Galaxies Underestimated

[ripcord]

This discussion is interesting, even though I have little of import to add except to say that fields like cosmology and other hard sciences must suffer under the unfortunate reputational burden of vast swaths of academia. The average man has to wade through a constant stream of so called "scientific" mendacity from the pseudosciences, so it breeds an unfortunate contempt.

Take the field of psychology, for instance. What substantive truth has it produced since Skinner in the 1950s? More bologna than anything else.

Edit: I went back and read what I wrote. Wow. Maybe coming on just a tensy but too strong.

 

[PWMDMD]

This discussion is interesting, even though I have little of import to add except to say that fields like cosmology and other hard sciences must suffer under the unfortunate reputational burden of vast swaths of academia. The average man has to wade through a constant stream of so called "scientific" mendacity from the pseudosciences, so it breeds an unfortunate contempt.

Take the field of psychology, for instance. What substantive truth has it produced since Skinner in the 1950s? More bologna than anything else.

I don't know anything about psychology so you're on your own there but I think there's some truth to what your saying as far as perception. When people see weak research, politicized studies, or outright pseudoscience being presented as "science," it can erode trust in legitimate scientific fields.

The problem is that many people treat science as one giant category when, in reality, different fields have very different standards of evidence and predictive power. The solution isn't to distrust all science, but to get better at distinguishing strong evidence from weak evidence. Unfortunately, that requires some understanding of science.

There's no getting around the fact that you have to know quite a bit about technical topics to give meaningful opinions about it.

 

[MolaKule]

...As for the Big Bang being a "failing cosmological model," I'd ask failing relative to what? The model successfully predicted the expansion of the universe, the cosmic microwave background, the abundance of light elements, and many aspects of large-scale structure formation. You can certainly argue that it is incomplete, and I would agree. But incomplete and failing are not the same thing...

I think you are referring to the "Hot" BB model which was a computer simulation involving a major extrapolation back in time carried out by Robert Wagoner at Stanford circa 1973, using various assumptions and conjectures.

The model goes back to ~ t=0 for a temperature ~ T = 10^11 Kelvin.

Prior to the earlier Proton-antiproton pair production epoch we "run out of secure physics," as explained by M.S. Longair in, Theoretical concepts in physics.

So we go from a supposed system with constituents in equilibrium at t=0 to a highly non-equilibrium system in later epochs for t>0.

I think you have more faith in cosmic conjectures and assumptions than I so I will leave it there.

 

[stormgol]

M82. the Cigar Galaxy. a Starburst Galaxy. one of the weirdest and prettiest Galaxy.

 

[JimPghPA]

I don't think we have directly observed Dark Matter but only inferred it indirectly.

If there is dark matter then it seems by implication there should be dark stars and dark galaxies and dark Quasars, but how would we know since it has so far been unobservable?

Dark stars have been located.

 

[JimPghPA]

If they don't overlap ours, you will never know.

If they don't overlap ours "within an observable location", you will never know.

 

[MolaKule]

Dark stars have been located.

Some potential candidates have been noted but no verification as of yet.

 

[PWMDMD]

I think you are referring to the "Hot" BB model which was a computer simulation involving a major extrapolation back in time carried out by Robert Wagoner at Stanford circa 1973, using various assumptions and conjectures.

The model goes back to ~ t=0 for a temperature ~ T = 10^11 Kelvin.

Prior to the earlier Proton-antiproton pair production epoch we "run out of secure physics," as explained by M.S. Longair in, Theoretical concepts in physics.

So we go from a supposed system with constituents in equilibrium at t=0 to a highly non-equilibrium system in later epochs for t>0.

I think you have more faith in cosmic conjectures and assumptions than I so I will leave it there.

I don't think this is really a matter of faith.

Every scientific model rests on assumptions. The question is whether those assumptions lead to predictions that match observations. The Big Bang model has been remarkably successful in that regard, whether we're talking about cosmic expansion, the cosmic microwave background, or the abundance of light elements.

I also don't think anyone is claiming that our understanding remains secure all the way back to t = 0. In fact, every cosmologists I've ever read was quite explicit about where the physics becomes uncertain and where current theories break down. Acknowledging those limits isn't a weakness of the model - it's simply an honest assessment of what we know and don't know.

Where I think we may disagree is that I don't view "we run out of secure physics" as evidence against the portions of the model that are well-supported. It tells us there are unanswered questions at the earliest epochs, not that the later predictions and observations suddenly become invalid.

So I wouldn't say I have faith in the conjectures. I'd say I have confidence in the parts of the model that have survived repeated observational testing, while remaining open to the possibility that our understanding of the earliest moments of the universe may change substantially in the future. As for t=0, neither I, nor any other human being, knows what happened, but we do confidently know what happened at t>0.


I hope we find a theory of quantum gravity in my lifetime and that we do figure out what happened at t=0.