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Originally Posted by Eta C
Hogwash. Provide some evidence that the observables are "tailored" to be consistent. Sounds to me like you're accusing physicists and astronomers of fraud.
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If you have looked in on the 'NASA puzzled by..." thread, you should know exactly what I am talking about
: It is standard practice to fit observations to know physics, even if such a fit is improbable. The unexpected vector
Messenger was found on after passing near Mercury was modeled using a positive gravity anomaly at the point of closest approach. Possible, but not likely. Likewise a large positive gravity anomaly was used to model Galileo's movement during her closest approach to Ganymede. A powerful downdraft was used to model the Galileo probes descent into Jupiter's atmosphere. This is a conservative approach: assuming everything is right in our understanding of the physical world, even though we have not yet found many things we expected to see, nor can we always find good fits, however improbable.
It is the right approach for the body of 'teaching knowledge'; but there is more than enough strangeness for research physicists to be in hyperchallenge mode: Questioning many assumptions down to the bare roots.
Supernova researchers are not doing this: There are many possible interpretations of the data in-hand, but there is little disagreement among the leading researchers. This is not a good thing: Our observations of supernovae polarity, rise times, ultraviolet emissions; and the known swings in local absolute magnitudes are not being weighed fairhandedly.
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Yes there are phenomena unexplained (your beloved Pioneer anomaly) but the vast bulk of observables are well described. You complain about the anomaly that's almost lost in the weeds but have not come close to providing an alternative that describes the simplest of well-established phenomena. At the risk of getting Biblical, Get that log out of your eye before you look for splinters in ours. You have not shown any viable option and simply complain in typical self-rightous ATM paranoia style.
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The level of content with the status quo is retarding scientific advancement. We are going to spend another potful of money on what has proven so far to be a failure in the searches for both dark matter particles and gravitational waves. These empty approaches have lasted for more than four decades - as long as the Navel Research Center kept flogging the Michelson Morley experiments.
I have complained that the Pioneer gravity experiment has not been followed up on. It has not. I have complained that there has not been comprehensive testing of the Newtonian Equivalance principle outside of the Earth-Moon orbit, and there has not. (Please, please don't tell me again putting probes in orbit about Mars, Jupiter and Saturn have demonstrated the equivalence principle, because they do not!) I don't believe good alternatives can be successfully modeled until we quit using 'gravity anomalies at the location of closest approach' to normalize exceptional observations.
Good science is skeptical science; not only skeptical of what is clearly outside of our world view, but also skeptical of standing theories when they have to be bent and expanded to accomidate new data. My entire adult life, local observance of gravitational waves has been advertised as being just one step away. Either many well-funded scientists have been over optomistic or the calculations have been wrong, because the constraints have kept pushing the threshold of observational expectations deeper into the universe. This is not a minor inconvenience, like the Pioneer probes, but a deep and possibly mortal wound: Gravitational waves have to be there, and we can't find them.
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P.S. Ketterle still has his Nobel Prize.
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To the best of my knowledge, no one has duplicated the incredibly precise images Cornell obtained in the very first 'successful' Bose Einstein Condensation. BCCs may be real, but that does not mean all of the data used to support them is free of pencil marks. A good skeptical read of the experimental adaptations, timing, calibration, pressure and historical facts surrounding the first Bose Einstein 'success' is warranted. I don't expect the paper will ever be successfully challenged, but I don't have to believe the results, either. To me the precision painfully is incredible.