Why there is something rather than nothing...
August 23, 2016 at 11:25 pm
(This post was last modified: August 23, 2016 at 11:26 pm by Jehanne.)
plus, an inspirational video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLu1cTKBspI
I started my academic career 30 years ago as a physics major before switching to computer science (so that I could get a job), and it took me a long time to realize, on a truly conscious level, that general relativity is a theory of four equal dimensions. I just didn't get it (which is likely why I failed to become a physicist) until I listened to the Carroll & Craig (what a loser) debate that took place a few years ago. But, yes, indeed there are purely naturalistic cosmological models that are eternal. And, indeed, Carroll, in his debate with Craig, pointed one out:
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0301042
In GR, time is an axis, just like the 3 dimensions that we all know and love, and so, in eternal cosmological models, the time axis runs from minus infinity to plus infinity. It took many years before this one sank in (not too recently, of course), but I am posting this thread mainly for the great Sagan video. What an incredible mind! Not a perfect human being, of course (who is), but a man who went through his entire life with basically two to three full-time jobs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLu1cTKBspI
I started my academic career 30 years ago as a physics major before switching to computer science (so that I could get a job), and it took me a long time to realize, on a truly conscious level, that general relativity is a theory of four equal dimensions. I just didn't get it (which is likely why I failed to become a physicist) until I listened to the Carroll & Craig (what a loser) debate that took place a few years ago. But, yes, indeed there are purely naturalistic cosmological models that are eternal. And, indeed, Carroll, in his debate with Craig, pointed one out:
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0301042
In GR, time is an axis, just like the 3 dimensions that we all know and love, and so, in eternal cosmological models, the time axis runs from minus infinity to plus infinity. It took many years before this one sank in (not too recently, of course), but I am posting this thread mainly for the great Sagan video. What an incredible mind! Not a perfect human being, of course (who is), but a man who went through his entire life with basically two to three full-time jobs.
