ASTRONOMY : EXPLORING TIME AND SPACE

WEEK II – Science and History Introduction

Science and History Introduction

- How science works to learn about the universe

- The scientific method not only applies to understanding black holes, and galaxies and the
Big Bang, and exoplanets, but also to understanding everything in nature, including
evolution and all our other scientific theories.
- Science starts with evidence, evidence of the natural world, and physical or regular laws
that can explain the behavior in the natural world.
- Astronomy is not like most sciences because the evidence we have is often remote, and
comes to us in the form of electromagnetic radiation.
- Astronomy is not a lab science, we cannot control the experiment of the universe.
- But the information we gather is extremely powerful and diverse, and has allowed us to
learn situations that are extraordinary such as the event horizon of a black hole, or the
atmosphere of a distant Earth-like planet 100 light years from the Earth, or the earliest
phases of the expanding universe when temperatures were extremely high.
- The evidence of science is combined with logic and the idea of building theories that explain
diverse sets of data.
- Science is a contingent enterprise, so scientific theories are always on their metal to be
proven against new data sets, and are always at risk of being disproven if data does not fit
the theory. This has happened in astronomy a number of times.
- We'll talk about the history of astronomy which includes some of these progressions where
theories have been discarded and replaced by better theories.
- Mathematics underlies astronomy and all the physical sciences, because it's emerged
over the last century that the universe is governed by physical laws that have beautiful
mathematical underpinnings. The reason for this is not completely understood, but the
explanatory power of these mathematical theories is quite extraordinary. The theory of
gravity is perhaps the most famous example of this.
- We will look at the nature of the evidence in astronomy and of the theories that have come
to be the most profound to explain our place in the universe.
- Astronomy is perhaps the most dynamic science with discoveries every week, but it's also
the oldest science.
- Astronomy starts with observations of the night sky, millennia before the telescope was
invented.
- Humans were looking at the motions of the stars, the planets, the Sun, and the Moon, and
trying to understand what was going on.
- Where were these objects? What were they made up?
- We'll look at ancient astronomy, cultures around the world, observing the same
phenomena, and trying to make sense of them without telescopes and really without any
mathematical underpinnings, but just looking at the regularity of the patterns in the sky.
- Regularity that you can see if you go out for a year and look at the phenomena of the night
sky.
- These ancient civilizations were not approaching the problem in a purely scientific way.
 - That innovation came from the ancient Greeks about 2500 years ago. With Pythagoras, and
the ideas of mathematics, and with Aristotle, and the ideas of logic, we have the basic
toolkit for doing science. Science still depends on that same basic toolkit.
- As we look at the history of astronomy, we'll see that these powerful ideas gradually gave
us a more and more broad view of the universe, explaining not just the phenomena of the
night sky, but the phenomena revealed by the telescope after it was invented in the early
17th century.
- Then we'll look at the Copernican Revolution, perhaps the most profound change in the
history of ideas in the history of humanity, where from a position where we thought
ourselves the center of the universe and the pinnacle of creation, we realized that the Earth
was in motion around the Sun, and was just a planet among-st other rocky bodies in the
solar system and beyond, and that the Sun was just one among-st many stars in the Milky
Way galaxy, nd eventually, among galaxies beyond.
- This profound shift in our views called the Copernican Revolution continues, because in the
modern era, it emerges that the totality of space-time we see, the observable universe, may
not be the only universe.
- Perhaps, the last step in the Copernican Revolution would be the demonstration that the
biology of this planet life on Earth, is not unique to this planet, and that life exists elsewhere
in the universe.
- We can anticipate that astronomers will make this discovery perhaps in the next decade.
- This first section, we'll try to summarize the principles that govern science not just
astronomy, but all fields of science, as they explore the natural world.

Lesson one overview

Science and History

Science combines logic and evidence to increase our understanding of the natural world, including
remote and inaccessible regions of space and time.

