From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Wed Oct 20 1999 - 00:01:45 MDT
> I missed the SciAm article, but in looking at their preprint it is curious
> that they don't mention Frank Tipler. Much of their effort seems to
> be in contradicting Dyson's claim that life could expand forever in
> an expanding universe, but Tipler already did that in his Physics of
> Immortality. I can't really judge the merits of the two works, though,
> the physics is mostly over my head.
Here's a web address for another concept to mix in with, and compare with the
SciAm article. Larry Krauss is an entertaining guy with a headfull of clever
ideas and a terrific teacher. He does, however, fit the SciAM mould, with an
eye to hide-bound conformity; something which Tipler or Julian Barbour
(below) definitely do not!
I think to get new notions on the cosmos, you either have to make new
discoveries with new instruments (upgraded); or to come up with new ideas in
the theory department. For example, in 1997 SciAm ran a lengthy article; on
how they were sure nanotechnology was a "cargo-cult science". To which I
say Sig Transit Scientific American; Viva! New Scientist. Shit-disturbers of
the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your old paradigms.
http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19991016/timeless.html>
From Julian Barbour courtesy New Scientist
>But I think that time is an illusion. Physicists struggling to unify quantum
>mechanics and Einstein's general theory of relativity have found hints that
the >Universe is timeless. I believe that this idea should be taken
seriously. >Paradoxically, we might be able to explain the mysterious "arrow
of time"--the >difference between past and future--by abandoning time. But to
understand how, we >need to change radically our ideas of how the Universe
works.
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