A Very Brief Note by Kip Hansen — 13 September 2023
If one reads widely and freely enough, not paying attention to the norms of one’s interest-boundaries, one can find oneself surprised and charmed by some unexpectedly found gem of wisdom.
I only vaguely follow the hubristic attempts of cosmologists and advanced theoretical physicists to “model” the universe. My reasons are my own – but deeply held.
Nonetheless, I stumbled on a priceless bit that interested me in an article by Dennis Overbye in the Science section of the New York Times titled: “Don’t Expect a ‘Theory of Everything’ to Explain It All”.
Overby recounts:
“That was the question that occurred to me on reading an article in The Guardian by Andrew Pontzen, a cosmologist at University College London who spends his days running computer simulations of black holes, stars, galaxies and the birth and growth of the universe. His point was that he and the rest of us are bound to fail.
“Even if we imagine that humanity will ultimately discover a ‘theory of everything’ covering all individual particles and forces, that theory’s explanatory value for the universe as a whole is likely to be marginal,” Dr. Pontzen wrote.”
Personally, I don’t expect any theory-of-everything coming out of cosmology or advanced physics to explain much at all. Science rules out far too much of the possible, starting with all religious/spiritual topics, denying them any consideration whatsoever. Even when physics stays within its artificial boundaries, it has to admit, according to NASA, that it only understands the 5% of the universe it can see and detect.
Pontzen puts it this way:
“In cosmology, a plausible explanation of the history of the universe has formed by making simple assumptions about stuff we know nothing about — dark matter and dark energy — but that nonetheless makes up 95 percent of the universe. Supposedly this “dark side” of the universe interacts with the 5 percent of known stuff — atoms — solely through gravity.”
Pontzen has a book: “The Universe in a Box: Simulations and the Quest to Code the Cosmos” which may interest some of you. I haven’t read it and don’t plan to.
Pontzen does say interesting things: “….by way of the so-called butterfly effect of chaos theory. …. in practice, we cannot predict either the future or the past.” He is referring to the past and future of the larger playing field, the physical universe, but I believe that his statement is correct in smaller arenas, such as Earth’s climate.
Overby goes on, giving the bit of wisdom that caught my eye and made my day:
“Dr. Pontzen quotes an oath suggested by Emanuel Derman, a particle physicist who became a quantitative analyst for Goldman Sachs and is now a professor at Columbia: “I will not give the people who use my models false comfort about their accuracy. I will make the assumptions and oversights explicit to all who use them.”
In his email, Dr. Pontzen added: “This is, I suggest, sometimes a good maxim for physics, too, especially in domains as complex as cosmological simulations.”
And to this I add my voice: Derman’s Oath should be adhered to in all fields of science – whenever and wherever mathematical models are used in any research or study in any way whatever:
Bottom Line:
For all models used in any scientific endeavor, Assumptions and Oversights must be made explicit by model developers to all who use the model.
As a corollary, I would add that no model should ever be used by persons who do not fully understand the assumptions, oversights and limitations of the model.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
Well, this is a Pretty Brief Note…read the linked references for the full impact.
But Pontzen and Derman get right to the nut of the Models Problem. Models are often wildly inadequate for purpose: full of unfounded assumptions, contain untold numbers of oversight (things left out) resulting in limitations that are never admitted.
And as William Briggs is wont to preach: Models Only Say What They’re Told to Say.
Thanks for reading.
# # # # #
Equally important to the basic assumptions is another thing:
In time-dependent evolving results ask the modellers what it is they do to stop the model leaving the rails.
They all do it. If they say they don’t then they are almost certainly lying. They set the models (constrain, ha ha ha) to produce results within what is considered reasonable.
Yes, I think Willis has shown such guard rails on here, border commands to prevent it running completely off a cliff.
michael ==> all climate models include non-linear equations, which are subject to chaotic divergence — see spaghetti graphs reutned by climate models. The only runs show are those that did not run of to infinity after year 25 or something or drop to near-zero in a few years.
So, yea, modellers should be upfron about what constraints they have built in as well.
J. B. S. Haldane 1892–1964
Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose… I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy.
Last week I was castigated for pointing out this “feature” of the big climate models in the context of averaging the multiple outputs: if they didn’t use anomalies and kept all the runs, plotting them all together would be a plate of linguini.
“all climate models include non-linear equations, which are subject to chaotic divergence”
All chaotic systems are non-linear, but not all non-linear systems are chaotic. We are certain that the weather system is chaotic and by extension, so is the climate. Although, many of the equations that define the weather are known, I don’t think any of the climate equations are known. Usually they just take a weather model, pretend it’s a climate model, and run it longer.
This is another good article Kip. I really enjoy your contributions to on this site. There is no theory of physics, let alone a model, that could explain how there is something rather than nothing or provide demonstration of the truth of moral beliefs, despite every person holding to the truth of their own moral beliefs. I continue also to be absolutely stunned that the world is relying on obviously useless climate models as the alleged scientific support for transformative policies that are doing serious damage to human well-being. When I first started thinking about climate science a few years ago it was immediately obvious to me that the uncertainties in the model inputs made the multi-year projections of climate models laughably ridiculous. I just had to look out my window to realize it was impossible to reliably model the climate system. I can’t believe the unreliability of climate models is not obvious to everyone, even without Pat Frank’s proof.
