Four Keys to Cosmology

Scientific American ^ | February 2004 | George Musser

[cornelis]

It could be that existence is infinitely deep

Yes, yes, but their are kinds of existence, and kinds of infinity. Remember, we need extra-super grand, not just grand.

[NJ_gent]

"How about a extra-super grand unified theory so we don't leave God on the dock? Does anybody else get sense there are too many words devoted to shrinking the universe?"

How does explaining the natural world leave God anywhere? How does developing a simplified explanation for the universe 'shrink' it? Grand Unified Theory is named appropriately in that it's the "theory of everything" (Grand) and it unifies quantum mechanics with Relativity (Unified). Perfecting that theory means we can start explaining everything in the universe using the same terms and without inherent contradictions.

None of this says one word about God. In fact, plenty of religious scientists are as passionate about learning more about the universe as they are because they have a deep desire to understand the beautiful universe God has created. It's always amazed me that any religious person would feel threatened in the slightest by science. There is nothing science can do to disprove God or provide evidence contrary to God. As such, science is not a threat at all. Science and religion both seek the truth; just to a different set of questions.

[NJ_gent]

"Order out of chaos, or chaos out of chaos? It's probably just me, but these sort of conflicting statements make it hard for me to keep from laughing."

Much like anything else, chaos and order, in their extremes, are the same thing.

[free_at_jsl.com]

If time were somehow a constant or a resource in limited supply, and the expanding bubble of the universe caused it to dilute, then it might appear that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. There was no "beginning" to the universe because time began with it. Thinking about such things can leave you in awe at the power of creation.

[cornelis]

If there's a theory of everything that includes God, you'd have to call it a super-grand theory. And if you ask, what caused God, it would be extra-super-grand. Capiche?

[George Smiley]

Eye shadow, blush, foundation and lipstick.

What?

I thought you said COSMETOLOGY.

[NJ_gent]

"This is just my opinion, but physical theories seem to explain what is know today, but fail eventually at the edges of knowledge. It could be that existence is infinitely deep, turtles all the way down."

That's precisely why theories are modified when new information that doesn't "fit" with current understandings is discovered. There are plenty of theories which have, thus far, held up to all available scrutiny. Einstein's Relativity is doing just fine, but that doesn't mean it's perfect. What it does represent is a far better understanding of the universe and its laws than what we had under Newton. We've made remarkable progress in our understanding of the universe in just a few hundred years, and our rate of discovery is vastly increasing. Since scientists aren't perfect, we have the Scientific Method and peer review to push us towards the truth instead of simply assuming we've found the truth.

[malakhi]

The universe was without form, and void. Inflation then filled it with an almost completely uniform brew of radiation.

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.

[Vicomte13]

Maybe every particle of matter is getting bigger at an identical rate, and the effect of this is for everything to appear to be the same size, relative to everything else, while it all expands willy-nilly into empty space.

Thus, if you drop a ball, the ball doesn't really fall. Rather, the expanding earth rushes up to meet the ball.

[cornelis]

Much like anything else, chaos and order, in their extremes, are the same thing.

You must be intelligent. There was once an ancient philosopher who thought that thinking and being are the same thing.

Today's version of A is A: New Orleans last week = New Orleans this week.

[RightWhale]

I'm animate and intelligent

And weigh something. What is it that bends the bathroom scales? Animation? Intelligence? No, of course it is the matter. What carries the intelligence, keeps it in one place? Matter has that tendency, to stay where it is. Matter must have the capability of both animation and intelligence, even though latent except for special, temporary, and particular cases--the various individual 'I's that we see around town.

[Bones75]

"I no cosmologist, but isn't this sentence a tautology? I mean, isn't "inflation" the process of filling something almost completely? So, couldn't this sentence be re-stated as follows:

Something inflated it with an almost completely uniform brew of radiation.

Something tells me that the predicate "filled it" needs a subject, and that it begs the question to say that "inflation" filled anything."

No not really. Not so much that your analysis of what is said here is so wrong. It's just that what is known as cosmological inflation is explained here in such a hokey and innacurate manner. "Inflation" (as used is cosmologic terms) did not fill anything with anything. This article was written by someone in way over their head, trying to write about something they have absolutely zero understanding of.

[PatrickHenry]

... turtles all the way down.

Don't give up your day job.

[js1138]

That's precisely why theories are modified ...

Of course. I'm just suggesting that there will always be work to do.

I was discouraged from a science career by looney teachers who taught that almost everything was known, or about to be.

I rather welcome the current fight over ID. It makes it clear that there are still problems as deep as those that faced 19th century physics.

[js1138]

A metaphor. OK?

[cornelis]

A metaphor, OK?

"I think it can be generally said that every attempt to explain natural phenomena by the use of mathematical knowledge alone necessitates the recourse to explanatory myths." Jacques Maritain, Philosophy of Nature, p. 7.

[Darth Reagan]

Something inflated it with an almost completely uniform brew of radiation.

How about "A brew of radiation inflated it in an almost uniform manner"?

Does that solve your problem?

[Yollopoliuhqui]

Scientific American will never report on the discovery of Halton Arp, Edwin Hubbel's former chief assistant, who found massive evedence in his cataloging of high energy galaxies, that said galaxies were associated with clumps of quasars, seemingly ejected at the galaxies' axial poles. Problem was the red shift of the galaxies in question was half that of the associated quasar clumps, throwing "red shift" into the dustbin of history. Visit his website: http://www.haltonarp.com/ and read his book "Seeing Red" and learn that not only "red shift" but "big bang", "black hole" and "dark matter" are the toad heads and lizard eyes to a witches brew of ad hockery and computer modeling run amok.

You can throw out disk accretion for planetary formation and consider the swept-under-the-rug counter proposition to "big bang", the Steady State Theory of the Cosmos, in which the Universe must be considered at this point to have always been in its present state, with matter being created (quasars are new galaxies!) and absorbed in a manner consistent with "Dirac Sea" (and Tesla resonance theory) quantum physics.

Without disk accretion as the method of planetary formation, astronomy's mouthpiece Carl Sagan no longer has his "billions and billions of galaxies" containing billions and billions of life supporting planets. A statistical analysis of the conditions prevalent on Earth that allow life to emerge will show that the possibility of all the key requirements for life in a satelllite body created by SOLAR ELECTRIC EJECTION is billions and billions to one, and, by extension, we may well be the only living things in all this infinity, the corollary to which is simply: it may take an infinite universe and infinite amount of time to come up with monkeys typing Shakespeare. Six day creation is a no brainer for God, what he really needed was a challenge up to his abilities...

Read more on the Electric Universe hypothesis at: http://www.holoscience.com/home/home.htm. For every standard issue, boiler plate cosmological, archaeological and philosophical theory out there, there are logically rigorous and evidence-supported counter theories. But the "science mafia" won't let you read them in any of the monopoly press. The Internet, for all its sleaze and ranting, is the level info playing field. Follow the links included in the above mentioned web sites and let the adventure begin.


Walter

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[Darth Reagan]

There is nothing science can do to disprove God or provide evidence contrary to God. As such, science is not a threat at all. Science and religion both seek the truth; just to a different set of questions.

Wonderfully said!

[NJ_gent]

"It makes it clear that there are still problems as deep as those that faced 19th century physics."

I would tend to disagree here. 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. Without a startling new discovery (something more fundamental than strings, for instance), we're pretty much reaching the edge of the completely unknown. That's not to say we're ready to explain everything; just that it's looking a whole lot more like a reasonably complete understanding of the universe is actually possible at some point in the future. That's both an exciting prospect and a sad one.

As naturally curious explorers of the world around us, what shall we do when there is nothing left to explore? That's a torture I'm glad I won't be around to experience.