Douglas and Dine and their co-workers have taken the first steps in finding the statistical rules governing different string vacua. I can’t comment usefully on this, except to say that it wouldn’t hurt in this work if we knew what string theory is. – Nobelist Steven Weinberg, The Nature of Nature , p. 550 A Read More…
Cosmology
In science, you can consistently get it wrong and still keep your job?
How’d that work out at a used car lot? In “Wrong Again: Planetologists Embarrassed” (Creation-Evolution Headlines, June 23, 2011), Dave Coppedge comments on getting it wrong about planets: In most careers, being wrong too often is grounds for dismissal. False prophets in ancient kingdoms were stoned or shamed out of town. Only in science, it Read More…
Huh? Fellow claims no one cared about “Don’t need God” physicist Sean Carroll’s recent post …
Uh, they did care; response was pretty good. Post here (June 7, 2011). But, one “Larry Tanner” who self-describes as follows, “Larry Tanner” is my nom de blog. I am married, a father of three beautiful children, and enjoying life in New England. I work with robotic technologies, teach classes in English literature, and ghostwrite Read More…
Many worlds theory, many interpretations?
At Discover Magazine’s blog, “Cosmic Variance,” “Sean” asks “Are Many Worlds and the Multiverse the Same Idea?” (2011/05/26) , When physicists are asked about “parallel worlds” or ideas along those lines, they have to be careful to distinguish among different interpretations of that idea. There is the “multiverse” of inflationary cosmology, the “many worlds” or Read More…
The Ice Hunters: Find a Kuiper Belt object while sitting at your computer,and maybe get to name it
At MSNBC’s “Cosmic Log,” Alan Boyle invites the audience to join a citizen science project to help identify future targets for a NASA interplanetary flyby — in this case, for the New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond. – “Join the search for icy worlds,” (June 21, 2011) Right now, the New Horizons team’s top Read More…
New book: “Strong hints” of a multiverse mean ours isn’t fine-tuned
As we noted earlier, in “Why the universe wasn’t fine-tuned for life” (New Scientist, 14 June 2011), Marcus Chown reports on physicist Victor Stenger’s “devastating demolition” of the argument that the laws of physics of our universe were “fine-tuned” to foster life, in The Fallacy of Fine-tuning: Even if some parameters turn out to be Read More…
The multiverse goes mainstream …
You can tell how much the notion of the multiverse pervades popular culture when a media release for the latest woo-woo train advises, Patricia McLaine’s Cosmic Conspiracy explores the common humanity that we all share as members of the Universe or Multiverse, which intricately connects us all. It is a result of the intense emotion Read More…
Can combining the multiverse with the “many worlds” theory save current cosmology?
In “When the multiverse and many-worlds collide” (New Scientist, 01 June 2011), Justin Mullins explains, Two of the strangest ideas in modern physics – that the cosmos constantly splits into parallel universes in which every conceivable outcome of every event happens, and the notion that our universe is part of a larger multiverse – have Read More…
Still room for comments on CalTech physicist Sean Carroll’s “no God needed” piece
Here, Caltech physicist Sean Carroll graciously responded here to UD’s Vincent Torley’s questions, explaining why he thinks God is not needed to explain the universe. It’s shaping up to be one of our most popular posts, besides which … Starting at 3, dark knight KD has certainly livened up the discussion, as have regulars like Read More…
Warning: Before you “dismantle” fine-tuned universe, read directions
In “Why the universe wasn’t fine-tuned for life” (New Scientist, 08 June 2011), Marcus Chown tells us that Victor Stenger’s new The Fallacy of Fine-tuning “dismantles arguments that the laws of physics in our universe were ‘fine-tuned’ to foster life.”: If the force of gravity were a few per cent weaker, it would not squeeze Read More…
Does science need fewer bad boys and more adults?
In Scientific American, Leonard Susskind is profiled as the “Bad Boy of Physics”: “Leonard Susskind rebelled as a teen and never stopped. Today he insists that reality may forever be beyond reach of our understanding (Peter Byrne, June 21, 2011), Stanford University physicist Leonard Susskind revels in discovering ideas that transform the status quo in Read More…
Could dark matter turn out to be WIMPS?
In “New Data Still Have Scientists in Dark Over Dark Matter,” (ScienceDaily, June 8, 2011), we learn: The new seasonal variation, recorded by the Coherent Germanium Neutrino Technology (CoGeNT) experiment, is exactly what theoreticians had predicted if dark matter turned out to be what physicists call Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs).”We cannot call this a Read More…
“No God Needed” CalTech physicist responds to Uncommon Descent’s questions
Recently, Uncommon Descent’s vjtorley posed seven questions to physicist Sean Carroll, Senior Research Associate in Physics at the California Institute of Technology. Carroll had written an article, “Does the Universe need God?” for The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity. Now Carroll has answered the questions, and given us permission to post his response here: Read More…
Still trying to understand what Stephen Hawking meant …
… when he said, “We need to use the effective theory of Darwinian natural selection of those Societies most likely to survive. We assign them a higher value.” Even the interviewer, it turns out, didn’t know what he meant, and has been trying to find out.
Has cosmic inflation collapsed?
In Scientific American (April 2011), Paul J. Steinhardt asks “The Inflation Debate: Is the theory at the heart of modern cosmology deeply flawed? (April 6, 2011) : Summary Cosmic inflation is so widely accepted that it is often taken as established fact. The idea is that the geometry and uniformity of the cosmos were established Read More…