Science does science:NOW with more science!

[BerenTebogo]

Meant about the origin of the uni, <_< we're done with the balloons.

Hahaha okay, apologies then.

[Moss]

The amount of work I don't do on any one day could fill a very large book, lol. Also I'm desperately sick since the weekend (on antibiotics) so I have easily enough time and brain power for this stuff, but not enough for reading papers / doing work.

Also I've decided on LSU for their Numerical Relativity program that is interfaced with their MASSIVE HPC center. They're pulling 175 teraflops/s on stuff I'll have access to, it's so nice. Looks like I'll be starting work right away on self-force problem in extreme mass-ratio systems. Eventually working towards using EMRI solutions as approximations of full NR up to some high degree of accuracy with orders of magnitude lower computational time.

How's your work going these days? Anything fun and exciting?

I am a grad student here fyi. No relation to those departments/programs tho.

[BerenTebogo]

I am a grad student here fyi. No relation to those departments/programs tho.

Yay, friends.

[Kuya]

One of the most annoying things about trying to explain the origin of something is how the human mind seems to jump straight to the question of "but what came before that!?" as if it were in a frenzied dash to place god's name on that.

[Salodin]

What does God have to do with that? Human curiosity makes us jump that far.

[Clash Perez]

It may not have anything directly to do with it, but it's frequently used as an attempt at a "Gotcha" question by those pushing that ol' time religion.

[Salodin]

Doesn't mean it isn't an honest question. Who wouldn't love to know "what came first?"

[Kuya]

Human curiosity should make you want to understand inflation and the big bang. It's a strange thing for people to want to jump straight to the question of what happened before or what is beyond the observable universe when they don't even understand the big bang, inflation and the present scope of our observable universe.

It seems to be that people love the unknown as it allows an opportunity to place personal belief where facts are scarce.

[Tajin]

You're the only one talking about it :/

[Uzor]

The way i understand it is that nothing exists outside of the universe(s). No time, no matter, no nothing. Therefor, asking what's outside and before is somewhat irrelevant, as the human mind can't really comprehend that concept. Essentialy, time for our universe started with Big Bang.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm fascinated by it.

[Niiro]

Human curiosity should make you want to understand inflation and the big bang. It's a strange thing for people to want to jump straight to the question of what happened before or what is beyond the observable universe when they don't even understand the big bang, inflation and the present scope of our observable universe.

It seems to be that people love the unknown as it allows an opportunity to place personal belief where facts are scarce.

I have no idea what you're trying to say.

If it wasn't for that curiosity we'd still think the stars were pinholes in a blanket.

Questions we don't know the answer to are the most important questions to ask, just because this particular question is unlikely to be answered doesn't mean it's not worth thinking about.

[Tajin]

He's not wrong tho. We should understand big bangs and gang bangs before venturing outside the strip clup. He's going at it wrong by grouping everybody in the religious zealot side.

[SephYuyX]

God created the big bang loopdeloop bounce.

[Blubbartron]

I think the problem is that most people are not educated enough about the big bang to understand how much we don't know about it. I think for most of these less educated people, they simply accept the big bang as "true" and move on (not unlike people who accept religion as true). When you think you understand something in a chain of events, the logical progression is to ask what happened before this other thing you understand. That's caused by the human brain being a pattern recognition machine, and throughout the entirety of our existence we see cause and effect everywhere. Curiosity - the "but why" mode of children - is exactly this concept of following causal chains backwards.

This quote seems relevant: "We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance."

[Salodin]

Human curiosity should make you want to understand inflation and the big bang. It's a strange thing for people to want to jump straight to the question of what happened before or what is beyond the observable universe when they don't even understand the big bang, inflation and the present scope of our observable universe.

It seems to be that people love the unknown as it allows an opportunity to place personal belief where facts are scarce.

Why should curiosity make me want to stop at the first step? And why does wanting/wishing I knew more about it automatically make you jump on the intelligent creator spiel. I know why we don't know about before the big bang, and I'm aware we might never know because science; but that doesn't mean I'm not curious to the answer of a question asked by humans since probably before recorded history.

I'm really surprised you of all people make that jump unprovoked. You really have no clue to what curiosity means, if you think a person can't contemplate existence with out throwing God in it.

[Psion]

This quote seems relevant: "We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance."

Thankfully, as the area of a landmass increases, it's shore to area ratio goes down. :D (unless it's some freaky island that's nothing but shore like those artificial ones in the shape of stars or cats or whatever.)

[Mythe_Seraph]

This conversation is starting to head towards human conditioning, which is way less interesting than space.

[Xno Kappa]

It was only a matter of time until someone tried to bait and derail this thread to an argument of god's existence.

More intriguing space talk please.

[Kuya]

[kareface]

The amount of work I don't do on any one day could fill a very large book, lol. Also I'm desperately sick since the weekend (on antibiotics) so I have easily enough time and brain power for this stuff, but not enough for reading papers / doing work.

Also I've decided on LSU for their Numerical Relativity program that is interfaced with their MASSIVE HPC center. They're pulling 175 teraflops/s on stuff I'll have access to, it's so nice. Looks like I'll be starting work right away on self-force problem in extreme mass-ratio systems. Eventually working towards using EMRI solutions as approximations of full NR up to some high degree of accuracy with orders of magnitude lower computational time.

How's your work going these days? Anything fun and exciting?

Same-old shit, different weather. I like the program here a lot, but it's not perfect. The good instructors are amazing, and the bad ones don't care because they bring in enough money in grants they'll never get fired.

For example I managed to get my first C, had an instructor that didn't curve at all, gave exams with a mean of less than 30%, and couldn't explain his way out of a paper bag. He failed a sizable portion of the class, I think it was ~35% a D or below. He taught with power point (why would you ever?) and he had the grad students make the slides and didn't seem to prepare for lecture in the slightest. There was seriously times where he was surprised by what was on the slides.

However, as terrible as he was, I've also had some of the best instructors here as well. One of my instructors works at CERN in the Anti-Hydrogen trapping group. He was very good about teaching us to think like a physicists, had really interesting anecdotes and related what we were learning in the context of the research he preforms. So far I've only had one terrible instructor, the rest have been solid. I've been taking care to avoid taking classes that have people like him teaching tho.

I took some time off researching when I got down here to focus on getting to know the people here and my way around the place. I'm planing to find a lab next year, once I refresh myself on C++ and attempt to learn a little bit of R over the break.

Not to derail the thread, I agree with the comments about michio kaku. I went to seem him talk once, he's a hack. I don't think we should demonize every scientist in the public spotlight, but he's not even really talking about physics most of the time. He talks about what he imagines will happen in the future based on slivers of research that's being conducted now. Best part is he didn't even talk for most of it, he played played a clip from a poorly produced cable TV show he was involved with. He's just in it to sell books.