Slashdot Mirror
Manyfold Universe Theory
Geek-from-parallel-Universe writes "In the HEP preprints database a preprint
">appeared
in which the authors propose that a world is a brane folded many times in extra sub-millimiter spatial dimensions. We see other folds only
through gravity as a dark matter because light must go around the folds. If this is true then I am waiting for Star Trek-like devices:
'portable submillimeter wormhole generator' and 'personal parallel
universe transmitter' to appear on the market. :-)"
Portable submillimeter wormhole generators and personal parallel universe transmitters suffer badly with tachyon fields and wierd energy like thingies. I thought everyone knew this. Mind you, you could try reversing the polarity. That fixes most things... ;)
The preprints database is a joy to behold; it regularly contains off-the-wall theories that may or may not be worth considering.
As for the manyfold theory: this (to my untrained and feeble mind) sounds a lot like M-theory, which is string theory with an extra dimension.
It presents us with a new dark matter particle and a new framework for the evolution of structure in our universe.
Cool. Predictions always make a theory more worthy of consideration.
I also learnt the word 'phenomenology' which I'll have to use somehow today. Damn!
I wonder how this theory meshes with the earlier reports that time doesnt exist. creativity is our way of making up for feeble, 3D perception.
I really hate the way people wonder along with some new idea and say 'science teaches this' - 'science teaches that'. In reality the entire scientific community is bunch of argumentative ego-maniacs (who will be first against the wall when the revolution comes). Just look at the expanding / contracting universe theory, some scientist (who shall remain nameless) proposes that if the universe stops it's expansion and start contracting then time will start to run in reverse. Five minutes after this was suggested the scientific community disregarded it and the original author retracted it. Five years later it's still in popular culture with 2 dozen film's using it and 3 dozen books using it is a central story.
I suggested reading this nice document on "Time Paradox" dealing with the grandfather paradox etc, its just as much crap but it has nicer formatting and pretty side bar.
...Heisenburg compensators. Always works for Jordi. Oh and if you can channel all of the energy through some kind of deflector dish for just one shot before overloading it, I think that will work too.
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
What's the new thing with this brane theory? Is there more dimensions, or are the scales more macroscopic?
This stuff is so far out there. Ever seem "Brave New World" on ABC, it was on a few months back, ran about 5 shows.. They would try to explain things like this with music videos, songs and whatnot. Definately a Bill Nye for adults. jackchaos.com -The Freak Of Geeks
-Oy Vey
Ok really, how many of you people out there understand what they are talking about in that paper? Is there anyone who knows of a good page about tensor calculus?
See! it's all so frustraiting I cant even get the url right! "Time Paradox"
... was "what a bunch of crap! Who are these freaks?" Turns out these freaks are faculty members at respected institutions. Doesn't mean they are less freaky, but it is harder to dismiss offhand what they have been working on.
However, since this is in no way the type of astrophysics I am familiar with, I don't feel qualified to make many comments on the paper. I will just say that, after reading the introductory chapter, I find it hard to believe that they could have accurately done all the things they claimed to. (I forgot many of the details, but suffice it to say that they claimed to have solved just about every problem, up to and possibly including GUT!)
Anyway, I look forward to comments from those who actually have time to wade through the paper (it is 28 pages long after all).
Eric
Strange that they claim (implicitly) that Newton's inverse square law was correctly deduced because gravitional interactions with branes make a difference only at the sub-millimeter level. But then they go on to say that gravitional interaction with branes can be shown by "unusual" behaviour of objects -- and they gave the example of the rotation of galaxies. Now I'm sure that's not on the sub-millimeter scale! What's going on here?? I must be missing something... why is it that branes don't make enough difference outside the sub-millimeter scale that Newton could still deduce an inverse square law consistent with observations, yet at the same time branes are supposed to account for the way large objects like galaxies behave??
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
I mean, is there some reason for people to sit and blast away "first post" whenever a new article is up at /.? I mean, do you get an award? The respect of your peers? A blowjob? I mean, what?
And to make matters worse, more than half of the "first post" posts are not actually first, but second or even 10th. You end up looking like complete and total morons. So why?
-Lost
I'm no physisist, but from what I understand, the Big Bang must have produced a lot of anti-matter (as much as there is matter). If this were true, then all matter and anti-matter should have "vanished" into energy, unless the anti-matter was confined to some other place. Is this a possible explanation as to where the anti-matter went?
Data: Captain, we're picking up a strange anomaly on radar
...
Picard: On screen
Data: It can't be
Picard: It is..! Another wild theory captured by the media-machine and blown out of all proportion.
Data: What's your order, sir?
Picard: Shields. Lock phasers
Picard: Mr Scott, Warp 4. Get us out of here. And avoid that trans-dimensional worm hole, damnit.
'Course, I'm no physicist. But, if you could send matter into a parallel universe, wouldn't that violate the conservation of mass and energy?
The other problem I have with the theory is, if the parallel dimensions are a millimeter from our own, wouldn't stuff randomly explode throughout the Universe? With gravity being the only force able to pass through, and at such short distances, what would happen if a massive, starlike object would pass 1mm from a star in our own Universe? Wierd, random-seeming intant catastrophic destruction, that's what.
Plus, with gravity passing through the brane, I'd be interested to see how something would react to being pulled in a "direction" that doesn't exist in our Universe.
-Omar
Robin, forget the Star Trek analogies, what this news really means is we're one step closer to constructing our very own TARDISes. Just fold space back on itself a few times and you too can have an entire seemingly infinate universe that's bigger on the inside than on the outside.
Face it, the universe is exactly as it is portrayed in Doctor Who. Bill Gates is constructing an army of his genetic creations to exterminate all competition, and Britain is ahead of us in the space race.
Could someone with the time & qualifications to actually understand the paper briefly say what's different between this and 'traditional' string theory / M space etc etc ?
--
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
If this is true then I am waiting for Star Trek-like devices: 'portable submillimeter wormhole generator' and 'personal parallel universe transmitter' to appear on the market.
Better not start using these just yet. We wouldn't want Windows 98 to contaminate other universes. Wait 'till AFTER the antitrust thing is done.