It is obvious to many, especially those who have to live with the consequences of their modeling. Anyone who has done long range investment planning for a large company based on forecasted demand knows just how far off the rails a predictive model can be. Just try to predict where the population growth will be in a small city (150,000 to 200,000) over the next twenty years or even the next ten years!
gc ==> Some climate scientists actually presents model results about the future as “evidence”. Mindbogglingly ridiculous.
Unfortunately there is not a politician of consequence who would understand Derman’s ‘oath’, let alone appreciate it. We are truly sunk.
Massie has a degree from MIT so there may be one. But I get your point.
Kip, nice post. Kudos.
Three addendums.
First, in college my major was economics but my real interest was any sort of model: math, computer, econometric, whatever. (My senior thesis generalized Leontiev’s input/output equations to be dynamic, then used the generalization to show Nuclear electricity wasn’t economic from first principles. Got a summa the same year Leontiev won the Econ Nobel for his I/O econometric model.)
For one senior class on biology models I showed that probabilistic Markov chains produce the exact same result as classic calculus for the prototypical predator-prey equations. (The rabbits/foxes boom bust thing). So I learned early on George Box’s axiom—all models are wrong, but some are useful.
Second, there will never be an accurate climate model (heck, or universe model). That is because of the proven mathematics of chaos theory, Simply defined, a chaotic system has just two fundamental properties:
Those two simple statements mean most of the climate and universe is chaotic, therefore unpredictable by computer models. Admitted explicitly in long ago AR3 WG1 (which also featured Mann’s bogus hockey stick), then subsequently completely ignored.
Third, I personally do not believe there will ever be a ToE. There will always be known unknowns. In your post, cosmologically those presently include dark matter (inferred from spiral Galaxy rotation) and dark energy (inferred from Universe expansion). But I also believe there will always be Don Rumsfeld’s last category, unknown unknowns. Your personal doubts likely fall in this category despite the abject failure of the ‘intelligent design’ “proof” covered extensively in a chapter of my ebook “The Arts of Truth”.
Highest regards.
Nicely said, Rud! When I first heard about computer models of the climate I doubted they would be useful tools or have any accuracy: think about all the things influencing weather, cycles upon cycles, with varying feedbacks, with varying linearity, chaotic forcings and feedbacks, etc. We had just better hope it warms rather than cools, given what we know of history.
In climate of the present Ice Age, the top-down Milankovic theory, is a reliable model of Big Climate, at least temporarily, relying on the present arrangement of the continents. It is reasonable to predict heading down into another glacial max, and probably several more since a few 100s of thousands of years isn’t much time geologically speaking for meaningful changes (drift rates vary by locale and over time 20mm to 160mm a year)
Ultimately, the continents will change configuration, shifting and rotating ending the Ice Age with rearrangement
of ocean currents, etc. What then? We should be able to eventually survey the tiny changes in the shapes and drift of the of the coastlines of the continents to predict future arrangements.
Rud ==> Thanks for your addendums…always appreciate your point of view.
There is an obvious piece of evidence that you are right, and that is the weather models. They actually model the same system as climate ones but on a much shorter timescale. It is very noticable that they are Ok for 2 days (but not exact), fairly innaccurate for a week (but not totally useless), and have no idea what will happen in a month. The question is therefore “what magic method is being used to correct the chaotic and divergent weather data to predict longer term trends?”. The answer will be , of course, Climate models work in a different way. You will note that recently they have tried to conflate climate and weather (more severe events) to validate their claims. Obviously all the climate “stuff” is BS of the worst kind!
They had this discussion years ago, with my added comments on weather models UK.
One of the guests interviewed by Mr Letts was the veteran Tory politician and climate-change sceptic Peter Lilley, who proceeded to poke fun about how Met Office officials would lobby for ‘more money for bigger computers to be more precisely wrong in future’.
But when the Met Office unveiled their latest update:[Even Newer Dynamics for General atmospheric modelling of the environment (ENDGame)] they mistakenly made this comment.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/s/h/ENDGameGOVSci_v2.0.pdf
New Dynamics has served us well over more than a decade: not only have we continued to improve the skill of our large scale forecasts at the rate of 1 day lead time per decade (so for example today’s 3 day forecast is as accurate as the 2 day forecast was 10 years ago) but we have seen the introduction of a very high resolution (1-1/2 km) model over the UK which provides unprecedented levels of detail to our forecasters.
So at this rate they will be able to get a 7 day forecast just a accurate as todays 2 day forecast in only 40 more years. Now if they could just get an accurate 2 day forecast they might have something to sell.
I think the challenges to modelling the cosmos is even worse. We use calculus to model the system. We assume calculus is an adequate tool. It might be to approximate some situations but just consider fluid mechanics. calculus is good for simple modelling but ultimately fluids like water are made from particles. They are not continuous, differential spaces. How can calculus work if we believe in the Planck length. bang go infinitesimals. The mathematical tools need to be able to describe the micro and macro level and join them together. That ain’t calculus in my humble opinion what other tools are there? The “How” has to be modelled not just approximated.
I have a ToE: the cosmos is infinitely large, eternal and infinitely complicated. It just is.
True story: as my undergraduate calculus professor used to emphasize, whenever anybody talks about “infinity” they really have no concept of what they are talking about.
