wobblycogs":3640twce said:
What's with this obsession some news sources have with knocking Einsteins theories though? No one said that they were the be all and end all of science they are just some clever mathematics that describe (most of) what we observe in the universe. We should be celebrating that we might have found something new and interesting.
I think it's largely because of the fact that the majority of people don't understand how science works. In my experience most people see the things they learned in school science lessons as absolute laws, and think that "the scientific method" has more to do with wearing a white lab coat and safety specs than about systematically questioning everything. A good scientist will agree that every so-called 'law' they have is just the best approximation of the truth we've found so far, and just waiting to be proven wrong; tell that to a layperson and you get stuff like the intelligent design movement claiming evolution shouldn't be taught because it's called the "theory" of evolution rather than "the explanation best supported by a large quantity of empirical evidence" of evolution.
Newton's theories of gravity and other mechanics are still taught in schools today, and it all still works for the majority of practical and engineering uses, despite the fact that it's all been subsequently 'proven wrong'. The same will happen when Einstein's work is further shown to (shock!) not be a complete description of reality, but the press and the general public will be expecting headlines like "Einstein proven wrong: physics turns on its head; giant wormhole spontaneously opens in Trafalgar square, sends half of London to parallel universe; pi redefined to six and a half".
</pet rant>
That, and everyone likes a bit of schadenfreude, as evidenced by the rise of reality TV. :/
The only absolute truths are in pure mathematics, and we made that up ourselves!