"The only thing that will save us is fundamental physics, because we have to escape to a distant part of the universe."

Surely you jest! If we escape we will be taking whatever we are "escaping" from with us. What we have to do is find a way of accepting scientific truths and spiritual (please note: NOT religious) truths equally and integrating them into a harmonious way of life.

Helen, Take a look at this website.
http://aintreeiron17.blogspot.com/

Ever wondered if a certain person was who he said he was with the things he said he had.

and while I'm on the subject of opinions...as regards my opinions on consciousness, science still has fuck all to tell me for all those multicoloured fMRI pictures showing me the 'love at first sight' region of the brain or the 'I like cheese' neurons.

I tell you what would make a good experiment btw...take any two physics PhDs, give them a wodge of Topman vouchers or whatever...they can even take Gok Wan...I'm willing to bet that 5 hours later if you put them in a line-up with 20 random punters dragged off the street, 95% of people asked could still identify them in a spot the nerd test.

Have you got an ice pop Tesco shelf stacker in one of the fridges?

I think 'worthless' is too strong a word. Most scientsts are rational people and recognise that you're only as good as your next theory, and someone is bound to come along and top you. You may be feeling a bit peeved but thats life.
I say most scientists are 'rational', but only when it comes to science. They are like everyone else when it comes to personal relationships and politics ie as eccentric as everybody else. In fact Newton was quite a nutter, although a genius.

Brian Cox appears to adopt a positivist position on science with no justification. It was totally debunked by Karl Popper decades ago.
If opinions are worthless then where does the inductive speculation in scientific research come from?
Certainly not from logic or empirical observation.

Did Cox actually study philosophy of science? He could start with Popper on the necessity of myth and inductive speculation, or with Imre Lakatos's seminal paper on the scientific methodology: http://www.tiac.net/~cri/1999/lakatos.html

Why do I find his so bloody irritating? And that awful Radio 4 programme where the boys from the 6th form spend 30 minutes trying to convince us that science is 'cool' and a bit of a laugh really. It makes me cringe.

"Why do I find his so bloody irritating?"

coz you is old grandad.

"It makes me cringe."

me too, coz i is old 'n all.

but then it should not come as a great shock to us that 2 hyper-intelligent geeks, trying to show off about their favourite things, come across as being a bit, well, geeky and irritating.

I like that jankaas.

"Did Cox actually study philosophy of science?"

oh dear, here come the Humanities....

"If opinions are worthless then where does the inductive speculation in scientific research come from?"

straw man. the point Cox makes is that one's opinion relative to established science is not likely to be very valuable. science tries to be objective rather than subjective (emphasis on tries. we are deeply flawed as humans after all, hence peer review).

in a nutshell; each allowed their opinion but not their own facts.

but ultimately you would have to ask him yourself i guess.

Just to confuse things,wasn't it Bertrand Russell who said that facts are only things that everybody can agree on. The implication being that there is no objective reality? Although I think he did eventually prove that 1 + 1 = 2.

Popper ah lets see there is no truth just things that cannot be falsified, so truths that cannot be doubted. A great philosopher and word smith.

Basically all we know to be science fact, is in fact, unfalsifiable, which to the average joe, means true.

2+2 is not four in the decimal system its just the unfalsifiable result.

There are many unknowns in the universe, and scientists can only peel away the layers to reveal even more unknowns. This life of Brian is interesting. Agree that quantum mechanics should be taught in schools instead of media studies.

"Is it not a matter of opinion what is accepted as evidence?"

It is a matter of opinion. I ask people to look at my line-up and pick out the two who in my opinion are the nerdiest? My hypothesis states that if we carry out this test repeatedly, the proportion of times the two Physics guys are selected will be greater than or equal to 95%. It's based on yet another thesis of mine that the brains of homo sapiens carry a network of neurons whose purpose is nerd-detecting. This isn't a genetic thing but a culturally instituted attribute. If I had access to a fMRI scanner I could probably even show you the 'nerd-centre'-as I like to call it. I'm guessing it's a bright lilac region just to the left of the "Quick grab the last roast spud before someone else does" cortex.

Science and physics should be taught from the age of 5 in schools. Why are children taught almost to be afraid of science? I didn't have any inspirational teachers of physics at school. However, I did have a brilliant chemistry teacher. As so as i was told that the elements in the periodic table made up the whole world as we know it- if we found a new element- we may have to reassess. Chemistry became both fascinating and easier to understand.

