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Has Cosmology Run into a Creative Crisis?

65 points by benbreen 11y ago

smeyer 11y ago
> At the moment, there is no alternative theory of the early Universe that explains more. I thought this was a very important point that the author just sort of brushed aside. There are serious flaws with inflation and real concerns to address with recent measurements, but it still remains the best available theory. It's not like everyone is latching on for purely sentimental reasons or something.
- alchemism 11y ago
  >Among today’s physicists, there are some who still believe the cosmos cycles in and out of being in this way. It may take science some time to grudgingly test hypotheses drawn from mysticism and metaphysics. So perhaps not so much due to sentimentality as pride?
  - Retric 11y ago
    What other test would you suggest? Right now we can collect light from the distant cosmos and run local experiments, but it's really hard to test for large scale effects at the local level. Which means detecting photons and making predictions about what they suggest is the only real option.
  - al2o3cr 11y ago
    "It may take science some time to grudgingly test hypotheses drawn from mysticism and metaphysics" Especially since the production of testable hypotheses from mysticism and metaphysics appears to have a time-constant larger than science's current age...
- Florin_Andrei 11y ago
  This is business as usual, no reason to get too excited. General relativity and quantum mechanics are also pretty clearly flawed, from the fact that they are mutually incompatible. And yet both are very successful theories. That's just how science works, it doesn't give you absolutes of any kind.
  - littletimmy 11y ago
    The fact that they are mutually incompatible does not mean they are "pretty clearly flawed". In their particular domain they work splendidly well, just as Newton's laws work splendidly well when talking about the movement of objects at human scale. All we can say is that they are incompatible at some extreme.
    - nilkn 11y ago
      The Standard Model is flawed just on its own as well. For instance, while it accurately predicts the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the electron, it does not do so for the muon. It's also spectacularly wrong about the vacuum energy (over 100 orders of magnitude wrong).
      - darkmighty 11y ago
        Woah, I had the idea that quantum theory had the "small stuff" all going well according to predictions. Is the phenomenon you describe with the muon incompatible with the quantum field theories?
    - nine_k 11y ago
      They are clearly flawed, but these flaws do not prevent their extremely successful practical applications. The same is the case with Newtonian mechanics: it's quite good when you need to construct a lever, a house, an automobile, or an airplane. They start to slightly squeak when you need to build a rocket or predict an orbit of a planet close to a star. This is where you detect the flaws, find a better approximation (SR/GR and QM), and it allows for vastly more interesting practical applications, from atomic bombs to GPS devices, and also turns your idea of cosmos upside down. So when a refinement on GR and/or QM is found, we should expect some quite interesting practical applications, along with another upheaval of the idea of cosmos. This makes studying the incompatibility "in some extreme" a very practical thing.
robinsloan 11y ago
This is fantastic: "When you read that word cosmos, you might begin to imagine the most expansive physical world your mind can build. Deep fields of glittering, star-filled galaxies stretching out in every direction, and maybe into forever. But even that image represents only the barest sliver of what is meant by ‘cosmos’. To build a cosmos, you have to extend your imagination to all of space and all of time. Only one of Earth’s creatures can pull off that cognitive trick. All living things are attuned to their environment: bacteria can sense chemical shifts in their immediate surroundings; migrating birds know our planet well enough to wing annually across its whole face; dung beetles navigate by the light of the Milky Way. But only the human being lives inside a cosmos, and only recently." Nobody writes about this kinda stuff better than Ross Andersen. (Also worth noting: he conducted what is probably the best interview to date with Elon Musk => http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/the-elon-musk-interview-on-mars/ http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/the-elon-musk-interview-o...)
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  Personally, I dislike this stoner-esque "whoa man," type writing. Its cheap and also dismisses the possibility of alien life elsewhere. I also don't think we fully understand animal intelligence to make grand claims like this. It just seems... egocentric.
  - kenbellows 11y ago
    I'll take your point on animal intelligence, but to the author's credit, he does specify "only one of Earth's creatures", so no ruling out of alien life there
- mkr-hn 11y ago
  > Only one of Earth’s creatures can pull off that cognitive trick. What I really liked about Carl Sagan was his humbleness. He knew we knew (and know) basically nothing about other animals' thought processes, so he avoided arrogant assumptions like this

