I saw this on social media the other day:
It took a few moments to get my head around the idea, but it’s an image of the Sun by ‘neutrino light’. Neutrinos do not interact with ordinary matter, so these neutrinos have passed through the Earth unhindered. Unfortunately, this also means most of them pass through our detectors without being detected, so it took hundreds of days to build-up this image.
I loved this, but unfortunately the article got a lot of ridicule from conspiracists and the scientifically illiterate. It suddenly seems fashionable for people to belittle what they don’t understand.
I blame the internet for the proliferation of conspiracy theories, and their supporters. Social media, websites and YouTube have all contributed to create an echo chamber where conspiracy ‘facts’, opinions, memes, videos, etc. are all bounced around, reinforcing each other’s opinions and beliefs
Conspiracists prefer alternative explanations of well-understood phenomena, but unfortunately, their own theories don’t hold-together very well. Mainstream scientific explanations, by comparison, are much more refined and self-consistent.
The conventional model of the natural world, is the result of millennia of hypothesis, research, experiment, and then refinement. That is the scientific method. The result is a model where all categories and sub-categories of science interlock neatly, and mutually support each other creating and extremely robust construct.
For example, Earth sciences (such as Geology, Atmospheric sciences, Hydrology, Palaeoclimatology, etc.) has an intimate relationship with Chemistry (Crystallography, Biochemistry, Materials science, Metallurgy, etc.) as well as Physics (Mechanics, Optics, Atomic physics, Thermodynamics).
Conspiracists are fond of cherry-picking from this model so as to give their own theories some credence, but they are forced to ignore the ‘inconvenient’ stuff. Sadly, this is not how science works. Tinker with this model, like (for example) the flat-Earthers do by rejecting Gravity, and the whole thing comes down like a house of cards.
Because they fly in the face of both logic and experience, it’s easy to be angry and dismissive when encountering their opinions. But actually, more than anger, I feel sorry for them. Theirs is a twilight world of superstition, denial and delusion. Whereas the rational world is interesting, challenging and uplifting.
During my short life, science has come to understand the structure of DNA. I was around when they put a man on the Moon. I followed with interest the Voyager missions to explore the outer reaches of the Solar System. They gave us the Hubble and Webb Space Telescopes to increase our understanding of the cosmos. They have decoded the human genome. During the pandemic, scientists developed vaccines in record time, thus saving millions of lives. These are all staggering achievements, and even though I’m not really a scientist, they have enriched my life beyond belief, and BTW, made the world a better place.
Sadly, all you’d get from a conspiracy theorist on any of these topics would be a laughter emoji. Ultimately, I think this is their loss.
