Space Science and Exploration

We have all, at some time or another heard of black holes, but what exactly is a black hole and why is it ‘black’? As I described in my post about star types, most stars grow slowly into massive red giants as they run out of hydrogen. Most then collapse heating up in their final years. This collapse is halted quickly however as most stars don’t have enough mass to create a gravitational pull strong enough to overcome electron degeneracy pressure thus preventing further collapse. In simple terms this is the force that prevents electrons sticking to the protons in the nucleus of the atom. The star can’t release any more energy and it slowly loses its outer layers to space leaving a cooling white dwarf the size of Earth. More massive stars (those with more than 10 solar masses) continue gravitational collapse past electron degeneracy. This means that in the final moments of a massive star’s life it actually fuses electrons and protons together to form neutrons. This process releases mas...

Once a hypothesis has survived to test, it may become adopted into the framework of a scientific theory. This is a logically reasoned, self-consistent model, or framework for describing the behavior of certain natural phenomena. A theory typically describes the behavior of much broader sets of phenomena than a hypothesis; commonly, a large number of hypotheses can be logically bound together by a single theory. Thus a theory is a hypothesis explaining various other hypotheses. In that vein, theories are formulated according to most of the same scientific principles as hypotheses.

Unlike a mathematical proof, a scientific theory is empirical and is always open to falsification if new evidence is presented. That is, no theory is ever considered strictly certain. Instead, science is proud to make predictions with great probability, bearing in mind that the most likely event is not always what actually happens.  During the Yom Kippur War, cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman was asked to explain why one squad of aircraft had returned safely, yet a second squad on the exact same operation had lost all of its planes. Rather than conduct a study in the hope of a new hypothesis, Kahneman simply reiterated the importance of expecting some coincidences in life, explaining that absurdly rare things, by definition, occasionally happen. In this sense, probabilities can run counter to our intuitions, which rely heavily on heuristics including mental availability.

My philosophy of science seeks to understand the nature and justification of scientific knowledge. It has proven difficult to provide a definitive account of the scientific method that can decisively serve to distinguish science from non-science. Thus there are legitimate arguments about exactly where the borders are, which is known as the problem of demarcation . There is nonetheless a set of core precepts that have broad consensus among published philosophers of science and within the scientific community at large. For example, it is universally agreed that scientific hypotheses and theories must be capable of being independently tested and verified by other scientists in order to become accepted by the scientific community.

Science (from the Latin scienta meaning "knowledge") is, in its broadest sense, any systematic knowledge that is capable of resulting in a correct prediction or reliable outcome. In this sense, science may refer to a highly skilled technique, technology, or practice. In its more restricted modern sense, science is a system of acquiring knowledge based on scientific research, and to the organized body of knowledge gained through such research. Science in this modern sense is a systematic enterprise of gathering knowledge about the world and organizing and condensing that knowledge into testable laws and theories This article focuses on science in this more restricted sense, sometimes called experimental science.