Monthly Archives: July 2022

Beneath every "fact" lies a series of assumptions that cannot be proven. Like it or not, even science requires a leap of faith.

Bill Nye, the 'Science Guy,' affirms that his "point of view is based on the facts of life" and not on faith-based "suppositions of life."1 For Nye, science is the only reliable, ultimate, unstoppable, and undeniable guide to truth and is faith-free. While scientific knowledge is the power that saves, faith, for the 'Science Guy,' is a weakness that only blinds. Nye believes that science alone can save the world and that faith must step aside to make way for the future. This is because, says Nye, people of faith "just can't handle the truth."2

But is science really faith free? Max Planck, Nobel laureate in physics and pioneer of quantum theory, thinks not. As Planck explains, "Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.' It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with."3 For Planck, faith is the axis upon which the wheel of science turns. If one does not have faith, then one may not have science.

To illustrate Planck's insight, consider Nye's claim, "science is the only basis for truth." Is this idea, in and of itself, a truly scientific claim? Not at all. This claim is not open to experimental testing or to falsification. It is a claim that goes beyond the scientific method. There would thus be no purely scientific reason for accepting the truth of the above claim. Consequently, the claim that "science is the only basis for truth" would logically have to be false if it were true. In philosophy, this is what is called a self-defeating claim. At best, the proposition would be a paradox or a mystery, but otherwise, it is just self-referentially incoherent.

The 'Science Guy' Bill Nye is keen on trumpeting the "undeniable facts of science" as opposed to the "mere suppositions" of faith. But can science ever know anything for certain? Consider the confidently asserted certainty of "the central dogma of molecular biology," proclaimed by co-discoverer of the DNA double helix Francis Crick as a "fundamental biological law" in 1956. The central dogma holds that genetic information flows in only one directionfrom DNA (and RNA) to proteins, and never the other way around. This idea was believed to be a biological "law of nature" that operated without exception and was the conceptual basis for the Human Genome Project of the 1990s.

In the early 2000s, however, scientists increasingly witnessed phenomena that broke the biological law. They discovered that DNA can be edited as a result of life experience and that the way DNA is read depends on the surrounding environment. In other words, "the body keeps the score."4 With the discovery of what is today known as epigenetics, it became clear that information can be "transferred from a protein sequence back to the genome." Consequently, explains molecular biologist Eugene Koonin, "the Central Dogma of molecular biology is invalid as an 'absolute' principle: transfer of information from proteins (and specifically from protein sequences) to the genome does exist."5 The history of science is full of such cases where scientists have found exceptions to what were once viewed as exceptionless laws of Nature. How, then, can any scientific facts be undeniable?

Uncertainty in science may be the only scientific fact that we can ever be certain of. This is because science itself has discovered numerous areas where there are limits to what can be known through observation and experiment. Consider, for example, big bang cosmologythe leading scientific theory that describes the universe's origin, structure, and development. According to the standard big bang model, derived from Einstein's theory of general relativity and observational data, the universe began 13.7 billion years ago in a singularityan infinitely small point in which matter was infinitely compressed. Everything that physically exists, including matter, energy, space, and time, came into existence at the big bang singularity. Thus it makes no sense to speak of physical reality or even a "time before" this point.

Science itself has discovered numerous areas where there are limits to what can be known through observation and experiment.

The existence of an initial singularity of this sort represents a fundamental limit to the observational powers of science. Any "science" that speaks of the conditions that gave rise to the singularitysuch as an infinite multiverse or a quantum vacuum stateis not truly scientific because science can never test it. To assert that science will someday be able to adequately describe the conditions "before" or "beyond" the initial singularity is not a statement grounded in current science but, rather, in a philosophical faith.

While big bang cosmology reveals that there are limits to what scientists can know when studying the largest known phenomenon (the whole universe), quantum physics has also shown that there are limits to what scientists can know when studying the smallest conceivable objects (atoms and their constituent parts). Classical physics, which was the standard view of physics before 1900, said that it was possible simultaneously to know both the position and motion of a given particle with complete accuracy. While the precision of a classical physicist might, in practice, be limited only by the available technology, there was no reason in principle to expect that better technology would not eventually overcome such limits.

Quantum physics has also shown that there are limits to what scientists can know when studying the smallest conceivable objects (atoms and their constituent parts).

