Starship Asterisk*

Wolf Kotenberg wrote:Yes the universe is fundamentally simple...........until you do the math. And just when our scientists get close, kaboom something that is not supposed to haoppen, happens.

Chris Peterson wrote:

Chris Evans wrote:Keep working on your theories with new data coming in you might be surprised that the universe is infinitely vast and never to be understood completely.

My feeling is just the opposite. The more we learn, the more we realize that the Universe is fundamentally simple and easy to understand. I think that within a century or two there will be no more science- we will totally understand the laws of physics, and fully know how things work. Scientific knowledge will be complete.

Of course, just as an artist can completely understand her simple medium (a box of crayons, perhaps), the number of unique pieces of art that can be created is infinite. We can live in a Universe that is both fundamentally simple and at the same time infinitely complex. But once we understand the underlying rules, the infinite complexity becomes a subject for philosophers and engineers, not scientists (as the term now applies).

Case wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:The more we learn, the more we realize that the Universe is fundamentally simple and easy to understand. I think that within a century or two there will be no more science- we will totally understand the laws of physics, and fully know how things work. Scientific knowledge will be complete.

That's a bold statement.
While many discoveries, scientific theories and new laws of physics extend our current understanding of the Universe, it also seems like every new discovery brings about at least a tenfold of new questions and weird results that defy current understandings. Do you see a convergence to completeness that makes the the new unknowns easier to solve than previous ones and/or less important and/or fewer of them in the future?

When you say "scientific knowledge will be complete", is that referring to the Grand Unified Theory?

Kind of depressing to think that there will be a time, not too far from today, when many theoretical physicists will be out of a job because there's little left to do for them.

Case wrote:

neufer wrote:
http://tinyurl.com/7epd8zd

Thanks for the link, Art. What a learned, interesting and even entertaining professor Richard Feynman was, as well as a great scientist.

Chris Peterson wrote:The more we learn, the more we realize that the Universe is fundamentally simple and easy to understand. I think that within a century or two there will be no more science- we will totally understand the laws of physics, and fully know how things work. Scientific knowledge will be complete.

neufer wrote:http://tinyurl.com/7epd8zd

Chris Peterson wrote:

Chris Evans wrote:
Keep working on your theories with new data coming in you might be surprised that the universe is infinitely vast and never to be understood completely.

My feeling is just the opposite. The more we learn, the more we realize that the Universe is fundamentally simple and easy to understand. I think that within a century or two there will be no more science- we will totally understand the laws of physics, and fully know how things work. Scientific knowledge will be complete. Of course, just as an artist can completely understand her simple medium (a box of crayons, perhaps), the number of unique pieces of art that can be created is infinite. We can live in a Universe that is both fundamentally simple and at the same time infinitely complex. But once we understand the underlying rules, the infinite complexity becomes a subject for philosophers and engineers, not scientists (as the term now applies).

Chris Evans wrote:Keep working on your theories with new data coming in you might be surprised that the universe is infinitely vast and never to be understood completely.

Christopher Evans wrote:There is nothing sacred about light speed.

All knowledge is subject to opinion of the holder unfortunately and we are all predjudice to our own way of thinking.

Here i have to point out Tesla, who was told that an AC motor was impossible to build in college. But you can see what we have today.

Christopher Evans wrote:All knowledge is subject to opinion of the holder unfortunately and we are all predjudice to our own way of thinking.

Woilf Kotenberg wrote:The sound barrier was known long before airplanes got close to it. Did you ever notice propeller blades on the FW190D and the TA152h were very wide ? My father ( rest in peace dad ) was an engineer at Focke Wulf and they encontered major efficiency drops at high RPM's. Those JUMOs put out some serious power. My father explained to me the solution was wide blades , smaller diameter.

geckzilla wrote:Why is it that sometimes people seem to speak of scientists as if being a scientist is something bad? If you think all the current scientists are wrong, don't you have to become a scientist yourself to prove them wrong?

geckzilla wrote:Why is it that sometimes people seem to speak of scientists as if being a scientist is something bad? If you think all the current scientists are wrong, don't you have to become a scientist yourself to prove them wrong?

geckzilla wrote:
Why is it that sometimes people seem to speak of scientists as if being a scientist is something bad?

Chris Evans wrote:Here is an article that describes that some scientist were fooled by complex theory that was proved wrong later. (Emphasis mine)

http://www.daviddarling.info/encycloped ... rrier.html

Chris Peterson wrote:

Christopher Evans wrote:
You scientist used to say that nobody could go faster than the speed of sound but that was proved wrong.

There was never a scientific view that "nobody could go faster than the speed of sound". For as long as scientists have understood the concept, it has been known that bodies could exceed the speed of sound, and examples were known. This claim is as fallacious as the one that suggests scientists thought the Earth was flat.