Kip, an excellent maxim, and one I would have thought was already used in practice, until the advent of consensus climate science. How can one feel a sense of accomplishment numbering up someone else’s model with no knowledge of its make-up. This is ‘paint by numbers’ science.
Gary ==> Some things can be reliably modeled, even mathematically. Short term weather prediction is possible using models, and some hurricane models are accurate enough once the time to landfall is short enough.
We can say such things because of acknowledged assumptions, oversights and limitations of the model are well known and understood.
Also, short term weather prediction and hurricane tracking have immediate feedback to validate the model or not. I trust the UKMET hurricane track prediction models because they have proven to be the most accurate 7 days out.. But I also stay alert as they may get one wrong.
Not so. science simply says that these topics do not present any physically examinable properties, so they can not be subject to scientific scrutiny. They may exist in some scientifically un-examinable form, or they might not exist at all, other than in human imaginings.
Either way, they are not “ruled out”; they are just not examinable scientifically.
If they can be imagined then they can be studied scientifically. The issue is whether the tools exist to do the studying with. We’ve got lots of tools today we didn’t have 50 years ago. Who knows what tools we’ll have in the next 50 years.
I am reminded of that famous quote from Hamlet about heaven and earth.
Do you include, say, unicorns in this?
Of course
Along with “cheap renewables”.
“Do you include, say, unicorns in this?”
Only in “climate science™“
Unicorns have been studied scientifically – and they turned out to be deformed goats.
Same as with climate science.
Many Rhinoceros have just a single horn.
How did string theory get so far if imaged things can’t be studied scientifically?
Remember Leonard’s engagement ended because he liked his strings loopy rather than straight.
I suppose a thought experiment a la Einstein or Galileo can be fruitful. Einstein formulated human landmark science that later observations corroborated.
“If they can be imagined then they can be studied scientifically.”
Perhaps in the realm of psychology- that is, how and why it is that humans seem to find some benefit in those religious/spiritual topics. And how it is that that psychological need has influenced the evolution of homo sapiens. Perhaps it’ll turn out that this happens on ever planet that devolops advanced life forms- and if that’s true, then this might indicate that there is an underlying physics that bring it forth— blah, blah, blah. 🙂
Or maybe because the spiritual realm exists…
First book I read in college in ’67 was “Future of an Illusion” by Freud.
Nail ==> Opinions vary on the topic.
No, in general, scientists routinely say that the spiritual doesn’t exist. You have to wade through the noise to find paranormal and physical scientists who hold a faith to see that there are effects that can be studied and that faith and reason can coexist in the same intelligent mind.
PCman999 ==> Literally, all the working scientists that I know personally, with the exception of one, are privately very deeply religious and active in their religious organizations (Christian congregations, synagogues, etc). The one exception is desperately searching for that missing part in their life.
Thank you! That is edifying to know. I wish, though, the ones with faith would stand up and tell us what they believe or know.
Lemaitre and even Galileo were faithful and devoted Catholics, and certainly all of early science and the “Enlightenment” were heavily dependent on Jesuit education.
An interesting and, in my opinion, important contribution to efforts to “model the universe” is Randy Mills’ work on electron configuration that has led to his work on dark matter. His books are out now–https://brilliantlightpower.com/subject-exciting-news-the-grand-unified-theory-of-classical-physics-is-now-available-on-amazon-and-more/
Please do not go to Mills hydrinos. Covered in a chapter of my ebook The Arts of Truth.
Two separate summaries.
One physicist said, the u inverse has had 13 plus billion years to equilibrate ground state hydrogen. No hydrinos ever.
The other said Mill’s hydrino tome was interesting. The parts that were well written were plagiarized. The parts that weren’t appeared original nonsense.
Have you bothered to read his books (available at his web site for free) and do you have enough physics background to understand them? I always start as a skeptic but with open mind on new work, and became convinced he is basically correct, although may not have everything correct. His work covers the basic totality of physics and chemistry, so something that broad and profound may be incomplete, but much of it is fully supported by the experimental data and logic. BTW, I am a retired NASA scientist with degrees in Physics and Aerospace Engineering including ScD.
Why don’t you respond to Rud’s very specific objections?
As to your degrees, there are many likewise credentialed and employed who hold, with a conviction only seen in Japanese Christians in the 1600s, that 2°C of warming, even if it leads to 5° of warming over a 100 years, would end civilization, even though that is utter BS.
A proper theory has something you can test, even if you have to wait decades for tech to catch up to give you the required instruments. Please let us know if anyone found hydrinos, and if they can be found with current tech or not. Any other things to check?
Personally I think the Dark Matter/Energy issue is bogus, it’s likely we don’t understand gravity well enough (there’s possibly other terms in the description of gravity besides GMm/r2 that negate the effect of the 1/r2). Hopefully it will be something that can be tested to ridiculous precision, say in space. Or maybe the Webb might find some useful system of black holes that would be appropriate to investigate the issue.
I am a sceptic on the global warming being mostly human caused and being a problem. I had several writeups on WUWT describing my position. Those scientists with so called good credentials that see it as a problem seem to mostly be those with funding which would decrease if there were no issue. In fact many of the “qualified” scientists are not scientists at all but computer programmers with limited physics, chemistry, and other related backgrounds. The vast majority of people seeing a big problem are not scientists at all. They include the news media, government officials and other groups not qualified to judge the issue.
