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Cyclic Universe a Possibility
An Anonymous Coward writes "Spacedaily has a post(from Science) about a new theory at odds with the big bang theory. The researchers claim that this theory of an oscillating energy field could be experimentally tested in the coming years."
This one might piss off the religious right. The Big Bang could sort of be reconciled with the idea that God created the world in 7 days, since maybe the Big Bang happened on the first day. But the idea that the universe has always existed (and therefore predates creation) is a big problem, since it excludes God from the picture.
I'll be interested to hear the religious responses to this theory.
What bugs me about the M-theorie, is that they had to introduce the 11th dimension in order to make the math work. They made the theory fit the math. It sounds like crappy science to me, when you start adapting your theory of the universe to your math, instead of the other way around. It's like saying: it has to be this way, 'cause that's the only explanation we have'
"A new theory of the universe suggests that space and time may not have begun in a big bang, but may have always existed"
To my line of thinking, it is totally illogical for this massive place this earth is floating around in, to have exploded out of nothing... and then _somehow_ created the amazing order we are able to observe thruout our window and in our linux boxes.
I've heard talk about this theory for years now, what's so new about it? And how does it explain temperature? When things expand and collapse (including universes) they produce heat, right? If this has been happening forever, then how come there isn't infinite heat?!? Am I oversimplifying this?
What I find even more interesting is that this would seem to indicate that our current universe is not the first, nor the last.
So how many universes existed before this one? How many universes will come into existance after this one?
If we will assume that we are not the only civilization in the universe, then out of all of the universes that have existed, imagine how many civilizations have existed.
If this theory about the universe having a lifetime is true, then what exists between each universe? I mean, if our universe suddenly dies, how long is it until the next one is born, and what exists when there is no universe? Quite strange to contemplate.
"The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov.
The story begins in the year 2061, when a colossal computer has solved the earth's energy problems by designing a massive solar satellite in space that can beam the sun's energy back to earth. The AC (analog computer) is so large and advanced that its technicians have only the vaguest idea of how it operates. On a $5 bet, two drunken technicians ask the computer whether the sun's eventual death can be avoided or, for that matter, whether the universe must inevitably die. After quietly mulling over this question, the AC (analog computer) responds: "Insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
Centuries into the future, the AC has solved the problem of hyperspace travel, and humans begin colonizing thousands of star systems. The AC is so large that it occupies several hundred square miles on each planet and so complex that it maintains and services itself. A young family is rocketing through hyperspace, unerringly guided by the AC, in search of a new star system to colonize. When the father casually mentions that the stars must eventually die, the children become hysterical. "Don't let the stars die," plead the children. To calm the children, he asks the AC if entropy can be reversed. "See," reassures the father, reading the AC's response, the AC can solve everything. He comforts them by saying, "It will take care of everything when the time comes, so don't worry." He never tells the children that the AC actually prints out: "Insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
Thousands of years into the future, the Galaxy itself has been colonized. The AC has solved the problem of immortality and harnesses the energy of the Galaxy, but must find new galaxies for colonization. The AC is so complex that it is long past the point where anyone understands how it works. It continually redesings and improves its own circuits. Two members of the Galactic Council, each hundreds of years old, debate the urgent question of finding new galactic energy sources, and wonder if the universe itself is running down. Can entropy be reversed? they ask. The AC responds: "Insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
Millions of years into the future, humanity has spread across the uncountable galaxies of the universe. The AC has solved the problem of releasing the mind from the body, and human minds are free to explore the vastness of millions of galaxies, with their bodies safely stored on some long forgotten planet. Two minds accidentally meet each other in outer space, and casually wonder where among the uncountable galaxies humans originated. The AC, which is now so large that most of it has to be housed in hyperspace, responds by instantly transporting them to an obscure galaxy. They are disappointed. The galaxy is so ordinary, like millions of other galaxies, and the original star has long since died. The two minds become anxious because billions of stars in the heavens are slowly meeting the same fate. The two minds ask, can the death of the universe itself be avoided? From hyperspace, the AC responds: "Insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
Billions of years into the future, humanity consists of a trillion, trillion, trillion immortal bodies, each cared for by automatons. Humanity's collective mind, which is free to roam anywhere in the universe at will, eventually fuses into a single mind, which in turn fuses with the AC itself. It no longer makes sense to ask what the AC is made of or where in hyperspace it really is. "The universe is dying," thinks Man, collecitvely. One by one, as the stars and galaxies cease to generate energy, temperatures throughout the universe approach absolute zero. Man desperately asks if the cold and darkness slowly engulfing the galaxies mean its eventual death. From hyperspace, the AC answers: "Insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
When Man asks the AC to collect the necessary data, it responds: "I will do so. I have been doing so for a hundred billion years. My predecessors have been asked this question many times. All the data I have remains insufficient."
A timeless interval passes, and the universe has finally reached its ultimate death. From hyperspace, the AC spends an eternity collecting data and contemplating the final question. At last, the AC disovers the solution, even though there is no longer anyone to give the answer. The AC carefully formulates a program, and then begins the process of reversing Chaos. It collects cold, interstellar gas, brings together the dead stars, until a gigantic ball is created.
Then, when its labors are done, from hyperspace the AC thunders: "Let their be light!" and there was light.
"she says i'm lousy conversation. as if that's supposed to help."
While these branes are a cute idea in a number of respects - not just because a parallel plane full of dark matter is 100% cool old school science fiction - it strikes me that they answer "how can we match our observations to what we want to be true?" rather than "how can we match our explanations to what we observe?"
Which is not to say that it isn't an excellent theory - merely that there is extreme intellectual danger associated this sort of speculation.
I think that you are overly restrictive in your requirements of how we generate our theories. Really, there should be absolutely no constraints on how we generate our theories. Theory generation may be driven by observation or driven by the fantasies of a madman---it doesn't matter. In the end, all theories have to stand up to experimental scrutiny, irrespective of how they were generated.
After all, even Einstein was driven by need for beauty when he came up with General Relativity. By your standards he definitely was working in an intellectual danger zone. In fact, I would prefer theorists operate in the danger zone more often than they currently do.
Properties of local regions differ tremendously (from the real picture) in the Universe, as all the classical physicists found out, much to their dismay, in the early 20th century. I am pretty sure, more advanced civilizations around the universe have written it off as the NP-hard problem of all times.
Existence exists; deal with it. :-)
Whoa... think about what this means. This would mean that space is not like a sphere expanding from a point of almost nothing into the fourth dimension, it means that space goes on forever! An infinite number of civilizations, and an infinite number of civilizations that are almost exactly like ours. And how many civilizations in the last cycle tried in vain to survive heat death and the next Big Clang?
What if the sheets "roll" across space together? If this could happen before heat death in our area, we'd all just be wiped out like a rat on a beach caught in a title wave.
(It would also mean this exact post has been posted on a much superior Slashdot, far far away.)
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
The acceleration of the expansion actually cools the universe, so the high-entropy 'heat death' is avoided; it is more akin to a 'big freeze'. Any collection of matter that is not gravitationally bound together will eventually be spreading apart faster than light (i.e. intervening space stretches faster) and will be forever out of reach. The increasing entropy, smoothing out of energy density variation, will be limited to local areas, where by local I mean that it is not stretching faster than light so that energy transfer can occur throughout the locality. Of course, life is still f*cked because it can't reach the other areas and use the energy difference to do work (unless faster than light travel is discovered).
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Please explain why God, who is supposed to be all-knowing, all-wise, and all-good, would communicate the creation story in such a deliberately confusing way?
I have an exercise for you. I realize that I'm not going to change your mind on the global issues raised in your post with a simple post to Slashdot, but I think I can defend this point well. Moreover, it is an interesting psychology point as well, not merely a religious one.
Let us say you wish to describe in writing, in exquisite detail, the internal workings of your computer. By "exquisite detail", I mean not just what it does, but how it does it, at every level from the "computer science" level down to the "quantum physics" level (for the transistors and similar hardware). You've got a lot of ground to cover, but by and large, one dedicated human could hold most of this in their head on a fairly deep level.
Now, let's say you're going to do this two thousand years ago using only Greek. I'll stipulate you a complete understanding of Greek; that's not the point. How will you describe the workings of a laser, the effects of coherent light, and the effect of two mediums in a CD-ROM? And that's just a small part of the CD-ROM drive, a fraction of one percent of the problem you are faced with.
The only solution? You will need to replicate the scientific revolution. You'll need to create news terms, define them, etc., and basically bootstrap from a thoroughly ineffective language into one that is useful to you, quite analagously to the bootstrapping of computer languages from machine language. It's certainly possible, though it's debatable whether one ancient greek would be able to learn this without significant guidance from a real person (i.e., not just from the writing, but with a teacher).
This is an interesting point of psychology, relating to our diffficulty in thinking with concepts we can't express in some language. Math exists to a large degree to give us a language we can discuss and manipulate mathematical concepts in. Understanding this can be valuable any time you are writing about a concept not fully understood by your potential readers, so this is a practical point, too.
Now, you've got one thick bundle of scrolls there, buddy. It would easily fill several rooms solid (just the blueprints to all your computer chips printed out would be quite a lot, and the technology of the time doesn't allow for onion-skin paper!). But it is conceivable that such a resource could exist.
Now, stipulate the existance of the Christian God with me for a moment. He is omnipotent and omniscient; for any precise formulation you care to give about what you want to know about the creation of the universe, he can provide the same sort of resource. (I can't guarentee that there still won't be points where it simply asserts the truth of something; contrariwise, Godel's Theorum would seem to imply that such points are necessary.) Calling it "massive" is probably an understatement. No reasonable estimation of the size of this resource can be given. But I feel confident placing a lower bound on the current lifespan of a human being; you could not absorb this resource to any significant degree in one lifetime. (It is likely that the resource can be made arbitrarily complicated, esp. if this is not the only universe, so merely extending lifespans really doesn't get you anything. There are two basic lifespans on the cosmological scale, finite and infinite.)
But, that's not the real point. The real point is this: What purpose would such a resource serve? It would be a waste of time to transcribe, it would be a waste of time to try and use it, and nobody has time to try, anyhow. So what are you going to do? Observing that God created the universe is an importent point, but futher details are effectively a waste; a person like you will still never be satisfied (because there will always be more details not given as long as you are alive, and forever if the panverse is infinitely complicated, which even many cosmologists currently talk about with those frothing universes of theirs...), others won't care at all. Inasmuch as purpose can be inferred, again regardless of your belief on authorship, it's quite clear that the Bible is not a text on cosmology.
The only thing you can do is be extremely highly metaphorical, and keep only the importent parts, which the stipulated God in His divine wisdom knows which parts they are, and ruthlessly cull the rest. The Bible is already quite long; should a useless cosmological discussion bloat it arbitrarily large for the purpose of failing to satisfy you? My guess would be no.
As for the "confusing" point, I'd submit that given any text, it is for you to bend to the usage and attempt to gain as much understanding of the author's point as possible, not for the author to spend a bunch of time quantifying and qualifying the point to you ad nasuem (and probably still ending up with you rejecting it anyhow). Again, this isn't just for the Bible, it's for all text, up to and including my post, and it goes double for anything written more then 20 or so years ago, and triple or more for anything more then a hundred years old. Given the word palette the author had to choose from, whether you believe the author divine or not, "day" (which of course is not the English word for day, and thus criticizing it on that point commits the additional sin (pun intended) of criticizing a translation) is as good as anything else.