Universe Is Expanding Faster Than We Thought (gizmodo.com) 146
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Gizmodo: The Hubble Space Telescope has released some new numbers indicating that the rate of expansion of our universe is approximately 45.5 miles per second per megaparsec. It calculated this by measuring the distance between 19 faraway galaxies. Conceptually, the calculations show that space is expanding fast enough to essentially double the distance between our galaxy and our nearest neighbors in about 10 billion years. The new Hubble constant, which is 5 to 9 percent higher than previous estimates, does not match estimated expansion rates from the energetic leftovers of the Big Bang, thus causing a headache for cosmologists. It could mean that Einstein's theory of relativity is incomplete and/or there are processes pushing space apart that we have yet to account for.
It's (Score:3)
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Time (Score:2, Interesting)
It could mean that time is a lot different than current physics accounts for.
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And the rent is too damn high.
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Re:Time (Score:4, Interesting)
It could more simply mean that inflation is not some sort of magical one-off event, but a fundamental part of the universe that simply varies in intensity with other parameters, such as density, and thus slows as the universe expands.
A density-correlated inflationary dilation gravity is part of some theories of black holes - they let you construct a black hole suchly that there is no singularity, no disjoint, eternally-inaccessible region of spacetime, no firewall, or any of those other things that physics finds awkward. In such a regime, infalling matter/energy collapses into a topologically flat environment around the event horizon. When the black hole finally dissolves (an ungodly length of time into the future), it explodes/expands into empty universe around it, with the first part of that explosion/expansion dominated by inflation which quickly weakens as everything moves apart.
Sound like anything in our past?
Re: Weird. (Score:3)
every year... (Score:1)
I am starting think they don't know what they are talking about.
Re:every year... (Score:5, Insightful)
Physicists gladly admit that there are some serious issues about the universe that they don't understand. Gravity, inflation, black holes... here, there's a full Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] on major unsolved problems in physics.
One of the things that astronomy is most useful for us helping gather data that will help us decipher the nature of what really drives the universe. We know a lot of it. A damned lot. But not everything, and finding those last missing pieces is the source of a vast amount of research across the world. Physicists don't hide their lack of understanding of these sorts of things, they talk about them with every chance they get. These are the things that pay their salaries. These are the things that could earn them the Nobel Prize if they can find and prove a solution.
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I could lose myself in that page for a week. I had no idea there was that much about physics that couldn't be explained, though I had heard of many of these. I admit though, I am a computer guy, not a physicist.
Another example of... (Score:3, Funny)
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That joke soon to be illegal California
http://www.washingtontimes.com... [washingtontimes.com]
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Not if it's really a joke.
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Yes. He could be held in the same prison as the entire Republican Party.
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You're the guy who couldn't figure out the difference between land and sea ice. I don't think you should be entering into this discussion without at least understanding the topic at hand. It's patently clear you are arguing from either a lack of understanding, your wishes, or a combination of both.
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I don't think
Absolutely certain that's the first accurate statement I have seen from you chief. You don't think.
Keep working on it though, you may actually start thinking sooner or later.
Headache...or Clue? (Score:5, Interesting)
The new Hubble constant...does not match estimated expansion rates from the energetic leftovers of the Big Bang, thus causing a headache for cosmologists.
I thought the real headache for cosmologists was that the measured value of the cosmological constant, which is what powers the accelerating expansion, was ~120 orders of magnitude different from the best calculations. If I have understood it correctly then this new result seems to suggest that the cosmological constant is not in fact a constant. So given that we clearly have absolutely no idea what is driving the expansion of the universe I don't see this new information as a headache but rather as clue which should help solve the puzzle of dark energy.
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Dontcha mean this guy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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The cosmological constant definitely needs a re-think. It was a theoretical construct that made the math work. Our understanding of the universe is based largely on one assumption on top of another, on top of another and so on. We tend to think the laws of physics are uniform across the entire universe without a shred of proof that this is actually the case. But uniformity is required to make math work and as long as the math works our assumptions have to be right don't they? And then we add dark energy and
Re:Headache...or Clue? (Score:5, Informative)
We tend to think the laws of physics are uniform across the entire universe without a shred of proof that this is actually the case.
