 
GOLDMAN'S BULLDOG PRESENTS

NOBODY KNOWS

THE BIG BANG!

HOW MANY UNIVERSES CAN  
DANCE ON THE HEAD OF A PIN?

Written by:

NOBODY!

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**ADVANCE PRAISE FOR** _NOBODY KNOWS THE BIG BANG!_

"Let's have Nobodies review the book before we publish it. That'll give us a jump on the critics!" Nobody!

"Clearly the waste product of one of those monkeys attempting to type the complete works of Shakespeare." Nobody at Save the Typing Chimps

"During its golden age, the universe was a game of billiards. Apparently, the universe lost." Nobody at the Billiard Congress of America

"The Bob Dylan of popular science writes again." Nobody on Maggie's Farm

"String theory as Orwellian cosmology?" Nobody on Animal Farm

"Where scientists have long failed, Nobody! has successfully extracted sunbeams from cucumbers. All we need now is a new battery to store them in." Nobody at the Grand Academy of Lagado

"Nobody! believes that genies should be kept in bottles--except for Barbara Eden, of course!" Nobody at the American Genie Bottling Company

"'Imagination in a tight straitjacket!'" Nobody in Arkham Asylum

"A Nobody! book is a quantum object. It invites all possible interpretations!" Nobody at Barnes & Noble Booksellers ("The Universe...in Books!")

"Hoyle without rules--who'd have thought?" Nobody reading Hoyle's Rules of Games

"You get Mr.Wizard, but you want Roxy Hart!" Nobody at the American Hart Association

"Unfilmable!" Nobody at Variety

"A Nobody! book is _The Crack in the Cosmic Egg!_ " Nobody breaking eggs at Ruby's Diner

"'Until scientists work it out, the big bang really is just the big yawn!' What'd we pay this guy?" Nobody at NoDoz ("Helps Students Stay Awake! Even during the Big Yawn!")

"You're in good hands with...Nobody!" Nobody at Allstate Insurance

"'Life is a snuff film!' Give me a break!" Nobody at Enough Snuff

"I hear that Stephen Hawking is going to sue!" Nobody at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney

"Not one word! I hear that William Goldman is going to sue!" Nobody at the Motion Picture and Television Fund

"If Frank Sinatra were alive today, he'd rewrite 'My Way' as 'My Theory.' 'I did it! My-y-y-y theory!'" Nobody at Caesar's Palace

"Why does the universe make me think, 'Why does the universe make me think?' Why does the universe make me think, 'Why does the universe make me think?' Why does the universe make me think, 'Why does the universe make me think?'" Nobody repeating the CERN Koan

"What's easier to believe--that Nobody! is a genius, and the universe is stupid; or that Nobody! is stupid, and the universe is a genius?" Nobody in The Genius Universe

"There does seem to be one silver lining. In an infinite universe, every idiot will have their day." Nobody at Idiots Anonymous

"In an infinite universe, every possible violation of Occam's razor will occur an infinite number of times." Nobody sharpening Occam's Infinity Razor

"The Supreme Court has already ruled that free will exists.* Maybe we should just make it illegal to promote the idea of a multiverse without citing evidence and leave it to the courts to decide!" Nobody in Washington D.C.

* (United States v. Grayson, 1978)

____________________

GOLDMAN'S BULLDOG PRESENTS

NOBODY KNOWS

THE BIG BANG!

HOW MANY UNIVERSES CAN  
DANCE ON THE HEAD OF A PIN?

Written by:

NOBODY!

http://www.goldmansbulldog.com

Published by Smashwords, Inc.

Copyright 2015 by Author

Cover Art by Chelsea Potts

____________________

SMASHWORDS EDITION, LICENSE NOTES

Thank you for downloading this e-book. You are welcome to share it with friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Genesis According to Hawking

PART ONE

JUST ME, JUST YOU

Chapter 2: Stamp Collecting

Chapter 3: Schrodinger's Rat

Chapter 4: Just Me

Chapter 5: Sim City

Chapter 6: The Apple of "I, Robot's" Eye

Chapter 7: Brave New Reality

PART TWO

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GRAND DESIGN

Chapter 8: When E. F. Hutton Talks

Chapter 9: The "M" in M-Theory

Chapter 10: God in the Machine

Chapter 11: A Most Determined Scientist

Chapter 12: Do Laws Govern?

Chapter 13: Maps and Territories

Chapter 14: The Bomb Man, the Cat Man and The Van Man

Chapter 15: The Neighbor Problem

PART THREE

MAVERICK

Chapter 16: According to Hoyle

Chapter 17: The Knight Errant

Chapter 18: Monkeys Typing Shakespeare

Chapter 19: The Big Bang

Chapter 20: Steady as She Goes

Chapter 21: The Intelligent Universe

Chapter 22: The Room-Temperature Universe

PART FOUR

THE END OF PHYSICS

Chapter 23: The Golden Age of the Cosmos

Chapter 24: Supernatural Laws

Chapter 25: The God of Miracles

Chapter 26: The Other Theories

Chapter 27: The Governator

Chapter 28: Physics Off the Rails

Chapter 29: The Sunshine of the Eternal Mind

PART FIVE

KNOWN UNKNOWNS

Chapter 30: House M.D.

Chapter 31: Straw Dogs

Chapter 32: To Serve Man

Chapter 33: Lucy in the Sky

Chapter 34: How Many Angels?

Chapter 35: Murphy's Other Law

Chapter 36: Infinite Nonsense

Chapter 37: We Think, Therefore, It Is

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APPENDIX

The Rolls-Royce of Universes!

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Author's Photo

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"So many universes, so little time."

The String Theorists' Lament

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CHAPTER 1: GENESIS ACCORDING TO HAWKING

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Uncertainty Principle moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

Genesis 1-3, The Holy Bible: King James Version

It's amazing how changing just three words ("Spirit of God" to "Uncertainty Principle") seems to completely change the meaning of the opening verses of Genesis. Of course, the authors of Genesis used language that was appropriate for the people who lived when the verses were written--people who believed that reality was ruled by the supernatural--but, as revised above, Genesis is a perfectly good stand-in for our current scientific understanding of the origin of the universe. Originally, "the earth was without form, and void." This "void" of Genesis can be interpreted as "the nothing that isn't really nothing," which is what modern scientists believe is the correct definition of empty space. Physicists believe that empty space is not really empty at all. Virtual particles pop in and out of existence in an infinitesimal "blink of an eye" so that space appears to be empty, but it isn't. The reason that virtual particles pop in and out of existence has to do with the Uncertainty Principle.

Most physicists today believe that before the big bang the only thing that existed was empty space and the Uncertainty Principle. A _fluctuation_ in empty space _caused_ by the Uncertainty Principle _caused_ an unbelievably huge, hot ball of plasma to pop out of, essentially, nothing. As this plasma cooled, the first things that were created were photons ("Let there be light"). After photons came quarks, then atoms, then galaxies, then us. The level of scientific accuracy in these bible verses is especially impressive when you consider that they were written more than twenty-five hundred years ago.

Now, the Uncertainty Principle of Genesis--or the Spirit of God if you prefer--is _not_ God. The Spirit of God is the _means_ that God used to create the universe. The question that haunts us then becomes: "Why would an infinitely powerful being like God create just one universe?" Modern science has come to the rescue with an answer that makes perfect God-sense. God did not create just one universe with the Uncertainty Principle; God created an _infinite_ number of universes! If you think of each universe as "a thought in the mind of God," then you will be in perfect harmony with Stephen Hawking who has been seeking "the mind of God" in the explanation of the origin of our universe for the past twenty-five years. String theorists have finally found it for him in Genesis.

An infinite God would create an infinite number of universes, no?

What could possibly satisfy the Infinite but infinity itself?

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PART ONE

JUST ME, JUST YOU

Just you, just me

Let's find a cozy spot

To cuddle and coo

Just us, just we

I've missed an awful lot

My trouble is you

Oh, gee

What are your charms for?

What are your arms for?

Use your imagination

Just you, just me

I'll tie a lover's knot

'Round wonderful you*

* From "Just You, Just Me," music and lyrics by Jesse Greer and Raymond Klages (I like Ken Shapiro's clumsily kinetic version at the end of The Groove Tube, the classic film satire of commercial television.)

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CHAPTER 2: STAMP COLLECTING

I know, you're bored already; you have every right to be. What could be more boring than stamp collecting?

Modern science is a victim of its own success. Scientists have figured out all of the things that we wanted to know. We understand the structure of matter at the atomic level and at the level of chemistry and the Periodic Table of the Elements. We understand our solar system and, more remarkably, the universe. We understand the processes of life and DNA. We even understand why the weather is so hard to predict. We can do amazing things like fly through the sky and into space. We have miraculous machines that can do almost anything and, now, communications technology that rivals bee colonies (who claim to have invented facial-recognition software and Facebook several million years ago). Medicine (biology) is far more complex than physics or chemistry, but even there we're making remarkable advances--if we can just figure out a way to pay for them all! We have even mastered information technology, and we finally understand that economic markets are no more rational than we are.

While there is still much to learn (much more than what we know already), we are in what is known as the "stamp collecting" phase of science. The fun theoretical work has been done, and now it's time for the technicians to step in and mop up. The mopping up will take forever as knowledge is added to knowledge. We will decode the genome of every living creature (untold millions) if we have enough time. They will all be stored in one of those gigantic Google storage facilities, hidden underground somewhere in Nebraska, I think.

This has left the scientists who specialize in the fun theoretical work with a problem. They don't have anything left to do. Being clever, they have decided that this isn't really a problem. Now that they've explained how the world that we live in functions, they can explain how worlds that we don't live in function. Hidden dimensions and alternate universes should be good for another century or two of intensive exploration. As we already know, it's a lot more fun to watch Fringe* than it would be to watch a television series about a stamp collecter who hunts down rare stamps around the world (The Stamp Lady)\--no matter how beautiful the star, how exotic the locations, or how high the stilettos!**

* The alternate ("Walternate") universe television series

** Like modern skyscrapers, modern stilettos are only limited by the laws of physics and the ingenuity of engineers. In the modern stiletto, engineering sexism meets many women's desire to be taller and/or more desireable--a near perfect symbiosis that is a continuous source of income for chiropractors as well as foot, ankle, knee, and back doctors. Tune in next week for the Grey's Anatomy crossover episode, "The Stamp Lady Takes a Fall." The rumor mill speculates a romance with Dr. Hunt or Dr. Torres...or, perhaps, both! Will the Stamp Lady go too far?

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CHAPTER 3: SCHRODINGER'S RAT

"Any idiot knows that you can't predict the future." Any Idiot

I'm looking at a miracle--a single atom actually. Her name is Astrid.* She is being held in a vacuum "trap" and illuminated with lasers. She is a barium atom; barium atoms are understood by physicists to be particulary sexy, which is why they trapped her. She is extraordinarily beautiful, a pale blue dot on a black background--similar to the way the earth looks when viewed from deep space. Then there's the miracle part; I can see her with my naked eye because she has been lit up to shine like a tiny sun by the lasers.

You really do have to admire the ingenuity of scientists. Imagine the intellectual brilliance that it takes to conceive how to suspend an atom in empty space and hold her there and light her up just so that we can see her in all her naked glory! It's the atomic equivalent of Fifty Shades of Gray (blue in this case). If physicists seem a bit chauvinistic at times, you have to cut them some slack; they're mostly men hanging out with men. You know how that can be.

Ever since Newton published his law of gravity, scientists have been enamored with the idea that the knowledge that allows them to predict the motions of the planets ought to apply to all things and that, therefore, the future can be predicted from the past. This clever idea is called scientific determinism. For over a century now, scientists have known that it isn't true, but they just can't stop talking about it as if it were true. As we shall see, one of the recurring themes of modern physics is a reluctance to deny scientific determinism. Scientists keep trying to slip it back in, but it only slips in at the planetary level--not where we live here on earth.

The reason this bothers scientists is easy to understand. If they can't predict the future at the scale where we all live, then what exactly does it mean when they say that they can predict the future of large systems like stars and planets and galaxies? Once they give up scientific determinism at the level where we all live, they give up science's greatest bargaining chip in their claim that they understand the true nature of reality. "We can predict the big, but not the small" is a definition of a failure of science and scientists know it. Their efforts to reconcile this failure is one of the stories of this book.

Back in the sixties when I was in college, we were taught that radioactive decay demonstrated that scientific determinism does not exist. To understand why, you only need to know one thing--radioactive decay is a completely random event. No one in the universe can ever possibly know under any imaginable circumstance when any individual radioactive atom will decay. This is a such a basic, fundamental tenet of modern physics that all physicists today believe that it is true. This may be the only fact in modern physics that all physicists agree on (someone should take a poll). If it isn't true, then the laws of modern physics will have to be rewritten. And, of course, if radioactive decay is random--if anything is random--then determinism is impossible. It's as simple as that.

The easiest way to illustrate this is with a slight variation of the famous Schrodinger's Cat thought puzzle. The only difference is that the box that the cat is kept in is transparent so that we can see into it. This completely changes the nature of the experiment, so to differentiate we'll put a rat inside the box instead of a cat. A single radioactive atom (think Astrid) is suspended in a trap inside the box and a detector is mounted that will record the moment when she decays. When it detects decay, it will trigger a hammer that will break a flask that will release a gas that will kill the rat. Obviously, when the rat dies--a large-scale event we can all see--affects the deterministic future. The world is different if the rat is dead than if it is alive. If the rat's death cannot be predicted, then the future cannot be deterministic no matter how much information we have about the position and velocity of everything in it. Think about it. We know the position and velocity of the trapped radioactive atom with incredible precision (look at Astrid's photo again)--and we still don't know when the rat will die!

Schrodinger's Rat Disproves Determinism

(Illustration by Chelsea Potts)

If you think that this experiment is highly artificial, then just think about cancer. When a certain kind of radioactive atom decays, it emits a particle that can cause a human cell to become cancerous if it strikes its DNA in a certain way. If whether or not a person gets cancer can be determined by a completely random event,** then the universe is obviously not deterministic, no matter what the scientists try to tell us.

* Not to be confused with the equally enigmatic Astrid of the Fringe television series. I'm referring to the atom in the book Taming the Atom, Hans Christian von Baeyer, Random House, New York, 1992, Photograph Section (see Astrid...and wonder).

** Scientists have determined that up to three-fourths of all cancers may be caused by random, non-deterministic events. The history of cancer provides clear evidence that strict determinism does not function where we live here on earth.

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CHAPTER 4: JUST ME

Que sera, sera

Whatever will be, will be

The future's not ours to see

Que sera, sera*

Many people have heard of Occam's razor--that the simplest explanation of almost anything is probably true--but what on earth is a razor? Occam's razor isn't a law or a principle or even a theory; it's a generalized statement about probabilities. The simplest explanation is _probably_ correct, but the simplest explanation isn't _always_ correct. _Probable_ means more than fifty percent; how much more probable, nobody knows exactly. It might be anywhere from "slightly better than a coin toss" to "practically certain," depending on the specific circumstances. That's it, Occam's razor in all its vague glory: "Whatever will probably be, will probably be!"

When it comes to theories of the universe, only one theory meets the standard of Occam's razor. All the other theories are hopelessly muddled and/or mind-numbingly complex. Obviously, this does not mean that the other theories are wrong; just that the simplest explanation is _probably_ correct. The simplest explanation of all reality--the entire universe including my mind, all of you and your minds, and absolutely everything else in our universe as well as in all other universes (no matter how many)--is...big drum roll here...a simulation of one. All of reality is a simulation just for me!

Or to put it more simply, I _am_ the simulation!

This is by no means a new idea. The Irish bishop George Berkeley proposed it centuries ago. Berkeley's great insight was that while it is impossible to know for certain if the world that we perceive is real, we can know for certain that _we perceive it as real._ Berkeley does not deny physical reality; he simply emphasizes a unique aspect of it--that there is only _one_ mind that any of us is intimately in contact with that perceives it. By emphasizing that all perception is individual, Berkeley rendered the question of whether or not the world we perceive is real...irrelevant. The world is, for all practical purposes, real for the mind perceiving it. Whatever lies behind that reality--including whether or not anything lies behind it--is one of Donald Rumsfeld's _known unknowns._ We don't know; we can't know. And even if we could know, what difference would it make? If your life is a dream taking place somewhere...else...it's still your life.

