I subscribe to the Salon Newsletter, and here lately, I'm getting more and more articles indicating that the Republican party is becoming more and more hostile toward science.
Only a few centuries ago, most of Europe was ruled by a religious AND political entity that was hostile toward science, the Roman Catholic Church.
Isn't that right, Galileo!!!
Anyway . . . . .
Here in the USA, our own Republican party has embraced the "science be damned" type of attitude.
http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the ... index.html
Yeah! I also believe that we should keep politics out of science, but we should NOT keep science out of politics!
Wednesday, Oct 27, 2010 19:33 ET
The new barbarism: Keeping science out of politics
Climate skeptics reach a new low. Their goal: Don't let
scientists influence policy, period.
By Andrew Leonard
Joe Romm, climate activist extraordinaire, is upset at Scientific American for featuring a dumb online poll on global warming.
Online polls are notoriously amenable to manipulation, and it seems pretty clear that climate skeptics organized in force to skew the results. Like Romm, I have a hard time believing that anything close to 56.1 percent of Scientific American readers believe that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is "a corrupt organization, prone to groupthink, with a political agenda."
But even if you grant that the poll was the victim of an organized attack, I'm still amazed by what we can learn from it. In response to the question "Which policy options do you support?" 42 percent of the respondents chose the answer "keeping science out of the political process."
Say what?
Keep science out of the political process? Science? I thought it was supposed to be the other way around; that the goal was the keep politics out of science. I can understand, albeit disagree with, categorizations of anthropogenic global warming as bad science, but I'm afraid I just can't come to grips with the notion that we should keep "science" from influencing politics at all. What is the point of civilization in the first place if we don't use our hard-won understanding of how the universe works to influence our decisions on how to organize ourselves?
Watching one Republican candidate for office after another declare outright that they do not believe humans are causing climate change is befuddling enough. But to flat-out reject science as a guide to policy is beyond medieval. It's a retreat to pure superstition, a surrender to barbarism. We might as well be reading omens in the entrails of sacrificial animals. Our wealth as a country, our incredible technological wonders -- the Industrial Revolution! -- were built upon scientific discovery.
Should the FDA reject clinical test results in deciding whether to approve a drug? Should the U.S. Corp of Engineers ignore physics when building dams and levees? Scientists say asbestos is dangerous to human health and cigarette smoking causes cancer. Who cares? Let's continue to build public schools packed with the fire-retardant material and give free Camel nonfilters to teenagers!
We need more science in the political process, not less. The countries that understand that will thrive and prosper. The ones that don't will undoubtedly fail, if they haven't already doomed themselves.
Now, some people might think "Aw gee! that's unfair!" you know, equal rights, and all that.
Oh! You mean that politics should have an equal right to dictate how science should do it's job as well as allowing science to influence political decisions? That it should go both ways? Is that what you mean?
No, sorry! But I don't believe that politics is equal to science. No, science is superior to politics. Sorry, but it's a one way street. Not all roads are designed for two way traffic.
Sorry, but some processes will only work one way! Or not at all.
Many natural processes are one way! Gravity works one way. Step of a cliff, you will fall down and die! Your broken bones will not reassemble and then you fall back up to the top and live again. Sorry, it only works one way! Fall down and die! OK, sometimes you might get lucky and still live after you hit the bottom, but you'll mostly likely be crippled up for the rest of your life and be in so much pain you'll wish you had died. Digestion is a one way process. When you eat, you take food into your mouth, and you eventually put out excrement through the back door if you know what I mean. You don't eat shit and excrete food! Nor do you shove food up your ass and "crap out of your mouth" as was once depicted in a South Park cartoon episode a few years back when a cartoon version of Martha Steward demonstrated a new way to prepare a Thanksgiving turkey and then she sat on it to shove it up her ass!
Well, that's politics alright. Most politicians are liars who spew crap out of their mouths!
I got to wonder if they have been shoving turkeys up their asses!
Anyway . . . . .
I must repeat, science and politics are not equal. Again, I say, science is superior.
Politics has no damn business, and should have no right to dictate how science works.