Actually we have quite a lot of proof of that. Stars has the same spectra which show absorbtion and emission lines consistent with elements here on earth. Supernovae occur in other galaxies in apparently the same way that they do in ours. The nucleosynthesis of the Big Bang seems to work really well etc. There is considerable evidence that the laws of physics are apparently the same everywhere and, if they are not, then fundamental laws such as conservation of energy and momentum will not be correct since these rely on the symmetry of the laws of physics with respect to time and position respectively.
Just because something we originally thought of as constant is perhaps not does not mean that the laws of physics must be different elsewhere all it means is that the laws of physics are not quite what we thought they were, or at least what we have is incomplete.
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That's all fine and dandy if we are measuring it right, but there seems to be at least a smidgen of confirmation bias - the candles keep getting blown out. Wow, that galaxy is ten times bigger than we thought it was (we think) because it was hiding behind all this gas (we think) and it's much further away (we think) and so on. Quicker, no slower, no steady state, up a bit, left a bit, take away the number you first thought of etc...
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That's all fine and dandy if we are measuring it right, but there seems to be at least a smidgen of confirmation bias
But there is plenty of evidence that we are not doing that as well! One of the biggest mysteries in physics at the moment is the nature of Dark Matter. The evidence of this comes from the rotation curves of stars orbiting galaxies as well as the cosmic microwave background radiation: both disagree with what we expect to see from the physics we know. Previous examples of new physics which was first spotted from astrophysical observation are neutrino oscillations (discovered by trying to explain the apparent
The relativity of wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
Today's understanding of the universe will probably be ridiculed in the future and get compared to when everyone accepted that the world was flat or that the Sun orbited the Earth.
The relativity of wrong [tufts.edu] - Issac Asimov's reply to that old canard.
Re:Headache...or Clue? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Occam has lost his Razor (Score:2)
What humanity views as dark mater may be in fact the result of dimensional space interaction causing one part of the standard dimensional space time bubble time to be slightly out of sync with another.
Occam's razor suggests that we start with the simplest ideas first. In this case that's solutions which require
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Or, as NASA said today, dark matter may be black holes.(http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-scientist-suggests-possible-link-between-primordial-black-holes-and-dark-matter). If I were an astrophysicist, I might know why the author didn't just pull out a calculator and figure out how many 30 solar mass black holes would likely be near us (assuming uniform distribution) to account for average observed galactic rotational speed anomaly, and if the kepler telescope (or another) could be used to look f
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The Hubble constant which is talked about here is the rate of change of the scale factor, divided by the scale factor (H = 1/a da/dt or d/dt (log a). You can think about it as the velocity of log(a) if you like. The matter contribution means that the universe is expanding.
The cosmological constant contributes to the acceleration of expansion (dH/dt ~ (rho+P) ) where rho is the energy density, and P the pressure. For a pure cosmological constant, rho=P and so this is zero. Follow the calculus through and y
that's why we never get any visitors (Score:4, Funny)
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Makes it even more fun (Score:3)
The next time a cosmologist starts to pontificate about the inevitable _________ death of the universe. Best to catch the older ones, so you can play just how many irrefutable endings to the universe there have been.
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The average? Not very. The exceptional ones? Quite so.
Non-linearity at smaller scales (Score:4, Interesting)
I wish slashdot headlines weren't so definite. This is a single paper adding incrementally to our knowledge; it is not a survey article describing the joint understanding of all cosmologists.
For example, reading the paper, the galaxies hosting the supernovae in the sample had Cepheid--calibrated distances [wikipedia.org], in other words these are reasonably close objects (hence the reference to the local Hubble constant). While the paper discusses the possible effect of local motions of these 19 (!) galaxies, I don't think this discussion is sufficient. These proper motions are a more likely effect than issues with the CMB.
This is easy... (Score:1)
The Universe is just trying to get away faster from the people who shop at Walmart. Have you seen them?
They're accelerating away too: (Score:2)
Both the universe and the Walmart shoppers are trying to escape the hipsters wanting to redevelop the downtown area into brewpubs and organic craft bakeries.
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Aliens spotted Trump and yelled, "step on it!!!"
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Trump here, my ego can expand faster than any universe, faster than you can imagine, the universe currently fits into a tiny corner of it...it's that big.
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Aliens spotted Trump and yelled, "step on it!!!"
In order to get over the wall?
So it's accelerating its acceleration toward... (Score:2)
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That sounds like it will eventually hurt.
