Further to The latest no-Big Bang theory relies on a quantum fluid of hypothetical massless particles (here), physicist Rob Sheldon kindly writes again to say,
The “study” goes through 3 pages of messy algebra and then introduces a simplification in the last 4 paragraphs to find the age of the universe. In the last paragraph, it makes a bad mathematical approximation to that simplified age, shows that this bad math turns a finite number into infinity, and then trumpets this conclusion as removal of the Big Bang.
In other words, there’s 3 pages of snow job before the sleight-of-hand in the last paragraph, just to throw the proletariat off the scent. This is as irresponsible as it gets, and if I were a reviewer, I would have rejected it outright for intentional obfuscation and misrepresentation. Very clearly the paper is a pretext for the title and abstract, which is the only part of the paper likely to be read by journos and the public.
My only consolation was that it wasn’t published in Phys Rev, but in a “second-tier” journal. But if this is the future of peer-reviewed physics, we are in deep trouble.
Maybe the solution is not to call it science.
Some of us aren’t sure that post-empiricism even works in science.
But what should we call this stuff?
See also: Big Bang exterminator wanted, will train
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News, it is beginning to be natural philosophy again . . . and not in a good sense. KF
“Maybe the solution is not to call it science.”
Amen 😉
to paraphrase Paul when he wrote to the church in Corinth 1,965 years ago:
as to:
In regards to the finite becoming infinite, Dr. Dembski, with PhDs in both mathematics and theology, states,,
Of note: I hold ‘growing large without measure’ to be a lesser quality infinity than a fraction in which the denominator goes to zero. The main principle for why I hold growing large without measure to be a ‘lesser quality infinity’ is stated at the 4:30 minute mark of the following video:
Thus materialism cannot reach an actual infinity by adding one member to another. Yet if materialists try to use the other method of reaching infinity, by forming ‘a fraction in which the denominator goes to zero, then they have the insoluble problem of a finite material object having to first become non-existent before it can become infinite. Thus the materialist, with no resource to appeal to rescue the finite material object from the nothingness it must go through, is back to square one in trying to explain why there is something rather than nothing.
The Christian does not suffer from this insoluble problem as the materialist does because the Christian has a ‘rescue devise’ to save Jesus Christ from the nothingness that would result from His being permanently separated from God in the ‘nothingness of death’:
Moreover, we actually have very good empirical evidence that Christ was resurrected from death by God so as to, as Dr. Dembski put it, ‘unite a finite humanity within a newfound infinity’. For one example of the evidence, the 3-D holographic/photographic negative image on the Shroud of Turin is now found to be formed by a quantum process. The image was not formed by a classical process:
Verse and Music:
For what it’s worth, the ‘graviton’ they use in their model is “massive,” not “massless.” There are two parts to the paper. Using their model they come up with a figure for dark energy that is reasonable. The second part is more problematic, or, let’s say, tentative. They use an approximation method that they consider good, but end the paper saying that they now what to use a more accurate ‘perturbation’ method.