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Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?



 
 
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  #241  
Old October 5th 18, 10:40 AM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Martin Brown[_3_]
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Posts: 189
Default Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?

On 04/10/2018 17:39, Gary Harnagel wrote:
On Thursday, October 4, 2018 at 3:55:31 AM UTC-6, Martin Brown wrote:

On 04/10/2018 07:24, Paul Schlyter wrote:

On Tue, 2 Oct 2018 14:09:34 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:

Less, but not zero.Â* You have NO idea how much less prevents life
and neither do I, so this is just yammering.

Neither do you have any idea about it.


Actually, I do. The fraction of heavy elements in the human body are in
parts per million, so a star's metallicity of 20% present value is QUITE
sufficient.


It isn't very useful to a corporate being as a stellar plasma though.
You need at least enough material out to iron and a little bit beyond to
build a planet big enough to hold onto liquid water and an atmosphere
which is almost certainly a prerequisite to life evolving on any planet.

So you have no basis whatsoever to claim it is "almost certain" such
civilization will form


So you are dead wrong ... again.

and succeed in interstellar travel.


So you believe that, given a thousand years or so, we won't? How
pessimistic of you!


We might get to the other planets in that sort of timescale. I don't
expect the first attempt to visit Mars to work very well. Too many dodgy
optimists involved and not enough hard engineering.

It is just fantasies and wishful thinking from you.


Nope. It is your pessimism and refusal to really THINK about what we
now know about the universe that clouds your judgment,


ROFL

The "law of big numbers" doesn't help you here since there are too
many unknown and possibly extremely small numbers involved.


But WE ARE HERE. No Law og Large NUMBERS needed to project our future,
provided one isn't an abject pessimist with zero hope of any future at
all.


We are here but that says nothing about how many more Earth like planets
there are in the rest of the universe.

Since the biggest stars burn out the fastest I think that locally a few
places may have been favoured with high metallicity very early on and
you only need enough to make a few planets here and there to get going.


Indeed. The question is did they create heavy elements like Type Ia
supernovae do in our era. But finding a galaxy 11 billion years old with
20% the metallicity of our sun is promising. We don't need all that much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compos...ositio n_list


The human body doesn't last well inside a stellar interior.


But the early universe was a much more violent place than today and
things closer together so any developing life would be more likely to
get zapped and reset by a close supernova or merging black hole pair.


But they were all gone in less than a billion years. There were big
galaxies with metals 11 billion years ago. Give them 5 billion years
to develop to our level, that means any such civilization would be 6
billion years ahead of ours.


Or dead when their star expired.

However, wild hypotheses are definitely "almost certain" to be true.
Dream on, and get back if and when solid evidence for the existence of
these phenomena appears. And note that science fiction is not science
fact.


Nobody but you is trying to bring the topic to actual fact. That is a
straw-man argument, which you regularly try to do.

Clarke's First Law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states
that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states
that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."


Let us know when you have invented perpetual motion or FTL travel then.

However much you wish to make a wormhole it isn't going to happen
without a heck of a lot of energy


Maybe, maybe not. The Alcubierre metric requires humongus energy, but
other metrics (e.g., the Natario metric) require much, much less.

and some very exotic matter.


True. However, there is some hope that "negative energy" can be achieved
in a relative manner, e.g., via the Casimir effect.


You are in a world of science fiction fantasy divorced from reality.

And even
if you could make one its stability and unwelcome tendency to spagettify
things near it is an open question.

Having vision is easy, you just fantasize. Making it actually happen is
much much harder.


Again you are trying to foist another straw-man argument on me :-)

Chances are that any civilisation that has been around for so long will
be unrecognisable to us - we could even be living inside one of their
computer simulations of universes.


Computer, end program?


I doubt they would be that cruel.

Believing doesn't make it true. It just means that believers will stick
to what they think they know in the face of all evidence to the contrary


That's YOUR definition of believing. Mine is that which is not refuted
by solid evidence.


So you will believe anything at all then uncritically if there is no
solid evidence to refute it.

