Cosmic inflation and settled science
In the most recent Scientific American, there’s an article on theories related to cosmic inflation:
On March 21, 2013, the European Space Agency held an international press conference to announce new results from a satellite called Planck. The spacecraft had mapped the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, light emitted more than 13 billion years ago just after the big bang, in better detail than ever before. The new map, scientists told the audience of journalists, confirms a theory that cosmologists have held dear for 35 years: that the universe began with a bang followed by a brief period of hyperaccelerated expansion known as inflation. This expansion smoothed the universe to such an extent that, billions of years later, it remains nearly uniform all over space and in every direction and “flat,” as opposed to curved like a sphere, except for tiny variations in the concentration of matter that account for the finely detailed hierarchy of stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters around us.
That some “tiny variation”! However, on the cosmic scale (which is what we’re talking about here), I suppose galaxies are rather diminutive.
To continue:
The principle message of the press conference was that the Planck data perfectly fit the predictions of the simplest inflationary models, reinforcing the impression that the theory is firmly established. The book on cosmology seemed to be closed, the team suggested.
In other words, the team of researchers was indicating to the press and the world that the science is settled.
But the book of science is never, never closed:
Following the announcement, [the three authors of the article in Scientific American] discussed its ramifications at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics…We all remarked on the meticulously precise observations of the Planck team. We disagreed, however, with the interpretation. If anything, the Planck data disfavored the simplest inflation models and exacerbated long-standing foundational problems with the theory, providing new reasons to consider competing ideas about the origin and evolution of the universe.
That may whet your appetite for the entire article, which is behind a paywall (I happen to have a copy of the dead tree version of the magazine, from which I copied the text). But it’s not the substance of the article regarding cosmic inflation that led me to quote it—it’s the idea that disagreements over the nature and meaning of scientific data are commonplace and expected in many fields.
The area of cosmology is relatively non-political compared to climate science. At least as far as I know, there is no pressing legislative initiative depending on the findings of cosmologists. People care about cosmology, however, in part because arguments about cosmology sometimes segue into religious matters (for example, I’ve read articles on how cosmology supposedly impacts on people’s religious beliefs). And although I have no doubt that there are political issues in cosmology relating to who gets grants and what satellites are launched and what those satelllites will endeavor to study, those things are not as highly popularized, pressurized, and politicized as the ramifications of the field of climate science.
And yet, in cosmology there are apparently consensus views, press conferences promoting those consensus views, and dissenters (such as the authors of that article). And that should be no surprise.
The Scientific American authors go on to say the following [emphasis mine]:
In the years since [that initial 2013 announcement], more precise data gathered by the Planck satellite and other instruments have made the case [against the commonly accepted inflationary theory] only stronger. Yet even now the cosmology community has not taken a cold, honest look at the big bang theory or paid significant attention to critics who question whether inflation happened. Rather cosmologists appear to accept at face value the proponents’ assertion that we must believe the inflationary theory because it offers the only simple explanation of the observed features of the universe. But, as we will explain, the Planck data, added to theoretical problems, have shaken the foundations of this assertion.
Sounds pretty dramatic and pretty unsettled, as science goes.
In 1878, a young Max Planck was advised by the German physicist and mathematician Phillip von Jolly not to go into physics, saying “in this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill in a few unimportant holes”… Planck replied that he didn’t wish to discover new things, only to understand the known fundamentals in the field. Ironically, Planck’s later work opened up the new field of quantum mechanics.
Human nature includes both the desire to explore undiscovered territory and to have things be securely settled.
I think there are topics that will always be beyond the abilities of our species to factually understand. For me, not necessarily anyone else, the concept of infinity is beyond my finite imagination.
The “Big Bang” theory or spontaneous conception is a theory confirmed on the basis of assumptions/assertions of the characterization of “space” as space, of time as uniform and progressive, and of transitions as continuous and differentiable. This was disproven a long time ago as the models fail to reconcile (e.g. dark matter and energy) with even the known features of physical space. All theories of creation, including so-called “secular” theories, are either articles of faith, fantasy, or philosophy, where accuracy is inversely proportional to time and space offsets from an observation frame (i.e. scientific logical domain).
That said, it’s a tragic irony that we still cannot confirm the evolution of human life, biological life, from conception, despite the close proximity in time and space that enables accurate scientific assessment.
Geoffrey Britain:
People, atheists in particular, want to, need to believe, and are prone to conflation of logical domains, for narcissistic indulgence, and for leverage to defeat competing interests. The new orthodoxy is a progressive form of the old orthodoxy, complete with articles of faith, fantasy (e.g. spontaneous conception), moral philosophy (e.g. religion), and scientific mysticism (i.e. half-truths, confirmation bias, and whole cloth inventions).
