Posted on 06/02/2014 10:34:39 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The astronomers who this spring announced that they had evidence of primordial gravitational waves jumped the gun because they did not take into proper account a confounding effect of galactic dust, two new analyses suggest.
Although further observations may yet find the signal to emerge from the noise, independent experts now say they no longer believe that the original data constituted significant evidence.
Researchers said in March that they had found a faint twisting pattern in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the Big Bang’s afterglow, using a South Pole-based radio telescope called BICEP2. This pattern, they said, was evidence for primordial gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space-time generated in the early Universe (see 'Telescope captures view of gravitational waves'). The announcement caused a sensation because it seemed to confirm the theory of cosmic inflation, which holds that the cosmos mushroomed in size during the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang.
However two independent analyses now suggest that those twisting patterns in the CMB polarization could just as easily be accounted for by dust in the Milky Way Galaxy
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
And there is the group think. You can't publish on intelligent design because no "reputable" scientific source wants to hear the competing theory. And since no "reputable" scientific theory publishes anything about intelligent design, it must not be scientific.
You believe what you want to believe. The sites are out there if you want to know the answers. My time is more important than to waste it on people who can't be convinced no matter what.
The idea that “nothing comes from nothing” predates the study of quantum physics. Maybe I didn’t first hear it in science class, but I it did first hear it in grammar school. During recess I experimented with gravity. Do you believe that something (the universe) came from nothing (pre-universe)?
Not sure about what you mean by “comparison”. Of course I can’t provide a link. I am shooting from the hip. Are you disagreeing that the bing bang theory is scientists practically saying that everything came from nothing?
Either everything came from nothing, or something has always existed. Do you have an alternative?
I believe that something has always existed. The Creator. Everything, as we are given to sense it with our five senses, was created by the Creator. If there was a Big Bang, it was His work. It may be a matter of terminology, but, for example, when FatherofFour posted “But the big bang, if it happened, is God’s creation. Something from nothing.” I agree with him on the first part, but disagree that it means “something from nothing”. I would argue that if the Big Bang is God’s creation then it is something from something (that something being God).
It looks like it’s possible that the original optimism around the “findings” of gravitational waves in the ripples in the background radiation might have been misplaced, that it was the effect of dust on the observations that was causing the results to be misinterpreted.
So what does that mean?
As far as the Big Bang goes, it means nothing. Those ripples were not part of the Big Bang theory, the evidence for which is in the background radiation itself, not the ripples. So the Big Bang survives this as a theory, which is no surprise.
What is in question here isn’t the Big Bang but the Theory of Cosmic Inflation. These ripples, as possible evidence of gravitational waves, were seen as strong support for Inflation.
Well, now that support (using these recent observations) is turning to dust, but that just means that these observations can’t be used as evidence for inflation... it does not mean they are evidence against inflation.
First of all, the jury is still out on just how much of this is dust and how much remains that just might actually be what the original interpretations said it was: evidence of gravity waves.
Second, bigger, better, more precise instrumentation is going to be trained on this subject — properly subtracting out the dust and properly getting the precise measurements required — to eventually be able to answer the question: Is there evidence of gravitational waves in the background radiation or not? And these improvements aren’t that many years away so the question will be answered fairly soon.
Third, even if no gravitational waves are found, that doesn’t mean the theory of inflation is dead. Before you kill inflation, you better come up with a credible alternative. You better come up with a theory that explains everything inflation explains but without the inflationary epoch to do it and as far as I know there are currently no credible alternatives out there. There are alternatives, but they all explain less than inflation does and they all introduce problems of their own.
Anyway, we might live in very depressing times as far as the crumbling of the Western and American Civilizations goes, but we certainly live in fascinating times if you consider what we are going to be finding out about our universe in the coming decades. Not just with regard to the background radiation, but in terms of being able to detect biological activity in atmospheres of exoplanets. It’s all good stuff. Too bad the situation here on earth is taking such a unenlightened turn. Scientific progress against a background of declining personal freedom. Bright lights in a collapsing cave.
>>And there is the group think. You can’t publish on intelligent design because no “reputable” scientific source wants to hear the competing theory.<<
OK — provide a competing theory that meets all (heck any) criteria of a Scientific Theory. I ave invited you to do so several times.
As I said, if you can do so you will be the first to do so in 200 years and you will be rich beyond the dreams of avarice...
One of the best scientific minds of all time, but today's evo-idiots would say he's unscientific.
Is Intelligent Design Theory Scientific? Here's a good article, describing why the claims that Intelligent Design is not "scientific" fails miserably.
