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Yesterday I attended a meeting at the Royal Society in London about how the discovery of extra-terrestrial intelligence would affect people and society, and was introduced to a whole new discipline: astrotheology. A big talking point at the meeting (stated somewhat crudely) was whether the discovery of alien intelligence would throw religion into crisis. (Thank you to Mike Croft for his rejoinder yesterday: “That’s a very poor question. Would science be in crisis if God was discovered?”)

My first thought was, “No, why should religion crumble just because aliens were discovered?” and I was slightly surprised (perhaps naively) that apparently the opposite view is more widely held. But according to Ted Peters, a Christian theologian (who now also dabbles in astrotheology, pondering whether meeting our space neighbours could throw humanity into an existential crisis) the issue is partly based on the unspoken assumption that religion is primitive and inferior, while science is superior. Should aliens make contact with us, one would assume they are more technologically advanced than we are, and hence—the argument goes—more highly evolved, to such an extent that they will in fact have “evolved beyond religion.” (I will come back to this point later.) What would primitive earthlings do when faced with their more evolved scientific superiors?

To address whether religious people really do feel that their beliefs would be threatened by contact, Peters has conducted a survey of people from various faiths to check the hypothesis that “upon confirmation of contact between earth and an extraterrestrial civilization of intelligent beings, the long established religious traditions of earth would confront a crisis of belief and perhaps even collapse.” New Scientist has covered his findings in detail, so I will direct you there for the stats rather than typing them all out myself. But the upshot—not very surprising to many of faith—is that Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, evangelical Protestants, Orthodox Christians, Mormons, Jews, and Buddhists really aren’t too worried by the prospect that the universe contains other intelligent beings. Anecdotal evidence from Muslims and Hindus suggest they feel much the same way. Most disagreed that the discovery would shake their personal faith and many believe that others who share their own faith would also take alien contact in their stride. (Some suggest it would even strengthen their faith and provide evidence for the existence of nonhuman intelligent beings described in sacred texts.)

So where does the notion that religion will crumble in the face of contact come from? Well, that was also partially addressed in the survey. Respondents tended to assume that while those following their own religion (or non-religion, in the case of non-affiliates and atheists) wouldn’t be too shaken, _other_ religions would be. “So those other people would have the problems!” says Peters.

Question answered then: Religion will not crumble. Or perhaps it’s not that simple? FQXi’s Paul Davies asked rather cuttingly in response to the survey, “how many people have an understanding of their own religion?” While he agreed that most religions could incorporate aliens into their worldview with little difficulty, he argued that for Christians there should be a serious problem: “Can you really be a Christian and not believe that Jesus was the incarnation of God who came to save a particular species?”

Peters responded that he has also looked into the views of many Christian theologians, and there opinion differs. Some believe that there could be only one incarnation—species-specific to humans. Others allow for multiple incarnations, with other alien species (or animals on Earth) having their own “Jesus.”

To complicate matters further, it’s also not clear that Christians _should_ believe that extra-terrestrials even need saving. Peters described how C. S. Lewis once speculated that aliens may never have gone through the fall, that is, no alien Adam and Eve were tempted to eat of the forbidden fruit (or the alien equivalent), and hence aliens do not need saving by a Christ-like figure. I am aware that I am straying into areas of Christian theology (let alone areas of alien Christian theology) that I am not an expert on, so I should maybe open the floor to people who know more than me here.

But, if that is the case, then a sinless alien race could be out there waiting to...inspire us? (Altruistic alien missionaries coming to Earth may not be a good thing either.) Which brings me back to the initial assumption that any advanced alien race should have evolved beyond religion. That may be the case. Or they may provide an example of a more spiritual way to live. In either case, how would their discovery affect you (whether you are an atheist, a religious person, undecided, or unwilling to declare)? Will it diminish your sense of human dignity if we meet beings that are more advanced than us? Should it?

While you’re pondering those questions, I’ll leave you with Jon Chase’s astrobiology rap, which was performed live for us at the meeting.

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I believe that religion would cope better with aliens than many scientists with God. After all, if there is a God, perhaps He chose to also create other species as well, why not? Are we assuming we're the perfect model and God stopped there?

However, supposing God _did_ appear and say that actually, I _did_ put the fossils in the rocks? I can see that being more problematic!

(Interesting programme about the coming of Jesus in modern times, "The Second Coming" starring Christopher Eccleston. Raised fascinating questions about modern cynicism.)

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Bryan replied on Jan. 27, 2010 @ 21:38 GMT

> Are we assuming we're the perfect model and God stopped there?

Depending on which religion you follow, likely so! Or can a perfect God make an imperfect creation and say, "Whoops! Need to try that again." It defies his definition as "Perfect" to say otherwise, right?

Also, I'd be careful of statements like this:

> I believe that religion would cope better with aliens than many scientists with God.

Scientists =/= Atheists. Many scientists are religious. I have no problem believing that there are some Atheists who would refuse to accept any evidence that God existed, just as there are some Christians who would refuse to accept any evidence that he did not. True scientists, as a rule, should attempt to replicate the data and then redefine theories based on it, even if that data is evidence of God's existence.

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The one property of the human mind which gives us our capacity for imagination is we project our consciousness onto the world. I suspect this might have something to do with our development of language, for we began to tell stories about the natural world in anthropic terms sometime early in our evolution to Homo sapiens. This permitted information necessary for survival to be passed down...

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The one property of the human mind which gives us our capacity for imagination is we project our consciousness onto the world. I suspect this might have something to do with our development of language, for we began to tell stories about the natural world in anthropic terms sometime early in our evolution to Homo sapiens. This permitted information necessary for survival to be passed down generations. So ideas about spirits in the forest, totems, demiurges, gods etc were in nature religions a way of telling about the cycles of life and seasons --- when the fish came up river, when the buffalo migrated, when a certain corn plant went to seed and so forth. We do these things today of course, consider in the USA with Superbowl time coming up the modern use of totems with sports teams. The writing of fiction is another example of such projections. The author projects their mind through a character onto words on a page which are then projected into and out of the mind of a reader. Einstein’s imagining what would happen if he were on a frame moving with an electromagnetic wave is also such a projection.

The idea of space aliens is frankly just as much a projection as is our mental projection of our conscious framework out “to infinity,” which is this thing we call God. The space alien, along with more mundane ideas of UFOs and so forth, are similar projections of minor forms, which in the past took the form of angels, satirs, demons, and so forth. Further, as time went on these projections assumed celestial dimensions, where the heavenly hosts of the bible are vague ideas about angels identified with stars. In our modern world these ideas have assumed an updated or scientific form of the ET or space alien. Our capacity to project our emotional basis onto them is manifold. Some aliens are friendly and benevolent, Spielberg’s ET and Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, or Sagans “Contact.” Other aliens are less than friendly, the HG Wells Martians in book and movie forms, the Predator movies, and what I think were the ultimate space bad boys, the Gieger aliens which were hideous and almost implacable. In the end we are projecting our mental and emotional framework onto the exterior world with these ideations.

So do ETs exist? I will say that I think the universe in the FLRW setting is k = 0, which makes space infinite. The field theory content we observe does not saturate the Bekenstein bound until about 10^{26} light years out, and beyond that might be other “pocket universes” beyond an inflaton or scalar field induced barrier of sorts. So anything which is not forbidden is ultimately mandatory. I see no reason to presume that ET is impossible, so I suspect they very likely do exist. Of course maybe the closest ET planet is 100 million light years out.

Our ideas about ET tend to be reflections of ourselves. This was carried to impossible and ridiculous forms on Star Trek where you got aliens and humans bearing offspring, such as Spock is half Human and half Vulcan. Nope, that is not going to happen. Our ideas about ET most often are exaggerated forms of ourselves, such as the bug-eyed bulbous headed grey alien ideas portrayed so commonly. They really are just variations of our selves. This would extend to the idea that any ET would project their selves as we do. The internal mental reality of an ET might be so radically different from anything we experience subjectively that we can’t possibly ever understand it. This would likely, and I think almost certainty, be the case, even if we can decode their electromagnetic signals and figure out how they do mathematics and so forth. The converse might likely hold as well. So the concept of a God, such as projecting their internal mental reality out to infinity, might simply be outside their capacity to internally experience. If they did decode a signal from us and garner our ability to project our minds, they might find this to be a unique way for what to them is an ET to experience external and internal existence. Further, they might find the idea we have of God to be utterly beyond their ability to internalize or understand. Of course this point is likely ever more the case when it comes to particular theological ideas we have.

Cheers LC

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Do not underestimate the capacity of human mind to accommodate contradictory data. The belief systems, when confronted with data which seems to contradict them, survive easily, mostly in one of two possible ways: 1. develop "antibodies" against the data which seems to contradict them, and 2. suffer superficial mutations and adapt to the new data.

Many consider that any of the following: the discovery that the Earth is not flat, that it doesn't lie in the center of the Universe, that the life forms evolve, and so on, is an enough reason to abandon religion. They are of course surprised that all these don't seem such obvious problems for the religious people, and this is why they consider them lacking intelligence. On the other side, many religious people cannot understand why others don't share their conviction that behind the wonders of this Universe must be a Creator, and consider them shallow.

For the human mind it is very difficult to live in uncertainty; it has to have a firm opinion about everything. But as hard it is for it to live in uncertainty, as easy it is to live in contradiction. Forced to choose between completeness and consistency, it usually chooses completeness over consistency.

The key is to learn to live with all the uncertainties life offers, to admit that our knowledge is limited, but to try to overcome its limits and to understand more.

