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Forums - General - Is science too much about assumptions?

DarkWraith on 19 December 2013
Soleron said:
BMaker11 said:
Soleron said:
BMaker11 said:
...

This gets a little semantical here. Light can't go "less than the speed of light" because it, itself, is light. A light photon can't move slower than itself. However, light can move slower than c, the speed of light in a vacuum, if you change the medium that light is going through. Gelatin, for example

No. Photons never move slower than c, 300,000,000m/s

I can bet you a Steam game over this if you want.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_index

Show me proof from that article that photons travel at less than c



this is really basic and if you think this you are uneducated about it. if a particle like a photon is interrupted it will slow down, unless you think photons use magic to travel through substances.

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TheJimbo1234 on 19 December 2013
fps_d0minat0r said:
TheJimbo1234 said:
pauluzzz1981 said:

Let's get this clear. I love science. I'm reading alot about science, if i can understand it. But i was watching a program on discovery about the stars, dark matter, anti-materie and wormholes. I love the theories, but aren't they going too far? I was listening to a scientist, pressumably one of the smartest people of the world and he was talking nonsense. He was talking about alternate universes and that we can create them in the future with some device. My only question was, where do we leave another universe?

Look, i know, i'm not so smart and we need people with vision. But where is the line between interesting theory and woohoo??


Maths.

Their crazy ideas are backed up by solid maths.

HOWEVER, these ideas make vast amounts of assumptions which we have no idea are true or not. Mathmatically they are sound, but if you somehow mathmatically show the sky to be pink, that does not mean it will be.


Actually it would. The colour of the sky is blue because of the elements in our atmosphere are mostly oxygen and nitrogen. An increase in other elements can change the colour of the sky, so if you have a statistic that tells you a certain element will increase a certain percentage, you can predict the colour of the sky....ofcourse there is never a sudden change except when volcanos erupt, which may cause parts of the sky to change to colours such as green temporarily.

I believe this will also be the leading method to determine whether exoplenets have a habitable envrionment or not, once we get telescopes that are good enough.

What I am implying though is if someone presumed that the sky was pink due to a "pinkon" particle that they believed existed as it fitted neatly into their equation. Of course though, no such thing is real and this is what many theoretical quantum physicists have most likely done - made neat little mathematically sound packages to fit into their equation as currently they can not discover what is meant to be there, but merely guess.



Soleron on 19 December 2013
BMaker11 said:
Soleron said:
...

Show me proof from that article that photons travel at less than c

Dude...it's right in the first paragraph

"For example, the refractive index of water is 1.33, meaning that light travels 1.33 times slower in water than it does in vacuum."

Unless you're trying to say photons aren't light? 

Yeah that's saying the group velocity of light waves is slower in a bulk material. Not the same thing at all.



alabtrosMyster on 19 December 2013
d21lewis said:
I was told that the only reason bullets go in straight lines is because you were told that's how they move. Truth is, you can curve a bullet. I saw a documentary where a guy curved a bullet and shot like four or five different people standing in a circle.


It's not science if they tell you bullets are going in straigh lines, effects of gravity, air resistance and wind have been discovered and explained a long time ago!



Soleron on 19 December 2013
TheJimbo1234 said:
...

What I am implying though is if someone presumed that the sky was pink due to a "pinkon" particle that they believed existed as it fitted neatly into their equation. Of course though, no such thing is real and this is what many theoretical quantum physicists have most likely done - made neat little mathematically sound packages to fit into their equation as currently they can not discover what is meant to be there, but merely guess.

Yes.

There's a large gap between "X is consistent with what we know right now", and "There's good evidence for X". Popular science often gets the two confused.



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alabtrosMyster on 19 December 2013
pauluzzz1981 said:

Let's get this clear. I love science. I'm reading alot about science, if i can understand it. But i was watching a program on discovery about the stars, dark matter, anti-materie and wormholes. I love the theories, but aren't they going too far? I was listening to a scientist, pressumably one of the smartest people of the world and he was talking nonsense. He was talking about alternate universes and that we can create them in the future with some device. My only question was, where do we leave another universe?

Look, i know, i'm not so smart and we need people with vision. But where is the line between interesting theory and woohoo??


Yes, some of the science behind cosmology and physics seem pretty much out there, the documentary should make it clear wether they are talking facts of something that has yet to be proven.

Sometimes what seems to make no sense at all at our level seems to hold the universe together at a very small scale, the problem is that to verify these ideas you need a giant collider many many years ahead of you to make a relevant observation, it was the same with Heinstein's discoveries, it took years and years for them to be confirmed... he could have been wrong.

In the end what makes science science is the scientific method, not the conclusions, the most important aspect of it is the observations and experiences either in lab or in the real world... they must be reproductible by others!



justinian on 19 December 2013
Soleron said:
justinian said:
The half-life of scientific facts. Half of what science believe to be factual will be proven incorrect in a decade.

Please, show me something that had good evidence a decade ago that is now known to be incorrect.

If you really want an answer read the book "The Half-life of Facts : Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date" by Samuel Arbesman.

He gives numerous examples.

 



justinian on 19 December 2013
Tom3k said:
justinian said:
The half-life of scientific facts. Half of what science believe to be factual will be proven incorrect in a decade.

That's the one true fact.

There is something fundamentally wrong in your second sentance. Science is not a set of belief.

Funny enough that is not my quote. I think it was Einstien's based on the context of the discussion, but please let me confirm that as it could have been someone else.



Soleron on 19 December 2013
justinian said:
Soleron said:
justinian said:
The half-life of scientific facts. Half of what science believe to be factual will be proven incorrect in a decade.

Please, show me something that had good evidence a decade ago that is now known to be incorrect.

If you really want an answer read the book "The Half-life of Facts : Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date" by Samuel Arbesman.

He gives numerous examples.

I'm asking you to name ONE example.



fighter on 19 December 2013

OP is right


TV science goes too far. Basically they keep finding wackos and extracting sensationalist phrases out of them...