Pretty big science news here! Potentially the biggest physics discovery in my lifetime (I don’t know about yours). Lots of people already speculating on a Nobel Prize.
Apparently this is some highly statistically significant evidence for inflation.
Scientific American Article on the discovery.
Apparently this is directly from the source
Gravitational “waves” (a bit misleading), yes.
Evidence of the Big Bang (aka “inflation”), no.
Incoming light is found to be distorted into a pattern. It is a very narrow mind that believes such a pattern establishes “direct proof” that Cosmic Background Radiation causes the pattern as a remnant effect of a Big Bang because that is the only possibility.
I think ‘direct proof’ is not the right term as well (but that was pulled from Scientific American, a popular science magazine, so…not really a relevant nit to pick).
But if you’re going to contradict these guys who are saying it’s evidence, that post wasn’t a very persuasive push to your side.
For me to argue an issue, you kind of need to know a little about the issue. Thus there’s not much need for me to bother presenting an argument. The bottom line of the argument would be that the harmonic “gravity waves” are actually almost impossible to avoid. Just like all harmonics, it doesn’t take a big bang to get them going.
I don’t mean to sound half assed, but after reading about half of the article, I thought I heard enough.
I think this is just a small piece of the puzzle. Reality is still a mystery in many ways.
The detection device sounds nice.
I don’t think that anybody is saying, ‘this is the entire puzzle’.
i don’t really understand why this is so significant…in what way does it help us out…we humans need a lot of help…
i would ask you guys who know this stuff-----------so what…
That is a question still on my mind also. It seems to be a strictly religious issue.
The true question on gravity is,
where does the energy come from?
I mean, when we use a planet for a gravitational boost,
and the spacecraft acquires more energy, the planet
doesn’t lose any energy.
Why?
Space IS gravity, merely more concentrated and less concentrated in regions.
Energy is gained or lost in a region merely by increasing or decreasing the concentration in that region.
A craft leaving a planet is decreasing the concentration of gravity on the planet, dispersing it a little.
The more dispersed it is, more energy is required to keep it that way. Thus it takes energy to get it that way.
Entropy requires energy.
The planet loses kinetic energy.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist#Explanation
Edit -A nice summary
community.dur.ac.uk/bob.johnson/SL/1.html
If you’re asking, ‘Even if its’ true, how is this knowledge useful?’ my answer is, ‘It’s not always immediately apparent if or in what ways new discoveries will become useful - but if we don’t make the discoveries, we’ll never find out if they could have been useful!’
Even if it’s not strictly useful in a pragmatic sense, though, it still might be worth knowing anyway. ‘Knowledge for the sake of knowledge’ doesn’t seem like an idea many philosophers would sneer at.
Read this today and thought it was relevant here.
Source: http://phys.org/news/2014-03-cosmologists-inflation-evidence.html
all this stuff is interesting but it doesn’t strike at the real problem…how about that awful singularity thing…that really lights up your bullshit detector…
which awful singularity thing? be more specific. singularity means a number of things depending on the context. which one, and why is it bullshit?
fj–I am a dummy…I heard that the big bang started from an infinitely small area of something that was infinitely dense…they called it a singularity…i didn’t say it was bullshit…I said it lit up my bs detector
ah, that singularity. do you think you have a reliable bullshit detector in this context? I’m not saying you don’t, just wondering if you think you do.
I am not sure of anything
In this case, you can trust it.
Very well said, Mr. James S. Saint.
They’re trying to pull the wool
over our eyes.