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If we meet extra-terrestrial intelligence then it will be the end for all terrestrial religions. For example, if the aliens are green then their God will be green also. They are neither Christians nor Moslems. Since our religions exists on Earth only, it will be the proof that all religions are false.

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Jason Wolfe replied on Jan. 28, 2010 @ 01:11 GMT

Constantin,

I'm not sure I see why? What color is the God of Earth? You don't seem to understand religion or God with any depth, other than what you may have read, and via logic and reason. I'm not trying to be critical, I'm really not. But your comment suggests that you are an athiest who believe that religion is a lot of evolutionary garbage. It's just not possible to teach anything to someone whose mind is closed. Good luck with that.

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I am of the opinion that our prospects for communicating with an ETI are pretty low. I think life in its basic form is fairly common in the universe. There have been some reasons of late to think life does exist on Mars. Some of the Jovian and Saturnian might have life forms in oceans under their ice crusts. Yet in these cases I would be surprised if there is intelligent life, or life forms...

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I am of the opinion that our prospects for communicating with an ETI are pretty low. I think life in its basic form is fairly common in the universe. There have been some reasons of late to think life does exist on Mars. Some of the Jovian and Saturnian might have life forms in oceans under their ice crusts. Yet in these cases I would be surprised if there is intelligent life, or life forms more complex than a nematode. Intelligent life requires a rich bio-planet like Earth, where on Earth there has been a rather extraordinary evolutionary explosion of complex life forms and ecosystems. That I think is rather rare. Rarer still is likely to be intelligent life.

The idea of God, and our beliefs in supernatural beings such as gods or God, has far more to do with psychology than cosmology. The human mind did not evolve to solve the problems of quantum gravity, or to prove the Riemann zeta function conjecture. It evolved to permit us to survive in a wide range of environments by socially communicating information to each other. It is a byproduct or happenstance that our brains are remarkably capable of solving abstract problems and of learning the structure of the universe. In our early imaginative narratives about the nature of things we projected our conscious being onto the world, which resulted in ritual forms which encoded a sense of being-ness and meaning into spiritual forms.

We continue to do that, for when something goes bump in the night most of us at first wonder, "Who did that?," rather than "what caused that?" Children shown nature films will make remarkable statements, such as "The rocks are jagged so the bears can scratch their itchy backs." We are psychologically disposed to see the world according to external agencies, which are similar to ourselves, which act on the world with intentionalism and purpose.

The persistence of religion is a remarkable example of this as well. Saul of Tarsus is probably the most famous and enduring author in history, and there is some possibility the guy actually existed. Abraham, Moses and even Jesus are likely characters developed into narratives than actual people, or they might be compilations of various people around the time. Certainly the literal concepts of the world as laid down in the Bible are wrong from the perspective of science. Yet literal believers in the Bible number in the many tens of millions.

In the case of Christianity the thought-belief system has a highly compelling quality to it. The idea was popular in the 1st century BCE, where Appolonius was supposed to be the incarnation of Hellenic gods, in particular Apollo. This Hellenic idea got incorporated into the Egyptian religions, where Isis and Osiris spawned Mithras, it impacted as far as India with Krishna, and it co-opted Judaism into Christianity. So this idea is not only specific to our psychological make up, but to ancient cultural traditions and their intertwined histories. Christianity emerged as a European-Mediterranean religion, lost the Middle East to Islam, but later was spread as a world religion with the European expansion into the Americas and the world. The religion early on found many converts in the late Roman period, expanded readily through the time of Charlemagne, and later converted many outside of Europe. The notion of a God emerging as a person who then suffered and died for one’s personal salvation is an apparently compelling narrative which plays pretty well to this day. In spite of advances in science, and enormous world view changes such as biological evolution and inflationary big bang cosmology, many people reject these in order to maintain their belief in a God that acts as their personal savior. I see not abrupt change in this either.

Cheers LC

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As the only person on this website with a FTL hyperdrive theory, I'd like to take the point of view of the advanced and intelligent aliens. This is what they're probably thinking...

Well, the human race upon the planet earth is getting technologically sophisticated, to some degree. Thank God they haven't noticed us. We've had quite a bit of luck communicating with them telepathically; we don't leave evidence that way. If they do discover us, I give them 20 years before they can build a sub-light speed spaceship and show up at our doorstep. Then what? It's not they we're worried they'll attack. It's more likely we'll have to send embassadors to earth. I don't want to be the first to get shot at, shot down and probed by humans. Yes, they are curious about whether we exist or not. Some of them are caring and naive. Then, there are others who are highly intelligent, crafty, and would come up with highly imaginative ruses to get at our technology. If that happens, how long will it be before the galaxy is swarming with crafty little humans looking for wealth?

Can humans be neighborly? There is still quite a bit of disease, death and poverty on their planet. I really don't want to be the one that has to tell them, "sorry, we'd like to help you, but we're not allowed to share technology with you." I'm pretty sure they would be nice enough to ask first, then take it by force. I mean, shields and force fields work just fine. But it's hard to be a friendly neighbor from behind the safety of force fields. Yes, they would rob us blind. We would have to walk back to Alpha Centauri.

But there are technologies that we can teach them. The problem is, telepathy and all that psychic/psionic stuff, it doesn't lend itself to proof. It also won't make anybody rich. That is stuff we've become very expert at. In fact, some of the same principles by which telepathy works, are similar to how a hyperdrive works. But for now, we'll just work with those whom they call crazy/imaginative/strange/certifiable/crackpot/etc...

On the brighter side, there are a few nations that have learned to behave a little better. If we had to crash land somewhere, I think I would pick a European country. I think the governments there would love to flaunt it in America's face that they know how to conduct a first contact, properly. Not like Ronald Reagan with his, "wouldn't it be great if we were in an interstellar war..." speach.

All we can say is this: learn everything you can about hyper-drives and how to conduct a proper first contact with your neighbors. Then, we'll see about dropping by for a friendly visit. Good luck earhling neighbors.

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Jason Wolfe replied on Jan. 28, 2010 @ 10:04 GMT

Well so much for finding intelligent life on earth. Hyper-drive technology is expensive to operate. So, we the aliens are supposed to come down to visit you, our neighbor; several light years away, and I can't even get a reply or a comment? Hello! Is there intelligent life down here? Are you so shocked and flustered that you can't even respond. How can you ever hope to understand an alien religion that spans countless worlds if you can't even respond to another human being with some crazy ideas and a hyper-drive theory? If the Christian God created the universe, and the Infinite Intelligence of our religion also created the universe, do you suppose the Christian Deity and the alien Deity (Infinite Intelligence) could some how possibly be the same? Maybe?

By the way, most of our communication is conducted telepathically anyway. If you thought we were hostile with intentions of invading your world, forget it. We have better things to spend money on then sending battle cruisers and alien infantry. If humanity can figure out how they're going to deal with a first contact, maybe we'll visit. Here is a hint. Trying being a little more friendly and neighborly. Practice saying this sentence:

Welcome visitors from another world. We of the planet earth greet you with goodwill and friendship. We hope that our two civilizations can share culture, knowledge and eventually trade with each other.

If you practice saying that, enough to be convincing, maybe we'll visit you.

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Jan. 28, 2010 @ 13:08 GMT

I wrote the book Can Star Systems be Explored? which addresses some of these issues. My book largely focuses on standard known physics required to get a probe to a star within a 50 light year distance. There have been as well considerable discoveries on extrasolar systems, which point to a wide range of diverse configurations for solar systems. In this book I discuss some estimates, based on chaotic dynamics and some Bayesian analysis, on the distribution of solar systems with a G-class star which can support the orbit of a terrestrial planet such as Earth. If the Jovian planets are too close to the 1AU distance they perturb the orbit too much. I frankly estimate that maybe around 1000 planets similar to Earth might exist in this galaxy. Of course other planets may have life, even Mars may well have life, but conditions I think are fairly special for a planet with the degree of biological complexity seen on Earth. So I think the probability of an ETI within the interstellar neighborhood of Earth is very remote.

I discuss the issue of warp drives and their improbability in this book as well, but I will not dwell on that subject --- we have been around the block on that :-) . It is likely that contact with ETI will be through electromagnetic means. So if we get hailed by ETI it will not likely be by their landing on the Whitehouse lawn, but because they send radio signals, or use large ring-world like ribbons with spaces or masking that orbit their star. The spaces might then generate a slight dimming of their star in periodic pulses which could be observed over large distances. That is of course highly speculative, but not impossible. If we should detect such a signal, then from there the problem is decoding it. Without going into detail, I think the foundations of quantum gravity involve a quantum error correction coding system, which might serve as some universal encryption/decryption system.

Cheers LC

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Dear Jason Wolfe

There I’m loking for logical reasoning only without dependence if the reader is atheist or believer. I have the following idea: If the Christian God created the universe then the alien Deity must be Christian God. Otherwise appears a question: Why the Jesus selected our planet only and ignore the rest of the planets with intelligence? Thus, if we do not find the Alien Christianity, it will be the proof that the Jesus is not the creator of the Universe.

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Jan. 28, 2010 @ 13:32 GMT

We have life forms here on Earth which might be considered intelligent. Cetaceans, whales and dolphins, are clearly one example. The brain of a dolphin is bigger and more complex than the human brain, and behaviors of these animals is very complex and they communicate in complex forms. Another example are cephalopods, octopi and squid, which while they are radically divergent from the mammalian evolutionary clade being invertebrates, they are very complex and communicate through rapidly variable skin tone and color. Some octopi have brains the size of basketballs and define up to a quarter their body mass. They are also very capable of solving problems. Their deficit for being intelligent is they are not social beings and don’t live terribly long. So they can’t accumulate ideas or knowledge.

