Posted on 08/31/2005 8:19:37 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
In what is widely regarded as the most important scientific discovery of 1998, researchers turned their telescopes to measure the rate at which cosmic expansion was decelerating and instead saw that it was accelerating. They have been gripping the steering wheel very tightly ever since.
As deeply mysterious as acceleration is, if you just accept it without trying to fathom its cause, it solves all kinds of problems. Before 1998, cosmologists had been troubled by discrepancies in the age, density and clumpiness of the universe. Acceleration made everything click together. It is one of the conceptual keys, along with other high-precision observations and innovative theories, that have unlocked the next level of the big bang theory.
The big bang is often described as an event that occurred long ago, a great explosion that created the universe. In actuality, the theory says nothing about the moment of creation, which is a job for quantum physics (or metaphysics). It simply states that as far back as we can extrapolate, the cosmos has been expanding, thinning out and cooling down. The big bang is best thought of not as a singular event but as an ongoing process, a gradual molding of order out of chaos. The recent observations have given this picture a coherence it never had before.
From the perspective of life on Earth, cosmic history started with inflation -- a celestial reboot that wiped out whatever came before and left the cosmos a featureless place. The universe was without form, and void. Inflation then filled it with an almost completely uniform brew of radiation. The radiation varied from place to place in an utterly random way; mathematically, it was as random as random could be.
Gradually the universe imposed order on itself. The familiar particles of matter, such as electrons and protons, condensed out of the radiation like water droplets in a cloud of steam. Sound waves coursed through the amorphous mix, giving it shape. Matter steadily wrested control of the cosmos away from radiation. Several hundred thousand years after inflation, matter declared final victory and cut itself loose from radiation. This era and its dramatic coda have now been probed by high-precision observations of the fossil radiation [see "The Cosmic Symphony"].
Over the ensuing eons, matter organized itself into bodies of increasingly large size: subgalactic scraps, majestic galaxies, galactic clusters, great walls of galaxies. The universe we know -- a set of distinct bodies separated by vast expanses of essentially empty space -- is a fairly recent development, cosmologically speaking. This arrangement has now been systematically mapped [see " Reading the Blueprints of Creation"]. Starting several billion years ago, matter has been losing control to cosmic acceleration. Evidently the big bang has gotten a second wind, which is good for it but will be bad for us. The ever faster expansion has already arrested the formation of large structures and, if it continues, could rip apart galaxies and even our planet [see "From Slowdown to Speedup"].
In developing a cohesive and experimentally successful account of cosmic history, cosmologists have settled the disputes that once animated their field, such as the old debates between the big bang theory and the steady state theory and between inflation and its alternatives. Nothing in science is absolutely certain, but researchers now feel that their time is best spent on deeper questions, beginning with the cause of the cosmic acceleration.
Although the discovery of acceleration was revolutionary, cosmologists' initial response was fairly conservative. They dusted off an idea of Einstein's, the so-called cosmological constant, which represents a new type of energy -- an example of what is more generally known as dark energy. But many physicists are thinking that a revolutionary discovery calls for a revolutionary response. Maybe the law of gravity works differently on gigantic scales than it does on humble, everyday ones [see "Out of the Darkness"].
Just as a nuclear missile cannot be fired unless two keys are turned simultaneously, the explosive progress in cosmology has depended on multiple observational and theoretical keys being turned at once. Will the rush of new ideas lead to chaos? Will order reemerge? Must the cosmos be "preposterous," as one of the authors of this special report once put it? Or will it start to make sense again?
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
Say "Hi" to Ted and the Kronia crew for me, Walt.
I think it's both with an amusing emphasis on the latter.
In about a dozen different places, the Bible states specifically that "God stretched out the heavens" or similar variations.
What the Hell was that gibberish?
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.
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.
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.
There been an enormous influx of Ted here recently -- Barfabrick.com, and other references. Did this wash ashore with the tidal surge?
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!"
<<<<<<<<
Paging Dr. Stochastic!
I wish you joy in your exclusionary unity.
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.
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.
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