The Science Thread

It depends on what you're talking about. I thought you were talking about stuff in the Bible that contradicted known science (i.e. evolution) or history. If not, what's the point of your statement? Of course the Bible can co-exist with science if it's not claiming that science is wrong.

Like what?

How you reach a conclusion is not moot. The way science does it is through a set of principles and methodologies designed to arrive at valid conclusions about the natural world, and have those conclusions tested and verified by others doing their own independent work. The way of religion is to simply believe what someone or some text tells you, and have "faith". One way yields results, the other doesnt. One way takes out bias and error, the other almost guarantees that bias and error will occur.

The way science approaches learning has nothing to do with "faith".

Again, no faith is required in science, and certainly not to believe that evolution is true. Your understanding of the subject is poor, if you think that evolution "isn't visibly occurring in nature" or that we can't replicate it. Your argument and credibility falls completely to pieces if you show that you dont understand even basics of what you're arguing against.

You can certainly disagree with science, but how can you be so confident when you dont understand how science works or what the evidence is for things like Evolution? (see above)

Opinions might be relative. Our experience of truth might be. Even the passage of time might be relative. But, truth is truth. Facts are facts, regardless of whether you agree with them, of whether you're even aware of them.

What is science is confirmation bias?

Funny you mention skepticism. How often do you apply this to your own religious beliefs?

@willpayton: just to butt in a little bit... I think your effort is admirable, but also I think you're wastin your time. That guy just said that he knows of species dying out but not evolving, meaning he doesn't have any information about facts that don't confirm his beliefs.

He doesn't even seem to understand how science works, stating that it is based on assumptions and authority. I don't think you're going to convince him to read a book (except the ones he was recommended by his particular religious community).

Your

Your reply here is the essence of theists and theologians alike, when asked to give evidence and proof of the prophecies and stories of the bible, you completely change the subject and go off on tangents(ala Ken Ham) because there is none. The man asked you for proof of things said in the bible but instead you talk about co-existing... Sure, the bible and science can co-exist, like anything else does but not on the same plane, the bible can stick around as fables and science as fact, sounds like a good co-existence to me. And also the bible isn't a book of "theories", they're just stories, a theory would need some basis in reality and the bible definetly CAN'T work as an alternative to science, that's laughable at best. Also, out of all the holy books, why should the bible be the only one that is real? Just that there should tell you about the scam of religion, why should christianity's origins be the truth and every religion be ridiculed? Once upon a time there were people who actually believed in Greek, Norse, Roman, Egyptian, Maya, Aztec, et cetera as true gospel, now imagine if there were people today going around telling people "if you die fighting, you shall dine in Valhalla and Asgard" or "worship the gods or you will spend eternity in Hades" or "dance, so the gods will give us rain", you and the vast majority of christians would just laugh and ridicule them out of the public square. To take a step further, this is what christians today are doing to the Muslims and Jews(to an extent), "my creator is better than yours", "Muhammad was a [insert expletive here]" ... Tell me, what gives a christian the right to say "the bible is real and the Quran can't be" or "Zeus is mythology and god is actually real" or "the Earth wasn't made by the Allfather, it was created by god" , what gives you that right?

@jeanralphio Again by your standards i'm no christian because i'd ask the same questions. I was never personally exposed or influenced by the notion of being superior or disrespecting other religions or ideals. But then i could ask the same to you... u seem apparently fall under the perspective of scientific realism, which frames a perspective of reality is essentially separate from the human mind. reality for you is a make up of objectivity. But who's to say that's correct? Maybe the reality we perceive is essentially only a product of the mind and nothing truly "exists" beyond it. - Solipsism, or knowledge isn't much at all a cumulative compilation of passed down information, but only what you personally experience and prove for yourself via senses -Empiricism... After all, like religion, at it's core, science is a philosophy. They all have a lot in common and generally seek to answer the same questions. Again it really comes down to which vice you have faith in, and what you consider "fact." You can try to eliminate all the bias and error you like but science has, and always will involve intuition. And intuition is borderline synonymous to faith. There are many way's to teach... God's venue is story form. sorry that doesn't sit well with you.

Also sorry you've encountered some F**ked up Christians. My faith would be abysmal too if i experienced it they way you apparently have. Evils of man happens for a wide variety of reasons. Sure a lot of hate happened in the name of religion but you can't really blame that on the religion itself. God didn't make us war, that was our own sin.. "Thou shalt not kill"

Hell, slavery happened cus a few men or so were just lazy?

Wow, your world view is severely warped, I agree with @matteopg, you're a lost cause. If you believe the bible is teaching what science does, sorry dude.

@jeanralphio: I prefer to say open minded. I believe in 1 thing. But,I accept I could be wrong.

Unlike your "I'm right your wrong mentality" I'd say your far more lost than me.

None of us were there when man was created. None of us have died and came back to explain the afterlife. We are all going after "tales" and "data" we think is legit. It's good to have your faith. It's ignorant to insult others.