I love philosophy and whilst a gcse maths failure, I love the philosophy of maths- the idea of infinity. I would love to know where we came from. But perhaps that is not the right question. Also, could all the elements that form together, to produce a point in time, ever be repeated?

I can't believe we fund religions without any question, but do not fund science. Why are we so against looking at the universe? Are we so scared?

Good on Brian for bringing science to the public's attention, in an informative and interesting way.

Joe Cool actually nicked one of my uni girlfriends but to tell the truth it was a blessing in disguise for she had very smelly clothes like she had weed in them but not cleaned them. You'll be kissing her and you'll get this wiff of stale urine.

One day I saw her holding hands with Joe Cool, the physics student. He had a scruffy appearance as well ... although I never got close enough to sniff his garments. He probably smelt a bit. People used to take the piss out of him but he got hold of some great hash. One night he came around to my place and I and this German girl Martina smoked some of his gear. It was really good stuff and when he went off to the dance me and Martina had wild sex on the bed, up and down the walls, and nearly into the kitchen. She wasn't a physics student.

from another forum a contributor stated the following about, which i still find compelling;

methodological naturalism is no more than a procedural protocol in science that isolates it from the unprovable chatter about competing speculative ontologies (i.e. natural or supernatural).

good science only operates in the sphere of methodological naturalism, and doesn't need to bother itself with ontologies.

"There was this bloke called Joe Cool who studied Physics back in my uni days."

WTF are you on about?...'called' Joe Cool? You mean he asked people to call him Joe Cool, or people spontaneously christened him Joe Cool because they decided he was so cool. Fuckin sad either way Mr D...and almost certainly an instance of you conflating vague memories of actual events from your youth with Snoopy cartoons...again.

swantantra: Even assuming the neutrinos results are real, it still has little value. Does not make time travel possible, all physical items would still not exceed light speed. We would still need phenomenal leaps in our propulsion systems and materials. Light travels at 671 million miles and hour..we have managed to get to about 38,000 mph with voyager. approx 1/2000th of required speed. also the square law affects fuel requirements. to accelerate 1 ton to 1/10th the speed of light would require 125 billion kWh of energy. Can you imagine the size of vessel required to get to Kepler at light speed provisions for 600 years, with a viable productive crew size...oh thats only one way and no provisions for a colony or return... To make to leap to another world is going to require very very small steps.

So Joe cool was a scruffy twat who probably smelled...just like his girlfriend?

and "People used to take the piss out of him..."

So where did 'Joe Cool' come from? Or was stinking, having a manky girlfriend and getting the piss taken out of you considered cool in your neck of the woods?

Was Joe Cool his actual name then, is that what you're saying?

I'll tell you something Divine...from what you're saying, if I'd been at university I'd have been the fuckin Ice-man, if that twat got to be 'Joe Cool'.

Tell you what Divine, you can call me 'Ice-Man' from now on...or just 'Ice' if you like.

Anyways...I'm off...going to a wedding...aaargghhhh!!!!

not too fond of weddings...and I'm bound to get so bored I get pissed later-free bar...so it's rumoured...so that's my Sunday morning lost in a fug of chemical imbalances...I almost wish it was Monday morning.

Take it easy D

Jankaas , we agree again...

C. Baker, more than one person went mad delving into mathematical infinities,beware. If we came from a singularity (finite) then all things aside from linear time must by the thermodynamic laws be finite.

A few anomalies in there,1) no particle has ever been observed in two separate and discrete locations at the same time

2) the Higgs particle, yet again Cern is promising it "next week" if it is proved not to exist then much of the maths will be proved wrong.. So far 80% plus of the hunt to prove it, have come up negative..CERN on edge. 50 years and still no evidence other than on paper. The LHC is not producing the expected results and returns,.

@Ian

"1) no particle has ever been observed in two separate and discrete locations at the same time"

i am not an expert on physics, merely an enthusiast. most of it goes way over my head, but, based on Young's double slit experiment, quantum physics does conclude that a photon can be in 2 places at the same time.

i read this in a lovely book aimed at hobbyists like me called "We need to talk about Kelvin" by Marcus Chown. a great Xmas present imho.

ttfn