Slashdot Mirror
Stars Could Shine In Many Universes
A commonplace of cosmologists who argue the anthropic principle is the assumption that if any or a few of the constants of nature took on an even slightly different value, life could not have evolved — perhaps even stars and galaxies would not form. Science News reports on a new calculation showing that, to the contrary, star formation could happen in up to one-quarter of universes with different values of three important constants. "In fact, all universes can support the existence of stars, provided that the definition of star is interpreted broadly," said the researcher, Fred Adams. "...calculations suggest that, contrary to some previous claims, stars are not only common in our cosmos but are also ablaze in myriad other universes, where the laws of physics may be drastically different... Had Adams found that the range of parameters that allowed for stars was very small, that would have suggested that the laws of physics in our universe have been 'fine-tuned' to allow for star formation... Instead, Adams' study shows that our universe doesn't seem particularly special in that regard."
> the universe is actually a rather robust structure.
.. at least w/r/t star formation.
slightly OT, the thing i really dislike about Intelligent Design arguments is that they're essentially a way of just giving up trying to explain things. they equate to "it's irreducibly complex, therefore we can learn no more", or "the chances approach zero, therefore we can learn no more". but science constantly discovers new things, throws old things out, etc. an essence of science is *not* deciding you've learned as much as you can or that you've arrived at the ultimate explanation.
Err ... isn't the base principle of string theory that there is an infinite number of spacetimes ie. universes out there?
I think you mean to say anything outside the light-cone of the big bang is a different universe.
That is fairly defensible, I'd go with it.
Isn't the basis of the word universe though imply that there is only one. So multiples universes would appear to be an oxymoron.
As already pointed out by another reply, this only applies specifically to star formation, which was just one piece that has to be in place for life to work out. Even if this particular one has a 25% chance of happening, there are still a lot of others. Like existing long enough to make heavy elements, or having the right ratio between gravity and electromagnetic forces.
Not a typewriter
How did this tired chestnut become a meme among supposedly smart people? "God did it" refers to agency, just like "time and chance" refers to agency. The "how" is a completely different matter. As a child, I remember asking my father, "How did you do that, Dad"? If anything, it whetted my curiosity to know more.
Whatever position one holds on the "irreducible complexity" argument, the argument is not "therefore we can learn no more." Rather, the argument is "the agency of time, chance, and unguided selection couldn't be the cause of such-and-such an object."
I continue to be bothered by the use of the word "universe" to mean something other than "everything". Having to substitute "multiverse" to replace the word that didn't need to be replaced (rather a new word should have been invented for the new concept) bugs the crap out of me so much so that I hope all these new theories are proved wrong so we can maintain continuity of the language.
I understand that this may or may not be true, but scientists still don't really understand what the gravitational force is, nor do they understand the role of dark matter or dark energy. I think we have a long ways to go before we can make any realistic conjecture on any of this.
I thought this was the evil universe.
loose: not fitting closely or tightly != lose: to suffer the deprivation of
There are several kinds of low probability events. A lottery has a low probability of any one ticket winning, but a very high probability that somebody will win because there are so many tickets. For universes to work like that, there have to be enough universes that as you put it, "it's got to happen to someone". Science hasn't "uncovered" (again, your word) this situation, unless they have proved that parallel universes definitely exist, there are definitely enough of them for the low probabilities to sum, and the meta-laws of these universes allow summing the low probabilities.
Uncovered would mean:
1. Scientist observes parallel universes.
2. Scientist counts enough of them to prove the low odds can sum to likely odds, or finds a good proof there are enough. A good proof has to be more rigorous than is usual in physics, because our universe's physics may not be the ruleset in any of these others. Probably this means the proof has to meet formal mathematical standards.
3. Scientist has to have a Theory of Everything for our universe.
4. Scientist has to derive similar theories for the other universes and a meta-theory that combines them.
5. Scientist then has to show that the meta-ToE allows low probability events to sum.
I'm pretty sure none of those steps have happened. If I'm wrong, I'd like to predict what discoveries get awarded the next ten Nobel prizes in physics, and probably a Fields medal or two.
Who is John Cabal?
This hypothesis, if true...
The Standard Model has 19 free parameters (not including G) and even more if you include the new neutrino mixing results. This guy varies TWO of them plus G and then claims that 25% of possible universes would form stars? I remain completely unconvinced. While the strength of gravity, EM and the strong interactions may be important for stars the other parameters control some other vaguely important things like whether there is any matter in the universe.
In addition these parameters also have major effects directly on the functioning of stars. For example if the electron mass were larger the orbit of the electron in the atom shrinks and fusion becomes a lot easier. One would presume that this would greatly affect star formation. In addition there are other effects caused by varying the parameters: tweaking with these may well change the type of matter in the universe such as less hydrogen and more helium etc. He does at one point mention this and then states that he would not expect it to vary much from our universe without giving a reference. To me this seems completely non-obvious but I'm not a cosmologist so perhaps it is obvious to them?
