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7971585
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Why does such fine-tuning occur? And the answer many physicists now believe: the multiverse. A vast number of universes may exist, with many different values of the amount of dark energy. Our particular hat containing zillions of universes, we happened to draw a universe that allowed life.
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fine-tuning-argument
multiverse
fine-tuning
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Alan Lightman |
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f28ec72
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For many years, a family of ospreys lived in a large nest near my summer home in Maine. Each season, I carefully observed their rituals and habits. In mid-April, the parents would arrive, having spent the winter in South America, and lay eggs. In early June, the eggs hatched. The babies slowly grew, as the father brought fish back to the nest, and in early to mid August were large enough to make their first flight. My wife and I recorded al..
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Alan Lightman |
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02acf62
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If time and the passage of events are the same, then times move barely at all. It time and events are the same, then it is only people who barely move. If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.
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Alan Lightman |
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c1a6bc0
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Philosophers have argued without a trend toward order; time would lack meaning. The future would be indistinguishable from the past. Sequences of events would be just so many random scenes from a thousand novels. History would be indistinct, like the mist slowly gathered by treetops in evening.
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Alan Lightman |
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44e0a78
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Indeed, what sense is there in continuing the present when one has seen the future?
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Alan Lightman |
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1c1d93a
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If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.
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Alan Lightman |
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f74f07f
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In fact, this is a world without future. In this world, time is a line that terminates at the present, both in reality and in the mind. In this world, no person can imagine the future.
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Alan Lightman |
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a99ad17
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In a world of fixed future, there can be no right or wrong. Right an wrong demand freedom of choice, but if each action is already chosen, there can be no freedom of choice.
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Alan Lightman |
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e1d98ca
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But what is the past? Could it be, the firmness of the past is just illusion? Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought? And if the shift is everywhere, how would we know?
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Alan Lightman |
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b2122a3
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Einstein once wrote, "The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science."
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Alan Lightman |
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dcec9be
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His dreams have taken hold of his research. His dreams have worn him out, exhausted him so that he sometimes cannot tell whether he is awake or asleep.
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Alan Lightman |
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1a94e23
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But the psychological change accompanying these technologies is more subtle, and perhaps more important. Consciously and unconsciously, we have gradually grown accustomed to experiencing the world through disembodied machines and instruments. As I stood in line to board an airplane recently, the young woman in front of me was primping in her mirror--straightening her hair, putting on lipstick, patting her checks with blush--a female ritual ..
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Alan Lightman |
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c632d79
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A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation. For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips without looking back.
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Alan Lightman |
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51c49fd
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Theoretical physicists are Platonists. Until the last few years, they believed that the entire universe, the one universe, was generated from a few principles of symmetry and mathematical truths, perhaps throwing in a handful of parameters like the mass of the electron. It seemed that we were closing in on a vision of our universe in which everything could be calculated, predicted, and understood. However, two theories in physics, called "e..
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Alan Lightman |
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162dd68
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indicate that the same fundamental principles, from which the laws of nature derive, lead to many different self-consistent universes, with many different properties. It is as if you walked into a shoe store, had your feet measured, and found that a size 5 would fit you, a size 8 would also fit, and a size 12 would fit equally well. Such wishy-washy results make theoretical physicists extremely unhappy. Evidently, the fundamental laws of na..
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Alan Lightman |