FWD (SK) Re: Cosmology Question [fringe theories]

From: Terry W. Colvin (fortean1@mindspring.com)
Date: Tue Feb 25 2003 - 13:10:14 MST

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    At 09:35 PM 2/24/2003 -0700, Terry W. Colvin forwarded:
    >Stirling Westrup, Wed Feb 12, 2003 09:47 pm:
    >
    > >All that being said, you will note that the vast majority of
    > >cosmological press releases (including the one someone included in
    > >this thread) emphasize not the changes to theories that the new
    > >results will require, but how well they always fit with existing
    > >theories.

    Disregarding the mass media which often exhibits its scientific illiteracy
    in press releases and just considering the scientific media (examples of
    which would be Science News, New Scientist and News and Views in Nature and
    Science), if they fit with existing theories, then that is emphasized. If
    they do not, then that is emphasized.

    Examples where discoveries did not fit with existing theories and this was
    clearly stated in such news releases are the several different observations
    showing there is only about 25% of matter needed for the universe to come
    to critical density, the type Ia supernovae studies showing an accelerating
    universe, gamma ray bursts found distributed uniformly instead of along the
    galactic plane as expected, the neutrino deficit coming from the sun, and
    stars discovered to be much older than anyone thought as it was then
    thought that stars didn't form in the universe until a billion or so years
    after the Big Bang. There are lots more examples.

    >They might be using 'theory' too vaguely. There's the following
    >aspects to consider too. (Some quotes... A friend gave me some nifty
    >quotes by astronomers and other scientists yesterday and I'm itching
    >to use them)
    >
    >"The trouble is that inflation is a paradigm rather than a model,
    >and has many different realizations which can lead to a range of
    >different predictions." ---Andrew Liddle

    Inflation is a theory that explains phenomena and makes predictions and is
    therefore falsifiable. There are several variants of inflation floating
    around, but each one makes one or more unique predictions and each one can
    therefore be falsified.

    >"A theory has only the alternative of being right or wrong. A model
    >has a third possibility: it may be right, but irrelevant."
    >---Manfred Eigen

    This comment is itself irrelevant. Models are simply visualizations or
    descriptions that may form part of a theory but aren't themselves theories.

    >"The purpose of models is not to fit the data but to sharpen the
    >questions." ---Samuel Carlin

    Sometimes.

    Ron Ebert

    -- 
    Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@mindspring.com >
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