So with the intelligent life forms we have on Earth, we might ponder whether any of them have mental ideas of a God. Clearly a species of octopus with these ideas might have an eight legged God, and a dolphin species might have some idea of a god that swims and sings songs. Yet we have no evidence of any of this sort of thing. A “Jesoid” concept is further remote, for this is a particular theological notion which emerged from a cultural mixing of Hellenic and Judaic ideas in the first century BCE, which was completely foreign to many human cultures, say Chinese, up until recent times. It is unlikely this is some universal idea across the universe to all forms of intelligent life. IN fact to presume so is to project our minds onto other life forms, just as we project ourselves onto “infinity” in this ideation we have of a God.

Cheers LC

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Dear Constantin,

You said, "Thus, if we do not find the Alien Christianity, it will be the proof that the Jesus is not the creator of the Universe. "

I don't know of anyone who says that Jesus created the universe. Jesus is said to have died for our sins. God created the universe. If God created the universe, then God might have created other inhabited worlds. It would not be too farfetched to think that the intelligent lifeforms of these worlds might have behaved very naughty themselves, or sinfully. As bad is sin is, from an evolutionary point of view, sinfulness and animal behavior is a useful thing (lust, greed, murder, anger, etc...). It is conceivable that the Creator of the universe might have to 'correct' the behavior of his children on some other world.

Dear Lawrence,

Wow, I didn't know that dolphins had larger brains than we do. If they could feel a religious instinct, how would we ever know? They can't exactly erect idols. Do we understand how they communicate? I don't think that monkeys have any religious idols. But if they did, that might support an evolutionary source of a religious instinct. If we can't prove that, then does that mean that the bible is supported by default? That humans have souls and hold dominion over all other life forms?

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Ray Munroe replied on Jan. 28, 2010 @ 20:23 GMT

Dear Jason,

My understanding of John 1:1-5 -

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it."

is that Jesus is 'The Word' and participated with God in the Creation.

Yes, He also died on the cross for our sins, defeated death, and was resurrected to give us hope.

I know some Christians who believe that Earth is the only planet in the Universe with life. Their justification is that the Bible doesn't explicitly name other planets with life. In my opinion, God is large enough, and the Universe is large enough, that I would be surprised if Earth is the only planet with life in the entire Universe.

Without FTL drive, we may never explore enough of our Universe to know...

Have Fun!

Ray

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Dear Ray,

This is just my personal interpretation, but to me, the "Word" is the power to create laws of nature. When I interpret it that way, I also think of the power that the president/congress have to create laws. That gave me the idea that it might be possible to create multiple sets of laws of nature within the 3D space. That is how I came up with the idea to create a set of hyperspaces and an aethereal plane. What say you?

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Ray Munroe replied on Jan. 28, 2010 @ 21:15 GMT

Dear Jason,

That verse refers to 'The Word' as 'He' or 'Him', but I prefer not to interpret it so literally.

I plan not to talk so much about my research with Lawrence for a couple of reasons: 1) it is private research and we don't want anyone else taking our ideas, and 2) most of the people on this blog site seem to care less.

What you are suggesting seems compatible with some of my ideas.

Have Fun!

Ray

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Dear Ray,

I understand both your reasons. I feel like I may have to find a more appropriate venue for my ideas as well. I have very limited time; I have had to make choices about how to spend that time. I wish I had the time to understand the deeper level mathematics. In truth, I have found that higher level mathematics might not be necessary (for me) to discover deeper secrets about the universe. It's important to be able to create symbols or a set of symbols which definitions. It gives laypersons something to talk about. Symbols allow the pieces of the puzzle to be manipulated relatively easily. Deeper level mathematics are extremely precise and difficult to manipulate. I can scout out ideas and possibilities using these symbols. Than, later, deeper level mathematics can be applied if desired. That is my approach.

How I wish an FTL propulsion device could be dropped in our laps. I have had this discussion with God. If God were to pull some alien spaceship out of the sky to crash land on the earth, who would take the responsibility if it hit a city and exploded, killing thousands? I would be willing to be killed by an alien spaceship that crash landed on me in my pickup truck; but I can only speak for me. The comments that Lawrence makes about the lack of richly diverse biospheres being separated by millions of light years PLUS his comments about a lack of an afterlife, God or soul suggest one course of action: that we just tinker around until our species becomes extinct. In contrast, if we (1) embrace our spiritual identity and (2) anticipate the existence of ETI (intelligent extraterrestrials) we enjoy several benefits: (a) we search, (b) we embrace others who are different from us, (c) we enjoy the pleasure and experience of hoping, (d) if they do exist, then we are making progress by being assertive, taking the initiative. I have already demonstrated that a belief in these strange ideas, when balanced with reason, can produce results. I had hoped to be able to describe what the tell tale signs of a hyper-drive would look like, but I don't think anyone here is interested. I am trying very hard to get my hyper-drive website set up. After that, I'll probably go to Twitter and talk about it.

I honestly believe that these conversations are helpful, even if their helpfulness is not immediately obvious. Please keep in touch. I'm sure I'll be out there, somewhere in cyberspace, or at wulphstein@gmail.com.

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Ray Munroe replied on Jan. 28, 2010 @ 23:01 GMT

Jonathan Dickau says that we learn from playing. This forum has been our opportunity to 'play' with ideas. In my geometrical ideas, I have used Petrie polygons to represent something much more complex (dimensionally and mathematically) than it appears. Too many people act like the Standard Model is set in cement. I think its time for a jackhammer. The only way that Lawrence and I can be taken seriously is if the LHC discovers particles whose existence and properties have been previously calculated by us.

Have Fun!

Ray

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The opening of John is a statement of Platonism. Plato said that the world existed in two categories, pure forms which are mathematical and physical objects. What gives physical reality a form which is mathematical is the logos, or word, which in Platonism is the unseen form behind the shadows we observe in his metaphor of being in the cave. Curiously quantum mechanics has a feature similar to this, where entanglement and nonlocality are the "pure forms," the atoms or particles the physical "stuff," and quantum information as the "word." Some of the writers of the Hellenic text titled "John" on the life and theology of Jesus clearly understood Plato's metaphysics. The system was used as the allegory to frame the theology of Jesus Christ. Here the pure forms we the Judaic God, the physical form is the world "God so loved the world ..." as John later says, and Jesus is the Logos.

Of course all the writers of the Bible, say books with their name in the Ketuvim or Prophets, as well as the books of the Hellenized “Christos books,” which form the New Testament, are really code names. These books were written by a school of men who followed the teachings of some sage who might have had that name. The only person who might have actually written the bulk under his name was Paul, or Saul of Tarsus. There are some reasons to think the guy actually existed more or less as portrayed. It is pretty evident he did not write Hebrews.

Cheers LC

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James Putnam replied on Jan. 29, 2010 @ 01:47 GMT

Dr. Crowell,

"...The opening of John is a statement of Platonism. ..."

Which came first Platonism or the book of Genesis?

"...Curiously quantum mechanics has a feature similar to this, where entanglement and nonlocality are the "pure forms," the atoms or particles the physical "stuff," and quantum information as the "word." ..."

So, as when the 'Word became flesh', quantum information will become flesh?

"...These books were written by a school of men who followed the teachings of some sage who might have had that name. ..."

Who were these men?

James

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Jan. 29, 2010 @ 02:13 GMT

Genesis as we know it probably came about around 600BCE, as did the rest of the Torah and some other books such as Job. Before that some ancient Hebrew fragments that have been found which suggest a sort of "pre-Bible." The Ketuvim or Prophets, Jeremiah and Isaiah in particular, were probably written a form we recognize around the 5th-4th century BCE, proceeding from a literary tradition set by the writings attributed to Ezra. Further, Judaic and Hellenic concepts are in many ways very different. Christianity is really a Hellenic overlay onto Judaism, where around that time the notion of a god becoming human was popular throughout the Hellenized ancient world and existed within other religious forms.

I am aware that it is common among Christians to think that Jews of the 4th to the 1st century BCE were waiting for Jesus, and read Isaiah as a prophesy of God coming to the world. To be honest this is sadly mistaken. The one who “bore our stripes, “ or was “rejected” is not a single man, whether a next prophet or a God-made-man. It refers to the people of Israel, and the messiah is not really a person so much as it is Israel which will bring light to the world. In more recent times we have an individualistic sense of things, whereas in the Hebrew writings this is not the case, but where the “group,” here Israel, is represented allegorically as a person. In fact this sort of allegorical projection is common in the Tanach in general.

This carries over to those who wrote the books of the Bible. Writing then was not like today, where getting published and one’s name advanced is paramount. Back then it was the group which counted. Individualism is a rather modern concept. So the writers were followers of a certain mystical and ritual pedagogical form laid down by a founding sage, and they contributed their writings in these books ---- and did so under a single pen name and namelessly as individuals. It was a different time.

Cheers LC

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James Putnam replied on Jan. 29, 2010 @ 02:45 GMT

Dr. Crowell,

"...Genesis as we know it probably came about around 600BCE. ..."

Which came first?

"...It refers to the people of Israel, and the messiah is not really a person so much as it is Israel which will bring light to the world. ..."

So, Paul cannot honestly testify that Jesus was the messiah?

"...namelessly as individuals. .."

What was their name as a group?

James

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Jan. 29, 2010 @ 03:38 GMT

Genesis and Platonism are independent in their origin. Genesis as we know it came about in the 6th century BCE and Plato is 428 – 348BCE. Genesis is based on the Epic of Gilgemesh, a Sumerian text dating back a thousand years earlier.

