25 ms·

Usually, scientists are extremely careful with extrapolation, the big exception being the big bang, because it sells, I guess, and because it is hard, if not im

Usually, scientists are extremely careful with extrapolation, the big exception being the big bang, because it sells, I guess, and because it is hard, if not impossible, to verify.

mr_mitm 6y ago
What do you mean? There is an overwhelming amount of evidence for the Big Bang. Unless you mean something other than the scientific consensus by the expression "Big Bang". And what do you mean by sell? The Big Bang used to be a fringe interpretation of the equations until the evidence rolled, not because it sounded appealing. Einstein famously introduced the cosmological constant so the equations would allow another interpretation (a static universe), which he just as famously regretted as soon as the expansion was measured.
- StanislavPetrov 6y ago
  "Scientific consensus" does not equal "overwhelming evidence".
  - simonh 6y ago
    No, but overwhelming evidence, as we have for the Big Bang, generally does lead to scientific consensus. That’s how science works.
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      > consensus Sorry, that isn't how science works. In science, a model is created and then verified experimentally. I know global warming is consensus-based, and that's not really science either. No matter how many people you find that say the earth is flat (consensus), it's not.
    - treeman79 6y ago
      You definitely want people working against the scientific consensus. They will mostly be wrong; but now and then that’s how we get a breakthrough.
      - simonh 6y ago
        Working against it, or holding its feet to the fire by testing its claims against new evidence, exactly as was done in this case. That’s the weird thing about science. If you’re trying your absolute level best to prove it wrong, you’re doing it right.
  - mr_mitm 6y ago
    That is not at all what I was trying to say. I was saying: Unless the OP meant something other than what every cosmologist means by the expression "Big Bang", there is overwhelming evidence for it. I said this because contrary to what many people believe, the Big Bang Theory describes pretty much everything but the singularity at the beginning. The Big Bang Theory describes how the Universe evolved starting at some tiny fraction of a second after the "Big Bang". And this theory is confirmed without any reasonable doubt. You can literally see the expansion of the Universe right now, and you can see that remote regions of the Universe appear much younger than our region due to the finite speed of light. What happened precisely in the very first tiny fraction of a second is still very much up to debate, mostly because we don't have a working theory of quantum gravity, because both gravity and quantum mechanics become important at the same time, similar to some aspects of black holes. That's why I was phrasing it the way I did.
- timthorn 6y ago
  The term itself was coined in order to disparage the idea by Fred Hoyle, who was a proponent of the Steady State Theory. He never accepted that the Big Bang happened.
  - foobar1962 6y ago
    The square root of minus one obtained its name for a similar reason.
  - mr_mitm 6y ago
    A prime example of the adage "Science progresses one funeral at a time"
    - timthorn 6y ago
      But it is also true that Hoyle made many important contributions himself. For instance, he posited the idea of stellar nucleosynthesis. We're all complex beings.
simonh 6y ago
That’s an odd comment to make about a slow, painstaking, extremely careful long term experiment that’s all about verifying predictions about the Big Bang.
boomboomsubban 6y ago
The entire concept of science is to extrapolate because things are impossible to verify. The Big Bang makes predictions that repeatedly are shown to be correct through experimentation.
MurizS 6y ago
Your comment reminds me of a study [1] published in 2019, demonstrating that people with the strongest views against genetically modified foods know the least about science but believe they know the most. Implicating that the Big Bang Theory enjoys its popularity because it "sells" is, I think, showing complete arrogance to landmark discoveries made in the past century - such as the cosmic background radiation [2] (for which the Nobel Prize 1978 was awarded), supporting the thesis of the Big Bang. [1] Extreme opponents of genetically modified foods know the least but think they know the most. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0520-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0520-3 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background

Usually, scientists are extremely careful with extrapolation, the big exception being the big bang, because it sells, I guess, and because it is hard, if not impossible, to verify.

mr_mitm 6y ago

What do you mean? There is an overwhelming amount of evidence for the Big Bang. Unless you mean something other than the scientific consensus by the expression "Big Bang". And what do you mean by sell? The Big Bang used to be a fringe interpretation of the equations until the evidence rolled, not because it sounded appealing. Einstein famously introduced the cosmological constant so the equations would allow another interpretation (a static universe), which he just as famously regretted as soon as the expansion was measured.

StanislavPetrov 6y ago
"Scientific consensus" does not equal "overwhelming evidence".
- simonh 6y ago
  No, but overwhelming evidence, as we have for the Big Bang, generally does lead to scientific consensus. That’s how science works.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    > consensus Sorry, that isn't how science works. In science, a model is created and then verified experimentally. I know global warming is consensus-based, and that's not really science either. No matter how many people you find that say the earth is flat (consensus), it's not.
  - treeman79 6y ago
    You definitely want people working against the scientific consensus. They will mostly be wrong; but now and then that’s how we get a breakthrough.
    - simonh 6y ago
      Working against it, or holding its feet to the fire by testing its claims against new evidence, exactly as was done in this case. That’s the weird thing about science. If you’re trying your absolute level best to prove it wrong, you’re doing it right.
- mr_mitm 6y ago
  That is not at all what I was trying to say. I was saying: Unless the OP meant something other than what every cosmologist means by the expression "Big Bang", there is overwhelming evidence for it. I said this because contrary to what many people believe, the Big Bang Theory describes pretty much everything but the singularity at the beginning. The Big Bang Theory describes how the Universe evolved starting at some tiny fraction of a second after the "Big Bang". And this theory is confirmed without any reasonable doubt. You can literally see the expansion of the Universe right now, and you can see that remote regions of the Universe appear much younger than our region due to the finite speed of light. What happened precisely in the very first tiny fraction of a second is still very much up to debate, mostly because we don't have a working theory of quantum gravity, because both gravity and quantum mechanics become important at the same time, similar to some aspects of black holes. That's why I was phrasing it the way I did.
timthorn 6y ago
The term itself was coined in order to disparage the idea by Fred Hoyle, who was a proponent of the Steady State Theory. He never accepted that the Big Bang happened.
- foobar1962 6y ago
  The square root of minus one obtained its name for a similar reason.
- mr_mitm 6y ago
  A prime example of the adage "Science progresses one funeral at a time"
  - timthorn 6y ago
    But it is also true that Hoyle made many important contributions himself. For instance, he posited the idea of stellar nucleosynthesis. We're all complex beings.

simonh 6y ago

That’s an odd comment to make about a slow, painstaking, extremely careful long term experiment that’s all about verifying predictions about the Big Bang.

boomboomsubban 6y ago

The entire concept of science is to extrapolate because things are impossible to verify. The Big Bang makes predictions that repeatedly are shown to be correct through experimentation.

MurizS 6y ago

Your comment reminds me of a study [1] published in 2019, demonstrating that people with the strongest views against genetically modified foods know the least about science but believe they know the most. Implicating that the Big Bang Theory enjoys its popularity because it "sells" is, I think, showing complete arrogance to landmark discoveries made in the past century - such as the cosmic background radiation [2] (for which the Nobel Prize 1978 was awarded), supporting the thesis of the Big Bang. [1] Extreme opponents of genetically modified foods know the least but think they know the most. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0520-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0520-3 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background