Posted on 03/23/2006 4:37:32 PM PST by Brilliant
If our universe was purposefully created — perhaps by a deity or an advanced civilization in another universe — could the Creator have left a calling card? The idea is not as crazy as it seems. Renowned cosmologists such as Andre Linde (Stanford University) and Alan Guth (MIT) have speculated that an advanced civilization could, in principle, cook up a new universe in a lab by concentrating huge quantities of energy into a tiny volume of space. And even the avowed agnostic Carl Sagan concocted a story at the very end of his sci-fi novel Contact of how scientists discover a message from the Creator embedded deep inside the number pi.
In a paper posted on astro-ph, physicists Stephen Hsu (University of Oregon) and Anthony Zee (University of California, Santa Barbara) come up with an alternative idea: astronomers can look for a message from the Creator in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) — the echo of the Big Bang.
"Our work does not support the Intelligent Design movement in any way whatsoever, but asks, and attempts to answer, the entirely scientific question of what the medium and message might be IF there was actually a message," write the authors.
The trick, say Hsu and Zee, is for the Creator to fine-tune the inflaton field — the field responsible for inflating the early universe — to encode a binary message in the subtle hot and cold spots of the CMB. As the authors note, the CMB is a "giant billboard on the sky" visible to all civilizations in all galaxies. Because different regions of the universe are so far apart that they are not causally connected, only a cosmos Creator could place a message in the CMB that all civilizations could detect.
Given the limited number of distinct regions of the sky of any fixed size, Hsu and Zee calculate that the message could include up to 100,000 bits of information. Such a message might, for example, reveal fundamental laws of physics. While current experiments like NASA's WMAP satellite do not have sufficient angular resolution or sensitivity to detect the extremely small-scale temperature fluctuations that would encode the message, future instruments might be capable of doing so. The authors urge that scientists analyze subsequent CMB data for possible patterns. "This may be even more fun than SETI," they conclude (SETI is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence).
In another paper posted on astro-ph, Douglas Scott and James P. Zibin (University of British Columbia, Canada) counter that Hsu and Zee overestimate the amount of information that can be encoded in the CMB.
Hsu responds, "Both groups agree that one can encode a universal message in the CMB. But we disagree as to its maximal information content."
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is leftover radiation from the Big Bang redshifted (stretched) by the universe's expansion into the microwave region of the spectrum. In this image NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) records minuscule temperature fluctuations in the CMB as different colors. In principle, an advanced civilization could create a universe and encode information in the CMB that would let civilizations in the offspring universe know that their universe had been purposefully created. NASA / WMAP Science Team.
Thanks for the ping!
Yes, but long ago displaced in the family hierarchy by the two younger wives. That's why she was working as a cleaning lady at the physics convention: her co-wives refused to share dinner or anything else.
Boredom.
Eat At Joes...
I was sitting around the apartment with nothing to do so went to the Ace Hardware store--paint section--and was looking up and down the shelves of untinted and pretinted base, when the salesclerk finally noticed a potential customer and asked what color I was looking for and I told him a subdued shade of ennui. I took several gallons home and spent the rest of the day painting the living room. It now matches my mood.
I got on the list and I am an iconoclastic Thomist.
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I try to remember the old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times".
So when I watch the news and it's got yet another car chase from LA I'm glad it was such a slow day that that's the major story, no quakes killing tens or hundreds of thousands, none of our carriers were taken out by a Sunburst missile, no asteroids sighted that will hit us!
Then I remember I should still paint my house...
This article is really reaching to the humorus.....its' now past the serious mode and reaching to Star Trek level Science Fiction and maybe some entertainment. Surely, no one takes this serious. Maybe Sciencetology......or the turtle thing....:))))
I have Einstein and Rosens book laying around somewhere.
I guess what I am trying to say is this: We have a model that fits closely. But we are continuing to find things that cause the model to have to be tweaked. (dark matter, dark energy, non-locality, hold on to your hats, there's more to come!)
So there comes a time when we have to decide "Can we continue tweaking the model? Or do we have to go back to the basic axioms?"
An example would be Puthoff's work on gravity being a result of quantum field effects, based on Sakharovs theories. (Covered in Physical Review, March, 1989, I can email it to anybody who wants it).
The net result would be gravity is a somewhat local phenomena, and it may be that there are not any sufficiently large structures in the universe that we can see that can prove or disprove it.
I have had a somewhat similar idea for a long time, based on gravity at least having an effect on the local density of the quantum "foam", but I don't have the math training or patience to perfect it.
And I agree Einsteins models have been largely verified. The problem is, for any given set of results, there are an infinite set of models that match. Doesn't mean they are all correct!
Like has been said, Einsteins work really gives us a geometry, not a causality. Tells us where and when. But not who, what, or why. Bells work covers these aspects more.
My personal feelings are that we can't tweak anymore. That we will discover something basic that shows we are seeing only a slice of what the universe is truly all about. And it will be so revolutionary, it will shake the foundations of existence and meaning and life itself.
They will tweak the models until something better comes along. Since there are an unlimited number of working solutions to Einsteins equations, and since the budget for getting ever-finer data is limited, they can milk this cow forever. The math is already beyond horrible, so most of us will have to stand on the sidelines noting if one or another physicist seems unusually animated for a moment.
When it comes to the effects of general relativity on the scale of the entire universe, you may very well be right (that is indeed a controversial matter).
At the moment, GR is the best tool we have, though (not for lack of looking), so we continue to tweak.
What's so whacky about Guth?
I remember when I was in college 30 years ago, I took an elementary course in astronomy, and the prof mentioning that Guth had some out of the mainstream ideas. I don't recall the exact idea, but the example he gave was something like a galaxy might suddenly be transported from one place to another, thus explaining why there are some galaxies that appear to be close, yet have large redshifts. The prof could not explain how that might happen, so he mentioned that Guth had a reputation for coming up with ideas that were bizzaar.