Show me a hyper advanced space faring civilisation or a signal from one
and I will be the first to agree that they exist. Until that time they
are at best a figment of your imagination. I am inclined to think that
the energetics and timescales for interstellar travel are so great that
very few if any civilisations ever expand beyond the confines of their
own solar system. Space is big - really really big. HHGG

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/33085.html


All we need is an Infinite Improbability Drive :-)


If you believe in that then you really are very lost.

Without any solid base, you are. It is easy to get caught up in wishful
thinking. But even a visionary must distinguish what we know from what
we merely believe, or else his visions will at some stage fall flat to
the ground.


No they can persist in the face of all the evidence to the contrary.


I'll be the first to recant if you present solid evidence that no
advanced civilization exists or that travel from one place to another
faster than light can get there is impossible.


I can't prove it but it seems highly likely that FTL travel is
impossible - at least in the sense of moving faster than light in a
vacuum. Shortcuts might exist if we can find a way to use them.

Why not?Â* Dreamers make reality happen.Â* Pessimists just sit around
moping.

Nope. Realists are those who make reality happen. Dreamers just dream,
and when one dream fails they switch to another dream. To make things
happen you must be careful about distinguish speculation from knowledge.


Dreamers and creative people can think of things but it takes engineers
and scientists to make something that will actually work.


As YOU pointed out above, those who believed the dreamers made cell phones
happen. Of course, railroads don't happen until it's time to railroad.


Sometimes devices get invented before the technology that will enable
them to actually work satisfactorily. Babbages later difference engines
for example were just beyond Victorian manufacturing capability.

But regarding extraterrestrial civilizations we humans cannot make that
happen. It either has happened or has not happened and we cannot do
anything about that. Your dreams can never create extraterrestrial
civilizations billions of years into the past.


If there was one they would probably be so abstract by now that we
wouldn't recognise them anyway. They would almost certainly have made
the transition to being a self improving AI singularity.


Would they? With billions of years of self-improvement, wouldn't that
include a highly-developed sense of responsibility to less developed
civilizations? Particularly, if developing civilizations have a tendency
toward self-destruction as some here have asserted.


They would also be evolving for all that time too so would be nothing
like their original form.

Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic."


It is a cute quotation and may well hold if you encounter a civilisation
with technologies more than a hundred years ahead of yours.

When you talk about extraterrestrial life, don't you mean real
life in the real universe and not just your fantasies and wishes?

I believe in ET.Â* Why wouldn't you?


I consider it possible that they exist.
But I'm not expecting to see LGMs shopping in Tesco's any time soon.


Neither am I.


You sound far too credulous.

No, I'm a realist.

No, you're a mope-around.Â* And you cannot possibly be a "realist"
since you admit that we don't know.

The reality **is** that we don't know...


I think the evidence is tilting towards the idea that simple life might
be more common than we thought but unless and until we find an
independent occurrence on Mars, Enceledus or Europa there is no evidence
one way or the other. It is all about belief in the absence of evidence.


Yes, but it is MUCH more desirable to be an optimist rather than a
pessimist.


Why? Being over optimistic about going to Mars will probably cost the
crew that goes there their lives.

Chances are they died with their star anyway. Interstellar travel for
life forms is in the seriously too difficult category. Interplanetary
travel for humans is still very very tough with only the moon having
ever been visited (and that was done 50 years ago).


Says a pessimist.


I have a pretty good idea about the energetics for interstellar travel,
it isn't going to be easy and it may be impossible except in a few
special places where stars are very close together.

Indeed.Â* As a human being, however, I want to have a "world view."
It's important to me.Â* I have developed mine over many years and
I'll hold it until and if the evidence refutes it.

That's fine, however you should admit that it's just a vision. Reality
itself can be very different.


Could be. Probably is. Even with 99% probability, that 1% can bite.


However the probability is more like 99.9999999999999999999999%

But, if you remember, I began this, um, treatise to demonstrate the
abject failure of atheism. I maintain that anyone who calls himself
an atheist is either ignorant of cosmology, incapable of critical
reasoning (i.e., stupid) or dishonest. One cannot rule out the
existence of a godlike race of beings.


You can't rule them out but neither can you rule them in.
Their existence or not is completely unknown.

I find it interesting how many fight against this very simple idea.


Just because you believe something does not make it true.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown
  #242  
Old October 5th 18, 01:56 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Chris L Peterson
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Posts: 10,007
Default Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?