As for Paul, who knows, he may have believed what he believed, or he could have been one hell of an operator. The idea of God becoming a man and existing in a physical form as attributed to Jesus is anathema to Judaism. No Jew thought that God would manifest Himself as a man. The Gospel of John does bring Jesus in as God, not just Son of Man, when Jesus tells the templer priests "I am," which is what God said to Moses. The reaction of the Sadduccee priests was not unexpected, for it is a complete blasphemy in Judaism for someone to say they are God. So Paul, who was a Jew, certainly knew this was not going to be acceptable to Jews, but either he came to this passionate belief or saw the chance to become one of the most important people in history.

It is interesting to read the epistles of Paul and Orwell's "1984" back to back. Paul devised a serious mind control system, complete with crime thought (hell-fire), double thought (ignorance is freedom = Jesus makes the wise simple and simple wise) and so forth. Paul got Orwell beaten by 19 centuries.

The groups identified themselves by names like Isaiah, Daniel, Luke, John and so forth.

Cheers LC

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James Putnam replied on Jan. 29, 2010 @ 03:58 GMT

Dr. Crowell,

Dr. Crowell,

"...As for Paul, who knows, he may have believed what he believed, or he could have been one hell of an operator. ..."

"...it is a complete blasphemy in Judaism for someone to say they are God. So Paul, who was a Jew, certainly knew this was not going to be acceptable to Jews, but either he came to this passionate belief or saw the chance to become one of the most important people in history. ..."

So Paul suffered tortuous persecution so that he may become one of the most important people in history? Your point is what: That he forsaw that Christianity would become a major religion of the world and last for thousands of years, even though he may have personally knew it to be phony and anathema to his beloved Jewish people?

James

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Jan. 29, 2010 @ 13:41 GMT

It is hard to know what went on the mind of someone who lived nearly 2000 years ago. I don't want to go in the question of whether Jesus actually existed, but around the year 50 where was clearly a range of Jewish midrash coupled with what at the time would have been neo-Hellenic mythology about this character "Jesus." Around that time the writers of Gospels who penned themselves according to the name of the disciples began to write their accounts based on these stories, and there are "lost Gospels," attributed to Thomas, Phillip etc, and recently found are those attributed to Judas! Now it is nearly impossible to know for certain what went on.

Paul is probably the one character in the Bible we can say is maybe the most historical, or at least not a purely mythic character. The subsequent apostolic writings leading to Tertullian and Origen and the development of the post-Pauline period are fairly clear and this gives some weight to Paul existing as a real person. There was probably a pedagogical school which followed Paul, most theologians think Hebrews was not written by Paul, and those who penned the other books of the New Testament did so under various penned names. The most wildly mystical trend was the followers of John, leading to the great flight of fancy seen in Revelations, while Paul was primarily devoted to codifying the “Christos scheme” into a legal and social format, with a degree of what might be called psychological conditioning required for believers.

Cheers LC

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What if they showed us reality isn't fundamentally digital, but unitary? Not only would it disprove a distinction between creation and creator, but show particle physics isn't fundamental either.

Come to think of it, since our left brain makes distinctions, while our right brain makes connections, we wouldn't need aliens to show us. Then again, we would be connected to them on some level as well.

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It’s easy to see what will happen if aliens are discovered (from the religious point of view). We only need to look back into history. Some new cults will be formed which will hope and pray to be rescued by the aliens, and Catholics and protestants will send in their astronaut missionaries to bring salvation to them.

The main thing will be who is more technological advanced? If they are, new cults will spread on Earth like wildfire and the new religions will overwhelm the established ones. If we are, we will try to assimilate them. This is no different from the case where Japan was forced to modernize after contact with the west in the middle of 19th century.

Another major factor will be the separation distance and the time it takes to have a message exchange. If the distance is too big for practical communication, then nobody assimilates anybody and there will be a lot of apocalyptic scenarios perpetuated by madman thirsty for power. Now this is a very dangerous scenario in the age of nuclear weapons.

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James Putnam replied on Jan. 29, 2010 @ 04:26 GMT

DR. Moldoveanu,

"...It's easy to see what will happen if aliens are discovered (from the religious point of view). We only need to look back into history. Some new cults will be formed which will hope and pray to be rescued by the aliens, and Catholics and protestants will send in their astronaut missionaries to bring salvation to them. ..."

I notice that you did not mention Judaism or Islam. Why was that?

James

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Jan. 29, 2010 @ 04:36 GMT

I am simply not familiar with them, but I know very well the history of Christianity.

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Florin Moldoveanu replied on Jan. 29, 2010 @ 05:10 GMT

Christianity has basically 3 main branches: Christian orthodox in Eastern Europe, Catholicism in Western Europe, and (the many forms of) Protestantism in Western Europe and North America. Interestingly, the 3 main forms correspond to different time sections of Christianity across two millennia according to historical circumstances.

The eastern Orthodox churches are not united, and they are very silimar with the church around 300-400 AD. There are no big cathedrals in (orthodox) Eastern Europe, and the church is concerned mostly with nationalistic interests, as the church embodies the idea of the tradition and nation. Orthodox churches are disconnected from modern theological debates and their current skeleton in the closet is their collaborationism with the oppressive communist states.

Catholicism is very much entangled with the political struggle across medieval Western Europe. Over time, the Catholic Church lost the battle with the states for political supremacy and with a rich history they have nothing to prove by getting into contemporary debates. Their skeleton in the closet is celibacy and widespread sexual abuse as a result of this.

Protestantism in Europe is mostly a nationalistic stance, but in US they represent the modern vibrant church connected to all relevant topics of the day. Their big fight is with Darwin and science in general. To a European, the argument against evolution in US looks bizarre (a topic closed more than 100 years ago).

There is a big difference in the level of secularism between Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and US. In Eastern Europe, 90% of the population declares themselves christian, but churches are filled only by old people, and practical secularism is very high, about 90-95%. In Western Europe, the active believers are around 20% and dropping, while in US the rate is steady around 60%. In US this is the Quaker’s legacy combined with active competition between so many denominations it is hard to keep track of.

Rooted in nationalism, to an eastern orthodox church, proselytism is a sin and the church does not have any missionaries. Catholic and Protestant churches have a lot of missionaries, but they have a different focus. For Catholics, missionaries go mostly in Africa and Latin America (Spain’s legacy), focusing on church growth and helping the poor, while Protestant missionaries go all over the globe like China, and eastern Europe, and even North Korea focusing on spreading salvation and drawing strength from early church martyrdom.

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James Putnam replied on Jan. 29, 2010 @ 23:55 GMT

Dr. Moldoveanu,

"...For Catholics, missionaries go mostly in Africa and Latin America (Spain's legacy), focusing on church growth and "helping the poor" (my parentheses), ..."

It took reading all the way to the end to find something positive. Is there anything more to say about the Christian religion that furthered intelligent thought and scientific thought? Do you know of anything missing here, and, if so, why is it missing?

James

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James Putnam replied on Feb. 4, 2010 @ 00:46 GMT

Dr. Moldoveanu,

I see that you have an interesting theoretical physics discussion ongoing with Dr. Ray. However, when you have some extra-time available, I would like to hear from you:

I presume that you understand that I do not have a religion. What I do have is an appetite for uncovering; unanswered question, misleadingly answered questions, and, incompletely answered questions. Your message "Christianity has basically 3 main branches..." left out a great deal of the history of Christian religion.

I replied:

Quoting you: "...For Catholics, missionaries go mostly in Africa and Latin America (Spain's legacy), focusing on church growth and 'helping the poor' (my parentheses), ..."

Quoting me: It took reading all the way to the end to find something positive. Is there anything more to say about the Christian religion that furthered intelligent thought and scientific thought? Do you know of anything missing here, and, if so, why is it missing? What I am most interested in is: Do you know of anything missing here, and, if so, why is it missing? I think much is missing. So, I am left wondering: Why is it left missing?

You enterred this jousting contest. Do you have anything more to say or have you left the discussion?

James

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Sending missionaries out to convert ETI somewhere in the near-local universe might be a bit like trying to convert dolphins or brainier species of octopi or cephalopods to some religious belief. Even if this intelligent life form is capable of producing mathematical structures we can decipher from their signals, they might regard what we call religion as something unfathomable. We might imagine from our perspective if they have some state of consciousness we can't neurologically experience, that they encode into what might be comparable to our sense of what gives being or meaning. Even if we communicate with such beings it is likely that such communications will go little beyond what each side could decipher as mathematics and maybe physics.

I seriously doubt we will ever come to very close proximity to any ETI. At best we will probably receive their EM or photon signals and they might receive ours. To be honest the mixing of completely different planetary biologies could be a bad idea, and interstellar distances probably make good wall which as it goes "makes for good neighbors" --- assuming we ever make such contact.

LC

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Jason Wolfe replied on Jan. 29, 2010 @ 19:12 GMT

I disagree; the real question is: what does it take for a civilization to survive long enough to become advanced technologically (advanced compared to us)? Our greatest mathematical minds do not have what it takes to help our species survive for tens of thousands of years. In fact, the physics community judges everything by how long it will last before it dies (heat death, extinction, average life-time,...). Physicists are far removed from the real tools of long term survival,...passion. If we ever did meet an advanced civilization or an ETI, I'll bet that they figured out how to perfect their religion (relationship with a universal Creator). That gives them the drive and the passion to continue to address real world problems with a love and zeal for life. I expect that they will have created a quality of life that is better than ours. They will ask questions that are better than ours. They will ask, "how can we use our technology to make our civilization even better." Not like our physicists who ask,

"how long until we die out?",

"How long until the universe dies from heat death?",

"How long until we go extinct?",

"How long until the entropy of the universe turns the whole universe into a great big ball of garbage?"