The point you brought up on hydrinos is interesting. There have been several falsifiable tests on the hydrino, and it passed every one. Considerable data supports it. Please go to Mills site and sees the facts, not your preconceived opinion.
Rud – consider possibly that some of Mills’ ideas may be right, but he’s made a cock-up on the sign. If the ground state of Hydrogen is with a spherical orbital, then a smaller multi-lobed orbital would have a higher energy level because the electron is confined in a smaller volume. If you had a tetragonal arrangement of small lobes of the orbital, then such an atom would both be smaller and would allow a closer approach to the nucleus by another such atom, maybe enough to enable the nuclear forces to reach the attraction range and thus to fuse the nuclei if only a slight extra push is added.
That a free unbound neutron decays into a Hydrogen atom with a half-life of around 10 minutes, and that the neutron has slightly more mass than a proton, implies that the neutron is maybe not a fundamental particle but a compound. I’d say it also implies that other electron orbitals are possible, and that these must be higher-energy states because they decay to a proton with a spherical orbital (ground-state Hydrogen atom).
Thus the ground state remains the ground state, with no allowed energy-states below it. Meantime, we know that a very slow neutron will basically drop into the nearest available nucleus, delivering the binding energy in the process and maybe making that nucleus unstable (neutron activation). Thus maybe one of these higher-energy and smaller average orbital size Hydrogen atoms acts a bit more like a neutron, and the nearer it becomes to a neutron the easier it becomes for it to fuse with another atom, and maybe easier still when the other atom is also shrunken to the same extent.
In order to produce these shrunken Hydrogen atoms, you’d need to give it the precise quantum of energy to produce it, since it looks like it’s easier to produce an excited S-orbital than one of the proposed multi-lobe shrunken ones. They’ll also decay and release their stored energy, giving a predictable spectral line, and there’ll probably be a half-life involved here.
I’ve put a lot of maybes in here, since it’s following a logical path but a lot isn’t known. Still, when you change the sign of the energy delta, it makes more sense and fits in better with the rest of what we know. Get the sign right, and maybe there’s something useful here.
Let me be further emphatic. Randy Mills is a failed Harvard/MIT MD who has for 30 years pedaled three differently named versions of his hydrino scam.
Rud
You may be right but I think it is interesting that he can model complex molecules and make accurate predictions that have been subsequently observed. If he is all scam what he says in that article is quite a lie: “From two basic equations, the key building blocks of organic chemistry have been solved, allowing the true physical structure and parameters of an infinite number of organic molecules up to infinite length and complexity to be obtained. These equations were also applied to bulk forms of matter, such as the allotropes of carbon, the solid bond of silicon and the semiconductor bond; as well as fundamental forms of matter such as the ionic bond and the metallic bond; and major fields of chemistry such as that of silicon, tin, aluminum, boron, and coordinate compounds.
Further, the Schwarzschild Metric is derived by applying Maxwell’s Equations to electromagnetic and gravitational fields at particle production. This modifies General Relativity to include the conservation of spacetime and gives the origin of gravity, the families and masses of fundamental particles, the acceleration of the expansion of the universe (predicted by Dr. Mills in 1995 and since confirmed experimentally), and overturns the Big Bang model of the origin of the universe.”
Randy Mills was summa cum laud at Harvard and took graduate Physics and electronics courses at MIT in a non-degree course. He published with his professor a major paper. Hardly failed. He has published many papers on his approach, and pulled together existing classical physics along with his new ideas for a unified theory of classical physics. Since he incorporated classical physics, clearly much of the total (Maxwells equations, Newtons equations, relativity, etc.) would be repeats to have a complete theory. His lack of carefully giving references for other work was poor tech writing, but that is book keeping, not plagiarizing error (he blanket acknowledged others work). His three versions were updates, not basically different versions.
He has shown why the universe expansion is accelerating, what dark matter is (with far more evidence than current theories). His data on hydrinos has far more experimental support than the sparse and guessing theories such as the big bang/inflation, dark energy to explain the acceleration, and many more. His experimental demonstrations support the hydrino theory far better than most theories that are accepted.
Is he correct? I think he is very convincing but as a scientist, always keep sceptical until the evidence is overwhelming but do not reject based on the need for updates or corrections. His work is monumental in scope, and not a simple short theory. I think his work will turn physics on its head. Your friend that commented on why 13 billion years would result in no hydrinos does not understand that there are dynamic processed to continually change states such as stellar fusion, coronal and magnetic interactions (flares, CME), black holes, nova and supernova, etc.
Mills’ “hydrino” theory dates back to at least 1991 and was the basis for formation of his company HydroCatalysis, Inc., subsequently renamed BlackLight Power, Inc., subsequently renamed Brilliant Light Power, Inc.
Meanwhile, the Standard Model of the universe has evolved and applied physicists have even found the Higgs boson and fairly well established its mass, which came as a surprised to just about every theoretical particle physicist working on the subject.
Meanwhile, gravitational waves have also been experimentally detected.
Meanwhile, hydrinos . . . no significant theoretical or empirical evidence they exist, just some handwaving such as “If they exist they could explain (insert favorite mystery here).”