On Fri, 05 Oct 2018 08:16:29 +0200, Paul Schlyter
wrote:

On Thu, 04 Oct 2018 07:16:42 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote:
If you would live for another 100-200 years I think you'd become
quite surprised about the development in physics more than once.


We'll see. But I don't think our core understanding of physics is
going to look all that different in a couple of centuries. Or ever.


The physicists of some 150 years ago had the same belief about their
physical worldview.


I'm not sure what that's supposed to demonstrate, though. Times
change. Our understanding of nature, and of how to understand nature,
is radically different now. Do you think that nature will never be
understood? That there's an infinite depth to the fundamental laws,
and we can never reach the end?

I see the Universe as a simple place, with simple laws. Indeed, that's
the general view of modern physics, and all the available evidence
supports that view. A view which had not developed 150 years ago. At
some point, it appears we'll know everything. And we are arguably much
farther along that path now than we were 150 years ago. Our big
theories are highly stable. They continue to hold up, and new
observations continue to support them. 150 years ago new observations
were overturning the (rather weak) theories of the time.

No, I think that our understanding of nature has changed radically in
150 years, and we are indeed looking at an accurate view of the big
picture now, and mostly just filling in details.
  #243  
Old October 5th 18, 07:03 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Gary Harnagel
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Posts: 659
Default Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?

On Friday, October 5, 2018 at 3:40:17 AM UTC-6, Martin Brown wrote:

On 04/10/2018 17:39, Gary Harnagel wrote:

On Thursday, October 4, 2018 at 3:55:31 AM UTC-6, Martin Brown wrote:

Actually, I do. The fraction of heavy elements in the human body are in
parts per million, so a star's metallicity of 20% present value is QUITE
sufficient.


It isn't very useful to a corporate being as a stellar plasma though.
You need at least enough material out to iron and a little bit beyond to
build a planet big enough to hold onto liquid water and an atmosphere
which is almost certainly a prerequisite to life evolving on any planet.


Sure. The existence of galaxies 11 billion years ago allows plenty of
time for all of that.

So you believe that, given a thousand years or so, we won't? How
pessimistic of you!


We might get to the other planets in that sort of timescale. I don't
expect the first attempt to visit Mars to work very well. Too many dodgy
optimists involved and not enough hard engineering.


Indeed. And the atmosphere (and low magnetic field) doesn't do a very
good job of absorbing/deflecting nastiness such as solar wind, etc.

We are here but that says nothing about how many more Earth like planets
there are in the rest of the universe.


The number is not important. All that's needed is ONE in hundreds of
trillions FEW BILLION YEARS AGO.

Since the biggest stars burn out the fastest I think that locally a
few places may have been favoured with high metallicity very early
on and you only need enough to make a few planets here and there to
get going.


Indeed. The question is did they create heavy elements like Type Ia
supernovae do in our era. But finding a galaxy 11 billion years old
with 20% the metallicity of our sun is promising. We don't need all
that much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compos...ositio n_list


The human body doesn't last well inside a stellar interior.


If metals accounted for some of the stars 11 billion years ago, then there
was a previous generation of stars with less but still sufficient. And
when those 11-billion-year-old stars supernova, there will be even more.

But the early universe was a much more violent place than today and
things closer together so any developing life would be more likely to
get zapped and reset by a close supernova or merging black hole pair.


But they were all gone in less than a billion years. There were big
galaxies with metals 11 billion years ago. Give them 5 billion years
to develop to our level, that means any such civilization would be 6
billion years ahead of ours.


Or dead when their star expired.


Or moved to newer star systems.

Clarke's First Law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states
that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states
that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."


Let us know when you have invented perpetual motion or FTL travel then.


Straw-man baloney.

However much you wish to make a wormhole it isn't going to happen
without a heck of a lot of energy


Maybe, maybe not. The Alcubierre metric requires humongus energy, but
other metrics (e.g., the Natario metric) require much, much less.

and some very exotic matter.


True. However, there is some hope that "negative energy" can be
achieved in a relative manner, e.g., via the Casimir effect.


You are in a world of science fiction fantasy divorced from reality.


It was scientists that suggested that, not any SF authors.

