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Tavoriel — Quantum Mechanics
Published: 2014-02-19 18:50:05 +0000 UTC; Views: 624; Favourites: 16; Downloads: 1
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nooooo what are we supposed to believe math or reality what what what what
if you are teaching science:
words to use less: know
words to use more: as far as we can tell
Not trying to single out my professors, but I feel like there's too much of a "that's how it is" attitude in the education system and less of a "OMG SOMEONE ACTUALLY THREW TOGETHER ENOUGH EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THIS IDEA, LETS ALL STARE AT IT, I WONDER WHAT WE WILL KNOW TOMORROW" attitude
Like, don't show quantum tunneling as some natural and obvious consequence of the math, wow kids, science is so cool, learning is fun, you are so much better and smarter now that you have been shown this fact and the reason for it, it's a simple and necessary feat to believe the clear and compelling truth of it!! We're comfortable with the idea of quantum tunneling (insofar as any result in quantum mechanics can be considered comfortable) because evidence for it has been observed. Nobody looks at an equation result and goes ok everyone we figured it out, you can all go home now, this is what happens. What happens is someone comes up with a really funky result and then a little science war ensues and nobody knows what to believe and then 100 years later it's sort of generally accepted which side was probably right, and meanwhile outside of the scientific community everyone's still thinking about atoms in terms of the Bohr model.
Like... the students are supposed to be the ones going out there and figuring out where to go next. Don't prepare us to stay in one spot.
and then meanwhile in particle physics: omg omg the standard model doesn't seem like the whole story, and what is dark matter, maybe we need to discover ~new physics~ to finally understand what's going on!!
and it's like, totally keep smashing tiny stuff together that's a fantastic approach to the problem, but at the same time maybe someone should also sit down with a list of all of the assumptions y'all physicists have ever discarded because they "weren't realistic" and double check everything
I have no idea what's going on, on a regular basis, and I want to be a physicist because finally, a space where that's useful!!
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Comments: 7
There are some things in physics taught as if they were Dogma. I've already had at least one Physics course where both the instructor AND the textbook didn't simply infer, but INSISTED that Dark Matter exists in the Universe and is, in fact, matter. Except, we can't see it, detect it, or produce it anywhere. It must be there because there is a discrepancy in the results of our equations that describe Newtonian and Relativistic things at mundane scales, but not galactic or universal ones.
Sure. Cool story, bro.
Frankly, as a scientist in the making, I am highly offended by dogmatic assertions like this, and the overall attitude that comes with them. This isn't science, it's a load of bullshit with chunks of science here, there... and a little over there...
Why can't we just admit that we're on most likely the "right track" but otherwise wrong and still trying to establish the real truth?
As someone that studies asteroid impact physics and geophysics, the following in particular makes me pull my hair out: "Kabira" Crater . Fun fact: This is not even close to being an impact crater. Despite the fact no evidence whatsoever exists for an impact, and tons of evidence exists for it not to be one, University of Boston was paraded through NASA's webpage, among other things. Sickening.
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aslkghsalghslYES a best guess doesn't become truth simply because there are no better guesses *hits things with books*
maybe it all has something to do with clamoring for funding; "proving things" looks more impressive than finding out a bunch of really important stuff that might lead to an actual conclusion 200 years from now. But like, IT IS COMMON/READILY AVAILABLE KNOWLEDGE that science is a painstakingly slow process that depends on continuous validation before something can be considered true. Can we please just live in reality instead of making up a fake reality made out of money?? Like, that kind of thing NEVER WORKS LONG-TERM, sooner or later fakiness gets FOUND OUT >: ( And 300 years from now people are gonna be like "hahaha those losers actually BELIEVED there was dark matter," and it's like no, we don't have any idea what's going on, someone's calling a discrepancy dark matter and other people are believing it because why not. And like, I don't even know if they're calling it dark matter because it's a best guess or because their satisfying evidence is too ridiculously complicated to explain to the masses. I'm gonna be a particle physicist, or at least involved with particle physics, if it kills me, I can't help out with some of these big questions if I don't have reliable info on how we know what we know >: (
And teaching students to believe things "just cuz" is just NO
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It's *all* about the clamoring for funding. All the decisions for funding of science and research these days (at least in the US) are made by bureaucrats and businessmen. These kinds of people don't know or understand science in general, and really don't care to know it. All they want to know, is if they put money into your research, does the research you do make them a return profit of some kind. Sadly, in our situation here, true science is done for the good of understanding, not profit... and this means that a lot of true, highly beneficial science does not get funding, while bullshit science that works in the favor of some business somewhere gets fully funded. Money has allowed non-scientific, selfish interests dictate when science is done, and on what... arguably leading to the slowdown of the progression in science in the last 30-50 years.
