Once Before Time:
A Whole Story of the Universe
by Martin Bojowald
Posted on 12/14/2010 7:27:22 PM PST by SunkenCiv
In Once Before Time, Martin Bojowald explains how he developed the idea of loop quantum gravity and how it will soon be put to the test.
At the moment of the big bang, our universe emerged from a state of infinite density, a point in space and time so small it had no size at all. This, the standard cosmological story tells us, is the singularity, the seed of creation. Singularities can also serve as seeds of destruction, lurking in the centres of black holes, the final endpoints of total gravitational collapse.
Many physicists, however, believe singularities do not mark the ends of space and time but rather the limits of the theory we use to describe them. That theory is general relativity and, according to Martin Bojowald, it's suicidal. When it jumps off a ledge, physicists need a more fundamental theory to take over, one that incorporates what they've learned about the quantum nature of the world - a theory of quantum gravity.
The majority of physicists have turned to string theory as their quantum gravity theory of choice. But a smaller group of physicists has been working on a theory known as loop quantum gravity. According to LQG, space-time on the quantum scale is not smooth and continuous but discrete, built of tiny loops linked and knotted to form a space-time mesh.
Bojowald was 27 years old when he took the equations of LQG and used them to see what happens to space-time near the big bang's singularity. In doing so, he discovered something amazing, and founded the field of loop quantum cosmology (LQC) in the process. Once Before Time tells the story of Bojowald's discovery and its implications in fascinating, eloquent, even literary prose.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Once Before Time:
A Whole Story of the Universe
by Martin Bojowald
Big Bang or Big Bounce?: New Theory on the Universe’s Birth
By Martin Bojowald | October 6, 2008
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=big-bang-or-big-bounce
yawwwwwn, more handwaving to get around the obvious creator.....
I think it’s really interesting when they try to explain the complexities of the Universe based on the ‘little’ that we understand. It leads to much speculation.
(p.s. All the answers so far are wrong. But please don’t mention it to anyone else. They’ll just get mad)
The three reviews at Amazon are parsimonious in their praise for this book.
Not worth buying based on those; maybe I’ll check if the library has it.
Bump for tomorrow morning :)
When they say nonsensical stuff like this, then you know it's all bullshit.
When they say nonsensical stuff like this, then you know it's all bullshit.
LOOP DE LOOP
Johnny Thunder
Here we go loop de loop
Here we go loop de li
Here we go loop de loop
On a saturday night
We’re having a party
Ev’rybody’s havin’ a great time
All the gang’s here and a-dancin’
Yeah I’m loopin’ with a baby of mine
Here we go loop de loop
Here we go loop de li
Here we go loop de loop
On a saturday night
Darling are you ready
To loop a loop loop with me
Start right there
Wait just a minute until I count to three
(one, two, three)
Here we go loop de loop
Here we go loop de li
Here we go loop de loop
On a saturday night
http://www.lyricstime.com/johnny-thunder-loop-de-loop-lyrics.html
When I read that phrase, it reminded me of this :
Ladies and Gentlemen, skinny and stout,
I’ll tell you a tale I know nothing about;
The Admission is free, so pay at the door,
Now pull up a chair and sit on the floor.
One fine day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight;
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other.
A blind man came to watch fair play,
A mute man came to shout “Horray!”
A deaf policeman heard the noise and
Came to stop those two dead boys.
He lived on the corner in the middle of the block,
In a two-story house on a vacant lot;
A man with no legs came walking by,
and kicked the lawman in his thigh.
He crashed through a wall without making a sound,
into a dry creek bed and suddenly drowned;
The long black hearse came to cart him away,
But he ran for his life and is still gone today.
I watched from the corner of the big round table,
The only eyewitness to facts of my fable;
But if you doubt my lies are true,
Just ask the blind man, he saw it too.
I haven’t seen that in it’s entirety in a long time...
Too funny...
Exactly. Everything we understand on Earth has a measurable and certain density. The things we study outside our planet have a somewhat-measurable density, neutron stars among the most dense in the universe. What I can't get is how something can have no size, yet be infinitely dense. Yet there are galaxies that are thousands of generations away from us considering propulsion today. Obviously, everything had to come from somewhere, but the idea that everything originated out of an infinitely dense, invisible point is just... arrogant.
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