To: RightWhale
I have often wondered if the red-shift is really caused by photons losing energy very slowly as they pass through thousands of years of space-time. There is only two ways a photon can lose energy... either its wavelength becomes longer or it slows down. I think we have evidence that the wavelength becomes longer (the red shift). How would you test such a theory?
If the speed of light is slowing down, would a photon be slowing down along with it?
To: LloydofDSS
Wolfram effectively sidesteps the issue of degrees of complexity. There is no debate that a degenerate pattern such as a chessboard has no effective complexity. Wolfram also acknowledges that mere randomness does not represent complexity either, because pure randomness also becomes predictable in its pure lack of predictability. It is true that the interesting features of a Class 4 automata are neither repeating nor pure randomness, so I would agree that they are more complex than the results produced by other classes of Automata. However, there is nonetheless a distinct limit to the complexity produced by these Class 4 automata. The many images of Class 4 automata in the book all have a similar look to them, and although they are non-repeating, they are interesting (and intelligent) only to a degree. Moreover, they do not continue to evolve into anything more complex, nor do they develop new types of features. One could run these automata for trillions or even trillions of trillions of iterations, and the image would remain at the same limited level of complexity. They do not evolve into, say, insects, or humans, or Chopin preludes, or anything else that we might consider of a higher order of complexity than the streaks and intermingling triangles that we see in these images. I found this review to be rather interesting, but I do like Wolfram's work.
To: LloydofDSS
If the speed of light is slowing down, would a photon be slowing down along with it? The jury is still out on photons. Einstein created photons as a byproduct of his various theories. While they explain some things, they are the result of a model and nothing more. Light is simply the energy released by nerves in the eye when whatever-it-is strikes them. When they refer to the speed of light, they mean the speed of propagation of the phenomenon referred to as photons.
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