Re: Universal grammar


Hans Aberg wrote:

I can give one example : in the newsgroup sci.astro.research, there was
recently a thread "The universe changes shape", where some respondents
fell that the idea of giving the universe a shape and other do not. Giving
the universe itself a shape suits well in a popular science magazine as it
is highly intuitive, but it is unclear whether the idea really makes sense
in a hard-core scientific context.

The article I mentioned does make sense for me:
Black Hole Paradox, 28 October 2006 issue of the
New Scientist, The elephant and the event horizon,
by Amanda Gefter, pages 36-39. Some quotes:

Begin: "What happens when you throw an elephant
into a black hole? It sounds like a bad joke, but it's
a question that has been weighing heavily on Leonard
Susskind's mind. Susskind, a physicist at Stanford
university in California, has been trying to save that
elephant for decades. He has finally found a way to
do it, but the consequences shake the foundations of
what we tought we knew about space and time. If his
calculations are correct, the elephant must be in more
than one place at the same time."

Susskind: "People always thought quantum ambiguity
was a small-scale phenomenon. We're learning that
the more quantum gravity becomes important, the more
huge-scale ambiguity comes into play."

Gefter: "All this amounts to the fact that an object's
location in space-time is no longer indisputable.
Susskind calls this "a new form of relativity". Einstein
took factors that were thought to be invariable - an other
object's length and the passage of time - and showed
that they were relative to the motion of an observer.
The location of an object in space or in time could only
be defined with respect to an observer, but it's location
in space-time was certain. Now that notion has been
shattered, says Susskind, and an object's location in
space-time depends on an observer's state of motion
with respect to a horizon. // What's more, this new type
of "non-locality" is not just for black holes. It occurs
anywhere a boundary separates regions of the universe
that can't communicate with each other. Such horizons
are more common than you might think. Anything that
accelerates - the Earth, the solar system, the Milky Way
- creates a horizon."

Steve Giddings, University of California, Santa Barbara:
"It's likely that this black hole information paradox will
lead to a revolution at least as profound as the advent
of quantum mechanics."

The article is short, well written, nicely illustrated, and
ends with a mind-boggling speculation by Susskind.
As the expansion of the universe is speeding up, the
accelerating space-time creates a horizon, and so the
cosmic microwave background that surrounds us may be
kind of a Hawking radiation coming from our universe's
edge. "If that's the case, it might tell us about the
elephants on the other side of the universe."

Regards Franz Gnaedinger

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Universal grammar
    ... Black Hole Paradox, 28 October 2006 issue of the ... New Scientist, The elephant and the event horizon, ... As the expansion of the universe is speeding up, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Birdblog: The Blackness of the Hole
    ... What of God in all of this? ... Everything, including the Universe itself, moves; ... placing the world on the back of an elephant, ... author of the Book of Genesis understood this? ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: A mammoth story - Million-year-old mammoth skeleton found
    ... The universe is stranger than you think. ... Ancient elephant unearthed in Indonesia ... excavated the almost complete 2,00,000-year- old elephant skeleton ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: right winger slams creationism
    ... we know the universe exists at t his point. ... does not mean you did not eat an elephant. ... unlike an artisan, Nature ... ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Quantum Gravity 92.0: SubPlanckian Time
    ... the relative horizon, 0[infinity.... ... Universe can self-similarily infinitize itself via its own naked ... Mirror itself to infinity via its own naked singularity. ... I know that we observe Proxima Centauri to be 4.22 light years away ...
    (sci.physics)
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