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"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.

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.