When you're under a blackhole's event horizon, all directions lead to the singularity. If big enough, you can survive in one for a time.
But eventually you're spaghetti. What if we're just in a really big black hole, and everything distant from us is just closer on that path to destruction? This could simply be what that looks like in a normal black hole of sufficient size.
Units (Score:3)
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And given that the universe is about 4E17 seconds old, that means we are partway through the first cycle of that tone. Hope it finishes before the Big Crunch.
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How much is that in metric cubic asstons?
miles per second per megaparsec (Score:2, Funny)
"Miles per second per megaparsec" is quite a surprising unit choice. Either use international unit system, or something else, but the mix is odd.
What about "miles per second per peta-yards?"
Incomplete theory? (Score:2)
Re:Incomplete theory? FTFY (Score:1)
Incomplete theory? Just fill in any gaps with CONSTANT. Problem solved.
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this is good news (Score:1)
Can this be observed over local distances? (Score:2)
A quick calculation says that's about 0.45 nanometres/sec over a distance of about 191,000 miles.
So....how accurately can the distance to the moon be measured these days?
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The Earth-Moon system is bound, so not useful to measure the Hubble constant. By definition, a bound system is one in which gravity has overcome cosmological expansion.
Genesis 1: (Score:2)
And God Said "Let there be ligh... Dammit, the dratted kids turned the record player up to 78 speed again!"
Solved! (Score:2)
The Great Simulator [slashdot.org] didn't bother to implement garbage collection.
We're in a video game... (Score:1)
Misguiding. (Score:4, Interesting)
"double the distance between our galaxy and our nearest neighbors in about 10 billion years." - except we won't, because the two galaxies are gravitationally bound and the bond overcomes space expansion.
It only works between superclusters of galaxies.
The analogy of "dots on expanding balloon" is inaccurate. It's more like blotches of dried, hard glue - each blotch being a supercluster. The space expands in between them, they drift apart, but each blotch remains roughly the same size.
yeah... (Score:1)
... those galaxies are just running away from Justin Bieber.
Redshift (Score:1)
... Or perhaps there's something else causing the redshift of spectral lines we use to estimate the speed of remote galaxies. Seems like a much simpler explanation than dark energy and all the other epicyclic add-ons we're accruing.
this is in keeping with (Score:2)
the interpretations of QM-influenced infinite universe models. (modified QRE-based. One example: http://www.sciencedirect.com/s... [sciencedirect.com] )
My own personal interpretation of the model is that gravitational thinning between galactic clusters can encourage energetic decay (as-in particle decay) in thin regions between galaxies in order to create new galaxies. Once enough hydrogen has formed to create new stellar mega-nurseries stars form rapidly in proximity, drawing in more void-hydrogen and thus creating more st
What about the space at atomic scales? (Score:2)
Is it expanding....??? Or is light slowing down??? (Score:2)
I wonder....wouldn't both exhibit a similar effect?
Missing Scale Factor? (Score:1)
Well, 45.5 miles/s/Mpc means that at a distance of ~4.1 Gpc the expansion speed exceeds c (~186000 miles/s). But the observable Universe has a diameter of ~28 Gpc. What am I missing here?
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Think about when the light at the edge of your calculation was emitted, and where that place is now. The definition of the observable universe goes roughly as follows:
Consider a photon emitted from a point at the big bang (really CMB, but we can substitute with a small change) that gets to us today. How far away is an object that was at rest (with respect to the homogeneous cosmological spatial slice) at that position now?
It isn't as simple as multiplying up these numbers, as the Hubble parameter changes ov
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Hope that helps!
A great deal actually. Thanks! I always get tripped-up trying to think about the expansion of the Universe. I imagine it's not really as hard as I manage to make it. *sigh*
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Re:Astronomy in a nutshell (Score:5, Insightful)
"A conclusion we came to was wrong because we jumped to it for no reason"
You believe that's what cosmologists do in peer-reviewed papers, just to conclusions for no reason? Somehow I think random /. armchair experts know less than they think.
No one understands what dark energy actually is - that's what the "dark" part means. The continuing, accelerating expansion of the universe is an observation seeking explanation. People propose hypotheses, and when we get new data many of those are falsified. That's called "science".
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Your use of the word 'observation' would tend to logically indicate that the correct statement is 'the universe appears to be expanding faster than our original hypothesis'. As it is impossible to confirm via alternate view points or experiment with alternate universes, only hypothesis based upon appearance can be postulated.