Is it just me or does this article read a bit like a Terry Pratchett novel? :-)
:-P
I thought this was particularly entertaining:
``You might produce nothing but black holes,'' Dr. Lykken said. ``So physics could look very surprising in this scheme.'' Such mini-black holes would probably go poof in a instant, producing a burst of radiation that scientists could immediately recognize as a black hole's signature.
``You'd say, `Aha! I've made a black hole,'''' Dr. Lykken commented.
"Oh dear, I appear to have accidentally ripped the fabric of space-time. Damn."
When some bright lad tries to split the graviton, I'm outta here.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
One thing you must remember about dimensions:
:-)
A dimension is at right angles to all other dimensions. Not curled up, or anything of that sort. A small dimension (around 1 mm or what have you) is enough to hold an infinite number of 3 dimensional universes, because a 3 dimensional universe has zero size in that dimension.
Tricky shit, huh?
Anyway, this postulates that gravitons do travel along a 4th dimension (not time, thank you) to affect other universes. If that's the case, then that's probably what's on the other side of the singularity of a black hole. A different universe. Of course, I'm just making this all up as I go along, but it's still pretty interesting.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
If I get one, I'm zapping to a universe with no First Post DUDEZ!! and no Bill Shithook Clinton.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
Topology is very interesting. You can think of further dimension as "casting a shadow" to lower dimensions. For instance....the shadow of a sphere is 3d is a circle in 2d. The shadow of a 4dSphere is thus a 3d sphere in 3 dimensions. Quite a while ago (1996?) I read an article in a scientific journal in which a dance of the honeybee corresponded directly to a "shadow" of the Flag Manifold. The article suggested that there were interactions on the quark level that effected our 3d world, and hence the bee gets its dance.
h tml
http://www.physics.helsinki.fi/~matpitka/honey.
I read an awesome book on the field of topology but I forget the title now. What they were explaining and attempting to describe on paper no less, what really mind-expanding for me. To think...all these weird things we can't quite reconcile with each other may just be because of a greater scheme outside our perception...that we are just the shadow of an even greater and more complicated play. That when things mysteriously "disappear" and "reappear" at the quantum level, that it could possibly be because they are "shifting" in a dimension we can't percieve. A good way to think about extra dimensions is to give them names of other continuims...like "color"....e.g. This particle is at location (1,2,1,red). Very interesting stuff. I have to find that book again...amazing diagrams of 4th and xth dimensional objects.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I probably won't understand the Manyfold universe theory, but this was a great article anyway, in that it pointed me towards arXiv.org, which looks like a pretty cool and (currently browsing the comp sci section) interesting site.
Dana
This theory claims that there are arbitrarily many parallel universes, separated by micron distances along additional dimensions. While strong, weak & electromagnetic forces are confined to our layer, gravity works across all dimensions simultaneously. And THAT is a HUGE problem.
What happens when a parallel universe star passes close to (or directly across) an object in our universe? Gravity would ramp up to insane amounts with no visible cause. Stars would be thrown out of galactic orbit, or ripped apart by tidal forces. If a few ordinary stars (like our Sun) happened to line up, the combined gravity could form a black hole where none should exist.
The fact is, in all of our history of astronomy, we have not seen this happen. But with thousands/billions/googols of parallel branes, it should be a statistical certainty. We would have already seen gravitational interference in the objects of our solar system, a million times over.
The only solution, which the article briefly mentions, is that ALL of the other universes must have tremendously lower densities than ours. This strikes me as inelegant to the extreme. A much more likely solution is that this brane theory is flat out wrong.
The Theory of Sub-millimeter Extra Dimensions is a neat way of explaining what is called the "hierachy problem", mainly why the Plank scale 2*10E18GeV is so high. We have found most of the elementary particles with the number and properties of the Higgs particle(s) and possible supersymmetric partners the most reasonable "undiscovered" particles left. All these particles even the undiscovered ones stay with their mass below a few 1000GeV. So why is there a "Desert" that spans 1000000000000000GeV of the energy scale befor something happens to the particle content again? Small Extra Dimensions are an elegant way of solving this problem without introducing lots of new particles and interactions. I really like the idea because it is so simple, I distrust it partly because it can be used to give almost any kind of physics i.e. it always works and it is difficult to experimentaly test it. On the other hand this idea has been around for a couple of years now so it can't be totally crappy. I hope you remember some high school physics. You may remember that the gravitational force and the electromagnetic force both grow weaker with the inverse square of the distance ~G*r^-2 with G the constant of the relevant force. If you know Math or have done universtiy physics you know that this law is because the space is three-dimensional and this is just the way a wave dissipates in three dimensions. Now imagine that as you go to smaller and smaller distances, say between two particles, the space suddenly has more dimensions so the wave gets to dissipate at a faster rate. Since the interaction remains the same the coupling constant G must change in response. The coupling constant of gravity relates to the Plank scale so you end up changing that and voila by adding some extra dimensions the "Desert" dissapears and everybody is happy. Exept for the experimantalists since you can't verify this theory yet...
This analogy helps, but mathematically you can describe the tube as a curved two-dimensional object without the third dimension. It is just easier to understand untuitively if you think it embedded into a third dimension.
Then you refer to orthogonality (being at right angles). It's a matter of parametrization, i.e. setting up the coordinate axes.
An excellent book which deals with with some ideas of parallel universes and time warps, etc.. is the book Black Holes and Time Warps : Einstein's Outrageous Legacy by Kipp Thorne. It doesn't deal directly with things like the world being a brane, but it deals with a lot of things in a similiar vein.
But I thought one of the more interesting aspects of this book is how it describes the way certain findings became accepted - it makes me wonder what happens behind the scenes in articles like this one...
The forward by Stephen Hawking is very interesting, as well.
If there are an equal number of parallel universes "above" us as there are "below" then all those pre-Copernicus scientists (the likes of Aristarchus of Samos not withstanding) would have been right in saying we are at the centre of the universe.
:-)
Maybe they were onto something.
Bob.
