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Irony ([info]isntitironic) wrote in [info]otf_wank,
@ 2004-06-22 09:32:00


Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Current mood:annoyed

It's Wank of Astronomical Porportions!
The Bad Astronomy Bulletin Board tends to be a bit wanky at the best of times - the general attitude over there is smug superiority about being smarter than all the cranks and conspiracy theorists who run around. Perhaps not entirely unjustified, but occasionally annoying, and I can't help thinking that someday the principles of physics really will get overturned, and then these guys will feel like idiots... but anyway.

Enter Jerry Jensen, self-proclaimed rocket scientist (literally - check out his profile there) and master of impenetrable technobabble, here to show us all how very wrong we are about... well, everything! Frankly, I don't think even he knows what he's talking about, but if anybody is actually able to out-smug-superiority the bad astronomers, it's the cranks themselves.

On why the big bang couldn't have happened: These are important questions because there are also disturbing indices in the galactic evolutionary trends. The quasar population appears to peak in a fairly local Copernican ring. The kinetic energies of ‘red’ to ‘blue’ galaxies found in galactic clusters appear to have been quite stable in the ‘early’ periods leading up to the current epoch, and then appear to have abruptly shifted.

On studying supernovae: I am somewhat in agreement with you. Their is also the possibility of sympathic detonation of a companion white dwarf that is near the critical Chandrasahker limit. The scatter of the data in the curve I presented is very wide (r^2=0.15) and I think only the broadest of statistical parameters can be applied to this data, and that is that the average light curve width, when corrected for time dilation, gets smaller with distance. This should not happen.

On the Doppler effect: The relationship breaks down though, when we try to identify where the Hubble flow creeps in. The first piece of evidence that the cosmic redshift is not Doppler is that the only way Cepheid and Tolman surface brightness distance measurements can be reconciliated is by plugging in magnitude evolution. This in turn, degrades relative to with Tully-Fisher estimates. None of this agrees with the observed local cause of magnitude variance, heavy metal distribution. This is reasonably good evidence for a null hypothesis: Assuming all redshift is Doppler forces the reconciliaton of distances measuring techniques outside of the predicted margin of error.

More on supernovae: Fourth, the critical data reductions of Permutter (the Stretch Factor) normalize at a midpoint z-shift of 0.48. A similar normalization is used by Humay in calculating the Delta(15)b value. In both cases, if there is a Malmquist bias in the collection of the data, this bias will run parallel with any time dilation trend, and therefore be interpreted as time dilation.

If you think maybe he's just talking about things that are beyond you anyway... well, (1) I'm an astrophysics major and he makes as much sense to me as he does to you, and (2), check this out: he's also in a thread about, of all things, ice.

There is a very reasonable and testible explanation: If you try to freeze water in a compressed situation, the molecular bonding necessary for crystal formation will not occur until the temperature has dropped further than the freezing point of water. The additional calories required to bend or break the compressing structure are exactly equal to the additional calories which must be removed to freeze the water. Once the bending or breakage occurs, the water immediately assume the relaxed crystal form and temperature increases dramatically - up to 0C.

Basically, what he's saying there is "pressure lowers the temperature at which water freezes".



(Post a new comment)


[info]beccastareyes
2004-06-22 05:40 pm UTC (link)
Woo! Astronomy Wank!

Yeah, I am also an Astrophysics major. I have a friend who hands out on that board (and on Space.com).

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]doyle
2004-06-22 06:49 pm UTC (link)
I am also an Astrophysics major.

Me too. We need an [info]astro_wank...

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re:
[info]beccastareyes
2004-06-22 08:53 pm UTC (link)
Dude, that would make me actually remember to go to the space.com furms. My friend AJ (SN ricimer) refuses to go into the SETI forum there because all the crackpots migrate there.

And I ought to tell you about Iron Sun Guy.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

Desperately Tries to Come Up With Something Smart to Say
[info]yadda
2004-06-22 05:51 pm UTC (link)
Um... uh, you know, if ice didn't expand, and thus float on water, life as we know it wouldn't exist!!1

(Geez, that's awful. I'm such a science tool.)

(Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: Desperately Tries to Come Up With Something Smart to Say
[info]beccastareyes
2004-06-23 12:33 am UTC (link)
Actually, ice has weird crystilline structures at (obscenly) high pressures, and were water to exist at those pressures, it would be denser than water.

They only thought I slept through thermodynamics!

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]aloysius
2004-06-22 06:12 pm UTC (link)
Basically, what he's saying there is "pressure lowers the temperature at which water freezes".

I understood that much! Jubilation!

*mocks the guy's grammar because she can't think of anything else*

(Reply to this)


[info]deoridhe
2004-06-22 06:17 pm UTC (link)
I love his use of color. I know color is frequently used for valid scientific reasons, but his tossing around colors is, for some reason, intensely amusing to me.

OMG HIZ AZTROFISICZ IZ PASTEDE ON YAY!

(Reply to this)


[info]teratologist
2004-06-22 08:57 pm UTC (link)
Using more words makes your arguments truer. Everyone knows that.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]wakkymse
2004-06-22 11:49 pm UTC (link)
Indeed. I love it when people use a zillion big, important-sounding words to describe something, when they could just as easily have described in plain English.

This whole thing reminds me of Star Trek technobabble. I kept hearing "Make it so, Number One" in my head when I was reading the quotes.

-lee

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]beccastareyes
2004-06-23 12:37 am UTC (link)
True. The reason scientists (and doctors, and lawyers, and engineers, and English professors, and interior decorators, and...) use jargon is because it's a clear way of telling collegues 'Look what I found!'. Only two types of professionals use jargon with the general public -- the ones that have NO CLUE how to explain things without it and the ones that want to make themselves sound impressive by using big shiny words.

Guess which one I think this guy is?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]kijikun
2004-06-23 01:31 am UTC (link)
Both?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re:
[info]beccastareyes
2004-06-23 02:55 am UTC (link)
Actually...

he could be both. Except the first usually implies that he can explain things with it.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]judyhazeleyes
2004-06-22 09:27 pm UTC (link)
Er... damn right!

*looks around shiftily*

Don't think my attempt to actually look smart quite worked. Retreat! Retreat!

(Reply to this)


[info]tianxiaode
2004-06-22 09:49 pm UTC (link)
There is a very reasonable and testible explanation

Oh gog. I just read that as "testeble." I'm not sure if all the bad spelling I've seen lately is getting to me, or it's all the pr0n.

Either way, I giggled, and I'm sooooo going to hell.

(Reply to this)


[info]calluna
2004-06-23 02:48 am UTC (link)
He reminds me of that guy on Usenet with the psychotic RPG that got brought up here a couple of months ago. (Wish I had that saved...)

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]crickets
2004-06-23 04:39 am UTC (link)
Was it this fellow? He's hard to forget, in a train-wreck sort of way.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]calluna
2004-06-23 04:48 am UTC (link)
Yup, that would be him. ^_^

(Reply to this)(Parent)


 
   
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