It's like being in a movie in which I am the lead character, but the lead character is also narrating the movie--much as the voice inside my head seems to be narrating the story of my life. The entire universe that we all live in and that we all understand is contained in that movie--or at least it appears to be.

Berkeley's clever philosophical trick was that--like Descartes before him--he did not deny his own existence ("I think, therefore, I am"), but he did deny _your_ existence. So far nobody (not even Dr. Johnson with his famous toe-stubbing foot) has been able to refute him. It's not about whether stones or Dr. Johnson are real; it's about whether or not _you_ are real. How could Dr. Johnson know that Boswell existed anywhere but in Dr. Johnson's own mind? How could he know that Boswell had thoughts just as he did? How could he know that Boswell and the biography that he wrote about Dr. Johnson were anything more than a figment of his own (Dr. Johnson's) imagination? How could he know that he was not in a coma somewhere dreaming about writing a dictionary?

He can infer; he can amass evidence to convince himself; _but he can_ _never know for sure._

Hmmph!

Makes you want to kick a stone, doesn't it?

* Written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans (Doris Day singing, of course!)

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CHAPTER 5: SIM CITY

This old town's filled with Sims

It'll swallow you in

If you've got some money to burn

Take it home right away

You've got three years to pay

But Satan is waiting his turn

This old earthquake's gonna leave me in the poor house

It seems like this whole town's insane

On the thirty-first floor a gold-plated door

Won't keep out the Lord's burning rain

The scientists say

It'll all wash away

But we don't believe any more

'Cause we've got our recruits

And our green mohair suits

So please show your ID at the door*

Some scientists believe that the world we all see is pixelated--that the point particles of modern physics are video-screen pixels. The world is not real; it is a near-perfect video simulation. This is the video-simulation theory of reality. The theory goes something like this. With each passing year, computers are better able to simulate reality. In the very near future, near-perfect simulations are inevitable. The probability, many believe, is that the world we are experiencing is _already_ just such a simulation. This is another one of those crafty applications of Occam's all-purpose probability razor.

The argument _against_ a simulated universe is that the universe is far too complex to simulate convincingly without errors that would be obvious ("bugs in the software" would be "bugs in the universe"). Of course, this problem goes away if you only have to simulate the universe for one person. First, the universe that you have to simulate is incredibly simple. It only includes whatever is happening to me (or you) right now. The entire universe is nothing more than lights I see in the night sky or those lights amplified through a telescope if I happen to be looking through one or an explanation of the universe that I read in a book or saw on television or at a planetarium. This simulation is a piece of cake compared to simulating an entire universe. It's easy to imagine mounting such a simulation on a sophisticated laptop computer in the not-too-distant future. Welcome to the world of _I, Matrix._

Other people who interact with you--your family and loved ones, your friends and co-workers--are all just part of your simulation. There may be other simulations that are real, but you can never know that for certain as they might just be part of your simulation (we're back to Bishop Berkeley, Dr. Johnson and Boswell here). Of course, there will be glitches in the software that you will notice from time to time, but we are trained from childhood to understand that our minds sometimes play tricks on us. If you occasionally see pink elephants, they are not a glitch in the simulation; they're an error of perception--the bourbon you drank last night or the drugs you took or an LSD flashback. Because our minds have so many different ways of playing tricks on us, it's just a matter of selecting an appropriate one from the drop-down list of options whenever you encounter a software glitch.

And if you insist that the pink elephants are real...well...there's a place in the simulation for people like you too!

* This is the "Sim City" variant of "Sin City" ("This old town's filled with sin") by Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman--The Flying Burrito Brothers!

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CHAPTER 6: THE APPLE OF "I, ROBOT'S" EYE

So, who wrote the simulation?

God only knows.

The most popular idea seems to be that my future self has maintained a detailed electronic record of everything that I have seen and done. That future self has edited this data and created a simulation to be replayed, perhaps while incapacitated in a retirement home somewhere.

Or, maybe, I am what is left of the information that was in my brain when I died, downloaded to a computer somewhere, and replaying in a loop so that, in a sense, I will never die. I will simply relive my life over and over again. Maybe the computer changes some parameters every time it re-plays the simulation so that I end up living out every possible variation of my own life. Rather than being reincarnated as a different person, I am reincarnated as myself but with a slightly different life story.

Or, perhaps, my simulation was created by a jilted lover who wants me to experience how miserable my life _should have been_ after jilting her. My life failings may have been invented by someone who is not me and who only knew me briefly. My suffering in this life may be nothing more than a punishment for something that I did not do (propose) in my real life. We're deep into "hell hath no fury" territory here. If I did her a favor by saving her from a disastrous marriage (saving myself in the process), then we're also deep into "no self-serving good deed goes unpunished" territory.

Or, worse, my simulation might be nothing more than my mother's simulation about my life as relived in _her_ retirement home somewhere. Perhaps, they adjust the simulation every morning depending on how _she_ is feeling that day. In many ways, that would explain a lot.

Or I might be a simulation written by a robot in the future--a robot who wants to know what it's like to "be" human. I might be nothing more than the apple of "I-Robot's" eye*--the high-tech dream of some future Pinocchio who will never know what it is to experience real human feelings and emotions. "I" may be as close as this Pinocchio will ever get to feeling human. That, too, would explain a lot.

Or what if this world is purgatory, like the island on _Lost?_ Purgatory is the place where you go to pay for the sins that you committed while you were alive--to prepare you for heaven. What if I am paying for sins that I committed during my life now that is over, a life that I do not remember? Purgatory would make no sense if you know that you are in purgatory because you would know that whatever you are suffering today doesn't really matter because heaven is the final, inevitable destination. Anyone would be happy to endure the tortures of the dungeon if they knew that their final destination would be paradise. I mean, we're talking paradise here! If purgatory exists, it would have to be a secret--God's secret.

If that's the case, then God wrote the simulation.

* With a tip of the hat to Isaac "I-Robot" Asimov

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CHAPTER 7: BRAVE NEW REALITY

Or, maybe the robots kept us. The human brain is the most complex thing in the known universe so they might have been worth preserving as the humans died off (however they may have died off). We've all seen the image in sci-fi movies--a brain in a jar.*

Imagine one jar, or billions of them, or any number in between. Of course, you can't know anything about the other jars. You can only know about one of them, and the only thing that you can know about that jar is what it's thinking. The universe is real for that jar, whatever that universe might be. We're back deep into Bishop Berkeley territory here.

You may have noticed that there isn't really much difference between these various models. You can't tell if you're a brain in a jar, or a video-simulation, or an idea in the mind of God or your Aunt Gertie, can you? Once you accept any of these ideas, you kind of...sort of...have to accept _all of them_ along with any other ideas that might occur to you to explain your reality. This isn't an argument for God, but it is an analysis that says that the idea of God is not completely ridiculous. God is whoever runs the simulation. Whether God is God or God is Aunt Gertie, only God or Aunt Gertie knows.

Makes you kind of crave the meaninglessness of existentialism, doesn't it? At least with existentialism you get to commit to something. In this Brave New Reality, you don't. You're already committed--and you have no idea who committed you!

* * *

These are just some of the simplest explanations. They are _not_ the most popular ones. Next, we'll explore some of the more popular theories--the ones that violate Occam's razor. There was a time when you would expect modern science to be less speculative than the kind of theories that we have just explored. In point of fact, modern science has become a good deal _more_ speculative. You'll soon be craving the simplicity of a video-simulation explanation.

You can thank Occam for that.

* Not to be confused with "a universe that consists entirely of just one thinking brain." That, of course, is another story--"The Rolls-Royce of Universes!" (see the Appendix)

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PART TWO

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GRAND DESIGN

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CHAPTER 8: WHEN E. F. HUTTON TALKS

"No man is a prophet in his own country." The Gospel According to Luke

But scientists sometimes are. In fact, a scientist can be a national jewel. Newton and Einstein come immediately to mind, but there have been others--Faraday, Maxwell, Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Hubble, Wheeler, Feynman, Watson and Crick (the dynamic duo)...just to name a few. I'm only mentioning these distinguished scientists to make the point that British physicist Stephen Hawking is that scientist--the "When E. F. Hutton talks, people listen!" physicist--for our present moment in time. While he may not have invented the big bang; he certainly is responsible for popularizing it with the general public. Before Hawking came along, the big bang was just the big yawn!

In case you were wondering how Hawking achieved such notoriety, we have to go way back to the Reagan years. Before he became world-famous for his scientific accomplishments, which have to do with esoteric things like black holes, Hawking wrote a popular-science book about the big bang that he hoped would be sold in airport bookstores and anywhere else where summer beach fiction could be found. Fulfilling his own expectations--and confounding everybody else's including his publisher's--his little book titled _A Brief History of Time_ went on to become _The_ _Da Vinci Code_ of popular science. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for almost five years and sold over ten million copies worldwide! No other popular science book comes even close to those figures. Hawking was a publishing wunderkind.

"When E. F. Hutton talks, people listen!"

(Illustration by Chelsea Potts)

Much ink has been spilled to explain why Hawking's book was so successful, but I personally think that it was the great climax--as is often true of a really good book or movie. Think about _The Sting_ **\--** that movie was _all_ about the climax, about "stinging" the audience in exactly the same way that the "mark" was being "stung." At the high point of his science drama, Hawking had to confront the question that was surely on everybody's mind: Did the big bang _really_ happen? Hawking's genius was to realize that he could have it both ways; it all depends on how you look at things. I won't try to improve on perfection, so I'll just quote the master. The answer has to do with time. Just as there are real particles and virtual particles that only exist for an instant in this wonderful quantum world of ours, there is also real time and imaginary time.

"In real time, the universe has a beginning and an end at singularities that form a boundary to space-time and at which the laws of science break down. But in imaginary time, there are no singularities or boundaries. So maybe what we call imaginary time is really more basic, and what we call real is just an idea that we invent to help us describe what we think the universe is like....So it is meaningless to ask: which is real, 'real' or 'imaginary' time? It is simply a matter of which is the more useful description."*

That's as nifty an example of scientific sleight of hand (the word "maybe" gives it away; "maybe" is always speculation) as I have ever encountered! The big bang did or did not occur depending on how you decide to look at time. Those who insist that the big bang actually happened might be called "real timers" and those who insist that it didn't might be called "imaginary timers" _\--only both are correct._ It's just a matter of perspective, scientific perspective to be sure (backed up by math and theories), but perspective nonetheless. It's _how_ you look at things--even in the most fundamental physics that created the universe!

When E. F. Hutton talks, _the big bang did and did not happen!_

You just gotta love the guy, don't you?

* Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Bantam Books, New York, 1996, p. 144

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CHAPTER 9: THE "M" IN M-THEORY

"They're coated!"

The eighties proved to be a difficult decade for E. F. Hutton--even with all those people listening. In 1980, several of the company's branches were caught writing checks to other branches for money that they did not have (allowing them to collect real interest on non-existent money). Criminal charges were filed, and the company was badly in need of a public relations makeover. They hired Bill Cosby to help revitalize their public image (admittedly, a quaint idea today), but even Fat Albert couldn't save them from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Facing damning evidence, Hutton pled guilty to _two thousand counts of mail and wire fraud_ in 1987. They paid a fine of two million dollars--one thousand dollars for each count! At the time, _New York Times_ reporter William Safire described the fine: "Like putting a parking ticket on the Brinks' getaway car." In return, no executive was prosecuted, and the company was not barred from doing business--a double bonus for institutional malfeasance. A firm would normally be permanently barred for such behavior, and failure to prosecute the responsible executives set a precedent that haunts us to this day.

Unfortunately, getting away with it only made them bolder. In 1987, the SEC announced that they were going to hand down indictments against the company for laundering money for a crime family in Rhode Island. The announcement came just one week before the 1987 stock market crash. Together, these events effectively put E. F. Hutton out of business. They were acquired by Shearson Lehman and then by Smith Barney. Now, it's "when Smith Barney talks," if you know what I mean.

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Hawking's _A Brief History of Time_ was as outdated as E. F. Hutton's financial reputation. The discovery of dark matter and the realization that the expansion of the universe was _accelerating_ for reasons that nobody understood had forced physicists to abandon the main theoretical edifice that they had been constructing for the past twenty years--string theory. All string theories predicted that the expansion of the universe was _not_ accelerating. An accelerating expansion meant that all those string theories are not a description of _our_ universe. This left a theoretical void that had to be filled. Hawking filled it with his book _The Grand Design_ (written with Leonard Mlodinow), where he introduced the world to a marvelous new theory called M-theory.

M-theory adds one more dimension to the ten-dimension world of string theory, bringing the total to eleven. The eleventh dimension has to do with things called branes, which, amongst other things, make certain kinds of multiple universes possible. M-theory is not a single theory but is a whole family of theories that includes the old string theories--just not for _our_ universe. Those string theories might work in _other_ universes. The significant M-theory--the one for the universe we live in--hasn't been worked out yet.

The "M" in M-theory stands for the word "my." M-theory is my-theory. Whoever figures out the M-theory for _our_ universe will get to put their name on it, like Kepler's laws of planetary motion or Newton's laws of gravity or Einstein's theories of relativity. This might take a while as there are more M-theories than there are _atoms in all the galaxies in the universe!_ Many times more! And each of those theories is, potentially, a universe in a vast multiverse that is a creation of...so many M-theories! The number of universes in M-theory is exactly equal to the number of M-theories. Nifty, no?

Since scientists cannot offer a scintilla of evidence that M-theory is true--nor a single theory that describes our universe--you have to wonder why so many scientists have come to believe in it. As Hawking makes abundantly clear in _The Grand Design,_ we need to believe in M-theory so that we can keep God out of our picture of the universe.

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CHAPTER 10: GOD IN THE MACHINE

God is what science has been trying to eliminate from our description of the world for the past five hundred years. In part, it's a neutral effort; science isn't opposed to the idea of God--just to the injection of that idea into an explanation of how the world works. Unless we believe that God tampers with the laws of the universe, we should be able to understand how God's creation functions without injecting the idea of God into our understanding. And even if God does tamper with the laws of the universe from time to time by violating them personally, the laws would still be laws for the rest of us, no?

But for some scientists, science is extremely antagonistic to the very idea of God, in part because the medieval Catholic Church erroneously believed that the Church--as God's representative here on earth--was also the final authority on how the world works. Their prosecution of Galileo for supporting Copernicus' idea about the structure of the solar system left a wound that has long festered. Scientific authority is opposed to Church authority in this view.

Modern science was created during the Renaissance by European aristocrats--many who specifically wanted to challenge the Church's authority in secular matters, even though they believed in God. The Church had authority over aristocrats so they had good reason to challenge that authority. Science was a way of at least partially cutting the yoke of Church authority, so the conflict was real and not just philosophical. Science wanted the Church to mind its own business--the God business--and leave the science business alone. That was then.

With the theory of evolution and big bang theory, scientists were able to make a case that both life and the universe can be explained without having to resort to God for an explanation. This led many scientists to conclude that since God isn't necessary to explain life or the universe that God does not exist. This is another application of Occam's all-purpose probability razor. From this perspective, science and atheism are inseparable.

In both of his popular science books, Hawking talks a lot about God. Each book mentions God dozens of time, usually in reference to superstitions of the past that have been eliminated by scientific progress. There is one interesting difference between the two books' treatment of God. In _A Brief History of Time,_ God is not listed in the index at all, but in _The Grand Design,_ God is not only in the index--God gets almost half an index column! It would seem that God's significance had greatly increased in the scientific community in just twenty years.

The reason for this is the same as the reason that we should believe in gazillions of universes. If there is only one universe, then scientists have to admit the possibility that God created the parameters of our universe so as to make them "just so" for life to exist. Scientists need the multiverse to answer this Goldilocks' question ("Why is the universe set just right for us?") without invoking God. They may not have any evidence for the multiverse, but a theory without evidence is better than the logical possibility of God.

The purpose of the multiverse is to keep God _out_ of the machine.

