Gravitational Waves - this stuff just boggles the imagination

[Buckeyebowman]

4 hours ago, natureboy said:

I see a lot of "our current understanding is..." from real scientists. Very often it's the popular media that translates some studies and hypotheses that are short of being 'well established facts' to be 'absolute truths'...kind of like what happened with limited sample health studies impugning eggs as bad for your health.

But there's a lot of stuff like the big bang leaving behind the cosmic microwave background that's basically unequivocal (even though the original event is not directly observable). Or that fusion reactions are occurring deep in the sun. Or this very intuitive demonstration of how there has to be a black hole at the center of our galaxy due to the high velocity orbits of the stars around the central point: http://www.galacticcenter.astro.ucla.edu/animations.html.

Doesn't that kind of information warrant a "we know..."? Just because some parts of a field are less certain in their understanding of some phenomena doesn't mean all of the field is equally uncertain.

Do you hold any contrarian views on the Moon landings?

Some good points. Science sometimes advances in fits and starts, and some mistaken ideas have been advanced. To their credit, scientists usually keep whacking away at it until they get it right! That's what peer review and experimental confirmation of theoretical predictions is for.

Besides, it's kind of fun when a fight breaks out! Two of the better examples are these. The Big Bang theory itself. An unfortunate misnomer applied to it by it's chief opponent, an English astronomer who's name escapes me now, who was a proponent of the "steady state" theory. The Universe is as it always was. Then along came Edwin Hubble to throw that idea on the ash heap! He made observations, repeatable by other astronomers, that distant objects in the Universe are moving away from us, and the further away they are, the faster they are moving! You can run that movie in reverse and make the Universe smaller and smaller. At one time cosmologists thought the Universe began as a point of "zero" size and unimaginable mass! That idea has been modified since, but I'm not up on the latest.

Another great fight was between Einstein and Quantum Mechanics. Despite the fact Einstein's mathematics of relativity provided the jumping off point for Quantum Mechanics, he just didn't like where it led! If the Universe is weird in the large scale, it is absolutely psychedelic in the small scale! Again, we are dealing with theory here, in other words the best explanation we have so far. No one has ever seen an atom, let alone a sub-atomic particle! It should be noted that a dark adapted eye CAN detect a single photon.

What sub-atomic physicists discovered, through experimentation with detectors, gauges, cloud chambers, bubble chambers, photographic plates, etc., was that protons just didn't sit around being protons all the time. The same for neutrons, electrons, positrons, and any other sub-atomic particle you can name. Well, except for maybe the neutrino! And maybe even those. All these particles "morph", if you will, into various combinations of other particles, the various combinations governed by a set of rules known as "conservation laws". Things such as mass, spin, charge, and a host of others must be "conserved", or protected. That is unless they happen fast enough that the "traffic cop" enforcing those laws doesn't notice. The take home lesson from this is that at the elemental level, the Universe "fizzes"!

This is a phenomenon known as "particle decay". And what quantum mechanics discovered was that they could not predict which decay would take place. This was in violent contravention of Newtonian or "Classical" physics, which maintained that if one knew the initial condition of a system you could predict it's future, and retrodict it's past! This was found not to be possible in the sub-atomic realm. Decays "seemed" to happen randomly, but further study showed that they happened in discrete ratios. In other words 40% of the time this would happen, and 25% of the time that would happen, and 15% of the time the other would happen, and so on. So, part of quantum mechanics became the quoting of probabilities, or the odds that this or that would happen. Don't interpret this as dismissive. Quantum Mechanics is THE theory of sub-atomic phenomena, and accurate to an awesome degree!

Einstein's problem with it was with it's clash with Classical physics. Despite his paradigm shifting work with relativity, he remained a Newtonian. This led to his remark, "I refuse to believe that God plays dice!" in regard to Quantum Mechanics.

There are more bizarre discoveries in the realm of the small. For instance, if atoms are 99.99999% empty space, how does matter project a solid aspect?!

[natureboy]

14 hours ago, Buckeyebowman said:

Some good points. Science sometimes advances in fits and starts, and some mistaken ideas have been advanced. To their credit, scientists usually keep whacking away at it until they get it right! That's what peer review and experimental confirmation of theoretical predictions is for.

Right on! It does require a bit of mental duality to do it right. Skeptical yet open minded enough to consider new information and perspectives with their implications. Hubris is never an admirable human quality, particularly in science. That doesn't mean 100% certainty is required before considering data or a theory important / significant.

