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Comment by mrbluecoat | Hacker News Reader

I have a great deal of respect for the sciences but sometimes astronomy just feels like one giant guessing game: age of the universe, big bang starting as a joke and all the "first minute" timelines thereafter, dark energy and dark matter (code for we have no idea what it is) vastly outnumbering everything else, and now questioning the Nobel Prize-awarded universe expansion. Meanwhile, asteroids the size of buses+ keep whizzing by closer than the moon with little or no warning. Sigh.

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Consider the scales involved. It's amazing that a species that is 99% chimp genes can even think and deduce phenomena of that size; don't ask it to get it right the first time.

All of that without having traveled farther than one light second from its home.

It should humble all of us that believe we have absolute knowledge of things. So many people consciously or subconsciously philosophize about the universe, life, spirituality, etc. based on grand ideas and science which is routinely overturned. Really all we can prove is mathematical facts, and what our emotions tell us (i.e. "I Love You").

> now questioning the Nobel Prize-awarded universe expansion

It is not questioning that the universe is expanding. It is questioning how the expansion is happening. Massive difference. The rate of expansion has always been more of a "probably" and "looks like" rather than "we have very strong evidence" (unlike expansion itself, for which there is very strong evidence). This is a classic "we have tweaked our model as we've learned more" type thing (assuming it holds).

I mean an asteroid the size of a bus is messy for your local area if it decides to land there, but in the terms of size of things in space is nearly undetectable. Space, even our local neighborhood is unbelievably huge.

Think of trying to find a bus that could be anywhere on earth that is moving so it's not easy to keep track of and is painted in a way to be camouflaged with its environment.

Now instead try to imagine looking for that bus on Jupiter. Gets way harder. But it's way bigger than that, your looking for a black dot in the size of an area of millions of Jupiter and just hope it crosses in front of a star so you can track it.

Most problems involving space are insanely hard.

There has been a lot of progress towards mapping all near-earth asteroids, at least. That's a lot better than the previous tactic of putting one's fingers in one's ears and humming.

That's a feature! If you want to be certain, you need religion, not science.

And of course, the people concerned with tracking near-earth asteroids are not connected in any way with cosmology.

what? no. religion is not certain which is evidenced by the numerous sects of christianity with their own interpretations of the same book.

while science might not have a definitive answer for everything, they distinguish from fact and theory.

> religion is not certain

Ask any religious person if their religion teaches truth or lie, then ask them if that truth is the absolute truth. We'll wait.

just because you tell me water is not wet does not make it dry. also, the cool thing "about science is it doesn't need you to believe in it" or however the quote goes

Sure, but they didn't say correctness, they said certainty

There are people certain the earth is flat, the moon landings were fake. That certainty doesn't impress me. So I'm just really not sure what the point is.

The point was that science doesn't allow for certainty, by construction. We're not certain the sun will rise tomorrow, we're not certain the speed of light is a limit, we're not certain that F=ma or that E=mc².

Those that want certainty have to look to religion, or to pseudoscience. And they will certainly be wrong.

Bingo. People who think science is fact dont understand science.

The actual fact is, we humans really don’t know much about the universe and indeed there may be truths and knowledge that we’ll never know the answer to. Like… why the fuck are we here? Where did all this stuff come from. Sure we have theories and have logical conclusions but at the end of the day… we are tiny and the universe is mind bogglingly huge. It is peak human arrogance to think we truly know anything at all.

It’s very humbling to realise how little we actually know. What we do know… we know. We are masters of electro-magnetism, chemistry, etc… but when it comes to the big questions it’s all a shot in the dark.

> no. religion is not certain

Religion allows for certainty. Science does not. Faith versus reason.

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