Re:The Race to Colonize Mars Perpetuates a Dangerous Religion
by taylodl on Thursday April 27, 2023 @01:57PM
(#35732072)
A new theory isn't going to contradict your observations. It may provide an alternate explanation and allow you to understand the phenomenon a different way, but the phenomenon leading to the observation is unchanged.
This is important in this discussion because we've never observed anything traveling faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. That would appear to rule-out faster-than-light travel, which for practical reasons would make traveling to other solar systems impossible.
Notably, the idea that a new theory simply takes existing "observations" and adds to them is historically unfounded. Indeed, many theories start as thought experiments that contradict observation and later turn out to be better models, not the other way around.
You also may or may not be familiar with the concepts of theory-ladenness and the commensurability of theories. If not, I suggest doing some reading about that so you can appreciate why those questions aren't as straightforward as you seem to believe.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-ladenness [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commensurability_(philosophy_o...