For one thing, “The end is far” is “scienceTM,” not “religionTM.” Here, The Atlantic‘s Graeme Wood reports on “What will happen to us?: Forecasters tackle the extremely deep future” (Boston Globe, May 1, 2011), featuring recent Templeton winner Martin Rees and others on deep and distant futures, the theory being that it is now possible Read More…
Cosmology
Coffee!!: Why cosmologists should avoid being armchair philosophers
Look, it’s the armchair, okay? It’s got to go. There are real philosophers out there, besides which great scientists have taken the philosophy of science very seriously. Undeterred by that history, Stephen Hawking recently dismissed philosophy in The Grand Design (with Leonard Mlodinow). In his view, philosophy did not contribute to knowledge compared with science. Read More…
“Twentieth century dematerialism”?
A late 2010 cosmology book features cosmologist Paul Davies as editor. Davies is known for a number of reflections on extraterrestrials. Information and the Nature of Reality: From Physics to Metaphysics “This is the anthology we have been waiting for … seminal papers deal with matter through the history of Greek thought, seventeenth-century materialism and Read More…
NASA’s future in largely private hands?: Will the organization’s pronouncements on life in the universe change?
At MSNBC’s Cosmic Log, Alan Boyle tells us “How tycoons will fuel space flight” (April 22, 2011): With the shuttle program winding down, the future of American spaceflight may well depend on how starry-eyed tycoons spend their money — and some of NASA’s money as well.
Space, time, and quantum teleportation of light
From Rebecca Boyle at PopSci.com, we learn, “Researchers Succeed in Quantum Teleportation of Light Waves: Like Schrödinger’s cat, teleported light is both dead and alive” (04.15.2011) In this experiment, researchers in Australia and Japan were able to transfer quantum information from one place to another without having to physically move it. It was destroyed in Read More…
Last call for real coffee!! “God particle” supposedly found
From Fox News LiveScience, we learn: World’s Largest Atom Smasher May Have Detected ‘God Particle’ (April 22, 2011): A rumor is floating around the physics community that the world’s largest atom smasher may have detected a long-sought subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, also known as the “God particle.” The controversial rumor is based on Read More…
One-dimensional early universe theory is testable, prof says
In “Primordial Weirdness: Did the Early Universe Have One Dimension? Scientists Outline Test for Theory”, at ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2011), we re asked to consider whether the universe started out with only one dimension: That’s the mind-boggling concept at the heart of a theory that University at Buffalo physicist Dejan Stojkovic and colleagues proposed in Read More…
Dark matter still elusive?
In “Dark matter no-show at sensitive underground lab” (New Scientist, 14 April 2011), Celeste Biever reports that the WIMPs (yes, yes,) wimped out: It’s just like a wimp to be a no-show when summoned for interrogation. That seems to be the result of an experiment to detect the weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, thought Read More…
Galaxy started forming stars only 200 million years after the Big Bang?
From the “earlier than thought” files, galaxies From ScienceDaily (Apr. 12, 2011): Using the amplifying power of a cosmic gravitational lens, astronomers have discovered a distant galaxy whose stars were born unexpectedly early in cosmic history. This result sheds new light on the formation of the first galaxies, as well as on the early evolution Read More…
Uncommon Descent Saturday contest: What would be acceptable evidence for other universes?
(Contest is now judged. Results are here.) First, here’s Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg: … There is also a less creditable reason for hostility to the idea of a multiverse, based on the fact that we will never be able to observe any subuniverses except our own. Livio and Rees, and Tegmark have given thorough Read More…
Cosmology: One of cosmic inflation theory’s creators now questions own theory
A theory that attempts to account for the fine tuning of the universe for life may be “deeply flawed,” we learn in Paul J. Steinhardt’s “The Inflation Debate.” Steinhardt is one of the theory’s creators, nevertheless asks, “Abstract: Is the theory at the heart of modern cosmology deeply flawed? Cosmic inflation is so widely accepted Read More…
Proponent of multiverses and “our universe as possible simulation” wins this year’s Templeton Prize
Proponent of the multiverse and the universe as simulation wins this year’s Templeton Prize The Prize has been awarded to Martin Rees. As Daniel Cressey tells it in Nature (6 April 2011), Controversial ‘spirituality’ award goes to a scientist for fourth year in a row. Martin Rees, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge, UK, Read More…
Martin Rees wins Templeton Prize
A fine tuning and multiverse advocate, Martin J. Rees, today won the 2011 Templeton Prize. The astrophysicist with no religion won the Prize originally “for Progress in Religion.” The 2011 Templeton Prize was announced today. LONDON, APRIL 6 – Martin J. Rees, a theoretical astrophysicist whose profound insights on the cosmos have provoked vital questions Read More…
Why Sean Carroll at the California Institute of Technology thinks that God isn’t needed, and how do you reply?
Here: Big Bang? One sometimes hears the claim that the Big Bang was the beginning of both time and space; that to ask about spacetime “before the Big Bang” is like asking about land “north of the North Pole.” This may turn out to be true, but it is not an established understanding. The singularity Read More…
Coffee!! : The Yeesh files – dark matter as key to habitable planets in outer space
“Dark matter could make planets habitable” (New Scientist, 30 March 2011), Maggie McKee tells us: No one knows what dark matter is – astronomers merely detect its gravitational pull on normal matter, which it seems to outweigh by a factor of five to one. But many researchers believe it is made of particles called WIMPs, Read More…