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does anyone argee with this thoery?

this is a thoery that i've heard many people mention in my physics lessons, often the ones when the teacher doesn't want to teach and we didn't want to learn.
anyway the theory is as follows. most of science is made up by an elite band of scientists. yeah it seems crazy at first but think about.
how many articles have you read that says that scientists have just found out some crazy thing about the universe like black holes or a new group of particles. and the only way of proving these theories is by very hard maths that noone can understand. have you every tried to read a paper on gas emitted from stars or the energy released from some reaction. as soon as the maths kicks in it becomes unreadable, so unreadable only the brightest people ( which are only a hand full) can fully understand it. the same people that are in on the whole scam. then they tell us simplfied models on what they know. and we can't question it because we don't know the full results.
i know what your thinking, it's rubbish and wheres the proof.
how many times have you been in a science lesson and have asked the teacher a hard question only to be given the reply " don't worry about that you learn it next year or when you get to uni". they never tell you the whole story until you get so high up the ladder you finger out it's all rubbish and then they tell you about the scam.
also right now there are people under ground trying to find dark matter or a certain particle, i forget which. there beingh paid millions in equiptment costs to find this thing. and they say it's undetecable, sounds abit wierd doesn't it.

anyway theres plenty more edvdence to support this crazy thoery and i won't bore you with them all.
now i don't really belive this ( altough it does make sense) and i was just wondering if anyone else has heard of this thoery. and as you all seem like cleaver people you can probably come up with some good arguments to dismiss this.

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Reply 1

JeremyC

What exactly could elite scientists gain from making stuff up? Surely they have better things to do, like doing proper research?

As for schools not teaching you the truth - they only really care about league tables, and so it's not in their interest to teach you stuff that isn't in the syllabus. Read this, for instance.

Reply 2

smeg3693

for one they get money, respect and a big ego boost about knowing there in control of modern thinking.
and also have you heard of Thomas Kuhn. he write a book called " the structure of scientific revolutions" and came up with the idea of paradigm shifts. it's worth looking up as it shows just how inwarding thinking some scientist gruops can be.
and i agree with the lie-to-children arguement to the elite thoery.
i would be as shocked as the next person if it were true, it's just i know some people who kind of think it could be true, does anyone else out there or do i just have wierd friends?

Reply 3

Krell

smeg3693

for one they get money

Research in Physics is not likely to give you a bulging wallet. The 'very hard maths' that you speak of is necessary for a complete description of the systems in question. While it may seem abstract to an A-level student, mathematics by its nature must be universal, and may be understood worldwide by those in such fields.

Sounds to me like you're paranoid. You can't believe that every scientific discovery has been orchestrated?

Reply 4

AlphaNumeric

smeg3693

and the only way of proving these theories is by very hard maths that noone can understand.

You mean apart from the tens of thousands of people paid to do research in such areas and the hundreds of thousands of people who pass through university and learn this stuff at some point?

I've done the basics of general relativity and quantum mechanics so it's understandable to some. Just because it's hard doesn't make it impossible.

smeg3693

have you every tried to read a paper on gas emitted from stars or the energy released from some reaction. as soon as the maths kicks in it becomes unreadable, so unreadable only the brightest people ( which are only a hand full) can fully understand it.

Yes, I've read papers on string theory and managed to understand significant parts of them. True, most papers are beyond me (WAY beyond me) but considering that 6 months ago I knew nothing about string theory, it shows that it's possible with time and effort.

You're an A Level student, of course you can't read and understand heavily mathematical published papers written by people 5, 10, 20 years ahead of you in maths knowledge and probably far beyond you in ability. I can't understand Russian so I don't expect to be able to listen to a speech by Yelsin and understand it.

To be perfectly honest and blunt, even with an A in maths and physics A Levels under your belt you know jack **** in the grand scheme of things. I've a maths degree and in the grand scheme of things I know next to nothing.

smeg3693

how many times have you been in a science lesson and have asked the teacher a hard question only to be given the reply " don't worry about that you learn it next year or when you get to uni".

Because most teachers don't know research level material. Very few have PhDs. Just like a GCSE student doesn't know any A Level material, teachers, when they were in university, were not often exposed to research. If you've a 50 year olf teacher, you've got to bear in mind that when they were in uni, the discovery of quarks was made. They were never taught things like quarks when they were young!

Also, because they don't keep up with their knowledge, the more advanced stuff they forget.

smeg3693

they never tell you the whole story until you get so high up the ladder you finger out it's all rubbish and then they tell you about the scam.

I'm sufficently 'high up' to be getting the first glimpses of things like black holes, quarks, superstrings etc in my courses and I'm still young enough to remember being in A Level and (vaguely) GCSE.

smeg3693

for one they get money

Ha! Lets just say doing theoretical physics isn't going to get you anywhere near the money that going into banking would. Lecturers earn a decent amount, but nothing close to what a person high up in a large business would.

smeg3693

and i agree with the lie-to-children arguement to the elite thoery.

You're thinking about the 'this simple model is so simple it's not actually true' process of teaching that goes on.

