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posted by martyb on Friday July 17 2020, @05:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the calling-all-crackpots dept.

This interview with the authors describes a fascinating book that gives facts about cosmology in a combined education and the challenges to the people who can't quite believe in the conclusions scientists draw. Looks neat.

Despite having the world's knowledge at our fingertips, we live in a time of great scientific illiteracy. Disinformation is rampant about vaccines, climate change and even pandemics like Covid-19. But it gets even trickier when talking about the origins of life, the universe, and everything. Some of the facts we often hear about the cosmos are so absurd to imagine — they can almost feel like a religious dogma.

Of course, cosmic theories are based on mountains of data, not whimsical guesses. Yet, how do scientists really know a supermassive black hole is at the center of the Milky Way? How do scientists know distant nebulae are (sometimes) made of hydrogen clouds? How do scientists know 14 billion years ago there was a massive explosion of matter and energy that formed everything in our universe?

We hear these claims often, but most of us aren't able to examine the gritty details behind a scientific theory. Two astronomers get at this problem in the new book The Cosmic Revolutionary's Handbook: Or, How To Beat The Big Bang (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

[...] But Handbook goes one step further, explaining the scientific process in detail, so if you don't accept the mainstream Big Bang theory, you can create your own. Yes, [authors] Barnes and Lewis encourage you to take on the intellectual giants of cosmology — Einstein, Hawking, and all the rest — by taking this data and interpreting your own hypothesis.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @08:23PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @08:23PM (#1023059)

    This is a *good* thing. Einstein was also just a "crank" with absolutely no formal experience, had never published anything, and couldn't even get accepted for a position at any university - anywhere (after trying for 2 years!) He was working as a low grade patent inspector while developing his pet theories which he felt would trump all the collective knowledge of the world's best, brightest, and most experienced. *shrug* He was right.

    Of course most people will not be the next Einstein, but that goes of "cranks" and 'doctorate with 8 gazillion [mostly grant fishing] publications'. The more people that participate, the better for society.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Friday July 17 2020, @09:03PM (5 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday July 17 2020, @09:03PM (#1023074) Journal

    The difference between Einstein and the typical crank is that Einstein actually understood the theories he was challenging, and didn't act just from a gut feeling of “I don't understand it, therefore it has to be wrong.” Also AFAIK he didn't get mad as soon as anyone dared to not immediately believe his theories.

    Indeed, the easiest way to identify cranks is to look at their tone. If they accuse the established science to be stupid, then you can be pretty sure they don't have anything substantial to contribute themselves.

    Einstein wasn't a crank. His theories spoke for themselves (which doesn't mean everyone immediately was convinced; indeed it took quite some time for his theories to be generally accepted). He hadn't to resort to insults because he had arguments. And those arguments were not on the level of “your luminiferous ether is just the modern epicycles“.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @09:32PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @09:32PM (#1023081)

      Oh you're going to love this. I'm certain you're aware of probably one of the most famous quotes attributed to Einstein where he referred to quantum mechanics as "spooky action at a distance." What's missed in that quote is it was not a description, but a somewhat antagonistic mocking of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics (the one we have now adopted). Picture some air quotes and ghost sounds and you get the flavor of the quote more accurately. Einstein was vehemently against the Copenhagen interpretation since he believed in a much more deterministic universe. This debate is also where quotes such as "God does not play dice" also originate.

      Relativity was adopted incredibly rapidly, perhaps moreso than any hypothesis before or since. It certainly was a major exception to Planck's famous witticism that 'Science advances one funeral at a time.' Einsteins' 'annus mirabilis' was 1905. By 1908 he had received worldwide recognition and accolade. And keep in mind the rate of information travel in 1908! And so we only got to see Einstein on the defensive (or would it be offensive?) when it came to quantum mechanics. And indeed the sort of person who has the ego to believe they, with no experience, no more than everybody in the world - well they tend to be a bit dogged in their ways. He took his rejections of the Copenhagen interpretation all the way to the grave.

      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @11:16PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @11:16PM (#1023112)

        I think you are downplaying the hours and hours he spent discussing these issues notably with Bohr, of course, but many others. He spent a lot of time struggling with it and arguing about it, and I think to characterize his action-at-a-distance comment as an angry knee-jerk reaction due to damage to a fragile ego is simply wrong. He could not imagine reality could work in such a way and he was determined to find a better answer, but to suggest he was reacting like a crank that couldn't handle criticism of his theories really shows how little you know of his work and his life. There are some excellent biographies of him (Pais is my favorite), and you should read the works he wrote himself if you want to get a much better idea into his thoughts and philosophies that you can't distal into a popular quip.

      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday July 18 2020, @08:36AM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday July 18 2020, @08:36AM (#1023298) Journal

        where he referred to quantum mechanics as "spooky action at a distance."

        Wrong. He absolutely accepted that quantum mechanics worked, he just was convinced that it was not complete, and that the complete theory would then no longer have that problem. Not much unlike Newtonian gravitation had an action-at-a-distance gravitational force, but even Newton himself was convinced that an actual action at a distance was not meaningful and the actual, so far unknown mechanism should be local, and indeed Einstein showed that Newtonian gravitation is just an approximation to a local theory, General Relativity.

        the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics (the one we have now adopted)

        Actually the question of the correct interpretation is far from settled. But even if it were, there's an important word in your sentence: “now”.

        At Einstein's time, “the” Copenhagen interpretation (actually there are several variants) was definitely not established. And indeed, as interpretation one may argue whether it is even in the realms of science (it is not experimentally verifiable, after all; the formalism of quantum mechanics of course is, but that's one thing all interpretations of quantum mechanics agree on), or should rather be considered philosophy. So even when ignoring the points raised by the other answer to your post, you still have not demonstrated any case where Einstein attacked established science.

        Relativity was adopted incredibly rapidly, perhaps moreso than any hypothesis before or since. It certainly was a major exception to Planck's famous witticism that 'Science advances one funeral at a time.' Einsteins' 'annus mirabilis' was 1905. By 1908 he had received worldwide recognition and accolade.

        And three of the four publications of that “annus mirabilis” were not related to relativity. That in particular included the publication he got his Nobel prize for, the explanation of the photoelectric effect.

        And why do you think that as late as 1921, the Nobel committee did not award the prize to Einstein for his Theory of Relativity?

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Saturday July 18 2020, @04:29PM (1 child)

      by Beryllium Sphere (r) (5062) on Saturday July 18 2020, @04:29PM (#1023412)

      "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" developed special relativity from accepted and experimentally verified E&M.