Yuber wrote:Then again, wormholes are still theoretical(I think).
Hypothetical, not theoretical. That's one of the places where the incompatibilities between our large-scale and small-scale physics models cause trouble. At some point, you have to change from one set of equations to the other, and the math is all wrong when you do and the whole thing blows up in your face.
Black holes amaze me as well, although I know very little about physics in general. A star that collapsed in on itself that's such a massive object that it nearly ripped a hole in space-time itself is pretty fucking intense.
Anything heavy enough that light itself can't escape from it is damn impressive.
It's pretty cool that the Higgs boson(or something similar to it) was discovered using the Large Hardon Collider(jethuth chritht!), but I know nothing about particle physics. Have there been any big discoveries or changes in the standard model as a result of its discovery?
Actually, the Higgs was the last major test of the Standard Model. It was the final predicted particle, and it's observation completes the checklist.
Which is all irrelevant to the fact that they are fundamentally incomparable to the modern scientific method, and cannot be used for character assassination on modern science.
Thanks, that was the exact point I was trying to make. What was considered hard science hundreds or thousands of years ago can't compare to the standards we have today, so you're just re-phrasing what I said earlier. I'm not trying to "assassinate" any theories. Despite earlier people not having the same scientific method/standards we have today, the 2 debunked theories(and many others) I mentioned earlier were considered absolute fact a long time ago. Of course they can't be called theories today; science is so different now than it was hundreds of years ago that it's even defined differently now.
Must've misunderstood, because you seemed to be saying "since the things these greek dudes said and took on faith without testing were wildly wrong, maybe these modern things that have been tested to death are wildly wrong too, so why trust science?"
There's so many things wrong with this statement I don't know where to begin.
You must also, of course, consider what constitutes advanced. In the ice age, just having motherfucking fire was state-of-the-art. A few wooden ships would make you gods among men.
Just a few decades or so ago, we thought the Sumerians created the first civilization, so I think it's silly of you to dismiss the idea that humans could've created civilizations during the end of the ice age.
Of COURSE they had civilizations. They had civilizations DURING the ice age.
Homo-sapiens have been around for 200,000 years, and we've explored such a tiny percentage of our oceans that it's ridiculous to rule out the possibility that there could be some truth in myths of incredibly old civilizations. Troy was once thought to be 100% mythical, but as we know now it's a real city. I'm not saying the Atlantis myth itself is true(that specific myth sounds ridiculous), but it's good to keep an open mind when it comes to things like the history of civilization because so much of our history has been lost. "Advanced" to me means agriculture, writing, math/advanced building skills, organized government/society, and of course the tools to build large structures. Also Gil, being condescending doesn't automatically validate your arguments. I'm talking about hypothetical, unknown stuff here, aka speculating.
Well, for one thing, you're assuming all ocean bed is created equal. The coastal areas, where such civilizations would've been flooded out of, HAVE been quite extensively mapped.
No one had an advanced civilization right in the center of the ocean, thousands of miles from any major land masses.
Defining advanced helps a lot.
Typically, whenever Atlantis comes up, it's all "Man, we used to have antigrav devices we stole from aliens, I bet they dug it all up and hid it in Area 51" and then I want to kill everyone. So I defaulted to cynical and irritable.
Especially when we have stuff like Pompeii around.
A city so well-preserved by the volcanic ash that flooded it, we can even
read the graffiti left on it's walls ... which mostly just proves that two millennia later, people are the same as ever. Seriously, there's even the 1st-century version of "for a good time, call" scrawled onto the walls, along with an awful lot of "Soandso was here" and "soandso + somesuch".
I don't know nearly enough to argue with you about dark matter or energy. Dark matter probably is just a part of gravity we don't understand, and I've heard it described as the invisible scaffolding that holds everything together. I can't even begin to discuss dark energy; it confuses the shit out of me. I'm just an average layman when it comes to physics.
Dark energy confuses the shit out of everyone.
But we understand gravity well enough on the large scale that dark matter probably has to exist in some form. Which is why it's being taken so seriously, despite sounding absurd at first glance("So you're saying there's this shit that we can't observe in any way, and it's not only everywhere in space, it's actually MOST of the matter in space? Right, now pull the other leg."). I do not envy anyone trying to figure that one out.