So actually, the U.S. had the second highest score on that question, behind South Korea. Furthermore, the U.S. consistently performed on par or higher vs. the other countries/regions for the remaining questions.
The real outlier for the U.S. on this survey was the question about evolution -- only 48% of Americans got that right, significantly behind the rest of the pack.
That's obviously because a lot of people have religious beliefs that make more sense to them than evolution. It's not that they haven't heard of evolution, but that they reject it for the simpler theory found in their 3000 year old book.
IME, that's because most people haven't ever heard any reasonable explanation of evolution. They honestly believe that evolution is just "random things happened and fish decided to walk on land". That "animals wanted to see so they randomly got eyes". Given that explanation of evolution of course they're going to reject it - that explanation is nonsense.
Creation is only simpler if you exclude the axiom of having some omnipotent creator in the first place.
Where the percentage correct is significantly below 50%, it seems like there are very widespread myths being accepted, possibly dangerously. Malaysia scored 8% and Russia scored 18% on the second to last question (Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria) - that's scary to me from a public health standpoint.
> The real outlier for the U.S. on this survey was the question about evolution...
Which, the way the question was worded, could reasonably be attributed to people just affirming their belief in creation irrespective of their actual ignorance of the accepted scientific explanation for the origin of humans.
On the question of whether or not the universe began with a huge explosion, they say the correct answer is "true".
Is that actually correct? This was before cosmic inflation, so the whole universe was very small at the instant of the Big Bang, and so wasn't it actually a small explosion?
Cosmic inflation changed the expansion rate of the "explosion", but this doesn't mean there wasn't an explosion.
Cosmic inflation changed the density ratio between spacetime and mass/energy, but the entirety of the universe's mass/energy came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang. So yes, some explosion that.
Remember about this particular explosion that it wasn't an explosion of mass/energy into the empty space of a pre-existing universe, but an explosion of mass/energy and spacetime into nothing -- the Big Bang was space, time and mass/energy.
In other words, there was no "before" before the Big Bang, and there was no "outside" outside the Big Bang. The Big Bang was everything.
Why is that scary? If we assume it is indeed a matter of belief the 50/50 chance is not that bad. Now, I suppose both you and me think about it more as a matter of science, but how many people understand what science is (and why), how the scientific method is applied and so on? Well fewer than 50%, I'd guess. US, Europe or Africa, any place.
Do you have any evidence for this? In my experience people with largely religious principles tempered by compassion are just as reliable as self-identified rationalists.
There has been plenty of atheistic terrorism in the last hundred years...
The history of religion? The Inquisition, as just one example among many? Being absolutely sure that God is on your side is a powerful drug.
> There has been plenty of atheistic terrorism in the last hundred years ...
Yes, but it can't compare to the well-established historical connection between religion and war.
One example -- try to imagine recent Indian history without the effect of religion, without Muslims and Hindus killing each other at every opportunity, true to the present day.
Another example -- 9/11 wasn't an attack by have-nots against haves, it was a largely successful effort by religious fanatics to snuff out some infidels.
Sure, the Inquisition was bad. But so was the gulag. Seems like the 'tempered by compassion' thing is more important than the left hand side, doesn't it?
"Moreover, the chief complaint against religion -- that it is history's prime instigator of intergroup conflict -- does not withstand scrutiny. Religious issues motivate only a small minority of recorded wars. The Encyclopedia of Wars surveyed 1,763 violent conflicts across history; only 123 (7 percent) were religious. A BBC-sponsored "God and War" audit, which evaluated major conflicts over 3,500 years and rated them on a 0-to-5 scale for religious motivation (Punic Wars = 0, Crusades = 5), found that more than 60 percent had no religious motivation. Less than 7 percent earned a rating greater than 3. There was little religious motivation for the internecine Russian and Chinese conflicts or the world wars responsible for history's most lethal century of international bloodshed."
> There is absolutely no historical connection between religion and war.
Absolutely false -- you have grossly overstated your claim and even contradicted your own sources. You have posted statistics that say either 7% or 40% (depending on source) of wars are caused by religion, and then blithely made a claim that contradicts your own evidence.
If your claim were true, having religious beliefs would produce a reduction in warlike tendencies and violence in religious believers, a claim that is obviously false. If you want to argue that religion doesn't lead to violence in and of itself, you have to ignore India, 9/11, every bombed abortion clinic, and dozens of other examples from the recent past, to say nothing of history. You would have to live in perpetual denial of reality.
Wow, an article on religious violence goes over religious violence. Who would have guessed?
