BS: One for the astrophysicist

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 30 Jul 15 - 06:45 AM

Time Stamp : but can we keep personal notions of God out of it, or it will go tits up. Trying to define "God" gets fekin tedious quick

Just spotted this. All notions of God are subjective, belonging to the realms of superstition, make-believe, folklore, religion, mythology & general bafflement. They offend when believers attempt to make them objective; to make physical reality the subject of a fictional deity when nature needs no such a personage other than in terms of metaphor : even Stephen Hawking persists in his use of the term and in science the Cosmos is often referred to as Creation which I find unfortunate given the associations with fundamentalism & fundamentalist thinking on the whole.

That said, as an Atheist I know exactly what sort of God I don't believe in : Gods of myth and patheistic religion which become the only-too-human monotheistic idiot despotic God of Christian & Abrahamic Tradition. I do not preclude the numinous from the universe, but readily concede that, in human form, I am as likely to have any conception of it as our kitchen slugs have of the Large Hadron Collider. Through science, I feel communion. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead it says Existence is for all Eternity*; someone else said Matter can neither be created or destroyed. The material Cosmos is a wonder that inspires all wonder; in the face of which the human adventure really is only just beginning. Religion is the darkness into which science shines its light.

* Spot the quote folk fans! Actually, it's inscribed in hieroglyphics on the inner bag of Robin Williamson's 1972 solo album Myrrh. Did it make it onto the CD edition? I only have the vinyl, much cherished naturally...

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Jul 15 - 07:04 AM

"She believed in nothing. Only her scepticism kept her from being an atheist." 
― Jean-Paul Sartre

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 30 Jul 15 - 07:38 AM

27% dark matter, 68% dark energy, 5% normal matter.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 30 Jul 15 - 08:25 AM

Sorry, Keith - I was lumping Dark Energy & Dark Matter together as (from what I can gather) both would be negated if MOND is accepted (although Dark Fluid Theory says Dark Matter & Dark Energy are one and the same thing). How does it work? As Vic Reeves would say : I don't know - but it does.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Greg F.
Date: 30 Jul 15 - 09:16 AM

Keith MUST be right! All the living historians say so.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 30 Jul 15 - 09:20 AM

(sigh)

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Greg F.
Date: 30 Jul 15 - 09:31 AM

Bravo Keith! That's the most intelligent post you've mde in months, if not years.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,henryetta
Date: 30 Jul 15 - 10:41 AM

A galaxy is a group of stars held together by gravity. It can be compared to a city, held together by human behavior.

Q: Which came first, some buildings or the city?
A: The buildings.

Similarly, which came first, the galaxy or some stars? Answer is, the stars.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Jul 15 - 01:43 PM

A galaxy is a group of stars held together by gravity. It can be compared to a city, held together by human behavior.

I'm sorry??? That's about the most facile argument that I've ever heard. It's entirely wrong. Try doing some reading before posting inane crap.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Jul 15 - 01:55 PM

"27% dark matter, 68% dark energy, 5% normal matter."

And, a lot of "don't matter"
lol

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,Pete from seven stars link
Date: 30 Jul 15 - 05:39 PM

I think I get what you are saying, grishka, but it seems to assume that there can be nothing, and then bang, there is something. I am not a scientist, but best I can see the Big Bang theorises the impossible.   So by my reckoning, the analogy is not 1 divided by 0 , but 0 divided by 0 !          And it seems to me that anyone who thinks 0 divided,added or subtracted by 0 , believes some superstitious stuff, as do the anti theists who a-priori discount a creator God. That don't strike me as being particularly scientific.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Bill D
Date: 30 Jul 15 - 06:03 PM

Here's the thing folks.... we can build fancier telescopes, bigger Hadron colliders, faster super computers (new one just ordered) and play with all sorts of math & imaginative theories.... and we can thus learn more & more about what we can see and/or measure.

What we cannot do is come to any definitive conclusion about stuff we can't see, measure or find. This means that "dark matter" 'may' remain dark and never be more than a mathematical prediction. It means that multiple universes, "membranes", string theory and the big one... what came before there was anything.. may always be just interesting games.

Even IF someday there is a "theory of everything" that everyone likes and agrees with, universal agreement is not the sort of proof that science accepts. Edmund Husserl made the point that the **Philosophically prior question** is Why is there something, rather than nothing?. That is, it is the question that all philosophy reverts to if pushed far enough. This doesn't mean we know to go about answering it in any way that can't be disputed by anyone saying.."But what about THIS idea?"