 Assessments: Lesson Quiz 1a, Lesson Quiz 1b; Writing Assignment no. 1, "Science: Past and
Present"
 Complete Science Literacy Survey (found in the introductory module).
Have you completed the Science Literacy Survey found in the introductory module? Help us
improve this course! Your participation in this survey will provide valuable information for this
course and science education as a whole:

 Science Learning Survey

Writing Assignment no. 1, "Science: Past and Present":

Below you can see the prompt for Writing Assignment no. 1, "Science: Past and Present". Before you
watch the videos, please read the prompt and questions carefully.

Astronomy is the oldest science and some important insights about the universe were gained even
before the invention of the telescope. In no more than 750 words, address the following two questions:

1. In terms of the scientific method, how does astronomy differ from a lab science like chemistry or
biology? How can astronomers be confident of their understanding of objects that are remote
from the Earth?
 2. Ancient cultures built some impressive structures that incorporated astronomical functions and
information (Stonehenge, Chichen Itza, the Great Pyramid). A friend or acquaintance of yours
tries to argue that some of these structures and artifacts are evidence of "ancient astronauts" or
visits by intelligent aliens. How would you rebut or argue against this idea?

Supplementary Materials

READINGS:

The Scientific Method

 Teach Astronomy Textbook Ch. 1: "How Science Works"

https://www.teachastronomy.com/textbook/How-Science-Works/The-Scientific-Method/

History of Science

 Teach Astronomy Textbook Ch. 2: "The First Discoveries About Earth and Sky"
https://www.teachastronomy.com/textbook/Early-Astronomy/The-Night-Sky/

 Teach Astronomy Textbook Ch. 3: "The Copernican Revolution"

https://www.teachastronomy.com/textbook/The-Copernican-Revolution/Ptolemy-and-the-
Geocentric-Model

PODCASTS:

 In later sections of the course we have podcast interviews that Professor Impey has conducted
with members of Steward Observatory. We have tried to include them with the most relevant
material in the course, however, if you would like to look ahead and start listening, here is the
link to the list of all podcasts.
Science and History Videos and Quizzes

- Vision

Astronomy starts with vision. That's not just because optical Astronomy is still the primary way
we learn about the universe, but because we have to see the universe. Astronomy is based on
observation as is most science. It's how we see the universe with our eyes or with
telescopes. And astronomy, like most scientists starts with observations of patterns and the
natural world. That's something that's built into everyone. Humans are built to recognize
patterns, whether it was a way of avoiding predation when we were hunter gatherers or a way
of identifying food sources with the changing seasons. We're built to recognize patterns. We're
really good at it. It has a survival mechanism, and it helps us a scientist to. It's important in
astronomy and in science in general to see the world as it actually is. In this pair of images, we'll
see a medieval view of how a cannon ball travels, and this is based on Aristotle's mistaken
idea. From Greek philosophy of the 5th century BC where an object does not have rest as a
natural state of motion. And we can see the completely unnatural trajectory of the cannonball
based on physics that was essentially wrong. Moving forward to Leonardo's painting of a
cannonball trajectory, we see the parabolic arc that later is described beautifully by Newton's
law of gravity. In this example, the artist, Leonardo, correctly portrays the trajectory of the
cannon ball based on observation, even though he had no theory of gravity to guide him. The
example of Leonardo reminds us that centuries ago there was not the artificial distinction
between science and the arts that there is now, which is unfortunate in my opinion. Leonardo
was a polymath who worked equally in the worlds of science, engineering, and math. Another
example perhaps less familiar as an artist was Galileo. He published his beautiful water color
and charcoal drawings of the moon and the things he saw through the telescope. Because again,
remember this was before photography, before electronic detectors. All you could record is
what you saw with your eye. And recording it exquisitely with a painting is one way of doing
that. So, in Galileo's drawings of the moon, we see the topographical features that told Galileo
this was another rocky world like the Earth. A very important part of the history of
ideas, leading to the fact that the Earth is not unique. When we talk about vision we can extend
this to include other senses too. One modern technique and science involves sonification
or turning visual or numerical data into sounds. It's one way of understanding the patterns in
nature. This was done by Kepler, who is the first to understand planetary orbits. He talked
about the harmony of the spheres, by which he meant he planetary orbit could be converted
into a varying tone based on the frequency of the orbital period and its perspective as viewed
from the off-centered position of the earth. In this audio version of that, we hear the harmony of
the spheres as successive planets are introduced with lower and lower tones moving out from the
sun.

