If I claim to be a wise man, it surely means that I don't know. - Kansas I am always amazed at how many people, some on this board, love to claim with certainty that some theories are facts or are above questioning. Treating any opposing theory as below contempt or serious consideration, completely dismissive. In their next breath they will deride the treatment of Galileo by the <religious> authorities of his day. Forgetting that Galileo was way out on a limb, a scientific heretic not in line with the science or other scientists of his day. They don't see themselves as the same people who threatened to burn Galileo at the stake which is in fact what they are. There are too many examples in of this in modern science today to list. There are far more people willing to burn someone at the stake (orthodoxy) then there are Galileos. We should value those that buck the norm, not excoriate them. Science, despite what we like to think, is often not an open process, often the deck is stacked in favor of orthodoxy. Sad to say I took part in bad science when I was in Hawaii. It was very informative and led me to be little more open minded and not so certain. That was my point Dan, there are a lot of open questions. There is so much we don't know that we should be a little more open minded and not so judgmental in our pronouncements as to what is "Settled Science". Many things that have been pronounced "Settled" have proven later to be wrong. My favorite Historian, Barbara Tuchman in her book" Practicing History" said that historically about 90% of what any society believed to be fact was later shown to be incorrect. She said the percentage did not improve in modern times it is just that people had more information but usually drew the wrong conclusions. Societal norms, culture, politics, monetary pressures, personal ambitions, etc. all put pressure to draw conclusions in a specific direction. Eventually truth would come out but by then there were new questions to address and the cycles starts all over again, the percentage stays about the same. It is said that History is written by the winners. I think there is a similar parallel in science. Bob -----Original Message----- From: utah-astronomy-bounces@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:utah-astronomy-bounces@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of daniel turner Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2010 5:00 PM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Privatization (Was: SpaceX ?Secret? Payload) Bob: The article in question says that the WMAP data that Penrose sites can also be used to refute his assersions. This is a case of "It's not soup yet". We need more data before this one is sorted out. So let's build some more space probes and generate some more data. Always a good answer to unresolved questions. DT --- On Thu, 12/16/10, Robert Taylor <robtaylorslc@gmail.com> wrote:
From: Robert Taylor <robtaylorslc@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Privatization (Was: SpaceX ?Secret? Payload) To: "'Utah Astronomy'" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Thursday, December 16, 2010, 12:25 PM Thanks, interesting article. Would seem to explain a lot of what we see. One thing I am sure of is that reality is far more interesting than what we can imagine.
Bob