Um, it's manifold not manYfold. A manifold is another term for dimension or "membrane". E.g. Our universe is a manifold of X dimensions.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
why is Dennis one of the planets?
He was visiting home.
Does this
I assume this is some sort of joke.
Evolution does not imply the creation of life in a laboratory.
Unless you're willing to wait a couple of billion years.
Evolution HAS been observed, however.
In fossil evidence.
In changes in DNA.
In observed speciation.
It is the basis for many predictions in current biology which HAVE been shown true.
It is used in medicine, biology, sociology, computer sciences, and geology.
The difference between it and a religion, is that evolution is science, tested science, observed science, proven science. You, on the other hand, are a nutcase.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
There is only a tiny scrap of "religion" in science, and that basically amounts to the beliefs that (1) people exist, (2) stuff exists, and (3) people and stuff can interact. Just about everything else is derived from observations. If you question a particular bit of science, you can look up the chain of assumptions and experiments that lead to it, and test each one individually for validity. If a transcription error resulted in a textbook being printed with "F=Gm1m2/(r^3)" instead of "F=Gm1m2/(r^2)", the error would eventually be noticed and corrected, since the new version of the formula would be mathematically and experimentally incorrect. If a similar transcription error took place in the printing of a new Bible, it would from then on be the Word of the Lord(tm & amen).
Oddball theories like the big-bang CAN be tested, by observing things like the ratio of hydrogen, deuterium, and helium in distant galaxies (and many, many other such observations). They can't be fully tested, but even a partial check for internal consistency is very valuable and lets you reject many ideas that sound good but just don't describe our actual universe.
As for the failure to create life in the laboratory, that's mostly due to the mind-boggling complexity of organic systems. It is *NOT* due to the lack of any mystic "life force" (and to be fair, neither is it the lack of a Frankenstein-ish lightning bolt). We are capable of *affecting* life on a very subtle scale, such as adding or deleting limbs from developing embryos. We can insert missing genetic material into cells by customizing a virus (e.g. to treat cystic fibrosis). The list goes on and on.
Honestly, you can get a much bigger sense of awe and wonder about the universe from reading a molecular biology or embryology journal (or watching pictures from astronomical probes), than from reading a typical book of the Bible.
Carl Sagan has written a couple of very good books about the wonders of science. Scientific American is a very good, accessible magazine. John Gribbin has written a good introduction to quantum mechanics called "In Search of Schrodinger's Cat". Read them, and maybe you'll get a hint of why scientists are.
Why should you pay to support "their religion"? I don't personally think you should. I'd be perfectly happy to allow a tax-exemption category (proportional to the % of tax dollars that are actually spent on scientific research) for anyone who chose to live the rest of their life on an Amish-style farm away from antibiotics, computers, doctors (excluding faith healers), and preserved food (Pasteur was a scientist, after all...).
I heard about another(?) theory proposing the existence of many dimensions "confined" (or somehow "tied") within a Planck space (the amount of space measured by a Planck Constant, a very, very, very small number) (I heared about this space being some kind of "quantum of space") Is this new theory (many dimensions within sub-milimeters) related with the older (many dimensions within Planck space) ???
If you're gutsy enough to castigate an entire /. post without even addressing its merits, then you should be gutsy enough to login.
You sound vaguely like a believer. I'm one too, and frankly I think your rabid vitriol makes you, and anyone else who believes in God, sound like a chauvanistic Luddite.
Shut up.
--GAck
3. Profit!
2. ???
1. On Soviet Slashdot, a Beowulf cluster of alien Natalie Portman overlords welcomes YOU!
...But it's very much like a story that many scientists are beginning to tell about the universe...
... whatever ... )
i do not believe that this theorey is entirely new stuff. not to say it is not cool, it most definetly is...
check out Frijtof (sp??) Capra's "The Tao of Physics" (if you don't know, and you wanna seem cool and knowledgeable, it's pronounced "DAO"
"Tao of Physics" was written in 1975-ish (i believe) and its underlying theory is that there is a narrowing of the rift between Eastern (and no, i don't mean Cambridge, MA) Mysticism/Religon and modern Physics.
One of the sources Capra quoted talks of a tower with many rooms, each room containing many towers exactly like the first, on and on and on, like two facing mirrors... the mansion metaphor struck me as being remarkably similar.
anyway, this is pretty cool stuff, although the article didn't go into as much depth as i would have liked to see... *sigh*
Props...
"Cogito ergo es... I think, therefore you is." -The King of the Moon's Head,
"Cogito ergo es... I think, therefore you is." -The King of the Moon's Head,
The total collapse of the discredited evolutionary "theory" was the first big public wake-up call,
What events constituted the collapse of the theory of evolution?
I'm not trying to troll or start a flame war, I really am curious. The public perception of evolution as a theory often differs wildly from the rather conservative notions of the actual text of the theory as written by Darwin, and I've often noticed that observations and explanations which are claimed to discredit evolution are actually aimed at the perception rather than the theory itself.
I really hope you respond, because in recent years my parents - after encouraging my interests in science throughout my childhood and adolescence - have developed a fascination with creation science, but can't explain their precepts well due to a difference in the focus of their educations. I would really like to understand what they believe, and I have a feeling that understanding what you're saying here would help me understand them.
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Essentially, they refer to a brane (which is in itself a manifold) which is "kinked" within a higher dimensional space within which some (e.g gravitational) interactions propagate whilst others (e.g. electromagnetic) are confined to propagation within the brane itself.
Imagine the universe is 1-dimensional (and composed of Crap ASCII Art (TM)). The the Manifold would be a 1d line within 2d, e.g.
---------X-------------------------------Y----
(exciting, huh?... bear with me...)
with all interactions between points X and Y taking place within the 1d line, oblivious of the extra (up-down)dimension.
The manYfold concept would take the above and turn it into the following:-
---------X--------------\
-----------Y------------/
where, although most (i.e. electromagnetic etc.) interactions still have to go all the way along the line and back between X and Y (regardless of the bend of which they are oblivious), gravitational interactions "know" about the extra up-down dimension (referred to in the article as the "bulk") and interact over the now much shorter distance between X and Y, bypassing the normal space distance along the line, leading to things which seem distant in space (but nearby in the "bulk") having much more gravitational influence than they would otherwise.
