Science, humanity's greatest discovery

Science has not only allowed the discovery of the elements that make up the solar system, but it has uncovered where they came from and how they formed. I ask the reader to, just for a minute, ponder on what an amazing achievement this is. Image source Science Blog from the SDSS; Origin of the Elements in the Solar System

The only reliable way that mankind has ever found to understand the world is through science. Religion has provided fairy stories in an attempt to explain the world; science uses observation and reason to search for truth. It is remarkable how many of the milestones in the development of human society are connected with a scientific, questioning, free-thinking state of mind. Home Top Index Some have said that science is just another religion. Nothing could be further from the truth!   Climate change, science, religion Similarly, some have claimed that the belief that climate change is a developing disaster is also religious. The acceptance of climate science is necessarily scientific; it is not based on unfounded belief. (Religion and climate science denial are based on unfounded belief.) Science is based on sound, verifiable evidence; religion is based on unsubstantiated belief. Science is based on reason, religion is based on blind faith. Science is based on doubting and questioning, religion is based on accepting. Science is based on searching for truth, religion is based on being given falsehoods and being satisfied to accept them. Science and religion have nothing in common. The deepest roots of science are in philosophy, which, like science, is based on reason, doubt and searching. Home Top Index   This section added 2021/12/19 Kepler's third law of planetary motion; p2 = a3 This law demonstrates how beautiful and simple science can be. Johannes Kepler used carefully recorded observational data collected over many years by Tycho Brahe to discover three laws of planetary motion. In doing so he reinforced a step away from the established Church's (erroneous and delusional) teachings - that the planets revolve around the Earth. This step was taken by Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei. Copernicus suggested that the Earth and other planets orbited around the Sun, Galileo produced evidence supporting that theory, but the Church forced him to deny what he believed to be true.   Planet Period, p (years) Distance, a (AU) p2 a3 p2/a3 Mercury 0.2408 0.3871 0.0580 0.0580 1.0000 Venus 0.6152 0.7233 0.3785 0.3784 1.0001 Earth 1 1 1 1 1 Mars 1.8808 1.5237 3.5375 3.5375 1.0000 Jupiter 11.8620 5.2026 140.7064 140.8190 0.9992 Saturn 29.4572 9.5547 867.7274 872.2705 0.9948 Uranus 84.0203 19.2181 7059.4041 7097.9240 0.9946 Neptune 164.7674 30.1096 27148.2984 27297.0024 0.9946 Pluto 247.6817 39.4397 61346.2313 61348.0564 1.0000 In this section of this page I will only discuss the third of Kepler's laws, because I think that it is wonderful and can be shown to be so with a bit of basic arithmetic. The third law, expressed simply, is that the squares of the orbital periods of the planets (the length of their years) are directly proportional to the cubes of their distances from the Sun. Putting this another way, p2 = a3. Where 'p' is the length of the planet's orbital period expressed in Earth years and 'a' is the planet's distance from the Sun expressed in units of the Earth's distance from the Sun (Astronomical Units, AU). This equation is very simple and elegant, as is Einstein's E=mc2. The table shows the figures for all of the planets and Pluto. The last column shows the accuracy of the figures, if they were perfect all the figures in the last column would be exactly one. Of course the figures I've entered are not exact (they have a limited number of decimal places) and squaring and cubing increases the inaccuracy. For the Earth both p and a equal one and both 12 and 13 also equal 1. Home Top Index Einstein's equation of the equivalence of matter and energy, E = mc2 This is the formula that Albert Einstein discovered and published in his General Relativity theory. It tells us that energy is another form of matter, that matter is another form of energy, that the one can be transformed into the other, and how much of the one we will get from a given amount of the other. What science has taught us about the Sun is an example of the application of E = mc2. "... our Sun converts 600 million tons of hydrogen into 596 million tons of helium every second. The missing 4 million tons of matter are converted to energy, according to Einstein's equation E=mc2. This amount of energy is so large that the Sun gives off 40,000 watts of light from every square inch of its surface." The above was extracted from Professor Dorneman's pages on the Mercer County Community College site. It accords with my recollection of the figures. According to the book Larousse Astronomy, 1981 edition (I know, it's old; I'm old too) the total energy output of the Sun is 383 billion billion Megawatts. It is likely to continue to do this for the next five billion years or so. Where did all this knowledge come from? Devine revelation? No, no knowledge at all has come to humanity from Devine revelation. It has come to us from free thought unbridled by delusions and from the application of the scientific method. Home Top Index

Don't waste your advantages The human brain is a remarkable instrument; the only thing in the Universe that we know of that is capable of understanding how the Universe works. Science is a remarkable tool; the only tool we know of that is capable of allowing us to understand how the Universe works. We all use our brains, but if we use tools other than science to try to understand how the world works we can make egregious errors. Don't waste your amazing brain by ignoring science or disbelieving what it is telling us.

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