Stephen Hawking: Big Bang an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics

[quadz]

"Fun fact: if you say this every time a professor does something to a complex-number equation that drops the imaginary part, they'll eventually move the class to another room and tell everyone else except you."

[Tubby]

Probably, which emphasizes the point I'm making: people who understand these phenomena better, make more accurate guesses about them.

So your guess may be as good as mine, but their guesses are better than ours.  A lot better.

Right?

Yes of course. All I'm saying is that probably no human brain is evolved enough (yet) to truly understand such phenomena. Oh sure, there are physicists & mathematicians who can speculate and theorise about them, but at the end of the day all they're doing is applying their own limited knowledge to something which trancends that limited knowledge.

Eg; Even physicists themselves admit that the 'laws' of physics break down / become disrupted at a singularity. What I think they should really be saying is that they don't yet understand the laws of physics as they apply to a singularity.

Saying that physical laws "break down" in such circumstances belies their ability to truly understand those laws as a natural process: Saying that they "break down" is really just another way of saying "we don't know what happens next"...

[quadz]

Eg; Even physicists themselves admit that the 'laws' of physics break down / become disrupted at a singularity. What I think they should really be saying is that they don't yet understand the laws of physics as they apply to a singularity.

Geez, man.  What kind of crackerjack poseur physicists have ya been listening to?

Of course they know it's the equations modeling the phenomena that break down, and not reality itself.  (Thus why they've been working for decades to find a quantum theory of gravity, for instance.)

They spend their careers toiling at the boundary between the known and the unknown.  By the nature of their work, they have to be acutely aware of the ways in which the existing models are inadequate.  Further, the dudes I've listened to are extremely forthright about communicating the deficiences of the current models to their audience.

As Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson puts it in the following talk, when asked about so-called dark matter & dark energy:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAD25s53wmE

[At about 36:36, after talking about how we don't know what dark matter is] "... and that's not the same thing as dark energy; that's another aspect of the cosmos about which we are completely dumb-stupid.  There is four times as much dark energy as there is dark matter, of which there is six times as much of that, as there is the matter we know and love.  So, we only understand four percent of that which comprises the entire cosmos!  So, you can't be an astrophycisist and be big-headed about it.  We're staring ignorance in the face."


Regards,

quadz

[Tubby]

Yes, professional observers do tend to discuss what they don't know before discussing what they think they do know.

As for dark matter... That's a whole new topic 

Gentlemen, draw your guns.....

LOL jk.

[quadz]

Yes, professional observers do tend to discuss what they don't know before discussing what they think they do know.

I accept your apology.

[|iR|Focalor]

Necroposting is ghey, but this probably fits here better than anywhere else, although it probably fits more in the "science" section than "religion".

Mainly posting this for me to read later, but perhaps someone else might enjoy it as well.

Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

A recent challenge to Stephen Hawking’s biggest idea—about how the universe might have come from nothing—has cosmologists choosing sides.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/physicists-debate-hawking-s-idea-that-the-universe-had-no-beginning