Starship Asterisk*

heehaw wrote:The American Astronomical Society met in Toronto, Canada, in August 1959, when I was 19 and already an astronomer. At the meeting, Ambartsumian suggested the presence of a blackhole at the center of our Galaxy, and I thought that was the stupidest idea I'd ever heard in my life!

heehaw wrote:The American Astronomical Society met in Toronto, Canada, in August 1959, when I was 19 and already an astronomer. At the meeting, Ambartsumian suggested the presence of a blackhole at the center of our Galaxy, and I thought that was the stupidest idea I'd ever heard in my life!

heehaw wrote:The American Astronomical Society met in Toronto, Canada, in August 1959, when I was 19 and already an astronomer. At the meeting, Ambartsumian suggested the presence of a blackhole at the center of our Galaxy, and I thought that was the stupidest idea I'd ever heard in my life!

Boomer12k wrote:
Fred Hoyle STILL does not accept the Expanding Universe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle#Rejection_of_the_Big_Bang wrote:
<<Hoyle offered an explanation for the appearance of new matter by postulating the existence of what he dubbed the "creation field", or just the "C-field", which had negative pressure in order to be consistent with the conservation of energy and drive the expansion of the universe. These features of the C-field anticipated the later development of cosmic inflation.>>

Chris Peterson wrote:

heehaw wrote:
The American Astronomical Society met in Toronto, Canada, in August 1959, when I was 19 and already an astronomer. At the meeting, Ambartsumian suggested the presence of a blackhole at the center of our Galaxy, and I thought that was the stupidest idea I'd ever heard in my life!

Perhaps you were the better scientist! I guess it depends upon the strength of the evidence that was presented. Certainly, science depends upon a high level of skepticism and a refusal to accept radical new ideas until they are well supported by evidence.

Sometimes scientists get things right by accident. That isn't the mark of good science.

• That's the stupidest idea I'd ever heard in my life!

neufer wrote:

Boomer12k wrote:
Fred Hoyle STILL does not accept the Expanding Universe.

Fred Hoyle died in 2001 never accepting the Big Bang theory.

However, his whole steady state cosmology theory was based upon an Expanding Universe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle#Rejection_of_the_Big_Bang wrote:
<<Hoyle offered an explanation for the appearance of new matter by postulating the existence of what he dubbed the "creation field", or just the "C-field", which had negative pressure in order to be consistent with the conservation of energy and drive the expansion of the universe. These features of the C-field anticipated the later development of cosmic inflation.>>

neufer wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:Sometimes scientists get things right by accident. That isn't the mark of good science.

• That's the stupidest idea I'd ever heard in my life!

Chris Peterson wrote:

neufer wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:
Sometimes scientists get things right by accident. That isn't the mark of good science.

That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard in my life!

Patently false given that you've heard the idea that Shakespeare wasn't the author of Shakespeare!

Niels Bohr wrote:
"We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough."

- Said to Wolfgang Pauli after his presentation of Heisenberg's and Pauli's nonlinear field theory of elementary particles, at Columbia University (1958), as reported by F. J. Dyson in his paper “Innovation in Physics”.

Ann wrote:
What was wrong about Fred Hoyle's Steady State hypothesis was that it postulated that the universe is eternal and unchanging, apart from the fact that it is expanding.

• 1) Cosmic microwave background radiation (including detailed structure).
  
  2) Abundances of helium-4, helium-3, deuterium, and lithium-7 as ratios to the amount of ordinary hydrogen.
  
  3) Detailed observations of the morphology and distribution of galaxies and quasars.
  
  4) Cosmic acceleration.

neufer wrote:1) The Scientific method STARTS with hypotheses (right or wrong) that are compatible with all well established observations.

2) The Scientific method CONTINUES by testing those hypotheses
and then refining, altering, expanding or rejecting those hypotheses.

Thinking that one is smart enough to reject some hypothesis out of hand simply because it is TOO crazy {rather than because it is in clear disagreement with well established observations) is nEVER good science.

Chris Peterson wrote:

neufer wrote:
1) The Scientific method STARTS with hypotheses (right or wrong) that are compatible with all well established observations.

Yes, but that doesn't mean that the formation of a hypothesis is good science. Frequently, it is inspiration, and while that is essential, it isn't scientific and it is wrong far more often than it's right. So when somebody proposes a bold new idea (that ultimately turns out to be correct), that proposition isn't necessarily good science, or even science at all.