Re:Astronomy in a nutshell (Score:5, Informative)
A large chunk of science relies on observations not tied to controlled experiments. That doesn't make it any less "science". Regardless of your experiment, after all, what you end up with is only "observations". Heck, for particle physics you get statistical analysis of observations 3 steps removed from the event of interest.
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Re:Astronomy in a nutshell (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Theories typically have to start off as wild assed hypotheses plucked from somewhere. I know of a group of highly published physicists who sit around passing a joint giggling and coming up with theories which they investigate further once they sober up a bit. Thinking outside of the box to find answers often requires creativity... especially when the theory is completely unable to be observed.
2) Due to obvious lack of observed information, new theories are often published citing other theories as their foundation. This is amazing because it can help prove the original theory by providing a possible application. It's very little different than smoking the joint and giggling over "what if...?". It's a necessary step to allow peers to collaborate. Publishing for peer review does not actually mean "I believe I'm indisputably correct, bow to me or prove me wrong". It's a method of sharing information so other people can try and run with it too. There are too frigging many people (especially journalists... even "educated" journalists) who seem to believe papers publish for peer review are proofs. Or worse, because of this stupid religion vs. science debate, there are people "representing science" who are trying to explain "The theory of evolution" to idiots running museums displaying humans riding dinosaurs and misrepresenting the word "Theory" to make it sound like "As good as fact".
3) There are good scientists who work for a living and try to establish a foundation for their theories before simply grabbing 5 papers written by others, gluing them together like a collage and spamming them into the first journal to take them. These guys will actually put some effort into it, visit the local university and peer review with students, professors, etc... and eventually after believing they've reached a point of reasonable certainty that their theory isn't simply shit, they'll release the paper to be torn apart by a group of people who will like the idea and try to run with it, like the idea and try to disprove it as a favor to the author, or others who will try to disprove the idea using nothing but a crayon and a napkin because they're dicks.
4) There are bad scientists who somehow manage to establish published bibliographies that span multiple pages. Some of these guys are people who got their Ph.D., "mentored" shit loads of grad students and put his name first on the paper. What's worse is that he also made the student pay to get it published. Even worse is that he didn't put his name on other papers that he should have. Even worse, he didn't even really read the paper he put his name on, he simply said "He looks pretty smart... If I take credit for his work, I won't likely get burned". That scientist, when he eventually publishes his own work likely doesn't have 2 grams of originality. What's worse is that since he's such an amazingly highly published scientist with so many good papers under his belt, the journalists will flock to his paper.
Science and the scientific process is not flawless and has to be constantly improved on. I obviously represented it terribly here and that was because I'm playing devil's advocate. I hold science in incredibly high regard and respect. I spent two years of my life helping scientists and mathematicians translate from Ph.D. to human for the purpose of publishing papers or patents. I learned more by doing that then I could in a hundred years of reading. I believe part of the scientific process that works well is the hecklers and the critics. They're like the fellow who would stand behind the roman general upon his chariot while entering Rome whose job it was was to whisper "You're not a god" as a reminder.
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Sure, science without observation to kill off the bad hypotheses is barely science. Witness string theory. But that's not cosmology, for the most part (though there is actually a lot of theories-based-on-theories around inflation, simply because so much time has passed without any new data to cull the herd).
However, most of the stuff that laymen insist can't be true, and scientists are just making crazy stuff up, is very much based on observations, and it's the universe itself that seems to be making craz
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Yes, that's absolutely what they do. Peer review is useless. 90% of the time no one reads the paper. 9% of the time they read the paper but don't understand it and just give it a thumbs up because they don't want to reveal how useless they are. 1% of the time they hate the person who wrote it so they read it and tear it apart thoroughly.
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Yes, that's absolutely what they do. Peer review is useless. 90% of the time no one reads the paper. 9% of the time they read the paper but don't understand it and just give it a thumbs up because they don't want to reveal how useless they are. 1% of the time they hate the person who wrote it so they read it and tear it apart thoroughly.
You have the cites for that?
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You can read any published paper from any "respected" journal and see from yourself.
Slashdot has posted a number of articles over the last 18 months or so about how journals and peer review are broken and gamed. You can look there.