Kepler didn't originate the idea of the harmony of the spheres, it was an ancient Greek idea that
came from Pythagoras. Pythagoras had a profound influence on all the scientists
and philosophers who came afterwards. Saying for example that the universe was based on
number. And in modern science we believe this. We believe the mathematical, numerical
theories underlying nature. Pythagoras also talked about the harmony of the spheres. He
thought that this celestial music was such that only enlightened people could actually hear it. In
this second example, we dramatically hear what the entire universe might have sounded like in
the first 10,000 years after the big bang. This is the sonification of the interactions of matter
and radiation in the infinite universe when the temperature was thousands, perhaps a millions
of degrees. We hear the ringing of the universe as these oscillating waves and particles interact
with each other. Remember, this is the pre-cursor state to a vast and ancient universe that
eventually would contain a 100 billion galaxies. This work was done by Mark Whittle at the
University of Virginia. That's dramatic example when we compress 10,000 years into a bad
sense seconds and because the audible range of the true physics is 42 octaves below what we
could hear, we up shifted to come into the audible range. Vision is how we learn about at the
universe. In astronomy, initially, it was with the eyes, and then with telescopes and electronic
detectors. Vision also extends to other senses, and to other parts of the electromagnetic
spectrum. Vision and this kind of data is how we learn about the universe.
 - Discovery

One of the exciting things about science is discovery. The fact that many important things about
astronomy were never predicted by a theory or anticipated by astronomers before they made
the observations, we never predicted the existence of dark energy or dark matter or black
holes. But we've observed these things, and we've observed extraordinary things in the
universe that were based on surprises to people looking at the world in new ways. As a
metaphor and an analogy for discovering nature, let's look at sequences of cards. Regular
playing cards with the face cards taken out, so just the number cards. It's a toy model, but it
meaningfully captures some of the essence of how science works.

You're gonna see four different sequences of cards, and the goal in this little game is to decide what
is the rule that governs how these cards were laid down. what is the pattern in nature? In this case,
the pattern in a numbered series of cards of four different suits that describes what's going on. The
first example is obvious.
I don't need any explanation for me, it's just a numbered sequence of the same suit. The rule is
obvious. The second patter, is a little more interesting, it's an alternating red and black sequence.

But notice here that some information is important, the alternating red and black sequence, and
some information is irrelevant. The actual numbers of the cards or the difference between the
two red and the two black suits. This is a lesson that in nature and in science, it's not obvious what
the most important information is when we seek a pattern and don't need understand it.

But now look at the third and fourth patterns, and see if you can decide before I give away the
answer what is the rule that governs how these cards were laid down.

You can see it's a little subtle. There do appear to be sequences or patterns embedded in that
layering of cards. But it's not obvious. By trying to imagine the rule, you are doing what a scientist
does. You're developing a hypothesis and testing it against nature, in this case, a sequence of
cards, and you're using a small sequence of the data to see if your prediction matches what comes
later. Immediately you're testing a feature of science where we have to understand how much
data is needed to test the hypothesis. We're also seeing another aspect of science where
possibly, more than one hypothesis can explain the same set of data. Looking at those last two
sequences of cards, C and D, it's quite possible that more than one simply stated rule governs the
sequences.
This is partly why astronomers argue about theories. Sometimes it's not obvious what the best
theory is, or there's not a unique theory at all. The rule or rather I should say one rule that governs
sequence C is,

when you play successive cards you're either matching the color or the number of the card. That's a
very simple rule stated in only a few words. But notice how subtle a pattern of cards it makes. A
rule that describes the fourth card sequence, is that a red card is placed on top of
an even numbered card and a black card is placed on an odd numbered card. Again, it's a very
simple rule stated in only a few words and it produces a surprisingly subtle pattern of cards in
sequence.
 When you stare at the sequences cold without any idea of what's going on, you can see how difficult
it is to elicit the rule or the underlying law of nature if you like, that describes C sequences. So this is
just a cartoon example, but it does illustrate many of the features of the scientific method.

