3 ms·

Seems like a very detailed yet approachable explanation, wondering about your thoughts? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UNLgPIiWAg https://www.youtube.com/wat

Seems like a very detailed yet approachable explanation, wondering about your thoughts? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UNLgPIiWAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UNLgPIiWAg

bananabreakfast 7y ago
Pretty interesting video. The big takeaway is definitely the end where he talks about the reality of the scientific method. Unlike math, you can never prove that something is correct and true. You can only prove that reality likely does not fit a given theoretical model to a vanishing probability. The models we have, we only have because they have not been proven to have a vanishingly small likelihood of explaining physical phenomena. Btw, this is what frustrates everyone about string theory. It's mathematically correct and quite elegant, but extremely difficult to gather any observational data that could prove it unlikely or another theory unlikely compared to it, leaving it in a sort of scientific limbo. Astrophysics is hard because it is an observational science only. You cannot run your own experiments so you must simply gather as much observational data as possible. It is really, really hard to gather significant data about the universe at the largest scales. The video talked about hundreds of observations, but in a universe with more whole galaxies than grains of sand on earth there are implicitly a huge number of assumptions about how representative any data set is. The numbers in astrophysics are so mind-meltingly enormous that often unimaginable and unintuitive consequences become regular occurrences. This new data should obviously not be ignored, but it also shouldn't be interpreted as "disproving" anything. That is journalistic attention grabbing. Rather the results are simply some experimental physicists saying to theoretical ones: "here, look at these interesting new data about important data sources. It reduces our uncertainty about one specific thing. Please incorporate this into your cosmology theories"

Seems like a very detailed yet approachable explanation, wondering about your thoughts? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UNLgPIiWAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UNLgPIiWAg

bananabreakfast 7y ago

Pretty interesting video. The big takeaway is definitely the end where he talks about the reality of the scientific method. Unlike math, you can never prove that something is correct and true. You can only prove that reality likely does not fit a given theoretical model to a vanishing probability. The models we have, we only have because they have not been proven to have a vanishingly small likelihood of explaining physical phenomena. Btw, this is what frustrates everyone about string theory. It's mathematically correct and quite elegant, but extremely difficult to gather any observational data that could prove it unlikely or another theory unlikely compared to it, leaving it in a sort of scientific limbo. Astrophysics is hard because it is an observational science only. You cannot run your own experiments so you must simply gather as much observational data as possible. It is really, really hard to gather significant data about the universe at the largest scales. The video talked about hundreds of observations, but in a universe with more whole galaxies than grains of sand on earth there are implicitly a huge number of assumptions about how representative any data set is. The numbers in astrophysics are so mind-meltingly enormous that often unimaginable and unintuitive consequences become regular occurrences. This new data should obviously not be ignored, but it also shouldn't be interpreted as "disproving" anything. That is journalistic attention grabbing. Rather the results are simply some experimental physicists saying to theoretical ones: "here, look at these interesting new data about important data sources. It reduces our uncertainty about one specific thing. Please incorporate this into your cosmology theories"