Curse you monkey brain

[dreamer_easy]

I've just seen it with my own eyes and I still can't believe it: a feather and a hammer dropped at the same time hit the moondust at the same time. It's one of the first and simplest things you learn in science, but my monkey brain has learned its physics in an atmosphere and not in a vacuum, and just won't have it.

Never mind that - in the process, I found an arresting Web site. Creationism, meet the cranks: "Common Sense Science" rejects quantum physics in its entirety, and thus the existence of many things: the weak force, the strong force, the neutron, the quark, peer-reviewed physics journals, empirical evidence, etc.

Comments

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

The feather and hammer demonstration is one to show to the disbelievers who think we never went to the moon. They were in a pretty damn good vacuum when they did that.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Not to mention a pretty good gravity field, if the acceleration of the two bodies is anything to go by.

But the 'true believers' would probably just say "on wires" and that'd be that, sigh.

[hereville.livejournal.com]

No, they say it was a carefully aimed feather (so it wouldn't catch on the air and be slowed down) and slowed-down film playback.

No, really. That's what they say (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM0FDGOsslU).

Human devotion to nonsense is, in its own way, as wondrous and strange as a dropped feather and hammer hitting the floor at the same time.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

... wouldn't it be easier just to claim it was a fake feather made out of lead, or something?

[nexstarman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we were just talking about that this week.

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

"True common sense is now rather uncommon, having been ousted by False Common Sense, also known as a bloody minded lack of imagination."
-Terry Pratchett.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

IDK man, it takes a pretty vivid imagination to throw out a century's worth of empirical proofs and randomly postulate a universe made out of tiny hula hoops instead. Well, that, or untreated schizophrenia, which is the usual explanation for cranks, the poor buggers. These guys have no excuse.

[drhoz.livejournal.com]

aren't they the same people that use these hoops to prove that the "Earth is XPandIINGGG!!!" thus invalidating geological timescales as well?

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

My rummage thru the site on a vain quest for equations, etc, uncovered the unsurprising fact that, yay verily yay, they're Young Earth Creationists.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. It's hard to determine for certain that the CSS guys are cranks. I mean, they reveal so little about their theories, apart from a few intriguing qualitative descriptions... unless you pay to receive their more detailed papers, of course... =:o\