The periodic table is an excellent example of patterns in nature and how science works. The first
notion of a periodic table came from the Greek philosopher, Empedocles, almost 250 years ago.

Empedocles came up with the idea that everything in nature, all the material substances of the
earth and the atmosphere and even if human beings, were made of four essential elements; earth,
air, fire, and water. The combinations of those four fundamental elements produced the diversity of
the material world, that's an extraordinary idea but it's the basis of modern chemistry. Flash
forward almost 2,000 years, and we have made a lab, doing simple experiments and drawing the
skeleton of the modern periodic table. Where the associations and the properties of similar
elements eventually gives us the idea that those elements have physical underpinnings. It's not until
the modern atomic theory that we truly understand the periodic table. But the patterns in
nature, the similarities between reactive elements, metals, and noble gases, is the basis of
understanding how the atom works.

The idea of discovery leads to a debate that's gone on for many centuries. The distinction between
what is invented in science and what is discovered. Is science a product of the human mind and
imagination? Or is it purely the discovery of things that exist in nature that we and maybe other
creatures elsewhere in the universe can understand? This is an interesting debate, and artists and
scientists have often found themselves intriguingly on opposite sides of the debate. We might
imagine that like Newton, we are dissecting the rainbow.

The science is pure analysis, turning white light into its component colors, and Newton was the one
who put it all together in a theory of light. So the standard view of science is that it is
reductionist, that it takes complex observed phenomena and then reduces them to their simplest
elements. But science also involves synthesis, and that synthesis is an important part about how we
understand nature and build scientific theories.
As an example from the artistic side, consider Michelangelo, who wrote poetry and sonnets and we
know as a scientist and an engineer. We might imagine that an artist is imposing their will on a
canvas or a lump of marble or clay, imposing a vision of what they might imagine that to be and
creating it from scratch. But that's not how Michelangelo saw it. He talked about roaming
around the northern Italian towns where the marble was quarried, Carrara, and he would scramble
over the hillside looking for a piece on the hillside where he saw something hidden in the rock that
he could liberate through his talent. That's an unusual view of art, that there's something in nature
in the lump of marble that he is liberating or seeing for the first time. It's more of a scientific idea.
I think a true and nuanced view of both science and art, shows that the truth is more
complicated, that there is synthesis and analysis and dissection and recompiling into a hole that
occurs in both fields of human endeavor.

Discovery is an important and exciting part of science. Many of the things we understand about the
universe, were not predicted by any theory. There were completely unanticipated. So scientists
must always be alert to patterns in nature, to something new and surprising that might lead them to
a deeper understanding of the universe. This is true in art as in science. The whole idea of whether
things are discovered or invented and are products of the human mind, is an interesting
philosophical debate that's never been resolved.

- Imagination
Imagination is an important part of how science works. You may be surprised, you may have
thought that science depended on the protean skills of people doing mathematics or chunking
through equations. Perhaps for people who don't like math, that can be a little boring. But
science is very exciting because creativity and imagination are built-in at the core. That's how
we learn about new things and new aspects of the universe that we never anticipated.

My favorite example of imagination, is how you can take two disparate things or two disparate
pieces of information and combine them to find something new or surprising. In this example
from the artist Pablo Picasso early in his career, he combines two routine elements of a rusty
old bike. The seat and the handlebars, to make a completely new image of a bull. It's surprising
and delightful.

The same feeling comes to scientists when they invent a new theory that explains disparate
data sets. Another reason imagination is important in science is, it can take us to places that we
can't yet venture with our telescopes or our spacecraft or our instruments because we have the
power to imagine the impossible or the power to imagine things that could be, but aren't.

There's an idea in science called contra-factual. That is things that could be true that
don't violate any law of nature or physics, but are not apparently true, they've never yet been
observed. Sometimes, we can test our theories or ideas by imagining contra-factuals. Things
that we don't actually observe but could be true. That's an interesting hypothetical
and imaginary way to do science. In the end, of course, we do need observations to prove or
disprove our theories.

