[cross posted at uncommondescent: What Qualifies as Science in the Wonderful World of Disney]
The scientific enterprise entails:
1. observation
2. hypothesis
3. testing
Consider this passage from the class text of an introductory cosmology class I took once upon a time:
galaxies farther than 4300 megaparsecs from us are currently moving away from us at speeds greater than that of light. Cosmological innocents sometimes exclaim, “Gosh! Doesn’t this violate the law that massive objects can’t travel faster than the speed of light?” Actually, it doesn’t. The speed limit that states that massive objects must travel with v < c relative to each other is one of the results of special relativity, and refers to the relative motion of objects within a static space. In the context of general relativity, there is no objection to having two points moving away from each other at superluminal speed due to the expansion of space.
page 39
Introduction to Cosmology
by Barbara ryden
Let’s say for the sake or argument this is true, an agnostic, science-loving friend of mine expressed the following unease with this claim:
1. we can never observe these galaxies
2. thus we can therefore never test that they are moving faster than the speed of light from us
3. repeatability of the observation? Not even testable in principle
4. things moving faster than the speed of light? We can’t test that directly either!
5. if you add space between two attracting bodies, doesn’t that mean you increase potential energy out of nowhere?
I responded to point 5 by saying, “General Relativity might not implicitly assert the conservation of energy law”, but that didn’t seem to be reassuring to him. I then read this passage in the same book on page 17:
During the 1950s and 1960s, the Big Bang and Steady State models battled for supremacy. Critics of Steady State model pointed out that the continuous creation of matter violates mass-energy conservation. Supporters of the Steady State model pointed out that the continuous creation of matter is no more absurd than the instantaneous creation of the entire universe in a single “Big Bang”.
My agnostic friend just about fell out his chair laughing. We both laughed.
The scenario of faster-than-speed-of light motion can be fit into the Friedmann-LeMaitre-Robertson-Walker solution to Einstein’s field equations of General Relativity, but does that make it true?
Consider Newton’s 2nd law. Suppose we are dealing with a force of 5 Newtons, what are the some of the mathematical (not necessarily physical) solutions to an equation constrained by the assumption that the force is 5 Newtons?
F = ma where F = 5 Newtons
Solution 1:
mass = 5 kg
acceleration = 1 meter/ sec^2Solution 2
mass = -5 kg
acceleration = -1 meter/sec^2etc.
Astute readers will notice solution 2, though mathematically consistent with the equation F=ma, is not physically real (in classical or most physics anyway) since it invokes negative mass.
I recall when studying General Relativity the professor assigning us an exercise to analyze geodesic trajectories through a particular solution to the Einstein field equations. This solution yielded incredible possibilities, and I thought to myself, “wow, where can I find such a place in the universe to observe this?”
And then reviewing the solution in class, the professor said something to the effect, “I didn’t tell you, but the solution I gave you describes a wormhole, but I’m not sure wormholes are possible since you need negative mass! This was more an exercise in math.” I and my fellow students had a small laugh, especially after having endured this mathematical exercise. The point being however, just because something is a mathematical solution to an equation of physics doesn’t mean it’s for real.
So with respect to those galaxies which we can’t see, which we will never see, that move faster than the speed of light, we can only postulate their existence as fact via inference. We can’t do it by observation, not by repeatable measurement or direct testing. So is the claim of these unseen entities a scientific claim? It does not accord with 2 of the 3 elements listed above that describe the scientific enterprise. The positivists among us will assert, “well if we can’t see it, we won’t believe it.”
So I would respond, “Ok, so do you believe the unseen galaxies predicted by the Big Bang. You can’t see them, you won’t see them, you can’t verify them, but supposedly they exist, they have properties as galaxies, and to top it off they move faster than the speed of light even though in the lab or anywhere we have access to, we haven’t clocked anything moving faster than the speed of light?”
So is the claim of unseen, unobservable, untestable, unverifiable galaxies a scientific claim? Eh, I leave that to the philosophers of science to decide, but it seems to me if one will admit as scientific the unseen, untestable, unknowable, unobservable, unverifiable entities as existing and having certain properties via inference and without direct evidence, then — well uh — couldn’t we hypothesize all sorts of unseen, untestable, unobservable, unknowable, unverifiable entities as being real via inference, and hence call that hypothesis science? I provided one example of such an entity in the thread: Quantum Enigma of Consciousness and the Identity of the Designer where Richard Conn Henry (a professor at no minor school) argued that Quantum Mechanics suggests God exists. Richard Conn Henry argued God is a permissible construct within accepted physics, and so is consciousness. Whether God is ultimately real is a separate question, but science doesn’t preclude His existence.
Getting back to cosmology, I learned of Alan Guth who speculated the universe expanded briefly at around 1000 times the speed of light in a process called inflation. In fact Andrei Linde speculated Guth understated the inflation speed by a factor of 10^1,000,000. If Guth claims the universe was inflationary, Linde claims it was hyperinflationary. Yikes!
What wasn’t presented in our cosmology class was Guth’s other speculation, which I learned of in a taboo book by William C. Mitchell
Guth is reported to have said, “in fact, our own universe might have been started in somebody’s basement.” Overbye has reported that, Guth and another MIT professor, Ed Fahri, found that, “If you could compress 25 pounds of matter into 10^-24 centimeters, making a mass 10^75 times the density of water…a bubble of false vacuum, or what Guth called a ‘child universe’ would be formed. From outside it would look like a black hole. From the inside it would look like an inflating universe.”
page 229
Bye Bye Big Bang, Hello Reality
by William C. Mitchell
Mitchell further commented of Guth, “can you believe such garbage?” I withhold making such a judgment since Guth is a smart guy, but it seems to me if we admit the possiblity of the universe being created by some tinkerer in a basement, we can surely admit intelligent design of the universe.
On a marginally more serious note, there are a minority of dissenting voices that share some of the reservations about modern cosmology that I’ve hinted of in this thread. One of them is a respected cosmologist by the name of Michael Disney. He argues we have too little data to really form a cosmological model.
Here is an excerpt from Modern Cosmology Science or Folktale
Where Do We Stand Today?
Big Bang cosmology is not a single theory; rather, it is five separate theories constructed on top of one another. The ground floor is a theory, historically but not fundamentally rooted in general relativity, to explain the redshifts—this is Expansion, which happily also accounts for the cosmic background radiation. The second floor is Inflation—needed to solve the horizon and “flatness” problems of the Big Bang. The third floor is the Dark Matter hypothesis required to explain the existence of contemporary visible structures, such as galaxies and clusters, which otherwise would never condense within the expanding fireball. The fourth floor is some kind of description for the “seeds” from which such structure is to grow. And the fifth and topmost floor is the mysterious Dark Energy, needed to allow for the recent acceleration of cosmic expansion indicated by the supernova observations. Thus Dark Energy could crumble, leaving the rest of the building intact. But if the Expansion floor collapsed, the entire edifice above it would come crashing down. Expansion is a moderately well-supported hypothesis, consistent with the cosmic background radiation, with the helium abundance and with the ages inferred for the oldest stars and star clusters in our neighborhood. However, finding more direct evidence for Expansion must be of paramount importance.
In the 1930s, Richard Tolman proposed such a test, really good data for which are only now becoming available. Tolman calculated that the surface brightness (the apparent brightness per unit area) of receding galaxies should fall off in a particularly dramatic way with redshift—indeed, so dramatically that those of us building the first cameras for the Hubble Space Telescope in the 1980s were told by cosmologists not to worry about distant galaxies, because we simply wouldn’t see them. Imagine our surprise therefore when every deep Hubble image turned out to have hundreds of apparently distant galaxies scattered all over it (as seen in the first image in this piece). Contemporary cosmologists mutter about “galaxy evolution,” but the omens do not necessarily look good for the Tolman test of Expansion at high redshift.
In its original form, an expanding Einstein model had an attractive, economic elegance. Alas, it has since run into serious difficulties, which have been cured only by sticking on some ugly bandages: inflation to cover horizon and flatness problems; overwhelming amounts of dark matter to provide internal structure; and dark energy, whatever that might be, to explain the seemingly recent acceleration. A skeptic is entitled to feel that a negative significance, after so much time, effort and trimming, is nothing more than one would expect of a folktale constantly re-edited to fit inconvenient new observations.
Ah, the wonderful world of Disney. Disney wrote a more technical article in The Case Against Cosmology published in the Journal General Relativity and Gravitation..
It should be noted, there is a forgotten article in the Discovery Institute archives by David Berlinski: Was There a Big Bang
Is the big bang model correct? One of my professors, James Trefil, gave his estimate that its about half way confirmed, but he has still some skepticism as he articulated in his book The Dark Side of the Universe.
The answer to the question of the Big Bang is way above my pay grade, but I posted this thread mostly to point out that if we pass off certain unverifiable, unseen, unknowable, unobservable claims as science, by what standard is ID disqualified? After all, according to Richard Conn Henry, quantum mechanics suggests God exists, and if so (though he won’t go so far as I would), imho, ID can then be admitted into to the realms of scientific hypotheses since now we have a theoretical entity with a sufficient skill set to design life.