On a very related note to this concept, I seem to remember something similar being touted about a particular Superstring Theory (E8xE8) where one ends up with 2 independent universes coupled only by gravity. Whilst this is not the same (in the manybrane paper the two universes are actually spatially distant parts of the same one) it does have common features. Of course, it is a long time since I heard about E8xE8 and I may be misremembering.
On a less related (but again similar) note, Richard Feynman and John Wheeler once postulated that all electrons in the universe were in fact the same electron wrapped back and forth (where it appears as an anti-electron) between the beginning and end points of the universe, thus accounting for the fact that every electron in the universe appears absolutely identical.
--
"I am not a nut-bag." -- Millroy the Magician
There's actually been a lot of fuss about what's called "large extra dimensions" recently. The original problem was that the energy scale associated with gravity is about 10^19 GeV (1GeV = the energy an electron would get going through a potential gap of 10^9 V = approximately the mass of a proton) while the energy scale associated with all the other forces of nature is only 10^3 GeV. This is really bad because it means that (for instance) particles would get gravitational fields surrounding them that give them masses on the order of 10^19 GeV, which would turn everything in sight into a black hole.
:) is one thing. In some of the models effective FTL travel may be possible.
This problem can be solved in a number of ways - notably supersymmetry, which causes those giant gravitational fields to cancel out. But there's one other odd problem to deal with, which are "extra dimensions." Basically string theory requires that the universe is actually 10-dimensional, and the other 6 dimensions are simply wrapped up very tightly. (Mental picture: If you wrap up a sheet of paper (which is 2-dimensional) into a very tight tube and look at it from far away, it looks 1-dimensional. Unless you're scanning it on distance scales comparable to the radius of the tube.) The problem is that you have to somehow wrap up these 6 dimensions on a really small distance scale (the length scale of gravity, about 10^-42 cm) and keep the other 4 really big. (the size of the universe) This again happens because the energy scale of gravity is big.
So about a year ago, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Savas Dimopoulos, Gia Dvali and John March-Russell had an interesting thought: We don't *know* that gravity really behaves like anything in particular at length scales below about a millimeter. (The current limit of experiment is about 0.8mm) So they noticed that the following setup gives the right answers too:
* We live in a universe with however many "extra" (small, rolled-up) dimensions, but these are rolled up with radii on the order of somewhere between 1fm (10^-15m, the size of a nucleus) to 0.1mm. (The range of sizes is because there are several different models)
* In this loosely rolled-up world, there are these 4-dimensional objects called "branes" floating around.
Then several amazing things happen. First of all, all matter particles (electrons, quarks, people) are bound to the surface of the brane and can't leave it. So are all the non-gravity force particles. (Photons, gluons, etc.) This just follows from the physical properties of branes in string theory, and it means that as far as anything but gravity is concerned, the universe is 4-dimensional and we won't see the extra dimensions.
Second, gravity completely ignores the brane (except insofar as there's matter, and therefore sources of gravity, there) and flies around freely in all of the dimensions. But because some of them are rolled up, what happens is that at long distances (bigger than the radius) all the gravity gets "squeezed" along the extra dimensions and gravity behaves like ordinary 4-dimensional gravity. At short distances, this changes -- for instance, the 1/r^2 force of gravity becomes something like 1/r^4.
But the real magic is, if the fundamental energy scale of gravity was 10^3 GeV, (the same as the scale for everything else) the distortion of gravity by the rolling up of space would make it seem like the scale was 10^19 GeV to any observer looking at distance scales bigger than the radius!
So the bonus of the Large Extra Dimensions (LED) scenario is, everything has the same energy scale, and it only seems that gravity has this high energy scale because we're looking at too long a distance. And all of the problems of a high energy scale indeed go away.
Of course, you can ask what the hell any of this has to do with reality. The thing is that all of this is consistent with all experiments to date and explains several tricky points. More importantly, it is experimentally testable; part of the testing happens in tabletop experiments (groups at Stanford and at NIST in Boulder are working on measuring gravity at distances down to about 10^-6 m) and part of it in accelerators. The final tests (thumbs up or thumbs down) will come from experiments at the LHC accelerator in Geneva, which should (knock on wood) be up to spin around 2004/5. Final results should take a few more years after the machine comes on-line.
But disclaimer: At this point this entire scenario is conjecture. People are already working out "observational experiments" to check these models -- for instance, whether these are consistent with the known spectrum of cosmic rays -- which are strong experimental constraints. But until the final experiments happen we can't be certain, one way or the other.
Also, since the original paper came out there have been several modified versions of the conjecture, which differ essentially in technical (but very important) points. The Randall-Sundrum model is especially important, and today's model looks to join the list of candidates.
So what does this mean for us? First of all, if it's right then the underlying scale of gravity is only 10^3 GeV, which is definitely accessible with the next generation (LHC) of accelerators. This means we can start to directly monkey around with the processes associated with black hole formation and the origins of the universe. Apart from completely changing physics (by making quantum gravity experiments practical) this is one of those things that creates more applications than we know what to do with. Making small black holes (and no, they wouldn't eat up the planet.
But possibly the most interesting thing is that there's no reason at all for our brane -- the one that our universe lives on -- is the only one. In fact, the most reasonable model suggests that there is some unbelievable number of branes floating out there, maybe 10^24 of them. It's not clear that the laws of physics would be the same on all of them -- e.g. the speed of light may be different, or the charge of the electron, or whatever -- but if the scenario turns out to be true, it is possible (though difficult) to communicate between two different worlds.
And for my money, that's the neatest thing of all.
Is it also a shadow from the higher dimensional manifold we see, when -looking up your url, i.e.
:)
this one- they also recommend reading/buying on an auction the book "Enlarge and firm your
breasts by hypnosis tape"????
Of course, it does have to do with geometry....
Roland
Every year it becomes increasingly obvious that so-called "science" cannot explain anything at all.