Continuing our analogies in the arts, here are some examples of impossible things that can be
visualized by artists. They look like real physical objects but they cannot actually be
constructed. Going along and riding over the top of them, some music written by Conlon
Nancarrow early in the 20th century called the X cannon. It involves player pianos altered so
they play notes at an impossible speed. This is not physical music. This is not music that any
 human could play. So it's imagining impossible in music, does this mean we can imagine it in art
and in science?

Two important examples of imagination and Astronomy involve the imagination of space travel
or visualizing space travel hundreds of years before it was possible. Isaac Newton produced a
famous diagram which shows a cannon placed on the top of a tall mountain.

The cannon is pointing sideways and it fires a cannonball at increasing speeds. As the muzzle
velocity increases, the cannonball falls in a parabolic trajectory, explained by his theory of
gravity. But Newton realized that if the atmosphere was thin and so not slowing down the
cannonball, in other words there was no friction force. If you increase the speed of the
cannonball, there would be a speed at which the cannonball was falling at the same rate that the
Earth was curving down under it. That's the imagination of an orbit.

The speed you get from that calculation in his theory is the orbital speed. We just needed the
technology to accelerate any object to that speed which would not happen for over 300 years. But
Newton was imagining space travel. Another example that's more relevant recently as we discover
exoplanets, is the work of space artists and visionaries going back a hundred or more years who've
imagined other worlds in space.

The idea of other worlds in space, worlds like the Earth or different from it, far from view maybe
even far from telescope analysis goes back hundreds of years. But space artists have increasingly
used their talents to visualize worlds and space similar or dissimilar to the Earth, how they might
look if we could be there what it might be like to live there or explore there. This space art is
helping us in our imagination. It helps propel us into the space exploration that we think will one
day take us to these other worlds.

Another example from the popular culture involves the imagination of wormholes or white holes. In
gravity theory, these are hypothetical situations where space-time is so curve that it doubles back
on itself. Essentially, we can have a portal into a completely different region of space or time by
stepping through into another world.

In movies this has been portrayed several times in several ways including recently, but the idea of a
wormhole exists firmly in the theory of gravity. It's just a situation we don't know exists in the real
universe though people are in fact looking. The behavior of space-time in situations of intense
gravity is a frontier field of research in astrophysics. Imagination is extremely important in science
and in particular in astronomy were so few things have been predicted. We use our theories and
our observations to bolster our science but we're completely free to imagine situations that haven't
yet been observed. Something called the counterfactual, is something that could happen in the
universe but has not yet been observed. We can test our theories and our ideas by imagining such
things.

- Reasoning
Reasoning is a very important part of the scientific method. Reasoning involves how we
use observations of the natural world and combine them to form structures or theories that
explain a large range of phenomena. Humans are unusual in their powers of reasoning.

Perhaps we're not unique. I'm confident there are other sentient animals with fairly high
degrees of intelligence, but humans have taken reasoning to an entirely new level. Notice that
although science is only a few thousand years old and civilization only 10,000 years
old. Humans have had the power of reasoning for longer than that. The last detectable
anatomical changes in humans or in their brain chemistry date back about 40,000 years when
we had hunter-gatherers and nomads in Africa, even before we ventured into the other
continents. A human alive then has exactly the same capability that we do now, and yet they
lived in a primitive and simple world with no tools of technology or tools of science. What did
they imagine about the world using the same brain they had then that we have now? The formal
ideas of reasoning started with the Greek philosophers, an Aristotle, a profoundly influential
philosopher who affected physics astronomy mathematics and many other fields. Aristotle
develop the rules of deductive logic that still hold today. They were further codified by Bertrand
Russell in 20th century. Aristotle's rules of deductive logic or how we define science as it
combines statements of the natural world to draw conclusions and inferences. We can look at
examples where deductive reasoning fails, and it's important to look at these examples and see
if you can see why they fail.
Sometimes deductive reasoning fails dramatically in in an obvious way, and sometimes the failure
is a little subtle.