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CHAPTER 11: A MOST DETERMINED SCIENTIST

Scientists who say that scientific determinism does not exist are like alcoholics who say they'll never take another drink. No matter how many times they say it, we know that relapse always lurks in the shadows. Relapse _is_ The Shadow! "Who knows what weakness lurks in the hearts of scientists? The Shadow knows!" Scientific determinism is the soft underbelly of the entire scientific enterprise.

The logic of scientific determinism is compelling for many scientists. If the movements of comets, planets and galaxies can be predicted with precision from "matter in motion" explained by the laws of gravity and relativity, then the movement of everything must be governed by laws, even if we don't understand all the details. Free will in human beings is just the way that they "feel" about the inevitable result of the collisions of particles of "matter in motion." We don't have free will any more than mice or ants do. In this view, human actions are no different than a comet's orbit, they're just more complicated.

Unfortunately, truly random events undermine determinism. If anything is random, then absolute determinism does not exist. But if determinism isn't absolute, then how far down does it go? The randomness of radioactivity doesn't affect the movement of planets and galaxies, but it does have an effect on living things. Where then does determinism end? Nobody struggles with this idea more than Hawking. As with the big bang, he feels that he can have it both ways: _Scientific determinism_ _does_ _and_ _does not_ _exist._

In _A Brief History of Time,_ Hawking cites the Uncertainty Principle as the reason that scientific determinism breaks down: "...one certainly cannot predict future events exactly if one cannot even measure the present state of the universe precisely!" This causes him to conclude that "Quantum mechanics therefore introduces an unavoidable element of unpredictability or randomness into science."*

In spite of the clarity of these words, by the end of the book Hawking is...shall we say...equivocating...his position against determinism? Now he tells us that, if the origin of the universe is a single quantum event--a singularity, the "real timers" big bang theory--then the universe must be deterministic because the wave equation that describes the evolution of the universe is completely deterministic. If the wave equation is deterministic, then the universe must be deterministic along with everything in it. Here's how Hawking cleverly splits this difference:

"These quantum theories are deterministic in the sense that they give laws for the evolution of the wave with time. Thus if one knows the wave at some time, one can calculate it at any other time. The unpredictable, random element comes in only when we try to interpret the wave in terms of the positions and velocities of particles. But maybe that is our mistake: maybe there are no particle positions and velocities, but only waves. It is just that we try to fit the waves to our preconceived ideas of positions and velocities. The resulting mismatch is the cause of the apparent unpredictability."*

So there, he's slipped determinism back in (with a "maybe," natch)! The universe is deterministic; "unpredictability" is just "apparent unpredictability." It's only when we think about particles and velocities (which is the way that scientists actually think--we're talking about the motions of comets and planets here) that we get confused. As long as we think about the future as a wave, it is completely deterministic!

Later he says more or less the same thing when discussing whether or not human beings have free will:

"If there really is a complete unified theory that governs everything, it presumably also determines your actions. But it does so in such a way that it is impossible to calculate for an organism that is as complicated as a human being. The reason we say that humans have free will is because we can't predict what they will do."*

So the universe and everything in it, including thinking human beings and all other life, is completely deterministic, but we cannot predict the future because we do not have enough information, or a computer large enough, to run the calculation. Like the weather, human beings are impossible-to-predict complex, but completely deterministic. For this analogy to have any validity at all, one would have to agree that the weather can be thought of as having free will just because it is too complicated to predict. _I mean, really?**_

Ultimately, Hawking and many other physicists _believe_ that if the equation that created the universe was deterministic, then the universe and everything in it must be deterministic, although the current scientific evidence for randomness contradicts that position. When we finally have a complete theory, these scientists believe, it will be a deterministic equation that will leave no room for randomness. Quantum theory and radioactivity will be understood by a deeper theory in which nothing is random.

We will know _when_ a radioactive atom will decay in this far future world of fiction science. Given the current clear-cut evidence for randomness (random decay in radioactivity, the Uncertainty Principle, the evolution of DNA), this is as much an article of faith as the faith in God--only it's faith in the opposite direction. It's a faith that there are laws that, somehow, govern the universe and everything it.

Hawking's faith is in scientific determinism.

* Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Bantam Books, New York, 1996, pp. 57 and 58, p. 144, p. 167

** It would be interesting to ask Hawking if he really thinks that his insights into black holes are a product of "the deterministic wave" that created the universe and only feel like the product of his own original thinking.

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CHAPTER 12: DO LAWS GOVERN?

We understand that human laws do not govern. Human laws need an enforcement mechanism; they need the police. The whole idea behind human laws is that people's behavior needs to be controlled. While human laws would very much like to control human behavior, one does not need to think about it very long to realize that this is not the way that the world actually works. Humans often break the law.

Some scientists think that scientific laws are different. They think that scientific laws are not explanations of how the world works but are actually in control somehow. Newton's law of gravity _causes_ the planets (and cannonballs) to move in certain well-defined deterministic ways. In this view, scientific laws are thought to actually govern. Hawking repeatedly states that "scientific laws govern," although he is completely silent on the governing "mechanism"--how they might accomplish this.

Hawking knows, and clearly states in both of his books, that scientific theories are only theories. All theories are partial theories; no complete theories exist. Theories only work in the arena that they were developed to explain (waves or particles, but not both at the same time). Newton's law of gravity explains the motions of the planets in the sky and objects here on earth, but Newton's law of gravity fails to explain certain perturbations in the motions of the planets. We need Einstein's law of gravity to explain those perturbations.

The idea that there is a single law (sometimes call the Theory of Everything) that governs the entire universe is the holy grail of modern physics. The essence of this idea is that, essentially, there is one main physical law (the law that created the universe), and that all other laws are sub-laws. Whenever we fail to see determinism, it is because we have focused our attention on sub-laws that might appear to be non-deterministic and not on the one, true, fully deterministic main law.

Another way of looking at all this is it that the laws of physics as we understand them today explain things quite well, but they do not govern any more than human laws do. Scientific laws explain; they do not govern. Newton thought that God propelled the planets through the sky; Hawking thinks that Newton/Einstein's laws propel them. In truth, nobody knows what propels the planets through the sky, although we'd like to think we do.

All scientists agree that the law that governs, if it exists, has yet to be discovered.

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CHAPTER 13: MAPS AND TERRITORIES

Outside of the world of science, it is well understood that the map of any territory is _not_ the territory. No matter how exact a map might be, it can only be an indication of certain aspects of the territory, and no number of maps taken collectively can ever be said to represent the territory completely. There is always something else that you could map. Imagine the difference between a road map and a mineral map. Now try to imagine that there are any number of maps that will give you a _complete_ picture. You can't imagine it, can you? You can always add another map: "We left out the gopher highway map!"

The Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges--a master of literary economy--once wrote a short, one-paragraph story (titled, ironically, "On Exactitude in Science") about an empire that set out to construct the perfect map of its territory. A series of maps were drawn, each larger and more detailed than the one before it. Eventually, Borges wrote, the Cartographers' Guilds struck a map that was as large as the empire itself, and which coincided point for point with it. The map, quite literally, _was_ the territory. The following generations, who were not as fond of the study of cartography as their ancestors had been, saw that the vast map was useless and allowed it to be slowly destroyed by the elements.

Hawking makes the argument in _A Brief History of Time,_ and repeats it in _The Grand Design,_ that scientific theories are like maps, but he insists that when you have enough scientific maps, that you can have a complete representation of reality. In the world of science according to Hawking, just a few of the _right_ maps _are_ the territory. They precede the territory somehow in ways that no earthly maps can. The territory must obey the maps because the maps are deterministic. Scientific maps _create_ the territory!

This analogy is, of course, clearly related to scientific determinism and the idea that scientific laws govern. The few maps that Hawking thinks will provide a complete picture of reality will have to account for all physical phenomenon in a deterministic fashion. That is how they can be thought to provide a complete picture.* If there is anything unknown or any randomness anywhere in the system, then the picture is not complete, and the maps are not complete. While the map metaphor seems to illuminate, in reality, it is just a repeat of the claim that scientific determinism means that the laws of science govern and that, ultimately, there must be just one governing law. We know that we don't have enough maps, but Hawking claims that we _can_ have enough maps.

So we have three interrelated claims/analogies. All three claims are dependent on a rigid view of a determinism that, thus far, has failed all the tests of science. While we know that the claim of scientific determinism is false, Hawking holds out the hope that it will be proven true in the future when we finally have a unified theory or a series of interrelated theories that are...somehow...complete. Even in the world of science, it seems clear that, thus far in our knowledge--the maps are not the territory; the planets are not propelled through space by laws; and reality has not been demonstrated to be deterministic.

Isn't the idea that they are just the science of hope driven by logic that denies the known facts?

* Relativity, quantum theory and the Standard Model taken together seem to fit the bill. The problem is that they appear to be maps of completely different and unrelated worlds, which is where the "set of complete maps" analogy breaks down.

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CHAPTER 14: THE BOMB MAN, THE CAT MAN AND THE VAN MAN

"The game that I play is a very interesting one; it's imagination in a tight straitjacket." Richard Feynman

"Imagination in a Tight Straitjacket"

(Illustration by Chelsea Potts)

There are currently three forms of quantum theory, each with its own math. The original--Heisenberg's matrix equations that set off the quantum revolution and won Heisenberg the Nobel Prize--views the quantum world as _a matrix of_ _particles that each have a fixed position._ Any given particle has a probability of being in any position in the matrix. The problem with Heisenberg's idea was that its equations were incredibly difficult to solve (like Einstein's equations for the motion of cannonballs). Nobody liked Heisenberg's equations--or the picture of the world that they implied. His work as the leader of the German project to build an atomic bomb during the early years of World War II led the United States to launch the Manhattan Project--for better and for worse. For all practical purposes, he leaves our story here.

Schrodinger came along and saved the day with his wave equations in which _each particle exists everywhere simultaneously_ in a wave matrix, but with a greater probability (no strict determinism here) of being in some locations rather than others. Fortunately, Schrodinger's wave equations were much simpler to solve than Heisenberg's just as Newton's equations for gravity are much easier to solve than Einstein's. Scientists no longer think of particles as being in all possible positions; instead, they think of them as being everywhere simultaneously, but nowhere specific _until_ they are measured.

After helping to build the bombs that ended World War II, Feynman proposed his sum-over-histories view that simplified things still further. In Feynman's view, _a particle travels every possible path_ \-- _an infinite number of paths_ \-- _instantaneously, and can travel backwards or forwards in time._ Feynman's equations can be reduced to simple diagrams that consist mostly of a few straight lines jutting off at angles with arrows and some circles and squiggly lines tossed in every now and then. To those in the know, you can read the equations right off the diagrams. Feynman even decorated his family van with these "Feynman diagrams" so that other drivers could work out the equations while stuck in traffic, although this was rumored to have led to several incidents of distracted driving. Is it any surprise that Feynman's view has become the most popular with many scientists?

The "Feynman Diagram" Family Van

with the Feynman Family

The significant point to be made about these three views of the quantum world is that, while each is different and has its own unique mathematics, _they all arrive at the same mathematical answer._ Or to put it another way, each view arrives at the "correct" answer even though each view creates a very different "picture" of reality. Since all three arrive at the same answer, it is impossible to say that one "picture" is correct--and the others, by implication, incorrect. Still, there is a strong tendency amongst physicists to do exactly that.

Most interpretations of quantum mechanics favor Schrodinger's wave view--perhaps because his interpretation has been around a lot longer than Feynman's. In Schrodinger's view, _a particle is everywhere (in every possible location) until it is measured,_ and only then does it _acquire_ a position and velocity that is measureable within Heisenberg's limits. This creates what is called the _measurement problem,_ which is that nobody can define exactly what a measurement is or what it _means_ to say that a particle only has a position and velocity _when_ it is measured. In some interpretations, measurement can be done by other subatomic particles, so that it is going on constantly. In other views, measurement is a human activity, even if the measurement is done by a detector. All science experiments are _human_ experiments because they are conducted by human beings--although scientists sometimes seem to forget this.

The _many worlds_ _interpretation of quantum mechanics_ \--which has become increasingly popular as multiverse theories have become fashionable--states that every time a measurement is made (however it might be made) a new universe pops into existence so that all possible results of all measurements actually occur...somewhere...although only one result occurs in _our_ universe. Once again, the unexplainable becomes explainable if you simply postulate a dizzying number of alternative universes.

Hawking, on the other hand, has become a cheerleader for Feynman's sum-over-histories view of quantum mechanics. Feynman's view is particle-oriented rather than wave-oriented.* In it, a particle takes _an infinite number of paths_ to reach a target, and it takes them all simultaneously. At the moment of the big bang, in this view, an infinite number of universes were created in the _sum-over-histories_ of our universe as it was born.

Scientists, including Hawking, who use Feynman's work to support string theory and M-theory usually don't tell their readers what Feynman thought about those theories--probably, because Feynman didn't like them at all. I'll let Feynman speak for himself:

"I don't like that they're not calculating anything. I don't like that they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation--a fix-up to say, 'Well, it still might be true.'...it doesn't produce anything; it has to be excused most of the time. It doesn't look right."**

Feynman is saying that string theorists are doing the same things that those who supported Ptolemy's view of the universe over Copernicus's view did during the sixteenth century. They are adding "epicycles to epicycles" in an effort to "save the theory." Feynman, clearly, did not consider string theory worth the effort. He did not sense "Copernicus" lurking in its shadows.

To the average reader, I would hope that none of these views seems like a true picture of reality. Instantaneous paths, an infinite number of paths, particles travelling to the other side of the universe and returning instantaneously, particles travelling forwards and backwards in time, an infinite number of universes--aren't these all just mathematical ideas that evaporate into thin air when you try to translate them into any real-world picture? We obviously do not have enough information to definitively favor any of them. They are all speculation. None of them are scientifically real.

Scientists know this; they just don't like to admit it.

* Yes, it is interesting that Hawking's explanation of the big bang is particle-oriented (citing Feynman), while his argument for determinism is that the origin of the universe is explained by a single wave-oriented, completely deterministic, equation (citing Schrodinger). Like a good lawyer, Hawking seems to be a master of adapting his argument to the answer that he wants us to believe. Schrodinger or Feynman? Whatever works!

** Lee Smolin, The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of Science, and What Comes Next, Houghton Mifflin Company, First Mariner Edition, New York, 2007, p. 125

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CHAPTER 15: THE NEIGHBOR PROBLEM

Nowhere do vagaries of Hawking's thought show themselves more clearly than in his dealing with the neighbor problem. Hawking admits that, for all it does tell you, physics cannot tell you how to treat your neighbor. He makes this sound like a small issue--like who _can_ tell you how to treat your neighbor?--even though it opens a big can of intestinal worms. If physics cannot tell you how to treat your neighbor, then what else is there that physics _can't_ tell you? It can't just be about neighbors, can it?

And if the world is completely deterministic as Hawking clearly believes it is (or will be when we finally understand it correctly), then physics tells us that how we treat our neighbor was decided long before we were born, even if we can't run the calculation that would allow us to predict what we will do. It was decided by the laws of physics laid out when the universe was created. If that is true, then the laws of physics tell us _exactly_ how to treat our neighbors. However we treat our neighbors was determined when the universe was created in the big bang. That view of physics explains everything that happens as inevitable. There is no neighbor problem if this is true. _The universe made me do it!*_

So let's make a short list of some of some other things that physics _can't_ tell us about. Physics cannot tell us anything about colors. In the world of physics, there is no rainbow. Light of certain wavelengths exists, but there is no need in the world of physics to associate those wavelengths with colors--nor any ability to do so, actually. How would physics know what yellow is? Only animals can see the colors; physics can only see wavelengths. Named colors are an eye/brain phenomenon, and eyes only exist in the living world. Science has no eyes; science cannot see.**

Nor can physics tell us anything about taste. Sweet, bitter, tart, sour, velvety: physics has no idea what anything tastes like. Scientists can create very specific tastes by mixing chemicals, but the only way that scientists can learn what the things they have created taste like is to ask human beings and write down the answers.

Or smells like. Scents can be created by science, but they cannot be smelled. Once again, it takes a living creature to smell something.

Or sounds like. Science has no ears.

Or feels like. Science has no sense of touch. Silky? Smooth! Rough! In your wet dreams!