Obviously! It's amazing that people haven't realized this before! I mean, if these myths like "Quantum Physics" or "Molecular Biology" actually had predictive power and could be used in everyday life, we'd end with things like:
- Computers with components that you could see them only with the best of microsopes
- Human-engineered microbes and viruses that can actually change the DNA of living cells
- Hydrogen bombs
- Communication using coherent light through thin glass fibers
Come on, we don't see "Buck Rogers" things like that in our everyday world, do we? What? We do? Damn! Maybe these guys in their little "club" actually have something here. Well, your argument, as stated, seems to be a little thin. Perhaps you could back it up with a few clarifications:- This God that you seem to have put forward as the Uncaused Cause: Where does He live? What is He made of? What are the physical laws that determine His abilities? How might we experimentally prove or disprove His existance and properties?
- Please give three examples of the "insane hatred" of mainstream scientific institutions. (I wasn't personally aware of it.) Please be specific and concrete.
The above information might make your post seem a little less vitriolic and a little more like rational discourse, which I'm sure was your intent all along.Chris Coslor
coslor[at]sprynet.com
The fact that you disbelieve what they are working on doesn't make it any less useful. This paper is a hypothetical description, but it actually contains items that are testable. Somebody will work out a way to test them, and our knowledge base will get larger. All whether you like it or not.
Rather than screaming and stomping your feet about how outraged you are, why don't you show us where they are wrong? (And just so you know, waving the christian bible around won't constitute acceptable evidence. It's already got too many problems.)
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
experimentally prove or disprove His existance and properties?
This has bugged me for years. At what point can we say we've explained everything that exists? Is it possible to explain the existance of physical laws or mathematics, since such an explanation would not be able to rely on them (in other words, they can't explain their own existance) To explain why mathematics works the way it does, we have to develop a theory to explain how it arose from nothing, without using math to create the theory. I don't think this is possible. You criticize him for putting forth God as the Uncaused Cause (not that his message didn't deserve plenty of criticism), but then ask what physical laws determine His existance. Are you not, therefore, putting forth these Physical Laws as an Uncaused Cause? Are you willing to accept the idea that the laws of physics and mathematics have no origin, and simply exist without cause, or do you believe that it is somehow possible for them to arise from true nothingness?
I am a Christian today due, in part, to this very question. I have not yet heard an adequate explanation. I realize that Christianity doesn't explain it, since we accept the idea that God can exist without cause. It just seems to me that this makes more sense than saying that abstract ideas and laws can exist without cause. Any thought anyone has on this would be appreciated.
Roses are red, violets are blue. I'm a schitzophrenic, and so am I.
The preprint server contains unreviewed preprints. They are not the official statement of that body of people called 'scientists'. It's just a repository where researchers and students can distribute material. Sometimes they are submitted by kooks and sometimes they come from the very best in their field.
-- SIGFPE
Just another case of Science imitating Science Fiction...
:)
It's not a bad idea, but it's not a new idea. Lots of hard-SF writers picked this one up a long time ago, with their space warps and their jump points and whatnot... Time to re-read Macroscope again...
(for those who don't know, Macroscope is an early Piers Anthony mostly hard-SF looking book, and it's very good, if somewhat strange at the end.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Every educated person in the United States has been aware for years that evolution holds no logical or factual water. It's been almost entirely abandoned by serious biologists. The mainstream media steadfastly refuse to report the facts, quite naturally, but I suggest that you drop by your local university and have a chat with the head of the biology department. You'll find that evolution is treated as an historical curiosity and is no longer taught.
I think that you may be mistaken. I've talked to biologists at my local university (including the ones that I've taken courses from), and they all seem to believe that natural processes result in new species over time, which is all that is meant by biologists' use of the word "evolution". Of ocurse, Darwin's original ideas on just how evolution might work have been extensively re-thought over the years, but I'm not aware of too many mainstream biologists denying that evolution has taken (and is taking) place. Please cite 3 references in mainstream academic (not religious) publications, like Scientific American, or in specialist biology publications, that indicate that the process of evolution is widely discounted.
Also, you might want to be a little more careful in your use of words. For example, you state:
Darwin himself admitted..that he could not account for the..eye. In other words, he admitted that his theory was nothing but an idle fantasy.
The second sentence does NOT follow from the first. The fact, for example, that Einstein could not find a way to get rid of his Cosmological Constant (which he knew was a problem) does NOT mean that he was saying that E=MC2 was wrong. Honest scientists will always admit that they don't know it all. This is not a weakness of science--it is one of its strengths.
Finally, I really think that it would make sense to know about the arguments that you are refuting when discounting them. You might wish to check out the Talk.Origins Home Page for some summaries of the surrent arguments for the side of evolution.
Chris Coslor coslor[at]sprynet.com
Can anyone join this thread, or do you need a degree in surrealism? :) Seriously, I believe Slashdot works in a connected space, so who or what are you two AC's replying to?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I assume, of course, that you've proven this, since nobody would even consider posting something on /. that they couldn't prove. Please post the proof here. I'm sure it was just an oversight that it wasn't posted originally.
Roses are red, violets are blue. I'm a schitzophrenic, and so am I.
WTF?! I don't know what Amazon is suggesting for you, but when I click my link (and the same one you provide) i get:
The Shape of Space : How to Visualize Surfaces and Three-Dimensional Manifolds
(Monographs and Textbooks in Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol 96)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I'm not sure why this theory violates God's Law. Please explain. I haven't read through it yet (I'm assuming you have) so I can't say that for sure, but from the abstract, I don't see where you find offense with it. Any clarification would be appreciated.
Roses are red, violets are blue. I'm a schitzophrenic, and so am I.
However, that doesn't seem to answer your question. I think the problem here is the assumption of an Uncaused Cause. Let's look at it this way:
Does that answer the question? Any arguments out there, anybody?
Chris Coslor
coslor[at]sprynet.com
Darwin himself admitted -- in so many words -- that he could not account for the development of the modern vertebrate eye.
So? Modern biology has progressed far beyond what Darwin ever thought. Just because Darwin didn't explaing the eye doesn't mean it was explained later by someone else. Try this for starters.
In other words, he admitted that his theory was nothing but an idle fantasy.