The only evidence supporting the Higgs boson is a small peak in a data curve that is inconclusive (i.e., other processes could have caused that peak.) If you read the data and study for the Higgs, they emphasize that the likely-hood of the peak being real is very high, but not exactly where they thought it most likely was. They then claim there is no alternate source of the peak they know of. That is the totality of the support for the Higgs. The validity of Mills hydrino is indicated by several different data sets of different types of measurements and far better supported. Mills demonstrated production of excess power is undeniable.The standard model is not at all supported unambiguously by data and fails to answer many questions that Mills ideas do answer reasonably.
Please read Mills books (free on line) with an open mind and you will almost surely be surprised how consistent and reasonable and supported by data it is. Does that mean all of Mills thoughts are valid? No, each idea (oscillating universe rather than big bang, hydrinos as dark matter, source of gravity, etc.) has to be considered separately. The basic two points of his work is the presence of lower stable states and thus the hydrino, and that the structure of the bound electron removes the particle/wave problem without the need for quantum mechanics.
No so. As reported by Wikipedia and heavily footnoted/supported (this reference purely for convenience in this discussion) at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson :
“The following are examples of tests used to confirm that the discovered particle is the Higgs boson: see attached table
and this:
“As of 2019, the Large Hadron Collider has continued to produce findings that confirm the 2013 understanding of the Higgs field and particle.
“The LHC’s experimental work since restarting in 2015 has included probing the Higgs field and boson to a greater level of detail, and confirming whether less common predictions were correct. In particular, exploration since 2015 has provided strong evidence of the predicted direct decay into fermions such as pairs of bottom quarks (3.6 σ) – described as an “important milestone” in understanding its short lifetime and other rare decays – and also to confirm decay into pairs of tau leptons (5.9 σ). This was described by CERN as being ‘of paramount importance to establishing the coupling of the Higgs boson to leptons and represents an important step towards measuring its couplings to third generation fermions, the very heavy copies of the electrons and quarks, whose role in nature is a profound mystery’. Published results as of 19 March 2018 at 13 TeV for ATLAS and CMS had their measurements of the Higgs mass at 124.98±0.28 GeV/c2 and 125.26±0.21 GeV/c2 respectively.”
I will just observe that using two different experimental apparatus to measure the mass of Higgs boson as being be between 124.7 and 125.5 GeV/c2 (i.e., to within ± 0.3%) clearly falsifies your assertion of there being “a small peak in a data curve that is inconclusive.”
His books are available at his web site for no charge.
Nice summary. It’s not so much that the models are garbage, and they may be, but the fact that people that don’t understand how they are built give the results credibility beyond their capabilities. Finite element analysis models have proven to be invaluable and accurate but they can be tested by studying the results in the real world.
mleskovarsocalrrcom ==> Yes == there are a lot of people who misunderstand and thus mistrust any and all models. A big mistake.
Isn’t some sort of modeling used in virtually all science? It’s really just about hypothesizing how something works. It’s value is just in helping us think about a process. At best, any model is only partially correct- some more than others. We can’t do without modeling or then the quest for truth reverts to a priesthood.
I remember reading a summary of a paper where the authors were trying to determine the long-term outcome of the planets from first principles. Unfortunately, the planets would either spiral into the Sun or spiral out and eventually escape–roughly on the order of a million years. Obviously, the Solar System has existed for much longer than a million years. To correct the model, they added a damping factor. So where in physics do we find a damping factor in planetary motions? Not even a relatively simple system of planetary motion can be modeled from first principles without adding modeling correction processes.
EE “Doc” Smith wrote a series called called the Lensmen. One of the mentors of the Lensmen told them something like that in order to predict the future you have to have complete knowledge of the present. Otherwise the prediction is just a guess and not a prophecy.
This pretty much applies to the climate models. They are WAG’s. Any conditions we have today on Earth has been duplicated at some point in the past – and the Earth didn’t turn into a cinder. That’s about as close as one can get for a prediction of the future.
Tim ==> Plus 1,000 for the mere mention of E. E. Doc Smith!
(I believe Miles Mathis provides a damping factor – gravity that we experience is the net force of two separate forces. Those change in strength inversely and at different rates. He uses this to explain the harmonics between Jupiter and Saturn: draw too close, a factor pushing them apart strengthens; separate too far, the repelling factor dissipates, attraction rules. Something like that)
The presence of gas in the early solar system development caused drag of forming bodies, which tended to cause spiraling in. Gravitational interaction with the star and other forming planets caused spiraling out. The planets moved a lot, but finally settled in some orbit. The problem with first principals is you have to be sure you have all of the principles and all of the interactions and sufficient resolution of interactions. This is similar to the problem of modeling climate, you simply do not have all of the interaction sufficiently understood and do not have sufficient resolution to be valid.
I believe the inherent chaotic nature of planetary motions explain the spiraling. That’s why the need for a damping factor.
“The planets moved a lot, but finally settled in some orbit.”
We actually don’t know that. There’s no orbital path in space that would allow us to know where the Earth was a million years ago or a billion years ago. If the Earth has been slowly spiraling out, then that might explain the Faint Young Sun Paradox.
When the condensing nebular material formed proto-planets (by dust cloud gravitational collapse, not continued accretion at increasing scales beyond dust size), the collisions (and merging) and gravitational effects eventually formed the planets, which then by gravitation swept almost all of the remaining particles and gas up (except for some orbital locations perturbed by formation of the gas giants). The continued gravitational interaction of the large planets (and much less for small planets) does continue to slowly change planetary orbits. It is true Earth orbit changes slowly due to the multiple sources, But I am referring to time scales of millions, not billions of years as effectively stable. The so called multi-body gravitational interaction are not solvable over long enough time scales. However it can solve planetary motion on the million year time scale very well.
