The Big Bang has been very unpopular. It reeks of purpose and is an incitement to theism. And Siegel tells us that it survives only because the evidence rules out all alternatives.
Tag: Ethan Siegel
According to astrophysicist Ethan Siegel, the universe has never truly been empty
But wait. If it was truly empty, it would not exist, right? What we mean by the “universe” is everything that exists. So, if it’s “empty,” nothing exists. Of course, it could always exist as an abstract idea but then it must be the abstract idea of a Being in another dimension.
Ethan Siegel: Largest structures in the universe may not exist
Essentially, if we don’t know whether the structures are real or not, why are we worrying about whether they “defy our present cosmic understanding”? First things first.
Ethan Siegel: Failure to replicate a dark matter experiment is “an incredible success” for the scientific method
Siegel offers an inside look at the details. While the finding is doubtless a success for the scientific method, it must be frustrating for those physicists who need dark matter to exist in order to make cosmology understandable — but can’t find any.
Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel tells us why a multiverse must exist
Siegel: “… if the theory of inflation is a good one, and the data says it is, a multiverse is all but inevitable.” Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon writes to offer a response.
Ethan Siegel tells us why he thinks colonizing super-Earths would end in disaster
Siegel thinks that a rocky planet of more than 30% greater radius than Earth stands a good change of becoming a gas giant in consequence of its size. Earth is the right size to avoid that.
At Forbes: Ethan Siegel offers to tell us how the universe popped into existence from nothing
If we leave physical constraints behind, we are certainly not operating in the only universe we know. But thanks to Ethan for an entertaining close to the evening.
At Forbes: Hawking’s black hole paradox is NOT solved
Ethan Siegel looks at the limitations: But we’re still a long way away from determining exactly where that information goes, and how it gets out of a black hole. Theorists disagree over the validity and soundness of many of the methods that are currently being employed to do these calculations, and no one has even a theoretical prediction for how this information should be encoded by an evaporating black hole, much less how to measure it.
Physicist Rob Sheldon checks out astrophysicist Ethan Siegel for ridiculing Nobelist Roger Penrose
Sheldon: The politicization of science evidently started before Ethan’s graduate schooling, as Hoyle and his post-doc Chandra Wickramasinghe tell in their biographical writings.
Ethan Siegel at Forbes on “finally” making the United States a “scientific nation”
Siegel: “It is a fundamentally misinformative act to present multiple sides of a controversial issue equally when the scientific consensus overwhelmingly favors one perspective.” Actually, consensus is achieved in many ways, including some that contribute to the likelihood that the consensus will be wrong, no matter how many experts believe it. In fact, the surest way to often be wrong is to adopt the very attitude Siegel displays here.
From Ethan Siegel: What if the Big Bang isn’t the beginning of the universe?
Make no mistake, the Big Bang is unpopular in many quarters and an exterminator has long been sought. Here’s the problem: The explanation for an event may be outside the event. In that case, one can’t derive an explanation from within the event.
Ethan Siegel enumerates what we might find, re life on Mars
Siegel: It’s the ultimate nightmare of astrobiologists: that there’s a fascinating history of life to uncover on another world, but we’ll contaminate it with our own organisms before we ever learn the true history of life on that world.
Claim: Physics erases the beginning of the universe
We don’t doubt that 2 + 2 = 4 can be dissolved in like manner, as long as the needed incentive is present. And it’s no secret that a great many cosmologists hate the Big Bang for philosophical reasons.
The ultimate confidence trick in science
As played by astrophysicist and Forbes columnist Ethan Siegel here and dissected at The Stream.
Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel offers to explain how the universe made us
The proponents of chance origins tend to make it look less likely all the time.