Bullcrap. He did nothing of the sort, except admit his own limits. As much as you'd like to believe otherwise.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
On the contrary - it's been observed, in plants and fish.
You can't breed a dog into a lizard, which is what the fantasy of MACRO-evolution (so-called "Darwinism") explicitly claims to be the case.
Strawman alert. Where was this explicit claim made?
A truly and literally honest "scientist" will simply admit that he knows absolutely nothing at all, that his wild guess is as good as the next, and that neither of them is worth a bucket of warm spit.
An odd statement, made in a world where the process of science has given us antibiotics, microelectrons, and space probes to the outer planets.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
If this theory holds, couldn't we communicate (if the other brane is listening) by moving around big heavy things in weird patterns? Would the arrangements of matter in other branes be similar because gravity can go between branes (and hence, matter in one brane would be attracted to matter in another). Would black holes poke into other branes (or at least, would the other branes have black holes at the same spot because the gravity from ours would attract enough matter from the others to form another black hole?)
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w
No, it hasn't.
See? I can make unsupported assertions, too. If you want us to accept your statements, you'll have to provide something other than lip flapping. Where has this demonstration taken place? (Please don't reference the ICR. Everything they say has been shot down like a cheap clay pidgeon.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Okay, okay, you CAN have your coordinate axes any way you please, but they're still at right angles to one another. It's just a matter of remapping the axes however you want.
So, yes, you can curve your dimensions. But it's easier (for most applications) not to think of them that way. I could use spherical coordinates to describe how to build a building, but I don't because it's not very useful. It's easier to do with rectangular dimensions.
Now, as to a real dimension being curled, lets use your tube analogy. Can one traverse around the tube (in one dimension, mind), ending up back where you started? Sure. Can you do that in reality? Well, that depends on whether the universe is closed or not. I have yet to see a satisfactory answer either way on that issue.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Of possible to interest to some readers, my latest Brain Candy column at Fatbrain.com is about Einstein's special theory of relativity and how it implies that any faster than light communication implies the ability to send messages backwards in time.
Of course, this yields all sorts of ugly paradoxes, which is why most physicist consider FTL communication unrealizable.
-- GWF
The Computational Beauty of Nature
Does that make my result a miracle? Hardly. I was going to get some result. Same way with the Earth. Given what we know about biochemisty, it was pretty likely that something biological would happen. Four billion years ago, given all the random factors the odds that it would be us were astronomical, but after the fact it's not remarkable (other than for sentimental reasons) that it turned out to be us.
Hard as it may be for devout beleivers (who usually want to go backwards in time for their authoritative statements) to understand, we've learned a few things since Chuck Darwin's time. You might try this, for example.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Check out this column which intuitively explains why FTL communication in any form violates causality.
-- GWF
The Computational Beauty of Nature
What compensates for the Heisenberg compensators?
Also, never, ever cross the beams. Unless, of course, the situation calls for it.
H.P. Lovecraft was on to this a long time ago. Or maybe he was just on something. Either way, the man kicked ass.
Check out this new release of some of his work with a forward by Neil 'The Main Man' Gaiman.
**>>BELCH
These things sound with an interesting similarity to some SF and paranormal stories. While most of these things go too much over fantasy there is a point that humans cannot imagine things completely out of this world. So are these "fantasies" a mirror of what the human mind may presume out of its own reality? Are dreams a middle term between "our" world and this "parallel" part of reality? :)
:)
What about travelling between worlds? Frankly this theory does not sound like StarTrek. It sounds much more like Zelazny's "9 Princes of Amber". There are several worlds. They are the result of the intersection between two "original" ones. So there are several Earths. Each one differs from the other by its distance to each of the "original" worlds. Funny but, somehow, certain human myths exactly reflect this nature.
While this is the world of phantasies and dreams there is a point that still theory seems to pass by. The fact that, the other possible "world", may be not like ours. Not only by events or biology but by its inner nature. Physics and its constants may be a little different from ours. Even its geometry may be quite different from ours. Maybe somehow that "other" dimension may be felt stronger than in our world...
Interesting is the Universe has such a nature. So don't get scared if you suddenly see your mirror image with a grey skin. It's just you
In other words, you are willing to stand up and make hysterical pronouncements, but when called upon to support your position, you hide behind ad hominem and run away. I'm not surprised.
As far as "damned" goes, that necessitates the existence of a god as specified in the christian bible, for which the evidence is thin at best. I'm not worried.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
I have.
Prove it.
I don't have to. You won't stand behind any of your statements. I'm just adopting the same tactic.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
I guess you didn't get the coin-flip example I posted. Let's try another one. Say someone comes up to you and says "I'm going to win the lottery! I can feel it in my bones!" You'd think he was wacky - it would be be a "wildly improbably accident" were he to win. And in fact, before the drawing we could say that about any of the participants.
But yet, if you sum up all those small probabilities, you get unity. Someone will win.
And if you summed up the small probabilities of all the possible courses that Earth could have taken 4.5 billion years ago - the dead and sterile planets, the ones where life never got beyond the blue-green algae, or where the dinosaurs never died out, or where rodents instead of primates got the big brains and opposable thumbs, or where Hilter won WWII, and our own improbable situation...sum them all up, and you get unity. One of them became the reality we observe today. There's no more need to invoke supernatural beings to explain it than to explain the lottery.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Which genesis? 1 or 2? Or haven't yo bothered to read the whole bible? While we're at it, why don't you take a tour through leviticus and report back on how you're doing obeying gods laws that are listed there?
Whoops... the original LED scenario was Arkani-Hamed, Dimopoulos and Dvali. Their original paper is here. Sorry!
Yonatan
You can't prove that God doesn't exist any more than he can prove that God does exist (or, even postulating the existence of a god, that his god is the right one.)
Hell, the Creationist Troll is even on better logical ground, since proving a positive ("there is a God," where 'God' is suitably defined) is at least logically possible, whereas proving a negative ("There is no God,") isn't even theoretically possible.