We have notions of 'singularities' of 'Supreme Creators', of recurring Universes that expand & contract into ∞³... but our finite minds sometimes trick themselves into believing that once we name a concept, the concept has some sort of independent status... sort of like Plato's "forms".

We (some of us) invoke religious concepts to defend the idea that there must be a "first cause", and that it must be conscious, immortal, all-powerful...etc...all the properties that we can define as valuable, necessary, etc... that WE can name and conceive of. *shrug*... maybe... but 'it' has very little to say about the issue.

It's interesting to play with ideas... and more--or less--- interesting to observe, measure and create 'stuff'. It's also important to keep some perspective about which we are doing, and the limits of each.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Don Firth
Date: 30 Jul 15 - 06:16 PM

42.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,Pete from seven stars link
Date: 31 Jul 15 - 04:11 PM

Well bill, that certainly seems a whole lot dogmatic than what krauss suggests.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Jul 15 - 06:36 PM

I am only dogmatic about exaggerations and careless logic & reasoning. I don't KNOW what all the answers are... but I am kinda dogmatic about my opinion that no one else does, either. ;>)

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,henryetta
Date: 01 Aug 15 - 09:23 AM

"inane crap"

Unnamed Guest, you're over the top, or else you've scraped bottom. Next time, try a little charm, and perhaps you'll acquire some beauty.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Aug 15 - 12:18 PM

henryetta... "guest" was impolite, but if its post had ended at " It's entirely wrong. ", would you have felt better? And would you have explained or defended your assertion?

We need to discuss the facts, not politeness and/or attitudes.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,Pete from seven stars link
Date: 01 Aug 15 - 05:39 PM

" impolite" , bill ,IMO ,is putting it politely !

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Aug 15 - 08:08 AM

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: EBarnacle
Date: 02 Aug 15 - 02:57 PM

I find it interesting that although people have been discussing gravity, the Big Bang, nebulae, etc. no one has mentioned turbulence. If the level of energy were flat, there would be no movement to encourage gravity to not only pull things together but to impart motion in other than linear directions.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,henryetta
Date: 02 Aug 15 - 03:33 PM

Actually, I think my post about galaxies and cities was right. We don't have time to write a whole book here, ya know.   

Guest is frustrated because my post took a little independent thinking.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Aug 15 - 04:03 PM

Henretta,
A galaxy is a group of stars held together by gravity.

A galaxy is more than just stars.
If you swirled up a mass of hydrogen but somehow prevented stars forming in it, you would still have a galaxy.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Aug 15 - 04:53 PM

.....though it would be dark until lit up by stars.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 10:09 AM

From: GUEST,Time stamp
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 02:04 PM

"Well didn't Stars form first so galaxies followed you/I would guess.My belief is consciousness came first which in turn formed everything.Just not consciousness as we humans currently understand it."


From: GUEST,Time stamp
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 04:24 PM

". . . can we keep personal notions of God out of it, or it will go tits up. Trying to define "God" gets fekin tedious quick. 8)"

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 10:17 AM

Which stars and which galaxies? Our own sun for instance is younger than our own galaxy, it is a Population I star (paradoxically one of the younger ones). It is a star which was formed out of a "solar nebula" already enriched with heavy elements (metals to an astrophysicist, for whom a metal is anything which is not Hydrogen or Helium). Its not a coincidence that we orbit one of the rarer Population I stars, as the elements with which they are enriched include all of those of which rocky planets are made, and all of those (bar Hydrogen) necessary for life.

It is likely that there were stars around before our galaxy was formed. All stars that we have analysed in our galaxy contain some heavy elements, even the older Population II stars. As far as we know these elements are only formed in stars, so there must have been an earlier generation of Population III stars, probably before any galaxies as we know them were formed.

Majority consensus is that the formation of galaxies is "bottom-up" rather than "top down". And the first things to form are dark matter halos, which form in small units and them merge to form larger ones. Gas accumulates in these dark matter halos forming stars and then small units (maybe like dwarf galaxies) which them merge to form larger ones. These bottom-up models are very good at explaining the spatial distribution of galaxies, less so their individual nature.

