From: Billy Brown (bbrown@conemsco.com)
Date: Fri Mar 26 1999 - 07:51:05 MST
Damien Broderick wrote:
> Indeed, I wonder if it has any salience to the traditional explanation for
> Olber's paradox. Might the universe be eternal after all, except for
> bubbles like our own that are observable only under (somewhat) anthropic
> conditions?
That makes sense to me.
Of course, there are other ways that the universe could be eternal without
causing a problem:
1) If the universe is eternal but constantly expanding, cosmic red shift
will render anything beyond a certain distance effectively invisible.
2) If the universe contains significant expanses of something that eats
light without re-emitting it (black holes, for instance), they could act as
observation barriers and allow an infinite universe to appear finite.
3) If new, connected regions of space-time are constantly being created
(i.e. the big bang was not unique), you would have large areas that have not
been saturated by light from arbitrarily distant sources.
I think there were a few other options, but I can't remember them at the
moment.
Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@conemsco.com
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