According to the standard view of current quantum physics, however, even perfect instruments cannot measure the location and velocity of a body simultaneously with impeccable precision. This fundamental limit on the accuracy of measurement is known as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. As mathematical physicist John Barrow explains, "The quantum picture of reality introduces a new form of impossibility into our picture of the world. This impossibility replaces a past belief in unrestricted experimental investigation of Nature which was based upon a misconception of what existed to be measured."6 With quantum physics, says philosopher of science Michael Ruse, "we seem to have reached an outer point of what we can know."7

The renowned philosopher of science Karl Popper showed that the most exalted status that any scientific theory can reach is "not yet falsified, despite our best efforts."8 Scientific theories can never be verified, proven, or confirmed because an infinite number of experiments remain to be performed before all other possibilities can be ruled out. Consequently, scientific theories can only be falsified. For instance, it takes only one black swan to falsify the hypothesis that all swans are white. If a given hypothesis is to be counted as genuinely scientific, it must make testable predictions about the world that may be potentially refuted by later experimentation or possible observation.

The cornerstone of the scientific mind is its continuous openness to the possibility of being completely wrong. In order for science to function as science and make any progress in knowledge, science must always have humility as its foundation. If a given phenomenon appears to contradict our best-known science, then science must reserve judgment until scientists can find a way to investigate it adequately. Science, in principle, cannot make infallible pronouncements about what is possible. Indeed, our best theory of atomic physics (quantum mechanics) says that scientific accuracy can only deal in probabilities. Science, in both principle and practice, can never know anything for certain. Thus, while Bill Nye's "facts of life" may exist in theory, our most advanced current scientific knowledge of them is middling at bestand always will be.

Featured Image: Unsplash.com, Kinson Leung

Read the original here:

Faith: the Axis Upon Which the Wheel of Science Turns - aish.com Ponder, Philosophy, Featured - Aish

James Bardeen, who helped elucidate the properties and behavior of black holes, setting the stage for what has been called the golden age of black hole astrophysics, died on June 20 in Seattle. He was 83.

His son William said the cause was cancer. Dr. Bardeen, an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Washington, had been living in a retirement home in Seattle.

Dr. Bardeen was a scion of a renowned family of physicists. His father, John, twice won the Nobel Prize in Physics, for the invention of the transistor and the theory of superconductivity; his brother, William, is an expert on quantum theory at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois.

Dr. Bardeen was an expert on unraveling the equations of Einsteins theory of general relativity. That theory ascribes what we call gravity to the bending of spacetime by matter and energy. Its most mysterious and disturbing consequence was the possibility of black holes, places so dense that they became bottomless one-way exit ramps out of the universe, swallowing even light and time.

Dr. Bardeen would find his lifes work investigating those mysteries, as well as related mysteries about the evolution of the universe.

Jim was part of the generation where the best and brightest went to work on general relativity, said Michael Turner, a cosmologist and emeritus professor at the University of Chicago, who described Dr. Bardeen as a gentle giant.

James Maxwell Bardeen was born in Minneapolis on May 9, 1939. His mother, Jane Maxwell Bardeen, was a zoologist and a high school teacher. Following his fathers work, the family moved to Washington, D.C.; to Summit, N.J.; and then to Champaign-Urbana, Ill., where he graduated from the University of Illinois Laboratory High School.

He attended Harvard and graduated with a physics degree in 1960, despite his fathers advice that biology was the wave of the future. Everybody knew who my father was, he said in an oral history interview recorded in 2020 by the Federal University of Paraguay, adding that he had not felt the need to compete with him. It was impossible, anyway, he said.

Working under the physicist Richard Feynman and the astrophysicist William A. Fowler (who would both become Nobel laureates), Dr. Bardeen obtained his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1965. His thesis was about the structure of supermassive stars millions of times the mass of the sun; astronomers were beginning to suspect that they were the source of the prodigious energies of the quasars being discovered in the nuclei of distant galaxies.

After holding postdoctoral positions at Caltech and the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the astronomy department at the University of Washington in 1967. An avid hiker and mountain climber, he was drawn to the school by its easy access to the outdoors.