It really bothers some people to acknowledge the logical limit of the scientific domain, and what is known, unknown, and unknowable.
Halton Arp was one of the top observational astronomers of the 20th century. In 1966 he compiled an “Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies” and found a large number of galaxies which did not fit standard theory.
So Arp began criticizing the Big Bang Theory.
In response those in charge took away his time on the Palomar telescope.
String theory in physics is not political in nature either, but practically speaking it has become “settled science” even though it cannot yet be tested empirically.
It’s very difficult to pursue a career in physics if you buck string theory.
Lee Smolin wrote an excellent book, “The Trouble with Physics,” on this. Accessible and excellent. I was reminded very much of current climate science orthodoxy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Physics
There is a wonderful sci. documentary on Netflix called “The Real Death Star.” This is the story of how we came to understand gamma ray bursts.
The film contains some discussion of the politics of the research. The “important” astrophysicists were at one point certain that the source of these bursts had to be within our galaxy. An eastern euro scientist took the contrarian view that the sources were in other galaxies, partly because the early data hinted at this conclusion. His opponents hammered him because the energy/power levels were impossibly high.
The first precisely measured burst was half a universe distant from us. These objects are the most powerful things in the universe for 1 to 10 seconds, much more powerful than a supernova. They are generated by the initial formation of a black hole.
I recall, in my youth, the speculation about whether black holes could actually exist in the universe. How would we know if they do? Many years later, it turns out the universe is littered with them.
It strikes me the bottom line is that “settling” is an irresistible force that is global in extent. As Woodrow Wilson wrote about 1906 about governance, and I paraphrase minimally, “The minority that cannot be persuaded must be crushed.” He said “crushed”.
Everything is settled or settling. There are some holdouts but not many.
If we take the “known” laws of physics and try to work them backwards for 14 billion years, it’s impossible; we reach a singularity. This means either that something special happened 14 billion years ago, or that our know laws are wrong, or that the laws of physics have changed within the last 14 billion years. I’m guessing it’s mostly the latter.
except that its not settles… funny..
If we take the “known” laws of physics and try to work them backwards for 14 billion years, it’s impossible
no, i was 12-13 when i was doing that level of math
it is possible… in fact given things you can compute the large scale stuff, and it doesnt lead to a singularity..
This means either that something special happened 14 billion years ago, or that our know laws are wrong, or that the laws of physics have changed within the last 14 billion years
the laws have always changed… duh… its in the math… but later the laws were fixed because the universe is TOO COLD…
the issue is that the black hole equivalent that the universe started from, destroys and scrambles information..
and information follows wave and conservation laws because energy is information… hows that for updating your physics.
hawking used this fact to argue about how black holes are not permanent… because at the boundary of the event horizon for particles. particles appear and disappear all the time all around you, and at this boundary point the gravity can drag one of the pair into the hole, forcing the other to fly off…
this causes the black hole to evaporate..
but this is different than the big bang… as one is imagining it wrong… there was no singularity, because such a thing would need the universe that doesnt exist to exist into…
there was NOTHING..
and funny funny, the creation order is exactly the same order that the universe big bang and such happened in.. (and the vedas are the exact same theory that it pulses through time, the universe closes the indra closes its eye, there is nothing, then the blue indra opens its eyes, the lotus grows and all exists again)
this is why so many of the real scientists who are not polically indoctrinated… used to honestly say, we dont know as there are tons of quirks you have to brush aside and ignore… even worse, the quirks actually imply both sides and so, are only good enough to say… you cant brush me aside.. (you can almost hear the ha ha)
string theory is useless and nice math, but doesnt go anywhere… ie. it creates over 26 dimensions to roll up things to make the math jog… but most of it is out of reach and so, cant be confirmed or denied… it reduced to a great mathematical construct we will never know is real or not…
and even worse… you can have thousands of such mathematical constructs that are all equivalents but very different.
so the game has been to create intractable things that are very hard and exotic and abandon the simplicity of things like einstein and euler…
want to know some amazing math that just knowing the formula would blow you away to the mind that could realize the relationships between them?