Chances are that any civilisation that has been around for so long
will be unrecognisable to us - we could even be living inside one
of their computer simulations of universes.


Computer, end program?


I doubt they would be that cruel.


How cruel are we to ants and spiders?

Believing doesn't make it true. It just means that believers will
stick to what they think they know in the face of all evidence to
the contrary


That's YOUR definition of believing. Mine is that which is not refuted
by solid evidence.


So you will believe anything at all then uncritically if there is no
solid evidence to refute it.


Straw-man assertion.

Show me a hyper advanced space faring civilisation or a signal from
one and I will be the first to agree that they exist. Until that time
they are at best a figment of your imagination. I am inclined to
think that the energetics and timescales for interstellar travel are
so great that very few if any civilisations ever expand beyond the
confines of their own solar system. Space is big - really really big.

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/33085.html


All we need is an Infinite Improbability Drive :-)


If you believe in that then you really are very lost.


You REALLY don't have a sense of humor, do you. Methinks you do protest
too much :-)

It is easy to get caught up in wishful thinking. But even a
visionary must distinguish what we know from what we merely
believe, or else his visions will at some stage fall flat to
the ground.

No they can persist in the face of all the evidence to the contrary.


I'll be the first to recant if you present solid evidence that no
advanced civilization exists or that travel from one place to another
faster than light can get there is impossible.


I can't prove it but it seems highly likely that FTL travel is impossible
- at least in the sense of moving faster than light in a vacuum.


If Alcubierre-type metrics are possible then FTL may indeed be possible.
But they may be based on something allowed by general relativity that is
not compatible with the real universe. For now, they must be considered
a possibility.

Shortcuts might exist if we can find a way to use them.


Given a few million years we might do so.

Dreamers and creative people can think of things but it takes
engineers and scientists to make something that will actually work.


As YOU pointed out above, those who believed the dreamers made cell
phones happen. Of course, railroads don't happen until it's time to
railroad.


Sometimes devices get invented before the technology that will enable
them to actually work satisfactorily. Babbages later difference engines
for example were just beyond Victorian manufacturing capability.


And Leonardo's inventions, too. It just wasn't time to railroad.

If there was one they would probably be so abstract by now that we
wouldn't recognise them anyway. They would almost certainly have made
the transition to being a self improving AI singularity.


Would they? With billions of years of self-improvement, wouldn't that
include a highly-developed sense of responsibility to less developed
civilizations? Particularly, if developing civilizations have a
tendency toward self-destruction as some here have asserted.


They would also be evolving for all that time too so would be nothing
like their original form.


Maybe we just don't recognize what an ideal form would be.

Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic."


It is a cute quotation and may well hold if you encounter a civilisation
with technologies more than a hundred years ahead of yours.


Maybe, maybe not. A MILLION years, certainly,

I consider it possible that they exist.
But I'm not expecting to see LGMs shopping in Tesco's any time soon.


Neither am I.


You sound far too credulous.


What? You are disputing yourself?

I think the evidence is tilting towards the idea that simple life
might be more common than we thought but unless and until we find
an independent occurrence on Mars, Enceledus or Europa there is no
evidence one way or the other. It is all about belief in the absence
of evidence.


Yes, but it is MUCH more desirable to be an optimist rather than a
pessimist.


Why? Being over optimistic about going to Mars will probably cost the
crew that goes there their lives.


It's THEIR lives. I'm not THAT much of an optimist.

Chances are they died with their star anyway. Interstellar travel for
life forms is in the seriously too difficult category. Interplanetary
travel for humans is still very very tough with only the moon having
ever been visited (and that was done 50 years ago).


Says a pessimist.


I have a pretty good idea about the energetics for interstellar travel,
it isn't going to be easy and it may be impossible except in a few
special places where stars are very close together.


Impossible? That's a VERY pessimistic word :-)

Indeed.Â* As a human being, however, I want to have a "world view."
It's important to me.Â* I have developed mine over many years and
I'll hold it until and if the evidence refutes it.

That's fine, however you should admit that it's just a vision. Reality
itself can be very different.


Could be. Probably is. Even with 99% probability, that 1% can bite.


However the probability is more like 99.9999999999999999999999%


You don't know that and it's irrelevant anyway.

