ScienceWhopper:Natural History According to Jeffrey Holland

[_Franktalk]

Again, Franktalk, you need tp pay closer attention.

It is the age of the universe that is estimated at 13 - 14.5 billion years. The Earth is estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old.

You are right I responded to universe not earth.

[_Tarski]

For those who think science is just getting more refined all of the time.

We used to think that all things in nature were continuous or had absolute precision. This led to determinism. Then one day quantum mechanics shows that probability exist at some level of reality.

The vacuum of space has nothing in it. Then came Casimir Pulaski.

We used to think that at absolute zero things would not jump around. But it turns out we have a ZPE which refuses to stop jumping around.

We used to think that the Earth is the center of the universe. Then came, well you know.

We used to think that we could observe all parts of nature. Then came dark energy and dark mass.

Now you guys can all believe these are refining but I see them as reversals. The real issue is why did science make the leap saying they understood something when they really did not. Is science doing the same today?

We used to think the Grand Canyon was formed by hydrodynamic erosion but then we discovered Zeuss carved it with his mighty hand on whim.

We used to think that languages evolved and bifurcated according to understandable patterns related to movements of populations. Then we learned it was really Yaweh who made all the languages at once just recently as a punishment for people building a tower to heaven.

We used to think that humans decended from early primates over millions of years and now we know that despite the fossil record and comparative anatomy etc, we are all decended from a single man and woman who lived in a magical deathless garden with a talking snake.

We used to believe that space was isotropic with no up or down and that the moon was closer to the earth than the sun and that the earth orbits the sun while the moon orbits the earth. Now we know that the moon is above the earth and the sun is above the moon and that Kolob is above them all.

We used to think we could explain the motions of the planets in terms of mathematical laws. Now we know they are moved by faith.

We used to think mental illness was caused by neurological disorder and disease. Now we know demons haunt the bodies of the mentally ill.

we learned all of this from a twinkly inner feeling and not by silly experiment.
/end sarcasm

[_Gadianton]

That was good, Tarski. LOL!

For those who think science is just getting more refined all of the time.

We used to think that all things in nature were continuous or had absolute precision. This led to determinism. Then one day quantum mechanics shows that probability exist at some level of reality.

Ironically, quantum mechanics is one of the best prospects for a genuinely deterministic theory in modern times!

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deter ... al/#QuaMec

Looks like science is getting a little more refined.

The vacuum of space has nothing in it. Then came Casimir Pulaski.

Exactly. We used to think space had nothing in it, then one day in 1745, a Polish General was born.

(on an unrelated note, some might be interested in Hendrik Casimir, the Dutch physicist and partially credited with the Casimir-Polder force -- it sounds similar, is someone typing faster than he can BS?)

We used to think that the Earth is the center of the universe...

As the Mother Church insisted...

We used to think that we could observe all parts of nature. Then came dark energy and dark mass.

CFR

[_Hades]

We used to think that the Earth is the center of the universe. Then came, well you know.

Wasn't this one a religious notion?

[_Franktalk]

Nice catch Gadianton. Casimir was someone with vision. Pretty rare. The general not so much.

[_harmony]

Casimir was someone with vision. Pretty rare.

Lord, if that ain't the truth! That is readily apparent, especially right after GC.

[_SteelHead]

Calculations

Human DNA X % difference = # of nucleotides that are different
(3 X 10^9) X .04 = 120 X10^6

Number of possible combinations in 120 X10^6 nucleotides with 4 nucleotide combinations per site
4^(120 X10^6) = My calculator did not go that high. So I used 4^1000 which
Is 1.148 X 10^519 Much smaller number but my calculator could handle it. Using this smaller number makes the job of evolution much easier.