Joseph Goebbels
said: “The best propaganda is that which, as it were, works invisibly, penetrates the whole of life without the public having any knowledge of the propagandistic initiative”,
the left and soviets and power elites have alwys gamed religion and things to power.. they cant do the math, but they DO realize that if they can skin that sheep, put on its clothes they can do what they want till someone notices it changes… then do it agian to another fabian sheeple..
science is a big boondoggle to this IF you can scare everyone, and so on..
remember in the 1960s, science was hopeful, we wanted the better world of the future..
fast foward now, and its the scariest thing in the world that is potentially real… they are worse than the fire and brimstone preachers of the early americas…
oh, the meteorites, comets, solar flares, aliens, will destroy the earth.. the sun will swell (it will so the earth is not forever, so saving it makes no sense long term and there is nothig to save.. we just move stuff around)…
then there are the earthquakes, storms, floods, and on and on… and weapons, and on and on
you want to raise a child to be an effective not genetic paranoid… have them really watch the science channel without a smart adult around to point out the missing stuff.
I am amused how, when cosmology starts edging into theology, some people do indeed get uncomfortable. The Big Bang is too close to Aquinas’s Uncaused Cause, I suppose.
Except for invoking Hawking, I enjoyed Artfldgr’s comment.
Surellin is right on the money.
View from the inside of physics: no one thinks the BB theory is the ultimate answer. No one thinks inflation is the ultimate answer. No one thinks QM is the ultimate answer. No one thinks string theory is the ultimate answer. etc etc
What we do think is that these theories, AT THE PRESENT TIME are the best fit to the observational data. We work with what we have and continue to pursue both data and new ideas. Physics is always a work in progress, and that’s where the fun is in pursuing the subject.
Artflldgr: what means your statement – “the laws have always changed… duh… its in the math… but later the laws were fixed because the universe is TOO COLD…”
The laws HAVE changed because this history of the universe is history and history IS (by definition) change … until it got TOO COLD for anything to change? …
More, please.
o – nevermind. all is semantics.
you cannot pull a universal law out of history because history is history and the assumption of universal law is changelessness which is NOT-history. The universal law searchers ultimately turned to mathematics, which is just fun, but mathematics only proves itself, in its own terms while science by Popper-definition cannot prove anything. So we are left with several barking dogs but no real trees for them to bark up. God wins.
So, what’s the insider view – or received wisdom at present – of “time” (or the concept of the same) nowadays? Sincere question.
DNW,
Time is now regarded as simply another dimension that is needed to describe the basic structure of nature, with the other 3 dimensions being “up/down”, “left/right”, “forward/back”, or in mathematical terms, x, y, and z in a Cartesian system. It is described easily in the math of linear vector spaces. It is then further modified by General Relativity; still one of four dimensions, but now those dimensions can take on non-linear characteristics (bending). Again, in math terms, described by what is called Riemannian geometry. All of this is very well supported by observational evidence. Gravitational lensing for just one example.
I suspect the issue you raise may have to do with the “arrow of time”. If time is like x, y, or z, there should be no issue with negative time. That appears to be true on the scale of sub nuclear particles, but obviously does not hold at the human scale. The most common explanation for the arrow of time at human scale depends on the statistical nature of “entropy”. That is, large scale systems, tend to evolve by chance to the most probable state, which is also associated with the highest level of disorder. While it is possible for a fallen tea cup to reverse it’s direction and then reassemble itself, that state is highly improbable and the time needed for the event to happen is several order of magnitudes greater than the estimated age of the universe.
I will say that the jury in some sense is still out on this, and that QM throws some wrenches in the works through the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
I’ve gone on long enough so will stop now. 🙂
It would seem that a property of space-time allowed for a moment of smoothing but a detailed explanation eludes us. There’s a recent article speculating that another property of space-time is that gravity is stronger than expected over long distances such that galaxies don’t fling apart (and don’t have “settled science” material called dark matter). See http://www.realclearscience.com/2017/03/04/maybe_dark_matter_is_just_a_big_mistake_275074.html. Then finally, the settled science of man-made greenhouse warming is in trouble because the most profound warming/cooling comes from decreased/increased cloud formation due to decreased/increased bombardment of cosmic rays from the sun. See http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/02/democrats_real_global_warming_fraud_revealed.html#.WKiD2OY2FhA.twitter
Time may be a virtual dimension that is a property associated with motion. Time does not exist, cannot be measured or perceived, in stasis.
no one thinks the BB theory is the ultimate answer
The problem is not pattern matching per se, but the promotion of a perceived pattern or theory as an established orthodoxy, which offers no clear benefit and may, in fact, retard understanding and exploiting the physical world.
LTEC:
There is another possibility. Science is a method and philosophy that function within frames of reference where accuracy is inversely proportional to the product of time and space offsets from the observer, which reflects a common understanding that human natural and enhanced perception and causality are both limited.
Surellin:
This is not about belief systems per se. This is about conflation of logical domains, when it serves to undermine the utility of science, and especially when it is exploited to injure individuals and competing interests.
