The Most Mysterious Star - theories about alien-developed megastructures orbiting it
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Thanks, Steve. Obviously, we all are fascinated by these topics because this wonderful, mysterious and incredibly vast universe is our Home.
Yet what concerns me is that string theory and its offsprings involving other dimensions and worlds tends to blur the distinction between science and metaphysics, and threatens to redefine science in a manner that threatens its efficacy if we are not careful.
The phenomenal success of science over the last few centuries is due to its grounding in observation and experiment. Yet precisely the close contact between theoretical hypotheses and their confirmation or falsification by observation and experiment now appears threatened, something that also Sheldon Glashow, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on the Standard Model of Physics, bemoans in an interview with PBS Nova:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/view-glashow.html
Mathematical models may be interesting, but if they cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by observation they are useless in a strictly scientific sense. Ptolemean epicycles perfectly described the rotation of the sun and the other planets around the Earth, but we know from later observation that, however elegant they may have been, what they described was a false view of our universe. There is no reason to think that the same should not hold true for string theory that also describes multiverses and related stuff. However elegant it may be (and that is debatable, some call it 'mathematical spaghetti'), since it is not grounded in observation and experiment it may very well be just as fatally false as the Ptolemean epicycles turned out to be.
As a scientist in the field of biochemistry I am confronted with experimental reality every day, and it is often humbling because predictions do not work out in the real world. I don't see why other scientists should have the unmerited freedom to speculate for 40 years without a shred of observational evidence that grounds them in reality. But that is what is happening with string theory.
Observations of a multiverse as postulated by striing theorists are also not possible. The reason for this is the particle horizon: the maximum distance from which particles (i.e. also particles carrying information) could have traveled to the observer in the age of the universe. It represents the portion of the universe which we could have conceivably observed at the present day. Any other universe would lie outside this particle horizon.
Those who pursue a worldview based on just evidence often neglect the fact that speculations about a naturalistic origin of the universe are evidence-free in the scientific sense; they are philosophy just like the alternative. Neither a wider universe from which our universe could have resulted nor universes prior to ours can ever be observed.
In a similar manner, science can only study the 'what' of the laws of nature, but not the 'why'. Even if our laws of nature would hold by necessity due to General Relativity and quantum mechanics only allowing for a unique set of physical constants, something quite unlikely according to our current knowledge, there cannot be an intrinsic metaphysical necessity for a universe based on General Relativity and quantum mechanics.
By definition, the large ultimate questions fall outside the realm of science; if you want to ponder them, there still is no substitute for metaphyics, regardless of which side of the worldview issue you are taking. There is no such thing as a 'scientific' worldview, since observations about an ultimate origin of the universe are in principle impossible (see above). Those who believe their worldview is 'scientific' are deluding themselves. While it may claim to be derived from what we know from science, the extrapolation to ultimate questions is still a strictly philosophical one, about which science proper has nothing to say.
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[Please note that I have carefully steered clear of the atheism/religion debate, a topic that is, understandably, banned from WBF. Yet as a practicing scientist with some philosophical training I felt compelled to clear up some confusion about the limits of science and the respective realms of science and philosophy.
Here is a topic that is clearly within the realm of science: an origin of life by natural causes. I have written an extensive overview article for Talkorigins.org, a leading evolution website. Just read the abstract, and you'll get an idea about the direction it is going.]
Thank you, that is a useful introduction to the issue.
From the article:
"It's such a great idea, it probably has to be true," Redlinger said.
That single sentence encapsulates perfectly what is so wrong with the mindset in contemporary physics.
The graveyard of science is filled with corpses of great ideas.
Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I read the abstract but it is beyond my understanding. I wish I could because it looks so detailed and well written
Sorry, I meant just the first half of the abstract. Point is, for life to have started by natural causes, the beginning must have been very simple, and things gradually would have to have become more complex from there. The article argues that this is a reasonable possibility, from the experimental knowledge that we have to date (that knowledge now vastly transcends the early Miller-Urey experiment, by the way).
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