Per generation number of mutations
DNA size X mutation rate X population = mutations in population
(3 X10^9) X (1.8 X10^ -8 ) X (1 X 10^6) = 5.4 X10^7 mutations

Possible combinations / mutations per generation = # of generations required
(1.148 X10^519) / (5.4 X10^7) = 2.125 X10^511 generations

Years in generation X required generations = years required
20 X (2.125 X10^511) = 4.25 X10^512 years required to make man

Now the universe according to science is 14.5 X10^9 years old.

Population number is where this falls apart. It assumes 10 million as a population per generation, but discounts that most of this mutation occurred in simple organisms with populations orders, of orders of magnitude greater than 10^6. Also per a quick thought process fails to define time frame of a generation. Again much faster by orders of magnitude reproduction for the simple organisms.

[_keithb]

For those who think science is just getting more refined all of the time.

Wow. Lots of things wrong with your post. Let's go through them one at a time.

We used to think that all things in nature were continuous or had absolute precision. This led to determinism. Then one day quantum mechanics shows that probability exist at some level of reality.

The correspondence principle says that quantum mechanics converges to classical mechanics at high levels of system energy. One way to see this is that the spacing between orbitals for a hydrogen atom becomes smaller and smaller at high quantum numbers, converging to continuous in the limit. So, you're wrong here -- the universe is essentially continuous at high energy levels. It only becomes discrete and probabilistic in systems with low energy.

The vacuum of space has nothing in it. Then came Casimir Pulaski.

On average, the vacuum is empty. It's only over short periods of time that there can be the creation of virtual particle/anti-particle pairs that can exist for a very short period of time, of which the Casimir effect is an experimental confirmation. by the way, this is the mechanism by which black holes are predicted to evaporate over time (~over several trillion years) and the mechanism by which a 511Kev gamma ray can create electrons from the vacuum.

We used to think that at absolute zero things would not jump around. But it turns out we have a ZPE which refuses to stop jumping around.

Objects at absolute zero really don't jump around that much -- no more so than everything else does in QM. Absolute zero is still not well understood and is difficult to approach experimentally. The state of the art for the method (last time I read anything about it) is to make a trap using atoms at the center of converging laser beams to drain momentum from the atoms and trap them at the center. It's not my field though, so I don't know that much about it.

We used to think that the Earth is the center of the universe. Then came, well you know.

Technically, the earth is at the center of the universe (just like every other point in the universe is at the center of the universe) in the same way that Salt Lake City is at the center of the surface of the earth (or any other point on the earth's surface for that matter).

We used to think that we could observe all parts of nature. Then came dark energy and dark mass.

We HAVE observed dark matter and energy (or at least their effects). That's how we know they exists.

Now you guys can all believe these are refining but I see them as reversals. The real issue is why did science make the leap saying they understood something when they really did not. Is science doing the same today?

They are NOT reversals. To say this shows a very deep lack of understanding about science. The laws of physics are NEVER reversed. That would imply a change in the laws that govern the universe, which has never been observed.

[_sock puppet]

Casimir was someone with vision. Pretty rare.

Lord, if that ain't the truth! That is readily apparent, especially right after GC.

Did Casimir speak at GC? Damn, I did miss something by not tuning in this past weekend.

[_DrW]

We used to think that we could observe all parts of nature. Then came dark energy and dark mass.

Now you guys can all believe these are refining but I see them as reversals. The real issue is why did science make the leap saying they understood something when they really did not. Is science doing the same today?

Franktalk,

What scientific theory or fundamental law of nature was overturned by the discovery of "Dark Energy"?

In fact, what fundamental law of nature was overturned by any of the examples you described, except for those first promulgated by superstition and religion?

Gravity was not overturned by Dark Energy or Dark Matter. In fact, there is a "wobble" along the outer perimeter of our milky way galactic disk that could not be explained before and is now explained very nicely by local concentrations of Dark Matter. In fact, these concentration can be charted, and not only explained the wobble but helped lead to the discovery of several very small and optically faint satellite galaxies that had been missed in sky surveys before.

This is refinement. If you think it is overturn or reversal, then again, as demonstrated by some of your other statements on this thread, you need to read a bit more about science.