The discomfort is two-fold. One, acknowledge the limits of human perception and causality (e.g. separation of logical domains). Two, limit the establishment of atheist and theist orthodoxies. Well, three-fold. Three, limit the control and exploitation (e.g. political) of conscious entities (e.g. human).
“No one thinks inflation is the ultimate answer. No one thinks QM is the ultimate answer. No one thinks string theory is the ultimate answer. etc etc”
As an ex-physicsguy, I know that even the narrow area in which I worked as a graduate student (elementary particle physics) was far from being “final”, although the pace of change was slowing in my time and there was talk of a “particle desert” (basically nothing new to be discovered within the range of energies available to particle accelerators that fit within the radius of the solar system).
Karl Popper wrote cogently about this sort of thing.
View from the inside of physics: no one thinks the BB theory is the ultimate answer. No one thinks inflation is the ultimate answer. No one thinks QM is the ultimate answer. No one thinks string theory is the ultimate answer. etc etc
What we do think is that these theories, AT THE PRESENT TIME are the best fit to the observational data.
physicsguy: Well, that’s the pro forma answer, which is good as far as it goes. But how far does it go in practice when the PRESENT TIME theories are challenged?
The climate scientists seem to circle the wagons, organize in offline email lists to orchestrate attacks on opponents, refuse to share data and even threaten to destroy data.
According to Smolin, it’s tough to move ahead in a physics career if you aren’t on board with string theory.
I’ve run into tons of people who believe they are wonderfully open-minded. I’ll credit them with saying the words. But they don’t walk that talk.
physicsguy: I presume you remember your Planck:
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
–Max Planck
Physicsguy,
I tried to respond twice by way of appreciation, linking to articles about Richard Muller’s criticism of Eddinton’s foundation for the arrow of time.
But they would not take.
Maybe this one will.
At any rate it is profoundly interesting to consider that our psychological reality, the experience of time as we conceive of it, may be as disconnected in some ways from what is, as our limited natural comprehension of the radiation spectra. More so.
Frankly, if time is in some sense unreal, it is way more radically impactful than is say the existence of ultraviolet light or cosmic rays.
We would have to completely rethink our being-in-the-world and reality itself. No longer would the “problem” be just a matter of not yet visible horizons, or things to swift or small or ethereal to be perceived and taken account of in the ordinary course of our existence.
Good Lord. We might have no bloody idea of what also exists within our reality right “beside us”, but in principle is never accessible.
Humans don’t understand anything. It’s mostly taken on Faith from their authorities and scientific big boys consensus enforcers.
Every single time an Ohm, Tesla, or Wright Brother turns up, the mass consensus is that they crazy or delusional or liars. The list goes on. Copernicus didn’t publish cause he knew. In human history, it wasn’t so much the churches suppressing knowledge as other humans that refuse to understand new knowledge. Newton had to create a new branch of mathematics, calculus, for his gravity theories.
The Pre Flood civilizations had better technology than 1930s America had. Evolution can’t explain that.
Evolution also can’t explain how a Flood can kill birds and all life on Earth, because that isn’t a normal flood.
Why are there fossils which cross the gap between strata that are considered millions of years old? They are just anomalies right. Stuff evolution and the geological standard works cannot explain, so the data must be erroneous.
Things like continental drift and reverse magnetic lines on the seabed, also don’t stand up to scrutiny.
There was a story about Einstein that he changed the variables to ensure that the formulas wouldn’t lead to a Big Bang, because they refused to believe that creation could come from nothing, as written in Genesis. Matter/Energy cannot be destroyed or created after all, so for the Big Bang to be actual, where was all this energy before? They didn’t want to explain it, because they could not, so they just ignore it and call it the Big Bang. There’s no theory behind it. Because they would have to start debating Genesis by understanding Genesis, and few humans are even qualified for that let alone achieve it.
Scientists and the Doctor Class, don’t know half of what they claim they know. But humans swallow the mainstream propaganda line, even as they self righteously criticize Leftists and other human zombies for falling for bullsh.
physicsguy: Well, that’s the pro forma answer, which is good as far as it goes. But how far does it go in practice when the PRESENT TIME theories are challenged?
Humans react the same way. They will react to the present status quo being challenged the same way people who used THC react to the newer theories that their mental and emotional growth and capabilities are damaged by THC, since the consensus was that THC had no long term debilitating addiction or negative consequences.
Ohm has an interesting achievement, called Ohm’s Law. The ohm unit is named after him. His peers thought he was an off the rocker idiot or flake. The evidence is there for science, but are humans ready to accept the Unreality of their bullsh beliefs…
All this, and I’m still stuck on how Scientific American copy editors don’t know the difference between “principal” and “principle.”