And finally, with respect to the question of ID being science, in light of considerations above, this passage by Bill Dembski comes to mind:
Thus, a scientist may view design and its appeal to a designer as simply a fruitful device for understanding the world, not attaching any significance to questions such as whether a theory of design is in some ultimate sense true or whether the designer actually exists. Philosophers of science would call this a constructive empiricist approach to design. Scientists in the business of manufacturing theoretical entities like quarks, strings, and cold dark matter could therefore view the designer as just one more theoretical entity to be added to the list. I follow here Ludwig Wittgenstein, who wrote, “What a Copernicus or a Darwin really achieved was not the discovery of a true theory but of a fertile new point of view.”
Sal, we can see ’em. That’s how we measure their redshift.
Sal:
The flaw in your reasoning is revealed here:
There is no such thing as direct observation. ALL observations are proxy measurements. This is even built into our perceptual systems: if I see a lion, what I am doing is constructing the hypothesis “lion” as a likely fit to the light and sound waves impacting on my sensory systems, and testing the predictions made by that model against new data. Fortunately I can do this very rapidly – rapidly enough to run away. But what if that “lion” hypothesis is incorrect? It may well be. That’s fine. The point is that my percept “lion” is an provisional inference from the data, which may in the event be falsified by new data. And this happens regularly – we call the results “illusions”.
In other words ALL our observations are inferences based on data, whether it’s of galaxies receding at more than the speed of light (although you need to be careful there, because velocity is defined as a function of distance, and it is distance itself that is postulating to be expanding).
And yes, that means that ID hypotheses can be perfectly scientific. However, what makes the difference between a scientific hypothesis and a non-scientific one isn’t whether the observations are “direct” or “inferential” (they are all inferential, however close the proxy is), but whether the model predicts new data.
Yeah. There’s that too.
The scientific enterprise entails:
1. observation
2. hypothesis
3. testing
YES
So is the claim of unseen, unobservable, untestable, unverifiable galaxies a scientific claim?
NO. SEE 1 ABOVE
If ID is to be viewed as a “fruitful device”, when will it start bearing fruit?
Evolution has been very fruitful, and continues to be fruitful. ID proponents want to throw out evolution and go with ID. Please call back when ID starts being at least as fruitful as evolution.
I’m with Neil Rickert. Any putative scientist who genuinely does “view design and its appeal to a designer as simply a fruitful device for understanding the world” is deluded, because ID just plain isn’t ‘fruitful’. Tell me, Mr. Cordova: How much CSI does a ham sandwich have? And if you choose to answer this question, please do show your work.
Yes, it’s interesting. I’m not an evolutionary biologist but I do work in a biological field. While I can’t say I explicitly use evolutionary theory every day, it still underpins everything, and informs the questions we ask. For interesting, the part of the human brain called the insula (the bit of cortex tucked away behined the temporal lobe) seems to be very important for some very human-specific functions, including an integrated concept of self. Interestingly, in schizophrenia, typified by loss of integration of self, insula abnormalities are the most consistent finding.
The genetics of cortical folding seem to be key here (it’s a highly folded part of cortex), so trying to understand the embryology and development of the insula and its connections involves thinking in evolutionary terms.
Even if I wanted to believe ID, like a YEC geologist looking for oil, I’d have to suspend my disbelieve in evolution/Old Earth for the purposes of doing my research. ID doesn’t help me to find out what causes schizophrenia any more than YEC helps geologists to find oil.
Right or wrong, the consensus model works.
Among the many photographs of galaxies that are receding from us much faster than light: NASA Telescopes Spy Ultra-Distant Galaxy Amidst Cosmic 'Dark Ages':
Paper at A highly magnified candidate for a young galaxy seen when the Universe was 500 Myrs old
Apparently, according to Professor Wikipedia, any redshift over 1.4 indicates that the galaxy is currently moving away faster than light (or perhaps we are both ‘moving away’ from a central point at between c/2 and c). The speed is a calculated inference – but then, any galaxy’s very existence is an inference. Its light frequently started its journey billions of years ago.
There is no central point, as I understand mainstream cosmology.
Sal,
I think you completely missed the goof your agnostic friend made, and have joined it. Looking at the 5 points of “unease”:
Not true. I believe you and your friend got tripped up by this: “galaxies farther than 4300 megaparsecs from us are currently moving away from us at speeds greater than that of light.” They galaxies are not moving away in the “space internal” sense, the are moving as the result of expansion of space itself.
You must have heard the pedagogical example of drawing dots on a balloon and then inflating it some more, right? What happens to the dots when the balloon expands? The dots get further away from each other. The substrate for them is expanding. The dots are not moving (in this example) relative to each other or their position on the balloon.
The movement of the galaxies at such speeds is the “balloon expansion” of space. It’s a mistake to read that as “space/time internal” moving away from us (or anything) at greater than c.