But science should have every right to approach politics and present politics with the facts, and the data which backs up those facts, and to advise politics before politics can make any decisions on environmental or energy policies, or on health care policies.
But the sad truth is, and history has many prime examples, of how political decisions made at the top were from a position of ignorance, and even outright hostility toward science, how political decisions and laws were passed, many of them based on religious doctrine and superstition.
Isn't that right, Galileo!
Another words, politics should have absolutely no influence on how science works, because that only interferes with the scientific endeavor, but politics should not ignore science, especially when it comes to passing laws concerning the environment, energy, or health care.
So, again boys and girls.
Politics should not control science, but science should have the right to influence and correct politics.
Another words, if you have a dog, you walk your dog on a leash. Your dog does not walk you on a leash! That's because humans and dogs are not equal. Human are a higher life form than dogs.
And so, it is thus, with science and politics. Science is a much higher endeavor than politics.
So, I say, that politics is the mangy flea-bitten lap dog that craps on the carpet, needs to be hit across the nose with a rolled up Newspaper or preferably a rolled up issue of Scientific American Magazine, be given a bath with strong soap, and then, walked on a leash by science!
Also, politics should be properly trained and housebroken so that it doesn't crap on the carpet and knows better to go outside to crap instead of spreading it's shit around in science's home, and politics should be trained to fetch science's slippers!
Yeah! Politics, you're a bad little doggy!
And politics must wear a flea collar, be given it's distemper shots, and vaccinated against rabies, and if politics does become rabid, like the Republican's present anti-science attitude, and tries to attack science, and attempting to bite science's leg, then politics should be put to sleep!
Aw! Poor little doggy!
And what about religion?
Well, that puppy should not breed with politics and not get underfoot and interfere with science and should just go sit in a corner somewhere and quietly meditate if it wishes to keep it's tax-free status.
And here is another reason why science is superior to politics.
Political right-wing conservatives and religious fundamentalists are irritated by the findings of science, irritated by the fact that the universe is billions of years old and NOT a mere 6000 years old as according to their interpretation of Biblical text. But there is nothing they can do about it. They can't do jack shit!!!
HA! HA! HA!
Politics can not legislate the age of the earth or the universe. Politics can not legislate the earth to be flat instead of round, and politics can not legislate the earth to be the center of the cosmos.
About all that politics (and religion) can do, is to lose it's temper and have a tantrum like a spoiled rotten retarded little brat, and threaten to kill anybody who doesn't believe in it's fairy tales, and have scientists tried as heretics and executed.
The Catholic Church as been there and done that!
Hey boys and girls! Can you say, Inquisition???
But no amount of threats, imprisonments, and executions is going to change the shape of the earth from round to flat, or put the earth back in the center of the universe, or restore an ancient universe billions of years old back to it youthful 6000 years again.
No, it's only going to serve to make politics the laughing stock! The heretic card has already been played, and they lost that poker game!
Yeah, politics might try to make the teaching of science illegal, but then, that would make the USA a laughing stock, and we would have to deny all the benefits and modern conveniences wrought by science. Are you sure you wanna give up your nice fancy cars, electricity, indoor plumbing, air conditioning and heating, and your fancy big flat-screen liquid crystal TV sets? Hmmmmmmm?
Sorry, but the universe is, what it is, and no amount of political legislation, threats of imprisonment or executions is going to change anything!
The universe is, what it is! Like it or lump it!
OK everybody.
In my topic, I'm going to talk about Astronomy, since that is what I know best, so I'm going to use it as a prime example of why science should be free from the influence of politics, and why science should NOT be booted out of politics nor ignored by politics.
So, I will use history, the history of Astronomy and the history of a political entity, the Roman Catholic church to serve as my example of what I'm talking about.
For example: the Index of Forbidden Literature instituted by the Catholic Church where as books written by Copernicus and Galileo, and also many books written by Protestants were placed on that index, and anybody who disagreed with church doctrine were tortured, tried and convicted as heretics, and sometimes even sentenced to death, usually burning at the stake, or in the case of Galileo, house arrest for the remainder of his life. Yeah! He got lucky! Well, sort of.
