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Martin Rees On The Multiverse, Scientific Research & Reality
There's an interesting piece by Martin Rees about the nature of the Uni/Multiverse, as well as some of the underlying mechanics. Also, a good bit on the nature of scientific research. You can get the text or the Real version. Good stuff.
I'm not aware of any widely accepted theory that says we can make observations to prove or disprove any multiverse theory, so it hardly seems logical to classify them as scientific. SciAm should know better, or at least admit that the article is philosophical speculation, and not scientific.
Don't encourage idiots...
I hate to say that such things shouldn't be written, but they may actually do more harm than good
Elitist crap. Its ok if people dont understand now what he is saying, they dont need to, a lot of persons reading such an strange theory (to current common knowledge) is enough to do good for civilization. Is not like they are going to be in charge of a nuclear reactor, so why in the first place are you whining?, this kind of "for common folks" inspired documents are good to introduce ideas to the base culture, maybe it wont be undertood until 2050, but thanks to documents like this, that little by little introduce new ideas, it will be undertood some day.
So, without prolonging more this stupid thread of yours, my guess is that you think you are way too special with your selfish elitist crap.
Sigs are for morons... Wait a minute...
"There is no matrix, there is only what is real." -- Laurence Fishburne in response to Matrix-inspired hysteria.
It is only apropos that it is the actor who plays Morpheus who has to set us straight on what is and what is not real.
Martin Rees is perhaps an expert on astrophysics, but Fishburne is an expert on appearance and illusion.
Scientific American's article is a confused mess of ideas in an attempt to take a lot of speculation in unrelated areas of theory and make it look like science. The magazine has gone down hill in credibility in the last few years, and this article is the crowning achievement so far; Scientific American is the new OMNI.
Here's my 2 cents worth of amateur philosophy on this subject.
:)
Yeah, that's about all it's worth...
I think multiple universes is highly likely because each time people have thought our existence is "special" or "one of a kind" we've been proven wrong. For example, the earth is NOT the center of the universe.
I'll assume here that you're referring to the medieval belief that the earth was the center of the universe, and further that you're incorrectly assuming (like most who reference this belief in their philosophical ramblings) that the reason they believed this was that they thought the earth's central position in the universe was a testimony to the importance of man. In actuality, the exact opposite is the case. If one regards the earth as the center of the universe, everywhere else in the universe is "up" (so to speak) - leaving earth in the lowest and basest position. Additionally, Hell was thought by the medievals to be located in the center of the earth (and thus to occupy the exact center of the universe).
I also do not buy into these recent claims that the universe, life on earth or anything on it in particular smacks of some "design" or pre-meditated intent by some creator.
Um, "recent claims"? The claim that the universe is uncreated is by far more recent than the claim that it was created.
One good example is the huge amount of distances between stars and planets. Space travel from here to some other star will likely not happen for thousands of years, not only due to the distance but that speed of light thing.
The fact that stars are really far apart lends absolutely no evidence to the belief that the universe was not created. Care to try again?
What we have here seems to be a really, really, really dull version of the SIMS where your neighbors are trillions of miles away, and your SIMS take millions of years to step outside. If there's a god out there, he's a really boring guy.
I thought you were the one who thought that humanity wasn't so special - why do you think that all God has to do with His time is to watch us humans? He's got an entire universe to amuse Himself with (imagine getting to watch supernovae as often as you watch sunsets
"America is - without a doubt - the most bizarrre culture this planet has ever produced." --James Lileks
The scientific method simply denies the existence of "laws", as you've put it. Theories do tend to get disproven, or modified over time. Cases in point:
;)
;) by Einstein. Even shuttle engineers largely depend on Newton's version of events because, quite frankly, it's close enough for government work. Since trying to find solutions to Einstein's equations can be a pain even for a computer to solve expediently and it doesn't amount to much difference in the real world anyways, it's just easier for the computer (or shuttle pilots) to make corrections on the fly as the result of any error.