Story tip – article referral – EV – The inevitable EV implosion – American Thinker
Science does not need the handicap of mass religion. It can proceed without it. KISS principle is useful.
Religion encourages people to believe in low probability, even impossible events. This conditioning, expressed as a fundamental element, subtracts from the scientific ideal for proof with minimal contestable assumptions. Overall, religion helps to encourage public acceptance of poor climate “science”. We might need a working convention like the separation of powers written into some political systems. L
Derman’s Oath, to be universally useful, should be a part of religious practices. Geoff S
I don’t understand why Kip brought up his religious beliefs. It’s divisive and takes away from the rest of his post.
A theory of the universe, which is what Kip was discussing, necessarily raises religious questions. Kip was merely pointing out that theories that involve only the physics of matter are incomplete because they cannot answer those questions. You cannot claim to fully understand the universe without also claiming to answer religious questions. So you are speaking of your religious beliefs as well when you say that religious issues are irrelevant to a theory of the universe. That’s fine and that’s my point. It is impossible to not reveal an opinion about religious belief when advancing a grand theory of everything.
Just because something is unknown doesn’t mean there is a god or magic.
We didn’t understand thunder and lightning in the past, so we invented a god of thunder and lightning. I think I’m more advanced than that.
I did not say that a failure to understand something proved the existence of God. You are winning easily, because you are fighting a straw man.
I guess I misunderstood your comment.
Thanks Alexy. I hope I didn’t come across as rude. Good exchange. I appreciate your thoughts.
You weren’t rude. A civilised exchange.
Well you do think Newton was a moron.
I don’t think Newton included god in his discoveries.
gc ==> Iam ont engaging in the science v.religion fight, which always arises here when any mention of religionis made, but you make a very good point. And correctly identify why I had to at least mention it. I could not honestly comment on a Theory of everything without doinf so. Thank you.
Science asks you to believe that something came from nothing.
I’m quoting from Andy West’s book Catastrophe Culture here:
Basically, for most of the world, religiosity is positively associated
with the affirming of general statements about the seriousness of
climate change (what West calls unconstrained statements), but negatively associated with reality-constrained statements in which a person has
to choose a priority between different issues or make a trade-off. He finds the situation to be more complicated in the US, where being Democrat, Independent,
or Republican significantly impacts answers people give to the unconstrained
statements.
I don’t think your hypothesis is adequate to explain these observations.
Sorry, its title totally is The Grip of Culture, isn’t it.
Dark Matter and dark energy .
The Phlogiston and Luminiferous Aether of 21st century science?
While Phlogiston is almost surely invalid, the Luminiferous Aether (absolute spacetime) with specific electrodynamic properties may be valid. In fact Rossi’s SKLep may be based on conversion of space-time to energy.
Phlogiston, being the principle agent in fermentation, will always have a place in society.
And like fishes accept water, I accept an Aetherous Dirac sea as a possibility.
This has jogged a memory, of a book I read over 50 years ago. It was a sci-fi book, written by Asimov Heinlen? About a professor who created a mathematical model of the universe, and he could look at any singular part and predict who would do what and the outcome.
Of course it was only fiction, but I reckon climate modellers must have read it and believed it.
Yes, Foundation. Now a TV series on Apple+.
Even then, The Mule threw a spanner in the works.
That might have been in “Foundation and Empire”.
As if modeling Earth’s climate weren’t difficult and contentious enough, let’s model the universe. Climate change/emergency/crisis money must be running out.
Maybe not for precise predictions, but no amount of butterflies (or CO2) is going to prevent the next glaciation in a few thousand years. No interglacial has ever resisted for long after obliquity goes below 23º. This time is never different.
Javier ==> Oddly, a deep understanding of Chaos leads to the realization that chaos can enforce stability as well as randomness. See my series on Chaos here at WUWT.
“…to all who use the model.” How about those who read of the model?
I have taught computer modeling to graduate students.
Modeling (computer or physical or mathematical) is necessarily a simplification. We make a model airplane and test it in a wind-tunnel. We make simplifying assumptions in mathematical models. We make simplifications in computer models. Math, physical and computer models are useful tools to make predictions which must be verified by real-world experiments.
All models must be verified in the real world. They’re only models.
Don’t get me wrong. I agree with you. But how do you verify a climate model? Suppose for example I make a model to project sea level rise at place X over the next 50 years and what I do is I simply draw a line extrapolating from sea level rise at that place over the previous 50 years. But then I take 100 factors that I think might contribute to sea level rise and I adjust, adjust and adjust – making guesses about the impact of those factors will be – but also ensuring that all of those theoretical contributors all balance out to produce my extrapolation projection. If sea level rise occurs as I have projected is my model verified? I think that when the uncertainties in a model’s inputs swamp the thing the model is built to predict, as is the case with climate models trying to predict temperature and sea level 50 and 100 years out, the model is useless as a projection tool and is not verified even if the projection happens to match future observation.
Old George ==> Yes and yes again!
