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Science is wrong!

#1

Not by a long shot… Bound and the 1st Matrix are still the winners hands down. Sense8 is okay. Lots of potential, and hopefully they’ll use that potential better in S2. S1 was a lot of expostion… A LOT! :smile:

Interstellar is a fine movie in every sense of the word… for me though, it’s just not as deep and complex as I was expecting from a Nolan flick… but that’s on my expectations. So yeah, it’s a great sci-fi tale, even if a bit too straightforward at times. My main gripe with the movie, and that’s not Nolan’s fault, is that it’s based around a lot of scientific theories that I just don’t agree with (gravity, black holes, wormholes, time-based 4th/5th dimensions, etc…) But hey, they’re wonderful concepts that yield interesting stories, so srew it =P

#2

You don’t agree with gravity?

#3

Oh don’t be such a downer.

#4
#5

Well, yes and no… What we call “gravity” usually refers to what we call the “gravitational pull” which is an effect that we experience on a daily basis, and that’s what Newton calculated very well ages ago.

However gravity itself remains a mystery and is still completely unexplained. Therefore, all the science that has been based on it (like the aforementioned black holes) is extremely shaky at best and each recent discovery keeps furthering the problems with it.

To make it clearer though: gravity is like say warmth. We experience both of them and both of them can be measured/calculated to perfection.

However, we actually know that warmth is created by a heat source… So scientists assume that the gravitational pull is created by a gravity source (the mass of a body in this instance), but since it’s impossible to test in on a lab, none’s really sure about that a 100%… Furthermore, we know how a heat source works and how it happens, like combustion, for exemple… Yet, none has ANY clue of how this “gravity force” works or what it is.

So gravity is one of the biggest unkowns of science, yet it is used to create theories about everything, including the creation of the universe, which is preposterous to say the least.

#6

And yet, we understand more about gravity now than we did 100 years ago, and we’ll understand it more in 100 years time. That’s how science works. We fit the best knowledge we have into the gaps we’ve yet to fill.

#7

Do we? I don’t agree at all… I haven’t read about any significant improvement to what Newton already established. As for what we’ll understand in a 100 years? Who knows… hopefully the cosmologial sciences will have gotten over this “Dark Age”, because that’s pretty much where they’re at right now. The mathemagicians are the modern preachers of so-called science. Mathematics is not science, it’s just a tool of science.

There’s actually a pretty interesting sociological theory about it and why did sciences took the turn they did in the early 1900’s, after the big wars to be precise. It’s worth a look, for contextual info.

#8

No but like, what I a want to know is: Magnets, how do they work?

Motherfucking miracles right there.

#9

[quote]
The electromagnetic force is the one responsible for practically all the phenomena one encounters in daily life above the nuclear scale, with the exception of gravity. Roughly speaking, all the forces involved in interactions between atoms can be explained by the electromagnetic force acting on the electrically charged atomic nuclei and electrons inside and around the atoms, together with how these particles carry momentum by their movement. This includes the forces we experience in “pushing” or “pulling” ordinary material objects, which come from the intermolecular forces between the individual molecules in our bodies and those in the objects. It also includes all forms of chemical phenomena.

A necessary part of understanding the intra-atomic to intermolecular forces is the effective force generated by the momentum of the electrons’ movement, and that electrons move between interacting atoms, carrying momentum with them. As a collection of electrons becomes more confined, their minimum momentum necessarily increases due to the Pauli exclusion principle. The behaviour of matter at the molecular scale including its density is determined by the balance between the electromagnetic force and the force generated by the exchange of momentum carried by the electrons themselves.[/quote]

*btw, it kinda makes you wonder why there’s even a need for gravity since electromagnetism seems to be doing a fine job in making everything else work… =/

=P

But, to get back on topic… It would be interesting to see what sci-fi might look like in a good 100 years… Maybe some of these theories will be forgotten and none will talk about blackholes anymore… or maybe they’ll be verified and they’ll start inventing new stuff? who knows… The one thing I know for sure, is that we still won’t have our hovering skateboards… so screw everything :smile:

#10

Seriously? You’ve not heard of Einstein? Or the Higgs Boson?

#11

Shhhhhhhh … Magnets!