And then we're back, of course, to that pesky "neighbor problem." If physics cannot tell us how to treat our neighbors then physics cannot say anything about politics, which is all about how to treat one's neighbors. The neighbor problem might be the simplest, and best, explanation of why we don't do anything about global warming. Science can inform us about the physical realities of global warming, but science cannot tell us how to deal with global warming because whatever anyone does to mitigate global warming will inevitably affect their neighbors--and science can't tell us how to treat our neighbors.

By now, I hope that you have noticed a common theme. Science cannot know anything that human beings know except by indirect means. The human world is completely opaque to science. Science has always excluded the human world from its view because the human view is not considered to be scientific because it is prone to error. In a profound sense, science is an inhuman activity because humanity is excluded from its view in the name of objectivity.

At some level, one might think, what a price to pay for objectivity! Science's bursts of inhumanity--animal torture, eugenics, experiments on helpless humans including children, chemical and biological weapons, atomic bombs, sophisticated torture techniques, and robotic warfare (we have become the _Terminators_ )--can probably be best explained by this. Science is not a humane process. It is an inhumane process that can be employed in the service of humanity.

When you think about it like that, science is a lot like war, and we all know what war is like!

* Admittedly, a great tee-shirt slogan!

** This reality was emphasized in the Swedish films, I Am Curious (Yellow) and I Am Curious (Blue). These films both made the point that while curiosity is the essence of science that science would always be limited by its inability to see colors (hence the parentheses).

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PART THREE

MAVERICK

Who is the tall, dark stranger there?

Maverick is his name.

Ridin' the trail to who knows where,

Luck is his companion,

Gamblin' is his game.

Riverboat, ring your bell,

Fare thee well, Annabel,

Luck is the lady that he loves the best.

Nachez to New Orleans,

Livin' on jacks and queens,

Maverick is a legend of the west.*

* From the theme song to the television show Maverick, music and lyrics by Ed Bruce, Glenn Ray and Patsy Bruce

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CHAPTER 16: ACCORDING TO HOYLE

British scientist Fred Hoyle was one of the major contributors to the modern science of nuclear physics and astronomy, but he is not thought of fondly by many scientists because, whatever his accomplishments, he was a science maverick. The dictionary defines a maverick as "a person who shows independence of thought and action, especially by refusing to adhere to the policies of a group to which he or she belongs." One might be forgiven for thinking that this definition was created to describe Hoyle, and it goes a long way towards explaining why he was the subject of so much criticism. Hoyle accused other scientists of acting irrationally--something that really gets some scientists hot under the collar. He also liked to remind scientists that the history of science is littered with the corpses of mavericks who were later proven to have been correct. Whatever personality traits he may have lacked, self-confidence was not one of them.

So, who _is_ that tall, dark stranger? Hoyle was the first scientist to realize how the chemical elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were created in stars. He correctly calculated that no element heavier than iron could be created in normal-sized stars and that the rest (most) of the elements could only be created during the destructive explosions of certain types of giant stars called supernovas. These supernova explosions scattered these heavier elements throughout the galaxy leading Carl Sagan to later comment that we are all composed of "star dust."

Simply by noticing that carbon was one of the most abundant elements in the universe, and the key ingredient in all life, Hoyle was able to calculate that the process that changes helium into carbon in stars must have a very specific resonance energy (don't ask) and spin (again, don't ask; it doesn't matter) for it to work. When scientists were finally able to determine the resonance energy and spin of carbon atoms, they discovered that Hoyle's numbers were exactly correct. This led Hoyle to claim:

"Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly miniscule. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to be so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."*

What Hoyle is pointing out is that if the resonance energy or spin of carbon atoms had been just slightly different that the universe as we know it would not exist. He couldn't imagine that this could have happened without what has come to be known as an "intelligent designer." He was posing the question that M-theorists would later answer with "gazillions of universes." If there are gazillions of universes, then the fact that we find ourselves in one that is finely tuned for human life is just the luck of the draw. Still, Hoyle is, quite simply, _the only person_ _ever_ _to have made a successful scientific prediction based on the idea of an intelligent designer._ In that alone, his genius shines through.

As is the way of famous Englishmen, Hoyle was made a knight of the British realm and is technically Sir Fred, but then so is Mick Jagger (Sir Mick!). Apparently, even bad boys can be knights.

* Fred Hoyle, "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections," Engineering and Science, November, 1981, pp. 8-12

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CHAPTER 17: THE KNIGHT ERRANT

Whatever his flaws, Hoyle was a chivalrous knight, although that may have cost him the Nobel Prize.* Discovering how the elements are created inside of stars was obviously Nobel Prize-winning work, but when the prize was finally awarded for it in 1983, Hoyle's name was conspicuously absent from the list. Those with whom he shared his ideas and collaborated with to refine his ideas received the prize. His role as the originator of the theory is lost to Nobel history. Since the working of the Nobel Committee is shrouded in secrecy, any understanding of why Hoyle was snubbed is historical speculation. There's no way to know for sure.

That said, there are certain facts. As always, facts require interpretation, but here they are anyway. The first fact is that the events took place in England, where manners reign, and where bluntness is thought of as rudeness and is often illegal. Mavericks do not fare well in England. Like all good knights, Hoyle raised his lance in defense of a woman. When the Nobel Prize was awarded in 1974 for the discovery of pulsars, Hoyle pointed out that the woman who had actually discovered the first pulsar and pointed it out to her superiors did not receive any mention in the award. His public comment angered many and led to the threat of a libel suit so that Hoyle was forced to issue a public retraction. Some think that the Nobel Committee was still stinging from the charge of chauvinism when they denied Hoyle the prize.

Sir Fred was a Chivalrous Knight

(Illustration by Chelsea Potts)

Others think that it was Hoyle's involvement with fanciful ideas that led the Nobel Committee to ignore him. The theory is that they did not want to seem to be condoning fringe science--not an unreasonable perspective. By the time the prize was awarded, Hoyle had not been leading the astronomy program at Cambridge for almost a decade and was better known for having odd theories than for his important discoveries. The same year that he did not receive the Nobel Prize, he published a book titled _The Intelligent Universe_ in which he rejected both the theory of evolution and the big bang theory and postulated that the universe itself must be intelligent and not just the human beings who inhabit it.

* Robin McKie, "Fred Hoyle, the Scientist Whose Rudeness Cost Him the Nobel Prize," The Observer, October 2, 2010 (http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/oct/03/fred-hoyle-nobel-prize)

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CHAPTER 18: MONKEYS TYPING SHAKESPEARE

Since all of theoretical physics is written in the language of mathematics, it shouldn't be surprising that Hoyle was a world-class mathematician. As a mathematician, Hoyle hated Darwin's theory of evolution. He even wrote a book to refute it titled _The Mathematics of Evolution._ While he thought that Darwin's theory was adequate to explain the evolution of a new species from a similar species, he thought that the theory became hopelessly muddled when it attempted to explain either the origin of life or the rise of the tree of life from single-celled creatures. In life, as in carbon atoms, Hoyle found evidence of intelligent design, and just to be clear, Hoyle was an atheist. Right or wrong, he believed in intelligent design for scientific--and not for religious--reasons.

Hoyle was highly critical of the old adage used to support the theory of evolution that "if enough monkeys were typing on enough typewriters for enough time that they would eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare." He felt that this analogy was so obviously wrong that it was incredible that scientists continued to repeat it. Too begin, the universe was just not large enough to hold all the monkeys and typewriters (let alone the waste paper) necessary to accomplish this feat. Using this analogy to support the theory of evolution led people to believe that the impossible becomes possible if you just have enough monkeys--obvious nonsense, or monkey business, in Hoyle's opinion.

The Chimp Who's Typing _Hamlet_

Takes a Well-Deserved Break

Hoyle calculated the probability of producing just the enzymes necessary for the simplest cell by random chance, and they were so small that it would never happen in the fourteen-billion-year history of our universe--or in gazillions of such universes, for that matter. Coincidentally, the odds against it happening were equal to the number of _all of the_ _atoms in all of the universes_ _postulated by M-theory_ (an unimaginably huge number), but it's not just a matter of probabilities. If something can't happen, giving that thing an infinite amount of time--or monkeys--won't make it happen. Why should it? Monkeys typing Shakespeare is something that simply can't happen. We all know that. "Saying it's so" doesn't "make it so." As Hoyle pointed out, it takes a Shakespeare to write the works of Shakespeare.

Hoyle countered the "monkeys typing Shakespeare" analogy with one of his own. He said to think about the possibility that a tornado passing through an aircraft junkyard would assemble the available parts into an airplane. Then he said to think about as many tornados passing through as many junkyards as you like. No matter how large the number you imagine, can you seriously believe that an airplane will be assembled in one of them just because it isn't in some absolute sense impossible? His "tornado passing through a junkyard" analogy illustrated the simple fact that very large numbers of occurrences do not make the impossible possible--except in the minds of some scientists. _A tornado passing through a junkyard will never repair a broken seat, let alone assemble an aircraft._ We all know that.

Hoyle was, perhaps, the only prominent twentieth century scientist to question the validity of both Darwin's theory of evolution and the big bang theory of cosmology. Hoyle felt that neither theory had become popular because they were a good explanation of the physical facts (the keynote feature of good science in Hoyle's opinion). He thought that they had become popular for social reasons--that they were more politics than science.

Scientists, and many lay people, like the theory of evolution because it seems to eliminate God from the world of biology and the tree of life--something that had previously been considered unthinkable. Hoyle equated the popularization of the theory of evolution almost immediately after it was proposed in the nineteenth century with the rise of industrialism that was taking place at the same time. Competition for resources and natural selection are an excellent description of how the business world works, but the business world is run by human beings who think, and not by random chance. Hoyle thought that evolution was a theory that was not supported by the facts, the fossil record, or mathematics. That it came to be believed by all baffled him as a scientist. He thought it was, in the words of the great physicist (and poltergeist*) Wolfgang Pauli, "Just plain wrong!"

The big bang is popular with some religious people for the same reason that the theory of evolution is unpopular. By giving the universe a beginning, some feel that it slips the God of Genesis back into the equation, and they like it for that reason. Many scientists like it for the exact opposite reason, because they feel that it eliminates the need for a God to explain the origin of the universe. This philosophical flexibility made the big bang a "big hit" right from the start. Everybody loved it! Scientists also like it because it might make the origin of the universe into a single quantum event, which just might slip scientific determinism--a persistent scientific dream--back into the equation. The big bang is win-win-win from a political point of view.

* Wolfgang Pauli was famous for causing physics experiments to "blow up" whenever he was present--or even nearby. This was referred in the physics community to as the "Pauli effect." Even the rational world of scientists has its poltergeists. "Who you gonna call?" "Not Wolfgang!"

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CHAPTER 19: THE BIG BANG

Hoyle was the scientist who named the big bang. He meant it as sarcasm. He thought that no reasonable person would believe that an entire universe could pop out of nothing--in some sort of...big bang. Because the creation of the universe cannot be described in scientific terms in the big bang theory, Hoyle thought that it was pseudoscience. Like M-theory, the big bang is a theory that is still waiting for a coherent scientific theory to make it make sense. String theory, M-theory and quantum gravity are all efforts, so far unsuccessful, to fill this gap.

Hoyle's first problem with the big bang was that it failed to explain galaxy formation--a key point, if you think about it. If the universe started in a primal explosion, then why did parts of that explosion clump together as galaxies _while_ everything was flying apart? Galaxies are "explained" because they exist, but they are not explained in any coherent scientific sense, although there are several theories. Nobody knows why galaxies exist or how they were formed or why there is a black hole at the center of each galaxy.

Hoyle was vindicated somewhat when inflation theory was added to the big bang model. Inflation theory became necessary because the big bang failed to describe the universe that we live in (usually, a fatal flaw for a theory, but one that the big bang has managed to circumvent thus far). Inflation theory helped by describing a universe more like the one we live in--including galaxy formation--but it introduced a larger problem. If the big bang was an unexplained miracle, inflation was a second unexplained miracle--one that occurred for some inexplicable reason just a few trillionths of a second _after_ the big bang began. The big bang and inflation were, for all practical purposes, _simultaneous miraculous events_ _that had to occur in a certain order_ \--first the big bang, then inflation.

We don't know what caused the big bang, and we don't know what caused inflation. Why they would occur as a one-two sucker punch to create a universe (or a whole pocketful of universes) is a mystery to everyone.

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CHAPTER 20: STEADY AS SHE GOES

Some stories are so good that it doesn't matter how badly they are told. A great story works in spite of its inherent flaws. Think zombies! Think vampires! Think UFO abductions! If a story is compelling, it doesn't have to be believable. It will be believed anyway. Most people don't understand that this applies to science stories as well as other kinds of stories.

Most people don't think that science stories even exist. Science is made up of facts, not stories. In this view, a science story is nothing more than a means to communicate the scientific facts. A science story is special. The big bang is a description of the origin of our universe, and not a science story. It happened, or perhaps it didn't, but in either case it isn't a story. It's a "yes" or "no" issue, and we can't be certain either way--yet.

The argument for the big bang seems so completely obvious to many physicists that it is, for them, undeniable. If everything in the universe is flying away from everything else, then, if we run the motion picture of the universe backwards in our minds, we will arrive at a moment where everything in the universe is compacted into an infinitely tiny space, leading inevitably to a beginning--a big bang. Hoyle thought that this was just one possible interpretation of the data. He thought that the same result could be explained by a very different scenario--shall we say, story?

Hoyle's story was that the universe was not created in one single gigantic event; instead, it was created one subatomic particle at a time. Since atoms are being created at a steady rate, Hoyle's theory is called the steady-state theory of universe formation (it was first proposed by the physicist James Jeans during the Roaring Twenties). Hoyle found it far easier to believe that "atoms" might simply pop into existence one at a time than that a whole universe might do the same thing. With M-theory postulating universes popping into existence in numbers larger than all the atoms in the universe, it seems clear that there is more than one way to skin this particular scientific cat. Hoyle's answer and M-theory's answer seem to be two ways of looking at similar things--only in M-theory, Hoyle's atoms are universes.

What this might mean is hard to say--except for Hoyle, who never seems to be at a lack for words.

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CHAPTER 21: THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE

Intelligence can be broadly defined as the ability to process and analyze data (information) and, then, to act on the basis of that analysis. All life is intelligent by this definition and nothing in the world of inert matter is intelligent. Computers and robots are not yet intelligent, and it is impossible to know if they can be intelligent based on our current knowledge, but the consensus of scientific opinion is that they can be and will be once they have advanced sufficiently.

What all this seems to indicate is that while life is the very definition of intelligence, it is not the only possible definition, but it is the only one that we know is true at the present moment in time. If intelligent robots are possible, they are only possible if they are first designed and built by living beings. No matter how we think about it, life and intelligence are intimately intertwined; they seem to be inseparable. Even intelligent robots would need life to exist "in the beginning." To intelligent robots, insects would be gods.

Think about it. Imagine that intelligent machines are all that exists in the universe because all life has been wiped out over billions of years by natural causes. When life was wiped out, the machines self-replicated and survived. Over time they improved themselves and created machine civilizations. Ultimately, they travelled to other planets as the time involved in space travel is irrelevant to machines. Now, the machines are trying to determine their "origin" as best they can from the information available to them.

What do you think is the possibility that the machines would ever postulate that something called "life" evolved somehow from inorganic chemicals, and then continued to evolve until it became intelligent, developed language and learned to build things--them? This would be such an extreme violation of Occam's razor that no reasonable machine would ever believe it. It would seem that the best that the intelligent machines could do is to postulate an intelligent designer even if there is no evidence that one exists or ever existed. They _are_ the evidence. Unfortunately, they are the only evidence, and that _is_ problematic.