Of course they're not. Anyone who seeks to supersede these theories (or any others, for that matter) with something else has the responsibility to explain why these theories have been so successful in explaining so much of what we observe, and how their new theory can do the same. Your description is near-perfect - Einstein didn't replace Newton, he extended Newton; i.e. showed that Newton's Laws work as a leading order approximation within his own new theory.
Any new theory would have to the same to QM and/or relativity - show that those theories still hold as a leading order approximations in the kinematic/dynamic realms in which we know their accuracy holds (a form of what Bohr referred to as the correspondence principle).
The old theory can be changed so far it is not recognizable. Adopting Hamiltonian mechanics or Gaussian coordinates will do that. However, since any such permutation will have to provide the same results that we see in daily life, in addition to new results, it may be said that the old theory has merely been extended in any and all cases.
Yup, that sounds about right, except that usually you should still be able to see the core idea of the original theory under layers of extension and new notation. Newton wouldn't recognize the way we use his laws of motion nowadays (and if he did, he'd be pissed because we all use his old enemy Leibniz's notation for doing calculus), but the new formulas are all derived from his basic ideas.
Greetings!
I caught the replies early this morning but have been busy, so I thought about what I would say.
First, let me say this: If you went to a convention of physicists and stood on the podium and said "Einsteins GR is a refinement of Newtonian theory" you would hear wild applause. Mixed with the applause there would be strong boos and derision. Then the calculator folks would attack the slide rule folks and pandemonium would break out! Blood would flow and hi-iq brains splattered on the table! It'd be just like Braveheart! Magnificent!
:-}
Personally, depending on my mood, I might applaud or boo. Kinda depends on what the next followup conclusion would be.
The reason is the two methods that led to the theories. And while I am about to say things about Einstein that might put some folks panties in a wad, DON'T TAKE IT THAT WAY.
Newton had a fairly good set of observables. So when you start with observables and find a function that fits it, that's one thing.
But Einstein started with a proposition, basically that the speed of light was the same for all observers. Then he built/derived the necessary functions and forms that he needed to describe the space that resulted. IIRC, Einstein was a good friend of Hilbert.
So it may be that relativity was in fact a necessary result of his main proposition. It may be that if we took the fellow who picks up the garbage, zapped him with a super IQ beam and gave him the proposition, then a form very close to Einstein's results would come out.
I know I stated earlier that given any set of observables, there are an infinite set of models that fit. I am, today, however, rethinking that statement, I think it was wrong.
Given any FINITE, DISCONTINUOUS set of observables, I would say it is true. But given an infinite, continuous set, it's wrong because the derivative is know and measurable and if the derivative is fixed, the function is fixed.
Even if there are other models that seem to fit the observables RE: GR, it is PROBABLY true that they are all relativistic in nature. But still, not necessarily Einsteins results.
Now IMHO, we have touched on what I see as the heart of the matter. EPR.
From what I remember about the chapter(s) dealing in EPR in Einsteins and Rosens work, the end result is the promotion of a "hidden variable theory". Basically, we're not sure what the mapping is, but there exists a one-to-one mapping between the results as predicted by GR and the results as predicted by QM.
Nice idea. But wrong.
Bell proved conclusively that there can be no hidden variable theory.
Now I need to present a thought experiment of sorts. Imagine groups of people. In group 1, we have person A and person B.
Person A likes to wear red sunglasses. Person B likes to wear yellow sunglasses.
We could say that in a sense, person A and person B live in the same world.
Our next group is person C and person D. Person C likes to wear blue sunglasses. Person D likes to carry an umbrella.
In the sense that we are able to say A and B live in the same world, we are just as able to say that C and D do not.
I understand that this does not fit any sort of mathematical language rigidity requirements. But it is true nonetheless. And I am inclined to sometimes think that many are inclined to worship mathematics a bit too much. I could easily make a simple statement in English that would stretch the limits of math, for instance "It hasn't rained for three days".
Have at it! Sharpen your pencils! Put it in math form! No answers will be accepted if they don't also include complete descriptions of the relevent terms.
So now we have a really, really interesting situation. How can GR be true and QM be true? If there were some basic incompatability between the axioms (something like we find out that "velocity" as it relates to GR isn't the same as "velocity" as it relates to QM) then we could make adjustments and try again.
In the past I have described the multiverse theory. That there are in fact more universes than one, right here, right now. And I will close for the moment with giving an example of something that tries to explain.
We have available to us a rule book. On page 5 of the rulebook, we find the rules for seven card stud.
On page 6 of the book, we find the rules for chess.
Nothing on page 5 contradicts or confirms anything on page 6, and vice versa.
Toward the end of the book, say on page 213, we have the rules for GR. On page 217 we have the rules for QM. Same deal applies.
If we learn ultimately that QM and GR are really talking about two different universes, that is an exciting prospect. Either way. Perhaps the next great breakthrough will come from analysing what are the implications of not being able to merge all the theories.
Anyways I already know there are some things I thought about today that I missed, maybe I'll come back to the thread.
The current quest for a Grand Unified Theory is restricted to how the four basic forces work. The odd man out continues to be gravity, which is doubly odd since it was the first basic force identified. Hilbert was the reigning saint of Logical Positivism, for which unfortunately Goedel, a close friend of Einstein, proved a couple of theorems that showed the axiom system impossible. Goedel also showed that if time travel is possible under Relativity, which it is, then time is not.
That doesn't leave much beyond particular circumstances except a beehive of hopes stinging and buzzing.
--Dos Passos
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