Newton created a model of how gravity works. Einstein proved Newton "wrong" with the general theory of relativity (I actually know little about the general theory of relativity, but am pretty familiar with the special theory of relativity; the latter being a subset of the former). But, when shuttle astronauts go up into space and use their computers to plot their trajectory, which do they use, Newton's equations or Einstein's? Newton's theory was slightly innaccurate (increasingly so as local space-time curvature and/or relative velocity increases), but even at the high velocities that space crafts obtain compared to the earth's position Einstein's "adjustments" to Newton's equations don't amount to any practically measurable effect. Since the overhead of computing Einstein's equations is much higher than computing Newton's equations, the astronomers stick to Newton's equations.
What was the point to the above gobble-dee-gook? Newton was assumed to be "right" for a few centuries before a smart German guy figured out that he was a bit off in the final picture.
Since Einstein, many of his theories have been modified, prodded, poked, measured, etc. Like Newton before him, Einstein has been shown to be "mostly" right.
Now, if you're a Creationist (and I suspect you are judging from the nature of your argument), this looks like an Achille's heel for Science. "Well," you huff, "you can't PROVE that men evolved from primitive apes because where's the EVIDENCE?" Well, there's lots of evidence. I'll even dare to bring up the evil swear word of creationists: FOSSILS. Of course, it's easy for the non-scientific to ignore the evidence in front of them. Those of us who actually learn the tenets of the scientific method and the methodology of sensible logic (they teach these things in schools and colleges, incidentally) know that when the evidence is staring you in the face and points to a conclusion that is feasible and sensible, then it would be preposterous to simply ignore that evidence and sweep the conclusion under the rug as if nothing happened. Rather, the conclusion needs to be disproven. Otherwise, it will forevermore remain a possibility. This can be misconstrued from the outside as though scientists are trying to impose some sort of arbitrary laws on humankind. But the only way to eventually prove a theory wrong is to use it as an "assumption" and try to show that using that assumption produces contradictions. This doesn't always result in the theory being thrown away, though... usually, it's tweaked until a consistent result is produced. With evolution, the theory get tweaked constantly because, one, it's a complex field with lots of unknowns, and two, we still don't have that time machine (dangit).
Newton's theories were "tweaked" (though they were tweaked in a big way
Things like multiverse theory tend to strike people as strange and "unprovable" since we can't see them, just like we can't go back in time to see proto-humans wandering the African plains a million years back. But, when we look at things as simple as radioactive atom decay, the eveidence stares one in the face: It's impossible to determine when an atom *will* decay, so therefore it must be possible that it could decay at any time. And stemming from that, it's possible that there are different versions of reality in which an atom will decay at different
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead
Damn, child. Learn some html.
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Mod parent down for gratuitous karma whoring without even bothering to make clickable links.
Off-topic response to flaimbait warning.
Afterall, everyone who's read one of Hawking's books thinks they could carry on a conversation with a high level theorist (in topics such as cosmology, quantum mechanics, etc), which is absolutely not the case.
Heh. Well, the general public can carry on conversations with high level theorists that aren't elitist jerks.
I actually have personal experience to back that up. For six years I worked as a system administrator at a UC Physics department. We had two Nobel Laureates. One could hardly speak to other people, including other Physicists. But that wasn't from elitism; it was more a question of poor socialization. 8) The other was quite accessible. A true gentleman, he would take the time to explain things if you asked. But I learned the most from the gradual students, many of whom seemed not to have caught the elite bug yet. (I wonder if they point a HERF gun at Physicists when they get tenure?)
After all those years, I learned quite a lot about Physics, despite having only a rough conceptual understanding of what a differential equation is. I also learned much about human nature as it applies to Very Bright People. Some of them are the most wonderful people I've known. A few I would put in the category of "monster." And of course most fall in between the extremes.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
What happens to any universes that didn't rejoin with ours we can't tell for sure. However, a reasonable assumption seems to be that they still exist, and we have no reason to think that they don't. Most professional physicists believe in the many histories theory of quantum physics, which implies multiple universes.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"I got that too. I've never been one to get hot one way ot the other on CREVO, but the "simulated universe" postulation thing throws a huge juicy "science bone" to the creationists - because it is creationism... then he goes and disses religious creationists - even though he plainly stated lines between science and philosophy were blurred by the multiverse theories. I sense blind prejudice... not something to be desired in a truly objective scientist.