Because #1 was mistaken, this one fails, too. More important, though, is to bear in mind that when we see light today, arriving at our telescopes on earth, it’s an ancient record of what happened long ago. For example, if we observe a redshift of 1.5, we can calculate the age of that light to about 5 billion years ago. So we can see galaxies that emitted light early enough and near enough to us to “outrun” the expansion of space. Many of these galaxies are currently and from now on beyond light contact, but light leaving that galaxy now wouldn’t get here for billions of years hence, anyway, even if it were not moving away.
We can and do make many repeated observations on this. You can’t recreate the same photon arriving form galaxy Z, of course, but we have a ready stream of input that tells the tale of what was happening when the light left on its way to us, long ago.
Sure you can. If object X is at position p1 at time t1 and later at p2 at time /t2 if the p2-p1 distance is greater than c for light in the t2-t1 delta, then Bob’s your uncle. Standard caveats about confidence that object X is object X in both observations applies, etc. With all the reference points to consider, we have a wealth of distance and movement relationships against which to not only measure individual distances and velocities, but a model that coheres for all of the observations. We live in an “accelerating universe”, which means that the farther you go from here (or anywhere), the faster the expansion becomes. This comes to us by way of calculating and resolving the various movements we can see of the galaxies.
I’m not aware of any models that ‘add space’ in the sense of new media being generate. This is about the balloon stretching, not more material being added to the balloon as you inflate it. If that’s the case, and that’s the only understanding I’m familiar with on this, there is no conservation problem. It’s a geometric transformation not additive process.
Anyway, wondering about “implicit” assertions (?) within GR about conservation of mass/energy is just adding more confusion to your friend’s misconceptions. Once you can separate out the dynamics of the space/time fabric itself expanding (see the “inflating balloon” demonstration) from the physics internal to that (e.g. c as max), it’s not hard to address the concerns of your friend.
On the energy question, the expansion vs. addition comments above notwithstanding, one of the cool bonus features of the inflationary universe model is that it is a zero net-energy model. Or, as it’s sometimes called and as I’m sure Dr. Dembski would appreciate, the “free lunch model”. Expansion is not a problem, and neither is the Big Bang in this framework. There is no “donated energy from outside” needed or compatible with this model.
Well … there must be somewhere from which both the Milky Way and one of these other galaxies (in opposite directions) give an identical redshift? Granted, depending on inflation, that redshift may perhaps exceed 1.4 …
”
Sal, we can see ‘em. That’s how we measure their redshift.”
Not superluminal moving galaxies beyond some distance, that was the whole point. You can’t see those objects. You won’t be able to see their redshift either!
4300 mega parsecs is 14 billion light years away, if the visible universe is 13.77 billion years old, light from these objects has not had time to reach us. 4300 mpc is known as the cosmological horizon.
There are objects presumed to exist which we will never see.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe
=================================================================
due to Hubble’s law regions sufficiently distant from us are expanding away from us much faster than the speed of light (special relativity prevents nearby objects in the same local region from moving faster than the speed of light with respect to each other, but there is no such constraint for distant objects when the space between them is expanding; see uses of the proper distance for a discussion), and the expansion rate appears to be accelerating due to dark energy. Assuming dark energy remains constant (an unchanging cosmological constant), so that the expansion rate of the universe continues to accelerate, there is a “future visibility limit” beyond which objects will never enter our observable universe at any time in the infinite future, because light emitted by objects outside that limit would never reach us. (A subtlety is that, because the Hubble parameter is decreasing with time, there can be cases where a galaxy that is receding from us just a bit faster than light does emit a signal that reaches us eventually[6][7]). This future visibility limit is calculated at a comoving distance of 19 billion parsecs (62 billion light years) assuming the universe will keep expanding forever, which implies the number of galaxies that we can ever theoretically observe in the infinite future (leaving aside the issue that some may be impossible to observe in practice due to redshift, as discussed in the following paragraph) is only larger than the number currently observable by a factor of 2.36.
Though in principle more galaxies will become observable in the future, in practice an increasing number of galaxies will become extremely redshifted due to ongoing expansion, so much so that they will seem to disappear from view and become invisible.[8][9][10]
I said 4300 mpc or 14 billion light years is the cosmic event horizon, the link I provided gives a slightly larger number at 16 billion. It also discusses the same philosophical problem of non-observability of possibly factual physical objects:
============================================
. This fact can be used to define a type of cosmic event horizon whose distance from us changes over time. For example, the current distance to this horizon is about 16 billion light years, meaning that a signal from an event happening at present can eventually reach us in the future if the event is less than 16 billion light years away, but the signal will never reach us if the event is more than 16 billion light years away.[6]
Both popular and professional research articles in cosmology often use the term “universe” to mean “observable universe”. This can be justified on the grounds that we can never know anything by direct experimentation about any part of the universe that is causally disconnected from us, although many credible theories require a total universe much larger than the observable universe. No evidence exists to suggest that the boundary of the observable universe constitutes a boundary on the universe as a whole, nor do any of the mainstream cosmological models propose that the universe has any physical boundary in the first place, though some models propose it could be finite but unbounded, like a higher-dimensional analogue of the 2D surface of a sphere that is finite in area but has no edge. It is plausible that the galaxies within our observable universe represent only a minuscule fraction of the galaxies in the universe. According to the theory of cosmic inflation and its founder, Alan Guth, if it is assumed that inflation began about 10−37 seconds after the Big Bang, then with the plausible assumption that the size of the universe at this time was approximately equal to the speed of light times its age, that would suggest that at present the entire universe’s size is at least 10^23 times larger than the size of the observable universe.[12]
Sal,
It’s a good thing you cross-posted. No one at UD pointed out your error, but it is obvious to us here at TSZ.
