October 9, 2006--Oodles of Googols
Just as I was getting comfortable with the idea that there is just one universe and that it was “created” or originated or got started about 15 billion years ago in a single Big Bang moment, along comes more cosmological information that calls all of this into question.
It’s hard enough trying to get through the day with global warming, Congressional lechery, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, North Korea exploding A Bombs, and the Yankees getting knocked out of the pennant race so ignominiously that I do not also need to know that maybe there is not one universe (ours) but perhaps googols of them. (Googols by the way, as opposed to Google the search engine, is a number of such immense size that it is best expressed as 10 to the power of 100.)
The article linked below from the NY Times sums up the current state of cosmological thinking, or confusion.
A mere 14 years ago George Smoot, an astrophysicist, using data gathered by the COBE satellite, found evidence in the so-called Cosmic Background which “proved” that everything began in that one incredible moment. Maybe some Flat Earth people resisted the notion that the universe was more than 6,000 years old but virtually all scientists were convinced that one of the greatest puzzles confronting the human mind had been solved.
Though just last week Smoot and his collaborator, John Mather won the Nobel Prize for physics, their discovery, so convincing back then, has already been undergoing significant revision. So much so that it may in time become a scientific relic of the order of the earth-centered universe.
Most challenging is the fact that the universe appears to be continuing to expand at an increasing rate rather than slowing down as Big Bang theory requires. Thus, in a search for just why this might be happening, physicists have had to come up with all sorts of untestable, exotic explanations that make it unlikely that the elegance of Smoot and Mather’s work can sustain all of this required amendment and jerry rigging.
What appears to be emerging as a likely counter-theory is the postulation that ours might be just one of googols of universes, each with its own set of physical laws.
As confounding as all of this is, maybe there is a bright side that could compensation for the loss of certainty—perhaps out of these gazillions of universes there might be one where the environment is pure, there are no wars, Congress folks can keep their pants zippered, and the Yankees are headed for the World Series.
If true, and probability suggests it is certain, I say, “Beam me up Scotty.”
It’s hard enough trying to get through the day with global warming, Congressional lechery, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, North Korea exploding A Bombs, and the Yankees getting knocked out of the pennant race so ignominiously that I do not also need to know that maybe there is not one universe (ours) but perhaps googols of them. (Googols by the way, as opposed to Google the search engine, is a number of such immense size that it is best expressed as 10 to the power of 100.)
The article linked below from the NY Times sums up the current state of cosmological thinking, or confusion.
A mere 14 years ago George Smoot, an astrophysicist, using data gathered by the COBE satellite, found evidence in the so-called Cosmic Background which “proved” that everything began in that one incredible moment. Maybe some Flat Earth people resisted the notion that the universe was more than 6,000 years old but virtually all scientists were convinced that one of the greatest puzzles confronting the human mind had been solved.
Though just last week Smoot and his collaborator, John Mather won the Nobel Prize for physics, their discovery, so convincing back then, has already been undergoing significant revision. So much so that it may in time become a scientific relic of the order of the earth-centered universe.
Most challenging is the fact that the universe appears to be continuing to expand at an increasing rate rather than slowing down as Big Bang theory requires. Thus, in a search for just why this might be happening, physicists have had to come up with all sorts of untestable, exotic explanations that make it unlikely that the elegance of Smoot and Mather’s work can sustain all of this required amendment and jerry rigging.
What appears to be emerging as a likely counter-theory is the postulation that ours might be just one of googols of universes, each with its own set of physical laws.
As confounding as all of this is, maybe there is a bright side that could compensation for the loss of certainty—perhaps out of these gazillions of universes there might be one where the environment is pure, there are no wars, Congress folks can keep their pants zippered, and the Yankees are headed for the World Series.
If true, and probability suggests it is certain, I say, “Beam me up Scotty.”
posted by Steven Zwerling at
10:29 AM
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