Back then, the Roman Catholic Church held to the doctrine that the sun and planets, and the entire cosmos revolved around the earth. But Copernicus said that is was the earth and planets that revolved around the sun, that the earth is NOT the center of the cosmos, and then, later on, Galileo proved it with his observations and discoveries made with the newly invented telescope, showing once and for all that church doctrine was wrong.
That is why, political decisions made in our high offices should not be based on religious doctrine, but should be based on scientific facts, and why I say, politics should be kept out of science, but science should NOT be kept out of politics.
Again, isn't that right, Galileo!
Politics is often wrong, especially when their decisions are handed down and laws passed are based on some kind of religious bias.
Does that mean that science is always right and never wrong?
No, of course not! But science is a self correcting endeavor.
Let me give you an example:
Back in the late 1700s and through out the 1800s, geologists and paleontologists had suspected that the earth was more than a mere 6000 years old as was generally held by the Christian churches, and no, these geologists and paleontologists were NOT all atheists, some were in fact Christians themselves, but it was just that they did not hold to a literal interpretation of the Genesis account in the Bible, and they had good sound reasons to suspect that the earth was much more than a mere 6000 years old. Back then they estimated that the earth was about 150 millions years old, or perhaps older.
Of course, this was before they knew about radioactive elements or atomic fusion which we now know about, and why the earth and the sun are actually much older, about 4.5 billions years old instead of a mere 150 million years old. Atomic fusion within the sun accounts for how the sun could burn for billions of years, and radioactive elements within the earth would account for how the interior of the earth, the earth's mantel and core could stay molten for billions of years so that it would not cool down and solidify within a mere half billion years as previously believed.
Had geologists known about radioactive elements back in the late 1700s and 1800s, then they would have come up with a much higher estimate for the age of the earth, a few billion years instead of a mere 150 million years. But either way, they were on the right track when they suspected that the earth was far more than a mere 6000 years old.
So, again, science is a self-correcting endeavor.
And now another example:
There was some disagreement between the geologist's saying that the earth is 4.5 billion years old while astronomers had estimated, based on the red-shift measurements on how fast the galaxies were moving way from us, that for the universe to have expanded to it's present size, the universe had to be about 2 to 3 billion years old. This was back in the 1930s and 1940s. Either the geologists were right and the astronomers were wrong, or the astronomers were right and the geologists were wrong, but somebody had to be wrong because the earth could not possibly be older than the rest of the universe, or the universe younger than the earth. So, somebody was wrong!
The geologists had more evidence to show that the earth was 4.5 billion years old, and physicists also had more evidence to show that the sun was also 4.5 billion years old, so it had to be that it was the astronomers who were off in their measurements and their estimated age of the rest of the universe.
The measurements in stellar and galactic distance is based on the known absolute brightness of Cepheid variable stars.
OK, how do astronomers know how far away the stars are?
For the nearest stars, astronomers are able to observe a parallax shift of some stars against the more distant background stars as the earth orbits around the sun. You photograph a star, then about 6 months later, take another photograph of the same star, and because that particular star is seen from a slightly different angle 6 months later and has shifted its position very very slightly among the more distant background stars, then you can measure the angle of the parallax shift, and even, just by using high school level trigonometry, you can calculate the distance of that star. The further away the star is, the smaller the angle of it's apparent parallax shift. As we all know, a full circle is 360 degrees, and there are 60 minutes of arc to each degree and 60 seconds of arc to each minute, so that is one arc second or a 3600th of a degree. If a star displays a parallax shift of one second of arc, a 3600th of a degree, then the distance of that star is one parsec or approximately 3.26 light years. Well, the nearest star is about 4 light years away, and it's apparent angular shift among the more distant background stars, its parallax angle, is less than one arc second. So, at 4 light years it's further away than one parsec. And then, from the apparent brightness of the star, and it's distance, we can calculate it's absolute brightness or magnitude.
