Kidbrad, thanks for the reply. Not sure where he got his info either. Interesting thought though I guess. Speaking of Pete Townsend, did you see his portions of interviews on VH-1’s “History of Rock&Roll”? He seemed a tad cranky! Enjoy the music though.
Carpe Diem! or at least seize something!
You apparently misunderstood my post. I didn’t say that my friend was commenting on string theory, I said that someone in his department who was expert at physics and mathematics had taken a look at it. However, my friend would certainly be qualified to comment on the mathematical significance of string theory had he looked at it, and so would I. That’s one of the nice things about mathematics – you don’t have to know anything except mathematics to know if something is good “mathematical” work. The sad thing is that people in other disciplines can do crappy mathematics and snow colleagues who know less about mathematics into thinking that it’s real work (or perhaps just intimidate them). I’ve seen this happen many times in computer science.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but I felt your response was a little patronizing, which undermines my confidence in the response. I don’t know anything about string theory, but I did know a number of theoretical physicists in my time as an academic, and they were generally pretty unsophisticated mathematically (and the best ones knew it). I’m not criticizing them – they were very smart people (a couple of them had Nobel Prizes) – but people outside of mathematics generally have no idea what sophisticated mathematics is.
To return to my main question. When you say that big bang theories accurately predict the amount of hydrogen in the universe, what does that mean? They predict it in terms of some fundamental constants or in terms of some other quantities that are apparently unrelated?
Speaking of pastors and science, I’ve been having a problem with my church being dogmatic about Creationism. I recently found a great website for “old-earth” creationism, the term for Christians who believe that God created the universe billions of years ago, not 6,000 years ago like these crazy “young-earth” creationists claim. Lot’s of ammunition and support. Here’s the web address:
Hey Geets, great link. Had some interesting points.
Carpe Diem!