The Ten Most Disturbing Scientific Discoveries
A list. Most interesting:
The universe is made of stuff we can barely begin to imagine.
Everything you probably think of when you think of the universe—planets, stars, galaxies, black holes, dust—makes up just 4 percent of whatever is out there.
Don’t get me started on the universe. I hate that fucking thing.
Via smijer
May 20th, 2010 at 8:48 am
Not much has changed in the 15 years or so since my last college physics experience–what we know about the matter in the universe is just a fraction of what there is to now. I remember doing an experiment in astronomy lab where we demonstrated that if the galaxy contained only the matter we could observe and account for, given the speed at which it’s known to be rotating, it should have flung itself apart long ago as there wouldn’t be enough gravity to maintain its shape.
Crazy. There’s a lot of “dark matter” unaccounted for.
May 20th, 2010 at 9:53 am
Funny, the discovery that “scientists” had “hid” the decline wasn’t there.
May 20th, 2010 at 10:28 am
Re: Dark Matter & Dark Energy.
It’s funny, it used to be that when our observed data didn’t match the predictions from our theories, it was the theories that got changed, not the data.
Did we learn nothing from the “aether”? (Since our theories said that waves required a medium to propogate and space appeared to be a vacuum, instead of changing our theories about light, we changed the data and said that space couldn’t be a vacuum at all but was instead filled with Aether.)
May 20th, 2010 at 11:06 am
Bore–it’s because the hiding wasn’t what you’re thinking it was. Which has been explained about a gazillion times.
In re: dark matter…it’s been a long time since I studied this, but that I know of, the central problem remains–if there isn’t at least some other matter out there the galaxy should be spinning itself apart and it’s not. I don’t think anybody’s changing data–they’re saying “we need more of it”.
May 20th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
the central problem remains–if there isn’t at least some other matter out there the galaxy should be spinning itself apart and it’s not.
The problem is with the unstated assumption. *IF* our theory of gravitation is correct *THEN* given the observed matter the galaxy should be spinning itself apart and it’s not.
But given the failure of that statement it seems rather backwards for us to say “No, No. The theory is correct, it’s the data that’s wrong.
May 20th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Why does everyone think that Galileo was this fine upstanding guy? Yeah, he provided evidence for one thing, and was utterly wrong on a bunch of other crap, comets come to mind. In fact, if he hadn’t been such an asshole to his contemporaries and publicly insulted the pope the church almost certainly would have ended up clearing him of any wrongdoing. Really the moral of the Galileo story is don’t be an asshole to those in power unless you’re prepared to take the consequences without whining.
May 20th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
The thing is we have a lot of other indications that our general knowledge about gravity is correct. So it’s not that the data is wrong–it’s that we don’t know where all the matter is. We don’t know enough to say it’s NOT there.
Now…if we did, then there’d be a heck of a lot of head scratching about how gravity doesn’t work like we think it does.
May 20th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
And most of those indications come from experiments and observations inside a gravity well. But that wouldn’t effect results at all would it? The results from our single experiment moving outside of the sun’s gravity well remain unexplained.
May 20th, 2010 at 6:51 pm
The thing is we have a lot of other indications that our general knowledge about gravity is correct.
We also had a lot of other indications that waves required a medium to propogate in too. And thus was born “The Aether”.
Oops.
May 20th, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Sebastiantheguywithnoblog,
It’s been explained a gillion times, but the reason this won’t go away is that the explanations are misleading/incomplete. Here’s what Mike did (the “trick” that made it to the front page of IPCC AR4):
1. Briffa’s proxy data set was truncated at 1960. Your link saying that the data “suddenly became unreliable” and how the “decline” referred to a “decline in reliability” of the data is laughable. They kept the 99% of the data that was useful to their warming story, and simply erased the last 40 years of proxy data because it didn’t fit their story.
2. They joined this truncated proxy data to instrumental data (put some apples in with those oranges). Normally you’d want as long an overlap period as possible to show that the proxy data is a reasonable match to the thermometer data. They deleted maybe 20% of this overlap period, because the proxy data is NOT a good match with the thermometer data (the “treemometer” problem). It’s unrealible from 1960-2000 but extra crazy super duper reliable from 1600-1900? Please.
3. Here’s the worst. There were a bunch of lines on their plot, and Mann tucked the truncated proxy line under other lines so that it’s not at all obvious that the data has been fiddled. That’s what made it to the cover of AR4.
So they threw out some of the data because they didn’t like it, they kept other bits of the data because they did like it, and they grafted two different types of data together with a bit of airbrushing so that you can’t easily see the stitches holding this Frankenstein’s Monster together.
I was kind of joking in my first comment that this is “scary science”, but it really is. Well, ugly science, anyway.
And the fact that some of the scientific establishment continues to defend this sort of practice is precisely why climate science has such a terrible reputation.
Unc, sorry for getting a bit grumpy and OT here at your place.
May 20th, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Link is here in case you want more than just my version of the story.
May 21st, 2010 at 12:34 am
Dude, you’re regurgitating McIntyre’s bullshit and you want to be considered credible?
Please.
May 21st, 2010 at 12:37 am
Further discussion here about why the data sets were handled as they were.
In point of fact, to handle them any other way would actually be the scary bad science–but because doing so doesn’t fit the denier narrative, we get all the bullshyte Bore is regurgitating from nonscientists like McIntyre.
May 21st, 2010 at 12:38 am
Shit no linky. Here I meant.
May 21st, 2010 at 8:35 am
BTW, ravenshrike wins the award for all time stupid comments.
The church didn’t accept Galileo’s findings for CENTURIES. Him being a little more polite about it wouldn’t have changed anything.
Let’s lock you up for a decade or so and see how much whining you do.
Goddamn there are some ass stupid people around here.
May 21st, 2010 at 8:39 am
Sebastiantheguywithnoblog, even John Stewart seems to be “buying McIntyre’s bullshit.” The way people continue to spin for Mann, Jones et al is simply astonishing.
Like what they did is honest science. Come on, dude – are you really defending what they’ve done? Really?