Experts - chocolate teapot

veryintrigued

jimjames wrote: »

RBS made a profit. Only became a loss when other items were added in like PPI costs. Having said that, I could see years ago that PPI was a complete rip off.

That made me smile when McEwan said this.

Pincher

Gravity is based on LOVE.

You fall to Earth because you love each other.

Love is an irresistible force.
Always wear a parachute, or a condom.

BucksLady

Pincher wrote: »

Gravity is based on LOVE.

You fall to Earth because you love each other.

Love is an irresistible force.
Always wear a parachute, or a condom.

I see you're wearing your 'rose tinted' glasses

atush

bigadaj wrote: »

You're not following a scientific route then?

Yes, I am. Newtonian physics and the fossil record plus DNA.

If gravity didnt exist, we would not have satellites far out in the solar system as they use gravity to slingshot round planets.

bigadaj

atush wrote: »

Yes, I am. Newtonian physics and the fossil record plus DNA.

If gravity didnt exist, we would not have satellites far out in the solar system as they use gravity to slingshot round planets.

You dont appear to understand what a scientific theory is then though do you.

Is it the theory of evolution, oh no, it's the fact of evolution.

masonic

atush wrote: »

Yes, I am. Newtonian physics and the fossil record plus DNA.

If gravity didnt exist, we would not have satellites far out in the solar system as they use gravity to slingshot round planets.

If you simply state that a piece of scientific knowledge is a fact, then you are not following the scientific method. The scientific method holds scientific theories to be the most reliable form of scientific knowledge. Nothing can be more certain than a scientific theory. As mentioned above, a key requirement of all scientific knowledge is that it is falsifiable and may be rejected or modified on the basis of new experimental data. Any explanation of a phenomenon that is asserted as a fact is not making use of the scientific method. An example of such an explanation would be creationism.

Anyway, apologies if you didn't understand my little jibe at those with a tendency to disbelieve the experts, who also tend to conflate the usage of "theory" in a scientific context with the common usage to describe a guess or hypothesis. I think you'll find nobody disagreeing with you that we can be very sure indeed that our understanding of evolution and gravity is very well supported by a large body of evidence.

AnotherJoe

atush wrote: »

Yes, I am. Newtonian physics and the fossil record plus DNA.

If gravity didnt exist, we would not have satellites far out in the solar system as they use gravity to slingshot round planets.

The theory of gravity is not about the fact of (apparent) attraction between bodies, it's regards how it can be predicted and possibly how it works. Newtons theory of gravity, which was wrong in detail, made good predictions up to a point about calculating it but said nothing about how it worked. Einsteins theory says how it works as well as making predictions. At some point, a better theory that supplants it may come along.

Quantum theory is highly successful about prediction but pretty much is clueless about what's going on.

dealer_wins

An "expert" on a documentary said that bodies dont attract each other, but that their mass warps space causing other things with mass to appear to be attracted, but they are just following the warped space.

I do like gravity though, its handy for keeping whiskey and ice in a glass.

bowlhead99

dealer_wins wrote: »

An "expert" on a documentary said that bodies dont attract each other, but that their mass warps space causing other things with mass to appear to be attracted, but they are just following the warped space.

And I'll stick to that as my excuse for being caught in bed with your wife

Freecall

atush wrote: »

If gravity didnt exist, we would not have satellites far out in the solar system as they use gravity to slingshot round planets.

You have tried to use a very complicated example to justify your claim but unfortunately you have misunderstood.

To give a slightly simpler example, we all know that if a brick is dropped it falls to the ground. What we call gravity is responsible for that.

But how does it fall? Why does it fall? Will it always fall? A simple experiment will show that the rate of falling is not constant, why not?

Newton suggested that the falling was due to a force and suggested that all bodies interacted this way. As a working theory this suggestion worked quite well and as a species we were able to develop all sorts of complicated machines which took advantage of this.

Then came quantum physics which showed that this was not in fact the case.

That does not mean that bricks no longer fall to the ground (and hurt like hell if they land on your foot) but it does mean that we have had to modify our theory.

This constant modification of the theory of gravity continues. To put it in context, it was only in 2012 that we were able to measure the 'speed' of gravity. Up until that point, gravitational 'speed' was just a hypothesis based on the mathematics.

Now it forms part of the theory.