Imagine 10 dimensions? Quite far-fetched... but after a few guided thoughts, it works out fine, actually.
Check it out here: http://www.tenthdimension.com/flash2.php
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Thursday, February 16, 2006
The Landscape
I've been so wanting to post this for ages after finally finishing the book, but for some reason, I've never gotten down to doing it. Nonetheless, I've finally managed to pick out the time to do it, one month after my previous post.
Here, I wish to talk about the Cosmic Landscape - a Landscape of possibilities of what our universe could be like. Cosmologists have postulated such a Landscape, pioneered by leading cosmologist Leonard Susskind.
Imagine that our universe resides in an even greater world - one that has many pocket universes inside it, with many hills and valleys representing different states in the laws of physics and different values for every constant known. As time progresses, the pocket universes 'roll' around the landscape, with the constants and laws of physics changing each change in position of the universe.
Specific conditions have to exist just to allow for life like ours to exist. They must be really fine-tuned to ensure that specific events, such as protons and neutrons binding through the strong nuclear force, and electrons and protons having opposite charges, occur to describe the kind of chemistry that we need to have life as it is now. Any minute fine-tuning that goes haywire, and chemistry as we know it could well blow out of hand - protons and electrons could start having equal charges; the strong nuclear force could become too weak to hold protons and neutrons together, and atoms would just blow apart. Or then again, the gravitational constant could be come too large, and gravity would start causing the universe to crunch not long after the Big Bang. So it is important to know how the laws of physics are so fine-tuned to allow for life to occur.
But as we go deeper and deeper in broadening our knowledge about space, will we eventually reach the line that, perhaps, a designer has drawn for us to limit our knowledge? Do we have an intelligent designer that has eluded our minds for the entire history of humanity? Research in this field raises such questions as being real and pertinent to understanding the universe and its structure.
Here, I wish to talk about the Cosmic Landscape - a Landscape of possibilities of what our universe could be like. Cosmologists have postulated such a Landscape, pioneered by leading cosmologist Leonard Susskind.
Imagine that our universe resides in an even greater world - one that has many pocket universes inside it, with many hills and valleys representing different states in the laws of physics and different values for every constant known. As time progresses, the pocket universes 'roll' around the landscape, with the constants and laws of physics changing each change in position of the universe.
Specific conditions have to exist just to allow for life like ours to exist. They must be really fine-tuned to ensure that specific events, such as protons and neutrons binding through the strong nuclear force, and electrons and protons having opposite charges, occur to describe the kind of chemistry that we need to have life as it is now. Any minute fine-tuning that goes haywire, and chemistry as we know it could well blow out of hand - protons and electrons could start having equal charges; the strong nuclear force could become too weak to hold protons and neutrons together, and atoms would just blow apart. Or then again, the gravitational constant could be come too large, and gravity would start causing the universe to crunch not long after the Big Bang. So it is important to know how the laws of physics are so fine-tuned to allow for life to occur.
But as we go deeper and deeper in broadening our knowledge about space, will we eventually reach the line that, perhaps, a designer has drawn for us to limit our knowledge? Do we have an intelligent designer that has eluded our minds for the entire history of humanity? Research in this field raises such questions as being real and pertinent to understanding the universe and its structure.
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