Well that's an inevitable thing because to explain something properly would be completely and utterly pointless to someone who doesn't understand the ground work.

For instance, they teach things about quarks at A Level. You learn about 'colour' and the basic composition of mesons and baryons. Thats what I learnt about mesons and baryons this year. It took 3 years of ground work in various parts of maths and physics to get to the point where I could learn that. To an A Level student it's almost entirely mathematical gibberish, but then that's because It took 3 years of ground work in various parts of maths and physics to get to the point where I could learn that.

The whole "It's all a lie" hypothesis is generally put forward by people who are a mixture of jealous of the people who can do that kind of complex material, ignorant of how much work is needed to be able to do that material or just plain paranoid about large groups of people thinking about the same thing. To dismiss the culmination of some of the greatest minds of the world for the last 500 years as "It's a trick" is a mixture of moronic, arrogant and plain stupid. Especially considering the VAST amount of technology we surround ourselves with which work on scientific principles taught in university and researched. Mobile phones, computers, MRI machines, GPS satellites, LCD TVs, pace makers, digital cameras, solar panels, nuclear power stations, internal combustion engines, weather satellites, lasers, missiles, super conductors. Need I go on?

Reply 5

smurfride

well these scientists are being paid to do research-so that's what they do-research! When they find things they let us know about it-why not, I'm very interested to know about new discoveries and it's up to me whether i believe them or not, although i know that these guys are well beyond me as it is and I'm not educated enough to really have an opinion, I congratulate them on their work-how do you think einstein and newton completely changed our understanding of our universe? they were 'no bodies' once and they worked their asses off at something that intruiged them and their findings are what we take for granted in each science lesson.

in newton's day it was possible to know everything about our world-simply because we knew so little-it's thanks to these scientists that we know so much more now-yet really speaking we know that what we know is far from everything!

The only way we are going to stand a chance of finding out more details about what the heck actually happened during the big bang, why and where our universe is going for definite is if research is done continually, i appreciate that there is alot of useless research going on and obviously there are going to be false and useless findings along the way but its all part of the learning process that will allow us to find out what the hell's going on in our universe!

Reply 6

Itchynscratchy

Q: Do you agree with this theory?

A: No, its absolute horse****

I would go into why but there is no point since alphanumeric has already comprehensively done so

Reply 7

Mohit_C

I believe the reason why teachers at AS/A level don't like to go into much detail, other than sticking to a syllabus, is because it as mentioned in the above posts can confuse students. Let me give you my case. At IGCSE, in Maths I was taught differentiation. Just the basic dy/dx. I had absolutely no clue why it was done. Then when at AS level they went through differentiating through first principles, I just thought, WTF is this! To be honest, I still can't do differentiationg "through first principles", and don't think i'll ever be able to because it's confusing. Little by little, i started getting the grasp of it when i understood the basic, but then so many questions came into my head that I just thought of just absorbing it, which usually isn't advisable at AS level physics. When I went onto C2, I understood the main point and now, I can do it perfectly understanding what the second derivative is used. This is a simple case, if you think about it, but in Physics, it gets a lot more difficult.

In the kinetic theory, where you relate equations which pressure, volume and temperature, when I got into the class, the teacher had already put the formula up and stated the symbols' meanings. I didn't understand a word of it. Then I went up to the teacher and he explained me everything. It still seemed like he was talking Japanese as the theory is made up of assumptions and nothing made sense. Then I bought this book, and it went through a mathematical way of explaining it, and yes, it made a little bit of sense but was difficult to understand all concepts. After having read the mathematical way of getting the Pv=......, I wasn't surprised why the teacher didn't explain it.

Basically what I'm trying to say is what teachers do, may be a "fake" model, if you want to say, to explain things so that we understand the main concept of it. When they go into detail, that's where the clever and bright students absorb the point of it and other don't. That's what my point of view is.

Reply 8

teachercol

I think fundamentally its about understanding that science proceeds via a series of models. None of which can ever be proved true.

Inorder to understand why we have the models we do now, its necessary to understand where we've been . And why more refined models replaced earlier ones.

In some sense, students are simply follwing the a compressed historical devleopment leaving out the dead ends.

For example, we teach a simple kinetic theory of atoms as hard spheres. Later we introduce the plum pudding model and then the nuclear model. We teach the Bohr theory of exlectron shells which is replaced by more sophicated treatments involving energy levels and orbitals. Later still we get qurk theories and then quantum theories.

Why not teach the final version straight away. Partly because its complicated and mathematical but mostly because to understand and appreciate why its needed you need to have gone through the earlier paradigm shifts. Deeper understanding is more than manipulating equations.

All models ultimately are 'fakes' . But thats what we do.

Reply 9

Mehh

teachercol

All models ultimately are 'fakes' . But thats what we do.

I disagree. Its the universe that is all wrong...viva la models!

Reply 10

Mohit_C

Models are simplified versions of real world situations. Like in mechanics we use models every now and then. They are fake to a certain extent, like if a falling body accelerates, it will ultimately reach terminal velocity as in a real world situation air resistance acts, but in a model we ignore that to make the calculation a bit easier. But if we used a sophisticated model, it would reduce the difference in answer if we used a simple model, when compared with a real world situation answer. That's what my opinion is.

