From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue May 28 2002 - 16:20:23 MDT
On Tue, 28 May 2002, Hal Finney wrote:
> Reference 2 provides a good explanation of why this new result is wrong.
> It is available at http://www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9902189:
>
[snip]
> Contrary to the introductory paragraph above from Nature, the new paper
> does not in any way contradict or even address the analysis in this paper
> by Krauss and Starkman. The K/S paper essentially recapitulates Tipler's
> analysis of why life is inherently limited in an expanding universe.
> Astonishingly, they do not credit or reference Tipler, indeed they give
> no evidence that they are aware that they are retreading ground which
> he covered in his 1994 book.
>
> The bottom line is that in an expanding universe, life is inherently
> finite in what it can accomplish.
[snip]
Huh? The K&S paper begins with the statement that "Current evidence
suggests that the cosmological constant is not zero". I believe the
NSU article which is based on the Freese & Kinney paper is looking
at universes that do not depend on a non-zero cosmological constant
(someone correct me if I'm wrong here). Further, we have seen
references to papers that argue you can explain the observed
phenomena without resorting to the cosmological constant (even
if that isn't the basis of the F&K paper) (based on axion oscillations
if I recall correctly).
So trumping the F&K paper with the K&S paper seems to me to be
a relatively weak play, since the assumptions of the K&S paper
are still somewhat in the swamp. A couple of years ago arguing
that the CC even existed would have been met with howls of laughter.
I'd like to see confirming evidence from multiple experimental
methods before we go assuming it is part of the reality.
Robert
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