So as I said I remain totally unconvinced that this paper really shows anything meaningful at all.
The anthropic principle is one of Creationists' favorite argument for the 'proof' of the existence of god.
The anthropic principle is only "'proof' of the existence of god" if it is misinterpreted. Simply stated, it describes the selection bias at play in humanity's observations of the universe. Increasing the number of universes that can support stars (much less life) has no bearing on the anthropic principle, as either way we're 100% sure we live in a universe which does support both.
As I said above, I think the multiverse theories are a pantload of stink.
The interesting thing about a way of describing the universe is that it doesn't have to be true to be userful, provided it produces useful results.
Think for a moment of Copernicus.
His model wasn't accurate at all, not even slightly, it was nowhere near as useful in real terms then the Ptolemaic model, but it allowed the universe to be viewed in a different way, eventually leading to our current, vastly more accurate description.
Ours too may be wrong, but you need ways of describing reality which produce useful results. They don't have to be 'real' to be useful.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
The important part about this idea is that the universe is more mediocre than we expected. Specifically cosmologists are interested in asking the question
What does "significantly different" mean? Originally our ego-centric view promoted the idea of "can the universe support life?" but as you correctly point out the definition of sufficiently different life even in our own universe is quite difficult. How should life be defined?
While "life" may be the question that we are interested in, we can instead ask questions that are well-defined that we may be able to answer. For example:
That is the idea of the this paper, to get away from purely anthropic ideas of what life is.
Your last paragraph
This sort of reasoning works if there are multiple universes (such as the idea promoted by Susskind of The cosmic landscape) and is what string theory advocates. However we have no evidence for the existence of multiple universes. If there is only one universe we can still describe possible universes and wonder why ours is so special. We have three possibilities:
Finally there is the issue of what counts as "changing parameters" and what counts as "laws of physics"? A standard cosmologist would consider the parameters to be the amount of matter, amount of radiation, value of cosmological constant, amount of curvature. A string cosmologist would consider the type of particles and things we would traditionally consider the "laws of physics" to be part of choosing the appropriate background.
You watched NOVA and some SA articles, appear to have utterly failed to comprehend what QM is, but don't worry, /. is the perfect place to make believe that a few dozen TV shows and four or five page articles makes you an expert.
QM is in fact one of the most successful scientific theories in history, predicting and explaining a very large number of phenomena. It's responsible for a goodly portion of the technology you're using right now to broadcast to the world the extent of your idiocy.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So just how is "they exist but it is mathematically impossible for them to affect our universe in any way or for us to measure them or conduct any empirical experiment upon them" any different from "they don't exist"? Are they, perchance, Invisible Pink Universes?
As for "winning the lottey", the question "why is the universe like it is" has only ever been a side-issue to the bigger question "why should any universe whatsoever exist at all -- the empty set is perfectly mathematically self-consistent; why should anything be here for us to 'even if I am mistaken, I am'* in"? It's a rhetorical question, but helps to understand the conceptual difference between the mathematical sense of "exists" ("there exists a set that contains possible appliances that can heat bread") and actual concrete existence. Laser toasters exist in the set, but that doesn't mean any really exist. If you believe that being describable (mathematical existence) is the same as real existence, then all the characters Agatha Christie described "existed" and she's the biggest murderer of all time...
We could pursue the silliness even further: if you claim to believe there really are an infinite number of universes, and you are still alive, then you are almost certainly lying. After all, why would you bother getting up in the morning when you can leave it to the infinite number of other yous... the true believers will have long since starved to death knowing it doesn't make any difference, leaving only the versions of themselves that chose not to believe still alive.
Now, St Augustine, the originator of the quote marked with a '*', about a thousand years before Descartes, would claim that this universe exists and the others do not because God, the great I Am, has blessed this universe to be the one that should exist. But of course that's "untestable nonsense" to be ridiculed by Flying Spaghetti Monsters on this forum, whereas believing there's an infinite number of untestable universes including many that actually contain flying spaghetti monsters, of course that's perfectly rational.
Yeah, and "atom" means "indivisible." Therefore, "atom smasher" is an oxymoron, and particle physics is just the product of deranged imagination.
There is something wrong with it: lack of hard evidence. Sure, it is easy to understand how it could be true, but we simply don't know if it is. By the same accord, it easy to understand how an all powerful being, possibly from a higher dimension (aka God), could have created the universe, but you run into the same problem, a lack of solid scientific evidence. IMHO, you are viewing the multiverse concept through rose colored glasses simply because it sounds more scientific.