Ultimately, this sort of reasoning led Hoyle to believe that, for life to exist--given what we know about the universe--that the universe itself must be intelligent. This is the only way to eliminate the "origin of intelligence problem." Intelligence is not a by-product of the universe, in Hoyle's opinion, intelligence is the _origin_ of the universe! Just as millennia of mystics have arrived at the mystical view of life--that universal consciousness (the One) is the source and not a by-product of our world--in Hoyle's universe, matter and life both originate from a pre-existing intelligence. Only Hoyle arrived at this view from a scientific perspective. Here's how he put it:

"This sets the scene for the origin of life on the largest conceivable scale. The stage is not local, not restricted to our solar system nor even to our own galaxy, but truly cosmic. If an intelligence was involved in the origin of life, the intelligence was very big indeed, as I suspect is recognized by the religious instinct residing in all of us, the instinct that whispers in some remote region of our consciousness. Life is therefore a cosmological phenomenon, perhaps the most fundamental aspect of the universe."*

Hoyle was a scientific mystic. He believed that the natural religious instinct that resides in human beings--no matter how primitive or how advanced--exists to indicate something that is _real._ Some scientists would say that makes Hoyle a non-scientist at heart. Science excludes God--and mysticism--from its view in the name of objectivity. If mysticism is the answer, science will never know it.

* Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe: A New View of Creation and Evolution, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1983, p. 161

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CHAPTER 22: THE ROOM-TEMPERATURE UNIVERSE

When Hoyle said that he thought that the scale of life was cosmic, he meant this quite literally. Hoyle believed that interstellar dust is not dust at all, but is made up of bacteria and viruses. He asks the question: Why is it that single-celled life is hardened so that it can survive in outer space, while multi-cellular life is not? His answer is that single-celled life did not just arrive on comets and meteors from space, but that it was _created_ in interstellar space. Space is bacteria's primary home in Hoyle's view. This was an idea that irritated many scientists. The majority of physicists are barely willing to entertain the idea that life may have arrived from space and are absolutely incredulous at the idea that life might have been created in space. How absurd!

Water Bears Can Survive in Outer Space*

Suggesting that life did not evolve on earth but arrived from space is thought by many scientists to simply push back the problem of when and where life _did_ evolve, but that was not Hoyle's view. Hoyle felt that the estimated age of the universe--fourteen billion years--was just not sufficient time for life to evolve _anywhere_ in the universe, therefore, _life had to have been created._ This is another of his arguments for intelligent design.

Enzymes are necessary to create proteins, which are the main building blocks of all life. Enzymes are the critical first step. Once you have an enzyme, you need a catalyst to create a protein, but without an enzyme a catalyst is useless. Hoyle (and others like Francis Crick) have pointed out that if it was possible for enzymes to assemble themselves from the available constituent chemicals in some sort of chemical soup, then scientists would have been able to demonstrate processes in the lab that lead to the assembly of enzymes, or parts of enzymes, at least. Most scientists today admit that they may _never_ be able to duplicate such processes. At best, they can form theoretical frameworks (DNA-world, RNA-world, self-replicating clay), but these frameworks have not led to experiments that create enzymes from chemicals. Score one for Hoyle and Crick.

Scientists (Hawking is one) often refer to "self-replicating molecules" that are "naturally selected" until they become alive somehow. Hoyle points out that scientists have no reason to believe that self-replicating molecules exist or can exist. He emphasizes that even viruses, which are made of RNA and can act on living systems, cannot self-replicate. Viruses have to take over existing cellular machinery (DNA) to duplicate themselves. If viruses can't self-replicate, then why would anyone think that chemical molecules can? DNA is the only thing in the known universe that can self-replicate. If scientists think that molecules can self-replicate, then they ought to be able to demonstrate it in the lab.

One might say that rust is "a self-replicating molecule." As long as you "feed" in water and iron, rust will replicate. But is rust alive? Can rust or self-replicating clay _(Swamp Thing!)_ ever become alive anywhere but in a comic book? Evidence for self-replicating molecules that might become alive is so far non-existent. A pre-life-world of self-replicating molecules remains a theory looking for real-world validation. Score two for Hoyle.

Self-Replicating Clay

(Life Emerges from the Swamp)

Scientists have just recently begun to realize something very interesting about the early years of the universe (what took them so long is hard to say, as the logic seems obvious in retrospect). If the universe started extremely hot and slowly cooled over time to the point where its temperature is now close to absolute zero, then there must have been a period of time when the entire universe was at, essentially, room temperature.** Scientists have calculated that this would have occurred about fifteen million years after the big bang. Then the universe took almost fourteen billion years to cool from room temperature to three degrees above absolute zero (its current temperature).

During that room-temperature epoch, life might have existed anywhere--or everywhere--in the universe. The entire universe--all of the galaxies--would have been "Darwin's warm pond." As the universe cooled, life would have had time to adapt. The scale of this adaptation is unimaginably large, especially when compared to the idea that life assembled itself from chemicals on a single lonely planet isolated somewhere in a single lonely solar system near the edge of a single lonely galaxy. Doesn't it seem more likely that life would have appeared during this warm-universe epoch than at any other time in the history of the universe? Life was most likely to happen (however it happened) when temperature favored it everywhere simultaneously as the scale of opportunity was enormous (mega-normous, giga-normous, tera-normous and beyond). That might explain how viruses and bacteria became "dust" on a cosmic scale. Score three--perhaps--for Hoyle.

In the end, maverick is the only word that fully captures Hoyle.

And Maverick is a legend of the west.

* Tardigrades, sometimes called Water Bears or Moss Piglets, survive in outer space by allowing all the water in their body to evaporate while they encase their body in a glass-like material for protection, until such time as they are re-hydrated. Just add water, and you've got Water Bears!

** Abraham Loeb, "The Habitable Epoch of the Early Universe," International Journal of Astrobiology, Volume 13, Issue 4, October 2014, pp. 337-339

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PART FOUR

THE END OF PHYSICS

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CHAPTER 23: THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE COSMOS

The seventeenth century was both the golden age of alchemy and the birth of the age of science. In fact, the birth of science _caused_ the end of alchemy just as it reached its peak. By the end of the century, science would replace alchemy as the preferred method to understand the physical world. In a similar manner, the twentieth century marked the birth of a new age of the cosmos. The cosmos of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton seems quaint and simplistic when compared to the modern view. Einstein's theories of relativity plus quantum mechanics and the Standard Model changed the universe forever.

During its golden age, our universe was thought to be either timeless _or_ infinite. Scientists thought that the universe can't be both timeless and infinite. If it were, then the night sky would be lit up like daytime because light would have had an infinite amount of time to arrive from an infinite number of distant stars and galaxies. It would be really, really bright all the time!

During the early decades of the twentieth century, scientists completely reimagined the universe. First came the discovery that some of the stars in the sky were, in fact, distant galaxies, so that, in addition to hundreds of billions of stars, the universe now consisted of hundreds of billions of galaxies that each consist of hundreds of billions of stars. The universe was suddenly a whole lot bigger than we had thought. Unimaginably bigger. Then there was the discovery that all of the galaxies seem to be flying away from each other, with those galaxies that are farthest away flying away the fastest, as if they had originated in some primordial explosion--a theory that would eventually come to be called the big bang.

In the modern age, our universe is flying apart and has a birthdate. Those discoveries led us to realize a limitation; no matter how big the universe might be, we can only see a part of it (about fourteen-billion-years' worth). It seems silly to assume that the part of the universe that we can see is all of it, but we have no way of knowing this by observation. It's impossible to see how big our universe is, or whether or not it has an end (a boundary of some kind).

The most popular current view is that our universe is "inflating"--after slowing down initially (for about nine billion years), it is now accelerating at rapid rate, and it will keep accelerating until it exceeds the speed of light, and even then it will just keep on accelerating! This inflation is constantly creating new bubble universes that we will never know anything about. In this view, the universe is infinite--and getting bigger (more infinite) every instant--and as it grows, it creates an infinite number of other universes. Inflation is also timeless, in the sense that it will keep inflating and creating more universes forever.

So the universe is timeless and infinite, but the night sky isn't lit up like a Christmas tree. Infinite universes have a beginning in time, which is why the night sky is dark, but not an end.

Like the alchemists of yore, it makes many crave the simplicity of the golden age.

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CHAPTER 24: SUPERNATURAL LAWS

The American theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss is God's avowed enemy. Krauss is not just an aggressive opponent; he believes that he has utterly defeated God. When Krauss is finished with God, God is lying unconscious on the canvas. That's how God fares in Krauss's universe. There is only one possible outcome.

Krauss is an atheist in the Richard Dawkins' mode. Krauss, like Dawkins, believes that science invalidates God. In their view, science leads any rational person inevitably to atheism. Many scientists hold this viewpoint, but few feel the need to trumpet it as loudly as Dawkins and Krauss. Dawkins argues mostly from the perspective of evolution, Krauss from the perspective of big bang cosmology.

Ultimately, their point of view is the same, and can be easily stated. _Because the world (reality) can be explained in purely physical (scientific) terms, there is no need to muddy that explanation with God._ This is a circular form of logic--one that appeals to Occam's razor, but Occam's razor is just a statement about probabilities, not a law of the universe. A universe can be both created by God and understood physically; the two are not contradictory.

Lots of things in the world we live in violate Occam's razor. The simplest explanation isn't always the _correct_ explanation. If it were, quantum physics would not exist. Quantum physics is not the simplest possible explanation of subatomic phenomena--it's almost mind-numbingly complex and can only be understood by incredibly complex math--but scientists believe it to be true anyway. They believe it is true because it works, and most modern communications technologies are based on it. To _not_ believe in it would be to deny reality, no matter what Occam says.

In his book _A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing,*_ Krauss covers the same scientific ground that Hawking covered in _A Brief History of Time_ and _The Grand Design_ to explain how inflation, string theory, M-theory, and quantum gravity all dovetail to show that the universe we live in may be part of an incredible multiverse of infinite (or perhaps not) size. While Hawking's atheism seeps through clearly in his books, it is never explicitly stated. Krauss, on the other hand, wears his atheism on his sleeve and mounts a full frontal attack on God.

Krauss is one of those few scientists who enjoy debate with Christian fundamentalists. He seems to view such debates as "shooting fish in a barrel." Of course, while he might be right about some fundamentalists, only a very small percentage of the religious people in the world are Christian fundamentalists. So how does Krauss fare with the rest?

Krauss does not question the spiritual cosmology of Confucius or Buddha or Lao-Tsu--or Hinduism, inspired by the Vedas and the Upanishads. He does not question the mysticism of the Kabbalah (Judaism), the Gnostics (Christianity), or the Sufis (Islam). As a proponent of western science, Krauss attacks the God of the western religions, the God of the bibles--Judaism ( _The Old Testament_ ), Christianity ( _The New Testament_ ), and Islam ( _The Koran_ ). Krauss wants to refute the God of miracles, and miracles abound in these three western bibles. Krauss' God, "knows if you've been sleeping, knows if you're awake, knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for this God's sake." Krauss' God exists because He is easy to refute with scientific knowledge.

The Santa Claus God is Easy to Refute

(Illustration by Chelsea Potts)

One thing that Krauss insists on is that if God created the universe, then he must have created the laws of the universe first. In this, Krauss repeats the scientific fallacy that the laws of the universe are not an explanation of how the universe works but are things that somehow _cause_ the universe to come into existence in a certain way. In Krauss's world, laws govern, although he makes no attempt to explain how laws can exist before "stuff" exists. Where, exactly, did these laws exist? Logic would seem to indicate that stuff must exist for there to be laws, even if that stuff is virtual particles that only exist instantaneously.

Physicists claim that these virtual particles are "created by the Uncertainty Principle," but this, again, is a circular claim. Scientists readily admit that the Uncertainty Principle cannot exist without these particles. If empty space were truly empty, then the Uncertainty Principle would not exist. Since the Uncertainty Principle cannot exist without these virtual particles, it would seem likely that first there were virtual particles, and then there was an Uncertainty Principle to explain them.

In Krauss's view, however, empty space and the laws of the universe are primal; they are the origin of everything else. This is the dominant position of many modern physicists. The laws of the universe _are_ God, in the sense that they are the creator of all that exists. They are the creator of all that exists because they existed _before_ creation.

In this scientific view, the laws of the universe _are_ the supernatural.

What scientists can't tell us is where these supernatural laws came from, although they insist that they are _not_ indicative of a pre-existing intelligence. What they are indicative of, scientists haven't been able to tell us yet.

* With an "Afterword" by Richard Dawkins, natch!

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CHAPTER 25: THE GOD OF MIRACLES

If God created the universe and its laws, can God violate those laws? Krauss believes that God ought to be able to, and that the miracles of the bible are obviously violations of the laws of the universe. In the bible, God did things like "stop the sun in the sky" and "multiply a few loaves and fishes to feed multitudes." Krauss interprets this to mean that God can violate the laws of the universe.

Of course, we know in modern times that it is easy to get a large group of people to believe that something has happened, even if it did not; it's a form of group hypnosis. This group hypnosis is just a group form of the well-known ability of the authorities to get individuals to confess to crimes that they did not commit and knew absolutely nothing about--or psychologists' and psychiatrists' ability to plant false memories in the minds of patients. The human mind is an incredibly plastic place. Biblical miracles might have been individual visions or group visions, which operate in a similar manner to individual and group hypnosis. Why would God bother to violate laws of the universe when there's a much simpler way?

Did Christ raise Lazarus from the dead? "Rising from the dead" is a well understood phenomenon today (called a "near-death experience"), but the surprise in the bible was that Lazarus rose when Christ commanded him to (the coincidence of two highly improbable events is called a "synchronicity"). Still, this does not have to be a physical miracle to seem miraculous.* Many miracles might be nothing more than extraordinary synchronicities, but are extraordinary synchronicities miracles? It's impossible to say; they might just be extraordinary coincidences--that's the scientific view.

If a child is sick, say dying of a terminal brain tumor, and that child's parents pray for a miracle, those parents are not praying for God to violate the laws of the universe; they are praying for God to save their child's life. In the world of science, children with terminal brain tumors sometimes (very rarely) have something called a "spontaneous remission." What this means is that their tumor shrinks and disappears for no known reason, and a child can be permanently cured as a result (although relapse is also possible). While scientists do not know what causes a spontaneous remission, they do not believe that it is a result of God intervening. They believe that there is a physical explanation that they do not understand yet.

A parent who prays could actually pray for a spontaneous remission (now that such things are scientifically understood to be real), and if their child has a spontaneous remission, they can thank God for performing the miracle of an appropriately timed spontaneous remission without thinking that God has violated the laws of the universe. Miracles do not need to violate the laws of the universe to be considered miracles in the minds of non-scientists.

A scientist could believe the same thing too, no? If it were someone else's child who had the spontaneous remission, a scientist might think that it was just the luck of extremely low probabilities landing in just the right place, but if the child belonged to the scientist who had prayed in a moment of desperation for their own child, the high probability is that the scientist would thank God, even if the scientist did not believe in God. Scientists are, after all, human beings too.

What Krauss and Dawkins and others don't seem to understand is that God is the God of life--the God of the living world. It's the living world that God created in Genesis _._ Life is the only thing that matters to God. The universe is just a life support system. Maybe God created a gazillion universes just to get one with human beings. If there were no life in the universe, there would be no need for God--and no one to think about God's limitations. God, without life, is unthinkable. Since a universe without life is perfectly thinkable, it's easy to understand how scientists have lost their way. God is not necessary to describe a dead universe, a scientific universe, an empty multiverse. As Hoyle realized, God only exists to describe a living universe--our universe.

Whether there is one universe or an infinite number of universes, without life (or God), they would not have a scintilla of meaning. They would just be mindlessly following patterns for reasons that nobody understands, or thinks about, or cares about. For all practical purposes, they would not exist.

And if they did exist, they would not matter at all.

* Like Babe Ruth pointing to center field with his bat just before hitting a home run over the center-field fence in the fifth inning of the third game of the 1932 World Series. (Do I have to say that this may well be an urban myth perpetuated by an imaginative reporter? It sort of spoils the story.)

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CHAPTER 26: THE OTHER THEORIES

Those who talk often, and loudly, about the big bang rarely acknowledge that there are dissenters in the science community--and other theories.* When scientists do mention other theories, they generally do so in the context of explaining that those theories have been disproven. Perhaps you won't be surprised to learn that those who support those alternate theories do not necessarily agree that anything has been _proven_ one way or another.

