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Originally Posted by madbadgalaxyman
I still remain unconvinced about the idea that reliable information about the nature of the universe can be obtained, in the sense of "information very likely to be true", from the analysis of the microwave background which is said to be a relic of the big bang.
If you observe a pattern in the background radiation and then you come up with a model to account for it; why not come up with another model which accounts for the radiation, or another one, or another one....(and so on, and so on, till you have created a billion different models, all of them equally likely to be true)
As we know, theorists are very good at coming up with multiple models, all of which they swear are true.
Only problem is, observations usually disprove most of them.
Could the study of the distribution and polarization of the microwave background radiation be a bit like gazing at the clouds and seeing patterns in them?
Yeah, we observe patterns, but can we really interpret them and say what they imply about the cosmos?
We have plenty of "cosmology fanatics" in IIS....so I would like to know if they think that the current interpretations of the microwave background are mere hypotheses which could easily be disproven when further facts come to light?!?
Cosmologists seem to be people who adopt the manner and tone of "true believers"; why do they seem to be unable to adopt a skeptical tone in relation to their theories?
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Very true what you are saying, and I'm glad to see that some other people are realising this as well,
see here...
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Originally Posted by New Scientist May 22, 2004
The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed—inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.
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