65 points by benbreen 11y ago

> At the moment, there is no alternative theory of the early Universe that explains more. I thought this was a very important point that the author just sort of brushed aside. There are serious flaws with inflation and real concerns to address with recent measurements, but it still remains the best available theory. It's not like everyone is latching on for purely sentimental reasons or something.

alchemism 11y ago
>Among today’s physicists, there are some who still believe the cosmos cycles in and out of being in this way. It may take science some time to grudgingly test hypotheses drawn from mysticism and metaphysics. So perhaps not so much due to sentimentality as pride?
- Retric 11y ago
  What other test would you suggest? Right now we can collect light from the distant cosmos and run local experiments, but it's really hard to test for large scale effects at the local level. Which means detecting photons and making predictions about what they suggest is the only real option.
- al2o3cr 11y ago
  "It may take science some time to grudgingly test hypotheses drawn from mysticism and metaphysics" Especially since the production of testable hypotheses from mysticism and metaphysics appears to have a time-constant larger than science's current age...
Florin_Andrei 11y ago
This is business as usual, no reason to get too excited. General relativity and quantum mechanics are also pretty clearly flawed, from the fact that they are mutually incompatible. And yet both are very successful theories. That's just how science works, it doesn't give you absolutes of any kind.
- littletimmy 11y ago
  The fact that they are mutually incompatible does not mean they are "pretty clearly flawed". In their particular domain they work splendidly well, just as Newton's laws work splendidly well when talking about the movement of objects at human scale. All we can say is that they are incompatible at some extreme.
  - nilkn 11y ago
    The Standard Model is flawed just on its own as well. For instance, while it accurately predicts the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the electron, it does not do so for the muon. It's also spectacularly wrong about the vacuum energy (over 100 orders of magnitude wrong).
    - darkmighty 11y ago
      Woah, I had the idea that quantum theory had the "small stuff" all going well according to predictions. Is the phenomenon you describe with the muon incompatible with the quantum field theories?
  - nine_k 11y ago
    They are clearly flawed, but these flaws do not prevent their extremely successful practical applications. The same is the case with Newtonian mechanics: it's quite good when you need to construct a lever, a house, an automobile, or an airplane. They start to slightly squeak when you need to build a rocket or predict an orbit of a planet close to a star. This is where you detect the flaws, find a better approximation (SR/GR and QM), and it allows for vastly more interesting practical applications, from atomic bombs to GPS devices, and also turns your idea of cosmos upside down. So when a refinement on GR and/or QM is found, we should expect some quite interesting practical applications, along with another upheaval of the idea of cosmos. This makes studying the incompatibility "in some extreme" a very practical thing.

robinsloan 11y ago

This is fantastic: "When you read that word cosmos, you might begin to imagine the most expansive physical world your mind can build. Deep fields of glittering, star-filled galaxies stretching out in every direction, and maybe into forever. But even that image represents only the barest sliver of what is meant by ‘cosmos’. To build a cosmos, you have to extend your imagination to all of space and all of time. Only one of Earth’s creatures can pull off that cognitive trick. All living things are attuned to their environment: bacteria can sense chemical shifts in their immediate surroundings; migrating birds know our planet well enough to wing annually across its whole face; dung beetles navigate by the light of the Milky Way. But only the human being lives inside a cosmos, and only recently." Nobody writes about this kinda stuff better than Ross Andersen. (Also worth noting: he conducted what is probably the best interview to date with Elon Musk => http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/the-elon-musk-interview-on-mars/ http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/the-elon-musk-interview-o...)

drzaiusapelord 11y ago
Personally, I dislike this stoner-esque "whoa man," type writing. Its cheap and also dismisses the possibility of alien life elsewhere. I also don't think we fully understand animal intelligence to make grand claims like this. It just seems... egocentric.
- kenbellows 11y ago
  I'll take your point on animal intelligence, but to the author's credit, he does specify "only one of Earth's creatures", so no ruling out of alien life there
mkr-hn 11y ago
> Only one of Earth’s creatures can pull off that cognitive trick. What I really liked about Carl Sagan was his humbleness. He knew we knew (and know) basically nothing about other animals' thought processes, so he avoided arrogant assumptions like this