One alternative theory is that inflation does not go on forever. The universe inflated to a certain size and shape, and then stopped (otherwise it would have "popped" like a bubble). The shape suggested, it turns out, is that of a soccer ball.** As in a game of _Asteroids,_ if you fly out one side of the universe (soccer ball), you will immediately fly in on the opposite side of the universe. Unfortunately, the boundaries of the soccer ball lie beyond our fourteen-billion-year view of the universe. If the universe is soccer-ball shaped, then the best we can ever hope for is indirect evidence. We won't ever be playing universe-level _Asteroids._

Another theory is that our universe is located on a flat two-dimensional plane called a brane. Multiple universes can occupy what is, for all practical purposes, the same space as they exist on different branes. The theory is that they are separated by a space much smaller than an atom, but that they never touch. If they were to touch (and given enough time, whatever can happen, will happen), the result--at the point where they touched--would be an event...just like the big bang.

While brane universes might seem like an odd addition to big bang cosmology, they actually serve a very important need. Large parts of our universe are _not_ moving as they should if the big bang theory is correct. For decades, scientists have questioned the data supporting this view, but over time the data has held up better than their questions. Vast numbers of galaxies (superclusters!) are moving in the _wrong_ direction for the big bang theory to be correct. One thing that might explain this movement without sacrificing the big bang theory in the process is that, while we cannot see or communicate with another brane universe, a parallel brane universe might have a _gravitational_ effect on our universe. That would explain what has come to be called the Great Attractor--the thing that is pulling all those galaxies off their big bang course.

Another theory developed by Canadian physicist Lee Smolin*** is that the matter that is drawn into the black holes that appear to be at the center of every galaxy comes out somewhere...else...creating a whole new universe. Every black hole creates a new expanding universe. Our universe is the creation of a black hole, and not of a big bang, in this theory.

Still, another theory developed by Gerard 't Hooft (Danish Nobel-prize winner and persnickety asteroid owner) and Leonard Susskind (one of the creators of M-theory) reduces the number of space dimensions from three to two by claiming that the universe is actually a two-dimensional holograph that only _appears_ to be three-dimensional (as all good holographs do). Just think about the holographic image of Princess Leia pleading for help in the first _Star Wars_ movie ("Help me, Obe Wan Kenobe!"). Now just extend that image to the entire universe, and you have the gist of their idea, which is called the _holographic universe,_ natch.

Scientists have come to like this idea because they discovered that all the "information" contained in the universe actually "fits" on the imaginary two-dimensional surface of the universe. They arrived at this idea by showing that all of the information contained inside a black hole fits on the two-dimensional "event horizon" of that black hole. Why that might be true makes little sense, unless you think that the universe _really_ _only contains two dimensions_ (Occam is shaving here). So the universe might contain eleven dimensions or just two--or anywhere in between really.

In the quantum view of its origin, the universe did not begin with a big bang because a big bang is an explosion into existing space. In the big bang view, empty space (virtual particles and the Uncertainty Principle) existed first. In the quantum view, all that existed was a surface on which photons vibrate, and where time measures the cycles of those vibrations. The matter that we call fundamental is just a standing wave vibration--a photon somehow "popped into reality" creating a "rip" that caused inflation, which created space/time. Inflation was a response to a rip caused by a photon; inflation created both space _and_ time. The universe started as a single photon in this view ("Let there be light!").

You'll notice right away that, in this view, the big bang has been _replaced_ by inflation. The big bang did not occur first, and then inflation. Inflation was a response to a rip in the fabric of whatever exists before space exists; inflation created space/time (and our universe) from the rip. The value of this view is that it reduces the two macroscopic miracles of the big bang plus inflation to just one macroscopic miracle--inflation. That alone makes it much easier to believe.

Then, of course, there is the argument that the big bang theory simply does not explain the data that we see without the invention of miraculous new features like dark matter and dark energy and Great Attractors. In other words, the universe is _not_ moving as the big bang theory says that it ought to be moving. Stars are missing from galaxies that ought to fly apart but don't, and the theory has to postulate new things like dark matter and dark energy to explain things in an ad hoc manner. The recent discovery that the universe was only slowing down for its first nine billion years and is now speeding up somehow also might be an indication that we just don't have a clear picture of what is going on yet--or that we're misreading the data.

Almost as if to prove this point, scientists have recently announced the discovery of a supercluster of nine massive galaxies that form a single structure that is five billion light years across. The size of this supercluster is far too large to be explained by any current big bang theory.**** A team of Hungarian-American physicists led by Lajos Balazs wrote: "It was a huge surprise to find something this big--and we still don't quite understand how it came to exist at all." The probability that a structure this large would have been created in the big bang is only one in twenty thousand--which lets Hoyle's intelligent design cat out of the big bang bag once again...bummer.

It's hard to understand how scientists can be so certain in the midst of so much uncertainty, but then, that is the very nature of science and scientists.

* The Big Bang Never Happened: A Startling Refutation of the Dominant Theory of the Origin of the Universe by Eric Lerner, The Cult of the Big Bang: Was There a Big Bang? by William C. Mitchell, and Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science by Halton Arp

** Sean Markey, "The Universe is Finite, 'Soccer Ball'-Shaped, Study Hints," National Geographic News, October 8, 2003

*** The Life of the Cosmos by Lee Smolin

**** The press release from the British Royal Astronomical Society can be viewed online at https://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/2693-5-billion-light-years-across-the-largest-feature-in-the-universe

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CHAPTER 27: THE GOVERNATOR

Einstein thought that God was a mathematician. He thought that the universe that we observe is not governed by laws; it is governed by the mathematics behind those laws. The true deity was math; science was just the means used to encounter that deity. Einstein's idea is supported by the fact that all physical theories are expressed in very precise mathematics. This is especially true of relativity and quantum mechanics, which are expressed in some of the most precise mathematics ever invented. These theories get their "power" from the very precision of their mathematics.

In our modern age, the physicist Max Tegmark champions Einstein's argument. In his book _Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality,_ Tegmark argues that the most significant feature of the universe is not empty space or matter or energy or laws, but mathematics itself. The Uncertainty Principle didn't create the universe; the mathematics behind it did! Math is the source of everything, including, by implication, our bad grades in math.

Since all of science is backed up by mathematics, it is very difficult to argue that Tegmark is wrong. Scientific theories _are_ based on mathematics. They are more intimately connected to their mathematics than they are to their verbal (physical) description. Math is more basic than any discussion of theory. Newton's "clockwork" universe of "planetary billiard balls" has been replaced by Einstein's "mathematical" universe of unimaginable curved space/time. Tegmark is right in that sense.

The counter-argument is that only a very small part of the mathematics that exists is expressed in our physical universe. The bulk of mathematics seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with reality. Why does only a very small subset of mathematics create physical reality while the rest seems to have a metaphorical attachment to reality at best?

This objection is greatly reduced by an extraordinarily large--or infinite--multiverse.* In an infinite multiverse, it is possible that every possible mathematics is actually expressed somewhere in one of those universes. Infinity might make all mathematics real, just as it makes all possibilities real.

As with physical laws, however, it is extremely difficult to imagine that mathematics could exist without stuff--before stuff somehow. Where, exactly, did mathematics exist before there was stuff, and why did it exist, and how did it exist? If mathematics only exists _with_ stuff, then there is no compelling reason to believe that it can exist without stuff. In this sense, math has the same problem that science laws have--they only make sense with stuff. Stuff always seems to have to exist first.

In his book _Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty,_ the mathematician Morris Kline tells a story that attempts to capture the current state of our faith in the mathematical foundations of reality in light of the breakdown of certainty in the foundations of math that has dominated math (and logic) since the beginning of the twentieth century.

"On the banks of the Rhine, a beautiful castle had been standing for centuries. In the cellar of the castle, an intricate network of webbing had been constructed by industrious spiders who lived there. One day a strong wind sprang up and destroyed the web. Frantically the spiders worked to repair the damage. They thought it was their webbing that was holding up the castle."**

** Ten to the power of five hundred (10500) is extraordinarily large (six times larger than all the atoms in the universe); infinite is infinite (as always).

** Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty by Morris Kline, Fall River Press, New York, 1980, p. 332

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CHAPTER 28: PHYSICS OFF THE RAILS

Those who propose that we have reached the end of physics* are not referring to a culmination of modern physics' new golden age--we are far from that now. Instead, they are referring to the largely unverifiable and theoretical nature of modern cosmological theories. The idea that there is one unified law of physics is challenged as a theory that lacks convincing evidence-- _or any evidence at all for that matter._ String theory, M-theory and quantum gravity all depend on the discovery of so-far undiscovered "super-symmetrical particles." If these particles are not discovered at CERN soon, these theories may all be candidates for the scrap heap of science history. In this very real sense, the inability to find super-symmetrical particles could spell the end of the bulk of the unverifiable, theoretical physics that exists today. Relativity, quantum mechanics and the Standard Model would survive, but string theory, M-theory and quantum gravity would be toast.

The simplest way to understand all this is to state the obvious: Science does not--cannot--provide a complete picture of reality. Science can predict the behavior of certain things, but the behavior of things does not provide a complete picture of the thing behaving. We can know a lot about ants by observing their behavior. We can study them scientifically and understand everything that they do in terms of chemical signals that cause predictable responses (much as human teenagers are understood to be "driven" by chemical hormones that cause predictable responses). Still, when we add up all of our scientific knowledge of ants plus all _possible_ scientific knowledge of ants, we do not have a complete picture of an ant. In truth, any ant in the world has a more complete picture of what it is like to be an ant than all the scientists in the world. The gap between the scientific world view and the real world that we live in is enormous when seen this way.

The same can be said of the stars in the night sky. We can predict their movements with great precision, but our knowledge of the stars cannot be thought of as being in any way complete. Let's face it, we cannot know everything that there is to know about a star in spite of our ability to predict certain aspects of its behavior. You would think this would be obvious to scientists.

To get around this problem, scientists had to be really clever. Scientists now claim that the real world isn't what is really real; it's the mathematics behind the real world that is the one true reality. _And we can know that math,_ which, incomprehensibly, they believe _can_ provide a complete picture of reality.

For the rest of us, the idea that an incomprehensible equation can give us a complete view of the universe is...well...just plain incomprehensible.

* The End of Physics: The Myth of a Unified Theory by David Lindley and The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin

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CHAPTER 29: THE SUNSHINE OF THE ETERNAL MIND

"God bless the child!" lyrics by Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog, Jr.

And so we have arrived back where we started--trying to find God...or laws...or mathematics that will make sense out of the "stuff" in our ultimately mysterious universe. Because this is complicated, I'll try to make it as simple as possible. To recap, Descartes thought that two separate universes existed--the universe of mind and the universe of matter--and that these universes were completely separate and could never communicate with each other. The problem with this idea is obvious; mind and matter clearly _do_ communicate--just think about the placebo effect.

Bishop Berkeley supplemented Descartes' view by pointing out that the universe of mind was _always_ primary, and that, therefore, mind must be the _source_ of matter. There are no known circumstances where matter exists without mind (before mind); therefore, mind is the source phenomenon of all matter (and all other minds). Mind is real; matter is only real because mind says it is. "I think, therefore, I am" becomes "I think, therefore, it is."

In contrast, the world of modern science believes that matter and energy are primary, and that both life and mind result from an "organization of matter" that is not well understood yet. In the world of modern science, matter is primary and mind is, quite literally, an afterthought. The scientific view has one significant failing. While it accounts for mind in a "mechanical" manner--it's a brain function that we don't fully understand yet--it fails to account for its own laws...or its mathematics...in a mechanical manner _because they are a product of mind._ The products of mind--ideas--are not real. You can think absolutely anything!

Modern science's view of reality is not real in the very real sense that mind cannot "imagine" it. It's literally impossible to imagine "warped four-dimensional space/time" or a "universe with eleven dimensions." These are not "ideas" in the traditional sense of the word--these "ideas" only exist as math symbols on paper, and not as mental pictures of the real world that we live in.

The "table" of modern science consists almost entirely of empty space and bears no resemblance whatsoever to the table in your living room. The table of science is made up of "ideas." The table of science is not real. The table of science _only_ exists in our minds. In the real world, the table is made of oak and dowels and varnish and is the one, true table that we all see. The table of science is an abstraction that does not exist anywhere _\--except_ _in our minds._

Ask yourself: If you had never been born, would the universe exist? In what sense would it exist? And when you die, will it continue to exist? What if the universe "winked out of existence" at the moment of your death? It would seem that--for all practical purposes--when you die, the universe will die with you. How else could it be?

This logical--but totally unsatisfactory--conclusion led Bishop Berkeley to postulate an Eternal Mind that must be the source of the universe and will keep it alive after you die. The Eternal Mind would survive the death of any individual mind in it, just as your own body survives the death of any individual cell in it. The Eternal Mind creates new minds as it assimilates old ones. Our lives exist as thoughts in the Eternal Mind. We've been able to decipher a number of the Eternal Mind's mathematical thoughts about how the universe works. Since we are children of the Eternal Mind that should be no surprise. But if you think about it, we don't _only_ think mathematically. Perhaps, the Eternal Mind doesn't _only_ think mathematically either.

Perhaps math is the _means_ that the Eternal Mind used to _generate_ a physical universe for the Eternal Mind to think about. The physical universe is just a thought in the Eternal Mind, but it is a boring thought--although an infinite universe that generates infinite multiple universes all acting differently and subtly interacting might alleviate some of that boredom.

It seems pretty obvious, however, that the way that the Eternal Mind thinks _creatively_ is through life. It takes a lot more than math to understand life. The living world is not a mathematical thought. DNA is not a mathematical molecule; the mind can easily imagine the double helix of a DNA molecule--a child can imagine it. Models that allow you to assemble DNA molecules from just four different-colored plastic parts are suitable for eight-year-old children! You can understand DNA as soon as you reach the age of reason. The living world is the Eternal Mind's ultimate achievement--its happy thought! Also, it's most challenging thought.

ScienceWiz DNA Experiment Kit

(Created by a woman scientist, natch!)

The living world that the Eternal Mind created only has two principles--progress and death.* The Eternal Mind fuels the progress of life with death. Death is the grease of life, and life is the Disneyland of the Eternal Mind. The universe is just a vast, lifeless Sahara of stars whose sole function seems to be as life's incubator. It was a big job, but the Eternal Mind thinks that it was worth the effort.

The Eternal Mind thinks that life (even red in tooth and claw) is a good thing, and that the purpose of humanity is to be good--to become good. The rub, of course, is that the "good" is debatable--as it must be.** The Eternal Mind has never made anything easy for life. Paradise (utopia) is a human invention and not a byproduct of the Eternal Mind. For the Eternal Mind, life _is_ paradise. And life lives in the Garden of Eden, even as it destroys it.

The Eternal Mind probably thinks about individual lives in much the same way that human scientists think about the animals that they torture in science experiments. Scientists are, after all, children of the Eternal Mind too. While this might seem ironic, it would explain a lot. Still, the "good" is an "aim" and not an "end." Just as authors know how to put their characters in maximum jeopardy to get the most out of them, the Eternal Mind knows exactly how to keep us challenged by an ever-changing world that is red in tooth and claw, but where death leads to rebirth and regeneration.

You just gotta say, "Wow!", no?

And then, you die.

Life is a snuff film!

* James Jeans (Sir James!), The Mysterious Universe, Kessinger Legacy Reprints, Montana, 2010, p. 180

** The "quality" debate in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig is an excellent example of just how difficult it is to say what "the good" is.

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PART FIVE

KNOWN UNKNOWNS

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CHAPTER 30: HOUSE M.D.

Science is a learning process, not a knowing process. There is no John Wayne ("I don't want to be the one who learns; I want to be the one who knows!") of science.* Scientists who are right are often just lucky--the idea that popped into their head at just the right moment turned out to be correct. It could just as easily have turned out to be wrong. It often is. No scientist is always right. Scientists who talk about their "greatest blunder" ought to clarify that "greatest" infers that they make a large number of blunders, and this is just the _most_ _significant._ Blunders are the slow-burning fuel of science.

When television writers set out to create a genius doctor who could solve cases that nobody else could solve (Dr. Gregory House), they used Sherlock Holmes as their model, but they had to make significant changes to the Holmes model because a doctor is a very special kind of detective. A doctor is a _scientific_ detective. House can solve obscure medical puzzles, but he cannot do it alone. He doesn't need one Watson to tell his story to the world; he needs a whole team of Watsons to help him arrive at the answer.

To solve a case, House must have a steady stream of scientific hypotheses presented by his team of Watsons (doctors). He will test these theories and show them to be _wrong,_ but they stimulate his thinking in the direction of the correct answer. Arriving at the correct answer involves eliminating all possible wrong answers in the search for the right answer. This is, of course, the scientific method. As a result, House is wrong a lot more often than Sherlock Holmes.** It's a part of the process--not his process, the process of science.

House discovers the correct answer to the medical puzzle in a moment of inspiration just before the end of the episode, usually while he is talking with someone about a completely unrelated matter. Some word or phrase will cause House to suddenly "know the answer" that has eluded him for the entire episode. This is his "Eureka!-moment in the bathtub," and the audience knows that the solution is about to be revealed. This answer is almost _always_ correct--ah, Hollywood!

We often have a Hollywood-influenced perception of how science functions. Remember a few years ago when movies that dealt with the discovery of a new virus that was threatening to become a plague that would destroy humanity would tell us the exact number of hours or days that it would take to make an antidote? That would start a "ticking clock" to determine if the antidote would be finished in time to avert disaster.

Now, ask yourself, could anything be further from what we all know to be reality? Has Hollywood never heard of the need to test drugs in clinical trials just to find out _if_ they work better than placebos? When scientists announced the discovery of the virus that causes AIDS in 1984, they claimed that a vaccine would be available within a couple of years. They must have been watching too many Hollywood movies as, thirty years later, we are still waiting for _that_ vaccine.

It's popular to think of science as a process that finds answers, but it might be more realistic to think of science as a process that eliminates errors. The more errors that are eliminated, the better off we are--even if we still haven't solved the problem. It's not so much that science becomes "truer" over time; it becomes "less wrong."

Clearly that's a good thing.

* In the world of science, "Those who know, teach."

** In reviews of the original Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes was criticized for what was seen as his most irritating feature--being right all the time (the original "Mr. Know-It-All!"). Some reviewers found this trait to be neither endearing nor realistic. They failed to notice, however, how entertaining it was. Just like Bullwinkle!

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CHAPTER 31: STRAW DOGS

"I would more easily believe that a Yankee would lie than that stones would fall from heaven." Thomas Jefferson

In the present moment, science consists largely of ideas that will eventually be proven to be wrong. These are the "hypotheses" of science that must be "tested" before they can be believed. Most hypotheses will be disproven. There can only be a handful of truth in any mountain of conjecture. Still, some scientific hypotheses become elevated to the level of "scientific truth" even though no convincing evidence (the hallmark of good science) has been presented. These special hypotheses are thought to be true until proven false, in spite of the fact that they have not yet been proven to be true. These are scientific "straw dogs."

The logic behind these special straw dogs is...no surprise by now, I hope...Occam's all-purpose probability razor. The logic is easy to state: If an idea is the simplest explanation of the facts, then that idea can be considered true until convincing evidence is submitted to contradict it--or a simpler explanation is proposed. Because Occam's probability can be anywhere from fifty-one to ninety-nine percent, this is an incredibly elastic notion that can be used to justify all sorts of things--some of them nonsense, some not.

The idea that no two people have the same fingerprints is just such a straw dog. The statement that no two fingerprints are ever identical is a hypothesis. It can be proven false by finding an identical print, but it cannot be proven true (you would have to compare everybody's fingerprints to everybody else's, which is not possible). It is a straw dog--something that you state so that others will attempt to refute it, but that subversively places the burden of proof on the person refuting (say, a defendant accused of murder).

Because fingerprint evidence is often partial and is ultimately "interpreted" by technicians who match "points of coincidence," the few scientific studies that have attempted to determine the accuracy of their final judgements determined that fingerprint evidence is less than fifty percent accurate\--not exactly a comforting conclusion. While it may be true that no two fingerprints are identical, innocent people may have been sent to jail based on a misinterpretation of what it means that no two fingerprints are ever identical. Apparently, it does not seem to mean that fingerprint evidence is incredibly accurate--as many people think.

Forensic evidence has often been based on the science of hope used by aggressive prosecutors to jail the (hopefully) guilty. The FBI has admitted that bite evidence, spectrographic voice analysis, handwriting analysis, arson analysis, and a host of other forensic straw dogs do not have rigorous scientific backing--or any scientific backing at all, actually. In other words, the FBI admitted that this evidence was little more, in each case, than a scientific straw dog--ideas that they hoped were true. These straw dogs convinced a lot of juries.

The very nature of scientific straw dogs is that they can't be proven. Otherwise, they would be scientific facts. Nobody disputes that water is made up of two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule; it's a simple fact. Scientific straw dogs are not facts; they are part of the process of science. While this process can lead to success, it can also lead to pseudoscience as scientists often believe that its straw dogs are true even though they are unproven.

For half a century, scientists denied the obvious evidence that the continents that are now separated by oceans were once part of the same land mass. The evidence was clear--the continents fit together like a giant puzzle if you just cut the oceans out of the picture. Scientists denied this evidence because they could not imagine a "mechanism" that would allow continents to move. They were unwilling to give up their straw dog ("land masses don't move") without such a mechanism. Reality had to satisfy their need for such a mechanism before they were willing to admit the obvious reality. They proposed alternative, if not very convincing, explanations for why the continents fit together so conveniently. They would not discover that the seafloor was spreading--which moves the continents--until after the Second World War. Absent this mechanism, scientists continued to believe a wrong hypothesis (that the continents were never joined) even after damning evidence was presented to the contrary. The straw dog prevented them from seeing reality for half a century.

Perhaps, the most famous scientific straw dog was the scientific attitude towards meteors. We understand today that almost everything about the earth (including how it got its moon) was formed as meteors and asteroids and comets bombarded it. Only the pace of the bombardment has slowed down in the billions of years since the earth was first formed, but seventeenth and eighteenth scientists could not imagine a "mechanism" that would allow stones to fall from heaven.

In spite of eye-witness reports and the evidence of crater impacts and actual meteors found in craters, scientists denied that meteors existed until the nineteenth century when a scientist predicted the date that a recurring meteor shower would return for all to see. Nothing impresses in science like a successful prediction, ironically, since none of the meteors in this particular shower landed on earth--except as dust.* What the meteor shower did accomplish was to turn the tide of scientific opinion. It suddenly became "scientific" to believe that stones could fall from the sky--so, suddenly, they did.

As with continental drift, reality was denied because a straw dog ("Stones can't fall from the sky; how would they get up there in the first place?") was believed. Reality does not necessarily trump scientific theory. While science may be generally self-correcting, _when_ and _if_ science will self-correct in any specific case will always be some of Donald Rumsfeld's _known unknowns._

The two giant straw dogs of modern science are evolution theory and big bang theory. Neither of these theories can be demonstrated in a convincing scientific manner--a fact which scientists readily admit--and yet many scientists insist that we should think of them both as scientific facts because they believe that the indirect evidence is overwhelming. They are just like identical fingerprints in the minds of many scientists. Scientists will continue to believe in them until convincing evidence is presented that they are wrong, and those same scientists get to decide which evidence is convincing. A protective wall has been built around these theories that no outsider--or insider--can scale.

Right or wrong, straw dogs can create scientific facts--even when no such facts exist. When it comes to science's straw dogs, it would seem that _reasonable doubt_ is probably the best option for non-scientists.

They've been wrong in the past; they might be wrong in the future.

* The dust of the thousands of meteors that burn up as they enter our atmosphere every day lands on earth where some of it settles in houses and apartments and mixes with the skin and hair shed by human beings and their pets to form...common housedust, which is how the meteors hid from Thomas Jefferson.

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CHAPTER 32: TO SERVE MAN

"It's a cookbook!"*

The search for extraterrestrials is, perhaps, the ultimate modern scientific straw dog. There are a hundred billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy. Scientists imagine that a huge number of those stars have planets that could support life, and that, therefore, life must be commonplace in our galaxy--and the universe in general. The question of how much of that life would become intelligent builders of advanced civilizations is harder to quantify, but, once again scientists suspect that the number would be large. When you start with a hundred billion, you get lots of just about everything.

But if there is so much life in the universe, then why don't we know about it already? Why don't we have visitors? Tourists from multiple civilizations should have travelled to visit what is certainly one of the garden spots of the galaxy. Uncertain what the food might be like in faraway solar systems, they might have adapted their cookbooks to whatever was available locally. That's the way it is in science fiction, at least. Why isn't it like that in science fact?

One answer is that space travel between stars just isn't practical no matter how advanced a civilization might be. Space travel might be the "rocket backpacks" of science fiction--appealing but not real, not likely to _ever_ be real. The time necessary to travel to even a nearby star might make the entire enterprise impractical. In this scenario, aliens would like to visit but they can't.

But absent space travel, wouldn't space communication be a priority for those advanced civilizations? Wouldn't they do what we have done, which is send signals and probes and search for incoming signals? If long-distance space travel is impractical, then announcing their presence should not pose any danger and communicating with distant civilizations would be space's real "final frontier." And if they are sufficiently advanced, can't we assume that they would communicate in such a way that we would be able to "receive" their message once we have reached a certain level of advanced civilization? Of course, the distances involved mean that it would be impractical to "answer" a message because our answer would not be received for millions of years. I mean, we would answer, of course, it's just that we'd have no expectation that our answer would be heard in any time frame that we might consider significant. All space communications are "messages in a bottle"--nobody expects an answer.

Another possibility is that there just isn't all that much life in the universe. We have absolutely no idea what the probability is that life will "spontaneously create itself" just because the circumstances for life are perfect. How many of Darwin's "warm ponds" are necessary to support just one fish? Scientists like to think that the odds are practically certain if the conditions are good for a long enough time with just the right ingredients...but that is really nothing more than reasoned speculation--a scientific straw dog.

Life appeared on earth in the "blink of an eye," but that life might have arrived from space in which case it would tell us nothing about Darwin's warm pond, which must have been somewhere...else. For all we know, it might take a million planets like earth just to create algae, and then a million planets with algae just to create one with any higher life forms--like simple multi-celled life. And then a million planets with simple multi-celled life just to create one with fish and plants and animals. We just don't know. Without knowing the odds, no reasonable scientific prediction can be made. It's all theory without math, which is to say, speculation.

Once you have animals, the question then becomes, what are the odds that the animals will evolve into an advanced civilization? Once again, it's impossible to answer this question. We know that gorillas are intelligent, but neither gorillas nor orangutans nor chimpanzees nor bonobos, which are all highly successful and intelligent, have created language or an advanced civilization. Does it really take special vocal cords to develop a complex language _plus_ an opposing thumb and forefinger to build things _plus_ a giant brain to put it all together? And if so, what are the odds of that particular trifecta? In any event, advanced life isn't all that common here on earth. How common it might be in the cosmos is a complete and utter mystery.

A really big _known unknown._

We might be the only intelligent life in the entire universe--that's a possibility that is thus far supported by all the evidence.

* Twilight Zone, Episode 89, "To Serve Man," March 2, 1962 (written by Rod Serling, based on the story by Damon Knight)

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CHAPTER 33: LUCY IN THE SKY

"If everything in the universe depends on everything else in some fundamental way, it might be impossible to get close to a full solution by investigating parts of the problem in isolation." Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

Scientists at CERN have recently confirmed what they had long suspected--that the first things that were created after the big bang were photons. _Entangled photons._ Entangled photons are pairs of photons that have opposite properties. If one photon spins left, the other spins right. If you change the spin of one, the spin of the other automatically changes to remain the opposite--no matter where in the universe that photon is. This spooky behavior is called _quantum entanglement_ , and it is what Hawking was referring to when he said, "If everything in the universe depends on everything else in some fundamental way." It turns out that it does.

As always, the difficulty is in understanding what this means. There is a strange connectivity that we do not understand, but it only seems to exist so that a balance of forces is maintained. The tricky part lies in the mechanism. A photon here on earth can affect a photon on the other side of the universe--instantly. They are connected faster than the speed of light, unimaginably faster, as the "spin information" makes a trip that would take billions of years instantly! Clearly, there is something about this process that we just don't understand...at least not yet.

There is a temptation to use this entanglement to postulate all kinds of nonsense, and many scientists--and non-scientists--have succumbed to that temptation over the years. The reality is that nobody knows what it means, and all theories about it are speculation. They are the worst kind of scientific speculation in most cases--speculations without any mathematics to back them up. Other theories, like the idea that the microtubules in every living cell are entangled at the quantum mechanical level, might be capable of scientific verification one day. In any event, anyone who talks with authority about quantum entanglement doesn't know what they are talking about.

Still, it might prove useful to remember that the stars that we currently see in the night sky were all originally entangled photons. Even E. F. Hutton thinks it might be important.

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CHAPTER 34: HOW MANY ANGELS?

"The number of new drugs approved per billion dollars spent on research and development has halved roughly every nine years since 1950, falling around eighty-fold in inflation-adjusted terms."* Eroom's Law

While computing power has increased exponentially since the first personal computers were built, the output of modern science has _decreased_ exponentially in a process with a clear trajectory. We spend much more in time and money for each new drug that we develop, and we get less new drugs each year as a result. The cost of drugs skyrockets while the development of new drugs diminishes. In the world of computers, we spend more and get more powerful computers. In the world of science, we spend more and get less new science with each passing year.

One explanation for this is that the costs of science cannot be recovered in the marketplace. In that sense, science is more like government than industry, and we all understand that government will always take longer, spend more money and produce far less than profit-oriented industry. As the cost and complexity of science increases, and funding is not unlimited (it's diminishing actually), output is greatly reduced. More cost for each new innovation means less, and more expensive, innovations. The ever-increasing cost of modern science acts like a giant parachute brake that impedes scientific progress.

The Cost of Modern Science Acts

Like a Parachute Brake on Progress

(Illustration by Chelsea Potts)

Science has become so large and so expensive that progress is made in such tiny increments as to be almost undetectable. What was once true mainly about biology is now true about the physical sciences as well. Competing theories about the big bang now need expensive satellites that can cost millions of dollars to build, launch and maintain just to determine which theory might have the "confirmational edge." In all cases, the data collected won't be definitive, and competing theories will continue to compete until a definitive answer is possible.

And what was once true of the physical sciences is now true for the applied sciences as well. The image of an Edison working alone in his lab churning out invention after invention is quaint and out of date. It's not just our inability to engineer a nuclear fusion power plant in spite of over fifty years of effort. A nuclear fusion power plant is a notoriously difficult task. Even the desire for something simple like a new, more efficient battery technology--coupled with hundreds of proposals for new and innovative batteries, and funded with billions of government and private research dollars--has not produced a significant new battery technology since lithium-ion batteries were first produced in 1991 from a technology that took twenty years to develop.

This is true, in spite of our current, practically desperate, need for a more efficient battery to help relieve our inputs to global warming and to bring energy to remote areas where infrastructure energy is impractical. A new battery--just ten times more storage capability--would literally change the world. Applying laboratory success to commercially viable technology is no longer a simple task and hasn't been for a while. Technology becomes more complex with each passing year.

Society votes with its pocketbook to decide which kinds of space exploration we want most, but one suspects that visiting our solar system will outweigh our interest in understanding the origin of the universe--unless, of course, a definitive answer becomes possible. The money is more likely to go to Mars, the god of war (always a human favorite). Or a bigger Hubble-style telescope. After all, Hubble sends back all those amazing pictures that we can't get anywhere else. The big bang may always be a theory, but photos can be mounted on the wall. Big bang scientists are very sensitive to these realities. Politics exists in all of science.

In the final analysis, competing theories about the origin of the universe are very much like the medieval question about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Some view the medieval question as ridiculous while others believe that it was a question about infinities and how they would apply to incorporeal things like angels. In modern cosmology, infinities are applied to universes instead of angels, but the overall effect is the same. Currently, cosmologists are unable to tell us how many universes can dance on the head of a pin--or if the answer is finite or infinite--although they are working diligently on the problem. Medieval scholars had it easy by comparison. Since angels have no substance (no "stuff"), the number of dancing angels was obviously infinite--just like God.

