384f5878
XPost: alt.astrology, alt.paranet.metaphysics
From: patrick@io.com
On Wed, 24 Feb 2010 06:49:10 -0800 (PST), Edmond H. Wollmann wrote:
> "The universe is bigger than we think. This seems to be a cosmic
> truth. Times change, theories evolve, astronomers see new things in
> their telescopes?and the universe always turns out to be vaster and
> more mind-boggling than anyone suspected. The most dazzling new theory
> holds that our universe isn't just big, it's one of many. It's like a
> bubble in a huge vat of beer, and every other bubble is another
> universe. (We like this image for some reason.) Our concept of the
> universe used to be tidier. Ancient Egyptians thought the sky was held
> up by mountains at the comers of the Earth, and the stars were not so
> far away. But in the 17th century the telescope shattered that notion.
> Through the lens, the stars were countless, and space had depth.
> Stars were suns, rendered faint only by great distance. Then, in 1923,
> Edwin Hubble proved that mysterious, wispy things called nebulae are
> actually galaxies, or "island universes," outside our own.
> New telescopes have since revealed ever more galaxies, and we've grown
> accustomed to living in Carl Sagan's cosmos, with billions and
> trillions of galaxies, each utterly lousy with stars. But Sagan may
> have been underestimating.
> A satellite called the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe recently
> captured a glimpse of the residual radiation from the young universe,
> when there were no galaxies, only perturbations in a seething,
> expanding cosmos. The data give a precise age to the universe: 13.7
> billion years, plus or minus 200 million years. Perhaps more
> significantly, the data support the idea of cosmic inflation, a
> variant of the big bang. The inflationary theory states that very
> early in the expansion the cosmos suddenly inflated, becoming
> unimaginably vast in a fraction of a second.
> If inflation is correct, the universe really is more than a million
> trillion trillion trillion times larger than the already enormous
> visible cosmos. It's practically infinite in scale. You have to speak
> like a child to convey the idea?it's basically a gazillion times
> larger than we thought. And there's more: One variation of the
> inflation theory suggests that our universe is a calm bubble, a kind
> of "no inflation zone" within an infinitely large, chaotic, eternally
> inflating "multiverse," and that this multiverse contains countless
> bubble universes, some of which almost surely contain intelligent
> observers trying to make sense of their own crazy cosmos.
> The problem is, a multiverse is a hard theory to prove. "Is this
> science? Not yet" warns cosmologist Michael Turner of the University
> of Chicago. "We can't test it" But here's the most alarming part about
> living in a multiverse. If the cosmos is more or less infinite in
> scale, then statistical probabilities dictate that somewhere there's a
> planet identical to Earth, containing creatures identical to us,
> leading identical lives.
> We don't buy it. Could there really be another world where Adam
> Sandler is a movie star???Joel Achenbach Washington Post Staff writer,
> National Geographic, August 2003
You eminently deserve a permanent position in the annual San Antonio
Festival...of course, as El Rey Feo.
--
Patrick L. "The Chief Instigator" Humphrey (patrick@io.com) Houston, Texas
www.io.com/~patrick/aeros.php (TCI's 2009-10 Houston Aeros) AA#2273
LAST GAME: Rockford 3, Houston 2 (SO, March 14)
NEXT GAME: Saturday, March 20 vs. Milwaukee, 7:35
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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