While the evidence does suggest that the universe is flat, when you plug in all the numbers, omega (a nifty number involving lots of fun constants and the total mass/energy of the univers), which should be exactly, precisely, not even a teeny weeny bit off of 1 if the universe is, in fact flat, comes out to.3. Well, if the universe isn't flat, calculation of omega becomes a function of time, so by now (assuming we know the age of the universe reasonably well) omega would be dramatically different than it was at the time of the big bang. (Thus the need for not even a teeny weeny bit of being off of 1). if it was just a teeny weeny bit larger than one at the big bang, it would be huge by now, a teeny weeny bit smaller, and omega would be almost 0. the problem is, this is an energy/time calculation, which brings Heisenburg uncertainty into the picture. so, given the lower end of what "1" means taking uncertainty into account, you get.3 for the current value.
There was an article in a recent New Scientist magazine ("What's love got to do with it, 8 oct 2000) dealing with this very problem. A bunch of computer scientists hacked out a program where "men" and "women" would search for their ideal mate. Every man ranked all the women randomly, and vice versa. Men proposed. Women always accepted, and would stay with that man until she got a "better" offer from someone she ranked more highly. Because it is travelling-salesman, they only used 50 "men" and 50 "women" in it, but it was always able to work itself out happily ever after for every "person" involved. It only started being zero-sum when they introduced the concept of beauty, in which each "person" had a set aesthetic value that would boost them the same way in everyone else's eyes. Then everyone, especially the men, wound up miserable.
So what's the moral of the story? Don't have absolutes. any time everyone agrees that X is great and Y sucks, there won't be enough X to go around, and people will feel that there's just too much Y in the world. making more X, killing all the Y, or Y pretending to be X won't fix that, because people will still see things in relative terms. basically, be your own person. Dont go with the crowd. You'll be happier for not judging and allowing yourself to be judged by Their standards.
I'm a student at ISU, and the speed (or lack thereof) of my parents' dial-up is always a shock after semesters in our very wired dorms. I'm not sure about UNI, but I know University of Iowa's getting ethernet connections, too. We come out of school craving speed, and if Vilsak, and other governors like him, doesn't want to see the brain drain in the midwest continue, then efforts like this need to continue, so we won't be lured away by the high-speed connections of major metropolitan areas.
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While the evidence does suggest that the universe is flat, when you plug in all the numbers, omega (a nifty number involving lots of fun constants and the total mass/energy of the univers), which should be exactly, precisely, not even a teeny weeny bit off of 1 if the universe is, in fact flat, comes out to .3. Well, if the universe isn't flat, calculation of omega becomes a function of time, so by now (assuming we know the age of the universe reasonably well) omega would be dramatically different than it was at the time of the big bang. (Thus the need for not even a teeny weeny bit of being off of 1). if it was just a teeny weeny bit larger than one at the big bang, it would be huge by now, a teeny weeny bit smaller, and omega would be almost 0. the problem is, this is an energy/time calculation, which brings Heisenburg uncertainty into the picture. so, given the lower end of what "1" means taking uncertainty into account, you get .3 for the current value.
So, according to astronomers, .3 = 1.
There was an article in a recent New Scientist magazine ("What's love got to do with it, 8 oct 2000) dealing with this very problem. A bunch of computer scientists hacked out a program where "men" and "women" would search for their ideal mate. Every man ranked all the women randomly, and vice versa. Men proposed. Women always accepted, and would stay with that man until she got a "better" offer from someone she ranked more highly. Because it is travelling-salesman, they only used 50 "men" and 50 "women" in it, but it was always able to work itself out happily ever after for every "person" involved. It only started being zero-sum when they introduced the concept of beauty, in which each "person" had a set aesthetic value that would boost them the same way in everyone else's eyes. Then everyone, especially the men, wound up miserable.
So what's the moral of the story? Don't have absolutes. any time everyone agrees that X is great and Y sucks, there won't be enough X to go around, and people will feel that there's just too much Y in the world. making more X, killing all the Y, or Y pretending to be X won't fix that, because people will still see things in relative terms. basically, be your own person. Dont go with the crowd. You'll be happier for not judging and allowing yourself to be judged by Their standards.
I'm a student at ISU, and the speed (or lack thereof) of my parents' dial-up is always a shock after semesters in our very wired dorms. I'm not sure about UNI, but I know University of Iowa's getting ethernet connections, too. We come out of school craving speed, and if Vilsak, and other governors like him, doesn't want to see the brain drain in the midwest continue, then efforts like this need to continue, so we won't be lured away by the high-speed connections of major metropolitan areas.