"How long until this godless miserable universe puts us out of our misery?"

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By using the term civilization you are imposing anthropic constructions. There could be intelligent life out there on some planet, which are beings with no real technology of much advancement, but which interact with each other by creating a kind of poetry. Further, maybe this poetry turns out, if we could decipher it, to be mathematics beyond anything we have even imagined. That would be intelligent life. We might imagine that this involves rituals of various forms, where the individual, or maybe a collective, which produces the most beautiful and abstract mathematics has a better chance of passing on their genes. It is possible! If so I doubt we will ever contact them if they have no technology.

Here is a general physics-metaphysics or philosophy of things. The foundations of the universe involve enormous symmetry systems, and I think underlying what we think lies the Fischer-Griess group, or the monster. Yet as one goes to such depths you also have less and less --- indeed a vacuum. Symmetry in its most basic form establishes how the vacuum remains a “void.” But this symmetry is broken on certain scales, and as we get to these larger length scales there is the appearance of mass and classical information. So as symmetry is reduced on these larger scales there is the occurrence of more complexity. In an infinite spatial universe the range of diversity for complex systems is enormous --- maybe infinite.

Life is probably a fairly common thing in the universe, and on a few planets (few 1000 per galaxy for instance) life evolves into the exuberant level of complexity and diversity we have on Earth. Yet on these other planets where this happens life is likely to be radically different from here, and this probably extends down to the molecular machinery. So there might be an even lower density of intelligent life scattered about here and there, but they may have completely different ways they experience things. An Earthly example might be seen with cats, which have no taste receptors for sugars. The most expensive confectionary is to a cat a tasteless blob of goo. They perceive things differently, and when it comes to intelligent life in the universe I suspect this analogously extends to how different mind-types which can possibly exist perceive the world and have a sense of “self.”

To presume that our religions extend to other intelligent life forms is a matter of extending our parochial experience of things into some universal principle. I think this is not at all likely the case.

Cheers LC

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James Putnam replied on Jan. 29, 2010 @ 22:50 GMT

Dr. Crowell,

"...Here is a general physics-metaphysics or philosophy of things. The foundations of the universe involve enormous symmetry systems, and I think underlying what we think lies the Fischer-Griess group, or the monster. Yet as one goes to such depths you also have less and less --- indeed a vacuum. Symmetry in its most basic form establishes how the vacuum remains a "void." But...

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Dr. Crowell,

"...Here is a general physics-metaphysics or philosophy of things. The foundations of the universe involve enormous symmetry systems, and I think underlying what we think lies the Fischer-Griess group, or the monster. Yet as one goes to such depths you also have less and less --- indeed a vacuum. Symmetry in its most basic form establishes how the vacuum remains a "void." But this symmetry is broken on certain scales, and as we get to these larger length scales there is the appearance of mass and classical information. So as symmetry is reduced on these larger scales there is the occurrence of more complexity. In an infinite spatial universe the range of diversity for complex systems is enormous --- maybe infinite. ..."

This may be 'a general physics... or philosophy of things, but, I see no metaphysics here. Metaphysics is the study of fundamental truths. Theoretical physics is the study of the invention of imaginary mechanical causes for motion. Philosophy of things is personal. Science began to lossen its grip on reality when it began to move away from metaphysics. Now we no longer strive to uncover fundamental truths. If we can solve mechanical type problems with mathematics and our imaginations, then some feel scientifically fulfilled. I do not. The origin of intelligence remains unexplained.

"...Yet on these other planets where this happens life is likely to be radically different from here, and this probably extends down to the molecular machinery. ..."

Possible maybe, but, how do you define 'likely'? I assume it means something akin to "probably"? Is there work to support this conclusion?

"...To presume that our religions extend to other intelligent life forms is a matter of extending our parochial experience of things into some universal principle. I think this is not at all likely the case. ..."

I agree that this can be expected to be the case. There is, of course, the possibility that there is a true religion already known here on Earth. I think that physics has nothing to say about this possibility one way or the other. It cannot be used to disprove religion; because, it is limited to matters of non-intelligence. It doesn't explain. It mimmicks the patterns of changes of velocities of matter. It imagines what might be responsible for those patterns, so long as that which it imagines is not in anyway intelligent.

Finally, symmetry is something to be observed after the physicist has defined and used their original ideas in mathematical equations. Those symmetries are the result of the initial assumptions that went into forming the original equations to describe effects. Whatever occurs afterwards is defined by the initial assumptions. So, if symmetries are found necessary, then something very important and fundamental is missing in those original equations.

Either theoretical physics can establish a step by step development, without artificial means such as transform equations, up from the fundamentals or it is forced to invent new ideas along the way. Those fundamentals must depend fully upon empirical evidence. That evidence always consists solely of measurements of changes of distance with respect to time. Everything, mechanical, invented beyond distance and time are inventions of the mind. It is true that at least one cause is necessary for effects; however, we do not know what cause is.

James

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Jason Mark Wolfe replied on Jan. 29, 2010 @ 23:30 GMT

James,

You said, "Those fundamentals must depend fully upon empirical evidence. That evidence always consists solely of measurements of changes of distance with respect to time. Everything, mechanical, invented beyond distance and time are inventions of the mind." At first, I thought you were trying to demarcate a line, within which is physics, beyond which is 'other stuff'. Certainly, there are peculiar organizing qualities within biology that continue to stump to science community; thus, the process of organization will fall outside of the line. But you have revealed an important distinction. There are real sciences with something tangible to study (mechanical systems, chemistry, biology, etc...) and there are also theoretical sciences (string theory, FTL propulsion, ...) and their speculative satellites (paranormal, etc...). I would argue that creations of the mind, the imagination, and extrapolations of established sciences (hard sciences) are valid and useful endeavors. More specifically, such endeavors should be given an appropriate name. Speculative sciences? Theoretical sciences? I believe there is benefit to creating a category of such theoretical sciences as both a learning tool and a theoretical playground. There are benefits to this.

First, those who fall below the threshold of scientific methodology will have some framework within which to speculate. Anybody with a crazy idea will be expected to explain how it fits with established physics.

Second, those with ideas that are somehow related to established sciences (FTL propulsion, etc...) know that they need something to observe.

Third, it provides a playground for creativity that is no longer reformed to scornfully as: those crazies with their weird ideas. At least those who do have weird ideas are encouraged to clean them up and make them more presentable.

Forth, a casual perusal by theoretical physicists (scientists) might prove to be a rich source of ideas or new approaches.

Fifth, professors can now tell the more creative students that they should speak with professor X down the hall who deals with the speculative sciences.

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James Putnam replied on Jan. 30, 2010 @ 00:03 GMT

Dear Jason,

"...I would argue that creations of the mind, the imagination, and extrapolations of established sciences (hard sciences) are valid and useful endeavors. More specifically, such endeavors should be given an appropriate name. Speculative sciences? Theoretical sciences? I believe there is benefit to creating a category of such theoretical sciences as both a learning tool and a theoretical playground. There are benefits to this. ..."

I would agree. The benefit, I see, is that we can proceed toward achieving useful results without knowing the reason why. We can predict the outcomes of mechanical type activities without knowing why. We simply substitute ideas for the unknown causes.

The difficulty, as I see it, is that the artificial 'whys' are insisted upon as being real. This act interjects artificiality into scientific learning. I think scientific learning requires that we understand both that which we know and that which we do not know.

James

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I agree that life is a fairly common thing in the universe, if you can recognize it. I would imagine that "desire" is something fundamental to all life, even to those that desire "desirelessness". It is 'desire' that gives life something to do. I'm not using 'desire' in a negative context; after all, the desire to serve others or to seek knowledge are examples of noble expressions of desire. ...

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I agree that life is a fairly common thing in the universe, if you can recognize it. I would imagine that "desire" is something fundamental to all life, even to those that desire "desirelessness". It is 'desire' that gives life something to do. I'm not using 'desire' in a negative context; after all, the desire to serve others or to seek knowledge are examples of noble expressions of desire. Life forms must, of course, relate to the necessities of their existence, whether great or small. If there are non-corporeal life forms whose existence results from coordinated fluctuations in the quantum mechanic ocean of randomness, perhaps their very existence has very minuscule requirements, giving them more time to pursue other activities (pleasure, service, learning, searching, destruction, etc...). I would also anticipate that the ability to experience pain and pleasure would be a necessary fundamental of all life forms that can experience consciousness. The molecules and neural pathways would become specific instances of some generalized recipe for consciousness.

But what kind of cradle of intelligent life is necessary for a life form with mathematical capability? One that expresses mathematical poetry? While the ability to create, remember and manipulate symbols is the means to such a life experience, how or why would it evolve? Besides the human mathematicians and physicists, why would a life form evolve such an extended capability? A certain intimacy with the laws of nature would be a good bet. The evolution or creation of an individual identity, an ego, would be a pre-requisite for sure. Perhaps by its very nature, there is the subtle desire to gain arcane power over the mysterious forces of nature. If necessary to attack or defend against natural predators in some subtle, yet reliable way.

Would this have something to do with the evolution/manifestation of a spiritual/religious instinct? Creatures with physical strength are the first to gain power over natural resources (food, shelter, wine, women, etc...). But brute force is eventually overcome by creatures that can demonstrate leadership ability. But a good leader knows that he must listen to the wise counsel of those who see the signs, see the patterns, see the reasoning of the world. Eventually, the conservation laws of the physical universe are discovered and studied with the careful and methodical use of mathematics. But life forms that can feel pain and pleasure, if they live long enough, will discover the Golden Rule, that they will be treated by others the way they have treated others. They will learn that the violence and oppression they have dealt to others, will eventually come back to them and their progeny; this is a lesson that can takes hundreds of years or longer to discover.

