post by yoavm »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #3
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

It fits the theme that, according to Webb, the universe developed a lot more quickly in what we think were the first billion years... Most likely the "first billion years" were more like five billion years.

There is growing evidence that doesn't fit the current model. It's funny how 'age is just a number' may be empirically true in a very existential sense.

Sorry, but can you elaborate on that? In what sense are you thinking of?

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#104

Post by thangalin »

fasteo wrote: post #25

Off topic: - Is the big bang theory the scientific consensus on the origin and evolution of the universe ? - What are the alternatives ?

The first four explanations of illustrations in my book delve into your off-topic point and bring it back on-topic:

https://impacts.to/downloads/lowres/impacts.pdf

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#105

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

nimish wrote: post #94
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientists have to publish a lot of papers (even useless ones) because that is how we have decided to rate them, for better or worse. And yes, they all mostly need to fish for funding to keep their not-so-well paid jobs going. They are hardly "ordained priests" though. I think you are trying to insult them, but not really sure what you even mean. They are pretty much by definition highly intelligent people who could…

> They are pretty much by definition highly intelligent people who could earn a lot more by working for FAANG or hedge funds Having interviewed many failed priests of higher education, this is not true. It might have been true 50 years ago, but if you are smart and intelligent you typically do not spend 5-7 of the most productive years of your life getting a PhD. >but prefer to take lower paid work on the off chance…

Everyone I've met with a PhD was intelligent. Maybe not genius, but yeah, pretty damn intelligent.

If you want to spend your life in the pursuit of knowledge rather than mere money or status, it's kind of a prerequisite to demonstrate you can perform original research.

I honestly don't get the analogy with priests. They still seem utterly different to me.

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#106

Post by deadbabe »

yoavm wrote: post #103
1970-01-01 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is growing evidence that doesn't fit the current model. It's funny how 'age is just a number' may be empirically true in a very existential sense.

Sorry, but can you elaborate on that? In what sense are you thinking of?

In the sense that the point of “age” is supposed to indicate some kind of progress by which cohorts can be compared and classified into discrete groups.

But increasingly, there is no correlation between age and specific developmental stages. It is merely a number that indicates how long something has been around but not what its current status may be.

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#107

Post by moomin »

elashri wrote: post #72
fasteo wrote: post #25

Off topic: - Is the big bang theory the scientific consensus on the origin and evolution of the universe ? - What are the alternatives ?

Big bang theory really a term describing the moment the universe started and not the evolution and how things evolved with time which have more questions than answer. The standard model of cosmology is the most accepted theory about universe. But you can't have knowledge about anything before the singularity. Actually we don't even know for sure what happens in the seconds after that because we need a much more power…

I mean, there is at the very least a theory that at very small levels, the quantum effects take over and we’re actually looking at a cyclic bang/crunch model. It’s literally discussed in A Brief History of Time. But this is more of a refinement.

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#110

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

nimish wrote: post #95
sho_hn wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with building the factory for the Model T of galaxy scanners is the limited customer audience.

So? The whole point of academia is that they aren't bound by customers. Except that's been subverted by having to kowtow to funding agencies and universities most concerned with accruing and distributing money. Defeating the whole point of having them in the first place! Free and open markets are far more efficient at distributing and allocating capital.

You are confusing academia with science. A lot of science is done in academia, but a lot is also done in the commercial sector.

Obviously the commercial sector won't typically fund things unless there is some probable payback, so they are not so good at doing fundamental research.

You need both to get the best returns.

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