Let's study ID: what science does (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, October 31, 2021, 18:31 (901 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: "How do you think about scientific discoveries? Are they additive? If so, we scientists can expect further understanding as Dawkins writes, even as I disagree with his opinions."

Look at this:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211025172114.htm

"Physicists looking for signs of primordial gravitational waves by sifting through the earliest light in the cosmos -- the cosmic microwave background (CMB) -- have reported their findings: still nothing.

"But far from being a dud, the latest results from the BICEP3 experiment at the South Pole have tightened the bounds on models of cosmic inflation, a process that in theory explains several perplexing features of our universe and which should have produced gravitational waves shortly after the universe began.

"'Once-promising models of inflation are now ruled out," said Chao-Lin Kuo, a BICEP3 principal investigator

***

"The results rule out a number of inflation models, including some popular older models and some versions of newer ones motivated by string theory, says Silverstein. The findings suggest that the correct model will be slightly more complicated that those that have been ruled out, although there is still a wide range of viable alternatives. "It's not as though we're going back to the drawing board," Silverstein says, but the results "help us focus."

"As more data comes in from BICEP3 and its immediate successor, the BICEP Array, as well as from other projects, physicists will start to get clues that will help focus their search for better models of inflation even more. Still, Ahmed says, they may have to wait until CMB-S4, a project currently under review at the Department of Energy, to get clearer answers. CMB-S4 will deploy the equivalent of 18 BICEP3 experiments -- or more, Ahmed says -- and will draw heavily on Department of Energy laboratory researchers and expertise, including ideas developed for BICEP3. "It'll take a decade to build up this thing," he says, "but it's starting to take shape.'"

Comment: this is how science refines its theories, and you know it. Guth invented the theory of early inflation because it fits the facts known at the time. Research has supported it Time to retract this quote of yours, caused by your anti-Dawkins feelings:

dhw: I know your views. Your “not absolutely proven as yet” is on the same level of blinkered faith as Dawkins’ hope: “If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand it and to embrace it within the natural.” And the two of you call yourselves scientists.

As a non-scientist are you out of your depth?