We can see superluminal galaxies.
The radius of the observable universe is 46 billion light years. That means we can see galaxies that are 46 billion light years away from us. Yet the age of the universe is only 13.8 billion years. Let that sink in.
This statement from the OP is simply untrue:
I’m glad we could teach you something about cosmology, though.
There is a region of the early universe we cannot see, but it is not because of distance or FTL.
I’m sure that Sal is aware of this and the cause, so I won’t insult anyone by describing the cause.
Allan,
Actually, no. The Big Bang is not like an explosion from a central point. All of space is expanding, and there is no center.
That’s why Hubble’s Law works. The redshift of a galaxy is proportional to its distance from us. If there actually were a center, then Hubble’s Law would imply that we are at the center!
We’re not. All of space is expanding, so no matter what galaxy you’re in, Hubble’s Law applies to your observations.
Yes, sure, I’m not saying that anywhere is the centre. But there is a point midway between any two other locations, including recessing galaxies. That was the point I referred to as the ‘central point’. If, from our perspective a bunch of the galaxies around us are redshifted, look in two opposite directions and pick two that are redshifted by the same amount. We are at the ‘central point’ between them, and they are receding from us at the same rate. But the speed that galaxy A is ‘moving away’ from galaxy B is twice that at which each is ‘moving away’ from us.
I looked further into the matter here:
General Relativity without Calculus
If the 4300 MpC number is revised to refer to the original distance versus the current distance, then the original point stands. It is odd that the 4300 MpC number also corresponds to the distance where superluminals exist, there is probably a good explanation for that coincidence.
I accept the correction of my error. Thank you gentleman and ladies.
Nevertheless, the main point that there are galaxies presumed to exist which we cannot see stands. That was not in error.
If as keith sayd each point of the universe is expanding and at each point we will see thr galaxies going away from us as we see in the earth, how could two galaxies collide?
Could you explain the difference between observations and data?
Ryden’s point:
“galaxies farther than 4300 megaparsecs from us are currently moving away from us at speeds greater than that of light. ”
If we then say galaxies farther than 4300 x 3.26 are moving away from us at speeds greater than the speed of light, we can’t see them. That should be correct. The figure of 3.26 I got from the GR book referenced above.
Which are the differences between ToE and ID respect embryology and develpment?
Allan,
Yes, and that is a direct implication of Hubble’s Law, which says that the relative speed of two galaxies is proportional to the distance between them.
They are twice as far from each other as they are from us, so their speed relative to each other is twice their speed relative to us.
Petrushka and I were objecting to this statement in your original comment:
The ‘or’ in your comment makes it seem that you don’t think the galaxy is really moving away faster than light (same with the scare quotes around ‘moving away’ in your last comment). It genuinely is moving faster than light relative to us, but not relative to space itself.
Edited to clarify: It seemed you were implying that motion relative to that ‘central point’ was real (and subluminal), but that the superluminal motion between us and the galaxy was somehow illusory. It’s not, and there’s nothing special about that ‘central point’.
Do not worry, you can forget galaxies, Lizzie and probably many on this forum believes as scientifically true the existance of many universes that we do not have any way to observe.
Blas,
Think of it this way: Space is expanding, but that doesn’t mean that galaxies that are close together can’t still attract each other gravitationally. The Milky Way is eventually going to collide with the Andromeda Galaxy, our next-door neighbor, but the average distance between us and all of the galaxies we can see will continue to increase.
Sal,
This confuses entailments with conjecture and superstition. Setting aside my reservations about “untestable”, and “unknowable” for the moment and stipulating that the putative galaxies are as inaccessible as you say as a matter of empirical review, models have implications that are non-optional. If the Big Bang model is correct, then… The Big Bang model may be incorrect, but it’s a package deal; if you embrace the model, based on verifiable, direct empirical experience and testing, then these other things are implied by it.