QM has indeed done more then what the gf poster said, and you are indeed correct that it explains a vast number of uncertainties, unfortunatly the more you study QM the more mysteries are added...its like the multi-layered onion that will never unravel.
To me, not sure who said it, but the qoute goes like this: "anyone who claims they understand QM does not understand it." This is what I liken it to after doing more extensive research into it then what the GF poster did. You go into all sorts of branches when you try to unravel some mysteries from of course string theory all the way into tachyons and of course multiple universes....and its just mind boggling that anyone could fully comprehend what QM means.
The theories that stem from QM do predict multiple universes but this part of it has not been proven persae of course. So what am I saying? GF and you both have points, but I doubt either one of you like me truly understands the implications of QM.....
That's how you know you have a really powerful theory: when it lets you meaningfully ask more questions. When Newton figured out how gravity worked we could suddenly ask all sorts of questions about planets, stars, solar systems, and other interesting bits of the universe. Quantum mechanics does the same thing for our ability to investigate the very small, and parts of reality itself.
Which part of quantum mechanics are you referring to, that predicts other universes? Do you mean certain interpretations of Feynman's sum over paths method? That's not really a prediction, just a convenient what-if explanation for an interesting trick Feynman figured out for calculating probability waves. It's very interesting, but not a requirement for QM to work.
....now I just need to work out which religion to sign up for!....
A god worth worshiping would have to be transcendent, outside and beyond our universe, not Limited to the dimensions of time or space. Such a God would also be capable of accurately predicting the future, never missing even once. He should also be capable of entering time and space and showing that he had power over nature and even death itself.
There is a collection of books claimed to be the Word of God which we call the Bible. The word "universe" means one poem. In the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, we read that this transcendent God SPOKE the verse to bring the universe into existence out of nothing. Anyone can read exactly the verses that God spoke. The echo of these words still reverberates in the universe today. We call it the cosmic background radiation.
Also recorded in this library of 66 books penned by 40 different writers over a time span of over 1500 years, are accurate predictions that have already taken place, some that are happening right now before our eyes and some that are yet to come in the not too distant future.
Described therein is the life of a person whose name was Jesus Christ. He did have power over nature and overcame death. All this this cannot be proved as a scientific experiment but then neither can the string theory be proved scientifically. However, both of these can be believed or not believed. Just because one belief has mathematical underpinnings and the other one does not, doesn't make either one science. They are both based on faith.
All theory is gray
I BELIEVE that Jesus Christ was who he said he was and is, namely God. He demonstrated this by the unique powers over the forces of nature and more importantly over death. However, science cannot observe or demonstrate this and therefore it belongs into the realm of faith, in this case religious faith. Of course, everyone who has faith, believes it to be the truth. Faith can turn out to be true in the end, but it is still faith and will always remain faith, never science.
Just wondering why you chose Christianity over, say, Islam or Buddhism or Shamanism. Feel free to ignore my question if you want, but it always interests me to know why people choose a particular religion (which almost always originated or was historically propagated within their cultural group). Do you apply the concepts of rigorous hypothesis testing to Biblical claims, or do you just accept everything the Bible says (and do you read the original Greek and Aramaic, and why do you discount the apocryphal and gnostic works yet accept the concept of the Trinity, etc.)?
No. Science does make assumptions, but those assumptions are always subject to verification. A big example is when quantum mechanics came around and forced us to throw out the idea that nature is always predictable: a given cause always produces the same result.
I realize you feel some need to compare your faith with science, but you really shouldn't. If you want to believe what you read in an old book, go ahead, but that's not the way science works, and it's not even the way string theory works, despite the pop bellyaching you read on Slashdot.
Your apologia for Christianity is refreshing. I see I've written a lot, but I hope you will find it insightful enough to endure and consider even if you don't think it's worth a reply. I don't mean any of the following in a condescending or vitriolic way, and hope you will keep as much in mind while reading. Many Christian apologists are more like Christian "stonewallers" than anything, and I will return your good faith (no pun intended).
Do you have any examples [of the Bible's inaccuracies]?
Forthcoming; I'll put them at the end of my post because I consider them minutia and would rather exhaust the reader's patience with deeper and better-tailored discussion.
This charge has been made against the Bible before, and in countless instances, that which was thought to be wrong later proved to actually be correct by archaeology.
Actually, exactly the opposite is true. In countless instances, that which we thought to be correct in the Bible was later discredited by archaeology, scientific advancement, the greater historical context, or just plain internal inconsistency, all of which cause Christian apologists to equivocate or syncretize outright, as your two posts today indicate you have done. If you want to decide to believe a bunch of stuff on pure faith, anyone can question your abandoning of reason but nobody can argue with you on faith. But, if you want your religious faith (*any* religion, definitely including Christianity) to be a reasoned one, you're fighting a losing battle and trying to justify your decision after you've made it. It should concern you that you've made your decision without justifying it first.
