Brace yourselves for gravitational waves

[Brian37]

Thats the point, not sure even Krauss is saying that. That is why he has said "nothing matters". I tend to agree, but that "something" as he said in that prior video, has nothing to do with mythological bullshit written 2000 years ago. I lean to not an either/or at the QM level, admittedly from a retard's point of view. But both depending on the quantum point of view. "It depends" and  the QM math has a fucking shitload of "it depends" decimal places.

I'd still trust Krauss before CS Lewis or Pat Robertnuts.

Dude, stop calling yourself a retard. I don't know physics at that level either, but you don't see me beating myself up over it. We're still allowed to have our uninformed opinions. Chill out.

He he he that was sarcasm dude. I am really serious. If you put a gun to my head and threatened to kill my family if I didn't complete a fraction addition, they'd be dead. But no, I say that knowing my brain doesn't get that mathematically deep. I am certainly capable though, of getting a visual from the experts, under the right conditions. No I am not dumb, but I also am not Hawking either.

[Aractus]

Aractus, I don't disagree in principle, except for three things, 5 billion years seems like  a hopeless underestimation for the situation you describe since there will still be stars and star formation going on for much much longer (more like 10^100 years); the directionality of time already arises in Newtonian physics as a statistical phenomenon if you have an extremely low entropy state at one point. There is currently no evidence that cosmic expansion will rip apart things at short length scales such as atoms. A constantly accelerated expansion  as it is caused by constant dark energy/cosmological constant does not do that

Okay sorry I should clarify what I said. General relativity doesn't know about an expiration date for the universe either, nor does it know about the Big Bang - but it allows for those events to take place, as well as for Black Holes to form. Under the laws of Quantum Mechanics the universe should stretch back and forward and infinite amount of time, never expire, and black holes can't form. Nor can the universe be expanding.

I feel that some scientists never got the recognition they deserved. The late Halton Arp maintained a different cosmological view to the conventional "big bang" cosmology for his entire academic career - for many decades in fact. Here's a video:

https://youtu.be/Mf5y6PJR5lE

Listening to Arp, I think that sums up how I feel about science in general. If you're studying down your own line of research which is outside of so-called "standard cosmology", they don't want you. They want to give preference to people with the same viewpoint. The result is biased science.

[Alex K]

As far as I can tell he held decent researcher positions at Mt Palomar and at the MPI Munich, which is not a bad address at all. Could have fared much worse considering that he held on to wrong ideas for so long.

[Excited Penguin]

I don't know. If the evidence went too far against him, I can't see how you can allow every single unorthodox view to be tested at once. But if his theories were reasonable, I don't know why they wouldn't allow him to conduct his research.

[Alex K]

Look, I agree that there tends to be too much pressure to follow mainstream topics and fads in order to get published and advance your career, especially on young researchers. But I am allergic to this idea regularly propagated by people on the fringe that everyone following far out ideas is a misunderstood and suppressed genius, and the entire scientific establishment is made up of people who suppress any unusual ideas. That is just highly insulting. The field is full of excellent scientists who are more than eager to entertain unusual ideas and do so on a regular basis, but if you hang on to propositions too long that have been rendered unlikely by new observations, and don't stay on top of current developments, you will very quickly lose support.

[SteelCurtain]

[Brian37]

Foghorn Leghorn, "I say, I say Mr Scientist, I don't need your facts to keep me warm, I've got my comic book".

[Aractus]

As far as I can tell he held decent researcher positions at Mt Palomar and at the MPI Munich, which is not a bad address at all. Could have fared much worse considering that he held on to wrong ideas for so long.

For a time yes, but once they took away his telescope time they killed his ability to continue his research.

On an unrelated note, here's Warnie's theory of evolution:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twLa8fBJA9g

[I_am_not_mafia]

Look, I agree that there tends to be too much pressure to follow mainstream topics and fads in order to get published and advance your career, especially on young researchers. But I am allergic to this idea regularly propagated by people on the fringe that everyone following far out ideas is a misunderstood and suppressed genius, and the entire scientific establishment is made up of people who suppress any unusual ideas. That is just highly insulting. The field is full of excellent scientists who are more than eager to entertain unusual ideas and do so on a regular basis, but if you hang on to propositions too long that have been rendered unlikely by new observations, and don't stay on top of current developments, you will very quickly lose support.

Agreed.

It's normally a sign that what someone is pushing is bullshit if they say that the evidence has been suppressed by conventional scientists. The whole field of science is made up of professionals looking to find holes in everyone else's theories.

It's true that there are fashions in science, but this will be because they are still proving useful. Sometimes long discarded theories can come back with an alternative slant which explains why they fell out of fashion. In my experience the enthusiastic PhD students at the beginning of their career with nothing to lose and with a dedicated three years of funding are the ones who can re-evaluate old ideas with fresh insight.

But the majority of the time, ideas are discarded because they really are just incorrect. It's how science works.

[Brian37]

To be fair science can be used to abuse. Religious theocracies have nukes and one party states like North Korea also have scientists to build their technology to make weapons and or hack other countries computers.

And while corporate paid scientists have produced valid products, they have also been paid off to lie about things like lead in gas which took ethical scientist to shout to get it removed, and now ethical scientists are still having to deal with the obstruction by corporate oil protecting climate change.

Ethics in science is about doing no harm or the least harm, it isn't about protecting governments or business or political parties. Ethics in science are simply using that knowledge to improve the human condition.