Often when we miss the failure of logic, it's because we don't question the premises. Logic combines
statements of the natural world, or observations, or theories to draw a conclusion. But if those
premises or assumptions are faulty or not justified by data or observation, then the combination in
logic fails. Logic is just a tool. It can't define the veracity of the statements that go into it. There are
two fundamentally different kinds of logic that apply in science in any field of science; deductive
and inductive logic. Deduction is the theory put together by Aristotle and burnished over the
centuries since then. An example of deductive logic involves arithmetic. This statement two plus
two equals four is completely and self-consistently true.

It doesn't matter in your opinion, on your point of view, whether there's a why in the month, it's
always true. In that way, deductive logic always produces reliable conclusions if the premises are
valid. A simple example in astronomy would be this observation say, demonstrates that the earth is
larger than the moon.

A second observation demonstrates that the sun is larger than the Earth. We can deductively
combine these two statements to say that the sun is larger than the moon. In this example, you can
of course see the power and the limitation of deductive logic. It's a very reliable conclusion, but in a
sense you're not getting out more than was there in the first place and the two separate statements.
So deductive reasoning alone cannot guide and drive science.

The second form of scientific reason is called induction. Induction was most powerful and first used
by Isaac Newton in his theory of gravity. Induction in simple terms is generalizing to a broad theory
from a specific or limited set of observations. This generalization is something that happens in
science all the time. Because when we develop theories, we can never have tested them in all
possible situations. So we're making an inference and we're projecting our conclusion into a
broader set of situations, and that's how we test the theory.

In Newton's case, he developed a universal law of gravity to explain the orbits of objects in the solar
system.
At that time, it was just the sun, the earth, the moon, and the planets observable with the naked
eye. A very limited set of objects. His theory of gravity explained their orbits extremely well, but he
was confident enough in the power of the theory to project and imagine that it would apply to as yet
unobserved situations. The great example was Halley's Comet. Before he died, Newton made a
prediction of when Halley's comet would reappear. It was named for his friend Halley when it
did reappear as predicted by his theory. More profoundly, Newton made his observations and
did his theory in a time when we only knew of one set of stars, approximate stars of the Milky Way.

But Newton's Universal Law of Gravity turns out to explain the motions of stars in other
galaxies, and the motion of other galaxies in a universe with 100 billion galaxies. These as yet
unobserved phenomena were perfectly explained by his theory. A dramatic example of induction
or generalization from a very limited set of tests of his theory during his lifetime. An example from
another field of science might be the Darwinian theory of natural selection and evolution. Darwin
of course only was able to make a limited set of observations over a few decades of life forms and
how they evolved in response to natural selection in the environment.

But the mechanisms he proposed in his book of 1859 were imputed to apply to all species and all
forms of evolution over time in the history of the Earth. They've proven to be valid for those larger
situations, another example of induction at work.
Science is based on reasoning, which we think is a particularly human attribute that we have above
all the other animals. This attribute has been present in our brains for tens of thousands of
years, even though science is a lot younger.

The formal application of reasoning comes in logic, and in particular in two forms of reasoning;
deduction, where we deduce principles from a specific set of observations combining them to draw
a reliable conclusion, and induction, which involves generalization from a finite set of observations
to a much larger set of potential situations. Both forms of reasoning are used in all scientific fields to
gain new knowledge.
 - Uncertainty and Measurements

Let's talk about uncertainty, and its related concept error. You might think that science has got nothing
to do with uncertainty or error. Science should be about knowing things and being sure of things, and
indeed scientists are confident about many of the theories they have and are very accurate in many of
the observations they make. But scientists are always wanting to be aware of the limitations of their
theories and the limitations of their data. So good science depends on understanding uncertainty and
error.
These concepts are distinguishable.

Uncertainty involves inevitable,

uncertainty involve with the measuring apparatus,

the theoretical framework for an observation,

or the physical universe itself.

An error is something a little different.

Usually when scientists talk

about an error they're not talking

about mistakes as we might do in everyday life,

they're telling you about errors

associated with measurements or observations,

that are to do with limitations of

the measuring apparatus or the telescope site.

So we can distinguish these two things.

They're built into science

and they're completely unavoidable.

Science is never perfect,

and science is never absolutely

confident 100 percent of its conclusions.

This level of contingency

is unavoidable and it's not a problem,

it just means we move towards

greater certainty and we must

always pay attention to the errors.

