RoR: Forum

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 7:07pm

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Was this a two-page advertisement, or a two page article in Science Illustrated?

The reviewers seem quite lackluster - a "biologist" from "FPL" and the "operations manager" of "Florida Microelectronics?"

I am no where being even close enough to judge the mathematical or physical merits of whatever his arguments seem to be. But I find the fact that he avails us of his entire preface, which says little other than that "there is a problem" in itself unimpressive.

I have heard some other recent cosmological theories, such as that the Universe is fractal and not smooth on a large scale, and the idea that our "universe" might be a bleb on the surface of an otherwise hyperdense surface but that due to the run-away inflation of our portion of that surface we are too far from the underlying "dense space" to observe it directly.

Cosmological theories are great fun, as are such things as the search for the roots of the earliest common human language. Joseph Greenberg has posited such roots such as *tik = "finger" which has its equivalent in the Latin-derived digit the Japanese te "hand" and the native English toe. The search for "common human" is charming, and it does present testable predictions, but it has little impact on our practical existence other than to entertain linguists. If new cosmological theories lead to new practical applications, that will be wonderful. Does this Null-Physics, besides supposedly making predictions, (which I can't evaluate) have a potential practical effect on our lives in the way that Einstein's equations did?

Ted Keer

Post 1

Thursday, December 20, 2007 - 11:16am

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Good points, Ted.

One nugget of wisdom that I took away from my cursory review of excerpts from this book relates to the recent "Taking Science on Faith" news article ...

"The signatures of elements are the same in ancient light, billions of years old, as they are in the light from our sun, only minutes old. This means that the laws of physics have not changed in billions of years. If this isn't a good enough track record for their stability, it is difficult to envision a better one. The machinery of existence everywhere, in the form of particles, photons, and interactions, depends on energy conservation. It's what keeps the universe's stars burning. ... energy conservation is a vital universal characteristic."

This excerpt (of an excerpt) seems to contradict what was said in the recent "Taking Science on Faith" news article; although there may still be solipsistic wiggle-room within this excerpt, to simply push back the time-line (to beyond billions of years ago), and stake the arbitrary claim that the laws of physics might have been different trillions of years ago.

I think. [?]

Ed