Aug 30, 2016 10:21 PM
The Multiverse Idea Is Rotting Culture
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archi...er/497417/
EXCERPT: [...] It might be true. I’m not really interested in the science of multiverse theory so much as its impact on the way we think about ourselves, but it helps to state the problem. That problem is wave function collapse. At a quantum level, particles don’t exist as solid objects in space but as probability waves describing the various positions that could potentially be occupied. This is demonstrated by the famous double-slit experiment [...] The hidden question: who decides which slit?
[...] In his 1951 book Der evangelische Glaube und das Denken der Gegenwart, the German academic Karl Heim gave us a perfectly workable answer: God did it. The Almighty, in His infinite benevolence, carefully tends to the waveform collapse of every particle, working on the tiniest levels to create a world kinder to human life.
Heim’s work has been enormously influential in the field of theology, but for some reason it’s generally rejected by the scientific community. Instead, thousands of physicists—big names like Stephen Hawking (who called it ‘trivially true’), Brian Greene, and Neil deGrasse Tyson included—pay lip service to the many-worlds interpretation: the particle still passed through both slits; one here, and one in another universe, created especially for the occasion. It certainly sounds more scientific than Heim’s theory, which tries to shoehorn a Bronze Age concept into an increasingly inhospitable reality. The only snag is that there’s actually very little difference. There’s no way we could ever carry out any experiment to test for the multiverse’s existence in the world, because it’s not in our world. It’s an article of faith, and not a very secure one. What’s more likely: a potentially infinite number of useless parallel universes, or one perfectly ordinary God?
There’s nothing wrong with faith, but if it’s not recognized for what it is then monsters start to spawn, not in some distant reality, but right here. No religion is complete without a moral code, but how do you live ethically in our shapeless foam of worlds, invisible to telescopes but throbbing close at the moment of every decision? In 2014, the New Scientist published an article called “Multiverse Me,” revealing that various lonely boffins take succor from the fact that alternate versions of themselves are leading fun lives full of emotional and sexual fulfillment, instead of solitudinous slogs through the stupid infinity of high-level algebra....
How to Jump-Start Life Elsewhere in Our Galaxy
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archi...ns/497258/
EXCERPT: [...] Earth’s history suggests that even under the best of circumstances, it takes time for large, big-brained organisms to evolve. And not every planet can count on a 4-billion-year run of relatively life-friendly conditions—not in a universe where a neighboring star could explode at any time. Some terrestrial worlds will only have a billion years of habitability, or a few hundred million years, and that might not be enough time to ramp up rich, diverse ecosystems with interesting alien creatures. But what if we could give them a head start?
A new paper by Claudius Gros, a systems theorist at Goethe University in Frankfurt, suggests that future humans could—and more interestingly, should—send “Genesis missions” to planets with limited habitability windows. With our current technical constraints, it’s hard to imagine sending a Noah’s-Ark-style probe housing plants and animals across cosmic distances. But it looks increasingly plausible that we will soon be able to beam small, light-weight spacecraft to distant stars....
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archi...er/497417/
EXCERPT: [...] It might be true. I’m not really interested in the science of multiverse theory so much as its impact on the way we think about ourselves, but it helps to state the problem. That problem is wave function collapse. At a quantum level, particles don’t exist as solid objects in space but as probability waves describing the various positions that could potentially be occupied. This is demonstrated by the famous double-slit experiment [...] The hidden question: who decides which slit?
[...] In his 1951 book Der evangelische Glaube und das Denken der Gegenwart, the German academic Karl Heim gave us a perfectly workable answer: God did it. The Almighty, in His infinite benevolence, carefully tends to the waveform collapse of every particle, working on the tiniest levels to create a world kinder to human life.
Heim’s work has been enormously influential in the field of theology, but for some reason it’s generally rejected by the scientific community. Instead, thousands of physicists—big names like Stephen Hawking (who called it ‘trivially true’), Brian Greene, and Neil deGrasse Tyson included—pay lip service to the many-worlds interpretation: the particle still passed through both slits; one here, and one in another universe, created especially for the occasion. It certainly sounds more scientific than Heim’s theory, which tries to shoehorn a Bronze Age concept into an increasingly inhospitable reality. The only snag is that there’s actually very little difference. There’s no way we could ever carry out any experiment to test for the multiverse’s existence in the world, because it’s not in our world. It’s an article of faith, and not a very secure one. What’s more likely: a potentially infinite number of useless parallel universes, or one perfectly ordinary God?
There’s nothing wrong with faith, but if it’s not recognized for what it is then monsters start to spawn, not in some distant reality, but right here. No religion is complete without a moral code, but how do you live ethically in our shapeless foam of worlds, invisible to telescopes but throbbing close at the moment of every decision? In 2014, the New Scientist published an article called “Multiverse Me,” revealing that various lonely boffins take succor from the fact that alternate versions of themselves are leading fun lives full of emotional and sexual fulfillment, instead of solitudinous slogs through the stupid infinity of high-level algebra....
How to Jump-Start Life Elsewhere in Our Galaxy
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archi...ns/497258/
EXCERPT: [...] Earth’s history suggests that even under the best of circumstances, it takes time for large, big-brained organisms to evolve. And not every planet can count on a 4-billion-year run of relatively life-friendly conditions—not in a universe where a neighboring star could explode at any time. Some terrestrial worlds will only have a billion years of habitability, or a few hundred million years, and that might not be enough time to ramp up rich, diverse ecosystems with interesting alien creatures. But what if we could give them a head start?
A new paper by Claudius Gros, a systems theorist at Goethe University in Frankfurt, suggests that future humans could—and more interestingly, should—send “Genesis missions” to planets with limited habitability windows. With our current technical constraints, it’s hard to imagine sending a Noah’s-Ark-style probe housing plants and animals across cosmic distances. But it looks increasingly plausible that we will soon be able to beam small, light-weight spacecraft to distant stars....