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Confirmed how. It is a theory. CMBR discovery is not confirmation of anything other than the existence of CMBR

by notso411 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
YesThatTom2 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  You can't attack another user like this, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. We have to ban accounts that break HN's rules this badly, so please don't do it again. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
nabla9 3y ago
“it’s just a theory” slur is misleading and conflates two separate meanings of the word theory. There is lots of mysteries related to big bang, but steady-state model of cosmic evolution has been falsified. In early 1960s statistical evidence from radio astronomy ruled out the steady-state model.
- bleeprot 3y ago
  But isn't saying that the big bang theory has been "confirmed" also misleading? That seems like a fair critique to me. Not to dismiss anybody's work, but it is important to express scientific accomplishments and advancements accurately (especially to a public that is vulnerable to manipulation by sources they deem to be authoritative).
  - nabla9 3y ago
    All words are misleading without appropriate knowledge and reading level. If the meaning is constantly lost for you when reading science or economics, it's not because the writers are bad, but because your reading level and general knowledge level are not high enough to read those articles. Human language has syntax, semantics and pragmatics. HN comment section has disproportionate number terminology nitpickers and misunderstanders who somehow have problems with semantics and pragmatics. They represent a small minority of HN users. I suspect many of them are teens or young adults and improve over time.
    - notso411 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - mr_mitm 3y ago
      > I suspect many of them are teens or young adults and improve over time Given my experience with crackpots from my time as a cosmology grad student, my money is more on retired old men, in particular engineers. Either way, it's always voices from the sidelines who try to tell actual scientists how to do their job.
  - SiempreViernes 3y ago
    Not in any very important sense no. The existing big bang theory made a big headline prediction and that prediction turned out to be correct, the theory is confirmed in this respect. Later experiments might see some details in the measured result the theory didn't get right, but this doesn't invalidate the theory at the coarse level because at that precision the new measurements still agree with the old predictions: the theory is still confirmed in the sense that its predictions roughly match measurements. Occasionally it happens that a new measurement of some detail comes up with a result that the existing theory cannot be easily modified to accommodate: only this represents a true challenge in the sense that if some competing theory easily explains the new result along with all the old ones that will then become the "correct" one. Without this other competitor, a theory found to not accommodate the latest experimental results will be kept on indefinitely as the correct and confirmed one, but only used within clearly delimited context.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    "Confirmed" is often just used as "found significant supporting evidence for", since there's no actual "true" confirmation of any theory.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Confirmed how. It is a theory. CMBR discovery is not confirmation of anything other than the existence of CMBR

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

YesThatTom2 3y ago

[flagged]

dang 3y ago
You can't attack another user like this, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. We have to ban accounts that break HN's rules this badly, so please don't do it again. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

nabla9 3y ago

“it’s just a theory” slur is misleading and conflates two separate meanings of the word theory. There is lots of mysteries related to big bang, but steady-state model of cosmic evolution has been falsified. In early 1960s statistical evidence from radio astronomy ruled out the steady-state model.

bleeprot 3y ago
But isn't saying that the big bang theory has been "confirmed" also misleading? That seems like a fair critique to me. Not to dismiss anybody's work, but it is important to express scientific accomplishments and advancements accurately (especially to a public that is vulnerable to manipulation by sources they deem to be authoritative).
- nabla9 3y ago
  All words are misleading without appropriate knowledge and reading level. If the meaning is constantly lost for you when reading science or economics, it's not because the writers are bad, but because your reading level and general knowledge level are not high enough to read those articles. Human language has syntax, semantics and pragmatics. HN comment section has disproportionate number terminology nitpickers and misunderstanders who somehow have problems with semantics and pragmatics. They represent a small minority of HN users. I suspect many of them are teens or young adults and improve over time.
  - notso411 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - mr_mitm 3y ago
    > I suspect many of them are teens or young adults and improve over time Given my experience with crackpots from my time as a cosmology grad student, my money is more on retired old men, in particular engineers. Either way, it's always voices from the sidelines who try to tell actual scientists how to do their job.
- SiempreViernes 3y ago
  Not in any very important sense no. The existing big bang theory made a big headline prediction and that prediction turned out to be correct, the theory is confirmed in this respect. Later experiments might see some details in the measured result the theory didn't get right, but this doesn't invalidate the theory at the coarse level because at that precision the new measurements still agree with the old predictions: the theory is still confirmed in the sense that its predictions roughly match measurements. Occasionally it happens that a new measurement of some detail comes up with a result that the existing theory cannot be easily modified to accommodate: only this represents a true challenge in the sense that if some competing theory easily explains the new result along with all the old ones that will then become the "correct" one. Without this other competitor, a theory found to not accommodate the latest experimental results will be kept on indefinitely as the correct and confirmed one, but only used within clearly delimited context.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  "Confirmed" is often just used as "found significant supporting evidence for", since there's no actual "true" confirmation of any theory.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]