You people are talking about cosmology like its some kind of political debate.

"how often scientists working in astronomy have not only their 'cornerstone' theories, but just about everything else disproven. Maybe it's time to wipe the board and start over."

"The universe is not the windup toy invented in the twentieth century"

"Seems like the "facts" these guys spout offf change every day."

You people are idiots. Where do I begin… I think I'll start by ridiculing your elementary school science teachers for passing you to high school without explaining to you what the scientific method actually is.

You make it sound like there's a bunch of stuffed shirt robber barons in some dark room smoking cigarettes, discussing what to force down the public's throat next. As if real scientists give a damn what you think of them changing the theory to suit new observations.

We are looking at the universe through an eyepiece whose width is negligible to the actual span of the subject… in other words, we are trying to watch the greatest movie ever made with only one eye looking through a pinhole the size of an atom. No audio either.

Get this straight right here and now, I don't want to have to go through this again. No one ever told you… ever… that results from cosmological research are referred to as "Fact". Get that crap out of your head. That is a lie just as much as the "fact" that politicians are honest. What we deal with is "Theory".

Fact =/= Theory. Whoever told you otherwise is a liar too.

I'm sorry it has to come to this, but the scientific community is not playing some popularity contest with the public at large. There will be no "wipe the slate clean". What the heck does that mean anyway? Throw away everything we already know for certain because our theories about the age of some clusters of stars is inaccurate?

I mean, jeez. I would welcome your theory as to why a globular cluster that for all we know is as old as the galaxy itself has a surprisingly low number of binary pairs when as far as we can tell they should have more? However, I do not welcome your snide comments that only expose you as someone who opened your mouth before thinking…. much like what I am doing now.

The galaxy is over 60% binary pairs. Every point of light you can see is more than likely a binary star.

There is no such thing as a perfect orbit.

Binaries will do one of two things over time: move closer or farther apart.

The ones that move farther eventually, separate; we aren't worried about them.

The ones that move closer eventually share material with each other. When they do they give off X-rays.

This happens as a matter of time, not causality. In a given population of stars, a certain percentage will be in the above phase.

Until this research, it was calculated (estimated if you will) that there should be X many x-ray binaries in a given population.

This number is apparently less than X; the results indicate that if our previous research was correct, then the age of the globular cluster is grossly overestimated.

Bottom line: either other scientists did poor research (not likely, as there is little scientists love more than pointing out errors to other scientists) or the clusters in question are far younger than we thought.

This does not mean that the clusters are not billions of years old… this just means that we misunderstood the length of cluster adolescence and lifespan.

One of the problems with such indirect and untestable theories is that they do not represent a true application of the scientific method. Without using the scientific method rigorously, astronomers, astrophysicists and cosmologists are just another category of fiction writers.

"It never ceases to amaze me how often scientists working in astronomy have not only their 'cornerstone' theories, but just about everything else disproven. Maybe it's time to wipe the board and start over."

"Past time. The universe is not the windup toy invented in the twentieth century."

Ha! I'm keen to hear your views on the subject jerry. I assume you have a good deal of scientific evidence to back your assertions…

Past time. The universe is not the windup toy invented in the twentieth century.

Regards,

Günther

"It never ceases to amaze me how often scientists working in astronomy have not only their 'cornerstone' theories, but just about everything else disproven."

Yeah, the scientific method is a real pain in the neck, isn't it? Imagine the laboriousness of revising theory based on fresh evidence! I don't think we should bother at all, and if you disagree with me you are wrong.

Seriously though, this is the sort of calculation that must be rife with input parameters that could hardly be nailed down at the moment. Accurately calculating the rate of formation of X-ray binaries in the dynamic environment of a globular cluster I would think would be no mean feat, as it would be affected by a huge number of variables acting in unpredictable ways. As such, I don't think that a lot of astronomers would regard such a calculation as too much more than a fast and loose one – the results from this research may raise a few eyebrows, but I'd say it's hardly drop-you-on-the-floor surprising, really.