MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 
Krakatoa (Earth & Sky) (Astrophysics)
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Here is an example of what passes for "science" in our modern age.

Earth Wreathed by Invisible 'Dark Matter'
Send private message
Boreades


In: finity and beyond
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Ishmael wrote:
Here is an example of what passes for "science" in our modern age.

Earth Wreathed by Invisible 'Dark Matter'


I won't be surprised if it's evidence of the Cosmic Ether Drift as well.

http://www.orgonelab.org/energyinspace.htm
Send private message
Tilo Rebar


In: Sussex
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Mick Harper wrote:
While we're on the subject of AE principles, one reads as follows:

As soon as a cycle is identified, it ceases to function.


You can ask me why this is if you can't guess.


Is it because on closer inspection it is noticed that both tyres are flat?

Luckily, this is not a problem with quasi-cycles, as they have solid tyres.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

It arises out of the following melancholy application of the human condition:

1. People can't stand not knowing and/or not being able to control things.
2. Many things are either random or chaotic or just plain beyond our ken.
3. One way of taming (2) is to declare they are cyclical.
4. This is often possible because the 'things' are often so variable in themselves (like say sunspots) that it is always possible to define when they are happening and when they are not to suit the cycle.
5. But also by definition they will be only recently discovered eg El Nino so there will be very few 'cycles' on record.
6. Also (eg lemming surges) it is always possible to argue that our knowledge is getting better and better so past 'misses' were down to our own ignorance.
7. And of course (eg global warmings) there are always opportunities to slip in cycles-within-cycles.

So what's the problem? Well, in order to establish your cycle to everybody's satisfaction, you actually have to come up with a number. And while that number can be satisfactorily wished into existence to explain the past, now everybody is waiting for the next event to appear on cue. Which it can't because the whole thing was a mare's nest in the first place.
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Yes! And that's where a new scientific quest is born: The effort to explain why this time the cycle was missed. Lots of funding to be had there.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Or, in the case of the most famous of all non-existent cycles, the boom-and-bust of the trade cycle, how we didn't solve it last time so we'll just have to do even more next time.
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

In a programme last night about the history of weather forecasting, we were told weather forecasters used a ninety year-old forecast to give their audience an accurate prediction. That was before computer technology took over and forecasters became meteorologists. It remains to be seen whether the weather is affected by a ninety year planetary cycle which is, perhaps conveniently, not quite verifiable within a person's lifetime.
Send private message
Boreades


In: finity and beyond
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Hatty wrote:
In a programme last night about the history of weather forecasting, we were told weather forecasters used a ninety year-old forecast to give their audience an accurate prediction. That was before computer technology took over and forecasters became meteorologists. It remains to be seen whether the weather is affected by a ninety year planetary cycle which is, perhaps conveniently, not quite verifiable within a person's lifetime.


Is that a solar or lunar cycle?
Send private message
Boreades


In: finity and beyond
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Talking of lunar cycles, that reminds me of something that ought to give fresh hope to the Flat Earth Society.

The astrophysicists at the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey have (we're told) created the first accurate map of the universe (within 1% of something)

"the findings strongly indicate that the universe is extraordinarily flat....

So they say it's very flat, but not why or how.
Why does it appear to be in a flat two-dimensional plain?
Send private message
Tilo Rebar


In: Sussex
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Boreades wrote:
So they say it's very flat, but not why or how.

Why does it appear to be in a flat two-dimensional plain?


Good question Boreades - perhaps not what should be expected if the Universe started when a super-massive, dimensionless singularity decided, for no good reason, to create the Big Bang.

Will be interesting to see how the academics 'spin' this, although perhaps the effects of spin are part of the answer to your original and most excellent question - why and how are dangerous words for academia to deal with.
Send private message
Grant



View user's profile
Reply with quote

"the findings strongly indicate that the universe is extraordinarily flat....

So they say it's very flat, but not why or how.


I don't think they mean flat as in two-dimensional. If the universe is curved inwards it will eventually contract under gravity and head for a "big crunch." If it is curved outwards it will accelerate faster and faster for ever. If it is flat it will neither expand forever nor contract. At least that's what my reading of various popular science tomes leads me to believe. Frankly my maths is not up to understanding it.
Send private message
aurelius



View user's profile
Reply with quote

Just by way of a side issue, Krakatoa was not the largest recorded eruption in human history. Tambora, for example (1815) exceeded it, as did Santorini though you may argue about whether that was 'recorded' as such.

Krakatoa is arguably the most famous after Vesuvius, though.
Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2

Jump to:  
Page 2 of 2

MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group