Having said that, there are a substantial minority of astrophysicists who would favour a different model, such as a top-down model which does explain better some of the properties of galaxies (for instance the concentration of heavy elements in their centres). And there are some as Jack Blandiver pointed out who would reject the need for dark matter altogether, preferring instead modifications (of which Milgrom's is the best known) to the theory of gravity.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,Pete frown seven stars link
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 11:42 AM

My grasp on all that is a bit tenuous , Dave . But I don't suppose there is so much variety of opinions as to established experimentally verified theories like gravity, for example.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Greg F.
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 12:11 PM

established experimentally verified theories

And like evolution.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 01:04 PM

Pete,

Its quite easy to verify gravity (the inverse square law, which goes back to Newton and Hooke of course) on familiar length scales, and at familiar accelerations. Such was done by Henry Cavendish in the early 19th century, and he (probably) measured the universal constant of gravitation, G. Also Newton's model explains very well motions on larger scales, such as the motions of the planets. Or nearly. It was found in the 19th century that the precession of the perihelion of the orbit of Mercury. Einstein's theory of General Relativity modifies Newtonian gravity at high accelerations (thats a bit of an oversimplification) and it models the precession of the perihelion of Mercury very well. And predicts some other things later verified by experiment such as the gravitational deflection of light (those photos of gravitational lenses that the Hubble Space Telescope produces).

So thats all very well, but what about the limit of low accelerations? Low accelerations mean large distances, so here you can't make experimental verification on earth, or even on the Solar System (though there is the Pioneer anomaly). But if you look at the motions of galaxies in clusters of galaxies, then Newton's laws clearly don't explain these, unless you postulate a large amount of hidden mass. Dark matter, which we have never detected directly, despite a variety of very expensive experiments to do so. So either there is dark matter or there is a modification to Newton's laws in the low acceleration limit, hence there is a variety of opinions.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 01:08 PM

Its no just clusters of galaxies of course, its the rotation of spiral galaxies, the motions of stars in the outer parts of our own galaxy, and a few other things. Historically the problem was discovered in clusters of galaxies by Fritz Zwicky.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,Time stamp
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 01:24 PM

From: GUEST,Time stamp
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 02:04 PM

"Well didn't Stars form first so galaxies followed you/I would guess.My belief is consciousness came first which in turn formed everything.Just not consciousness as we humans currently understand it."


From: GUEST,Time stamp
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 04:24 PM

". . . can we keep personal notions of God out of it, or it will go tits up. Trying to define "God" gets fekin tedious quick. 8)" "

       Guest10:09 AM, I know you think you have made a point,and I can understand why you think that.But ... when I say consciousness I don't mean God.I do though understand why people would think it is the source or God of their culture when experienced in its purest form.
   Imo and a lot of others now and through the ages, for valid reasons, think/thought that if we can just get a better grasp/understanding on consciousness mankind will make a big leap in both science and our nature (what it is to be a human being).At the moment we live stunted half lives.
   Back to the OP,I'll say again when I say I think consciousness is the source of evolution, the universe,the all, I don't mean God as I've ever seen written. Attaching human qualities to what I'm talking about should be resigned to the past.
   If you want to expand further guest, start a thread.8)

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 01:40 PM

Time Stamp,

That is absolutely not back to the OP, the OP asked a reasonable question which I have attempted to answer, but in that answer I have to highlight disagreements. The OP did not once mention either consciousness or God, only stars and galaxies. Goodness knows how young earth creationism came into this thread.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,Time stamp
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 01:47 PM

Goodness knows how young earth creationism came into this thread."
   That's nothing to do with me.You're obviously not quite understanding.That said you do have a point though I suppose,and not too fussed about challenging it.I'm done carry on.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 02:04 PM

Keith A says:

"There is very little matter between the galaxies.
The galaxies are clumps of matter within and from which stars formed."

Surprisingly, this isn't right. Even if you ignore the putative dark matter, if you look at a cluster of galaxies, there is about 6 times as much mass in hot gas (mainly hydrogen and helium, but also rather surprisingly including heavier elements) between the galaxies as there is in the stars in the galaxies themselves. We know this because the gas is hot and emits X-rays, which can be observed by X-ray satellites. But its only been known since about the 1980s.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 03:53 PM

Thanks Dave, but I found this on the Hubble site,
"I wrote above that the space between galaxies is mostly empty because it depends on where one looks. Along the filaments and nodes of the cosmic web, there is some normal matter and dark matter, but at much lower density than in galaxies. In the voids, there is only extremely low density material."