But why would intelligent alien life forms discover religion? Mathematics and mathematical physics really tells us that everything eventually reaches equilibrium, everything eventually dies, and everything is eventually used up. This is not very motivating or inspiring; in fact, it's probably the reason why they invented anti-depressants. Therefore, mathematics is useful, but not sufficient to make life enjoyable. Spirituality and religion, on some fundamental level, are the manifested intelligence of the forces of nature. But if it were mere evolutionary trickery, we would have all figured it out long ago. But something funny happened. Physicists have recently considered the idea of a multi-verse. Those who have seen spirits, ghosts, angels, etc., have made it difficult for the whole issue of religion to go away. Ideologies come and go, they evolve over the centuries. But the apparitions, the touch of a life form that is not biological, perpetuates ideas of a hereafter, of a spirit world/heaven/hell/etc. If our laws of physics do not explicitly state their existence, then either religion is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated, or, our physics has missed a key element; a poorly coupled interface with a coexisting universe, full of "alien intelligences". Remember, we don't understand quantum mechanics the way we think we do. We don't see wave functions directly. We only see their (Psi*)Psi probability of where we think our particles should be. An ounce of humility might prove fruitful here.

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Jan. 30, 2010 @ 00:46 GMT

The quantum mechanics of black holes, and quantum gravity, points to how systems actually run away from equilibrium. A black hole at the same temperature as its background with either absorb or emit a quanta, which will respectively make it colder (higher entropy) or hotter (lower entropy). The effective heat capacity of spacetime is negative. So the black hole will evolve away from the same temperature as the enviornment.

Death is not exactly the prime cause for religion, for a range of mystical experiences do not involve ideas of life after death. Death is not the most comforting of prospects (an inevitable one), but without ideas of after lives one can come to some peace with it. On the other hand one can obsess over the matter, and to compound matter become more neurotic over religious gambits over rewards and punishments based on some crime thought idea (hellfire for not believing or believing right).

Cheers LC

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James Putnam replied on Jan. 30, 2010 @ 02:00 GMT

Dr. Crowell,

"The quantum mechanics of black holes, and quantum gravity, points to how systems actually run away from equilibrium. A black hole at the same temperature as its background with either absorb or emit a quanta, which will respectively make it colder (higher entropy) or hotter (lower entropy). The effective heat capacity of spacetime is negative. So the black hole will evolve away from the same temperature as the enviornment. ..."

This depends upon black holes of the relativistic type really existing. My first question to you was: 'The thrust of your essay depends upon the existence of, at the least, Black Holes. ... can you please say something about the empirical evidence for the existence of Black Holes. I am not asking for a theoretical explanation. I want to know if there is empirical evidence that clearly distinguishes the existence of a black hole from an otherwise very massive object?'

This time I will clarify that I mean Einstein type Relativity Theory based black holes. Is there empirical evidence to support 'the quantum physics of black holes, ...' that would distinguish it from an otherwise very massive object.

I think conclusions must be firmly empirically established before they are announced as representing reality. It is, of course, always possible to theorize and describe it as such.

James

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Jan. 30, 2010 @ 12:19 GMT

There is tons of evidence. Principally a black hole has no solid surface like a neutron star, which gives a signal characteristic of material splashing onto a surface. I more or less leave it up to you to seek it out. Looking at the NASA website for Chandra and Hubble ST are a start.

Cheers LC

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Dear Lawrence,

You said: "...On the other hand one can obsess over the matter, and to compound matter become more neurotic over religious gambits over rewards and punishments based on some crime thought idea (hellfire for not believing or believing right)."

There is an interesting problem here.

If you're the deity, God, you have a conflict you have to resolve.

You don't want your people to run amuck and behave like animals. You want them to know that you really do exist. You also want to give them a sense of personal power and motivation to sustain themselves and your teachings. So let's say you hand down some teachings. You want them to remember the limitations that you've placed on them. When you use a significant amount of your "Godly intervention", it has an incredibly profound impact, like worlds of thought colliding and exploding. People's lives and belief systems are collided violently. There is a historical impact that can last for thousands of years.

But you don't want your people to become neurotic. So what do you do? You create a peaceful religion with many teachings about serenity and peace. You stand back and allow the people to relax and find their happiness. You still love, support and guide your people's lives, but you do it in more subtle and non threatening ways. You also play the equivalent of chess where your pawns and pieces are those who listen to you, their inner voice. You direct and guide people in seemingly chance encounters. As long as everyone is basically getting along, you don't upset the applecart. Ideas about hellfire/damnation become a little used stick to keep the people in line. You let free will and national leaders play their parts, fight the wars and evolve civilization.

As a deity, you really have to be careful about how much power you use because it can make people neurotic. You direct the paths of those who want to find you. Those who don't, you leave them be.

There was a time when I did worry about dogmatic Christians and their hellfire/damnation teachings. I asked for help. I eventually realized that those kinds of Christians do more to keep people away from Jesus than a Lucifer ever could. They don't like to hear that.

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Jan. 30, 2010 @ 12:52 GMT

Ultimately God is what you want Him to be. The Bible is a series of narratives centered around this main character named God, Yod Hey Vod Hey, Adonai, El Ohim etc, and this character displays the range of emotions common to people in general. At times God is loving and forgiving, other times angry and wrathful, and the stories of Jesus indicate someone similarly endowed with human emotions and behavior. The stories also involve God attempting to work out a series of “plan Bs.” God moves across the waters, a symbol of chaos or nothingness, and creates the world. Then things go awry and eventually God brings the waters (nothingness, chaos or the void) back in an existential crisis, where all but those on this little “bubble” protected by the Shekhina, called Noah’s arc, are saved, and God starts over. Things again go awry, so God attempts a covenant with Abraham, things go bad again. There is then a birth motif, where the children escape Mitzrayim (Egypt) which is the narrow place (a birth canal, or the Nile), and the waters crash (like water breaking during a birth) in leaving the narrow place, and things go bad and … , well ultimately up to the penultimate plan B where Jesus comes as the Son of God to offer salvation from sin, but that does not quite work and there is the ultimate plan B yet to come. There is a sort of recursive literary nature to this, and writing admitted into biblical canon were considered according to how well they referenced prior books or scriptures. Of course whole forests have been harvested for the paper devoted to the theodicy of why God has this problem with sin or “wickedness” in his Creation. Yet nothing has ever been concluded. The problem is these are projections of our selves onto some empirium beyond the world, and the “explanens” are really what might be called “just so stories.” You can’t apply reasoning to this sort of thing.

I tend to think that Paul was a clever guy, and I think he had an idea of how some system of belief and thought could be of a compelling nature and become widely accepted. Paul in many ways converted God in part into Orwell’s “Big Brother,” and there are elements of Orwell’s double thought system in his epistles. Paul also invoked the idea of a Holy Spirit as some metaphor on how one’s psychology is ultimately conditioned into this system, and one becomes guided by this. Mohammed came up with a similar idea in his submission to the will of Allah. It is a clever idea really, and if one were to believe this in some literal framework you are in effect like those watching the “screens” in Orwell’s “1984” who come to love Big Brother and chant “BB BB BB … .”

Cheers LC

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Jason Wolfe replied on Jan. 30, 2010 @ 17:26 GMT

Lawrence said: "At times God is loving and forgiving, other times angry and wrathful, and the stories of Jesus indicate someone similarly endowed with human emotions and behavior."

"...God attempting to work out a series of “plan Bs."

"Then things go awry... "

"...and God starts over..."

"...but that does not quite work and there is the ultimate plan B yet to come..."

I had always wondered if it made sense to try to emulate God; after all, I don't have that kind of power. And yet, even from a skeptic and an atheist physicist, there are there are ideas and concepts that may prove helpful to live by. But this is clearly a no-win battle. There is no way to prove to you that such things exist. Furthermore, there is no way I would ever join the ranks of the atheists to become a soulless bio-machine worthy of eventual extinction in a cold and dying universe; nothing exists to answer your prayers. You are alone.

Until another Christian comes along to keep you company. :-)

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Jan. 31, 2010 @ 13:56 GMT

God as a projection of our consciousness does not indicate God does not exist. After all there might be some ultimate connection here between our conscious existence and some self-referential structure which underlies everything, say from which Tegmark's meta-math-cosmos emerges. I don't know for sure. Our particular theological notions of God impose all sort of particularities on this projection, which even if there is some grand self-reference or self-awareness beneath existence are parochialism which place us humans in a more central stage.

We might not have the power to do anything, but we can project ourselves into positions of imagined power. Harry Potter does not exist, but as a scripted character he has considerable magical power. The same holds for a God. If you are to produce a narrative about God, then you can take your imagined powers attributed to this God and place it on a page. The ability to write symbols which convey imagery in the mind, and to further pen the ideations of a powerful God, was a sort of intellectual revolution which started around 1500BCE. The Biblical commandment in Exodus 20 “Thou shall have no graven images,” really means that all ideas are to be expressed in alphabetic form --- no pictures at all, or no pictures of people and living things. The writers of the Torah, probably from the Yawist (J), Elosit (E) and Priestly (P) traditions early on, took what was then a pre-Torah (fragments of which have been found) and scripted the Torah (Christians call the Pentateuch).

Cheers LC

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Lawrence,

is it that the black hole has no surface or no detectable surface? If the massive object distorts the surrounding medium of space enough or distorts empty space enough if you prefer to think of it that way, then the object will no longer be within what we observe to be 3D space. The surface could exist but would be within afore space, that is further 3D space existing beyond the boundary of detectability.

