The end of Cosmology?
Offline I was doing some reading, (amazing concept I know), in Borders the other day and I stumbled across an interesting article. The article is in the magazine Scientific American and the title of the article is "The end of Cosmology?" Essentially, it challenges the future acceptance of the Big-Bang theory. I was wondering if anyone with better background in this issue has read the article yet. If you would like to read it for the first time, I found this website http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-end-of-cosmology&sc=rss which has the full text. I would love to hear some thoughts/opinions concerning the article because I myself am a bit skeptical of what the article uses as evidence to support its claims.
The implication that we should put Darwinism on trial overlooks the fact that Darwinism has always been on trial within the scientific community. -- From Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth R. Miller
Chaos and chance don't mean the absence of law and order, but rather the presence of order so complex that it lies beyond our abilities to grasp and describe it. -- From From Certainty to Uncertainty by F. David Peat
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Disclaimer: Article tl;dr, but skimmed through it.
The universe will in theory, 'cool down' to a point where the Cosmic backround radiation will be uniform, ergo cannot be used to measure the Big Bang. (It was measured by WMAP..).
So I guess that once the radiation has died down, the universe will be symmetrical, and we (or should I say they since we'll probably be long gone...) won't be able to measure it.
So, in science, theories are only kept as long as there is presently evidence for it? For example, the Big Bang theory is currently generally accepted because there is presently evidence for it. However, if in the future the present evidence disappears, then will the theory be abandoned? The past evidence won't carry the theory into the future? Is this right? This is all very interesting to me. I didn't know that a widely accepted, almost universal, scientific theory could be so calmly discarded. Its rather refreshing and comforting to know that science is nothing like religion.
The implication that we should put Darwinism on trial overlooks the fact that Darwinism has always been on trial within the scientific community. -- From Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth R. Miller
Chaos and chance don't mean the absence of law and order, but rather the presence of order so complex that it lies beyond our abilities to grasp and describe it. -- From From Certainty to Uncertainty by F. David Peat
Sure. In science, one should not form emotional attachments to theories, even your pet ones. I like your use of "calmly discarded". We've "calmly discarded" things more times than can be counted. Indeed, the ability of science to calmly discard things when shown false is its most impressive attribute. One of my favorite examples is the discovery of non-baryonic Dark matter. In an instant, we just threw away the most utterly basic idea imaginable.
The trouble is that this can sometimes lead to "pathalogical fringism" whereby a radical theory is automatically given a higher status just because it challenges a commonly held belief. But this is a misunderstanding. It is true that a theory held by the majority can be overturned but that implies the opposite is true as well: a widely held belief could be widely held because it is correct. One problem that can arise is that a theory can be propogated not by virtue of evidence but rather solely by virtue of the fact that it stands in contradistinction to a widely held claim. This is just as problematic as holding a belief to be true solely because it is widely accepted.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Ahh I see. You know, I never understood that about science until now. Good times.
NO NO NO , science says I don't know .... but I / WE try to know with all reason (science / reason)
Religion says stop thinking, pluck the eye out of reason .
Believe you are god was the great message, that got Jesus murdered .....
Jesus was right ! DG is Jesus too ! We are god ! Ancient Buddha knew !
Atheism Books.
The crux of the article is that if you were to observe the universe for the first time "x" amount of years from now when other galaxies are undetectable (expansion has driven them so far away) and the microwave background is unresolvable, you would never be able to infer a "big bang." Basically, if you didn't have the data from billions of years ago (i.e. today's evidence) you would never be wise to the fact that a bunch of galaxies use to be closer together and later moved apart because you wouldn't be able to see them much less measure their receding velocities.
Scientific illiteracy is reality illiteracy.
the "big bang" , seems true, but that is shit nothing much in the bigger scheme of ALL that was and will be ! GOD Rocks ! God of abe sucks !
Atheism Books.
Receding galaxies may eliminate obvious evidence of expansion, but that's where experiments come in.
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Faith is not a virtue.
Did you read the article?
The implication that we should put Darwinism on trial overlooks the fact that Darwinism has always been on trial within the scientific community. -- From Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth R. Miller
Chaos and chance don't mean the absence of law and order, but rather the presence of order so complex that it lies beyond our abilities to grasp and describe it. -- From From Certainty to Uncertainty by F. David Peat
Yes, though it was months ago... I'm pretty sure I remember it well enough that my comment is still valid. I'll admit I might be missing a point, but I'm not sure you understood mine. Tell ya what, I'll explain mine if you explain yours.
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Faith is not a virtue.
I asked because the article didn't suggest that experiments (or anything else) would save the theory. After reading the article I thought that there had to be a way to keep the theory, even there lacked evidence for it.
You suggested experiments.
I didn't have any idea what could be used instead to support the theory if the evidence had expanded away. At the end of the article, it just seemed like the authors were suggesting that when the evidence is gone, the theory is gone.
There I've explained what I meant
The implication that we should put Darwinism on trial overlooks the fact that Darwinism has always been on trial within the scientific community. -- From Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth R. Miller
Chaos and chance don't mean the absence of law and order, but rather the presence of order so complex that it lies beyond our abilities to grasp and describe it. -- From From Certainty to Uncertainty by F. David Peat
Cosmology ? my hunch is that ALL we see so far tells us the BIG BANG is like a tiny atomic speck occurrance. AS if we can SEE jack shit. The earth size in what we have seen is not even close to a grain of sand ....and we have seen much further into the small. What is beyond our vision ? Buddha loves science, but when asked about GOD he said , (sorta), "are you kidding !
and Why worry", I love that Buddha stuff. 
Atheism Books.
Other evidence can be found. That's what experiments are for. For instance, we could send a probe out beyond the edge of the galaxy, and watch as it accelerates rather than holds it's speed.
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Faith is not a virtue.
Send the idea to authors because they sure didn't seem to consider the idea.
WHAT'S THERE ? WHICH WAY YOU WANNA GO, IN OR OUT !? "
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE !? 
AIN'T NONE. .... same in lower caps ....
hear the music ! The highs the lows ! 
Hey I got yellow friends !!!
Atheism Books.
The authors aren't doing the science, and I really don't think I need to suggest something so obvious to actual cosmologists. The headline is just an attention getter. Don't take it too seriously.
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Faith is not a virtue.
I would have to agree with you there.
The implication that we should put Darwinism on trial overlooks the fact that Darwinism has always been on trial within the scientific community. -- From Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth R. Miller
Chaos and chance don't mean the absence of law and order, but rather the presence of order so complex that it lies beyond our abilities to grasp and describe it. -- From From Certainty to Uncertainty by F. David Peat
...There are no ends...the end as is projected according to current reliable observations, mechanics, and reasoning will be a lonesome wagon train (Our galaxy )riding off in to the sunset and then our solar system followed by our planet (the lonesome cowboy) then some time much later than you care to wait, local space will begin tearing at its own seams but you won't be hear to scream, because you don't believe or even begin to know how to. There will be no final temperature reached. This is what quantum mechanics is about. There is infinite energy locked up in the ground state of this system we call universe. It may be that we don't freeze in the end, if an astrophysicist I know of is correct about black hole's singularities being a daisy chain of space time continuums. We would then reionize because a blackhole's temperature or Hawking radiation is determined by its mass or size of event horizon. As blackholes evolve they radiate virtual particales back to space thereby losing mass and shrinks. The smaller the blackhole, the hotter its temperature.There may be no beginnings...which came first? THe chicken or the Singularity? But what do I know?...I'm only The Dark...