Space Sciences
Is it OK to say "evolves"?
Posted by ER on 3/16/2008 4:32:07 PM
In Reply to: Amazing! I have lived long enough to see the beginning of the death of the "Big Bang Theory". posted by Jacob on 3/16/2008 2:20:33 PM
I haven't read the article, so I don't know if the implication of the title is that the Big Bang theory is incorrect, or if the physical evidence for the theory is disappearing as the universe evolves. I suspect it's the latter.

The latter possibility raises some interesting anthropic issues. Since science depends on evidence, if the evidence disappears, can the phenomenon be saved? Or is it simply enough to know that the evidence ONCE existed.

The evidence of the Big Bang, isotopic abundances, the 3degK microwave background and the correlation of redshifted spectra and extragalactic brightnesses, could conceivably all go away if the universe evolved sufficently. It is conceivable that some future cosmologists would not be able to collect any evidence for the Big Bang.
Does it make any sense to say that if the evidence is missing in principle, you can't prove something happened? Is this some kind of Schroedinger's cat in reverse kind of problem? Maybe we shouldn't throw those cosmology books away, the future may need them!

And of course, the major issue, what does Nick Hoffman have to do with any of this?

Table of contents
Replies:
Message URL / 65.10.150.164 / Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)