Reply 11

smeg3693

looks like no one belives in this thoery, no suprise really.
just want to make a couple of points:
-moonlanding, if they can get away with that what else can people hide from the average guy. and large companies have done some seriously bad stuff in the past and continue to do so and no one knows about it.
-most reaserch is done in the poper way, the thoery says the really abstract ideas, mainly to do with space and other universes and stuff.
- there is loads of money in reaserch, the US goverments have thrown loads of money at crazy ideas, one of them being that goats could be used to kill people, and without the use of any explosives.

i could go on but i won't bore you all. seems like you think it's more fact than fiction and it would have made a good movie if somebody hadn't got there first, apparently theres a film called resident evil thats pretty big and follows a similar theme.
i've lost a bet with a friend through this aswell, i thouhgt there would be someone out there who would be parinod enough to belive.

i just want to remind you that i never said i belived in it i was just wondering if anyone else had heard of it or if the people in my physics class were just weird. i thought maybe it was a typical student thing but turns out it's just a dursley thing.

Reply 12

AlphaNumeric

smeg3693

-moonlanding, if they can get away with that what else can people hide from the average guy

Oh, that's made it all clear then. Your friends are conspiracy nuts. Let me guess, they ask moronic questions like "OMG how did the flag wave, there's no air on the Moon!!" without realising if you shake something it will move and there's no air on the Moon to stop it wrippling.

What more evidence do they want aside from people like myself who are young enough to not be involved in some huge conspiracy but are beginning to learn the 'really complicated stuff' which your friends are clearly too stupid to ever actually understand themselves.

most reaserch is done in the poper way, the thoery says the really abstract ideas, mainly to do with space and other universes and stuff.

Care to rephrase that so it actually makes sense?

If I have decoded it properly it sounds to me like your friends think "This is hard, I don't understand it, therefore it's made up".

seems like you think it's more fact than fiction

No, I'm saying theories like string theory and relativity aren't just random gibberish to fool the government into giving research grants, they are deliberate attempts to understand and model the universe. Oddly enough, sometimes theories need to be complicated, the universe is a complicated place.

apparently theres a film called resident evil thats pretty big and follows a similar theme

No, that's got nothing to do with physics. It's a bloody zombie film for god sake!! People get infected with a virus which makes them almost unkillable and they want to eat other people. Yeah, science is predicting that :rolleyes:

here is loads of money in reaserch

Only in certain areas. But do you know why there's loads of money for the right areas? Because they've produced results time and time again. The government isn't going to pour money into areas of research which have never and will never produce results (well, at least not all the time). Why do they fund nuclear research? Because it's given up nuclear power and atomic bombs. Why do they fund laser research? Because it's given us fibre optics, precision weaponry etc.

If physics was one big scam how do you explain our ever increasing rate of technological advancement? Luck? No, it's called hard work!!

I'll say it again, your friends are idiots.

Reply 13

Mehh

Mohit_C

This is true. We tend to talk about limits in Physics alot. When we talk about Newtonian Mechanics we say things like, in the low velocity limit. When we talk about QM we talk about the microscopic limit (ignoring gravity). When we talk about Special Rel we talk about the relativitic limit.
Its just our way of saying that by ignoring certain effects we can say this will happen and in some cases those certain effects are so damn small it is not hard to find the difference but is actually proven to be impossible.

Reply 14

Itchynscratchy

smeg3693

moonlanding, if they can get away with that what else can people hide from the average guy. and large companies have done some seriously bad stuff in the past and continue to do so and no one knows about it.

. Moonlanding conspiracy theories always make me laugh. They are often spouted by people with almost no physics knowledge at all. They left experiments there which are still running FFS what more proof do you need?!!!!

''But there are no stars in the photos''

:rolleyes:

Reply 15

Mohit_C

I don't get this thing about moonlanding conspiracy theories. what do you guys mean? is it made up or something?

Reply 16

AlphaNumeric

It would seem that Smeg's friends who think high level physics is a con also think the moon landings were faked. Usually the people who think the moon landings were faked are the people who understand physics the least and claim that certain things, such as the flag waving in one of the videos of Armstrong on the moon, are clear signs of a conspiracy when it's actually a result of their ignorance.

While I suspected Smeg's friends weren't the sharpest tools in the shed when it came to physics from their opinion it's all a scam, Smeg's last post implies they think the moon landings were faked, which just goes to confirm my initial suspicions. Man did land on the moon, there's plenty of evidence and any claim by paranoid morons can be easily dismissed with a modicum of science knowledge.

Reply 17

teachercol

Thinking the moon landings were faked is one of the giveaway signs, isnt it?

Reply 18

Mohit_C

Oh, ok. Well yeah, i suppose they are signs of lack of knowledge.

Reply 19

harr

smeg3693

-moonlanding, if they can get away with that what else can people hide from the average guy.

This website proves that the moon landings did not happen.

On a more serious note you can look at the wikipedia article to see explanations for all the percieved inconsistencies in the moon landings.