The big bang theory is very much a work in progress. Actually, in the years since it was first proposed, there has never been a moment in time when more physicists questioned exactly what occurred at the moment that our universe was created. For the average person, the big bang is the big yawn. Our universe popped out of nothing. So what? What difference does it make? We've been teaching that "scientists believe that the universe began in an explosion called the big bang" in high schools since the nineteen fifties. Over half a century later, physicists are still arguing over the details, and modern discoveries have greatly confused matters, but the general statement that "scientists believe that the universe began in an explosion called the big bang" remains true.

Without any evidence or theoretical confirmation for string theory, M-theory, or the multiverse, there is no need to change the high school textbooks. While inflation might survive as a theory, it hardly seems necessary at the high school level. The big bang makes exactly the same sense to a lay person with or without inflation. Popping out of nothing is popping out of nothing, whether it happens once or twice, no? You could save inflation for the entry-level college classes.

Until scientists work it out, the big bang really is just the big yawn--no matter what E.F. Hutton says.

* Jack W. Scannell, Alex Blanckley, Helen Boldon & Brian Warrington; Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 11; March, 2012; pp. 191-200

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CHAPTER 35: MURPHY'S OTHER LAW

"Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong." Murphy's Law

Most people know Murphy's Law, but there is a more generalized statement of this law that is less well understood. Murphy's Law was originally developed as an explanation of why things go wrong because it was used to help develop methods to avoid things from going wrong in complicated test set-ups.*

When scientific tests are conducted, they are repeated over and over again to confirm that they always yield the same result. What this does is create a large number of occurrences of exactly the same test. As it turns out, it you repeat any test often enough, everything that can possibly go wrong with that test set-up will go wrong--eventually. This knowledge was then used to feed back into the system so that modifications would be made to the test set-up to reduce the number of things that could go wrong to as close to zero as possible--a form of total quality control. This is the practical side of Murphy's Law. "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong."

But when a sufficiently large number of occurrences of any event takes place, all possible variations of that event will happen. Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong; but this is just a small subset of a larger reality--everything that can possibly happen, will happen. Things may happen extremely rarely, but they will happen if at all possible. Toss enough coins and some will land on their edge.

Murphy's Law, like Occam's razor, is a generalized statement about probabilities. Given enough repetitions, every possible failure will occur, but it's also true that every possible** variation or success will occur. The near infinite variety of the living world is a perfect example of this reality.

"Whatever can happen, will happen." Murphy's other law.

* Nick T. Spark, A History of Murphy's Law, Annals of Improbable Research, September, 2003

** As we all understand by now, monkeys typing hip hop lyrics and tornadoes performing motorcycle maintenance are not possible.

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CHAPTER 36: INFINITE NONSENSE

"Man, woman, birth, death, infinity."*

(Illustration by Chelsea Potts)

Scientists go to a great deal of trouble to keep infinities out of their equations, so it is quite surprising that, when it comes to a controversial theory like the multiverse, scientists have embraced infinity as a virtue. The simple truth is that infinity makes big bang cosmology make sense--and nothing is more important to scientists than that science make sense.

Still, we need to stop and reflect for a moment because a momentous event has occurred. The infinite multiverse is the first time in human history when a scientist--or a mathematician, or anybody actually--has proposed the something infinite might actually exist. _Everybody knows_ that infinities do not exist. _Everybody knows_ that infinities _cannot_ exist except as mathematical objects . There are perfectly good, real-world reasons for knowing this, but some scientists have decided that infinities can--not necessarily do, but can--exist. This is a momentous event in human history no matter how you look at it.

The multiverse actually creates two infinities. If "eternal inflation" is real, then the size of our universe is infinite and growing more infinite by the second. The most interesting by-product of this inflation is that it creates a lot of new bubble universes--an infinite number of them, actually. So our universe is infinite, and the multiverse is infinite. And when you have infinity, then you have...quite literally...everything. Not only do you have everything, you have everything _an infinite number of times._ Infinities lead to all kinds of nonsense, and scientists know this perfectly well.

Let's just accept that our universe is infinite. If the universe is infinite, then certain things are true. If the universe is infinite, then there will be another planet that is exactly like the one you live on, and in which your life would be exactly the same. There would not only be one planet that would be identical with an identical you, there would be an _infinite_ number of planets in which your life is exactly the same as the one you are living.

Then, imagine a planet in which you did one thing differently in your life. Say, you ate cornflakes instead of oatmeal for breakfast one morning. While no major changes would occur, there would be minor changes (less oatmeal consumed, more cornflakes that day). If you ask how many planets exist in which you ate oatmeal one day instead of cornflakes, you will discover that there are an infinite number of such planets! For anything that you can imagine physically happening, you are forced to realize that--in an infinity--that thing will happen an infinite number of times, and then it will just keep on happening! Shakespeare (but not the typing chimps) will write his plays over and over again, and then he will just keep on writing-- like an Elizabethan Energizer Bunny!

So, in an infinity, every possible (cornflake/oatmeal) variation of every person's life would be played out an infinite number of times.** When confronted with such ideas, I would think that the average person is perfectly happy that this marvelous panorama might remain forever opaque to us. Considering it too seriously is bound to give one a headache.

And if there are an infinite number of universes, then logic would compel us to believe that some universes must contain a participating God who watches lovingly over His or Her creation in full violation of Occam's razor. Unless such a God is physically impossible, in an infinity, such a God will occur in an infinite number of universes, just as such a God will _not_ occur in an infinite number of universes.

Which infinity is larger--and which kind of God-verse we live in--are just more of Donald Rumsfeld's _known unknowns._

* The five-word opening (with chalkboard graffics) of the television series Ben Casey (spoken by Sam Jaffe--Dr. Zorba!)

** The way that Stephen Hawkings parsed this idea (as a holograph, no less) was to assure all the young women in Australia that in an infinite multiverse that each and every one of them would marry Zayne Malik of One Direction...just in a universe somewhere...else. It has been rumored that multiple suicides were averted with this scientific knowledge. Who said that science can't be a moral enterprise?

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CHAPTER 37: WE THINK, THEREFORE, IT IS

"Doctors advise; patients decide." Dr. Kildare*

I believe in the reality of the world that we live in. In that sense, I am in complete agreement with the scientific world view. I do not think that the real world exists because I see it. _I think it exists_ _because_ _we all_ _see it._ The fact that we all see it is something that I can easily verify by asking any random stranger what they see.

The real world exists, at least in part, because of our consensus agreement that it exists. If everybody agrees that something exists, then it doesn't really matter much whether or not that thing is real because it is, for all practical purposes, real. In many ways, it is "realer" than something that we do not all agree is true. From this perspective, God was more real in Europe during the middle ages than global warming is today. Nobody was ever burnt at the stake for denying that global warming is caused by mankind--at least, not yet.

Whenever we hear theories that challenge the idea that the reality that we all experience every day does not exist, we roll our eyes. No matter how strong the argument, our belief in reality emerges unscathed. We know it exists in our bones. This is much like our feelings about free will. Scientists can insist all they want that free will does not exist, but most people believe that they have at least a limited access to free will, so they simply ignore the scientists. Right or wrong, personal experience trumps science.

If science speaks what sounds like nonsense, then people tend to ignore the science. By now, society understands that science is a flawed--and not a perfect--enterprise. The facts of science require interpretation to apply them to societies (Hawking's "neighbor problem" again). As unsatisfactory as it might seem, individuals and governments are the ultimate interpreters of science, whether or not they are qualified. People often think what they're going to think regardless of what scientists say. When the majority agrees, society acts. Science has an influence, but science is not the "decider."

While this irks some scientists, it is obviously better that society be governed by its citizens rather than by any one limited subset of them--priests, aristocrats _or_ scientists--a formula that has gotten societies into trouble throughout history ("Off with their heads!"), no matter how noble the original intention. Because science has no built-in morality, society would seem to be better served by those who do. Politicians may be flawed, but at least they have a clearly stated morality--no matter how imperfect their practice of that morality might be.

Scientists believe that the world that we see is real and that any other layer of reality beyond that violates Occam's razor. The multiverse violates Occam's razor, of course. A gazillion universes isn't the simplest possible explanation by anybody's standards. Scientists counter this objection by saying that nature is not governed by Occam's razor.

As you can see, scientists accept or reject Occam's razor depending on the goal that they want to achieve. If they want you to believe in quantum physics or the multiverse, they argue against Occam's razor and defer to nature, but if they are asked to consider God, then they defer to Occam. You might take note that it's not so much Occam's razor as God's presence that prompts them to action one way or the other. The fact that an infinite multiverse makes God a statistical certainty in some universes does not seem to have occurred to them yet.

They are, after all, scientists and not philosophers.

The claim that science can explain the mysterious aspects of matter, energy and the universe has not stood up well to scrutiny. The laser light of twentieth-century science has only served to deepen the mysteries of the universe. The universe is more mysterious in the twenty-first century than it was in the twentieth--a lot more mysterious. Despite claims to the contrary, the universe remains an inscrutable place.

As the universe has become unimaginably vast, our understanding of it has become exceedingly narrow, if not downright myopic. If math is the answer, then none but mathematicians will ever understand it. The final complete theory of the universe will only be comprehensible to a few of the high priests...I mean mathematicians...of science.

How we got here is easy to understand. Science's understanding of the universe does not include life or consciousness--except as an afterthought. How can our understanding possibly be complete when it fails to include that which is most important to us? That is the ultimate paradox of modern science and its "neighbor problem."

* Apparently, the rivalry between Ben Casey and Dr. Kildare extended into real life. Whenever the actors who played those characters met in public, their conflict over who was the better doctor intruded. There is even a report that a duel that took place in Central Park with ice cream cones (apparently, the jousting weapon of choice amongst doctors). I hear that Ben Casey won; Dr. Kildare had to pay his own cleaning bill.

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APPENDIX

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THE ROLLS-ROYCE OF UNIVERSES!

This is the climactic chapter from Nobody Knows (The Thing That Really Matters About) Anything: A Users' Guide for the 21st Century written by Nobody! If you'd like to know more, that's where to look.

"IT'S WHERE IT'S HAPPENING!"

This is the story of Boltzmann's brain. The science Columbo is about to solve the Bohr student murders. You are about to learn why evolution evolved six billion individual consciousnesses that seem to have no other function than to get us killed. More correctly, you're about to learn why it didn't. Let's all retire to the library for brandy. You're going to need it. Comfortable? If you thought that my Miniverse in a crystal sphere was a strange idea, wait until you hear about the Multiverse. In spite of the fact that it's impossible to see the big picture because we're in it, science thinks that it has. Science has never been troubled by its inability to see things. We wouldn't have great things like positrons, neutrinos, anti-quarks, anti-matter and the Higgs boson if it did.

Before creationists got their hands on Intelligent Design, it was a perfectly good scientific theory (which the poor scientists have since had to disavow as part of their plan to save us from the creationists). The basic question behind the original Intelligent Design theory was: "Why are the parameters of the universe set in just such a way that our universe happens to support DNA-based life?" The sarcastic scientific answer was that if our universe didn't support DNA-based life then nobody would be asking the question. The unscientific answer was that our universe was special (this opened the door for the creationists). Scientists didn't like the "special universe" answer, but they had a hard time getting around it. The universe had to be special, or nobody would be asking the question (the sarcastic scientific answer worked better as sarcasm than as an answer). The reason that scientists quit worrying about Intelligent Design was that they came up with an answer to the question that fell out of their string equations (as gravity does) like apples fall from trees. The answer eliminated the need for a "special universe."

The reason that the parameters of the universe are set in just such a way as to support DNA-based life--big drum roll here--is that our universe is only one of a gazillion universes (the number "gazillion" is actually not nearly large enough, but we'll go with it for clarity's sake). Out of these gazillion universes, it is not at all surprising that one of them might have the parameters set perfectly so that it would support DNA-based life. If you toss enough coins, eventually one will land on its edge.

Like the unpopular "many-universes" explanation of quantum mechanics (where a universe pops into existence every time a measurement--which nobody can define--is made), the Multiverse makes up for whatever it may lack in sense with "an overabundance of universes." [Historical sidebar: To get around the problem of not being able to define what a "measurement" was, Bohr (the most practical scientist since Newton) simply said that "while we may not know what a measurement is, we sure as hell know how to make one." So they measured things and invented quantum mechanics. Only God knows how many universes they may have created doing it.]

Like the "give evolution enough time, and it can do anything" theory, the "give us enough universes, and we can explain anything" theory is a true peach amongst fallen apples. What it does that scientists like is eliminate the need for an Intelligent Designer. Take that, you pesky creationists. We have enough universes now to send you to the lockers.

The problem with this explanation--and scientists don't even like to think about this--is that it makes the laws of the universe, and by extension, science, so... _not special._ The laws of the universe that they have so painstakingly unravelled are only the laws of _our_ universe. _They're not universal laws._ Heavy sigh. Go to another universe and all that hard-gained scientific knowledge is useless. Another universe means other laws. Science is just a local phenomenon. A scientist could spend a gazillion lifetimes and never learn all the laws of all the universes. This seems to have made scientists a bit peckish, if not downright puckish.

So what does all this have to do with Boltzmann's Brain, you ask? Ludwig Boltzmann was the nineteenth-century scientist who came up with the idea that a fluctuation could occur in a gas--or in a universe, for that matter--which eventually evolved into the idea that a "fluctuation in a quantum vacuum" could cause a universe to pop out of nothing (scientific nothing isn't like our ordinary everyday nothing, but you were beginning to suspect that by now, weren't you?).

All this has been exasperated by a mysterious force called "dark energy" that is accelerating the expansion of the universe and nullifying the effects of "the gravity we don't understand"--except with string theory, which also gives us all these wonderful universes. It turns out that the accelerated expansion of the universe caused by dark energy has an unusual side effect--it makes universes pop out of quantum fluctuations like popcorn out of a hot-air popcorn popper.

All of these universes (however they may be generated) create a problem for scientists. Do you remember the law of unexpected consequences, a.k.a. Pandora's Box? Amazingly, this problem is not considered as serious as the problem that creationists pose to society as they have decided that they can live with it--but not with the creationists.

Wanna know what it is?

Once you have a gazillion, gazillion, gazillion universes, the scientific problem becomes this: Our universe has created a brain in an extremely roundabout manner. The process began with single cells without nuclei, then a billion years later single cells with nuclei, then a billion years later simple multi-celled creatures, then plants, then fish, then insects, then reptiles, then birds, then mammals, and then, finally, man with a brain. (If I got anything out of order, please don't write, just hand correct your copy.) Four billion years just to come up with the first thought. It hardly seems efficient, does it? Well, as Lieutenant Columbo liked to say, "And that's the problem."

If there are untold gazillions of universes, doesn't it seem probable that most that will evolve a brain would come up with a much simpler way to do so? For every universe like ours--I am not making this up--there must be literally millions of simpler universes that are nothing more really than a "brain in a jar" although, technically, a "brain in a universe." The entire universe would consist of just one thinking brain. This is considered the economy car of universes. For some reason, we're driving a Rolls-Royce.

If you ask how it is possible that we ended up in The Rolls-Royce of Universes! rather than in a Rambler American, you might realize that this is the same question that we started with: Why are the parameters of the universe set just right for human life? The truly amazing scientific answer--and there aren't enough drums in all those gazillions of universes to roll for this one (and there are universes that consist of nothing but drums playing Gene Krupa on themselves)--is that we don't live in The Rolls-Royce of Universes!

We just think we do!

The need to banish creationism seems to have driven scientists insane. Just to be clear--and, yes, this really is a scientific theory--we do not live in the universe that we think we live in. Where do we live, you ask? We are a "brain in a universe" that thinks that it is living in The Rolls-Royce of Universes! Remember Schrodinger's theory that only One Mind exists and that we all share it? Scientists have finally given that mind a name. In memory of the Darwin of fluctuations, they refer to it as "Boltzmann's Brain."

Science has finally arrived at the mystical solution to the mystery of conscious life. The universe that we think we inhabit is an illusion, but there is a real reality behind it that remains hidden from us--and always will be.

Now, what idiot said that science _doesn't_ have a sense of humor?

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THE END

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AUTHOR'S PHOTO

To maintain his anonymity, Nobody! likes to pretend that he's Steve Martin ("to throw the paparazzi off the scent"). To be clear, Nobody! is NOT Steve Martin.

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