A recent example of this is dark energy. It “has to exist” for the model being consider; another form of energy (cannot be dark matter) is needed to resolve our strong empirical support for a flat (non-curved) space/time. The model might be wrong, but dark energy comes along for the ride whether we want it to or not, to the extent we adopt that model.
This isn’t the case for a designer, or for the kinds of speculations ID indulges. Those intuitions may be correct, but they are not, in any case, entailed or required by any model. These notions are separable in ways that dark energy is not, nor are the existence of many galaxies we will never possibly interact with.
So it’s true to say that scientists adopt beliefs and even construe such as knowledge without any direct interaction or validation. But this is nothing more than assenting to implications of logic and physical principles. If these things we can directly engage and test are correct, then by extension — necessarily, in this model — these other things are also true.
The ID intuition, correct or no, is of a different epistemic provenance. It’s not an extension or necessary implication of any model we embrace. Scientist who subscribe to beliefs in “unseen, unseeable galaxies” are not indulging in the form of speculation and detached conjecture that ID proponents are.
The redshift gives us the velocity of the galaxy along our line of site. It may have a significant component perpendicular to our line of sight that we don’t detect.
Gravity easily overcomes the expansion of space in small volumes, such as solar systems, galaxies, and clusters of galaxies. Gravity has put us on a collision course with Andromeda and it’s going to get nasty in about 4 billion years.
If there were some kind of observing beings in those distant galaxies, they would see us receding at a velocity greater than c but galaxies relatively near to them would not be seen receding due to the expansion of space.
keiths,
The light coming from Andromeda shows red shift?
“It’s not an extension or necessary implication of any model we embrace.”
Slight disagreement.
Certain interpretations of QM suggest an ultimate MIND, and I referenced that in the OP regarding Richard Conn Henry. Henry published an essay in Nature, and he gave an even more bold statement in his other writings. Speculative, yes, but I was glad those thoughts were allowed in the pages of Nature. Beyond his essay in nature, he wrote:
====================================================
“Now we are beginning to see that quantum mechanics might actually exclude any possibility of mind-independent reality….
Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.
Richard Conn Henry and Stephen R. Palmquist
Journal of Scientific Exploration Issue 21-3
“
Ah, I missed the 4300 MP bit. OK, those galaxies are not observable, nobody has ever claimed to observe them and if you press a cosmologist she will no doubt admit the possibility that they don’t exist. I don’t know of any cosmological theory that depends on the existence of such galaxies. Bottom line: we can’t see them, so what?
No. Blue shift, partly due to gravity and partly due to moving towards us.
As soon as ID has its Penzias and Wilson we’ll start taking it seriously. Oh wait, that can’t happen, because there are no distinct testable predictions made by any ID theory.
Sal,
I would say ‘yes’.
We see galaxies in every direction, nearly to the edge of the observable universe, and beyond them the cosmic microwave background. The parsimonious assumption is that the pattern continues beyond the cosmic horizon. If there are galaxies in every direction out to the cosmic horizon, but no galaxies beyond, then you have to assume that we are literally at the center of the universe.
That is an extremely unparsimonious assumption.
Also, if there were no mass beyond the cosmic horizon, I believe that fact would leave an observable imprint on the CMB. However, IANAC (I Am Not A Cosmologist). Also, current cosmological models — which make some spectacularly successful predictions — would have to be discarded. Far more likely that there is mass out there, that we are not at the center of the universe, and that our cosmological models are on the right track.
Someone might argue that while there is mass beyond the cosmic horizon, it may not be in the form of galaxies, but that also seems like an unparsimonious assumption. It would still place us at the center of a very special region.
stcordova,
What qualifies as science in the bizarre world of ID/creationism?
Sal’s errors are in trying to learn the Gish Gallop instead of science.
Why is Sal monster-mashing through the tulips trying to take on advanced topics in science when he can’t even get high school physics, chemistry, and math right?
We just watched him attributing a binomial distribution of coin flips to chirality in molecules with no justification whatsoever. And then he walks away from that “discussion” deliberately avoiding facing that very question.
(1) Can Sal scale up the charge-to-mass ratios of protons and electrons to kilogram-sized masses?
(2) Can Sal then calculate the energies of interaction of these kilogram-sized masses when they are separated by distances on the order of meters?
(3) Can Sal express his answer in joules?
(4) Can Sal covert his answer to megatons of TNT?
(5) Can Sal fold in the rules of quantum mechanics into these kilogram-sized masses with the same charge-to-mass ratios as protons and electrons and imagine how they would interact?
This is high school level physics and chemistry; high school physics and chemistry students can do these calculations.
And now the hardest part:
(6) Can Sal justify the routine ID/creationist tactic of using ideal gases of inert objects (such as coins, junkyard parts, ASCII characters, battle ship parts, etc.) as stand-ins for the behaviors of atoms and molecules?
