Gravitational waves discovery hailed as breakthrough of the century (thisisnocave.blogspot.co.uk).
“‘We have detected gravitational waves. We did it,’ said David Reitze, executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo), at a press conference in Washington. The announcement is the climax of a century of speculation, 50 years of trial and error, and 25 years perfecting a set of instruments so sensitive they could identify a distortion in spacetime a thousandth the diameter of one atomic nucleus across a 4km strip of laserbeam and mirror. … The phenomenon was detected by the collision of two black holes.”
One may wonder what the physicist chap who said we have reached the end of the line for scientific knowledge a few weeks back has to say (Latest Picks 17th January 2016), but then again, despite the fact of the discovery just how much is it theoretical and still open to an interpretation you choose, often with much reification because nothing, not even a black hole can crush the appeal of a paradox.
A digest that through the quirky deconstruction of latest stories aims to show that a lot of “belief” is often actually just “agenda” or “opportunity” and media “opinion” is copy to reenforce presuppositions many already have and why philosophy is useful in everyday life in defining—for and by yourself—the difference between what ancient Greeks like Plato defined as episteme (knowledge) and doxa (belief), and not just idealistic training to pack Fyffes bananas. Think a bumper bonanza of those cultural, political and just down right hypothetical you don’t really read in Latest Picks.
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- This Is No Cave: Physics—Could humans have reached the end of the line for scientific knowledge? Scientists think so (Latest Picks 17th January 2016)
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