I'll freely admit I believe there's a God because I find it comforting, and I'd rather ascribe the universe's elegant design to intent rather than randomness. I'll also freely admit it's an utterly untenable position from any logical proof standpoint, and that there's no evidence whatsoever one way or the other. It works for me, I haven't been inside a church in years, and I don't ask that anyone agree with my position Or Die.
But then, I believe in the general idea of God, not in a specifically pinned-down Scripture-type God like the Creationist Troll seems to.
Absolutely believing in God and absolutely denying the existence of God in the absence of evidence one way or the other are equally acts of faith -- the atheist is committing just as much to his dogma as the Creationist Troll is to his.
And yes, they all too often tend to subscribe to human-hating doctrines like Randism or bizarro Nietzsche misquotes.
gomi
ayn rand mcnally: 'get lost. we don't care.'
If a similar transcription error took place in the printing of a new Bible, it would from then on be the Word of the Lord(tm & amen).
Not exactly. See the medieval 'Infamous Bibles,'
which contained some droll misprints, among which was 'Thou shalt commit adultery' in the listing of the Commandments. Typically the print run was destroyed, but surviving specimens are worth Bux.
Alas, the world would be a happier place if that version had gotten accepted. Or at least entertainingly different.
Honestly, you can get a much bigger sense of awe and wonder about the universe from reading a molecular biology or embryology journal (or watching pictures from astronomical probes), than from reading a typical book of the Bible.
Hell yes. I've had transcendent mystical experiences in a parking lot, just looking at trees and sunlight and thinking of all the Serious Neatness involved in the Universe at large. Religion (in the broad sense of awe and humility before the Universe) is completely compatible with science.
It's kind of cute how the frothy God-types have no trouble typing on their science-derived computers in their science-derived lifestyles. Thankless and rather moronic, but cute nonetheless.
gomi
While we're at it, why don't you take a tour through leviticus and report back on how you're doing obeying gods laws that are listed there?
This came up much earlier, in one of the cloning articles. So I can confidently predict this weiner will come back with some tosh about how JEE-zus invalidates the Word of God in Leviticus about dietary laws and mixing fabrics and earlocks.
See, *he* gets to pick-and-choose God's Law, because he's wit' JEE-zus. Anyone who doesn't agree with him, though, will Burn In Hell (tm).
He sounds *just* like the wanker in that long-ago cloning thread, and frankly it's probably just some troller who gets his jollies impersonating a frothy Creationist. Do ignore him, and he'll go away.
Of course, there's a lot of value in modern Christian thought, but Sturgeon's Law inexorably applies there as elsewhere. You have to pick through a lot of crap to get to some really admirable and noble sentiments about getting along with your fellow earth-bound critters.
If the system really is set up that you can Accept Jee-zus, be a total asshole, and go to Heaven, and not Accept Jee-zus, be a self-sacrificing loving person, and go to Hell, then the system sucks and I want no part of it, and the God pushing that system can go fuck himself up the ass with a fire hydrant.
gomi
Cute. This boils down to the 'golf ball' argument:
It's exceedingly unlikely that a golf ball driven off a tee by a golfer lands on one specific tuft of grass on the fairway, out of all the possible tufts of grass it could have landed on. Because it's so very unlikely, the inevitable conclusion is that the golfer deliberately guided the ball onto that tuft.
This doesn't follow -- it's an accident that humans have their current shape. Just because an event with low probability happens doesn't mean there's an agent behind it.
People win the lottery, despite huge odds against it. Are you saying God picks lottery winners and guides golf balls?
Of course you are. You're a Creationist. It seems to have seriously impaired your musical taste, too. I mean, the Pretenders? Nick Lowe? Costello? Yeesh. Get out of the 80's. Wouldn't Creed be more to your liking?
gomi
Matthew Fox has a lovely metaphor for this ("ecumenical garbage!", I hear the Creationist Troll froth in background):
The world's religions are stained-glass windows in a lantern; God is the flame within.
I really dig Matthew Fox, crazy outlaw excommunicated former Jesuit that he is.
Religion isn't really a commutative or transmissible experience -- you either gots the feeling within, or you don't, and mileage varies wildly between folks.
gomi
Humor doesn't always have to be well thought out. In fact, it's normally funny quite because it *isn't* well thought out.
Just learn to laugh for once. That's all it takes...hell I laugh at myself most days.
Well they don't have to be compensated often but modulating the field harmonics usually works... =)
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
What kind of ignorant SOB are you anyway? Even most Christians don't believe that God literally
created the earth in 6000 years. Haven't you ever heard of a metaphore? The Bible is full of them by the way. And who ever said that science and god can't coexist anyway. It's just your feeble mental power that finds the Bible at odds with science.
Religion is about spirituality and a higher purpose to life. If you had any real spirituality,
you would see that the very fact that the universe works without any help from "God" is a miracle in itself.
You give up the free will god gave you when you hide yourself from the truth. Did the bible predict the rotation of the planets or the effects of gravity? Does the bible explain Calculus or statistics? Do you really think that with all the different species that exist today, Noah could have fit two of each one in his tiny boat(you may actually have to crack a book other than the Bible to figure out how many species there actually are today), or even gone to all seven continents and rounded them all up? If you do then you are a bigger fool than I thought and if not then you have to accept evolution(There isn't any passage in the Bible about god restocking the earth after the flood). The Bible is so full of inconsistancies that it isn't surprising that the fun"duhh"mentalist has to completely reject reality in order to have faith
in God.
Science works. If it didn't, we couldn't have this little "discussion". Science is about creating models that accurately describe the world around us. Your religion seems to be about denying the world around you in order to have all the answers. well I've got news for you buddy, we're never going to have all the answers in this life. We can only deceive ourselves into thinking we have all the answers and show our own ignorance in the process,as you have aptly done. There is nothing more foolish than foolish people who thinks they are wise and nothing more destructive to society than ignorance in the cloak of religion.
One last thing about the Bible. You know what a parable is right? Did you ever stop to think that the whole book may just be a bunch of parables and not the literal truth(obvious to free thinkers), or even (heaven forbid) a story book created to keep the masses in check(no, it couldn't be that, could it?) ?
I could go on and on but I won't.