By then, what the Nobel laureate Kip Thorne, a professor at the California Institute of Technology, refers to as the golden age of black hole research was well underway, and Dr. Bardeen was swept up in international meetings. At one, in Paris in 1967, he met Nancy Thomas, a junior high school teacher in Connecticut who was trying to brush up on her French. They were married in 1968.

In addition to his son William, a senior vice president and the chief strategy officer of The New York Times Company, and his brother, William, Dr. Bardeens wife survives him, along with another son, David, and two grandchildren. A sister, Elizabeth Greytak, died in 2000.

Dr. Bardeen was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, as is his brother and as was his father.

Although he was speedy at math, Dr. Bardeen didnt write any faster than he spoke. William Press, a former student of Dr. Thornes now at the University of Texas, recalled being sent to Seattle to finish a paper that Dr. Bardeen and he were supposed to be writing. Nothing had been written. Dr. Bardeens wife then commanded the two to sit on opposite ends of a couch with a pad of paper. Dr. Bardeen would write a sentence and pass the pad to Dr. Press, who would either reject or approve it and then pass the pad back. Each sentence, Dr. Press said, took a few minutes. It took them three days, but the paper got written.

One of the epochal moments of those years was a monthlong summer school in Les Houches, France, in 1972 featuring all the leading black hole scholars. Dr. Bardeen was one of a half-dozen invited speakers. It was during that meeting that he, Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University and Brandon Carter, now of the Paris Observatory, wrote a landmark paper entitled The Four Laws of Black Hole Mechanics, which became a springboard for future work, including Dr. Hawkings surprise calculation that black holes could leak and eventually explode.

In another famous calculation the same year, Dr. Bardeen deduced the shape and size of a black holes shadow as seen against a field of distant stars a doughnut of light surrounding dark space.

That shape was made famous, Dr. Thorne said, by the Event Horizon Telescopes observations of black holes in the galaxy M87 and in the center of the Milky Way, and by visualizations in the movie Interstellar.

Another of Dr. Bardeens passions was cosmology. In a 1982 paper, he, Dr. Turner and Paul Steinhardt of Princeton described how submicroscopic fluctuations in the density of matter and energy in the early universe would grow and give rise to the pattern of galaxies we see in the sky today.

Jim was delighted that we used his formalism, Dr. Turner said, and was sure we got it right.

Dr. Bardeen moved to Yale in 1972. Four years later, unhappy with the academic bureaucracy in the East and yearning for the outdoors again, he moved back to the University of Washington. He retired in 2006.

But he never stopped working. Dr. Thorne recounted a recent telephone conversation in which they reminisced about the hiking and camping trips they used to take with their families. In the same conversation, Dr. Bardeen described recent ideas he had about what happens as a black hole evaporates, suggesting that it might change into a white hole.

That was one aspect of Jim in a nutshell, Dr. Thorne wrote in an email, thinking deeply about physics in creative new ways right up to the end of his life.

Here is the original post:

James Bardeen, an Expert on Unraveling Einsteins Equations, Dies at 83 - The New York Times

According to comic book legend, the hammer of Thor, Mjlnir, can only be lifted by those who are deemed worthy enough to wield it. Now, with Thor: Love And Thunder due for release, this has inevitably led to questions.

What makes someone worthy? How does the hammer stop the likes of the Hulk from lifting it? And if even the Hulk cannot lift it, how much must it weigh? Its a debate so enduring that it made its way into 2015s Avengers: Age Of Ultron, where all of the Avengers took turns trying (and failing) to lift the hammer off a table. The handles imprinted, right? suggests an annoyed Tony Stark. Like a security code?

James Kakalios, a physics professor at the University of Minnesota, and author of The Physics Of Superheroes, has spent more time than most thinking about Thors hammer. So much so, in fact, that his theory for how it works was cited by Bruce Banner himself in an issue of the 2012 comic The Indestructible Hulk. For a start, Kakalios suggests that Stark wasnt that far off with his idea of the hammers handle featuring a fingerprint scanner.

The science of the Asgardians is so advanced that to us it would seem like magic, he says. It makes sense that Mjlnir would possess a form of artificial intelligence that, when you grab the handle, uses some sort of biosensor to scan whether youre worthy. He uses a scene from the first Thor movie to illustrate his point. Odin banishes Thor, after whispering to Mjlnir, whoever holds this hammer, if they be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor. So basically Odin has administrator rights to rewrite the hammers operating code.