The idea of Dark Matter is a bit like saying there must be a black cat in my coal cellar because I never see any mice in there. The reason Dark Matter was proposed was that an anomaly was noticed with the orbital velocities of stars in the outer reaches of galaxies (Döppler shifts in the spectrum received) where for a stable orbit they must be seeing a higher gravity than the galaxy ought to exert. People didn’t want to believe that Newton’s law of gravity could be wrong at huge distances, so there must be *something else* that supplied that gravity.
Mike McCulloch put forward an alternate explanation, basically that inertia is quantised (QI), that explains this anomaly without needing Dark Matter. Whereas Dark Matter cannot simultaneously explain both galactic rotation anomalies and a similar anomaly with wide binary star orbital speeds, since it would need a different distribution of DM for each case and couldn’t solve both at the same time, QI does this elegantly. See https://physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.com/ for more, but you’ll need a lot of coffee and time.
QI also predicts it’s possible to produce a thrust without needing to eject mass to produce that thrust, and after a lot of ground-based tests there should be a satellite launch in October that tests whether it can accelerate a cubesat in space. Current thrust is around 50mN for a watt of electrical power. I expect it’ll work, but this is a go-nogo test since if it works it stays in LEO and if not it’ll de-orbit in a few weeks.
If it works, it adds some credibility to the QI theory, as well as making a huge difference to space flight in future. Improving the thrust and thrust per watt will be normal engineering, so it should later on be possible to lift off from ground level without needing a rocket. Travel between planets will be a lot faster if you can accelerate all the time rather than just at the start and the end, and if you can do that at 1g that saves problems with astronauts’ bodies from long periods of zero-g.
This also throws up some questions about the Big Bang theory, and since the JWST now has pictures of early galaxies that are far bigger and more mature than the Big Bang theory predicts, those questions were going to be asked anyway.
Net here is that theories about how the universe started are only guesses, and since we’re getting new data at an increasing rate and more people are thinking about the data we’ve gathered, there will be new guesses that (maybe) are closer to the truth. More things that we thought were impossible will be not only seen to be possible but you’ll be able to buy them.
Models are simplifications of reality that have fewer moving parts and simplified interactions, such that we can understand them and calculate results. Can be good, can be misleading, but always need to be tested against reality to see how accurate they are. However, you can’t rely on them to absolutely predict what is possible or impossible. There are always the unknown unknowns.
IMO the biggest problem with “dark matter” is that it seems like they’ve so latched on to it as an explanation that they don’t look for any alternatives. Lee Smolin addresses a similar issue with string theory in “The Trouble With Physics”
Simon ==> Fascinating possibilities…so many ideas….so much unknown.
“People didn’t want to believe that Newton’s law of gravity could be wrong at huge distances, so there must be *something else* that supplied that gravity.”
It seems to be wrong at short distances, because GR explains Mercury’s orbital precession better than Newton and far more precisely
I have favored MOND (MOdified Newtonian Dynamics). Apparently like QI, MOND explains multiple problems (including the galaxy rotation problem) with one setting of its parameters. Also like QI, MOND is ridiculed by the established science community. As for Dark Matter, they have to reset its values for each case.
Jim – Yep, MoND does also fit the observed effects well, but Ao is a fitted parameter and there’s no explanation as to why it is what it is. Mike’s QI on the other hand derives the equivalent equation from the measured Hubble radius, and thus also predicts that in the distant past (when the Universe hadn’t expanded so much) then the minimum quantum of inertia (or acceleration) will be larger. This change of the minimum acceleration is in fact seen on far red-shifted galaxies. Thus I’d say that Mike’s explanation is a bit better.
However, Mike’s explanation does require you to swallow some propositions that do not seem intuitively right, in that despite the Unruh waves being limited to the speed of light the effects of applying an acceleration here and now will change the location of the horizon billions of light-years distant, and that that movement of the horizon also affects the thing being accelerated here and now. Of course, QM has a similar problem with “spooky action at a distance” which is just as objectionable but still gives the right answers if you use the equations. The paradox likely means we haven’t found out what’s really happening yet, and that later on we will probably find a better description, but in the meantime the derived formulae work in practice and QI does predict some other useful effects that also appear to practically work.
A really interesting result of being able to produce a thrust without needing to eject mass to get a reaction-force is that it can be used to build a rotary motor. For this motor, the power it produces is proportional to the speed of rotation, but the power needed to drive it remains constant. Thus at some speed it will be producing more energy than it takes to drive it. I’ve been trying to persuade the various people I know who are working on these drives to test this prediction by experiment, but it’s a bit too heretical for them so far. With an available thrust of 50mN/watt, the “break-even” speed for the thruster is 20m/s, and this is low-enough to be easily achievable. I expect the thrust per watt to improve over time, too, making it easier to make such a motor and to generate power. This will of course fix the problem with “renewable” power since it will be available 24/7 and independently of weather, which is why both these questions of exactly how the universe works and whether QI practically works are really important.
Of course, that IVO Ltd satellite test may fail, and crash and burn. If however it works, and stays in orbit or even gains height, then it’s the dawn of a new era where energy will become really cheap and non-polluting. Pretty astounding. Who’d have thought that the observation that galaxies weren’t rotating at the expected orbital velocities would lead to a way to make energy?
The main difference is using models to try and track down TOE and using models to predict climate change is that no one studying the TOE is forcing us to change our life style, our economic situation or comply with government mandates.
