|
THE PROCESS OF SCIENCE: HOW DO WE KNOW?
The nature of the universe, its age, its birth and life story, have been deduced through the process of science.
This process has many aspects and stages. In the case of astronomy, it usually starts with making careful observations
and measurements -- something your students can begin to do through inspection of astronomical images, and observation
of the real sky. Together with our knowledge of the laws of physics, developed in laboratories here on Earth, these
observations provide the basis for our understanding of the universe. From continuing observations, astronomers
develop models and theories to explain how things work in the realms of the planets, stars, and galaxies.
In science, we test our ideas by making further observations and doing experiments. All suggestions (hypotheses)
must ultimately be confirmed by testing them against the evidence of the real world. As much as possible, we must
leave our prejudices and preferences outside the laboratory or observatory door. When the experiments and observations
have spoken, we must accept their results gracefully.
When scientists measured the age of the universe (as we will describe in a moment), they did not hope or wish
for it to have a particular age, and try to make their results come out according to those wishes. Instead, they
did the best they could to understand nature and then reported what their observations had told them.
|
