RM> KK> It is indeed an unconscious habit of human beings that when we
RM> KK> come up with an explanation, we tend to look for support for it,
RM> KK> even though the most parsimonious way to proceed would be to look
RM> KK> for something that kills the hypothesis.  That is one of the major
RM> KK> occupatinal hazards of science.
RM>I am referring to the scientific method.  "Refutation" is how the
RM>scientific method works and that is not what has been employed with the
RM>BB cosmologies.  IOW, BB cosmologists do not use the scientific method,
RM>but use an altered method that they CALL scientific.
To the extent that they are testing against observation, they are
scientific, though.
RM> KK> Simply RM>looking for support is not very scientific at all and
RM> KK> ranks up there RM>with religion and pseudoscience.
RM> KK> To rank it with pseudoscience would be to rank it with perpetual
RM> KK> motion machines, etc.
RM>That was my intent... the BB is pseudoscience.
I think Lerner overstates it somewhat.
RM> KK> It think what is happening with the BB
RM> KK> models is that when a generation grows up with a particular
RM> KK> paradigm, it becomes part of the environment, like Coca-Cola or
RM> KK> smog, and people forget to look at the basic assumptions.
RM>This may also be true, but we are talking about what has been always
RM>referred to as "science".  True science is very unforgiving.
Yeah, but it's also done by human beings, who sometimes fall in love
with hypotheses.  One of the great virtues of scientific
methodology is that science can correct itself.
RM> KK> An even more important issue is that we need more data, and it
RM> KK> will be very expensive to get those data.  The current
RM> KK> proliferation of hypotheses is typical in situations where there
RM> KK> are enough data to support all of them but not enough to kill any
RM> KK> of them.  NASA is cooking up a couple of 'next generation' space
RM> KK> telescopes, but they aren't gonna fly for at least five years.
RM>The steady state theories have been refuted long ago, creation theory (I
RM>use the word "theory" very loosely here) is unprovable (or if you will
RM>non-disprovable), and the BB theories are disprovable at the most basic
RM>level (ie. the presence of infinities in a, so called, finite universe,
RM>and the inability to actually derive anything meaningful those few
RM>millionths of a second after the "so called" big bang).
I dunno if that last would constitute disproof.  If you could get it all
sorted out all they way up to those last few zillionths of a second,
that would be strong support.
Plasma cosmology
RM>does not involve any major cataclysm as a precursor to the universe's
RM>existence.  The BBT starts from an assumed beginning to everything and
RM>tries (but fails) to arrive at the present universal structure.
Early Carbon-14 datings were not very accurate either, but that doesn't
mean the universe is 6,000 years old.  Radiocarbon dating has since been
refined to a very high degree of accuracy, by testing it against
waterlogged samples, samples embedded in different soils, new discoveries
about the actual CO2 content of the atmosphere in the past, etc.
Since, as you know, in science theory must bow to observed fact,
early BB models have had to be revised in light of new discoveries.
That does not necessarily demolish the overall BB idea.
The thing I think is really cool about the PC is that it takes all the
same data used by the BB crew, and comes up with a very different model.
You have to have that in science.  We like to imagine that in scientific
methodology you Gather Data, Make Hypothesis, Test Hypothesis, but
really no one understands how the creative human brain makes hypotheses.
PC
RM>works back from the present to increasingly more remote periods in the
RM>universe's history, and so far there is no need for any beginning at
RM>all.
Could well be, for all I know.
RM>      PC just looks much more logically derived.
In saying this, you may be making the same mistake you are accusing
the BB modelers of making.  A model can be logically self-consistent
without having any relation to reality.  Logical consistency works
in mathematics, but it doesn't work in science, where the only real
test is whether the model fits what the universe is actually doing.
RM> RM>> RM>> Sounds like a good policy.  Consider that 99% of the
RM> RM>> universe is RM>> highly conductive plasma,
RM> KK>> Plasmas are highly ionized, and can therefore conduct electricity
RM> KK>> and can therefore generate huge magnetic fields.  These EM fields
RM> KK>> apparently explain a number of cosmological puzzles.
RM> KK> RM>For example?
RM> KK> Just the ones in Lerner's book -- formation of stars and galxies,
RM> KK> transfer of angular momentum from the sun to the planets, etc.
RM>Okay, just checking. ;)
I don't read physics journals because I have no idea what they're
saying, but my impression is that BB physicists have gotten hep
to the idea that any future cosmologies must include plasmas.
So plasma physics can be valid without necessarily validating
the plasma cosmology.
RM> KK>> Plasma physics was a relatively obscure field until just this
RM> KK>> decade.
RM> KK> RM>Plasma physics itself was not recognized cosmologically until
RM> KK> the last RM>decade.  The filamentry structure of the universe is
RM> KK> just now becoming RM>accepted.  The slow plodding pace of
RM> KK> scientific revolution continues.
RM> KK> Yeah, but it's always been like that.
RM>Very true.
RM> KK> If you look at the leading
RM> KK> edge of any scientific field, it always seems to be in a state of
RM> KK> crisis. It was only 80-some years ago that most astronomers
RM> KK> thought certain objects they observed were objects within the
RM> KK> Milky Way, and it took Edwin Hubble to show that they were
RM> KK> actually galaxies the same size as the Milky Way, and at
RM> KK> outrageous distances.
RM>To be more accurate, they had no idea that the universe has the complex
RM>structure we know of now.  Hubble aided in removing such ignorance.  Do
RM>note, though, that Hubble merely mentioned the idea of an expanding
RM>universe in passing, and he was not really that serious about it.  It
RM>took the rest of the astronomical community to grab his ball and run
RM>with it,... now look at what we got.
What seems to be a state of crisis.
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