Re: dark energy...

Posted by Pasti on Feb 18, 2002 at 03:15
(64.10.126.130)

Re: dark energy... (anyman)

First of all I really appreciate the fact that you decided to have a normal discussion, I really do.I can only hope you will continue this trend, and as long as you do, I will be happy to continue our debate.

"what is in dispute is whether or not you or anyone else KNOWS that stuff to be true"

I will take your word for the meaning of what you said in the previous posting, even if at the time I could not see that meaning.
And let's get something straight.It is not about education, it is about experience.You could do the same thing I do,or Morgan, or anyone else for that matter, if you put your mind to it, irrespective of your former backgrounds, or education.It ust takes a little more effort, that's all.

"your training was framed in a paradigm; that paradigm was reinforced by the views of your profs and their's by their profs and all of you apparently forget how HUGE is the number of assumptions (and not a few of them a priori and still others axiomatic) involved in relativity and other cosmological models"

Well,I will have to disapoint you here.I can see how you could get to this conclusion, and in part it is true for the first few years of college, at least as much as college goes on the north-american continent.But as soon as you get into "some real stuff", like electromagnetism, special relativity, quantum mechanics,you are made aware of any assumption involved in developing the theory.I guess you will have to take my word on that, I cannot prove it to you.And by the time you get into the "real real stuff", the assumptions and the theory are on the same level at least, if the assumptions are not higher.
Of course, some people, and even scientists, choose to forget these assumptions,but again, believe me, anyone that I know that does real science, like say, Smolin, or G.Ellis,and the list can continue almost as much as you want, they are fully aware of both the assumptions and the implications of a theory.
I realize that this might seem utopic to you, but it is true,and again, I am speaking from experience.And to be honest, I don't think I have ever seen more people to challenge the "old" concepts than the cosmologists and the theoretical physicists working one way or the other in something related to cosmology and gravitation.
And what is known today as the standard cosmological model is only the best "guess" there is,in the sense that it is the model that has survived criticism at all levels (even though is is not by far the best, or the most complete model)and fits the experimental data.
Why do you think that this cosmological model is still "controversial",that it is not clear cut and still under development?
I will get back to this standard model later, maybe in a different posting, if you decide to continue this discussion, and we get to examining those assumptions.

"and the alternative proposals in the articles i referenced (and i'm pretty sure the MOND guy posted to this forum several times in either the last or the second to the last archive of this board) do not represent my thinking either; they are sitll billions of years guys at heart"

With all due respect, I somehow doubt that those were "serious" articles.In the sense that even if the metaphysics in them seemd plausible, or seemed as an interesting alternative to the current metaphysics,somehow I think they lack the quantitative description and agreement with the observational data.And that for two major reasons (and I mean no offense to you):on one hand you cannot reference a quantitative article on the subject,since you seem to lack knowledge about a lot of the observational techniques and data, and on the other hand, because the observational data, even if some of it is publicly available,requires a lot of computational power to be analized and "refitted" into a new theory, and there are only very few places which posses this computational capacity.Or in other words, not many people have access to a CRAY, or a DEC.
Hence, the articles you have referenced and the ideeas presented in them (unless extremely special cases like George Ellis for example)cannot be based on a full view of the field.

"what those articles do point out, and very well, is that there is chaos in the field...the alleged consensus masks myriad problems of no small consequence...there ARE lots of conflicts"

Let's not be overly dramatic, there are not myriad problems with the model. Yes, there are conflicts of both experimental nature, and of metaphysical nature, it is true. And again,everyone who does this type of science seriously is aware of them, as much as you don't want to believe it or you are not aware of it.

"and be not in doubt anymore, if you were previously...there are serious problems with inflationary big bang jazz...
...i stand by my post most immediately above, which was in reponse to yours
...but i am here to remind you that there is still much to be learned about quantum physics and we know far far far less about gravity...
...about the only thing we really know about cosmology is that...we don't KNOW very much at all..."

As I said, I am aware there are problems, but for me at least, this does not seem to be a major drawback. It is somewhat natural at this stage in "history" not to have the full answer, and not to have the entire information that would lead to a full answer.And if you are looking for a definitive and immuable answer, science cannot give it to you at this particular moment.However, this does not mean by far that science as it is today is rotten to the bone, just because there are problems with the cosmological models.
Let me remind you of the JJThompson model of an atom (the raisin cake model in which electrons were embedeed and fixed in the "material" of the atom).Today, even children would laugh at such a model,but the model has nonetheless the value (apart from the historical value) that it challenged people to investigate it,leading in the end to Rutherford's experiments that disproved it.
The situation is the same with cosmology, or gravitation, or quantum "physics" to use a general term. And it will change with time, based on observational consistency. It will only take longer, probably much longer than the development of atomic physics, for the obvious reasons.
Now, on the other hand, taking refuge into metaphysics of some sort,doesn't answer your questions either.And worse, it is not even direcly testable (I hope that you admit that much), and at least in my case,this is not much comfort.

If you want to continue this debate on cosmology and its problems, let me know, and I will be happy to do so.But only if it is possible to have a normal argument, and you know exactly what I mean by that.Otherwise it would only be a waste of time.


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