On this episode I share my thoughts on an article we received from a listener (thank you Rachel!) about one of the oldest Star's in our known universe that registers as older than the universe...How is that possible? Is science not perfect? How can the magical art of science be wrong? IT'S OVER 9000??!! This brings up one of my favorite parts of science. That it is not perfect. In fact, what science does in my opinion is allow us to disseminate reality. And even then, we can only truly guess within a range of uncertainty. No, not the feeling of not knowing the answer - but scientific uncertainty. Scientific and statistical error. Always been a part of science - but we rarely talk about it, and it seems we only do when it's convenient (like when a Star can read older than the universe).
And while science can produce answers with reasonable certainty and with small tolerance - when it comes to space that error can seem unimaginably large. What's the tolerance on the age of the universe at 16 billion years? Even 1% of that is MASSIVE.
So my message for this week (that I hope comes through) is that it's more beneficial for humanity and science to say "I don't know and here's why" than to say "science is perfect, and there's no need to question it", even accidentally. If we can find a way to make science more real and practical and less like magic, we should do it.
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