After having calculated the distances of many stars through observing the apparent parallax shift, astronomers discovered that many stars are actually brighter than the sun, and some not as bright. But there is a limit to using the parallax method, because the further away a star is, the smaller it's apparent parallax shift, and if stars are too far away, that angle becomes way too small to measure accurately, so the parallax method is only good for stars that are up to a few hundred light years away at the most.
But there is a classification of stars called Cepheid variables, named after such stars observed in the constellation Cepheus, stars which vary in brightness in regular time cycles, some over a course of a few days to many months or even a few years or so. The long period Cepheid variables have a much higher absolute magnitude or brightness than the short period Cepheid variables.
Now, if you observe a globular cluster of stars, there are all kinds of stars in the cluster, some that are similar our own sun, some brighter, and some not as bright. But that cluster would also have a lot of Cepheid type stars in it as well, so that we can then estimate the distance of the star cluster and the size of the cluster. Now, even though that star cluster might be a few hundred light years across, all the stars in the cluster can be considered as being the same distance from us. Just like, for example: New York city is about 2000 miles away from me where I live, but the city of New York is 50 miles across. So a person living on the West Side of New York is 50 miles closer to me than a person living on the East Side, but for all practical purposes, I can consider everybody living in New York as all being the same distance from me, which is 2000 miles, the distance to New York city.
The same also applies to a collection of stars in a distant cluster. All the stars locally grouped together in the cluster can be considered as being the same distance from us regardless of the diameter of the cluster.
So now, the astronomers have another "yard stick" to calculate the distance to many other star clusters and even some distant galaxies.
OK, back in the 1800s, astronomers thought that what we call The Milky Way was the entire universe. It was estimated to be about 80,000 to 100,000 light-years across, and it appeared that we might be the center of the Milky Way. They really didn't know yet. They had no idea what shape the Milky Way was, or that the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. They simply didn't know yet.
Then thanks to improvements in photography and bigger and more powerful telescopes, the so-called Andromeda Nebula was discovered to be, not just a spiral nebula, but a spiral collection of stars, another "Milky Way" outside our own "Milky Way" so the Andromeda Nebula was re-named the Andromeda Galaxy, and so were many other so-called nebulae, they too were also re-classified as "Island Universes" or galaxies when photography resolved them as being made up of billions of stars.
Also, the distance to these other galaxies could be estimated based on the known absolute brightness of Cepheid variable type stars seen in many of these galaxies, and then the size and the diameter of the galaxies could be calculated from the known distances.
Now, the further away a galaxy is from us, the harder it is to spot any individual Cepheid variables in it, but for more distant galaxies if we assume that all spiral galaxies are about the same size, some slightly smaller, and some slightly larger, but most being approximately the same size, then we can estimate the distance to these much further galaxies from their apparent sizes.
By then, it was pretty well established that we are living in a spiral galaxy, that our sun is not anywhere near the center, but about 30,000 light-years away from the center or 20,000 light-years from the outer edge since our galaxy which is about 100,000 light-years across, and we are living in one of its spiral arms. If you think of the Milky Way Galaxy as a great city, then the galactic core is down town and we living are out in the suburbs.
Then astronomers also noticed from observing the stellar red-shift in the spectrum of distant galaxies, that the further away the galaxies are, the faster they are moving away from us. Light waves behave a lot like sound waves. For example: you're standing along side a railroad track, and as you see the train approaching, the train is blowing its whistle, then the train passes you, and then, it is moving away from you while still blowing its whistle. When the train was approaching, the whistle sounded like it had a higher pitch, and then as the train moves away from you, the sound of the whistle dropped from the higher pitch to a lower pitch. This is because, when a source of sound is coming toward you, the sound waves are compressed closer together, and shorter sound waves means a higher frequency and a higher pitch. Then, as the source of sound moves away from you, the sound waves behind are stretched out longer, and longer waves means a lower frequency and a lower pitch.
This is known as the Doppler effect (or Doppler shift), named after the Austrian physicist Christian Doppler who proposed it in 1842, which is the change in frequency of a wave for an observer moving relative to the source of the wave. It is commonly heard when a vehicle sounding a siren or horn approaches, passes, and recedes from an observer. The received frequency is higher (compared to the emitted frequency) during the approach, it is identical at the instant of passing by, and it is lower during the recession.