7% of all wars in history have been religiously motivated (note, that is not by body count: if we went that way the atheistic russian and
Chinese civil wars plus nationalist world wars would make them a round-off error.)
Do some religious people commit violence? Yep. So do some environmentalists. Is the problem environmentalism? So do socialists. Is the problem socialism?
I get it: HackerNews commenters generally don't like religion, mainly on first-principle and emotional grounds. But there is no reason, logically, to exaggerate the dangers of religion, nor to deny the observable benefits.
> 7% of all wars in history have been religiously motivated
You're picking data to suit your beliefs. Another of your own sources said the number was 40%. In any case, this contradicts your prior claim that: "There is absolutely no historical connection between religion and war." That's quite false, however you cut it.
> Do some religious people commit violence? Yep. So do some environmentalists.
You're moving the goal posts and posing an absurd argument -- not unlike the child molester who says, "So? Who's perfect?"
> But there is no reason, logically, to exaggerate the dangers of religion, nor to deny the observable benefits.
I can't possibly exaggerate the dangers of religion in a country that (because of religious belief) rejects science and critical thinking, murders health workers, and tries to force Creationism into public school classrooms as though it's science.
And what benefits did you have in mind? A way to control the behavior of people who aren't very smart and need to have their hand held as they cross the busy street of life?
Quote: "In a 2013 meta-analysis, led by Professor Miron Zuckerman, of 63 scientific studies about IQ and religiosity, a negative relation between intelligence and religiosity was found in 53 out of 63 ..."
You are the one picking data. The reality is that non-religious, even restricting to the more tightly defined atheist, people are responsible for more death and suffering than religious people. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. End of discussion.
Religious people are happier and more moral. They are less intelligent, for sure, but there is no correlation between intelligence and morality. Furthermore, since there are far more religious people in the world than non-relgious people, in absolute terms there are more intelligent religious people than intelligent non-religious people.
Good times are to be had outside the anti-religious bubble most people swim in here, you should come on out.
> If anything, atheism has stronger correlation with wars and violence than religion has ...
"Atheism?" You're absurdly arguing that every war not started by a recognized religion is started by atheists. You're overlooking the fact that a non-religious war is most often fought by people with religious beliefs -- not atheists.
> USSR was an atheist state
Oh, do learn some history. By that reasoning, prohibition stopped Americans from drinking, and laws against prostitution prevent sex workers from plying their trade.
Do you know the term "self-reference"? This conversation has a big element of self-reference. You're defending religion for a reason other than a dispassionate pursuit of truth, and you're not very bright. You represent the I.Q. norm that's been scientifically established for religious people.
If your arguments were more than paper-thin and self-contradicting, if you had the requisite intellect to construct substantial arguments, you wouldn't have religious beliefs and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Self-reference.
I didn't blame it on Islam, I attributed it to religious extremism, something the vast majority of Muslims reject. That attribution is absolutely correct and supported by an unbiased analysis of the events.
> Are you also claiming that religious extremism is worse than non-religious extremism?
No, only that a prior poster's claim that religions have no connection to wars is false. This is easily established by reading the thread's contents instead of inventing views for people.
Wasn't a major reason they were pissed off by the US presence in Saudi Arabia that some very major holy sites of their religion are there (such as Mecca), and they objected to having infidels near such sites?
That's probably an oversimplification. The Saudi government's gobsmacking flagrant corruption was a powerful motivator for bin Laden, and religion is a vector for opposition to the Saudi state. And there's no question that the US helps keep the Saudi government in power.
The original stated objection of AlQ was indeed to remove US presence from Muslim holy sites, but Lawrence Wright's book on what happened (for example) makes it pretty clear that the religious stuff was more emblematic of the real problem than it was the real problem itself.
What worries me more is people who believe the world is going to end in their lifetimes. How can we plan for the long-term future, as a species, with that kind of worldview?
To me the worst part is on page 25. Only about 30% of Americans understand scientific inquiry. I believe this is the root of the anti-science undercurrent in mainstream American society.
The table on page 23 shows the US tying or beating all other sampled countries for % correct in most of the basic science pop-quiz questions. How does this mesh with the widely-repeated statistics of US math and science education ranking 10th, 20th, or lower in the world? Is it because the answers come from the general population rather than students?
> Is it because the answers come from the general population rather than students?
I believe that is the case. Those studies you mention generally use results of standardized tests taken by students. For what it's worth I'm not convinced the methodologies used by those studies are very good.
I speak only as someone who was raised in a somewhat alternative upbringing. I wouldn't describe it as anti-science, but perhaps more critical of science. I thought moving away from those rural areas would bring me to see things differently, but overall anything claiming to be science, especially once you get into the more controversial subjects, seems to be more corrupted than nearly any industry which could impact society half as much. There almost seems to be a religious faith in certain bodies of self-claimed scientist. Funding, the lack of sharing their findings and sources has only embraced what I once thought I would see differently. Science is anything but, and the only one I trust is myself. I will not accept summerization of findings from the current community unless it agrees with traditional though or what I can come to understand myself.
This is exactly what I mean. Science is not a religion. It is not a faith. Calling it that betrays a lack of understanding of the scientific method. The scientific method is not perfect and there are worrisome trends in modern practices of science (see the recent story about p-values being misused) but this is the sort of thinking that leads people to believe in nonsense like psychics, dowsing, homeopathy, anti-vaccine propaganda, etc.
Then in regards to time and effort invested, I would say many of the very critical parties I've met are doing it right. Scientist by-and-large are doing it wrong, in my opinion. There are parties still upheld by the climate debate which still refuse to share the data and methods they used to declare their findings. I don't care which side of the fence you're on, that's bullshit and can only be evidence of manipulation.
That statement is a non-sequitur. It _could_ be interpreted as evidence of manipulation, but that's hardly the only possible explanation. As much as we all wish science was given all the funding it needs and scientists wouldn't have to resort to hoarding information to protect their turf, that's not the world we live in.
Somewhat related: I've found in my general experiences that many people don't know what a scientific theory is. They think it means a guess. For example, a lot of people I've talked to think the Big Bang "Theory" is a work of fiction someone invented.
I've found that among a lot of the people I talk to there's this severe, fundamental lack of understanding around how science works. Not a lack of scientific knowledge per se; just a misunderstanding of science's modus operandi.
I once explained to my (very argumentative) ex that when most people use words like "hypothesis" or "theory" they basically mean "guess." He was shocked and then said something like "that explains a lot of conversations I have had..." Of course, he meant their scientific definition, not remotely what most people meant when arguing with him.
Fact: In science, an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed.
Law: A descriptive generalization about how some aspect of the natural world behaves under stated circumstances.
Hypothesis: A testable statement about the natural world that can be used to build more complex inferences and explanations.
Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.
"Massive objects are attracted to each other by the force of gravity." == Scientific Fact.
"Objects in motion remain in motion. For every force there is an equal an opposite reaction. Force is mass times acceleration." == Scientific Law (Newton's Laws of Motion).
"The bending of space under the influence of gravity can cause light to curve around massive objects." == Scientific Hypothesis (Verified by Eddington's 1919 solar eclipse observations).
All of the above (and a whole lot more) put together == General Theory of Relativity.
>Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.
...that can be wrong and often are replaced by better theories as more tests and better explanations came out.
Science is based in doubt. If you are too sure of a scientific theory, you are missing what science really is about and what you need is religion.
Falsifiability is a feature of every element of science. Something that is not falsifiable isn't science. Period.
But a Theory is not a guess. It is a framework built from individual pieces, some of which may be hypotheses (effectively guesses) that have been tested and found to hold within the larger structure of that framework.
The reason that theories are not referred to as "guesses" is because there is, in theory (pun intended), an enormous chasm of evidence between a theory, and a guess/hypothesis.
Nothing is known with absolute certainty. What is the point is referring to everything as a "guess" simply because it isn't known for certain? Context is important here.
sigh ...take a moment to re-read what I wrote. Then take a moment to re-read what you wrote.
Newton's LAWS of Motion are not a THEORY. They are a descriptive generalization about how gravitation behaves under stated circumstances. Those circumstances being slow speeds and large masses. In those circumstances, they are not wrong. They are a generalization. The THEORY of General Relativity contains Newton's LAWS of motion as a part of the overall framework.
Why? would you say, quantum mechanics theory is a universal truth, a fact, or just a very good guess? Because general relativity is also a theory, but both theories cannot be true in our universe as they contradict.
It's the same with almost any natural science theory. Theories try to be very good aproximations of the truth, until a better guess comes out.
Everyone, please stop pretending you aren't intentionally assigning different meanings to the same words. Put substance in your disagreement, not wordplay.
What you mean by "guess" isn't how any scientist would interpret "guess" in this context, and that what you call a "guess" is a rather glib and incomplete representation of all the things that comprise a "theory."
The question as it's worded is: "does the earth go around the sun or does the sun go around the earth?" There's all sorts of reasons someone might get that question wrong. The way it's framed makes you visualize two systems and pick the right one, and people might have a problem with that. The phrasing depends on word order being significant in English in ways that might be confusing to foreign language speakers (of which the U.S. has many). Heck, just parsing it took me enough time that someone rushing through the survey might just not think about it too carefully before answering.
I bet if you showed two pictures, with a large sun orbiting the earth and one with a small earth orbiting a large sun, you'd get a much higher percentage right.
The astrology thing is possibly a matter of vocabulary. Especially in a "let's talk about science" context, it would be easy to just hear "astronomy" and say "sure, that's a science".
I had a fascinating discussion with an ex trucker in Spain (who after an injury worked selling souvenirs in the old windmills where Don Quijote had once jousted according to Cervantes' book).
When he heard I was a physicist, he apologized in advance for being such a tool ... and then admitted that he thought the earth rotating around the sun was a mistake. He saw the sunrise every morning, always in the East, move around ... and then set in the West. Plus, wouldn't we feel the speed, or even disintegrate if we travelled so fast around the sun?
It was the first time I had encountered somebody who didn't think heliocentrism was possible, let alone other cosmological models. I paused before answering ... but then realized the man was right.
What evidence did he have that contradicted a sun rotating around the sun? He only studied until age 12. He never had a Foucault pendulum. And even if he had had one, the fixed stars idea and the earth's rotation is not the only interpretation.
I asked ... what about the astronauts who have been up there? Surely they must have seen the earth rotating. He was unconvinced. Things seem to rotate when you are very high as a result of vertigo. Could that be the explanation? What about the great speed of the earth he insisted? Wouldn't we feel that? [nobody had ever explained that to him, including his son who was an engineer]
I realized that this man was much more of a scientist than his peers who blindly believe what they are told in school: "the earth rotates around the sun". But ask them a deeper question: What is the evidence? Could the evidence be interpreted otherwise? Are we fooling ourselves (as is very common in science)?
Of course the answer to these questions is child's play for most technical people. There is a ton of evidence. But are the 3/4s aware of it? or do they just parrot the accepted wisdom.
The man turned out to be very smart, having learned the names of all his souvenirs in Korean, Japanese, German, French ... and having strong opinions about the dogmatism that religion blindly accepts.
So it's possible that in that 20% of "non believers" there are true scientists (or Quixotes!) who refuse to believe what they are told before seeing credible experimental evidence that they can reason deeply about.
Americans know about as much as people in similarly developed countries.
Really. Compare to the success rates versus South Korea and Japan. And then compare it to less economically developed parts of the world. Americans were the most correct among the surveyed populations about radiation, antibiotics, atomic structure, and lasers.
The takeaway shouldn't be "Americans are ignorant" but really that "Education is hard" and "Poverty inhibits education"
Depressing, but not unexpected. The problem isn't necessarily anti-science; it's anti-authority. Anti telling me what I can or can't believe. Anti you think your "science" can tell me what I know in my heart/what I feel in my bones?
The last thing we should do is try to mash heads with this level of warm comfort and confidence in ignorance and instead ask questions to probe the depths of what they do know and why.
Why do you believe this? How would that happen?
People may be allergic to being told what to do and what to accept, but inviting them to wade in the waters of the scientific method may allow them to find answers themselves.
I once met a person who was anti-anything which isnt coming from her own mind.
Science? Nah, she got "power of her mind" to bend and twist metals(move objects around - only if she could just focus and use more than 10% of her brain.
We got into a heated discussion about knowledge, science and philosophy, it all boiled down to "I believe whatever I want and thats the only thing that matters, no matter what you say or how things appear or whatever else".
At one point I asked her how she knows that she is right about that about anything, she said she doesnt really but she chooses to believe it. And hence anything, science, philosophy, knowledge, if the rock over there really is hard and if it really is going to fall to the ground if I keep it in the air and drop it, its all a matter of belief, and if people believe it hard enough it wont necessarily always fall to the ground.
How would you approach further discussion with her?
I think there was more to it than "I believe whatever I want". That's just her pride talking.
Heated arguments aren't very helpful IMO. I have a good friend who still believes the Earth is 5000 years old, but the last thing I want to do is bash his head into science.
That takes a long conversation over coffee (hopefully several cups) and ensuring that I don't make him feel like I'm looking down on him for what he believes. That's the worst way to convince anyone of anything, reality or not.
People have a tough time separating belief from idea. Beliefs need no evidence, but ideas are testable. Find out what her ideas are and we can move on to her beliefs later (or maybe you won't even need to go that far when she realizes the fallibility of unyielding belief).
1 in 4 Americans don't know a piece of technical trivia that has zero relevance to their lives, and is equivalent to their model on all ways that matter to them.
Even if title quote is true, what percentage of the population needs to know this (to live better, work better, act in some different fashion)? 5%? 1%? less?
In other words, it is knowledge of trivia for most people. Perfectly fine, if you go in for that sort of thing (and I do),
but why look down your nose at those who don't?
Of course, knowing the scientific method can change how you act, but so can understanding lots of things. Finite time and attention. Or be a hater.
As long as you choose an inertial frame of reference, it wouldn't matter. Many people forget that while velocity is relative to the observer, acceleration is not. And we all know moving along a curved path has non-zero acceleration.
Imagine that you are in a vast empty dark abyss without gravity (a.k.a. the space) and all you can see is a transparent sealed container with some water in it positioned above your head. Consider these two scenarios: 1. You are rotating around the axis of your body with velocity Ω, and 2. The container has the velocity -Ω around the same axis. You might expect these two scenarios to be identical. After all, the relative velocity of two objects is similar in these cases. But only if the container is the moving body we will observe that the water is affected by centrifugal[1] force.
It is obvious that earth is rotating around the sun not the other way around. You just have to consider the forces.
> And we all know moving along a curved path has non-zero acceleration.
Not to give the OP undue attention for what is a truly weird post, but a curved path through curved spacetime (as seen from a different perspective), as with a gravitational orbit, can have zero acceleration.
> It is obvious that earth is rotating around the sun not the other way around. You just have to consider the forces.
That's not obvious at all -- there are no forces at work in a relativistic orbit (because gravity is not a force). The earth and the sun orbit their mutual center of mass, neither experiences acceleration, and neither of them experience a real centripetal or fictional centrifugal force.
Therefore there would be no way to use centrifugal force to argue that one of the bodies has a special role in the orbit. It's easy to see why -- just adjust the relative masses, gradually make the sun's mass smaller and the earth's mass larger, and try to argue that there's a special moment where their roles reverse. Clearly not the case -- regardless of their relative masses they're always equal partners in an orbit, with one of the bodies farther from the mutual center of mass in proportion to its (smaller) mass.
Technically, both objects are orbiting their barycenter, or center of mass. For the Sun and Earth, that barycenter is very near the center of the Sun, so in common parlance most people will refer to the Earth as orbiting the Sun.
Perhaps asking whether "the planets" orbit the Sun would lower the chance of ambiguity.
I'm not sure how you would setup the study, but has there ever been a study to see what percentage of people will respond to a survey like this incorrectly even if they know the correct answer, either due to a mistake, or general disinterest, or confusion over the question? Especially for the last possibility, I think reading comprehension could be a big culprit here.
Everybody thinks the general population should be more knowledgeable about the particular topic they love. "Everyone should learn how to code!" "I can't believe people are so apathetic about how laws are made!" "Most people don't understand basic finance; how can they buy a home and save for retirement properly!"
I have Wikipedia for this. No joke. This is kind of like the argument about students during math using a calculator. General knowledge is less of a requirement even here in NYS with the Regents system. California I'm sure is more of the same. As long as you know how to find it, that's all that matters in life.
Wikipedia for basic facts about the Earth? That's similar to saying you shouldn't need to learn how to add or multiply or calculate percentages because you have a calculator. (Not to mention, the real point of maths isn't calculation.)
Also interesting, only 32 percent of Indians answered "true" to the statement "The continents have been moving their location for millions of years and will continue to move" whereas 83 percent of Americans answered this question correctly.
I simply refuse to believe that. The notion that a quarter of the people supposed to vote in the ruler of the most powerful nation can't wrap their head around the most basic of scientific facts is too depressing to contemplate.
Note that the USA scored better than most of the rest of the world in this and several other basic science questions. The actual result is "humans aren't well-educated"; it's being cynically spun as "Americans are stupid."
Nor should it, but you need to understand the scope of the problem before you can address it. The original headline invites millions of people to say "haha, look at those stupid Americans, they sure are stupid" and continue ignoring the problems in their own nations. We can do better than that kind of bullshit tribalism.
These sorts of arguments all fail the most basic principle of relativity -- that any viewpoint is relative. One can argue that the earth orbits the moon or the reverse, but the best way to think about it is that the earth and moon orbit their common center of mass. And that common center of mass orbits the sun -- or, if you prefer, the earth/moon common center of mass and the sun' center of mass have another common center of mass, around which they mutually orbit.
In other news : 3 in 4 hacker news readers don't know the earth doesn't orbit the sun at all. That is an impression created by the fact that the space around the sun moves as a result of gravity. This results in that the location of the earth doesn't change, but as the sun is sucking in space and constantly pushing out it's matter the distance doesn't change. This results in the fact that a straight line path around the sun at the relative speed difference that the earth the sun have, and then transpose said trajectory into an approximate euclidean space with the sun as it's point of origin results in a (roughly) ellipsoid trajectory.
But make no mistake : the earth is standing still, it's not moving. There is no actual movement of either the earth, or the sun, or for that matter, any other planet or body, as a result of gravity. The earth is not circling the sun, it is moving in a straight line through what just happens to be non-euclidean space. Hell there is no gravity acting on the earth, nor for that matter on you (on the contrary : you are being accelerated upward, not downward at roughly the rate at which the earth sucks up space).
(Here movement is defined as the only viable relativistic definition of movement : a movement that can be observed to be different from standing still, meaning travelling at a fixed speed in a straight line is not moving at all)
If the earth ever starts orbiting the sun, life on earth will become impossible in a matter of minutes, as the resulting acceleration would affect magma flow and would very quickly change the entire surface of the earth into a liquid state. In that case the earth's surface would quickly change to the average temperature of the earth itself : ~6000 degrees celcius.
People say that the earth is orbiting the sun, because people are thinking within an euclidean reference frame. If you ignore the fact that we live in a relativistic universe and just act as if it's euclidean, it looks like the earth is orbiting. But in (what we think) is the real structure of the universe, that's not the case at all.
Saying that the earth orbits the sun, or God forbid, that it circles the sun, are flat-out wrong statements. The last time scientists actually believed that was about 1931. The "science" that is being popularized is either old, or just flat-out wrong. This goes for other popular versions of scientific theories as well. If evolution is "mutate + natural selection + goto 1", then humans don't evolve at all, and neither does any larger lifeform (and it's still an open question if bacteria evolve or not). Hell, did you know the earth is the exact center of the universe ? No joke. Read a bit about Hubble's discovery. The big bang is not actually the beginning of time, google inflation theory (and even inflation theory doesn't model the beginning of time). Did you know that we lost ~98% (that's a lower bound) of all mass in the universe ? We have zero clue where the rest of the universe is.
There is so much wrong with this comment I don't even know where to begin. It will suffice to say that this is a huge conceptual muddle, and a great example of where conceptual confusion can lead us if we are not careful. You are confusing 'discovery' with 'giving new definitions', 'reality' with 'a mathematical model that describes...', physics with everyday language, and you also seems to be unaware of what 'orbit' and 'motion' actually mean:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbithttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_(physics)
It should be clear that it can never be the case that by using a new mathematical model we can come to the conclusion that "the earth is standing still". This would be equivalent to inventing a new theory of mind according to which people never get angry. At best, what we can achieve is a new interpretation of the words "standing still", different from what they actually means, under which the earth is doing something else. However, this would simply be a matter of choice, not of discovery, and a pretty bad one at that (see Wittgenstein's criticism of Freud).
> It should be clear that it can never be the case that by using a new mathematical model we can come to the conclusion that "the earth is standing still".
Apart from the OP's many outright errors, this one suffers from the defect that it assumes there is only one possible frame of reference. One can obviously choose a frame of reference in which the earth is motionless, but relativity denies any special significance to a particular frame of reference -- indeed, that's what relativity means.
Which is exactly the point. Whether the earth rotates depends on your frame of reference. You can pick one where it is, you can pick one where it isn't. Neither is "true". So saying the earth orbits the sun is a choice : it is not a true or false statement, just a statement reflecting an opinion. Occam's razor (as well as general mathematical practice) dictates that we declare this to be not true in that case (note the massive difference between "not true" and "false". Not true means you don't know it to be true AND you don't know it to be false either). But this is only possible in euclidean space, you have to transform space (change the normal/distance function) before you can choose a reference frame where there is rotation.
If you look at it in the original relative space, without an euclidean transformation, there's only 2 ways to see it : you can only pick reference frames where the earth is standing still entirely, or you pick reference frames where it is moving along a straight line. You cannot pick a reference frame in relativistic space that shows ellipsoid movement (like the one predicted by the Newtonian theory which is generally what people mean by "orbit").
So you can't actually pick reference frames to do whatever you want. In order to get something looking like an orbit you have to pick a reference frame where you not only have messed with the point of origin, but also projected the distances between objects to be invariant under the influence of gravity. Which they're not in reality (effectively you're claiming that distances everywhere in the universe are as they are at an earth-sun lagrange point, which is not true). Only by doing that transformation can you get an orbital pattern.
At that point, from a purely mathematical point of view you can analyze what other motions you could get that are equally true as saying it orbits. So you can say, you can put the origin point anywhere you like, moving, accelerating, whatever you want. In addition to that you can arbitrarily change the distance function. So you could make one where the earth spirals into the sun. Or spirals away from it (simply introduce a time component in the distance function). Hell, you could make one where the earth and the moon look like they're bouncing on the surface of the sun that looks like the disc in the discworld (put origin at the center of the sun, distance function is a the normal multiplied by the tangent of an angle that goes from the center of the sun to where the moon was 48 hours ago, and in the z direction all distances are zero). Hell, I bet that even if you demanded the reference frame be euclidean you could still make it look pretty silly (I think my spiraling examples would still be euclidean). Reasons for picking one over the other ? None.
Well, one : if you want to calculate the influence of the laws of physics inside our solar system, having an euclidean reference frame centered on the sun-planets lagrange point (which is not the center of the sun) is pretty useful, as it means you need 11 (number of planets) transformations to calculate the path of a satellite moving through the solar system, whereas a relativistic reference frame would require 12 transformations (imho because they don't change rotation they're simpler though).
Aside from the utilitarian choice, all those statements are simply equally true to saying that "the earth rotates around the sun". Just because we prefer one arbitrary kind of reference frame above others here on earth (ie. euclidean) doesn't make it any more real.
And yes, compared to objects "near infinity" the earth arrives at the same spot once a year, but that doesn't make it's path any less straight.
> Whether the earth rotates depends on your frame of reference. You can pick one where it is, you can pick one where it isn't. Neither is "true".
No, both are true, yet you claimed that "3 in 4 hacker news readers don't know the earth doesn't orbit the sun at all" which is a false and ignorant claim.
> So saying the earth orbits the sun is a choice : it is not a true or false statement, just a statement reflecting an opinion.
False! Mathematical physics is as far from opinion as you can get, and it has vast amounts of supporting evidence.
> You cannot pick a reference frame in relativistic space that shows ellipsoid movement (like the one predicted by the Newtonian theory which is generally what people mean by "orbit").
Yes, you can! As I said earlier, sufficiently above the sun's north pole, you would see a classic Newtonian orbit, because of the choice of reference frame.
> you can only pick reference frames where the earth is standing still entirely, or you pick reference frames where it is moving along a straight line.
I just proved this claim to be false. But you know what? I'm not going to go through and correct all your false arguments (they're all false). I've had this exact experience more times than I care to remember. You don't know anything about physics or mathematics, your overall argument is post-modern ("It's all opinion"), and you're a waste of time.
If you actually understood the topic, you would use 10% of the words you use while being wrong, and your posts might become worth reading.
> Yes, you can! As I said earlier, sufficiently above the sun's north pole, you would see a classic Newtonian orbit, because of the choice of reference frame.
No you would not. Here I assume a correct reference frame : the start point is above the sun's north pole, but it is in gravitational freefall, not artificially accelerated to the same relative position above the sun. If you looked at the earth moving and describe it's movement as an equation in relativistic space you'd get p = k * s + c (with k a real number, p s and c vectors).
This is not a rotation, obviously.
Intuitive observation would show rotation, but that's wrong, or at least that's not really what's happening. Note that your position "above the sun's north pole" is actually an accelerated movement at a point in time. As such it is not a reference frame that is at rest, and as such is not the type of reference frame you'd want to use for anything, unless of course you're using newtonian physics.
> Just because we prefer one arbitrary kind of reference frame above others here on earth (ie. euclidean) doesn't make it any more real.
You got it all backwards. Our preference for a certain reference frame is exactly what makes it real, because that's what 'real' means.
Certain frames of reference are almost useless, while others are very useful in our everyday life. This is why "I'm going to the store" is true, while "the store is moving toward me" is false: it is our application of those words in everyday life that defines what we would call 'true' and 'false' here.
It is ridiculous to claim that the above are equally true because supposedly we can choose our reference frame however we like: this is simply not what we mean when we talk about "true" and "false" here. By focusing too much on physical vocabulary, you are losing sight of what certain words mean in the first place.
If you develop a theory that says the fridge is moving toward me when I'm hungry (= I'm going to the fridge, from a different frame of reference) - you are not making a discovery, you are simply making up new definitions of existing words, and you are confused.
Also, mathematical models are just that - math, useful abstractions we can predict stuff with. Assigning to them an ontological status is a matter of choice and of personal belief, not of knowing anything about physics.
> "Occam's razor ... dictates that we declare this to be not true"
Note that Occam's razor does not actually have the authority to dictate anything. Occam's razor is a useful heuristic -- like frames of reference, you may treat it (or various similar heuristics) as true, but may also treat it as not true.
----
This whole exchange reminds me of one of my favorite Asimov essays, The Relativity of Wrong [0]. You can certainly make the argument that the reference frame "the earth goes around the sun" is not true, but it's less not-true than "the sun goes around the earth". "The earth goes around the sun" is a correct assessment of the relative behavior of the bodies in a reference frame which is in a sense arbitrary, while "the sun goes around the earth" is an incorrect assessment of the relative behavior of those bodies under either Euclidian or relativistic reference frames.
There are 3 main proofs (I know of) that the Earth orbits the Sun:
1. Stellar parallax: Stars will appear at slightly different positions in the sky due to the changing position of the Earth during its orbit. Many astronomers from the 1500s to 1800s hoped to measure parallax, and it was finally measured by Friedrich Bessel in 1838. This is the work that first made Bessel famous.
2. Stellar Aberration: Stars appear at slightly different positions during the course of the year due to the finite speed of light relative to the (changing) velocity of the Earth. This was first explained and carefully measured by James Bradley in 1729, making him the most famous scientist of the 18th century according to scientists of the time, including Laplace.
3. The Foucault pendulum: Pendulums on Earth precess. This is not so much proof that the Earth orbits the Sun, but that the Earth rotates in place. The fact that the sun appears to rise/fall/go around us is an illusion due to this rotation. First demonstrated by Foucault in 1851.
I disagree with you on the reference frame/general relativity argument. It is true that, by GR, the actualy picture of spacetime is more complicated. However, there is an intuitive notion of 'orbiting' which is very useful which applies in classical/SR, which applies in inertial reference frames, and in that ase the above observations make clear that the Earth orbits the sun.
Also:
>it's still an open question if bacteria evolve or not
> If the earth ever starts orbiting the sun...as the resulting acceleration would affect magma flow
I don't think that's an appropriate analysis, because "orbit" has a specific definition in science that abstracts away the technicalities like Euclidean space vs. gravity as "bent space." The Earth absolutely does orbit the Sun.
> This results in that the location of the earth doesn't change, but as the sun is sucking in space and constantly pushing out it's matter the distance doesn't change.
This is just one of many egregious errors the OP makes, scattered alongside a few obviously misunderstood elements of real physics. I advise HN readers to ignore the OP's post.
Yes the relativistic model is more accurate but like any physics it is still a model and only an approximation.
The newtonian / euclidian model is going to be accurate enough for most people (and some space missions) + its much simpler to compute and also it lies closer to human 'common sense' making it a lot easier for people to grasp and think about intuitively.
Well, apart from the fact that the OP is an undisciplined mixture of almost-right physics and fantasy, spacetime isn't Euclidean, it's curved by masses.
But, contrary to the OP, if you took a position above the sun's north pole, you would certainly see the planets orbiting the sun, just as in pre-relativistic physics. The reason? A different spacetime curvature at that location.
It's true that, in modern physical theory, there's no force called gravity. It's also true that the earth is moving in an inertial "straight" path through curved spacetime. But it is absolutely false to say that the earth isn't orbiting the sun.
hell. No one knows anything if you assert that you don't truly know what something is unless you understand every minute intricacy of it. Most people wouldn't define gravity as an object moving in a straight line through space time. However those that know that that is the nature of gravity, would then define gravity as such.
The OP is trying to argue that there's a preferred frame of reference in a physical theory (relativity) that explicitly disallows preferred frames of reference. If you took a position roughly 200 million miles (about 320 million kilometers) above the sun's north pole, and watched from there, you would certainly see the earth orbit the sun. The reason? Different curvature from that perspective.
The OP could have simply said that, in relativity, there's no force called gravity, instead planets orbit their parent bodies because of curved four-dimensional spacetime. He then could have quoted physicist John Wheeler, who famously said, "Matter tells space how to curve, and space tells matter how to move."
After the OP correctly said that the earth is moving through curved spacetime in a straight line, IMHO he should have turned in his golf clubs.
> Your comment feels far too clever for it's own good.
You got that exactly right. The OP's intention is to confuse, not enlighten.
It is too clever, by half. From my perspective it's a long-winded and self-contradictory (as you note) attempt at punning with curvature tensors and metrics, only not doing it right.
http://i.imgur.com/FXMlOZB.png
[source: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/content/chapter-7/c07....]
So actually, the U.S. had the second highest score on that question, behind South Korea. Furthermore, the U.S. consistently performed on par or higher vs. the other countries/regions for the remaining questions.
The real outlier for the U.S. on this survey was the question about evolution -- only 48% of Americans got that right, significantly behind the rest of the pack.