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You can read any published paper from any "respected" journal and see from yourself. Slashdot has posted a number of articles over the last 18 months or so about how journals and peer review are broken and gamed. You can look there.
IOW, no cites. At least let me know a general idea of how many peer reviiewed articles you have written. Then describe the peer review process. Its a little funny that people like you read about a retraction and someone getting caught, and think You see? You SEE? Your Stupid Stupid minds!
When in fact, it is merely a case of people getting caught. Despite the right wing's insistence, scientists are humans too, and just like family values politician getting caught in an airport bathroom cruising for Big
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"A conclusion we came to was wrong because we jumped to it for no reason"
You believe that's what cosmologists do in peer-reviewed papers, just to conclusions for no reason? Somehow I think random /. armchair experts know less than they think.
All part of the anti-intellectual crusade. If you can discredit any part of science, then some of the more uncomfortable parts are easy to enact political answers for.
Even in the summary, it is written that this is causing headaches for cosmologists. Good gawd no! More like excitement. Science isn't like religion or politics, where you make your decision, then stick to it at all costs, think trickle down economics or the war on drugs. Things that don't work, but some folks still worship them. Scientists
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Re:Astronomy in a nutshell (Score:5, Insightful)
The history of science is nothing but a chain of increasingly less-wrong conclusions supplanting ones that were previously jumped to for insufficient reason, because there is no such thing as "sufficient reason"; there is no certainty, and all conclusions are necessarily "jumped to".
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I agree with this. Truth is unobtainable. Worth a try though.
Re:Astronomy in a nutshell (Score:4, Interesting)
Truth is unobtainable. Worth a try though.
My personal motto is "fortasse desperato sed conor nihilominus", which is Latin for "it may be hopeless but I'm trying anyway", and that is the foundational principle of my philosophy, both in the "attitude toward life" sense and, back on topic, in the academic sense: from that principle, stated a bit more formally, I build up to a formulation of the scientific method, where you can never quite reach the truth but you can get a lot closer by trying than you would by giving up, whether that be giving up in the sense of abandoning any hope of success (nihilism, which all forms of relativism boil down to) or falsely claiming you've already succeeded (fideism, encompassing in it any appeal to authority or the supernatural, i.e. religion); and I also, separately, build from that foundational principle to an ethical analogue of the scientific method, but that's off-topic here.
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Re:Astronomy in a nutshell (Score:5, Insightful)
The accelerating expansion of the universe, aka "dark energy" is just about the last case in which you want to say this sort of thing, you know. Two independent groups of scientists both set out to measure how much the expansion was decelerating, since they, and basically everyone else who even believed the universe was expanding, expected gravity to slow it down over time. Through lots of observations (not pulled out of their collective asses) and calculations (ditto), they wound up disproving their own hypotheses.
I would say that's an example of science at its best - research leading to results that fly in the face of what had previously been believed, and belief being updated as a result. Apparently the Nobel committee felt the same way. Oh, and yes, there are people - not just Hubble folks - actively running experiments to get more data and see whether the numbers arrived at back in the late '90s by the guys who won the Nobel 5 years ago were actually right. In fact, those same guys are involved in follow-on projects to further refine or narrow down the ranges they came up with.
Re:Astronomy in a nutshell (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you misunderstood my point; I was arguing against the "pulled out of their asses" notion of the person I responded to by pointing out that all of science is just increasingly more-educated guesses, and that's fine and normal and couldn't possibly be any other way. Finding that the universe was accelerating was the less-wrong conclusion that supplanted the assumption that it was decelerating, previously jumped to for insufficient reason; not that the reason being insufficient is a criticism, because no reason can ever be sufficient, so we've got to settle for "good enough for now" and expect to find out we were wrong in some ways later.
This newest result is just finding out one of the ways were were still wrong after that. And no doubt the new conclusion is also still wrong. But they're getting less wrong, and that's the best we could possibly hope for.
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"A conclusion we came to was wrong because we jumped to it for no reason"
No reason whatsoever, except the entirety of observed data.
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> No reason whatsoever, except the entirety of observed data.
If you change the model every time you observe more data, you don't have a model, you just have data.
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Certain parts of science, like Newtonian mechanics, is mature enough so we know where it works and know where it does not work. We know the bad assumption that we made, and how to back fix it so it is now ok.
Cosmology, on the other hand, has lots of problems.
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