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Four Keys to Cosmology
Scientific American ^
| February 2004
| George Musser
Posted on 08/31/2005 8:19:37 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: NJ_gent
Once the Grand Unified Theory is perfected (assuming such a thing is possible) The assumption is preposterous. We're smart, but never so smart to be smarter than ourselves. There's one way out, of course: you just shrink your universe enough so it fits the size of your "grand theory").
I smell the ghost of Descartes
41
posted on
08/31/2005 9:27:49 AM PDT
by
cornelis
To: Yollopoliuhqui
Scientific American will never report on the discovery of Halton Arp... Say "Hi" to Ted and the Kronia crew for me, Walt.
42
posted on
08/31/2005 9:44:30 AM PDT
by
VadeRetro
(Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)
To: malakhi
Either the author is proposing that the big bang occurred as a (relatively) smaller event in a preexistent universe, or he has been carried away by his own rhetoric.
I think it's both with an amusing emphasis on the latter.
To: cornelis
"The assumption is preposterous."
Care to elaborate?
"We're smart, but never so smart to be smarter than ourselves."
This doesn't appear to make sense.
"you just shrink your universe enough so it fits the size of your "grand theory")."
I'm still not understanding what's meant by 'shrink'ing the universe in this context. If you mean simplifying it, then of course that's the goal. (See: Occam's Razor). It doesn't mean ignoring anything; it means you explain as much as you possibly can with the same terms. If I can explain everything as a function of strings and their interactions with each other, and I can do so accurately, than it becomes far easier to gain an understanding of what's happening in any given instance. That is the goal of the GUT.
"I smell the ghost of Descartes"
Descartes attempted to explain the universe in a very fundamental fashion without any understanding of the laws governing it, nor the behavior of most of it, nor any understanding of the fundamental aspects of matter or energy. He tried pushing for the explanation without the evidence, which is a rather large 'no-no' in the world of science.
44
posted on
08/31/2005 9:46:51 AM PDT
by
NJ_gent
(Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.)
To: mikeus_maximus; cornelis; Michael Bluth; NJ_gent; Darth Reagan
In about a dozen different places, the Bible states specifically that "God stretched out the heavens" or similar variations.
To: VadeRetro
What the Hell was that gibberish?
46
posted on
08/31/2005 9:56:45 AM PDT
by
furball4paws
(One of the last Evil Geniuses, or the first of their return.)
To: NJ_gent
I'm still not understanding what's meant by 'shrink'ing the universe in this context. Simplification is helpful, but not exhaustive. If simplification is identical to being exhaustive, that would be tantamount to saying your grand theory is exhaustive of the universe. This view is not coherent, given that we have evidence that presents use with more than one kind of infinity. We we need to point out here is that the scope of anyone's theory--grand as they may be--is finite. The term unified only unifies the chosen universe.
47
posted on
08/31/2005 9:57:16 AM PDT
by
cornelis
To: cornelis
"The term unified only unifies the chosen universe."
That being the one in which we live. I'm not sure which others we have to choose from, but I sure hope you're enjoying the one you're in right now.
48
posted on
08/31/2005 10:14:11 AM PDT
by
NJ_gent
(Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.)
To: NJ_gent
That being the one . . . This is a great point of dispute, running from Heraclitus to Kant. Some of them refused to include matter. Think of it, a grand unified theory, but no cosmology!
The discovery for some of them was that the universe is always larger than the theory.
49
posted on
08/31/2005 10:21:58 AM PDT
by
cornelis
To: NJ_gent
We now have Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, String Theory, and all kinds of new ways of experimenting with some of the most fundamental things believed to exist. Once the Grand Unified Theory is perfected (assuming such a thing is possible), we'll be able to explain any given thing in the universe using the same terms as we would to explain any other given thing. That's pretty much the way my teachers talked fourty years ago. Science was about to run out of stuff to do.
Just my opinion, but I am not holding my breath.
But assuming we reach a comfortable state of physics, and the levee holds for a couple hundred years, we have a phenomenon known as emergence. We cannot predict the properties of complex things from the properties of their components. We have no theory that explains water based on the properties of hydrogen an oxygen.
Hardly a state threatening unemployment for science.
50
posted on
08/31/2005 10:31:04 AM PDT
by
js1138
(Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
To: VadeRetro
There been an enormous influx of Ted here recently -- Barfabrick.com, and other references. Did this wash ashore with the tidal surge?
51
posted on
08/31/2005 10:35:05 AM PDT
by
js1138
(Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
To: cornelis
"This is a great point of dispute, running from Heraclitus to Kant."
I'm not interested in ancient philosophers or meta-physicists; I'm interested in those studying modern science. Modern science stands in stark contrast to anything else ever put forth in terms of explaining things. That computer you're typing on works because modern science has helped us gain an understanding about how electrons work and how they can be manipulated. When you find Heraclitus' lost writings on String Theory and Quantum Mechanics, I might be interested in what he had to say.
"The discovery for some of them was that the universe is always larger than the theory."
They had the bad luck of living in times where the human understanding of the natural world was severely limited. Of course their theories were incomplete and wrong; they had almost no accurate scientific knowledge. Let's get some comments on Vafa's work, Schwarz's work, or Townsend's work instead of relying on guys who were dead hundreds and thousands of years before Einstein was born. Modern science bears no resemblance to ancient philosophy.
52
posted on
08/31/2005 10:43:33 AM PDT
by
NJ_gent
(Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.)
To: NJ_gent
I have to agree with this. Philosophy is always coming in like union thugs, after science has built something, and trying to take over the operation.
>>>>>>>
A sudden commotion destroyed the moment: the door flew open and two angry men wearing the coarse faded-blue robes and belts of the Cruxwan University burst into the room, thrusting aside the ineffectual flunkies who tried to bar their way.
