No Big Bang

[Geronimo]

Come to think again on this, KH, JM, et al are just reporting that lay directed sources of information on current physics are useless.

Science and probably "Scientific American" certainly still have merit for keeping up to date on any of the other areas of science. The articles themselves won't have enough meat to do the job but the references will allow you to finsih the job to your own satisfaction.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe


I've atrophied to level 1.

We've established that you can claim fractional mastery of the next levels.

You're probably more like 1 and a half that doesn't sound nearly as bad!

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
It depends. You have to enjoy the learning. Simply being able to say "I understand this" does not make it worth the investment of time.

If, however, you look on the learning itself as a hobby, an enjoyment, then it is worth it. Physics is beautiful when you understand it. It's such an unbelievably simple subject at its very basics, yet layers upon layers of complexity emerge.

Don't be afraid to ask me any questions as you go, if you choose to.

I can get textbooks for most of these for free with the catch that they are all old. Would any of these topics apart from cosmology, QFT and particle theory need to be covered by new texts?

[KrazyHorse]

Not particularly. All the rest of them were standardised upwards of 50 years ago.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Geronimo
Come to think again on this, KH, JM, et al are just reporting that lay directed sources of information on current physics are useless.

Science and probably "Scientific American" certainly still have merit for keeping up to date on any of the other areas of science. The articles themselves won't have enough meat to do the job but the references will allow you to finsih the job to your own satisfaction.

I can say their bio stuff is nigh garbage too, even ignoring the fact that they run the same three articles in sequence. At least, they did before we canceled.

[KrazyHorse]

There might be some minor notational and conventional differences, however.

Like IIRC the contraction of eta-mu-nu with itself is taken to be positive in a lot of old books, but is taken to be negative today.

[Ramo]

Science and probably "Scientific American" certainly still have merit for keeping up to date on any of the other areas of science. The articles themselves won't have enough meat to do the job but the references will allow you to finsih the job to your own satisfaction.

"Science" is worlds apart from "Scientific American." Getting published in "Science" or "Nature" is about as well as you could do...

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


I can say their bio stuff is nigh garbage too, even ignoring the fact that they run the same three articles in sequence. At least, they did before we canceled.

Which one Science or Scientific American?

I haven't read all of the bio-science articles in Science but I haven't seen one that it would be fair to call garbage yet.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Ramo


"Science" is worlds apart from "Scientific American." Getting published in "Science" or "Nature" is about as well as you could do...

So is this Scientific American more like Popular Science than an actual peer reviewed journal?

[Ramo]

Yep.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Sci Am used to be respectable. Not that it was peer reviewed in any event but the abstracts reviewed were done in a thoughtful manner. Hasn't been that way in quite a few years.

Now categorizing it as "Popular Science" is probably an insult to Pop Sci as Pop Sci always was layman science and never pretended anything else.

[Geronimo]

Ahh that changes everything.

So Physicists publishing in general topic peer reviewed journals aren't removing essential information to render those papers meaningless?

If so, that completely changes my interpretation of what was being said about the meaningfulness of physics in general readership publications in this thread.

Is it safe to assume that physics in any peer reviewed journal is still meaningful?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Geronimo

Is it safe to assume that physics in any peer reviewed journal is still meaningful?

My guess is yes, but will leave it to the researchers on the board to validate.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Geronimo
Is it safe to assume that physics in any peer reviewed journal is still meaningful?

The other question is... is it intelligible? Can a layman read Science or Nature and actually come away with an understanding of the material that KH won't laught at?

[Ramo]

So Physicists publishing in general topic peer reviewed journals aren't removing essential information to render those papers meaningless?

There aren't many general topic scientific journals that meet the highest standards of respectability. All I can think of atm are "Science" and "Nature."