But even if that was true, how does Mjlnir also repel the unworthy by making itself impossible to lift? Kakalioss Bruce-Banner-approved theory pivots around gravitons. These are fundamental particles that have not yet been confirmed to exist on Earth, but could exist in the scientifically advanced society of Asgard.

No one has observed a graviton yet, he says, but it is believed to be the quantum mediator of the gravitational force; much like photons of light are the quantum excitation of the electromagnetic field.

Natalie Portman and Chris Hemsworth in Thor: Love and Thunder Disney/Marvel

Kakalioss theory is that when Mjlnir is grabbed by someone it has deemed unworthy, it emits gravitons to make the hammer a heavier weight than the individual can lift. This, Kakalios says, explains why the hammer does not fall through the table in Avengers: Age Of Ultron because it is able to use gravitons to adjust its weight and nullify whatever force is being exerted on it.

It will only emit those excess gravitons while youre trying to lift it, says Kakalios. Lets say the hammer weighs 40 pounds. It exerts a force of 40 pounds on the table and the table pushes back with a weight of 40 pounds. So the hammer doesnt move. You then try to lift it off the table with a force of 80 pounds. You should be able to because 80 up is greater than 40 down.

"But if the hammer at that moment knows how much force youre exerting, it could emit gravitons so now it weighs 80 pounds. Your 80 and its 80 balance out. The moment you let go, it stops emitting the gravitons and goes back to weighing 40 pounds, meaning it can sit on the table just fine.

Or, of course, it could just be magic.

Verdict: Mjlnirs traits might be weird, but it can all be explained by Asgardian physics... even if their physics is different from ours.

Read more fromPopcorn Science:

Here is the original post:

Mjlnir: The physics that could stop the unworthy from wielding Thor's hammer - BBC Science Focus Magazine

On February 11, 2016, researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced the detection of gravitational waves for the first time. As predicted by Einsteins General Theory of Relativity, these waves result from massive objects merging, which causes ripples through spacetime that can be detected.

Since then, astrophysicists have theorized countless ways that gravitational waves could be used to study physics beyond the standard models of gravity and particle physics and advance our understanding of the Universe.

To date, gravitational waves have been proposed as a means of studying dark matter, the interiors of neutron stars and supernovae, mergers between supermassive black holes, and more.

Whats new In a recent study, a team of physicists from the University of Amsterdam and Harvard University has proposed a way where gravitational waves could be used to search for ultralight bosons around rotating black holes. This method could not only offer a new way to discern the properties of binary black holes but could lead to the discovery of new particles beyond the Standard Model.

The research was conducted by researchers at the Gravitation Astroparticle Physics Amsterdam (GRAPPA), at the University of Amsterdam, with support provided by the Center for Theoretical Physics and the National Center for Theoretical Sciences at the University of Taipei (Taiwan), and Harvard University. The paper that describes their work, titled Sharp Signals of Boson Clouds in Black Hole Binary Inspirals, recently appeared in the Physical Review Letters.

Its a well-known fact that normal matter will infall toward black holes over time, which will form an accretion disk around its outer edge (aka. Event Horizon). This disk will be accelerated to incredible speeds, causing the material within to become super-heated and release tremendous amounts of radiation while slowly being accreted onto the black holes face. However, for the past few decades, scientists have observed that black holes will shed some of their mass through a process called superradiance.

This phenomenon was studied by Stephen Hawking, who described how rotating black holes would throw off radiation that would appear real to a nearby observer, but virtual to a distant one. In the process of transferring this radiation from one reference frame to another, the acceleration of the particle itself would cause it to transform from virtual to real. This exotic form of energy, known as Hawking Radiation, will form clouds of low-mass particles around a black hole. This leads to a gravitational atom, so-named because they resemble ordinary atoms (clouds of particles surrounding a core)

While scientists know that this phenomenon occurs, they also understand that it could only be explained through the existence of a new ultralight particle that exists beyond the Standard Model. This was the focus of the new paper, where lead author Daniel Baumann (GRAPPA and the University of Taipei) and his colleagues examined how superradiance causes unstable clouds of ultralight bosons to form around black holes spontaneously. In addition, they suggest that the similarities between gravitational and regular atoms go deeper than their structure.

