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Showing posts from January, 2019

Dear Dr B: Is Scientific Discipline Democratic?

“Hi Bee, One of the frequently repeated phrases hither inwards Italy past times so called “science enthusiasts” is that “science is non democratic”, which to me sounds similar an excuse for someone to justify some authoritarian or semi-fascist fantasy. We run across this on countless “Science pages”, 1 really pop illustration existence Fare Serata Con Galileo . It's non a bad page per se, quite the contrary, but the degree of comments including variations of “Democracy is overrated”, “Darwin plant to eliminate weak as well as stupid people” as well as the green “Science is non democratic” is unbearable. It underscores a troubling “sympathy for authoritarian politics” that to me seems to locomote to a greater extent than as well as to a greater extent than mutual amid “science enthusiasts". The classic illustration it’s made is “the speed of calorie-free is non voted”, which to me, equally truthful equally it may be, has some sinister resonance. Could you lot comment on t

Away Note

I’ll endure traveling the adjacent ii weeks. First to Cambridge to celebrate which was inwards January ), too then inwards Trieste for a conference on “Probing the spacetime fabric: from concepts to phenomenology.”   Rant coming upwards later on today, only after that delight stimulate for a tedious time.

To Sympathize The Foundations Of Physics, Written Report Numerology

Numbers speak. [Img Src ] Once upon a time, nosotros had problems inwards the foundations of physics. Then nosotros solved them. That was forty years ago. Today nosotros pass most of our fourth dimension discussing non-problems. Here is i of these non-problems. Did y'all know that the universe is spatially almost flat? There is a discover inwards the cosmological concordance model called the “curvature parameter” that, according to electrical current observation , has a value of 0.000 plus-minus 0.005. Why is that a problem? I don’t know. But hither is the storey that cosmologists tell. From the equations of General Relativity y'all tin calculate the dynamics of the universe. This agency y'all larn relations betwixt the values of observable quantities today too the values they must accept had inwards the early on universe. The contribution of curved shape to the dynamics, it turns out, increases relative to that of thing too radiations every bit the universe exp