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Steve Dufourny replied on Jan. 31, 2010 @ 10:09 GMT

Hello dear Georgina,

Happy to see you again on FQXi, but you were where? HIHIH

Best Regards

Steve

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Jason Wolfe replied on Jan. 31, 2010 @ 18:29 GMT

I would think that the event horizon would be more like the suction hose on a vacuum cleaner. When your hand is sufficiently far away, you feel only a little bit of wind. But if your hand gets too close to the suction nozzle of the vacuum cleaner, SSSHLOOOMP! Your hand gets sucked it. It's not like the surface of a pond, it's the point at which you, something, are irretrievably sucked in.

So God is a self referential structure which underlies everything? OK that's a start. I guess that analogy is about as good as saying that a black hole is like a cosmic vacuum cleaner. Mathematics is like a set of self consistent rules. I admit to being notorious for boiling complicated concepts down to analogies. So I'm happy. Hurray!!!

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Jan. 31, 2010 @ 19:48 GMT

A black hole event horizon is a null surface, which for an external observer watching matter or field falling in has some very spectific consequences. For an observer which enters the black hole by falling in nothing in particular is observed upon crissing it. There is no "hard surface" from the perspective of an infalling observer. For the exterior observer the horizon has within a string length ~ 10\sqrt{Għ/c^3} a timelike surface, or a stretched horizon, where quantum fields are frozen out and strings are wound around just above the horizon. In effect the black hole is some type of membrane composing a “string star.” These are two complementary perspectives on how a black hole appears. There are some fascinating physical consequences of this.

Cheers LC

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Hi Steve,

Thank you. The answer is on holiday. OK I'll admit I did take a quick glance at FQXi while sitting in Starbucks.

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Steve Dufourny replied on Jan. 31, 2010 @ 10:47 GMT

hihihi like says Jason , we are all addicts of FQXi.

Best Regards

Steve

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The expected physical characteristics of an event horizon are pretty well understood. Indeed event horizons are regulators of quantum field in a renormalization group flow. Any solid surface on a body, such as a neutron star, gives a return signal for material which interacts with them, splashing or crashing onto the hard surface (and a neutron star surface is really REALLY hard and dense), which can not happen with an event horizon. This is well documented and observed with objects identified by exterior accretion disk energetics as black holes.

Cheers LC

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Lawrence,

thank you for your description of a black hole. I understand that this is an area of particular interest and expertise for you. I wonder about the generally accepted description though. Why shouldn't the huge mass comprised of the compact luminous centre of a galaxy be so far ahead along the 4th (spatio-energetic) dimension of space that it is no longer detectable from the 3D spacial position of a observer? Which could be described as distorting the region of space in which it exists so much that it is undetectable. So it is formed from a real star or collection of stars and other orbiting bodies with real surfaces that are just not detectable. I suppose that is a rhetorical question because as James pointed out the description of something and understanding that one has of it depends upon the model that is used to derive that description and comprehension.

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Let's eat some more apples of insight as to get rid of false paradises. It was the same St. Antonius (354-430) who created a part of Christian belief including to damn sexuality as a sin who also argued that god can see all numbers as an entity.

The role of abstinent monks in history of science in the middle ages is perhaps underestimated. Scholastics was not based on evidence. Maybe, this was crucial for some progress which was not available to Euclid. Georg Cantor's paradise was also not really based on evidence.

Eckard Blumschein

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Jason Wolfe replied on Feb. 10, 2010 @ 05:43 GMT

Dear Eckard,

At the risk of 'showing up' in the middle of the conversation, I thought your comment about, "St. Antonius (354-430) who created a part of Christian belief including to damn sexuality as a sin who also argued that god can see all numbers as an entity" was interesting enough to respond to.

I think there is a nuance here in the physics community, perhaps a fear and hatred towards a Christian God who casts sinners into the hellfire for trivial offenses. From my own personal experiences with the Deity, I'll comment as prudently as haste allows. Sinfulness that leads to damnation is a completly misunderstood concept. I would recommend the use of the Golden Rule as a more reliable Moral Compass. Thus, sexuality isn't a problem, if you care for another the way you want them to care for you.

I think that Christian dogma might be scaring some physicists, and some people, away from what would otherwise be a very beautiful religion. Maybe we should look at that.

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If all energy is equivalent to a change in spatial position then this explains thermal energy measured as temperature too.

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Hi all,

Dear Georgina, have you thought about an universal rotation of all around the universal center, that changes the perception in fact, our topology is specific and evolves.

All turns and the evolution continues the building towards the harmony.

Best Regards

Steve

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Dear Steve,

Have you thought about your spinning spheres being equivalent to a magnetic-like force with circulating field lines?

Dear Georgina,

Have you read Verlinde's paper? He uses the First Law of Thermo to derive the idea that gravity arises out of entropy.

Have Fun!

Dr. Cosmic Ray

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Hi Steve,

to be honest with you I really haven't given it much thought because I have been preoccupied with the cause of the perception of time and gravity. Which has seen to me to require an apparently asymmetric "linear" flow of matter along a 4th dimension.

I do think however that rotation is very important in many aspects of physics. I have actually been thinking about the topological argument that every continuous mapping from an interval to itself has a fixed point. Giving periodic motion . However I see some problems here. To do with relating the mathematics of the phase-space to actual quaternion space. I think that there is periodic motion but also "linear" motion along the 4th dimension so that, following the cycle in actual space, it is not possible ever to return to the (imaginary) fixed point but only to the equivalent of that point in another 4th dimensional position. This continues in a cycle without there ever being the possibility of overlap in quaternion space. So rather than describing attraction to a point or circle to give a limit cycle it seems more akin to a spiral. Perhaps because of a recent post from Eckard concerning the problem of infinity and the irrational numbers I can't help wondering if there is a connection.

With that and a number of other ideas spinning around in my head, I don't really want to think about rotation of the entire universe too. Perhaps you could just tell us why you think it is an important consideration.

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Dear Geaorgina,

Thanks for your answer.

It is your choice, it was just to help you a little to understand better the time and the gravity and the light.

Dear Georgina, I have already say why, thus you can encitrcle the whole.... quantum spheres....cosmological spheres...universal sphere and its center and the rotation.It is simple in fact, if people doesn't see this truth thus I think it is just a lack of understanding about the whole of my theory or centers of interest.When a theory is correct we see its applications everywhere, thus a good theory rests, the others no.The spherization will rest simply and humbly.

If the doubt is always in your head, thus you can undertand what perhaps it is not a good idea and thus it is a lost of time, simply.

Personnaly I have not doubt about my theory.And if people wants ask me or want critic they can, I wait still since I am on FQXi, because simply it is foundamental these spheres, I can understand that frustrates many people but it is not my fault hihihi, I have worked a lot to find that.And now I have still many to do too.

Ps, dear Georgina never the time will be checked......

Dear Dr Cosmic Ray,

Thanks too, in fact all in proportional dear Ray thus a good work probably will be in this rationality, if not we shall see it in fact.

Best Regards and friendly to both of you

Steve

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Dear Georgina,

Have you seen the works of Dr E and the essay of Peter,

if you must resume the applications about time, could you tell me what they are please.Do you consider reversibilities in your model about time and gravity?

Best Regards

Steve

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Steve,

it is once again difficult to clearly understand the meaning of your post.

I have read some of Dr.Es ideas. Both on Fqxi and elsewhere. I think I read last years essay but not this year's. As I imagined it would be pretty much the same thing repackaged for the new contest. Perhaps that was an incorrect judgement but time is valuable and I can not possibly read everything. I...

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Steve,

it is once again difficult to clearly understand the meaning of your post.

I have read some of Dr.Es ideas. Both on Fqxi and elsewhere. I think I read last years essay but not this year's. As I imagined it would be pretty much the same thing repackaged for the new contest. Perhaps that was an incorrect judgement but time is valuable and I can not possibly read everything. I understand what he is saying and why. I understand the similarity between the model he proposes and the ideas that I have outlined. However I do not agree.

I do not think dimensions should expand but dimensions should be provided in a model to give orientation to change that is occurring. However I do think that matter is continuously moving along that dimension in a "linear" flow but because of the relationship of the 4 dimensions this gives rise to scalar effects. I also do not think the universe is expanding. That is a major disagreement with DR. E's model. If I could reconcile expansion with how I comprehend the perception of time and gravity then I would naturally be keen to do so, as this would be in keeping with current mainstream scientific opinion.

It bothers me that the material of the universe is so obviously coming together. Dust into rocks, rocks into planets, proto-galaxies colliding and forming galaxies and accumulating more material to form bigger galaxies. Overall everything is gradually coming together,( despite the odd explosion here and there, etc) as far as I can tell. How can I reconcile that with everything rushing apart in universal expansion? The best that I can think of at the moment is that red shift is the illusion caused by the motion away from the origin of the EM along the 4th spatial dimension, by the observer which occurs together with rotation in 3D space. (Which has incidentally just made me think spiral again.)I am not saying that that is definitely the cause because I can not verify it. It is speculation. I just can not think of another explanation that is really satisfying.

I have not yet read Peters work but I intend to do so.

I have explained before that I do not consider time to be a physical reality but a perception and a number of different mental constructs. What I call historical time past, present and future do not have any existence as physical realms. There is in my opinion only space and change of position in space is energy. Changes in position of matter occurs and we can understand this also as energy changes. This occurs within 4 dimensional space with foreward flow of matter along one of those dimensions. That flow may give rise to changes interpreted as passage of time but it is not time itself, it just another change of spatial position. The force of gravity also arises because of the afore-ward "linear" flow.

