I appreciate the scientists’ honesty. When asked about big G and time invariance, he says he just takes it on faith that it has been the same forever. If more people would admit their leaps I think the theistic schism would be far more shallow.
It might also be nice if cosmologists stopped claiming their Big Bang "Theory" wasn't more accurately termed a mere Hypothesis. IIRC, 12 out of 13 predictions failing and necessitating "model" "tweaks" is not a fantastic track record for a Theory, which are supposed to robustly survive investigation.
> The Big Bang is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. .. A wide range of empirical evidence strongly favors the Big Bang event, which is now widely accepted. ...
> The Big Bang models offer a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of observed phenomena, including the abundances of the light elements, the cosmic microwave background, large-scale structure, and Hubble's law.
> Precise modern models of the Big Bang appeal to various exotic physical phenomena that have not been observed in terrestrial laboratory experiments or incorporated into the Standard Model of particle physics. Of these features, dark matter is currently the subject of most active laboratory investigations. ... Viable, quantitative explanations for such phenomena are still being sought. These are unsolved problems in physics.
In reality it's just that the output of the procedural generation routines doesn't quite match that of the primary simulation loop. A classic worldbuilding inconsistency.
The model failing is a question of how accurately you want it to model the world.
Many laypersons have absolutely no conception of how accurate those "failing" models were.
A good example is Newtonian physics. Strictly speaking it is a failing model, after all, under certain conditions and if you look very closely ot falls apart. Yet, every bridge you ever walked on and rhe most precise mechanical watches ever made were all only calculated using newtonian physics. It is still accurate enough for most tasks on earth.
A model can still be useful despite its limitations, you just need to know those. People who are like "Ha! It is not accurate!" often have their own mental models of the world which are magnitudes worse, miss key bits or get other parts completely wrong (despite clear evidence to the opposite). As if a morbidly obese person for whom even walking presents a challenge made fun of an Olympic silver medalist for only getting second place. "Ha! You didn't get it 100% right so now my fringe theory that fails to even explain the most basic observations must be seen as equally valid!"
So if you say it fails, consider how many digits after the comma it was accurate before it failed and how many digits your own theory would manage.
Figure 1 in the paper helps contextualize the numbers better.
The paper is https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1681-7575/ae570f
Source: https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2026/04/nist-weighs-my... (4 points, 12 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47796892
[flagged]
"Please don't fulminate."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
how is this at all related to TFA
I appreciate the scientists’ honesty. When asked about big G and time invariance, he says he just takes it on faith that it has been the same forever. If more people would admit their leaps I think the theistic schism would be far more shallow.
It might also be nice if cosmologists stopped claiming their Big Bang "Theory" wasn't more accurately termed a mere Hypothesis. IIRC, 12 out of 13 predictions failing and necessitating "model" "tweaks" is not a fantastic track record for a Theory, which are supposed to robustly survive investigation.
We can literally observe cosmic microwave background and it fits our prediction that the universe was denser and hotter. It is a scientific theory.
You might be confusing the established big bang with the more speculative cosmic inflation model. They're very closely related.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
> The Big Bang is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. .. A wide range of empirical evidence strongly favors the Big Bang event, which is now widely accepted. ...
> The Big Bang models offer a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of observed phenomena, including the abundances of the light elements, the cosmic microwave background, large-scale structure, and Hubble's law.
> Precise modern models of the Big Bang appeal to various exotic physical phenomena that have not been observed in terrestrial laboratory experiments or incorporated into the Standard Model of particle physics. Of these features, dark matter is currently the subject of most active laboratory investigations. ... Viable, quantitative explanations for such phenomena are still being sought. These are unsolved problems in physics.
In reality it's just that the output of the procedural generation routines doesn't quite match that of the primary simulation loop. A classic worldbuilding inconsistency.
The model failing is a question of how accurately you want it to model the world.
Many laypersons have absolutely no conception of how accurate those "failing" models were.
A good example is Newtonian physics. Strictly speaking it is a failing model, after all, under certain conditions and if you look very closely ot falls apart. Yet, every bridge you ever walked on and rhe most precise mechanical watches ever made were all only calculated using newtonian physics. It is still accurate enough for most tasks on earth.
A model can still be useful despite its limitations, you just need to know those. People who are like "Ha! It is not accurate!" often have their own mental models of the world which are magnitudes worse, miss key bits or get other parts completely wrong (despite clear evidence to the opposite). As if a morbidly obese person for whom even walking presents a challenge made fun of an Olympic silver medalist for only getting second place. "Ha! You didn't get it 100% right so now my fringe theory that fails to even explain the most basic observations must be seen as equally valid!"
So if you say it fails, consider how many digits after the comma it was accurate before it failed and how many digits your own theory would manage.