"We demand admission!" shouted the younger of the two men elbowing a pretty young secretary in the throat.
"Come on," shouted the older one, "you can't keep us out!" He pushed a junior programmer back through the door.
"We demand that you can't keep us out!" bawled the younger one, though he was now firmly inside the room and no further attempts were being made to stop him.
"Who are you?" said Lunkwill, rising angrily from his seat. "What do you want?"
"I am Majikthise!" announced the older one.
"And I demand that I am Vroomfondel!" shouted the younger one.
Majikthise turned on Vroomfondel. "It's alright," he explained angrily, "you don't need to demand that."
"Alright!" bawled Vroomfondel banging on an nearby desk. "I am Vroomfondel, and that is not a demand, that is a solid fact! What we demand is solid facts!"
"No we don't!" exclaimed Majikthise in irritation. "That is precisely what we don't demand!"
Scarcely pausing for breath, Vroomfondel shouted, "We don't demand solid facts! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts. I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!"
"But who the devil are you?" exclaimed an outraged Fook.
"We," said Majikthise, "are Philosophers."
"Though we may not be," said Vroomfondel waving a warning finger at the programmers.
"Yes we are," insisted Majikthise. "We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons, and we want this machine off, and we want it off now!"
"What's the problem?" said Lunkwill.
"I'll tell you what the problem is mate," said Majikthise, "demarcation, that's the problem!"
"We demand," yelled Vroomfondel, "that demarcation may or may not be the problem!"
"You just let the machines get on with the adding up," warned Majikthise, "and we'll take care of the eternal verities thank you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?"
"That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
<<<<<<<<
53
posted on
08/31/2005 10:50:10 AM PDT
by
js1138
(Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
To: VadeRetro; Doctor Stochastic
Say "Hi" to Ted and the Kronia crew for me, Walt. Paging Dr. Stochastic!
54
posted on
08/31/2005 10:52:52 AM PDT
by
balrog666
(A myth by any other name is still inane.)
To: js1138
"That's pretty much the way my teachers talked fourty years ago. Science was about to run out of stuff to do. Just my opinion, but I am not holding my breath."
Neither am I. I never gave a time frame for any of that. First of all, assuming the GUT is sufficiently developed within the next hundred years to be even mildly useful, it's still going to take a long, long time before we can get off this rock we're gravitationally stuck to so we can go out in search of new things. GUT could take a thousand years to perfect, or it may be impossible to perfect. If we were handed a complete GUT tomorrow, it'd be dozens or perhaps even hundreds of years before it could be fully understood. Once it's understood, it becomes a very useful tool to understand how things work and to engineer new things to work. The GUT is a massive accelerator to the growth of our knowledge, but I seriously doubt that human beings will run out of things to explore prior to our sun exploding. By that time, I doubt the human race will be anywhere near this planet, and I doubt they'll even vaguely resemble the race we have here today.
I do pity the poor folks who grow up in a period of time where discovery is a very rare and difficult thing to find. We're really in a golden age right now. We have barely scratched the surface of the natural world, and we're just now getting the tools necessary to dig in deep.
"We cannot predict the properties of complex things from the properties of their components."
Sure we can; just in a less than ideal way. How do you think new substances are created? (like the stuff they just created that's harder than diamond)
55
posted on
08/31/2005 10:53:25 AM PDT
by
NJ_gent
(Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.)
To: NJ_gent
I'm not interested in ancient philosophers or meta-physicists; I wish you joy in your exclusionary unity.
56
posted on
08/31/2005 11:01:08 AM PDT
by
cornelis
To: NJ_gent
I do pity the poor folks who grow up in a period of time where discovery is a very rare and difficult thing to find. In one of my meaner moments I asked my children how it felt to grow up with space travel in the past instead of the future. Looking back, I suspect that was a kind of child abuse, even if I intended it as a joke.
I honestly think your worries are misplaced. It sounds to me like an artist thinkng everything has been painted because all the paint colors have been invented.
There is a descriptive side to science and an inventive side. When all the pebbles have been counted, you can still make things with them.
57
posted on
08/31/2005 11:03:56 AM PDT
by
js1138
(Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
To: js1138
"I honestly think your worries are misplaced."
I'm not worried for me. As I said in another post, I don't expect that mankind will have exhausted the quest for discovery until well after our sun has long since exploded. :-)
"When all the pebbles have been counted, you can still make things with them."
Sure, but there are a finite number of possible configurations for the pebbles. It may take an extraordinary amount of time to run through all of them, but what do you do when you're the guy at the end of the line, growing up with everything else tried, tested, and run into the ground?
"In one of my meaner moments I asked my children how it felt to grow up with space travel in the past instead of the future."
Ahh, but space travel is only the beginning. Getting into space is just the first step. We've never sent humans to another planet before. We've never sent humans to another star system before. Nor have we sent anything to another galaxy. There are many exciting things that have yet to pass any of us by.
58
posted on
08/31/2005 11:09:12 AM PDT
by
NJ_gent
(Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.)
To: cornelis
"I wish you joy in your exclusionary unity."
The only things excluded by modern science's GUT are those that science cannot study, measure, or test. No responsible scientist bothers trying to measure, test, or disprove God.
59
posted on
08/31/2005 11:12:06 AM PDT
by
NJ_gent
(Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.)
To: NJ_gent
The only things excluded by modern science's GUT are those that science cannot study, measure, or test And so we return to my point. The scope of your theory is only as universal as the portion of the universe it studies.
Plus (and this is important), there is no science so pure that it's study of things measurable and testable have nothing to do with logic or metaphysics. Scientific thinking is influenced by other kinds of thinking.
60
posted on
08/31/2005 12:02:21 PM PDT
by
cornelis
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