#12

This is getting waay off topic, so feel free to move this to a more suited thread =P

But oh don’t get me started on Einstein and his gravity theories… The dude just sidestepped the issue by inventing his “spacetime” concept and claiming gravity is a curvature of spacetime while also failing to explain gravity in any meaningful way. Also, I don’t have the quote right at hand, but it’s known that in his later years he confessed he wasn’t entirely staisfied with his theories precisely because at no point he managed to actually understand or explain what gravity is (or something to that effect, I’m probably paraphrasing wildly). So, from my understanding, Einstein just changed the framework of gravity, not calling it a “force” like Newton had, and calling it a “distortion of spacetime” (which in turn is a grossly over-simplification of it, but you get the point). He basically replaced a theory by another theory, but in the end, Newton’s equations of the gravity effects are still used for practical purposes even today… So yeah, I don’t see the huge improvement of knowledge about it.

Damn, I actually thought you were being serious earlier and not a shhhh…

Silly me, I know :smile:

#13

If einstein’s theory of space time was junk, it would have fallen out of use. It fits the evidence better than any other theory we have right now, and when we know more it’ll be replaced. That’s how science works.

And just out of curiosity, where’s your degree in physics from?

#14

I am very rarely serious, Jon.

#15

Well, that’s kind of my point… the evidence coming with newer technologies is stacking against a lot of those theories, even if they cling to them like there’s no tomorrow (and, there would probably be no tomorrow for a lot of them if those theories were disproved, which might explain the feverish attachement). New pictures of galaxies that shouldn’t exist under the current models (based on the theory of relativity), for instance… Certain kinds of stars behaving VERY differently than expected… A ridiculous lack of evidence to support the prevalent comet theories (that they’re supposedly chunks of ice… no ice or water has been found yet on any of them),… Heck, even the sun is not behaving as predicted for a giant furnace… etc, etc. So yeah, I hope science gets out of this rut sooner than later and they start looking at the evidence and question their theories, instead of just patching them with silly concepts like dark matter or dark energy (‘dark’ meaning: they don’t know squat about it, but it needs to be there so their equations work out… yeah awesome logic there… xD)

As for my degree in physics: You already know. Now, I would ask where yours comes from to respond in kind to your dismissive tone (see? here you go again, and yet you complain about it… funny)… But instead, let me just point out that THIS is precisely what pisses me off to no end about modern science… You either need a frickin’ degree to be able to even give an opinion or basically you’re treated as an idiot who doesn’t know anything so you should shut up. That’s elitisim in the worst sense of the word… That’s why science (some branches of it, not all, thankfully) today has become a religion akin to the dark ages Catholisism, wherein only a few speak the language of the scripture and everyone else is supposed to take their word for it.

Hopefully in the future, science will come back to the people, where it belongs… where it can be discussed and new ideas can grow and it’s not stiffled by a very few interested, self-regulated people who’ll cling to their prophet’s words come heaven or hell.

#16

And those new discoveries wouldn’t be possible without Einstein’s work leading the way. Einstein largely obsoleted Newton, but he wouldn’t have known where to begin without Newton

oh, I have no problem with people who aren’t experts commenting on a subject. But you spent quite a lot of time arguing otherwise when someone you don’t like was saying things you don’t like. Can’t have it both ways.

#17

“Obsoleted” is an exageration, but don’t take my non-expert word for it, a quick wiki search confirms it:

Notice the subtle, yet huge difference in the words Newton’s LAW and Einstein’s THEORY btw…

First of all: I don’t dislike you. It’s got nothing to do with “liking”. I just don’t agree with you on a lot of topics… on some I do. And secondly: Do you mean to tell me that what I’m doing is having a discussion/argument in a message board with someone who doesn’t share my opinions??? Holy moley, what a weirdo I am… Where the hell did I come up with such a novel and strange idea?

#18

And just in case anyone is interested, the difference is: a LAW describes an observed effect (e.g. “things fall under gravity at this rate”) while a THEORY tries to explain the cause of that effect (e.g. “and they fall like that because”). A law isn’t better or worse than a theory, it’s a completely different thing with a completely different purpose. The two can and do co-exist.

Newton didn’t have a clue why things fell down, he just knew they did. Einstein came up with an idea for why they did. Einstein’s theory also predicted that Newton’s law wouldn’t work in all cases. This was later proven observationally to be true, leading to Newton’s law being abandoned in those cases.

(BSc in Combined Science from the Polytechnic (now University) of Sunderland, if it matters.)

#19

Damn, we should maybe open up a thread and move all this somewhere else because we’ve gone completely off-topic… Also I’ve been watching a ton of videos lately on youtube about a lot of this stuff (which I guess is actually on-topic to this thread), and if there’s interest, I’d definetly like to share them and discuss them. Up to you folks =)

#20

Good call :smile: