Any Astrophysicists in the house?

[Lisnpuppy]

And in the past and future he remains full of sarcasm :tongue: I think the timeline is safe...you aren't doing anything different! ha!

 

 

Also many theories may never get any empirical data. Had to tell where humans will be but some things are just so....really out there in quantum mechanics. String theory, 11 extra-dimensions, alternate universes, information getting spread into and around the edge of black holes, heck black holes that move like electrons around the nucleus of atoms.

 

Boggles the mind.

 

Yeah talk to a prof but totally write those noble winners. I am betting they don't get a great deal of fan mail. >.>

[Vagrant0]

Yeah talk to a prof but totally write those noble winners. I am betting they don't get a great deal of fan mail. >.>

Except that it really isn't fanmail. It's almost something along the lines of "congratulations on your award, but it's possible that you're actually wrong about everything. I don't know how to prove it one way or another, but maybe you'd like to check my theory." Given that the tendency to be self-serving increases with the number of degrees you accumulate, I somehow don't think they would be too willing to do much than maybe send me a copy of their latest paper on their own theories... Possibly with key bits underlined in red.

 

No, the best chance something like this has of any sort of fair test would be some student looking to make a name for themselves, or atleast run the theory through the wringer for the purpose of showing they can do the work to a doctorate board.

[Marxist ßastard]

Oh, I see. You don't just have lingering doubts. You still firmly believe that while on the john you discovered a revolutionary new cosmological model. And that if you were to talk to a professor or established researcher, they would angrily dismiss your idea because science is dogmatic. So of course it falls upon a maverick young postdoc who doesn't play by the rules to actually derive your model, test it, and then publish with you as co-author. Just so we understand each other.

 

Try PhysicsForums. There are a few postdocs there; PF lists job openings for them.

[Vagrant0]

Oh, I see. You don't just have lingering doubts. You still firmly believe that while on the john you discovered a revolutionary new cosmological model. And that if you were to talk to a professor or established researcher, they would angrily dismiss your idea because science is dogmatic. So of course it falls upon a maverick young postdoc who doesn't play by the rules to actually derive your model, test it, and then publish with you as co-author. Just so we understand each other.

 

Try PhysicsForums. There are a few postdocs there; PF lists job openings for them.

No, mostly that anyone who is established probably has better things to do than work over some poorly explained theory that even I can't describe in much detail, let alone model. They would dismiss it because it is simplistic at best, a poster child for exactly why more needs to be spent on actual science education at worst. It frankly wouldn't help them the slightest bit to even entertain the notion let alone do the actual work for something which, as you put it, someone thought up "on the john". Don't really care much about co-authorship or anything silly like that. Hell, they did the work proving or disproving it, and explaining it in technical jargon so that it sounds all clear and official, so it's theirs alone.

 

Someone who is a student or is working towards a doctorate however would likely have access to both the data... That rather crucial bit, have enough know-how to apply it, and would probably get credit for the work, regardless of the results. The last bit also being rather important since an established physicist, even a doctorate out of work, would only gain something if it happened to be right. That is not to say that someone working on their doctorate probably doesn't have better things to do, they just might be more entertained by the exercise.

 

Frankly, I don't expect much of anything to come of this, since afterall this is a gamer forum, so at best the only ones who might ever see this thread are gamers, some of them probably science geeks. The response I expected was more along the lines of "the universe doesn't work like that you idiot, and here is why: ". Not all that different from the dozens of other things that pop into my head from time to time, like how we might have better luck with fusion on a smaller scale, and other things which I usually just dismiss or forget. I don't entertain the belief that I'm a genius, let alone that I'm particularly smart. I would just find it funny as hell if I happened to call it and have a call in pointing some sort of change to the paradigm.

 

 

Any assumed biases from my last response are based purely on the handful of professors with advanced degrees that I've spent much time with, and may not be indicative of all, but seems to be a trend. If something, even if it might be right, isn't in their best interests, why would they be inclined to do anything to help it along? If someone came out of the woodwork with an explanation that dismisses or explains something that they've spent the last 10 years working on, were given tenure for, and were counting on another 10-15 years of continued development, naturally, they would not be happy. Something like this theory could even be considered an insult since it means that I didn't bother to read all the material out there, didn't do all the work or even try understanding all the formulas, and decided based on the best information provided by public education in America, and probably too much science fiction, that I might have some better notion about the nature of the universe than them. Even if they aren't the self-serving sort, the mere pomposity of contacting one would seem disrespectful enough to not warrant an honest, thought out response short of something along the lines of "piss off and do your own research".

[Lisnpuppy]

You make a lot of assumptions of how someone will react in a given situation Vagrant. It would take you maybe 10 min to shoot one of them an email. If they do ignore it then oh well. However there might be the smallest possibility they will answer you. After all quantum physics itself allows for the probability.

[Marxist ßastard]

It boils down to two options:

1. Go to a physics professor at your school and ask, “Why can't the accelerating expansion of the universe be explained by centrifugal forces due to a rotating Big Bang singularity?” If they aren't busy, they will answer – it is their job to teach you. Oh, and a 100-level physics professor who teaches 700 students through TAs won't even know that you aren't taking their class right now.
2. Take your original post and put it on PF. You're certainly more likely to find a postdoc or a doctoral candidate there than at MWSource.

I've already given you my (lazy) refutation: since the universe has no center or central axis, there's no possible origin of rotation. So you can't just stay here and bemoan the lack of qualified astrophysicists.

[marharth]

Couldn't the universe be something of a spinning balloon? Even if it does not have a direct center and the big bang caused expansion all over, couldn't it still be spinning without a central point?

[Marxist ßastard]

In that case the centrifugal force would act radially. But the radial direction doesn't exist in the metaphor (all space is constrained to the surface), so it's meaningless. Besides, in the coordinate system of the balloon's surface, any rotation would be the same as simple translation.

[marharth]

I see. Guess this wouldn't work then.