Astronomy is in a particular situation

within the fields of science,

because astronomy does not work as

a laboratory with direct control of the experiment.

Experiments astronomy take place trillions

of miles away at the minimum, that's one light year.

So astronomy is based on

remote situations and remote sensing of those situations.

As a result, the uncertainties in astronomy or perhaps

larger than in other scientific fields

or laboratories involved.

In some situations in astronomy,

we are quite unsure especially in a new regime.

We talk about an order of magnitude uncertainty,

which means a factor of 10.

The answer could be 10 times smaller or

10 times larger than our first guess.

This seems almost like we don't know anything at all,

but in a new regime and in a universe that spans

dozens of orders of magnitude of

scale sometimes this is where we start.

As astronomers refine their measurements,

in many cases they're quite happy with a factor

of two or 50% uncertainty.

For an observation such as the number of stars in

a galaxy or the size of a star,

this is a reasonable estimate it can tell us quite a lot.

It's hard to do much better.

In many fields of astronomy something with

10 percent precision or

accuracy is is about as good as we can get.

Remember, we're dealing with limited amounts of

information from objects that are

very faint or very far away,

and so 10% or 5% percent accuracy

such as for the expansion rate

of the universe involves

an enormous amount of work even to reach this level.

These are the realms of accuracy in astronomy,

and we are gradually moving towards precision.

There are some measurements in

astrophysics where the accuracy is a percent or two,

the edge of the earth for example is known

with a precision of less than one percent.

We can talk in general about three different forms of

uncertainty or limitations that occur in science,

in all fields of science not just astronomy.

The most important and perhaps the trickiest to

diagnose is the conceptual limitation of science,

for example, we might make

a false premise about a theory or an observation.

We might confuse causation with correlation,

something we'll talk about more,

or are powerful pattern recognition apparatus

might lead us to infer

a pattern where none actually exists.

Remember, we're conditioned to do this,

if we were hunter-gatherers and we thought we saw

a pattern of a leopard hiding in

the underbrush and we were wrong,

then we just got a fright.

If we didn't see the leopard when

the leopard was there we were lunch.

So we're built to recognize patterns very powerfully,

and sometimes in science this can lead us astray.

The second level of limitations

in science are macroscopic,

associated with our observations

or measurement apparatus.

There is no perfect set of data

and science, simply doesn't exist.

Every measurement has limitations.

Every dataset is finite,

and so there was uncertainty

associated with those limitations.

We can do our best to improve the observations,

to improve the instrument, the apparatus,

make a bigger telescope or more accurate detector,

but we can never completely overcome those limitations.

The third level of limitations

in science are microscopic,

and these are profound because they're associated with

the quantum uncertainty in the microscopic world.

About a 100 years ago,

innovations in physics led to an awareness that there was

a fundamental imprecision with which we

can measure the physical world of sub-atomic particles.

This limitation has nothing

to do with our measuring apparatus.

No amount of ingenuity or

money can overcome this limitation.

It's built into the quantum nature of reality,

and so it forms a profound limitation on

our knowledge of the microscopic world.

But when we're dealing with large macroscopic objects of

humans and objects that

contain trillions and trillions of atoms,

these uncertainties become insignificant.

The quantum uncertainty in

particular is a very strange beast,

and physicists continue to debate a 100 years after

these theories were invented what

their philosophical implication is.

Einstein for example, was extremely uncomfortable with

these limitations in nature

these absolute obstacles to our understanding,

and he thought it was just a matter

of ingenuity before we

develop a deeper theory that could explain everything.

At the moment, we think

Einstein was wrong on this matter,

and there is no perfect theory of

nature at the subatomic level.

It upset Einstein very

much all that damned quantum jumping.

It spoiled his idea of God which I

tell you frankly is the only idea

of Einstein's I never understood.

He believed in the same God as Newton,

causality nothing without a reason but

now one thing led to another until causality was dead.

Quantum mechanics made everything finally random.

As it could be this way or that way

the mathematics deny certainty,

they reveal only probability and chance and

Einstein couldn't believe in a God who threw dice.