[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
(meteorobs) Science
I would certainly object to the statement of Paul Jones as follows;
(and also again for the 1998 Leonids) that the more we THINK we know
about
natural events, the less we ACTUALLY do! We should never assume for one
minute that we fully understand or can accurately predict how the
natural
world will behave.
We may not fully understand nature but that does not prevent us from
accurately predicting how the natural world will behave at many levels
and we certainly understand the better part of it today. Recent
predictions of meteor storms may not be perfect but they are far better
than they were 10 years ago. Weather predictions are complained about
but again it is so much better than it was 30 years ago. Further many
disastrous storms are predicted accurately avoiding great disasters. The
Law of Conservation of Energy holds perfectly true and has never been
questioned since the early twentieth century when energy of mass and
nuclear energy were added to the mix. I am reminded of the argument
that was used against the very expensive science of space exploration;
"It raises more questions than it answers.". That is untrue it answers
the questions we wanted answered but the new knowledge enables us to ask
questions that we could not ask before. A very simple example is that
until you discover that the world is round, you cannot ask the question
of "Why don't the people in China fall off?".
The archive and Web site for our list is at http://www.meteorobs.org
To stop getting all email from the 'meteorobs' lists, use our Webform:
http://www.meteorobs.org/subscribe.html