Light waves behave in the same way. When you examine a star's spectrum, you'll notice a horizontal band of colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet, and that the star's colored spectrum is interrupted by vertical black lines. These black lines are absorption lines caused by certain chemical elements absorbing light at certain frequencies. For example: black lines in the red part of the spectrum is caused by hydrogen, black lines in the yellow part is caused by sodium, black lines in the blue part means the star contains calcium. So, these black absorption lines in the spectrum tells us what a star is made of. Now, if all the black absorption lines in the spectrum of a star or galaxy is shifted toward the blue or violet end of the spectrum, that means that the star or galaxy is moving toward us, and the more the lines are shifted towards the violet end the faster it's approaching us, another words, the greater the blue-shift velocity.
The blue-shift in the spectrum of the Andromeda galaxy means that it is coming toward us. But all the other galaxies exhibit red-shift velocities so they are all moving away from us, and the more distant galaxies have greater red-shift velocities away from us than the galaxies that are closer to us. So, our universe is expanding, and back in the 1940s, astronomers had estimated that for the universe to have expanded to it's present size, it had to be about 2 to 3 billion years old.
But geologists said the earth was 4.5 billion years old, so something had to be wrong with the "yard stick" that astronomers were using.
Well, the astronomers themselves were also sure that something wasn't right either. According to their calculations, our Milky Way galaxy was 100,000 light years across, and in that they were correct. But they had estimated that the Andromeda galaxy was only about 50,000 light years across and about 600,000 light years away, and also, all the other spiral galaxies seem to be smaller than the Milk Way, thus making our own galaxy an over-sized freak.
OK, if there is just one thing that astronomy has always taught us, it is that we are not unique, we are not anything special. We are a dime-a-dozen and run-of-the-mill in the cosmic scheme of things.
First, Catholic Church doctrine held that the earth was the center of the cosmos, then Copernicus and Galileo came along, and knocked us off our central pedestal.
Then in the 1800s, we thought that the Milky Way was all there was to the universe, and that we might be somewhere near the center of it, but then, when it was discovered that the so-called spiral nebulae were in fact, spiral galaxies made up of stars, then they were referred to as other "Milky Ways" or "Island Universes" and so again, we learned that the Milky Way is not all there is, and we are not even the center of that, but that our Milky Way was just one galaxy among millions of other galaxies. We now know there are billions of galaxies.
And so, since we are not unique, then why should our galaxy be a one-of-a-kind over-sized freak among all the other galaxies? Eh?
Some astronomers have suspected all along that something was wrong somewhere.
Also, when spotting Cepheid variable stars in other galaxies, they didn't see any in the spiral arms, but only in the core regions of the distant galaxies.
We live in the spiral arm of typical spiral galaxy, and we have lots of Cepheid variable stars relatively close by us. So, there should also be Cepheid variable stars in the spiral arms of the other galaxies out there and not just in their core regions, and so, once again, our galaxy appeared to be a one-of-a-kind freak having Cepheid variable stars in it's spiral arms while in all the other galaxies, only their core regions appeared to have Cepheid type variable stars.
But then . . . one night . . . during the Second World War, the city of Los Angeles California was having a black-out practice drill. Many cities would stage such black-out drills for a couple of hours where everybody had to turn their lights off and the city street lights were turned off.
My mother was in her 20s back during the Second World War and lived in Milwaukee Wisconsin. She once told me that before she was married to my father, he was an Air-Raid warden walking up and down through his neighborhood making sure that everybody had their lights turned off during a black-out practice drill. First the fire sirens would go off signaling the start of the drill, and people had to pull their cars over off the streets and turn off their head lights, and people had to turn off all the lights in their homes. These drills usually lasted about an hour or two, then the fire sirens would sound again, and the black-out practice drill was over, and people could turn their lights on again and resume driving.
These black-out drills were necessary, just in case the USA might be attacked in air raids as other countries were during the second world war.
OK, now what does this have to do astronomy and Cepheid variable stars???