Peace and Love
Thats why I find it so amusing that the latter day saints of our business one, attribute to me motives that just weren'
Yeah... but ... quantum physics, which has been demonstrated to be the most accurate theory ever in terms of experimentally verified predicitions, routinely violates locality, and thereby causality. People just don't like it doing that...
This is not necessarily true. Again, it depends on the definition, but given suitable definitions, one can prove the non-existence of things. For example, proving the non-existence of square circles or triangles whose angles add up to 150 degrees is trivially easy (again, I'm talking about given suitable definitions -- given different definitions, proving the existence of 150 degree triangles is easy, you just need to switch out of planar geometry). A lot of people define God in such a way that it implies a contradiction, which yields an easy proof of non-existence. Which of course doesn't prove that there are no gods, just that there are none matching that description. The reverse is also true -- proving a positive may be logically impossible, given appropriate definitions. So really, without carefully examining the definitions and other axioms both posters are operating under, one cannot conclude that either is on better logical ground.
I'd rather ascribe the universe's elegant design to intent rather than randomness
This is invoking a logical falacy known as a false dilema. You're mistakenly (or at least baselessly) asserting that the universe's design is due to either intent or randomness, whereas there's nothing in your post to back up the notion that these are the only two options. It could be due to neither of those but instead due to some other option. Thus, even if you prove it's not due to randomness, this does not prove it's due to intent, or vice versa.
and that there's no evidence whatsoever one way or the other.
This depends on what you consider to be evidence. Although there is no proof, there are plenty of things out there that many would consider at least to be evidence for one position or the other.
Absolutely believing in God and absolutely denying the existence of God in the absence of evidence one way or the other are equally acts of faith -- the atheist is committing just as much to his dogma as the Creationist Troll is to his.
The only people with no faith are Pyrrhonists, and I'm not sure about them, either.
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Just out of curiousity, doesn't anyone know where in the New Testament Jesus says you can ignore all the old dietary laws? I've been wondering about that one for a while...
Of course, there's a lot of value in modern Christian thought, but Sturgeon's Law inexorably applies there as elsewhere. You have to pick through a lot of crap to get to some really admirable and noble sentiments about getting along with your fellow earth-bound critters.
That's what I love about Unitarian Universalists: they pick through the crap and take just the best parts. And what's even better, they do it for religious texts other than Christian ones as well. Grab the best from all religious thought anywhere, that's the ticket!
If the system really is set up that you can Accept Jee-zus, be a total asshole, and go to Heaven, and not Accept Jee-zus, be a self-sacrificing loving person, and go to Hell, then the system sucks and I want no part of it, and the God pushing that system can go fuck himself up the ass with a fire hydrant.
It'd be more amusing to see the people pushing this idiocy off as Christianity suffer that fate. Oh, and thanks for the mental picture. Yikes!
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Just out of curiousity, doesn't anyone know where in the New Testament Jesus says you can ignore all the old dietary laws? I've been wondering about that one for a while...
What I've seen adduced is some vague passages where Jesus speaks of bringing a 'new covenant,' although the searchable-bible page I just tried doesn't pull anything up on that. Perhaps our local Creationist Troll can give us chapter and verse. What I've seen cited so far does not specifically address dietary and bodily maintenance (earlocks) laws, but just speaks vaguely about 'new covenants' and such, which is pretty weak grounds for shaving off your sideburns if you ask me.
gomi
This is invoking a logical falacy known as a false dilema. You're mistakenly (or at least baselessly) asserting that the universe's
design is due to either intent or randomness, whereas there's nothing in your post to back up the notion that these are the only
two options. It could be due to neither of those but instead due to some other option. Thus, even if you prove it's not due to
randomness, this does not prove it's due to intent, or vice versa.
Hm. I can see where you'd think that. I have mis-stated what I meant. Logically, either X or (not X) is true, yes? Therefore, what I meant to say was that either the universe came about by intentional design or not, and I sloppily substituted 'randomness' for 'the converse of intentional design.'
To rephrase: I believe in God because I find it more comforting to believe the Universe came about by intentional design than to believe the converse. No false dilemma there, yes?
Excellent points on logical proof systems, by the way -- teach me to dash stuff off without thinking it through (it sounded a little funny when I wrote it, but heat of the moment, alas).
In the specific case of a well-defined God, however, I do maintain that for the more common definitions (omnipotent intelligent consciousness watching over human affairs, say), proving existence is simple -- define some evidence of Divine intervention/manifestation using some mutually agreeable definition of same, then collect evidence satisfying that definition.
Proving non-existence is very slippery (absence of action can either mean non-existence or merely non-action, so it's inconclusive).
This depends on what you consider to be evidence. Although there is no proof, there are plenty of things out there that many
would consider at least to be evidence for one position or the other.
Again, I have been imprecise. It would be more correct, perhaps, to say that the available evidence is sufficiently inconclusive towards either side that neither is really preferable.
Cheers,
gomi
Steven Weinberg, one of the leading Nobel Laureates working in this field, has an article in Scientific American, the December 1999 issue. He explains what will probably be required to understand the nature of the universe at the very tiny Planck scale of the space-time, and mention of the "brane" theories. There are many links to explain the concepts behind his arguments, and this is one fo the best ways to get a handle on this problem.
The book was probably "Hyperspace"
I think you meant mr laForge.
This is not my sig
Click on the link; d/l the postscript file (or pdf or whatever). Read what these scientists are saying!
I understood about every 3rd paragraph (which is pretty good for me). The "branes" are "folded" in sheets that are bigger than our observable universe, > 15 billion lightyears. Yet the sheets (or branes) are less than a millimeter apart gravitationally, which is where the dark matter comes from, according to these guys. That means dark matter is just like regular matter, just invisible except for the gravity. So you would have "dark stars" which look like MACHOS, "halos" of dark matter around visible galaxies (which reveal the presence of other-brane galaxies nestling together "through the bulk" of the branes. Oh, my head is spinning!
And now a safety tip: Please don't pour sulfuric acid on your genitals.
I'm cool like a fool in a swimming p-p-pfft-pool