But, if you remember, I began this, um, treatise to demonstrate the
abject failure of atheism. I maintain that anyone who calls himself
an atheist is either ignorant of cosmology, incapable of critical
reasoning (i.e., stupid) or dishonest. One cannot rule out the
existence of a godlike race of beings.


You can't rule them out but neither can you rule them in.
Their existence or not is completely unknown.


But the probability is not zero, hence a critical thinker cannot claim
nonexistence without putting himself in a bad light.

I find it interesting how many fight against this very simple idea.


Just because you believe something does not make it true.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown


And I didn't say I believed this. I only point out that aggressive
atheists are dishonest, ignorant or stupid.
  #244  
Old October 6th 18, 10:54 AM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Paul Schlyter[_3_]
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Posts: 1,344
Default Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?

On Fri, 5 Oct 2018 11:03:12 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:
We are here but that says nothing about how many more Earth like

planets
there are in the rest of the universe.


The number is not important. All that's needed is ONE in hundreds

of
trillions FEW BILLION YEARS AGO.


Which makes the number important: you want it to be greater than
zero. But if you drop the requirement of a few billion years ago, we
already have one - that's us.

Yep, if you think one single advanced civilization is enough, why not
choose the single one we already know?
  #245  
Old October 6th 18, 11:15 AM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Paul Schlyter[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,344
Default Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?

On Fri, 05 Oct 2018 06:56:22 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote:
On Fri, 05 Oct 2018 08:16:29 +0200, Paul Schlyter
wrote:


On Thu, 04 Oct 2018 07:16:42 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote:
If you would live for another 100-200 years I think you'd

become
quite surprised about the development in physics more than

once.

We'll see. But I don't think our core understanding of physics is
going to look all that different in a couple of centuries. Or

ever.

The physicists of some 150 years ago had the same belief about

their
physical worldview.


I'm not sure what that's supposed to demonstrate, though. Times
change. Our understanding of nature, and of how to understand

nature,
is radically different now. Do you think that nature will never be
understood? That there's an infinite depth to the fundamental laws,
and we can never reach the end?


An infinite depth isn't really needed. A sufficiently deep finite
depth would be enough for us to never be able to explore it all
within the lifetime of our civilization.


I see the Universe as a simple place, with simple laws. Indeed,

that's
the general view of modern physics, and all the available evidence
supports that view. A view which had not developed 150 years ago. At
some point, it appears we'll know everything. And we are arguably

much
farther along that path now than we were 150 years ago. Our big
theories are highly stable. They continue to hold up, and new
observations continue to support them. 150 years ago new

observations
were overturning the (rather weak) theories of the time.


No, I think that our understanding of nature has changed radically

in
150 years, and we are indeed looking at an accurate view of the big
picture now, and mostly just filling in details.


Without doubt we've made amazing progress over the last centuries,
and it may indeed appear that we are approaching the "end of
knowledge" in physics. But remember that we have no idea of what lies
ahead of us. And we know of one big remaining problem: the creation
of a GUT (Grand Unified Theory) which combines relativity and QM into
one and the same theory, a TOE (Theory Of Everything). Until that
final theory has been completed, it is premature to claim we "know
almost everything" about physics. In completing that theory, we don't
know if some new dark corner appears and expands beyond the wildest
imagination of the physicists. And if no such dark corners exist, why
hasn't that GUT already been completed? The physicists of 150 years
ago thought they had it but they were wrong. Einstein worked on it
towards the end of his life but failed. Hawking has worked on it too
but he didn't succeed either. That GUT is a major remaining problem
in physics.
  #246  
Old October 6th 18, 02:24 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Chris L Peterson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,007
Default Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?

On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 12:15:18 +0200, Paul Schlyter
wrote:

I'm not sure what that's supposed to demonstrate, though. Times
change. Our understanding of nature, and of how to understand

nature,
is radically different now. Do you think that nature will never be
understood? That there's an infinite depth to the fundamental laws,
and we can never reach the end?


An infinite depth isn't really needed. A sufficiently deep finite
depth would be enough for us to never be able to explore it all
within the lifetime of our civilization.


I see it as shallow. Very shallow. The Universe is simple and easy to
understand. I think every intelligent species that has the
technological ability to conduct physical experiments will understand
everything within a few thousand years, with the majority of that in
just the last century or so.