"Centuries ago the church was the ultimate authority, and dissenters from orthodoxy were excommunicated and punished for their supposed heresy. But science and the church have reversed positions in modern times, and secularized scientific institutions now have the upper hand. Scientists who deviate in their public writings or teachings from the prevailing naturalistic orthodoxy are now ostracized, ridiculed, and sometimes even denied tenure or research funding. Those dissenters are modern day Galileos who are standing up to the Neo-Darwinian dogma and the misleading attacks by its believers, who fear the truth just as the church did centuries ago." - conclusion from the above link.
>>”This most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. —Sir Isaac Newton, The Principia”<<
Very colorful philosophy and I agree. Not science.
>>Here’s a good article, describing why the claims that Intelligent Design is not “scientific” fails miserably.<<
Well it is an article. Redefining science to include philosophy and discarding large parts of the Scientific Method, although fanciful, is not science.
Still waiting for an alternative to TToE that meets
the current definition. One that can actually be used.
If something always existed then we can just say that the potentials for a Big Bang (whatever those are) always existed. A “god” is not a required step.
Such closed mindedness to other alternatives does not suit science well. It's every much as big of an embarrassment as global warming. And you can't see it anymore than the global warming advocates can.
Science should be primarily about the pursuit of knowledge and applying the scientific method to confirm that knowledge. Science should not be limiting itself through arbitrarily applied definitions. And when it does limit itself, it's no longer science, it's dogma.
“If something always existed then we can just say that the potentials for a Big Bang (whatever those are) always existed. A “god” is not a required step.”
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Yes. Certainly we could just say that. Further, we could just say that the “potentials”, for the formation of everything that exists, always existed.
Or, more precisely, that the “potentials” at least preceded the formation.
>>Very cute. The current definition excludes all alternatives other than naturalism. <<
OK, tell me how you can use, measure, define and apply supernatural phenomena.
What's supernatural got to do with it?
If I find a watch on the beach, I don't assume it was created by a supernatural being. Neither do I assume it evolved.
If the sudden appearance in the Cambrian is better explained by a designer, that says nothing about who or what the designer is. "Supernatural" is a red herring thrown out by evolutionists so they don't have to answer which fits the fossil record better.
If God happens to be one option that fits the bill for the designer, so be it.
Besides, only God is natural. Everything else is a creation.
>>What’s supernatural got to do with it?<<
Your post:
>>The current definition excludes all alternatives other than naturalism.<<
That which is not natural is supernatural.
>>If I find a watch on the beach, I don’t assume it was created by a supernatural being. Neither do I assume it evolved.<<
Non sequitur.
You didn’t answer the question. How can something not based on “naturalism” be used, measured, defined and applied?
Is it supernatural when man designs something? I think that's neither natural nor supernatural.
And lots of fields of science deal with man's design of various items. So why exclude origin of species from scientific study of design just because we can't yet identify the designer? I don't have to know who designed the watch, to recognize it was designed.
Your twisted definitions are nothing but a self serving refuge to hide behind, rather than answer the legitimate quesions of what explains the data better. It's got the same legitimacy as when Obama declares the GW science settled and the debate over.
>>And lots of fields of science deal with man’s design of various items. So why exclude origin of species from scientific study of design just because we can’t yet identify the designer? I don’t have to know who designed the watch, to recognize it was designed<<
OK, same question. How can we use and apply ID? What scientific principles could we take away from it?
I have already easily handled and dismisssed AGW using the science framework, so that chimera does not help you.
Great. Glad we agree. The existence of a Big Bang does not imply anything about god.
Well one of the predictions of ID is that all organs and DNA in the original design would likely have a function. There are exceptions such as when micro-evolution which mostly results in degradation, genetic illnesses might cause those examples.
Had that been a competing theory, doctors might have been more reluctant to remove organs they thought were vestigal. Doctors removed the tailbone, Coccyx, from many people thinking it didn't have function. And it left them in excrutiating pain the rest of their lives, because it did indeed have function.
Likewise, the Evolutionist prediction that non-protein coding DNA was vestigal likely set back genetic research by years. Had all genetic scientists approached the science with the same attitude the founder of genetics had,which was to find how more about the designer's design, and assumed that it had function, we might be more advanced now than we are.
Here's a table of ID predictions. But why are you wasting my time? You know this exists, you just don't want to admit it because it conflicts with your world view.
I'm not going to convince you, and you're not going to convince me. So let's just agree that you believe in evolution and I don't. And that you're to arrogant to believe that there is any other possibility.
>>I’m not going to convince you, and you’re not going to convince me. <<
True.
>>So let’s just agree that you believe in evolution and I don’t. And that you’re to arrogant to believe that there is any other possibility.<<
I speak in concepts of the physical world. You speak in the concepts of the metaphysical world. By definition they do not intersect.
But the next time you need a new light bulb, call a priest, minister, rabbi or monk. They should be able to talk one into existence though pure sophistry.
Its really a struggle to explain in scientific terms how nothing became a universe. Christians are fine with “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. Science wants to understand what happened in a blink of an eye, by the spoken word of a creator.
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