It should also concern you (any religious follower, that is) that a) other people find similar-quality evidence of their religions convincing, and b) that which religion humans follow is largely a matter of when and where they were born, rather than of their own reasoned choice. Perhaps the creator of the universe really thinks some people should have a hard time escaping damnation for believing the wrong religion, at least enough not to bother ensuring the "correct" religion (or one "similar enough" to it) was available to them. What do you think God was doing for the first 200,000 to 400,000 years humans lived on Earth? They led difficult, unenlightened lives with primitive tools, without the benefit of language, and certainly without the loving direction of God, which according to even the Abrahamic religions was absent for all but the last 4000 years, give or take depending on literature.
There are hundreds of historical falsehoods, scientific falsehoods, and of course internal contradictions to be found in the Bible; probably thousands if anyone ever earnestly tried to catalog them. History is not my area though, and I find most of these to be boring minutia, being more familiar with the scientific shortcomings (and of course the logic errors and horrendously immoral imperatives).
Actually, this ["God did it"] explains a great deal. It explains why there is an order and method to the universe.
You're appealing to salience. What you and the original poster actually mean to say are (respectively) "Actually, this would explain a great deal" and "[claiming] 'God did it' is an unfounded explanation, even if some people find it salient". Moreover, it is our minds that demand we find order in things (as we are innate pattern-matchers), and we must of necessity fit harmoniously in any universe we inhabit, which is a tautological truism that doesn't lend any support to the "tuned universe" argument for God.
In other words, the other poster objected to your claim of "explanation" in the same sense you meant it here:
[The Bible] also explains how our universe came into being.
It's a possible configuration of reality, but it is not empirical or reasoned.
The fact that G
That was the prevailing belief for thousands of years...
No, it wasn't. Most cultures had creation myths, and the Judeo-Christian creation myth is only one among many with the common theme of an "uncaused creator".
...until modern scientific observations showed otherwise. We are now told that the universe, that is time and space, had a very definite beginning. Scientists have labeled it the "Big Bang".
Don't get lost in the idea of infinite "steady state" cosmologies versus "big bang" cosmologies; they have nothing to do with the assertion that God created the universe. Even when the universe was thought, scientifically, even, during the prevailing steady-state notion prevailing from the enlightenment to early 20th century, people thought "God created the universe, because something had to". So theologically speaking, the question of an eternal universe is irrelevant because it is supposed that God is "more eternal" in any case, and further supposed that such a god created the universe, no matter how old it was, even if it were infinitely old. You've claimed you subscribe to the theological idea that "God exists outside space and time" too.
To say that God "simply exists" is not to say that God has no beginning or is infinitely "old"; it is to say that God is uncaused. To say that the universe, even one of finite age, "simply exists" is to say that it is uncaused, not that it had no beginning. It is completely arbitrary to decide that some things can be caused while others can't. If the universe needs a cause, then its creator needs a cuase, and so does the creator of that creator, and the creator of that one, and so on all the way back. If God doesn't need a cause, neither does existence itself. We gain no satisfaction by deciding that the universe needs a cause if we decide that its cause doesn't.
You've posted the following paragraphs into responses many times already, and copy-pasted them again here. I'll copy-paste my responses again, because their context has not changed (obviously), and because you have still not responded to any of them. In the future, please address them and accourdingly adjust your approach and discourse.
--------------------
[The Bible] has a very unified central authorship and message concerning the dealings of God with mankind.
But you claim that the Bible defines the message "concerning the dealings of God with mankind". You're shooting the barn and then painting a bull's eye around the place you hit. Your reasoning is circular.
Much of it depicts human history written down before it ever took place.
It is incredibly vague in general. All its predictions are of the kind "some bad stuff will happen to some people, some good stuff will happen to some people". Those aren't predictions, they're truisms. If we squint, and want to believe, we can shoe-horn anything into a shoe as loose as the Bible.
We can read the content of tomorrow's newspaper headlines in some of the passages of the Bible.
Again, only if we interpret quite liberally. Just think about how specific a true prophecy could be. It could contain information about the treachery at Thermopylae, the battles of Tours and Hastings, the discovery of the "new world" by Europe, any mention at all of the contemporaneous oriental civilizations which were vastly more advanced than those in Europe, the rise of modern democracy, the dangers of chemical and nuclear weaponry in the world wars, global stock market crashes, solutions to the problems of poverty and human suffering all over the world, and mathematical insights, all in esquisite detail. If such a book were conceived with true foreknowledge, it could be the most precise and *useful* guide to civilization ever, even after millenia of use. Instead, it is vague enough to fit most circumstances if the