(And I'd argue that the scientific method starts with making an observation, not making a hypothesis.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Ambartsumian#Active_galactic_nucleus_.28AGN.29 wrote:
<<It was in the early 1950s when Prof. Victor Ambartsumian (18 September 1908 – 12 August 1996) first raised the issue of the Activity of Nuclei of Galaxies (AGN). In his famous report at the Solvay Conference on Physics (Brussels, 1958) Ambartsumian said that enormous explosions take place in galactic nuclei and as a result a huge amount of mass is expelled. In addition, if this was so, these galactic nuclei must contain bodies of a huge mass and unknown nature. During a break in the session Walter Baade went up to Ambartsumian and said, "Professor Ambartsumian, you have come from the Soviet Union, and I from America. Logically speaking, you should be a materialist, and I an idealist. But what you have just said is nothing other than a pure idealism! It’s fantastic! You speak about some kind of 'non-stellar' objects which no one has seen. So it must be something inexplicable, mysterious."

The idea about the activity of galactic nuclei at first was accepted skeptically and only after many years, under the pressure of observations (the discovery of quasars, radio outbursts of galaxies, consequences of explosions in nuclei, ejection from nuclei, etc.) did it gain recognition. The concept of AGN now is widely accepted.

Ten years after the Solvay conference, at the plenary session of the IAU in Prague, the well-known American astronomer Alan Sandage said, “today, no astronomer would deny the mystery surrounding the nuclei of galaxies or that the first to recognize the rich reward held in this treasury was Viktor Ambartsumian.” As Victor Ambartsumian himself noted, the concept of active galactic nuclei occupies a special place among his scientific ideas. It was proposed by Ambartsumian more than half a century ago and was recognized by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences as revolutionary, on a copernican scale.>>

neufer wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:(And I'd argue that the scientific method starts with making an observation, not making a hypothesis.)

The Scientific method STARTS with hypotheses (right or wrong) that are compatible with all well established observations[/size]...and which are often (but not always) stimulated by some new (though less well established) observations.

APOD Robot wrote:The Galactic Center itself appears on the left and is located about 30,000 light years away towards the constellation of the Archer (Sagittarius).

Boomer12k wrote:

heehaw wrote:The American Astronomical Society met in Toronto, Canada, in August 1959, when I was 19 and already an astronomer. At the meeting, Ambartsumian suggested the presence of a blackhole at the center of our Galaxy, and I thought that was the stupidest idea I'd ever heard in my life!

They laughed in the early 70's when I said there were other planets around stars... I hope you were not one of those who laughed. But don't feel bad... Fred Hoyle STILL does not accept the Expanding Universe.
So we are all in good company...

They nearly KILLED Galileo...


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starsurfer wrote:

APOD Robot wrote:The Galactic Center itself appears on the left and is located about 30,000 light years away towards the constellation of the Archer (Sagittarius).

I thought the centre of the Milky Way was 26,000 light years from Earth?

Jim Leff wrote:I hope this isn't too much of a tangent, but all the talk of dust made me think about how unbelievably sparse even "thick" interstellar dust is.

Per this link in today's APOD, the most abundant interstellar molecule is H2. So I wonder whether even at this extreme sparseness, if a spacecraft going extremely fast - perhaps 50k-100k mph - might gather and use enough H2 to significantly boost its velocity? Or is it still a trivial amount even at those speeds (or an order of magnitude higher)?

Chris Peterson wrote: scientific thinking begins with an observation that suggests a question. That makes much more sense to them than the idea that it somehow starts with a hypothesis, and also makes it much easier for them to apply.

Chris Peterson wrote: I think it's still uncertain if a Bussard ramjet or similar system could work in most interstellar space, where the ISM is very tenuous. It almost certainly could work in regions where the gas density is higher.

Chris Peterson wrote:

neufer wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:
(And I'd argue that the scientific method starts with making an observation, not making a hypothesis.)

The Scientific method STARTS with hypotheses (right or wrong) that are compatible with all well established observations...and which are often (but not always) stimulated by some new (though less well established) observations.

Suit yourself. There is no THE scientific method. I always teach my students that scientific thinking begins with an observation that suggests a question. That makes much more sense to them than the idea that it somehow starts with a hypothesis, and also makes it much easier for them to apply.

Jim Leff wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote: I think it's still uncertain if a Bussard ramjet or similar system could work in most interstellar space, where the ISM is very tenuous. It almost certainly could work in regions where the gas density is higher.

Oh, I wouldn't imagine that current ramjet tech would apply. Just wondering what the total volume of H2 scooped up at such speeds (from a reasonably-sized "scoop".... say <1km in width) might be....in typical space. To compute it from higher density areas would be cheating - I'd think it unlikely that most flight plans could include significant travel through such areas.

Jim Leff wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:
scientific thinking begins with an observation that suggests a question. That makes much more sense to them than the idea that it somehow starts with a hypothesis, and also makes it much easier for them to apply.

That's a distinction without a difference. Even if a hypothesis seemingly springs from deep within the recesses of a person's mind/imagination/intuition, it always stems from observation of some sort at some level. There is no such thing as a purely hermetic hypothesis.