Tom in FL: Which is precisely why TOE had better get itself together and line up with AGW, or else CliSci Inc. will make sure that your non-compliant TOE never gets published, or if necessary, gets retracted. Now, if you’re willing to see reason, and form your TOE so that CO2 is bad, you may submit. Your article, I mean.
How hard could it be? 😉
Paul ==> Very very nice!
kamala loves vens, but I think this one would be beyond her ability to appreciate.
Kip nice article for you here is one of my favorite quotes:
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
Robert Jastrow
mkelly ==> Beautiful!
This is one of the things that bothers me about all the attention AI is getting these days. People don’t realize that all AI does is sort through the data it has access to and report a most likely scenario/solution. Computational power, data, and a search engine is all it is. Screw up the data, like in most of the CC models, and you get garbage out.
mleskovarsocalrrcom ==> My AI Guy explains that most AI ChatBot/Essay Writing AIs just look for the next most likely word. Over and Over
I’ve been wasting part of my retirement watching YouTube videos, though one regular feature has proven rather interesting: Coffee with Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert). He spends roughly an hour a day giving his views on the world, and has formulated a number of rules about the world which are quite reasonable. One is that “models” writ large have nothing to do with science, nor do they have any predictive value whatsoever. Models, according to Adams, are nothing other than marketing tools – things to convince people what course of action to take.
He based this on his own pre-Dilbert career as an economic model builder, but believes it applies to any kind of models. He’s got a point.
Michael ==> Today’s climate models, the parts we hear about in the media, are being used as propaganda generators. Most still use the now dis-credited RCP8.5 and its prosperity (little baby models, now all grown up and just as wrong).
From the above article:
“And to this I add my voice: Derman’s Oath should be adhered to in all fields of science – whenever and wherever mathematical models are used in any research or study in any way whatever:
Bottom Line:
For all models used in any scientific endeavor, Assumptions and Oversights must be made explicit by model developers to all who use the model.”
Whereas I can understand the general concern expressed by Kip Hansen, I don’t think science has ever progressed in such a manner and with such cautious limitations. In particular, the following “mathematical models” (aka, theories supported with rigorous mathematics) come to mind that, IMHO, did not/do not pay any homage to Derman’s Oath:
— modern theories/models of the structure of atoms and the processes involved in chemical reactions
— modern theories of nuclear physics and the strong and weak forces involved in such
— theories of special and general relativity (esp. modeling “spacetime”)
— quantum theory/quantum mechanics*, including the development of elementary particle physics supporting the Standard Model of the universe.
The mathematical models used in each of the above breakthrough progressions of science did not need any “vetting” or precautionary warnings for mathematicians and physicists (in both theoretical and applied fields) to have them be them quite useful and practical in understanding nature*.
*“I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics.”
— Richard Feynman
ToldYou ==> But, if the originator of the model does not understand the assumptions and limitations and have a good idea of t the known oversights, how can he have any faith at all in the outcomes of the model?
Nothing wrong with exploratory models, theories, hypotheses, but just knocking something together and finding that it produces some result is not enough.
Well, any new insight, theory, model has to start somewhere . . . and, IMHO, all good scientists have recognized for quite a long time that no models are perfect*, that they have inherent approximations, and that they will be refined over time as they are tested against observations (data). All part of the scientific method.
Case in point: cosmological “models” at an earlier time had the Earth at the center of the universe and the Sun, planets and stars arranged in surrounding crystal rings and spheres. Later, the models evolved to having the Sun at the center of the universe, and the notion of surrounding spheres disappeared. Still, later our galaxy was located at the center of the universe, which was thought to be alone and of constant size. This model, in turn was further refined to what we have now have as a Big Bang, followed by inflation, followed by an expanding universe of innumerable galaxies which is being forced to incorporate the dual ideas of dark matter and dark energy, with parallel recognition that our solar system is nothing special in cosmological terms, being perhaps one among trillions.
Because we do not have even rudimentary knowledge of the composition of either dark matter or dark energy, but have scientific evidence both that together comprise something like 95% of everything that exists in our universe, wouldn’t it be fair to say humans are “just knocking something together” as a model of cosmology today?
*I think the basic answer to your question lies in this quote:
“It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.”
— attributed to Aristotle
ToldYou ==> absolutely, it would be right to say humans are just knocking something together today…and that is my point. It is one thing to say “This is how it seems to us today.” and another to claim that such a model has any chance of being correct….one MUST admit the limitations and shortcomings of one’s model
And a model that leaves out at least 95% of what is known to exist (and does not acknowledge that it intentionally leaves out an entire field of study that is necessary for complete understanding) cannot be considered anything other than a “toy” or “child’s” model.
The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is 42.
This reminds me of the truism; “If you torture statistics long enough they will confess to anything!” Scientists these days seem to enjoy pulling fingernails. 😮
Personally I don’t expect a “theory of everything” to ever be discovered.
Science ==> You and me both. But let me qualify that….I do expect many “Theories of Everything” to be announced and then proven wrong.
First off, I don’t believe that theories are “discovered” . . . instead, they are invented by human intellect. And they are subject to validation* based on observational data.
Second, there are many “theories of everything”, commonly know as creation myths. However, I would agree that currently there is no TOE that is consistent with mathematics and physics per our present understanding in these fields.
*“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, if it doesn’t agree with observation, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”
— Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman