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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."
A collapsing universe has long been a hypothesized. It would be interesting if this were true, because it implies that each universal state is discrete and has a finite lifetime. I wonder how much time our universe has left?
-Sean
On April 25, All Things Considered on NPR did a five-minute story on this new Science article. Highly recommended, gives some good background not only on how this theory fits better with some of the current data that we are collecting, but also talks about how difficult it is for a new theory to gain acceptance in the scientific community when it flies in the face of a long-established theory.
modern choral music...
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.
The Cyclic Universe: An Informal Introduction
Authors: Paul J. Steinhardt, Neil Turok
The Cyclic Model is a radical, new cosmological scenario which proposes that the Universe undergoes an endless sequence of epochs which begin with a `big bang' and end in a `big crunch.' When the Universe bounces from contraction to re-expansion, the temperature and density remain finite. The model does not include a period of rapid inflation, yet it reproduces all of the successful predictions of standard big bang and inflationary cosmology. We point out numerous novel elements that have not been used previously which may open the door to further alternative cosmologies. Although the model is motivated by M-theory, branes and extra-dimensions, here we show that the scenario can be described almost entirely in terms of conventional 4d field theory and 4d cosmology.
In spite of the "informal" claim, the paper is fairly dense - IAAPA (I am a professional astronomer) and I found it heavy going. But the link above has PDF versions if you're interested.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Oh sure.. women's moods don't have any cycles. Honestly.
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I sig, therefore I was.
Some more info on,
http://feynman.princeton.edu/~steinh/
"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.
The latest versions of the big bang theory, with the addition of dark energy or whatever, of an extra repulsive force, predict, basically, the entropic death of everything - the universe as we know it today, with hot stars and habitable planets and the like, exists for some finite period and then disperses forever.
There is certainly a desire - I feel it, myself - that the universe not be that way. It is far more pleasant to think that it will regenerate itself and that complex phenomena like life could re-emerge in some subsequent cycle. However, it is important, as scientists, that we not give in to wishful thinking of that sort.
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.
Let me say also - Entropy is a thorough bitch. Whatever the laws of physics turn out to be, and whatever cycles they may allow, if subsequent phenomena depend in any way on previous phenomena (phenomena being the most general term I can manage), there will be a tendency for the whole shebang to degenerate, to move into a more likely state. It is possible that the most likely state for the whole universe involves repeated regeneration of galaxy-rich explosions like the one we all inhabit, but it is also possible that subsequent big bangs would be smaller and smaller in size, eventually dwindling below some critical threshold to generate stars and the like.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
After a big bang, lots of people need to wait a while before they can go again.
Personally, I always like the idea of another structure operating at another order of magnitude beyond what was observable.
Some folks think that such a cyclic universe would be literally repeating, which is plain silliness in my mind. It is not the big rewind button in the sky, so far as I can see.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Sky and Telescope also covered this story, but didn't obscure it with piss-poor scientific writing like this other source did.
As an aside, the other source over simplifies things, and leaves you with the feeling that you learned nothing but marketing hype. It's target is obviously non-astronomers (or we would have read the original paper in an original journal.) Because of that, they should have explained "branes" (and other terms) with more than sound-bytes from involved physicists. Think diagrams, break-out boxes, etc.
It all goes downhill from first post
You have the right idea, just that your a bit confused. The idea is that heat will be lost when the unvierse expands and heat will be generated when the universe colapses. (The whole idea of friction and the galaxies rubbing up against each other creating a singularity hotter then the average sun... but that according to this new theory isn't the case ;) Anyways... that's about as basic as it gets.
eh, food for thought...
It's really weird that I was telling out of nowhere, I was thinking of this theory while having a beer with my girlfriend. I told her this and she thought I was crazy!
.. the prophets are just people that remember the mistakes of the prior universe, the problems with mankind and how it results into the cycle of the universe. Budhist teaching talks a lot about cycles in that you want to break out of the cycle and achieve enlightenment. Other people like Nostradamus also "remember" the events of the prior universe and go off to "predict" it and write about it. At the bookstore the other day, I was skimming through a book called Bible Codes; it's about how modern events are predicted in the Hebrew bible.
Anyways, what I had explained was that there will come a time when the universe goes back to the beginning. At that point, the entire civilization will start anew. However, there will be certain people that will "remember" their previous life in the previous cycle. These people will go on to spread the "truth" which will turn into modern day religion. People like Jesus, Mohammad, Tao te Ting, etc
Anyways...that's just my little theory...
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Welcome to the philosophy of the stoics. If they'd had /. 2500 years' ago, they would have been posting on it.
graspee
"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.
All theories in cosmology starts with speculation. However, this is nothing like they cooked up over night. They've been working on this for a very long time.
Then, there is this challenge of getting good tests. This is very, very hard in cosmology, but I can tell you, it is not an issue these guys simply ignore. But you don't put everything in one article.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
"she says i'm lousy conversation. as if that's supposed to help."
I love how all these new theories are "O so much better" than the Big Bang theory. Oftentimes they cite how this new theory takes into account all of these interesting phenomena which the Big Bang theory does not, or does with this additional theory...
It reminds me of how some programmers wish to totally rewrite a program with a different design, stating that the new design will take into account all of the issues which were fixed with patches in the other program.
Well, if this new theory (program) DIDN'T take those phenomena (bugs) into consideration, the theory (program) wouldn't even be considered....
Hindsight is 20/20.
Okay, a lot of people have been saying that an infinite cycle of exands and contracts would NOT generate infinite heat. Here's what Steven Weinberg has to say:
"Some cosmologists are philosophically attracted to the oscillating model, especially because, like the steady-state model, it nicely avoids the problem of Genesis. It does, however, face one severe theoretical difficulty. In each cycle the ratio of photons to nuclear particles (entropy per nuclear particle) is slightly increased by a kind of friction (known as "bulk viscosity") as the universe expands and contracts. As far as we know, the universe would then start each new cycle with a new, slightly larger ratio of photons to nuclear particles. Right now this ratio is large, but not infinite, so it is hard to see how the universe could have previously experienced an infinite number of cycles."
Pysicist Sidney A. Bludman says:
"Our Universe cannot bounce in the future. Closed Friedman universes were once called oscillatory universes. We now appreciate that, because of the huge entropy genereated in our Universe, far from oscillating, a closed universe can only go through one cycle of expansion and contraction. Whether closed or open, reversing or monotonically expanding, the severely irreversible phase transitions give the Universe a definite beginning, middle and end."
If any of you have counter-quotations from equally famous physicists, I would love to read them. This is all I have found on the matter so far.
It's all going according to
The BBT and this cyclic theory can be tied together easily, they may BOTH be correct. The cyclic theory does not try to undermine the BBT, it helps augment some arguments that have been held for a while... that the universe expands and contracts on a continual basis. What remains a mystery is what causes the reversal of each cycle.
Hammer of Truth
Is this really new? I don't know where I first heard it, but I know that a "big crunch" has certainly been theorized. I've always thought that it seems likely that a big crunch might cause a big bang to follow. I don't know, maybe I was assuming something.
Be that as it may, one perhaps unusual bit of evidence I've always thought in favor of a cyclic universe is the existence of intelligence life on Earth. First of all, I'm pretty much of the belief that intelligent life is hugely, extremely, unbelievably unlikely. I have a feeling that if we inventoried the universe, we would find a small proportion of single cell life, some but almost nonexistent multicellular life, and higher life forms totally absent except for us.
If you look at the complexity of human beings, it's just crazy how many things have to go right to get intelligence. I mean, it took 2-3 BILLION years just to get us, and no other animal form is even close to us.
When you combine that with the fact that it only takes 2-3 million years to fill a galaxy once you have intelligent life even at sub-light speeds, that means it's probably never happened before in this galaxy.
So given that intelligence almost never happens, and it took about 1/7th - 1/4th the age of universe for it to happen here, I think that gives evidence that we needed a hell of a lot of universe cycles to get it to happen.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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
I probably should have pointed that out at some point in my schpeal. I'm a molecular biologist, too.
Even if no energy dissipates, my thinking is that each "subsequent universe" must depend in no way on what the previous universe was like, in order for it to go on forever.
Otherwise, if some sort of characteristic is inherited from one cycle to the next, there will be a movement towards a maximum likelihood position, over the course of many cycles; since entropy is "really" a movement towards maximum likelihood, which is only disorder because disordered states are more likely than ordered ones - I view this is a form of entropy. It's very close in concept to a "maximum entropy" analysis from statistics, which is really what I'm thinking of.
Of course, if that "inherited characteristic", and I am being purposefully vague, can never interfere with the universe regenerating, it isn't a problem.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
LOL!
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
No not at all new.
There have been theories about cyclic expansions and contractions lasting say a 100 billion years. But these theories were killed by the realisation that there was not enough mass in the universe to reverse the contraction.
Also there is a class of theories, which I guess this theory belongs to where the universe reproduces itself. Scientific American had an article on this about 10 years ago. About how after a very long period of time the universe could spontaneously generate a new big bang withough contraction.
In fact, an update on the original article can be found here .
As you can see this looks a lot like the current theory at first sight, but they are quite different since the latest one involves 'branes'.
Bitter and proud of it.
Those who promote the cyclic-universe theory, shall hereby be called cyclists. The conventional way of seeing the universe is just a lot more pedestrian.
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If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
While there's a superficial resemblence, there's a huge difference between the old oscillatory models and this one.
In the old models, the universe collapsed from many billions of light years across (or even larger - we really have no idea of how big the universe is) back to the singularity of the big bang.
In this model, the universes (plural) only have to move a few millimeters. The big bang occurs when the branes separate (we're in one brane, the other universe is in another), and the big crunch occurs when they collapse again. The point of intersection can even travel faster than the speed of light without violating relativity - it's okin to the scan of a lighthouse beam against a wall a very long distance away.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Now think of the 2nd ball. Since it's all repeating itself, think about going FORWARD in time for a whole cycle minus a year. You have just "travelled back in time"..
:)
That's assuming that everything happens the exact same way each cycle. If you're wrong, you could find yourself in the cold blackness of open space. Or worse, in the heart of a star.
Happy travels.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
...into the Anthropic Principle.
Also what's this about `an energy field that pervades the Universe then creates new matter and radiation'? What energy field? How does it get recharged? God of the gaps again? Continuous creation? Didn't we just have an article on scientific something-for-nothing scams?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Just how do you come to that conclusion, that's ridiculous. There is absolutely no basis for that statement at all, you simply pulled it out of your ass.
That's like saying, "If God ('G.', wtf?) exists outside the universe, he probably eats a lot of *waffles.'
* I just said "waffles" because I've had a craving lately, but I never get to eat waffles...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
If the show Lexx, with it's concept of time existing in cycles that happen over and over again, is proven to be the most scientifically realistic sci-fi show ever, imagine what other stuff from the show could be true...(shiver!)
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Rather than actually make sense, these theories get weirder, stranger, more incomprehensible, and more imaginative with each cycle.
Pretty soon, they'll be talking about the "archangel" as though he/she/it were proven!
Perhaps, rather than looking at the "cyclical theory of the universe" we should be looking at the "cyclical view of universe theory"?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
That the world is not going to end in my lifetime.....
This is a good point--if the universe really is cyclic, and maybe the laws of nature vary slightly in each cycle, it would explain why all of the cosmological constants seem so well tuned for the existence of life. The idea (anthropic principle) is that this way, there could be many barren cycles that produced no life, and these cycles would have no observers feeling cheated. In cycles that do produce observers, those observers shouldn't feel "lucky" because the laws of nature are tuned so well. Just about every combination of laws comes up eventually, and only winners are ever observed.
I think its pretty clear by Genesis 1:1 that God created everything at some particular point in time.
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."
Now, for ancient society, the heavens referred to everything that wasn't the earth.
As you read the rest of Genesis, you can see that God filled the heaven with "light." I would assume that means stars, the cosmos, etc. So its most likely that He created the universe in those 7 days. Still, there are some basic questions about what a day means to God.
Personally, I believe that God is omnipresent, which, in light of some current theries about space time, I think He exists in every point in space-time simultaneously. An easy ramification for us to understand about this is that God would be omnitemporal. I wonder what the "beginning" means to a being who is omnitemporal?
Just as with the church and Galileo, a lack of belief in science is due to a limited understanding of God and His words. There are still a lot of theories that have been brought into existance for the sole purpose of rejecting the existance of God while providing little or no evidence whatsoever (such as the multiple universe theory).
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Yes, you are right. At the time that I was writing this, I couldn't think of his name, so I just wrote the title of his writing. I actually like a lot of what Lao-tze talks about.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Discarding hard evidence because it's incompatible with one's hopes/expectations is downright wrong.
...
... science often offers us unpleasant answers to our questions, and we have to accept those answers in a realistic way even when we don't like them. But I think you are wrong to assume that is what is at play here, merely because the simpler theory also happens to be a little more appetizing to those of us who find a 30 billion year lifespan of the universe to be abysmally short. :-)
Very true, but the article makes it clear they did not do this. Indeed, quite the opposite, their theory fits the current data better than the standard big bank theory, and in a much more concise and elegant manner. Occams razer suggests their theory to be more likely than the big bang theory, but
1) Occams razer is merely a rule of thumb which is often correct, but not an absolute law which is always correct, so without hard data to differentiate the two theories it only offers a sense of likelihood, nothing more.
2) The truth will be in the experimentation, once an experiment can be derived to determine which, if either, theory is the correct one.
If both theories had been published at the same time, rather than this one appearing decades later after the other had gained widespread acceptance, it would likely be the one favored because of its simplicity. What we are dealing with here is inertia in the scientific establishment, a natural and long understood phenomenon of human nature not to want admit one has been wrong for the last several decades. Of course, critical thinking and the scientific method gets people beyond that and new ideas are accepted, after rigorously prooving themselves within the limits of the available data, as contrasted to say, some religious dogma that flies in the face of all evidence and is nevertheless clung to decades, centuries, even millennia after it has been demonstrably shown to be false.
You are right to denounce wishful thinking
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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.
It might be more natural within the context of M-theory, if you buy M-theory -- but even within that theory it's hardly the only scenario that exists.
... I based the comment WRT elegance off of reviews of the theory I read in the article linked to by /., and a few others, which of course is a logical fallacy in itself (appealing to 'authority' such as it is).
... if that report is wrong or exaggerated then so too are of course the conclusions based upon it. Nevertheless I think my point stands ... rejecting the theory simply because it paints a more palletable picture may be something we as skeptics instinctively want to do, but IMHO that is as much a mistake as accepting a theory for the same reason. It will either fall or stand on its own merits.
... from what I gather both entire branes are subjected to big-bang levels of energy throughout during each 'boot' sequence (when they touch), so for an immortal wannabe like myself both theories are equally unworkable. :-)
Fair enough. My knowledge of physics is limited to college courses through quantum physics, and reading such layperson gems as "The Elegant Universe." I cannot follow the deeper math of M-Theory or the various scenerios people draw off it
It is being reported that this theory fits the data better
To be honest I don't find either theory more palatable than the other, as long term sustainability of life through the cycles this theory proposes is probably as impossible as it would be through a cyclical big-bang/big-crunch universe (let alone the various other big bang, non-cyclical scenerios)
Which is why I'm still looking for the escape hatch to the universe altogether, thus far with no luck...
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
- Science and religion have preset rules. Religion refers to these as your creed/catechism/etc. Science calls them basic laws. For example, a religious person will say "God is all powerful." This implies that there is a being God who can do anything he pleases (depending on the religion). A physicist will say "The derivative of the expression describes the velocity of the object at time T." This implies things like velocity, trajectory, time, and the idea that such things may be quantified.
- Religion and science build on the rules (laws) that they have established. Sometimes these exist as thou-shalt-nots (e.g., blaspheme, levitate, etc). This extends to things like "God can cause floods, famines, etc." and "If object 1 is moving in such a manner and object 2 is moving in a different manner, then the collision of objects 1 and 2 will be like
..."
- Religions usually admit to a degree of faith being required to operate (mind, I'm not addressing things that claim to be religions but may not be). Science disclaims faith, demanding that things be proven. And this is where we have the rub.
Proof of something works often for math and physics. It sometimes works in CompSci. You can't, however, prove some things that science alleges. There is a big difference between a correlation of data and absolute certainty. For example, people are digging up hominid-type bones all over the place. They even suggest similarities between different finds such that they conjecture that there is an evolutionary chain. What they miss is that they have no proof of this. They take what they refer to as Darwin's theory of evolution as the Gospel truth, forgetting theories are very different from laws, as any good first level science class should teach.As an example: If I see a series of numbers, say, [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13,
That's a bit contrived, and certainly not the obvious answer if you recognize the series, but the point stands: If I see a piece of the whole picture, I can attempt to describe it. This is making a theory. I can attempt to apply that theory to the world and see how things fit. However, just because it fits some of the time does not mean it is correct. In this case, the theory that my series is based on adding a prime to the last number in the series to get the next number is clearly wrong. I've used a Fibonacci sequence.
Back to my point: Science, and to some extent, religion, try to describe the world we live in. Science concerns itself primarily with what can be quantified, while religion deals with the unseeable. Religions usually speak from the "God told us, therefore" perspective. This is fine for religion, so long as what God says does not translate to inhuman behavior (a la the Inquisition or modern Muslim extremists). Science is heard through the channels of "peer review." I'm not going to speak on the big bang theory one way or the other as to its validity, but I will say this: Just because a theory makes it through the peer review process does not make it true.
What is your Slash Rating?
Nonsense remains nonsense, even when attributed to God. God can't square a circle. God can't "make a rock so heavy he can't lift it". . . no such entity can exist, so it's just logical nonsense to babble about how something is limited because it can't do the contradictory.
Creating such a single word immune to misinterpretation implies by necessity a removal of free will from the receiving agent, as interpretation is something done by choice. Again, by definition, one cannot remove free will from the equation by forcing choices and still have free will.
As for the other part of the argument, Christian theology says the communication exists; it's the universe, including the Bible. Insisting on being forced to respond to it is a generally self-defeating demand. You have the choice.
I'm glossing over a lot here, because this is Slashdot, and I have no idea what your background is, or where to start a real explanation of this, so I wouldn't waste your time trying to nitpick this post; even I could do that and I agree with me! But if I could have an extended discussion, this is fairly true to what my main points would be.
...although it still doesn't help the article's case. Magic scalar fields aren't a part of science, AFAICT.
WTF was (s)he modded to zero?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Is actually up to each of us to discover. There is probably an actual 'true' definition, but it has likely been drowned by the millions of man-made definitions that have surfaced since.
Why is it that so many people think I'm insane for not believing in God, yet don't mind that they believe in a God that they can't seem to tell me anything about?I don't think you are insane, but I do think that you have a very positive outlook on things, contrary to many 'religous' people I know.
But liberal religions don't seem to mind jettisoning things like a literal seven day creation, a literal Noah's Ark, and even a literal Resurrection. I understand why someone would give up on such apparent absurdities, but why continue to worship the vacuous concepts that remain?I hear you on this one. Why indeed do so many 'religous' people throw the concepts of their belief system so freely out the window? Most likely to gain public acceptance. Personally, I feel that if you are going to believe in a God, then task number one is figuring out who exactly it is that you are believing in. Then you don't have to worry about those things. Furthermore, if you are really deeply rooted in your religion, then what scientists say shouldn't sway your views even a little bit.
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
I'll answer that one.
Is God capable, yes. But the God I believe in doesn't arbitrarily override our freedom to choose and grow. Besides, whose to say that the right thing to do is to create a text that is impervious to misinterpretation?
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
Does anyone have the link to the online Science post of 4/25 mentioned in the article?
the normal online archive at sciencemag.com lists 4/26 as the date of the weekly (print) publication.