Fun Fact: Most meteor impact sites on earth have been found by geologists working for Oil interests. The Chicxulub Crater in Mexico (the supposed "dinosaur killer" impact) was known by an oil company for many years, but they refused to tell the world about it, for fear that it would hurt their profits. It was found in the 60's or early 70's. The impact was only formally accepted by the research community in the late 80's after scientists convinced them to let it go.
As for the Dark Matter issue... essentially, our relativistic and Newtonian models work very well on Earth and in our Solar System. However, the same mathematical laws applied to an entire galaxy's orbital velocities around its black hole produce results that differ greatly from what we actually observe. Since the calculations basically link matter/mass to orbit velocities (think Kepler's Laws) the discrepancy is interpreted as a ton of missing matter/mass. What we need to pay mind to, though, is that we're not really observing missing matter, but the incapability of our current understanding of Physics to explain the larger picture. My problem with all of this: Universities are spending untold money in research looking for the "missing matter", when we ought to be pursuing the reasons our physical laws and mathematics are not matching observation! So, essentially, it goes back to the Bureaucrats and funding. Some non-scientific goon believes in the missing matter, pays colleges to look for it. He pays no attention to the guy that says the math/physics is not complete, and no progress is made in that area.
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So true my friend.
I've always gotten annoyed with this stuff, because, there is also to much proof that animals and people didn't evolve, and then theres very small amount of proof it's true.
All they ever did was take a small animal bone, and then just draw it, then add in a bunch of other stuff and say: "OH HEY LOOK, WE USED TO BE MONKEYS EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE STILL ALIVE!"
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oooooh I've seen arguments for this! I was homeschooled growing up, and the science books I read were written by a guy who didn't believe in evolution and was explaining all of his reasons for it (like, "everything percent of ~fossils~ are basically sea shells how do we even know"); I really liked those books because the guy was so respectfully uncertain about stuff most people believed and even stuff he believed himself. Maybe people believe in evolution because if you assume that life arose without the help of God, it's practically the only logical conclusion; there's no way a fully formed person would pop out of nowhere, but maybe a super simple living thing could, and if you give the simple thing lots and lots of time for random changes, you finally get up to people. Maybe it's not the evidence that's compelling them, so much as the logical and statistical impossibility of evolution not being true and God not being real, simultaneously. Maybe evolution is the standard not because of evidence but because in order to base science on observation alone you "have no other choice." But if that's the reason they should just SAY THAT, not, "evolution is true because we found this bone somewhere, it's so crystal clearly obvious, science is cool, learning is fun." *is no fun AT ALL* personally I take a "what happened happened IDK" approach; I think we're here because God wanted us here, but who am I to say how, or how quickly he did it. I think if he wants to believe because of faith instead of proof, he's gonna cover his tracks really super sneaky well, and I trust him to be more than capable of outsmarting us, so I'm betting there's probably always going to be a logical nonreligious argument for how we got here. Still, if the evidence isn't supporting evolution overly crazy much, that should be cause for concern and talked about openly, there shouldn't be any shame in it, there's no need to pretend everything checks out. Science is about discovering the truth, and you can only do that if you take everything you find seriously and be open to lots of possibilities, and "we don't have enough evidence to say for sure" is ALWAYS an acceptable answer if that's really what happened. I'm gonna worry about particle physics, you probably know more about this stuff than me, but YEAH other people should definitely be worrying about evolution, onward, science!
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^_^
Finally someone who sees it the same as I do.
I try to tell others that there's no sure explanation, but they always just call me a idiot.
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