This “debating” tactic goes all the way back to Henry Morris and Duane Gish who introduced it in “debates.” It became known as the Gish Gallop. ID/creationists will quote-mine and copy/paste stuff they don’t understand from any source that appears “advanced” to them. They will continue to dump tons of garbage into “debates” while never addressing any substantive issue. They are after celebrity; not understanding.
Sal appears to be practicing this technique. He doesn’t know anything about cosmology, relativity, astrophysics, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, or probability distributions.
I don’t think Sal can do high school level science of any sort; especially the above calculations. I don’t think he knows what they imply; and I don’t think he gives a damn.
Blas,
No, it’s blueshifted. Our galaxies are moving toward each other at about 250,000 miles per hour.
“He doesn’t know anything about cosmology, relativity, astrophysics, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, or probability distributions.
I don’t think Sal can do high school level science of any sort; especially the above calculations. ”
I still mess up on some high school, dare I say junior high math, for that matter even elementary school arithmetic. That’s why I show up here at TSZ to get some free education and tutoring.
Blas: the way I think of local and distant motion is like bread rising. On large scales, the tension in the bread pulls nearby bits of bread together giving them their own peculiar motion, but the expansion on longer scales makes the bread expand, so bits of bread that are very distant are always moving apart, even though all the bits of bread are closely attached and might even be moving nearer to their own local bits of bread (I find this analogy far more useful than the rubber balloon example as that doesn’t even nearly do local motion as well)
Sal: Your opening argument is really crap:
1. we can never observe these galaxies
This is manifestly false. we can observe them, they are just very red shifted.
2. thus we can therefore never test that they are moving faster than the speed of light from us
yes we can, the formulae are quite simple.
3. repeatability of the observation? Not even testable in principle
any galaxy with a redshift of greater than 1.4 is moving away faster than the speed of light
4. things moving faster than the speed of light? We can’t test that directly either!
except we can and we do.
5. if you add space between two attracting bodies, doesn’t that mean you increase potential energy out of nowhere?
This is irrelevant, but you’re bringing up energy conservation, which is nontrivial in General Relativity.
keiths:
Nope – for ‘central point’, read ‘midpoint’. (I use ‘scare quotes’ a lot. Probably too much).
Even without adding space between them, any two objects will separate at twice the speed that each is moving from the midpoint between them. If that latter speed is >c/2, they will be moving apart at >c, even though at no point did either need to be accelerated to or past c in order to achieve that. This applies to particles, within a static region of space. It applies to galaxies also, even though there is the added issue that space itself may expand between them.
Well, there are always textbooks, online courses, and other resources; but I’ve noticed that people here are very good at imparting knowledge with minimal snark and derision, however deserved.
Comment cross-posted from UD:
Sal,
There is a far more serious error in your OP:
That reflects a serious misunderstanding of general relativity. GR doesn’t forbid galaxies from moving faster than light relative to each other; it only forbids them moving faster than light relative to space itself.
Blas,
Believes? Probably not.
Takes seriously because it is a consequence of inflation (and string theory)? Yes.
I don’t think so.
You still avoided everything; and your very next comment will still avoid the issue.
I’ve been watching this game for nearly 50 years. What are you going to do that I can’t already predict?
Allan,
Yes, but the redshift is due almost entirely to the expansion of space itself and not to the motion of galaxies through space. (Otherwise Hubble’s Law wouldn’t work.) For example, the closing rate between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy is only about 250,000 miles per hour, or .00037c.
You might wonder how we can talk about a galaxy’s speed through space when general relativity tells us that no frame of reference is privileged. The answer is that we can measure motion relative to the cosmic microwave background. Earth is plodding along at just a few hundreds of kilometers per second relative to the CMB.
I disagree that this qualifies as “implicated” in the sense dark energy or galaxies-we’ll-never-see does, but I will grant that this is at least the kind of speculation that can be informed by immersion in the science. That is, it’s way more scientific in its provenance than ID (which is anti-scientific in its roots, so not saying much), even if it’s not entailed or proceeding from our models even in our most generous readings.
Historically, we don’t. This is idealism, one of the major tributaries to western philosophy over the last n centuries. Romanticism is it’s kissin’ cousin in that regard, both being major heavies in western thought for a long time. Neither has kept up with the ascendancy of realism and empiricism and science in general, but this is a stream of thought that is still very well represented.
And, theism is not the only alternative to solipsism in the mind-as-primary sphere, but that’s too far afield to do more than mention, here.
It seems you forgot to paste in your quantum mysticism blurb. The implications from Bell’s theorem are problematic for non-local realism. You can have “non-local” or “realism”, but not a robust version of both, according to Bell. That makes things a bit sketchy for working scientists, who are, in my experience, overwhelmingly subscribers to realism, the belief in an extra-mental reality that obtains objectively, independent of any mind or will.