I can imagine a scenario of a homeowner who when told by an engineer that current understanding indicated with 60% confidence that a sinkhole was forming under their home that they'd tell the geologist to go away until they were 100% certain. Of course it's not a perfect analogy since you could easily measure for the sinkhole - maybe more apt for a time before the technology existed.

Quote

Besides, it's kind of fun when a fight breaks out! Two of the better examples are these. The Big Bang theory itself. An unfortunate misnomer applied to it by it's chief opponent, an English astronomer who's name escapes me now, who was a proponent of the "steady state" theory. The Universe is as it always was. Then along came Edwin Hubble to throw that idea on the ash heap! He made observations, repeatable by other astronomers, that distant objects in the Universe are moving away from us, and the further away they are, the faster they are moving! You can run that movie in reverse and make the Universe smaller and smaller. At one time cosmologists thought the Universe began as a point of "zero" size and unimaginable mass! That idea has been modified since, but I'm not up on the latest.

Another great fight was between Einstein and Quantum Mechanics. Despite the fact Einstein's mathematics of relativity provided the jumping off point for Quantum Mechanics, he just didn't like where it led! If the Universe is weird in the large scale, it is absolutely psychedelic in the small scale! Again, we are dealing with theory here, in other words the best explanation we have so far. No one has ever seen an atom, let alone a sub-atomic particle! It should be noted that a dark adapted eye CAN detect a single photon.

The history/process of discoveries is almost as interesting as the discoveries themselves!

Quote

What sub-atomic physicists discovered, through experimentation with detectors, gauges, cloud chambers, bubble chambers, photographic plates, etc., was that protons just didn't sit around being protons all the time. The same for neutrons, electrons, positrons, and any other sub-atomic particle you can name. Well, except for maybe the neutrino! And maybe even those. All these particles "morph", if you will, into various combinations of other particles, the various combinations governed by a set of rules known as "conservation laws". Things such as mass, spin, charge, and a host of others must be "conserved", or protected. That is unless they happen fast enough that the "traffic cop" enforcing those laws doesn't notice. The take home lesson from this is that at the elemental level, the Universe "fizzes"!

The quantum foamy universe is an odd critter.

Quote

And what quantum mechanics discovered was that they could not predict which decay would take place. This was in violent contravention of Newtonian or "Classical" physics, which maintained that if one knew the initial condition of a system you could predict it's future, and retrodict it's past! This was found not to be possible in the sub-atomic realm. Decays "seemed" to happen randomly, but further study showed that they happened in discrete ratios. In other words 40% of the time this would happen, and 25% of the time that would happen, and 15% of the time the other would happen, and so on. So, part of quantum mechanics became the quoting of probabilities, or the odds that this or that would happen. Don't interpret this as dismissive. Quantum Mechanics is THE theory of sub-atomic phenomena, and accurate to an awesome degree!

Einstein's problem with it was with it's clash with Classical physics. Despite his paradigm shifting work with relativity, he remained a Newtonian. This led to his remark, "I refuse to believe that God plays dice!" in regard to Quantum Mechanics.

I accept the experimentally validated truth of quantum mechanics, but my gut sense is that what Einstein objected to more than the Newtonian predictability was a 'fuzzy' understanding of the underlying mechanism...I suspect that he intuitively felt the universe should be knowable at a deeper level than statistical sampling. My own intuition on quantum mechanics is that it 'feels' a bit like the shadows on the wall of Plato's cave...that there's possibly a deeper / truer 'form' even if we can't currently perceive or even conceive of it. Bohr's rejoinder about the dice  '<thrown>...where they can't be seen' seems to me to evoke a similar concept.

For example an energy wave form in an extra dimension that we can't observe might possibly orthogonally project into our 3-D / 4-D space as a particle. So on our 3-D / 4-D 'wall' we see particle-wave duality when there is a deeper coherent source ('the sunlight'), which we might possibly perceive if we weren't 'prisoners' of our 3-D / 4-D cave. Basically, my feeling is that this is ultimately the type of relativity-like paradigm shift that may lead to quantum gravity.

Quote

There are more bizarre discoveries in the realm of the small. For instance, if atoms are 99.99999% empty space, how does matter project a solid aspect?!

Don't the probability clouds of the electrons repel atoms from passing through each other...i.e. energy fields of the subatomic particles prevent matter interpenetration (at low velocities / energies of interaction)?

Edited May 13, 2016 by natureboy

[Strandly]

On 5/12/2016 at 4:51 PM, natureboy said:

I see a lot of "our current understanding is..." from real scientists. Very often it's the popular media that translates some studies and hypotheses that are short of being 'well established facts' to be 'absolute truths'...kind of like what happened with limited sample health studies impugning eggs as bad for your health.

But there's a lot of stuff like the big bang leaving behind the cosmic microwave background that's basically unequivocal (even though the original event is not directly observable). Or that fusion reactions are occurring deep in the sun. Or this very intuitive demonstration of how there has to be a black hole at the center of our galaxy due to the high velocity orbits of the stars around the central point: http://www.galacticcenter.astro.ucla.edu/animations.html.

Doesn't that kind of information warrant a "we know..."?

If it wasn't tested for repeatability thousands or maybe even millions of times then no.  These things are still called theories because people, in fact, do not know.

 

On 5/12/2016 at 4:51 PM, natureboy said:

Do you hold any contrarian views on the Moon landings?

I was wondering when the insults would start popping up.

[iacas]

8 minutes ago, Strandly said:

If it wasn't tested for repeatability thousands or maybe even millions of times then no.  These things are still called theories because people, in fact, do not know.

No, that's not why they're called "theories." Scientists don't use the word to mean the same thing as in common usage. Surely you know this, or you'd be worried about the objects in your house floating up to the sky because we aren't sure about the theory of gravity yet.

They believe and have ample evidence to support that black holes contain the amount of mass they've said. If they say they're 20x the mass of the sun, they're probably about 20x.

[Strandly]

5 minutes ago, iacas said:

No, that's not why they're called "theories." Scientists don't use the word to mean the same thing as in common usage. Surely you know this, or you'd be worried about the objects in your house floating up to the sky because we aren't sure about the theory of gravity yet.

They believe and have ample evidence to support that black holes contain the amount of mass they've said. If they say they're 20x the mass of the sun, they're probably about 20x.

Yes, that is exactly why they are called theories because if the theory had greater certainty it would be a law.

Also, I don't worry about gravity reversing or disappearing or whatever because if that were to happen we'd be walking (or floating) dead men anyway.

[colin007]

39 minutes ago, Strandly said:

Yes, that is exactly why they are called theories because if the theory had greater certainty it would be a law.

Also, I don't worry about gravity reversing or disappearing or whatever because if that were to happen we'd be walking (or floating) dead men anyway.

No disrespect, but you're in way over your head here. So am I, but at least I can recognize that.

[Strandly]

37 minutes ago, colin007 said:

No disrespect, but you're in way over your head here. So am I, but at least I can recognize that.

No disrespect but you obviously haven't read the thread and have no idea what you're talking about.

[colin007]

50 minutes ago, Strandly said:

No disrespect but you obviously haven't read the thread and have no idea what you're talking about.

I have, and do to some extent, but suit yourself. Peace out.

[Buckeyebowman]

2 hours ago, Strandly said:

Yes, that is exactly why they are called theories because if the theory had greater certainty it would be a law.

Also, I don't worry about gravity reversing or disappearing or whatever because if that were to happen we'd be walking (or floating) dead men anyway.

Errrr. that's not exactly right, but it's an idea that has occurred to me before. As it turns out far fewer "laws" are being promulgated these days because science is pushing further and further into esoteric realms. As I said before, no one has ever seen an atom or a sub-atomic particle, for instance the electron, yet we have electricity. So, a degree of understanding was reached enough that the technology would work.

Consider Newton's "Laws" of motion. He promulgated ideas that cannot be observed on Earth! So he needed his theory of gravity to help out. His idea was "action at a distance". Einstein simplified, or complicated depending on your mindset, this idea by introducing the idea of spacetime and the idea that it could be "warped" or bent by the presence of a massive body.

Despite being supported countless thousands of times experimentally, Einstein's relativity is still referred to as a theory. Considering this, I don't know that we will ever see any more "laws" adopted into physics.

[iacas]

2 hours ago, Strandly said:

Yes, that is exactly why they are called theories because if the theory had greater certainty it would be a law.

Also, I don't worry about gravity reversing or disappearing or whatever because if that were to happen we'd be walking (or floating) dead men anyway.

No. That's not right.

[Hardspoon]

@Strandly: in the scientific sense, "laws" and "theories" are two very different things (theories don't "become" laws when they grow up!)

Good basic article if you're interested:

http://futurism.com/hypothesis-theory-or-law/

 

[iacas]

3 hours ago, iacas said:

Surely you know this, or you'd be worried about the objects in your house floating up to the sky because we aren't sure about the theory of gravity yet.

Of course, gravity is a law. As are some things about thermodynamics, gases, etc.

[Golfingdad]

On May 10, 2016 at 8:17 PM, natureboy said:

Really careful measurements, good theory, mathematical rigor, and peer review. The numbers quoted in news articles are rounded for convenience and so as to represent the rough expected error as an order of magnitude. So it's likely 30 times the mass of the sun plus or minus one solar mass, for example. The total luminosity of the observable universe is probably an estimate, but the likely error is probably small enough to pretty accurately round and compare to the measured power / flux of the gravitational waves.

The size of the observable universe has a known lower bound (the age of the universe at 13.8 billion years) and an estimate from redshifted light of 46.5 billion light years (http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2009/07/31/the-size-of-the-universe-a-har/). The problem is that the actual physical universe could be larger than just what's observable. You want to get your mind blown by something intuitively ludicrous, look up 'dark matter' and 'dark energy'.

Don't be this guy:

 

I love Dr. Spaceman!!! (Spuh-Che-mun)

[Strandly]

8 hours ago, Buckeyebowman said:

Errrr. that's not exactly right, but it's an idea that has occurred to me before. As it turns out far fewer "laws" are being promulgated these days because science is pushing further and further into esoteric realms. As I said before, no one has ever seen an atom or a sub-atomic particle, for instance the electron, yet we have electricity. So, a degree of understanding was reached enough that the technology would work.

Consider Newton's "Laws" of motion. He promulgated ideas that cannot be observed on Earth! So he needed his theory of gravity to help out. His idea was "action at a distance". Einstein simplified, or complicated depending on your mindset, this idea by introducing the idea of spacetime and the idea that it could be "warped" or bent by the presence of a massive body.

Despite being supported countless thousands of times experimentally, Einstein's relativity is still referred to as a theory. Considering this, I don't know that we will ever see any more "laws" adopted into physics.

Possibly.

I think a bigger reason you're not hearing about new laws is because the low hanging fruit has been taken.

Edited May 14, 2016 by Strandly

[natureboy]

14 hours ago, Strandly said:

If it wasn't tested for repeatability thousands or maybe even millions of times then no.  These things are still called theories because people, in fact, do not know.

I see your point technically, but it's an awfully high standard / burden of proof. It's not practical or even necessary for science to accept something as significant or valid (possibly with some caveats). In an earlier era a single (net one direction) circumnavigation of the earth would have debunked the 'flat earth' notion. Yet by the time of these voyages theorists had already long established with some basic observations and math that it was true.

The whole theorizing aspect of science is to indicate the forward (or possibly backward - don't neglect some of those old ideas when new testing or measuring technology becomes available) direction of inquiry and experiment based on the best available evidence to date.

Your point about not knowing is fair, though. Even with a law like naturally increasing entropy we don't know why it's a law. Even with all we know, you're right, we are still relatively blind. That said, we don't know 100% what the weather will do each second, minute, or day, in precise detail but the science of meteorology has advanced significantly enough to become very practically useful and informative in our daily lives...even if it's not perfect.

We all know we are solid and alive/conscious, but at a fundamental level we seem to be just a bunch of vibrating energy that's relatively condensed. We should all be a bit humble about what we know, but you've still got to go ahead and live your life. Ideally IMO appreciating in the back of your mind just how amazing existence is.

This is why I don't particularly cotton to science people who are anti-religion and religious people who are anti-science. Lots of paths of human thought have potentially valuable and practical insights to contribute to understanding ourselves and our place in the universe or ordering our lives and societies. Any mode of human thought can be mis-applied. 'Simplistic' allegories can be much deeper than their superficial appearance and very practically helpful in people's lives. What ultimately matters IMO is the spirit in which they are approached and the impacts of their use and application. Tradition and experience should not be lightly dismissed, nor should stagnation be embraced. I am innately skeptical of the dismissively arrogant and greatly respect the spirit of well-intentioned inquiry.

Quote

I was wondering when the insults would start popping up.

Sorry, that should have had a  symbol. I got what you were saying, but testing your sense of humor about it a bit.

11 hours ago, Golfingdad said:

I love Dr. Spaceman!!! (Spuh-Che-mun)

The correct pronunciation is important. 

Good satirical character. A little like a medical Ted Baxter.

Edited May 14, 2016 by natureboy

[Buckeyebowman]

15 hours ago, Strandly said:

Possibly.

I think a bigger reason you're not hearing about new laws is because the low hanging fruit has been taken.

That's a point. There is low hanging fruit in every human endeavour. I used to sell wine. It was fairly easy to sell a really good sub $10 bottle, not so easy to sell the more expensive.

The low hanging fruit of physics is comprised of those things that are observable directly here on Earth. But, we can't see atoms, or sub-atomic particles, or black holes at the center of galaxies. Scientists have to rely on indirect clues, and their mathematics, to guide them. And they do the best they can.

13 hours ago, natureboy said:

I see your point technically, but it's an awfully high standard / burden of proof. It's not practical or even necessary for science to accept something as significant or valid (possibly with some caveats). In an earlier era a single (net one direction) circumnavigation of the earth would have debunked the 'flat earth' notion. Yet by the time of these voyages theorists had already long established with some basic observations and math that it was true.

The whole theorizing aspect of science is to indicate the forward (or possibly backward - don't neglect some of those old ideas when new testing or measuring technology becomes available) direction of inquiry and experiment based on the best available evidence to date.

Your point about not knowing is fair, though. Even with a law like naturally increasing entropy we don't know why it's a law. Even with all we know, you're right, we are still relatively blind. That said, we don't know 100% what the weather will do each second, minute, or day, in precise detail but the science of meteorology has advanced significantly enough to become very practically useful and informative in our daily lives...even if it's not perfect.

We all know we are solid and alive/conscious, but at a fundamental level we seem to be just a bunch of vibrating energy that's relatively condensed. We should all be a bit humble about what we know, but you've still got to go ahead and live your life. Ideally IMO appreciating in the back of your mind just how amazing existence is.

This is why I don't particularly cotton to science people who are anti-religion and religious people who are anti-science. Lots of paths of human thought have potentially valuable and practical insights to contribute to understanding ourselves and our place in the universe or ordering our lives and societies. Any mode of human thought can be mis-applied. 'Simplistic' allegories can be much deeper than their superficial appearance and very practically helpful in people's lives. What ultimately matters IMO is the spirit in which they are approached and the impacts of their use and application. Tradition and experience should not be lightly dismissed, nor should stagnation be embraced. I am innately skeptical of the dismissively arrogant and greatly respect the spirit of well-intentioned inquiry.

Sorry, that should have had a  symbol. I got what you were saying, but testing your sense of humor about it a bit.

The correct pronunciation is important. 

Good satirical character. A little like a medical Ted Baxter.

More good thoughts! You're point about KNOWING is particularly apt. There may be many things that we simply cannot know. Like the nature of the Universe at the atomic or sub-atomic scale, or observing a black hole up close and personal! All we have is our best estimates of what might be going on there,

And, yes, the ancient Greeks and Phoenicians already knew that the Earth was not flat! They had the same brains that we do, and they were curious about their environment, so they figured it out, given their limited "science" of the time. In fact, I'd argue that the average person of those ages, was far more skilled in science than the average person today.

And as far as religion goes, Einstein was quite religious, leading to his "I do not believe God plays dice" quote. And Robert Oppenheimer, upon completion of the first successful atom bomb test, wrote in his notes, "I am become Shiva, destroyer of worlds!" Shiva being the Hindu deity of destruction and redemption. Many scientists have not seen science as a negation of God, but just a different way of looking at it. And I say "it" because I do not believe that God, if it does exist, has a gender!

[natureboy]

15 hours ago, Buckeyebowman said:

The low hanging fruit of physics is comprised of those things that are observable directly here on Earth. But, we can't see atoms, or sub-atomic particles, or black holes at the center of galaxies.

Clearly we need to create some black holes here on earth so we can study them up close before we draw any real conclusions.

Edited May 15, 2016 by natureboy

[natureboy]

On 5/14/2016 at 10:40 AM, natureboy said:

The whole theorizing aspect of science is to indicate the forward (or possibly backward - don't neglect some of those old ideas when new testing or measuring technology becomes available) direction of inquiry and experiment based on the best available evidence to date.

Here's an interesting thing I came across that relates to traditional knowledge vs. scientific advancement and the value of the occasional look backward:

One of the emphases in the documentary is how traditional bread-making (letting yeast ferment and rise in the flour) has been largely supplanted by modern, 'scientific' quick-rise baker's yeast. However, such bread is not as nutritionally complete as that produced in the traditional way and may expose sensitive people to some compounds in the flour that used to be eliminated / transformed by the yeast during the traditional leavening process. Certainly the traditional leavening process increases production cost, but it may be a very worthwhile investment for nutrition and health.

Many symbioses and processes that work well discovered through long-term social trial and error can have some real value rediscovered through a scientific look at 'old-fashioned' practices or questioning some of our modern assumptions and biases. We've only recently begun to study and understand our own symbiotic gut flora in much depth and in the process discovered a functional role for the appendix, until fairly recently viewed by modern medicine as vestigial.