Well . . . . . the Mount Wilson Observatory with its 100 inch reflector telescope was located not too far from Los Angeles California and there was usually a lot of glare on the western horizon due to all the bright city lights.
But then, it was one night, during a black-out practice drill, that all the city lights in Los Angeles were turned off, and so, the sky was all nice and dark over Los Angeles on the western horizon. And on that particular night, astronomers were able to spot Cepheid variable stars in the spiral arms of the other galaxies and not just in their core regions, but also, in their spiral arms.
And . . . as it turns out . . . there is a difference between Cepheid type variable stars in the core region of a galaxy and those in the spiral arms. The Cepheid type variables in the core region of a galaxy are much brighter than the Cepheid type variable stars in the spiral arms.
Now, the astronomers got themselves a nice brand new yard stick!
So, if we now assume that the newly discovered Cepheid variable stars in the spiral arms of the galaxies are the same brightness as the local Cepheid variable stars in the spiral arms of our own galaxy in which we live, then it turns out that the Andromeda galaxy is not just 600,000 light years away, but is in fact, 2 million light years away, and therefore, it also has to be larger than previously estimated, so that our own Milky Way Galaxy is not a one-of-a-kind over-sized freak after all. Actually, it turns out, that the Andromeda galaxy is a little bit larger than our own Milky Way galaxy, abut 120,000 light years in diameter while the Milk Way galaxy is 100,000 light years across. So, our galaxy is typical. Yes, just a typical spiral galaxy, and spiral galaxies range in size from 80,000 light years to 120,000 light years in diameter, and our galaxy, being typical, is in the middle of the range at 100,000 light years across.
Also, it meant that ALL the galaxies had to be larger and much further away, so that thanks to the Los Angeles black out, the known universe more than doubled it's size over night, and of course, in order for the universe to have expanded to the newly calculated size that it was, the universe had to be more than 5 billion years old, much older than the age of the earth.
So, the geologists were right all along, while the astronomers had suspected that their own estimates were off, and so, they had to revise their calculations based on the newly discovered data.
Yeah! Another example of how science is a self correcting endeavor.
This is how science works. Yes, scientist don't know everything, nor do they claim to. But science is a self-correcting endeavor. Science is all about asking questions, then formulating a hypothesis to explain how and why something is, or happens a certain way, then doing observations, taking measurements, doing experiments, taking variables and constants into consideration, proving or disproving a hypotheses based on data collected, and then, formulating a working theory that should be able to make predictions based on changing variables, and the results should be repeatable by other scientists, and if so, then you have a working theory.
A true scientist is honest. He admits when he doesn't know something, because science has always had to deal with unknowns. A true scientist is not ashamed to say "I don't know . . . yet." and then, they'll also say "we don't know . . . yet, but let's find out!" and that is what science is about. It's about asking questions and searching for the answers.
Also, a true scientist does not try to alter the data, or "cook the books" in order to support some kind of political agenda. If he does, then he's guilty of fraud and his reputation is damaged. Anytime a scientist is about to publish his results, it is first subjected to peer review, and other scientists must be able to use his data and be able to repeat his experiments and get the same results. The peer review process can actually be very brutal sometimes, no not physically, but intellectually speaking.
This is why politics is to be kept out of science, because science should be based on observations and on measurements and experiments and on testing and retesting, and not based on any kind of agenda.
But science should NOT be kept out of politics, that is, politics should not be allowed to ignore science, as the Republican party has been want to do so recently.
This is because, if politicians are going to make any decisions on energy policies, or pass any kind of environmental laws, or make any decisions on health care policies, then any laws or decisions passed down should be based on scientific facts, and NOT based on their own ignorance, prejudice, or even on their own religious beliefs.
Isn't that right, Galileo!!!
Yeah! He should know!
Politics need to learn how to correct itself. That's what science has been doing now since Copernicus, Galileo, Johannes Kepler, and Sir Isaac Newton and even through the times of Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and Albert Einstein.
Science has always been a self-correcting endeavor. The more discoveries are made, the more data collected, the closer we get to the truth.