I don't like to entertain foolishness but me acknowledging science is not faith, I'm not wondering if god is real like you, I'm observing the science, theists need to stop equating faith with theory, it's nowhere near the same but you can say it a million times and theists still will compare them(like you continue to do, even though you are actually wrong).

First, you are right none of us were around when man first came to be but second, man wasn't created, it evolved. And I could care less about the afterlife, once I die, I die, that's it and I'm fine with that, it'll be just like before I was born.

@jeanralphio that's fine. Your average person can only handle 1 perspective anyway. Life is a lot simpler when you put your "acknowledgement?" (faith) in mankind and go along with whatever we come up with as truth. Fair enough I suppose. But "only things I can touch and measure is true" seems a little limiting to our minds Imo.

There you go with the undercover condescending, yea I'm done.

Scientists have discovered an Earth-sized planet that could support life. Right now we have no idea, of course, it just means that the planet is in the "habitable zone" where liquid water could exist. Read more here:

http://news.yahoo.com/found-first-earth-size-planet-could-support-life-181057158.html

Fun physics time... go!

Hello! Seing that @willpayton seems the only person who ever bumps this thread, I wanted to make my voice heard. I have nothing major to say, but I wanted to point out one of the reasons I love science. These times have seen an increase in the hip trend of slandering science as if it was one large conspiracy based on deciding what is true and what isn't. Or to point out that science is glorified hear-say and authority arguments.

I was thinking about this last month in the lab, while trying all my best to verify something beyond any proof: I had a theory about a new microscopy technique (can't get technical for concerns of time, writing space and also I have to avoid divulging the few left hooks that make my PhD project worth publishing ;) ) and I am fairly convinced that it will work.

But the cool thing about science is that nobody ever takes your word for it. Look at Stephen Hawking (this is not a simily, mind you): he recently said that he thinks that some things he found out about black holes might not be true. Did we take his word for it? No, we waited for the peer-review. And he's freaking Stephen Hawking!

Science is the slow process of discovering how the world works and showing everybody that there is very little doubt, through making your experiments and findings critique-proof, repeatable and evident. It's a difficult and frustrating process that requires consistency, honesty and creativity. And the willingness to admit that we were wrong.

So, I want to hear it from my science peeps. Is any of you struggling with some discovery/theory? Are you sweating your head off to add something to the zeitgeist?

A=ΣF/M

Agreed... so?

EDIT: although I think that traditionally you write acceleration with a small "a", but it's not a big deal.

Science is awesome

What happens when you drop a magnet down a copper pipe?

Find out...

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/05/nasa-hands-space-enthusiasts-the-keys-to-a-1970s-era-spacecraft/

NASA hands space enthusiasts the keys to a 1970s-era spacecraft

NASA felt it had gotten its money's worth out of the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3 mission back in the 1980s. Its last scientific mission ended in 1997, and contact was suspended in 1998. But time and a fortuitous orbit mean that ISEE-3 is now catching up with Earth and will make a close pass this summer. When we first noted this story last year, some enthusiasts were suggesting that the probe should be revived and returned to scientific duty, but the perpetually tight budgets at NASA made that outcome unlikely.

Yesterday, NASA announced that it found a solution: it would hand the keys to the probe over to those enthusiasts.

Launched in 1978, the hardware was initially sent to the L1 Lagrange point between the Earth and Sun and was used to study the solar wind. With that mission complete, the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3 was renamed the International Cometary Explorer and was sent into orbit around the Sun, where it passed through the tails of two comets before its mission ended in 1997.

ISEE-3 is now catching up with Earth again. At last check, all its instruments were functional, which raises the possibility that it could be restored to its former location at the L1 Lagrange and returned to scientific duty. That restoration is more challenging than it might sound, as NASA hasn't maintained the hardware and communication protocols necessary to communicate with ISEE-3.

The challenge didn't deter a number of enthusiasts at the ISEE-3 Reboot project, which had been attempting to restore contact with the spacecraft without official permission. That situation changed yesterday with the announcement of an agreement between NASA and Skycorp, Inc., a company that's backing the Reboot project. The "Non-Reimbursable Space Act Agreement" gives the rebooters permission to try to control the spacecraft, and it specifies the conditions that need to be met before attempts are made to do so.

Should the attempt be successful, any new data that results will be placed in the public domain. Right now, the group has a team at the Arecibo Observatory attempting to reestablish contact.

I think people misunderstand the word theory

a coherent group of tested general propositions, commonlyregarded as correct, that can be used as principles ofexplanation and prediction for a class of phenomena.http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theory

many people only think that a theory is not something that is correct but it is.

Yeah, the common notion that the public has of a theory is more like a hypothesis in science.

In science, an accepted theory is basically something that's considered to be true, a fact, because it has been tested and substantiated by so many other facts and evidence.