  #247  
Old October 7th 18, 05:58 AM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Paul Schlyter[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,344
Default Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?

On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 07:24:56 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 12:15:18 +0200, Paul Schlyter
wrote:


I'm not sure what that's supposed to demonstrate, though. Times
change. Our understanding of nature, and of how to understand

nature,
is radically different now. Do you think that nature will never

be
understood? That there's an infinite depth to the fundamental

laws,
and we can never reach the end?


An infinite depth isn't really needed. A sufficiently deep finite
depth would be enough for us to never be able to explore it all
within the lifetime of our civilization.


I see it as shallow. Very shallow. The Universe is simple and easy

to
understand.


If so, please present your Grand Unified Theory of the universe. If
the universe is so easy to understand, you should be able to do so
quite quickly. A century is just a little more than a human lifetime,
and since Maxwell, Einstein and others already have done a lot of
work, you will just need to fill in the gaps. If you succeed, you
will be awarded a Nobel Prize. Good luck!

I think every intelligent species that has the
technological ability to conduct physical experiments will

understand
everything within a few thousand years, with the majority of that in
just the last century or so.


Btw, even if the universe should be as simple as you believe, what
about the multiverse? :-)
  #248  
Old October 7th 18, 02:58 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Chris L Peterson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,007
Default Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?

On Sun, 07 Oct 2018 06:58:35 +0200, Paul Schlyter
wrote:

I see it as shallow. Very shallow. The Universe is simple and easy

to
understand.


If so, please present your Grand Unified Theory of the universe. If
the universe is so easy to understand, you should be able to do so
quite quickly.


Why? That's a fallacy. GR is easy to understand. QM is easy to
understand. That doesn't make either of them obvious. We can puzzle
for a long time over a tricky problem that ends up having an extremely
simple and easy to understand solution. Simple != obvious.

  #249  
Old October 7th 18, 03:58 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Gerald Kelleher
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Posts: 1,551
Default Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?

The fantasy based on absolute/relative time and its derivatives of absolute/relative space and motion is fairly straightforward and easy for anyone to understand.

The daily cycle, either natural or in terms of timekeeping, is anchored to noon so these followers running around chasing Newton's definition of the Equation of Time as absolute or relative time are as lovable as the late 17th century rogue.

"Absolute time, in astronomy, is distinguished from relative, by the equation of time. For the natural days are truly unequal, though they are commonly considered as equal and used for a measure of time; astronomers correct this inequality for their more accurate deducing of the celestial motions...The necessity of which equation, for determining the times of a phænomenon, is evinced as well from the experiments of the pendulum clock, as by eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter." Principia

All the crap about standing on the shoulders of intellectual giants is replaced by a few nuisances hiding behind a few 20th century characters who at least tried to escape the clockwork solar system (RA/Dec) and live in their heads instead.

Theorists don't get it for the real issues are with Huygen's description of the Equation of Time in tandem with the fractional year insofar as the Equation of Time only works with the 365/366 day/rotation system -

"Here take notice, that the Sun or the Earth passes through the 12 signs,
or makes an entire revolution in the ecliptic in 365 days, 5 hours 49
min. or there about, and that those days, reckoned from noon to noon,
are of different lengths as is known to all that are versed in
astronomy. Now between the longest and the shortest of those days, a
day may be taken of such a length, as 365 such days, 5. hours &c. (the
same numbers as before) make up, or are equal to that revolution: And
this is call'd the Equal or Mean day, according to which the watches
are to be set; and therefore the Hour or Minute showed by the watches,
though they be perfectly just and equal, must needs differ almost
continually from those that are showed by the Sun, or are reckon'd
according to its motion. But this difference is regular, and is
otherwise called the Equation of Time.." Huygens

Maybe people like the playacting which appears to give a certain group of people status they don't deserve. Physics would be fine with the 'astro' in front of it or that they consult with astronomers before dumping junk into the celestial arena as fact.


  #250  
Old October 7th 18, 09:21 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Quadibloc
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Default Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?

On Sunday, October 7, 2018 at 7:58:08 AM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:
GR is easy to understand.


For a certain value of "understand". Tensor calculus isn't easy.

John Savard
 




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