It’s just self-flattery for ID proponents to think there’s some form of solidarity here with Henry or Aspect, et al. They aren’t speculating from visceral intuition, but from a disciplined look at real world stuff. Yes, it’s speculative, but it’s a “noble breed” of speculation, borne of wrestling with empirical data and sophisticated models. ID is “lazy speculation”, and it’s only just a small exaggeration to classify its speculation as a “Goddidit” reflex.
When scientific thinking indulges in speculation, you get speculation, but “scientific speculation”. When religious thinking indulges in speculation, you get “religious speculation”. The soil ID speculation springs from is a religious and superstitious loam, all the pseudo-scientific jargon and Lottery Winner Fallacy fetishizing aside. So you get “religious speculation”, and it’s not hard to distinguish from “scientific speculation”. That doesn’t mean ID is wrong; it’s religious intuitions might be right, and any or all manner of scientific speculations wrong.
They are different animals, no matter what the veridicality is for each.
Not me (I’m insufficient of a cosmologist to understand the demand for them by extension from known measurements). I’d accept as plausible (regardless of the relation to inflation) that there has been more than one Big Bang in the history of … uh … everything. I also think there’s life on other planets, but doubt we will ever know. But ‘believe’ … nah.
I’d agree that our models don’t “depend on unseen galaxies”, in the sense that those galaxies are a predicate for the other parts of the model. But by the same token, I think these galaxies are unavoidably implied, entailed by that model.
Just so it’s clear where the connection is, in the Big Bang model, the inflationary dynamics have matter/energy spread out, triggered by a phase transition, as the universe expanded exponentially. As that exponential growth stopped, the mass of the universe existed as a diffuse plasma. It wasn’t homogeneous, and small perturbations in the density formed gravitational centers that developed into gas clouds, stars, galaxies, etc.
My point is not to clumsily try to recapitulate BBT here in one paragraph, but to emphasize the diffusion and near homogeneity of the universe’s mass in its early phases. This aspect of the theory makes “unseen galaxies don’t exist” highly problematic. If we suppose, arguendo that they don’t exist, then our model crumbles. Typing that out, maybe I have to revise what I said just above and assert that BBT does, in this way, depend on ‘unseen galaxies’.
I can’t think how one would construct a model that yield some inflationary inception of the universe, and left only the visible universe as the only ones…
The point of my essay wasn’t about the Big Bang, but about what qualifies as science. The inflation model of the Big Bang isn’t repeatable (unless Guth is right that it can be done in someone’s basement). So is inflation science? I don’t know, I’ll say it is, but then that admits a lot of other unprovable ideas as science .
That said, here is a criticism:
“any galaxy with a redshift of greater than 1.4 is moving away faster than the speed of light”
predicated on FLRW, which is exactly what’s in question. Disney is skeptical, so are others that FLRW is in play. You’re insistence then that it’s true is based on circular reasoning. There needs to be independent confirmation of space expansion than just redshifts.
A proof of superluminal movement goes something like this:
“Redshifts beyond 1.4 indicate super luminal movement. Why do we know this? Because we assume FLRW. How do we know FLRW is true? Because of redshifts.” Circular reasoning. That’s what Disney and IE Segal and other criticize. I’m not putting forward anything that has been observed in secular quarters.
There might be other explanations for redshifts than space expansion….
Disney points out the recent Tolman tests are suggestive the FLRW is the wrong solution to GR. Then there was this
http://creation.com/the-big-bang-fails-another-test
I’m all for superluminal velocities. It will help the YEC model immensely!
FLRW might be true, but its not very reassuring as it stands. What if you found an extreme red shifted quasar which parallax suggests is close? Or how about this rather disturbing observation by Van Flandern:
http://metaresearch.org/cosmology/BB-top-30.asp
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“The average luminosity of quasars must decrease with time in just the right way so that their average apparent brightness is the same at all redshifts, which is exceedingly unlikely.
According to the Big Bang theory, a quasar at a redshift of 1 is roughly ten times as far away as one at a redshift of 0.1. (The redshift-distance relation is not quite linear, but this is a fair approximation.) If the two quasars were intrinsically similar, the high redshift one would be about 100 times fainter because of the inverse square law. But it is, on average, of comparable apparent brightness. This must be explained as quasars “evolving” their intrinsic properties so that they get smaller and fainter as the universe evolves. That way, the quasar at redshift 1 can be intrinsically 100 times brighter than the one at 0.1, explaining why they appear (on average) to be comparably bright. It isn’t as if the Big Bang has a reason why quasars should evolve in just this magical way. But that is required to explain the observations using the Big Bang interpretation of the redshift of quasars as a measure of cosmological distance.”
I think we got that part.
What we didn’t get was how interpolation is somehow equivalent to magic.