JCC Go science?

I read a minute to minute summary. It looks like it accomplished nothing. Nye was not wrong of course. But when you are ham you want this sort of thing to happen so you can let all your marks hear you say how much you are into God and science is this thing that non-God people hijacked because they don't include God and God God God all the time.

 

Pat Robertson tells Ken Ham it's time for him and the young earth creationists to shut up:
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/05/pat_robertson_begs_ken_ham_to_shut_up/

 

You know, when Pat Robertson of all people is telling you to shut up about creationism.... maybe it's a sign that you should, you know, shut up.

 

New bionic hand can actually *feel*
http://news.yahoo.com/man-gets-first-prosthetic-hand-feel-202300302.html

 

So I'm convinced we're stuck in a 1 year, three month loop.

 

So I'm convinced we're stuck in a 1 year, three month loop.

 

He's far too dug in, and makes far too much money to shut up.

 

Alas, it looks like China's poor Jade Rabbit was not to be:

China's Jade Rabbit Lunar Rover 'Declared Dead'

 

It's alive!

 

I used to believe in the whole JS Mill absolute freedom of speech solves everything by illuminating wrong opinion thing. I even thought that the reason holocaust denial is far more prevalent in continental Europe than it is here in the UK is down to the fact that we didn't ban it, rather it was openly debated during the Irving libel case, in which all of his arguments were torn to shreds by a series of experts and a huge volume of evidence both in court and in the media. Holocaust denial was afterwards seen as ridiculous rather than flourishing in dark corners where it wasn't challenged.

Now I just think we're facing a new breed of superhuman impervious to logic, empirical evidence and plain common sense. In a decade, I fully expect to see Hitler rubbing shoulders with Julius Caesar, Heracles and Robin Hood on Xena, Warrior Princess. Part of the all-history-and-mythology-and-semi-hot-lesbians-and-dragons-not-dinosaurs-that-all-happened-at-the-same-time-but-they-were-all-alien-astronauts-really that now provides the framework of understanding where we come from.

 

ISS gets a laser

 

1 of 4 people think the Earth orbits the Sun

Sherlock Holmes, they are not.

 

For you Cetacean fans out there: Chilean highway project unearths whale fossil graveyard

 

Cosmos reboot is on tonight

Don't forget to watch it.

 

Beezel made a thread about it, so I'm all set!

 

Gravity waves?

 

http://bicepkeck.org/b2_respap_arxiv_v1.pdf

And there you have it, folks. 5.9 sigma certainty for gravitational waves. Evidence for an inflationary period near the beginning of the universe. If this holds, a lot of problems will be solved, including the flatness and horizon problems.

 

Oh baby. Brace yourselves.

 

Explain to me why I should care about this and why physicists think I should care. To me it seems like esoteric minutiae that provides more evidence for things that were already well-accepted. What happens if it's discovered that, like, the universe is a "hologram" or something? Something big enough that laypeople will give a damn? Will Ramza's brain literally explode?

 

You're right, if this doesn't have an immediate and tangible advantage to our current everyday lives, we'll have added to the body of scientific knowledge for nothing.

 

I don't mean that. I mean, I can't pretend to understand it fully, but it adds to the mountain of evidence we already have for the Big Bang and the early universe and General Relativity, right? I'd be just as ho-hum about an announcement in biology that they found more evidence that Darwin was on to something.

 

Good point. Questioning why something should get billing in major newspapers is the same thing as doubting whether the project should have been undertaken at all.

 

It's sort of the last big, known fish that still had to be fried for GR in terms of predictions. If everything pans out, it's mostly going to verify some baseline assumptions for lots of theoretical types. So, yeah, I guess it is understandable that it would be hard to care about this from the lay perspective, but there are some very good theories that need these things to exist.

I literally had no idea that was the case, so I initially read Guy's comment as the latter. I perennially don't understand what, sciencewise, does and does not make the news, though.

Edit: And I do apologize for that misreading, incidentally.

 

1) what it shows evidence of is cosmic inflation, which is what comes after the big bang. Like I said in my previous post, it solves various different problems: flatness, etc.

2) this is the first detection of gravitational waves ever.

3) you don't really need to care about this. No one forced you to read up on this.

Jabba-wocky: who mentioned front page billing? What is your problem?

 

Along with the aforementioned front-page news treatment, I was prompted by seeing a heavily-upvoted thread at the top of reddit with comments acting as though we solved hunger and cured HIV and brought Michael Jackson back to life. I was genuinely wondering what the big deal was.