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 04:46 PM

Goodness knows how young earth creationism came into this thread.

Might have been me. Did I point out that Newton believed the Cosmos to be around 10,000 years old? Of course he was operating within the limits and conventions of his time,the sort if thing that passed as learning rather than the entreated idiocy of young earth creationism of our present time.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 04 Aug 15 - 05:01 AM

Ok, Keith, the slight issue there is that because any material in filaments and nodes will be cold, it is very hard to detect. In clusters of galaxies it is hot and we do detect it. Where this statement comes from is simulations of the universe (such as the Millenium simulation, though as you can tell from its name its not the most recent project here). In the simulations run on computers, which reproduce very well the distribution of galaxies, though less well their properties, there is very little matter between the filaments. In the real universe it can't be measured because any such material will be cold and unobservable. If its molecular hydrogen especially.

So this statement may be right, but its not verified by observation. In clusters of galaxies we know there is lots of gas, although still at a lower density than in galaxies. But the volume is much higher, and the total mass is greater.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 04 Aug 15 - 09:34 AM

Ok, Keith, there is the Warm-Hot Intergalactic medium (WHIM), I don't know much about this but have been looking it up. This is gas at maybe 100,000 degrees (not as hot as that in clusters of galaxies). It can be found in X-rays by a satellite such as Chandra, or detected by its absorption of light from quasars behind it (by the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on Hubble). I am not up with this stuff, but will read up more, but it seems to be that it makes up maybe half or more of the non-dark matter in the universe. There was a big press release from Chandra about 4 years ago saying that they had found loads of it.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 04 Aug 15 - 03:15 PM

Thanks Dave, that is really interesting.
I know stars are often thrown out of galaxies. Could a star actually form in that medium or is it too rarefied?

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 04 Aug 15 - 04:39 PM

the " idiocity " to which the fount of all knowledge alludes to, certainly was believed by newton , but there is quite a long list of scientists of the current day who also are creationists , and to call such accomplished people idiots, only serves to demonstrate the scientifically closed minds of those calling them idiots. and if certain parties will desist from such jibes, I wont feel the need to call them on it.    meanwhile, thankyou dave for your post. admittedly too tech for me, though I did know that Einstein improved on newton theory. but , I presume that this does not relegate the theory of gravity to non experimentally verified science. ie, it is not generally argued and debated about, as competing cosmology/astrophysics theories are.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 04 Aug 15 - 04:44 PM

Stars are thrown out of galaxies yes, mostly by tidal forces when galaxies pass close to each other. Gas is thrown out of galaxies by "galactic winds", driven by heating of the gas by supernovae. Also, if there is gas there anyway, and a galaxy runs into it quite fast, more is stripped out (gas is sticky, stars are small so mostly pass straight through). But, here is the interesting thing, the gas in clusters of galaxies has lots of heavy elements, and these are only made in stars, so a lot of that gas must have been in stars at some time, and therefore in galaxies).

I don't think stars form in the rarified medium between galaxies, the gas is too rarified and too hot (stars form mostly out of gas which we would call "cold", though its a few hundred degrees). There are stars there, although we can't see a star at those distances even with Hubble, we can see a planetary nebula, which forms at the end of the life of a star, and there are some numbers of these between the galaxies. But I think people believe that they have been thrown out of galaxies by tidal forces.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 04 Aug 15 - 05:31 PM

Pete,

I really don't think that there is a long list of scientists who are creationists, though there is a much longer list who are Christians. A.S. Eddington for instance, and later people like C.A. Coulson, John Polkinghorne, John Barrow, Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, George Ellis, Charles Townes. Of course the Vatican runs its own observatory, and the Jesuit order has many prominent scientists. But I can't think of a credible figure, at least in the physical sciences who is a young earth creationist.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Aug 15 - 05:58 AM

only serves to demonstrate the scientifically closed minds of those calling them idiots

The term I used was idiocy, Pete - but if the cap fits...

Atheism and Secularism are hard won freedoms that do not demonstrate closed-mindedness. On the contrary - they are a means of transcending the dark superstitions of the past and turning our faces into the light of knowledge that will guide our species into the future. Sadly, the transition isn't painless, but we may take heart that whilst the religious impulse has manifest itself in countless thousands of contradictory ways down the aeons (of which Xtianity is but ONE), there is only one Cosmos, and one Science with which we might come to understand it.