A taste of the future!

Why do we find planets that look similar to earth but find no life on them? WHEN ARE WE GOING TO FIND LIFE ON ANOTHER PLANET DANG IT? I WANT TO SEE IT.

Billions more would believe in God if he just freaking showed up and said, hey im real.

He(if real) condems people to hell just by not confirming his existence.

im surprised nobody posted these memes yet...

might as well post all of em'

Man, imagine discovering a Galactic Society similar to the one in Mass Effect. Would be so cool.

Russia may not be giving us access to the International Space Station right now, but we still have ways of observing the stars :)

Show me a kryptonian and saiyan for all I care. I just want to see the dang life.

I don't know if this has been posted or not, but people need to know of the coming zombie apocalypse. It's coming, man!

Am I wrong or does this sound like the beginnings of a real world T-Virus?

Is abiogenesis a scientific fact?

Time to get my shotgun and yoshimitsu. We got a Zombie Apocalypse on our hands. What's next vampires & werewolves?

Interesting. Doesn't look very harmfull though.

It's not. It's a hypothesis and a field of study. As far as I know there's different forms of abiogenesis being studied, but none has been shown to be conclusively correct.

But, while not an accepted fact, I'd say it's the most likely explanation for how life started on Earth.

Thank you for the information sir.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/06/body-that-formed-the-moon-came-from-a-different-neighborhood/

New evidence that the Moon was formed from a collision between the Earth and a large body that came from another part of the solar system...

Well, we must know that abiogenesis happened somehow. After all, the universe didn't start off with biology. It must have arisen some other way. Maybe on Earth, maybe not. It happened science just can't explain how yet.

What if we created the universe by us time traveling from the future lol.

Well that would be impossible. If you exist as matter, then you wouldn't be creating the universe. Think about it. If you exist already, then so does time, and time itself is a construction resulting from the big band.Even time didn't exist until after the big bang. This is why a creation method seems so implausible.

You do realize that comment was a joke right. That was the reason I put "lol" in there. I'm about to become a 10th grade student too.

Woops mah bad lol. Hey I'm going to 11th grade! Is it summer yet for you because I just got out.

Woops mah bad lol. Hey I'm going to 11th grade! Is it summer yet for you because I just got out.

@marvel_boy2241: I got out last week. No problem dude.

A big explosion happened in space, and we have the video...

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/star-explosion-video-is-the-most-awesome-thing-i-have-e-1589138376?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

@willpayton: I have a question, is it possible that there was universe before our current Universe existed?

Do you mean if our universe existed in some form before the Big Bang, or if a different universe existed?

There are several theories that follow the cyclic model which basically say that the universe could have existed before the BB and oscillates. In those cases, the BB was not the start of the universe.

Otherwise we dont know, but yes it's possible. Some current hypotheses say that there might be other, or even an infinite number of, universes that exist right now. I'd say that it's likely that there are. It makes sense that as our universe was created, through the same mechanism others would have been created as well. If there were many, or an infinite number of universes, it would explain why life was able to arise here. It'd mean that there are many with different values for the laws of physics. In many, life would not be possible, but in many it would. We just live in one of those.

@willpayton: I was watching Mythbusters. you ever heart that people shoot guns in the air and when the bullet comes down, it has enough velocity that it can hurt or kill you? They did 3 different experiments and NONE of them made the bullet go through the skull. but they went to a Doctor who had xrays to prove it happened. Contradiction? Also, ever hear of a piece of straw going through a tree during a tornado? They got straw to stick in the tree but not through it. But they posted pics of when it happened.

Yeah, I remember seeing that episode. No, no contradiction since they said that it wont fall with lethal speed when shot straight up in the air, but if it's shot at an angle, then it can come down fast enough to kill. Anyone who's been killed with falling bullets almost certainly had the bullet shot up at an angle.

There's no way a piece of straw will go through a tree, no matter how fast it's going.

Imaging an exoplanet with a flower-power star shade

(read full article at link below)

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/06/imaging-an-exoplanet-with-a-flower-power-star-shade/

I consider myself a rabid science enthusiast even though I'm studying Business Finance and Statistics. This seems like a good thread, especially since so much science journalism is apparently written by people who have no knowledge of science (see recent reports on quantum entanglement communication and solid state light for example) or statistical design (several recent rather amateurish psychology papers I've read), this could be a good thread to talk and discuss things.

I myself have been interested in sustainable energy (isn't everyone lol) and propulsive mechanisms for space travel. Ion engines, space sails, nuclear engines, VASIMIR rockets, conventional redox engines, maybe a mix of all of the above.

Researchers at the Imperial College London have successfully managed to genetically modify mosquitoes so that 95% of their offspring would be male. This step would be instrumental in eliminating mosquito populations alongside malaria.

Full story:- http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/gm-mosquitos-could-eradicate-wild-populations-only-producing-male-offspring