In short, they suggest that binary black holes could cause particles in their clouds to become ionized via the photoelectric effect. As described by Einstein, this occurs when electromagnetic energy (such as light) makes contact with a material, causing it to emit excited electrons (photoelectrons). When applied to a binary black hole, Baumann and his colleagues show how clouds of ultralight bosons could absorb the orbital energy of a black hole companion. This would cause some of the bosons to become ejected and accelerated, evident from the black holes associated gravitational wave signals.

Lastly, they demonstrated how this process could dramatically alter the evolution of binary black holes by reducing the time it takes for the objects to merge. As they state:

These kinks, they argue, will be discernible to next-generation gravitational wave interferometers like the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). This process could be used to discover an entirely new class of ultralight particles and provide direct information about the mass and state of gravitational atom clouds. In short, the ongoing studies of gravitational waves using more sensitive interferometers could reveal exotic physics that advance our understanding of black holes and lead to new breakthroughs in particle physics.

This is one of many possibilities that have been ventured thanks to the revolution taking place with gravitational wave astronomy. In the coming years, astrophysicists hope to use them to probe the most extreme environments in the Universe, like black holes and neutron stars. They also hope that primordial gravitational waves will reveal things about the early Universe, help resolve the mystery of the matter/anti-matter imbalance, and lead to a quantum theory of gravity (aka. a Theory of Everything).

This article was originally published on Universe Today by Matt Williams. Read the original article here.

LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY.

Read the rest here:

Cosmic phenomenon predicted by Einstein could shatter physics as we know it - Inverse

Credit: PA Images

It is time for Planet Rugbys Sunday Social, your quirky recap of the serious and not so serious talking points from the past weeks action.

Kicking off with an outrageous debut try from Henry Arundell! Everything this youngster touches seems to turn to gold. It looks like England has another Test superstar loading. Brilliant stuff from the London Irish speedster!

The leg drive has to come from somewhere! A humorous take on the source of Arundells power. Scandalously exciting debut indeed.

Wow! An aggressive push to the head from Jonny Hill on Wallaby Darcy Swain. How on earth has this gone unnoticed by the match officials? It truly was a robust clash between the two old rivals.

The heat between the two continued until Swain got himself a red card for a headbutt. It is never nice to see these kinds of scuffles on the pitch. Unnecessary and ill-disciplined. Poor from both parties here.

As soon as Englands Maro Itoje started screaming at the Australian line-out, the meme creators of the internets underbelly kicked into overdrive! A good laugh from Squidge Rugby, who has his take on a strange moment.

Another one! Sorry, Itoje, but there was no other outcome. The image sums up Englands second half. Springboks supporters probably felt the same about their first half at Loftus Versfeld against Wales.

ICE in his veins. Springbok Damian Willemse steps up after the hooter and nails the penalty to win. That is incredible composure for a player that has not kicked much at goal all seasonpure class.

If anyone has forgotten how ridiculously talented All Black Ardie Savea is, here is your reminder. What a game by the number eight scoring a brace! World-class performer.

What a heartwarming moment! A lovely lady hands the Wallabies captain Michael Hooper a chocolate bar for his efforts on the field. A kind and warm gesture.

Brothers in arms! Always lovely to see two siblings representing their country together. Paolo and Alessandro Garbisi lining up for Italy! What a moment that is for the Garbisi family.

Story continues

The Champions Cup draw was completed this week, but you will need a Quantum Physics degree to make sense of what is going on. Surely there must be a more simple method? Is this the best they can do?

Remembering an iconic moment for the Lions. Who does not like seeing Israel Folau carried like a naughty child by George North? Immense power is showcased in a bizarre moment in rugby.

Leicester Tigers assistant coach Kevin Sinfield took an old friend and teammate Rob Burrow, who suffers from Motor Neurone Disease, on a 10-kilometre run to raise money for the cause. Fantastic stuff from the pair who have already raised a great deal of money. Rugby is more than just a game. The camaraderie and brotherhood transcend the sport.

READ MORE:Eddie Jones: Darcy Swain red-card influenced refereeing decisions to even the game up

The article Sunday Social: Debut try, a kick to win and heartwarming gestures appeared first on Planetrugby.com.

Go here to see the original:

Sunday Social: Debut try, a kick to win and heartwarming gestures - Yahoo Eurosport UK