Sure, it's an ongoing process; and sure Newton held some crazy ideas (didn't he spend much of his time mad with mercury poisoning as a result of his alchemical endeavours?), but he gave us our fundamental understanding of gravity which underpins everything. That said, whilst we can understand gravity in terms of Newtonian Dynamics and Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, actually saying what it IS is proving totally elusive. Here we have this fundamental cosmic force of which were all subjects, barely aware of it because it's quite literally the only medium we know - we can measure it, predict it, watch it smashing our coffee cups to the floor or else use it to fling our spaceships to the outer reaches of the Oort Cloud* and yet no one really knows what it is. The nature of cosmic / natural reality is ultimately one of mystery and wonder that inspires a transcendent notion of numinosity that is utterly and empirically Godless. Furthernore, it is totally objective and inclusive of each and every one of us; crucially, it is true whether we choose to believe in it or not, and, most importantly, no one is going to spend eternity being tormented by sadistic demons if they choose not to.

* A theoretical region of the outer solar system which no one has seen; so vast that even flying at 11 miles every second Voyager 1 won't clear it for another 28,000 years. And all held in place by the sun's gravity.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 05 Aug 15 - 06:42 AM

Jack says:

"there is only one Cosmos, and one Science with which we might come to understand it."

Sorry, we don't even know this much. Both in science (the Multiverse hypothesis, brane-worlds) and in religious thought (for instance Hindu
thought) there are those who argue for multiple cosmoses.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Aug 15 - 07:21 AM

Why sorry, Dave? It's all part of the same cosmos - complex layers of fluid theoretical thinking inspired by natural reality as revealed to us by science. All is one and one is all, as vast and baffling as that might be. The fact that we can speculate on such things is proof enough of that. To nab a WIKIquote from Feynman:

Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again or, more likely, to be corrected. … The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific "truth".

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Aug 15 - 09:43 AM

Meanwhile, here on Earth 

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Aug 15 - 12:28 PM

Pete... for about the 10th time... regarding this:

"...but there is quite a long list of scientists of the current day who also are creationists ,..."

They may be good at their basic job IN science, but when they make assertions about religious beliefs that affect their conclusions, they are no longer DOING science! Science, in order to be called science, must follow where evidence leads. If you reject evidence because it doesn't agree with 'some' interpretations of 'some' versions of 'some' religious documents, you are doing theology...not science. Doing so requires very awkward distortion of how data is understood.

IF a god "made everything", all science is trying to do it follow the details of the process... and many fine Christian scientists do just that while standing in awe of 'his' creativity. This does NOT require cramming all history into 6000-10,000 years.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,Pete from seven stars Link
Date: 05 Aug 15 - 03:32 PM

Well Dave , certainly there are less than those who subscribe to the ruling paradigm. But of course the ruling paradigm has been wrong enough times before. I do know that the list includes just about every discipline, including the one under discussion here. John hartnett and Danny Faulkner are two of which are qualified in this field. I presume they are " creditable" unless they a priori don't qualify by virtue of being creationists !.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Aug 15 - 03:47 PM

"Doubt everything or believe everything: these are two equally convenient strategies. With either we dispense with the need for reflection." - Henri Poincare 

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 05 Aug 15 - 03:55 PM

one thing I can say about you jack, is you sure is eloquent. I also think you read like a religious mystic, with all your talk of wonder and mystery. and I wonder, if you have considered that given that you are thus conceding limits to even your knowledge , being such a hardline atheist is inconsistent , since despite the mystery you discount a creator.   even dawkins inserts a ...probably...to his no.
interesting sideline about newtons other theories now discounted, but we were not talking about them. " muddying the waters" is the term that comes to mind. and I should add, that , though a theory may not be fully explained, as you so very eloquently alluded to gravity, it can be [and in this is] verified by experimental, testable, repeatable ,observational science, and thus there is little debate about its verity. then there is the theoretical, you concede, oort cloud. correct me if wrong but since this is not observed it was introduced only to fill the holes in the theory.

Subject: RE: BS: One for the astrophysicist
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 05 Aug 15 - 04:06 PM

. . .Oort cloud. correct me if wrong but since this is not observed it was introduced only to fill the holes in the theory.

Sort of like phlogiston?

Dave Oesterreich