But over the centuries, politics, and organized religion has always tried to put a stumbling block in the path of progress, and to hold us back.
Isn't that right, Galileo!
And now, today, yes, even today, our own Republican party has becoming increasing hostile toward science.
Anyway . . . . .
I have shown, how scientist are not always right about somethings, but also, how science has corrected itself when new data comes in, using the example of how there was once a conflict between the estimated age of the earth by geologists and the earlier estimated age of the rest of the universe by astronomers, and how some astronomers had even suspected that their earlier calculations were off until more discoveries were made, and more data collected, as in the example I have given about the discovery that there was a difference between Cepheid type variable stars in the core of a galaxy and the spiral arms, and when it was discovered that the Cepheid variables in the core of a galaxy are much brighter than the Cepheid variables in the spiral arms. The astronomers were then able to make the necessary corrections in their calculations of the size and distance of the galaxies, and hence, the age of the universe.
OK, so now we know the universe is expanding, and all the galaxies are moving way from us, and the further away they are, the faster they are moving.
Now, does that mean we are the center of that expansion?
Again, NO! Of course not!
That's because, if you could travel to anyone of those other galaxies, then no matter which one of those other galaxies you happen to be living in, you would see the same exact thing. You will notice that all the other galaxies would be moving away from you, no matter where you're at. Therefore, no galaxy can claim to be the center of the universal expansion. The only reason why the Andromeda galaxy is the only one moving toward us is that it's a local sort of thing. We are gravitationally bonded with each other and we live in a local cluster of near by galaxies, and in about 3 billions years or so, our Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy will collide with one another, but that's really no big deal. There are lots of colliding galaxies out there.
No, were not going to die if the Andromeda galaxy collides with us, because there is so much space between the stars that there will be no star collisions. We'll just simply pass through each other, and our two galaxies will be gravitationally deformed, and stretched out of shape from being spiral galaxies into a larger irregular galaxies. And of course, there are lots of irregular galaxies out there as well as spiral galaxies, barred spiral galaxies, giant elliptical galaxies, and spherical galaxies. So, a collision of two galaxies is more like an encounter rather than a crash. They simply pass through each other because galaxies are mostly empty space.
Oh, and by the way . . .
Astronomers now say that our own Milky Way galaxy is not just a regular spiral galaxy, but is in fact, a barred spiral galaxy, but again, that does not make us unique because barred spiral galaxies are just as common-place as regular spiral galaxies. Again, we are no big fucking deal.
So, we're really nobody special. The sun is just a typical ho-hum boring Class G star in a typical hum-drum barred spiral galaxy. We don't occupy any unique or special position in the universe.
We have been demoted so many times over the past 4 centuries since Galileo knocked us off our central pedestal. I love it!!! I love it!!!
Thank you Galileo! We needed a good ass kicking!
And our present Republican party also needs a good hard ass kicking!
That's why I love astronomy so freaking much!
It has revealed to us that our two-bit little solar system is run-of-the-mill and that we're only just a dime-a-dozen.
I truly believe, that the reason why the ultra conservatives politicians in the Republican party are so hostile towards science is because science, especially Astronomy, has quite literally knocked us off our collective high horse.
Way back in the so-called good ol' days of Inquisitions and burnings at the stake, when the Catholic Church ruled most of the western world and most of Europe, we had believed that the earth was the center of the cosmos and all creation, and that meant, that the ruling class, those at the top, the Pope and kings and queens, etc. etc. were closer to divinity than the common people, the serfs and the peasants.
But this hierarchy has been virtually overthrown. Thanks to our being knocked off our central pedestal, we now know, that in fact, and in the cosmic scheme of things, the Pope, all the kings and queens, and even the Presidents and all the politicians in their highest offices are of no greater significance than some poor homeless skid-row bum and drunken wino passed out in a forgotten back ally in some insignificant little village somewhere.
Astronomy is the great equalizer!
Astronomy is the science of kicking humanities collective ass, over and over again!
Yeah! Ass-kicking-stronomy!!!
I love it!!!
I'm fat and sassy! I love to sing & dance & stomp my feet & really rock your world!
