Welcome joyous readers. Thanks for being here.
OK to get with the practical first. The Santana concert was awesome. His son did a fine warm up set and Carlos played most of my favorite classics, the right amount of new stuff and did several unexpected bits that I loved (a Jimi Hendrix tribute and many licks interspersed that were references to old songs and TV jingles).
Now to my science blog for this Friday.
What we don’t know.
I have on many occasions recently remarked about what a great time to be alive. We are more peaceful and more free than we have ever been as a species on this little blue gem of a world. We have in the past few decades discovered an amazing amount of information about our Universe, and our understanding is growing at an ever increasing rate.
Further, I occasionally debate creationists and I regularly run into the argument that science doesn’t know everything leading to the “God of the Gaps” argument.
So, what don’t we know? A lot, it turns out. I was recently reading an article in Scientific American which detailed a current controversy in particle physics. Apparently physicists have been looking for something called “supersymetry”. It is a crucial component of the “standard model” which is the assumed explanation for the nature of matter at the very small level. The Large Hadron Collider was built in part to find “supersymetry”.
Well . . . we’re still waiting. The LHC has found some wonderful and amazing things (the Higgs Bosun) but it hasn’t (yet) found “supersymetry”. There will be a higher power run next year and scientists are hopeful that then they will find what they seek.
If they don’t find supersymetry they will have to scrap many of their cherished theories. This begs the question “Do we really know anything?” If new discoveries can completely trash assumed reality than how stable is reality? Do we really know anything?
The comforting answer is “Yes, we know quite a lot.” Our understanding is expanding. It is not yet complete and there is much left to learn. But the fact that our scientific world is still open to ignorance is a great sign that we are in good hands. At times in the past the scientific community has become intrenched in it’s own dogma and rigid in it’s beliefs.
Today’s scientific community is being accused of just that but politicians and others with a political ax to grind. However, looking at how much is changing in the science world, how many formerly cherished theories are being dumped into the trash indicates that currently science is on the right track. Our current crop of scientists are eagerly throwing out ideas that no longer have validity. That is how science should be done. New information brings new theories.
. . . and no, there is nothing to suggest that evolution and natural selection are not the way we all got here.
Never mix red wine with Oodo, but cider is fine.
Earth Year 2014
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