In Saecula Saeculorum

One of the reasons one can cite for the reason that we are in an Era of Patience as far as astrophysics goes, is that some of the great open questions in that field will simply never be settled.

For example, the theories of galactic dynamics are only partially complete. One of the big open questions is something called the rotation curve of galaxies. Basically this refers to how the speeds of stars in spiral disk galaxies such as our own drop off as you get farther and farther form the center of the galaxy. The speeds get slower but not at the rate predicted by any accepted theory. Predicting the proper rotation curve is one of the aims of any good modification to gravitation, and was the subject of multiple talks at the recent conference.

But there are many deep problems to answering this question definitively, and it is the same problem as in any theory of galactic dynamics. It is that we will never be able to verify many of these predictions by experiment.  We can spin all the mathematical theories we want, but we can never be sure many of them actually refer to a physical reality.

Why is this so? In the case of galactic dynamics, when we look out and observe them, we see only a glimpse in time, and from the standpoint of the lives of galaxies, we may as well see only a snapshot and the briefest possible motion, if you can even call it that.

Even with the planets, which Kepler observed over decades, we can gather meaningful data over the course of a human lifetime, and settle questions of theory. With galaxies, even if we had been observing them since the dawn of civilization, our data would be only a tiny window in the motion and evolution of these large-scale structures. Even if we observe for the ten thousand years, we will have barely any data that can tell us what will happen in the long run, and thus our theories will be guesses.

It is a problem that goes deep to the heart of what science means and the kinds of questions it seeks to answer.

We are like mayflies who live and die in a daylong flick of time on the scale of the universe. Our possible to do experiments on the cosmological scale is nil and will always be so. We are human, we know so little. In this sense, the Era of Patience will be permanent. It is one of many reason that there may never again be a time in the history of mankind where physical sciences like the first half of the Twentieth Century.

Of course, this does not even factor in the notion, taken seriously by many scientists, that we may actually be living in a simulation. If so, is what is out there even truly "out there."

Absurd, you say? We can see into deep space. Of course all those deep space objects we see in the night sky are physically there, at the distance and scale we think they are. Sure. All right then, go ahead and prove it.

Or do you want us to take it on faith that it is all really there? It's the simplest answer, right? Surely there's nothing wrong with using Occam's Razor to prove that the entire universe out there exists?

It makes the problem of the galactic rotation curve look pretty simple after all.

Side note: in any case anyone is wondering, I am not at all a fan of this man. I don't consider what he does to be science but entertainment. He is the favorite deceiver of people who claim to "f-ing love science." Yet I've never found anything he said to be intellectually stimulating or worth discussing in any serious way. Worse, after leaving the University of Texas as a graduate student he slandered some very good people in the astronomy department I happen to know personally accusing them of racism (of course). Some things never change. I have no use for people like him. That's all I'm going to say about politics and current events for the moment.