JWST MIGHT have found evidence of life.

[FBW737 519]

3 hours ago, qqwertz said:

For a hypothesis to be of scientific value, it should be falsifiable

And by the very same standard both General Relativity and the Standard Model not to mention every other scientific and pseudo scientific hypothesis and or theory you care to mention have been falsified since both theories have a significant number anomalies i.e. make prediction that are not borne out experimentally or by observation. Never the less they are the most successful theories but they are both ultimately paradigmatically wrong. Will a new paradigm emerge? Who knows. The very idea of the multiverse arose as an answer to the fine tuning. But it doesn't work. I recently saw Richard Dawkins interview Steven Weinberg and you should have seen the look on Dawkins face when he gleefully Asked Weinberg to explain how fine tuning is explained by the multiverse and Weinberg informed him that it doesn't work because there would have to be more universes than there are atoms in this one or something to that effect. I'm paraphrasing but I sure got the impression that Weinberg was not surprisingly taking issue with infinity. So there you go.

The problem is that it only takes one anomaly to falsify a theory with an otherwise perfect track record. That's not the way it works in practice otherwise there would be no funding. But it's strictly true of the fundamentals of the scientific method. It becomes an epistemological question and everyone knows scientist don't like philosophers messing around in their back yard.🤪

Edited September 18, 2023 by FBW737

[qqwertz 800]

5 hours ago, FBW737 said:

And by the very same standard both General Relativity and the Standard Model not to mention every other scientific and pseudo scientific hypothesis and or theory you care to mention have been falsified [...] The problem is that it only takes one anomaly to falsify a theory with an otherwise perfect track record. 

Nice post; we're getting into the finer points of epistemology 🙂

I was keeping my post short, but there is more to successful theories. Take Newton's second law, for instance. It has been proven wrong a lot of times since it has to be severely modified for very fast particles, and does not work at all for atoms and molecules. And yet, it is used everyday by engineers in the construction of houses, bridges, airplanes etc. The trick is that successful theories have a range of validity, and Newton's second law works perfectly well for almost everything between the size of a virus and that of a star system. Pretty impressive, given that it is about 350 years old.

As for General Relativity and the Standard Model, I would say the verdict is still out. The latter is so successful that high energy physicists are desperate to find new phenomena, otherwise they are running out of jobs 😉 . Yes, there are some experimental results that suggest new physics beyond the SM, but they are not conclusive yet. GR's anomalies are mostly on cosmological scales (see below) or on galactic scales. The latter can be explained by adding dark matter that we cannot observe. Nobody knows what that is and whether it exists at all, but the fundamental laws of gravity won't have to be changed then. A caveat: there is one recent publication by a Korean astronomer that casts doubt on dark matter. That is really interesting work, but needs to be confirmed by other groups before one can really say that we have a problem with dark matter.

As for the multiverse, you won't find me defending that. I personally find the idea absurd that one would need a (literally) infinite set of universes just to explain the one in which we are living. IMHO, that doesn't pass Occam's razor. The idea originates not from cosmology, but from quantum physics, where one needs to distinguish between a system to be measured, and the measurement apparatus. Now, the measurement apparatus consists of atoms, so it must be a quantum system itself. Hence, you need a bigger apparatus to measure both together. One can continue that argument until the entire universe is included, and then you run out of bigger apparatuses. Basically, the multiverse is needed as the biggest measurement apparatus at the end of that chain.

The multiverse is popular among cosmologists, but, ironically, not so much among quantum physicists. The reason is that, for practical purposes, one can stop that chain of devices very quickly. A measurement is not necessarily deliberate. Every time a molecule collides with your system or your measurement apparatus, it can be considered as a kind of measurement. Since we cannot track these collisions, we very quickly lose information about weird quantum effects such as entanglement between the experiment and the rest of the universe. Problems only arise on cosmological scales, and then we are strictly speaking not about science anymore: science deals with repeatable experiments, and we only have one universe. As impressive and significant Big Bang cosmology is (and I believe (!) in most of their explanations), it is strictly speaking natural philosophy, not science.

Peter

[martin-w 3,260]

7 hours ago, FBW737 said:

Weinberg informed him that it doesn't work because there would have to be more universes than there are atoms in this one or something to that effect.

 

Got a link to that? Doesn't sound as if you got that quite right.

 

7 hours ago, FBW737 said:

The very idea of the multiverse arose as an answer to the fine tuning.

 

 It depends on which multiverse you are talking about, there are nine, quilted, inflationary, brane, cyclic, landscape, quantum, holographic, simulated, and ultimate. 

We have evidence for inflation, of course, and if inflation is a valid theory then eternal inflation should be too. 

 

Quote

In the eternal inflation theory, which is a variant of the cosmic inflation theory, the multiverse or space as a whole is stretching and will continue doing so forever,^[62] but some regions of space stop stretching and form distinct bubbles (like gas pockets in a loaf of rising bread). Such bubbles are embryonic level I multiverses.

 

 

Edited September 18, 2023 by martin-w

[martin-w 3,260]

35 minutes ago, qqwertz said:

As for the multiverse, you won't find me defending that. I personally find the idea absurd

 

The universe doesn't care how absurd you find things. 🙂

 

Quote

The multiverse is popular among cosmologists, but, ironically, not so much among quantum physicists.

 

 

Quote

 

Proponents and skeptics[edit]

Modern proponents of one or more of the multiverse hypotheses include Lee Smolin,^[23] Don Page,^[24] Brian Greene,^[25][26] Max Tegmark,^[27] Alan Guth,^[28] Andrei Linde,^[29] Michio Kaku,^[30] David Deutsch,^[31] Leonard Susskind,^[32] Alexander Vilenkin,^[33] Yasunori Nomura,^[34] Raj Pathria,^[35] Laura Mersini-Houghton,^[36] Neil deGrasse Tyson,^[37] Sean Carroll^[38] and Stephen Hawking.^[39]

Scientists who are generally skeptical of the multiverse hypothesis include David Gross,^[40] Paul Steinhardt,^[41][42] Anna Ijjas,^[42] Abraham Loeb,^[42] David Spergel,^[43] Neil Turok,^[44] Viatcheslav Mukhanov,^[45] Michael S. Turner,^[46] Roger Penrose,^[47] George Ellis,^[48][49] Joe Silk,^[50] Carlo Rovelli,^[51] Adam Frank,^[52] Marcelo Gleiser,^[52] Jim Baggott^[53] and Paul Davies.^[54]

 

 

Edited September 18, 2023 by martin-w

[martin-w 3,260]

13 hours ago, FBW737 said:

Ditto! and today scientific evidence REALLY favours intelligent design

 

😁 We aren't allowed to discuss such things here, as you know, but if we were, Id have a lot to say about the statement you just made.

 

Its one of those subjects that's off limits on a forum for a reason. 

 

 

Edited September 18, 2023 by martin-w

[dmwalker 612]

17 hours ago, FBW737 said:

So if you look at the abundance or scarcity of any one of the elements in one small region of space say a planet the odds of that abundance or scarcity of all 103 elements being precisely matched somewhere else in the universe is statistically very close to zero and yet at the same time those abundances and scarcities are extremely finely tuned for life to exist.

Looking at the periodic table, I would say that elements beyond iodine are not biologically important.

“The human body is approximately 99% comprised of just six elements: Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, and phosphorus. Another five elements make up about 0.85% of the remaining mass: sulfur, potassium, sodium, chlorine, and magnesium. All of these 11 elements are essential elements.”

“The three most abundant essential trace elements are iron, fluorine, and zinc.”

I would add manganese, cobalt, copper, selenium and molybdenum.

So, of all the naturally occurring elements, only about 20 are biologically important. The first six elements accounting for 99% of the human body are all relatively abundant throughout the universe. Rather than being “fine tuned”, I could imagine variations of plus or minus 10% would still support the existence of life as we know it. I'm just guessing so I could be quite wrong.
 

[FBW737 519]

Well, I have limited credentials in this subject mater so I'll let all you PhD's duke it out. Especially you Martin. I know you're the brainiest person in the whole forum.🤪

[DD_Arthur 1,092]

21 hours ago, FBW737 said:

statistically very close to zero 

? There’s around twenty-thousand billion stars in the universe.

I would have thought statistically, billions of light years away, another bunch of humanoids scattered around some blue planet are reading their version of Avsim…..

[martin-w 3,260]

25 minutes ago, FBW737 said:

Especially you Martin. I know you're the brainiest person in the whole forum.🤪

 

I'm certainly not, and I'm not sure why such a rude  comment was required.

So do you have that link to the Dawkins conversation?

[martin-w 3,260]

26 minutes ago, DD_Arthur said:

? There’s around twenty-thousand billion stars in the universe.

I would have thought statistically, billions of light years away, another bunch of humanoids scattered around some blue planet are reading their version of Avsim…..

 

If we're talking about the entire universe, and the universe is infinite, and considering that atoms can only arrange themselves in a finite number of ways, there's a bunch of humanoids identical to us reading their version of Avsim. 

[dmwalker 612]

10 minutes ago, martin-w said:

So do you have that link to the Dawkins conversation?

I think it must be this in 8 parts. There are various references to multiverses but I just skipped through.

 

[FBW737 519]

59 minutes ago, martin-w said:

 

I'm certainly not, and I'm not sure why such a rude  comment was required.

So do you have that link to the Dawkins conversation?

That was a compliment!😁

Edited September 18, 2023 by FBW737

[FBW737 519]

28 minutes ago, dmwalker said:

I think it must be this in 8 parts. There are various references to multiverses but I just skipped through.

It is in there but I don't recall which part. I watched it a long time ago.

[FBW737 519]

I guess my reference to intelligent design was interpreted as religious discussion. Not so. Intelligent design is certainly a main stream consideration now in cosmology, physics, evolution, biology etc. It's part of the scientific debate. Regardless, I see even Dawkins to his credit doesn't go in for censoring his interlocutors. I'm sure he, as a man of his intellectual stature, recognizes that censoring those on the opposite side of the discussion is tantamount to admitting defeat.

[qqwertz 800]

6 minutes ago, FBW737 said:

I guess my reference to intelligent design was interpreted as religious discussion. Not so. Intelligent design is certainly a main stream consideration now in cosmology, physics, evolution, biology etc. It's part of the scientific debate. Regardless, I see even Dawkins to his credit doesn't go in for censoring his interlocutors. I'm sure he, as a man of his intellectual stature, recognizes that censoring those on the opposite side of the discussion is tantamount to admitting defeat.

Sorry, but I beg to differ. How would you falsify intelligent design as a hypothesis?