There can be no time travel because temporal realms do not exist and so no going backwards in time. Picking something up and moving it away from the earth's surface is the reverse of the action of gravity. Gravity takes matter afore (foreward, ahead) along the 4th dimension. Moving in space in the opposite direction is taking something further aft (back, behind) along the 4th dimension. This is in keeping with the observations of time dilation.

I have been thinking about periodic motion in chaotic systems because it is very important. I said "So rather than describing attraction to a point or circle to give a limit cycle it seems more akin to a spiral." I actually mean that the strange attractor must be a position along the 4th spatial dimension that gives rise to a gradually spiralling change of position towards that 4th dimensional position, observed as stable orbital or periodic motion within 3D space. As all matter even the diffuse stuff is flowing along the 4th dimension as well as moving in 3D space. As any change in spatial position is an energy change this 4th dimensional change in position can also be regarded as the loss of universal potential energy or promotional energy (akin to kinetic energy but along the 4th dimension).

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Steve Dufourny replied on Feb. 9, 2010 @ 10:30 GMT

Hi dear Georgina,

I understand better your model with your last post.I wish you all the best.

Best Regards

Steve

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I think, as far as Christian theology is concerned, that certain theologies would be harmed by the discovery of intelligent life, but the faith itself would not be threatened. Tradition, of course, allows for lots of intelligent non-human life - angels and so forth - but I do think Barthian Neo-orthodoxy might face a problem. It makes Christ's humanity an eternal and essential aspect of God's nature. I think the discovery of an intelligent alien race might put that doctrine into question.

I think though that religious people would be more interested in what these aliens had to say (assuming they speak) and what we could learn about creation from them. The aliens themselves and whatever characteristics they might have and whatever knowledge they might have could be of spiritual interest.

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As I try to imagine what an intelligent communicating alien might have to say about religion, I start to wonder what drives the need and/or desire to perpetuate religion. Is religion nothing more than a delusion to make us feel better about our less than perfect life (lives)? Is it nothing more than some evolutionarily built in set of mechanisms that fool us into believing in something that doesn't exist beyond the biological brain?

In my own experience, and at the risk of stirring up athiest hecklers, the scientific community has totally missed, completely overlooked the existence of the paranormal/God/etc. I've seen personal evidence yet again. Sorry I won't be able to display it for the athiests to heckle at. But so what; the scientific community has had great success at being able to figure out the workings of the universe without the need for any universal deity, God or intelligent force of nature.

Neither I, nor the intelligent aliens are going to force a religion down your throat. The cold hard truth is that a universe with no God, a human life with no soul, these beliefs will bring you no joy and no peace for the duration of your natural lives. On the brighter side, you have free will to choose what it is you believe in.

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Steve ,

thank you for the opportunity to explain my thinking. I'm sorry my post was a bit long but it is difficult to summarise while still explaining clearly. I wish you all the best too.

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Steve Dufourny replied on Feb. 10, 2010 @ 10:38 GMT

Hello Dear Georgina,

You are welcome, I like read your extrapolations you know.

Thank you too , it is nice

Friendly

Steve

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Jason, "Golden Rule as a more reliable Moral Compass", what does it mean for me with respect to physics and mathematics? Read the first sentences of my essay 527. You will also find several other essays pointing to an increasing gap between mathematical rigor up to nonsensical speculations on one side and physical reality on the other side. I see it the worst wrong doing alias sin or amorality if "physicists" and "pure" mathematicians do not even try to seriously keep contact with reality. I do not deny that mathematics is independent to some extent. The more important is its relation to reality.

Right now I am reading a book "Labyrinth of Thoughts, A History of Set Theory and its Role in Modern Mathematics". I strongly disagree with the author.

By the way, Cauchy allegedly lost all of his students due to his extreme rigor. Weierstrass tried to be even more rigorous, and managed to have a huge crowd of pupils. Why?

Regards,

Eckard

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Eckard,

I understand that you are enamored with rigorous mathematics, and how mathematics should be tied to reality. Great! But let me educate you about reality. You posted, "It was the same St. Antonius (354-430) who created a part of Christian belief including to damn sexuality as a sin who also argued that god can see all numbers as an entity." You posted this in the middle of a blog entitled: Astrotheology: Do Aliens Have Their Own Jesus? Are Aliens Sinless? For you to ask, "what does it (golden rule as moral compass) mean for me with respect to physics and mathematics?", as if I had barged in on a mathematical physics conference is...a little odd.

Perhaps a better question might be: what do numbers have to do with morality? ...with sexuality?

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James Putnam replied on Feb. 10, 2010 @ 23:33 GMT

Dear Eckard Blumschein,

I am still studying your essays. I have no doubt that theoretical physics has lost track of how to understand reality. I think many theoretical physicsts are enjoying the Wonderland type of universe that has opened the door to speculations beyond which Alice could have reported on. I think that Einstein was the person who opened this 'apparent' door, that I think is really another 'Looking Glass'. Today, anything seems to be a possibililty so long as some branch of mathematics can be applied to support it. The imaginary prospects of theoretical physics have long ago left reality behind. I do not believe in the universe of today's theoretical physics. I work to expose its weaknesses and misinterpretations. I think they begin right from the beginning of theory. I have mentioned my concerns about the expedient use of f=ma; in otherwords, helpful to theorests but not really right or proper and definitely not safe for interpreting reality.

I am interjecting these thoughts at this time because Jason mentioned your reference to St. Antonius. I researched St. Antonius on the Internet. I could not find support for what you said. You may be correct. From what I know of the teachings of the Catholic Church, I have never seen it said officially that sexuality was a sin. Sex outside of marriage was condemned as sinful. I do not yet know what you were referring to. My point is that attacking Christianity is not helpful in furthering scientific debate. With regard to theoretical physics, I think you very likely have something very important and corrective to say. I am still learning whether or not that is true. However, I will point out that arguments against any religion do not even begin to address the unexplained origin of intelligence. What does any weakness of any religion have to do with scientifically explaining the origin of intelligence?

James

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Jason Wolfe replied on Feb. 11, 2010 @ 01:11 GMT

James,

When trying to explain consciousness, you are definitely right that attacking relgion is not a very scientific approach. Your concerns about the 'Alice in Wonderland' predicament that physics finds itself is most definetely worth reviewing. If you are looking for the origin of intelligence, it is my opinion that you will have great difficulty with a scientific strategy. Intelligence and consciousness, in my not very humble opinion, cannot be boiled down to any kind of mundane physics. Intelligence and consciousness emerge out of builogical life. Biological life is built on a foundation of quantum mechanics. You and I will disagree on this point, but I believe that quantum mechanics is built on the very strange and magical nature of quantum mechanics, the very "Alice in Wonderland" quality you are trying to stamp out.

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Ray Munroe replied on Feb. 11, 2010 @ 01:35 GMT

Dear Jason & James,

The Origin of Life is that special link between Inanimate Chemistry and Living Biology, and we don't have a satisfactory enough answer for it. Genesis calls that link the Breath (Spirit) of God. If Darwin's Survival of the Fittest is correct, this may help explain increasing Complexity and Intelligence, but at face value this seems to run contrary to the Second Law of Thermo and may not explain a step-by-step evolution of a functioning eye where its 'all or nothing' - a blind eye has no evolutionary advantage.

Alice in Wonderland makes more sense.

Have Fun!

Ray

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2 is a good number Jason!

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Jason Wolfe replied on Feb. 11, 2010 @ 03:07 GMT

Georgina,

2 is a good number.

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Quoting from Steven Jay Gould, Ever Since Darwin, 1978" Common sense is a very poor guide to scientific insight for it represents cultural prejudice more often than it reflects the native honesty of a small boy before a naked emperor. Common sense dictated to Darwin's critics that a gradual change in form must indicate progressive building of function. Since they could assign no adaptive value to early and imperfect stages of a function, they assumed either that early stages had never existed ( and that perfect forms had been created all at once) or that they had not arisen by natural selection. The principle of preadaption-functional change in structural continuity- can resolve this dilemma.

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Ray,

my last post was in reply to your blind eye has no evolutionary advantage. I am still unable to "reply to thread" for some reason.

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James,

Whether a biological intelligence or some other more exotic, yet to be scientificaly documented intelligence, what does intelligence come down to? Isn't consciousness just the stage, the platform on which many different kinds of thoughts are allowed to interact? The biology and the nervous system have their own generated thoughts which serve the physical body (eat, sleep, procreate, etc...). The neural pathways are continually subjected to chemical information by the endocrine system, that are experienced as urges. In addition to the basic survival urges, there are higher level functions and interactions as well. There are emotional needs, curiousity, the desire to seek/find pleasure and avoid pain. There are beliefs, belief systems, and in some people, a yearning for spiritual fullfillment.

Pain and pleasure cannot be the ultimate forces that drive consciousness because we know, deep down, that there are other fundamental drives. I have heard that there are 6 or 7 fundamental drives.

1. Need for certainty.

2. Need for veriety.

3. Need to express one's individuality.

4. Need to interact, be with others.

5. Need to grow as a person.

6. Need to contribute.

7. Need to find One'ness, one's place within the whole, spirituality.

Much of consciousness has a biological (nervous system) and chemical (endocrine system) origin. From my own personal experience, there are just things that exist beyond the grasp of physics. I've wondered for years how it gets into our biological consciousness. I can only imagine that the randomness of quantum mechanics allows 'degrees of motion' that can be used for signalling. In other words, the randomness of quantum mechanics, I believe, can be used to manipulate chemical (primordial ooze), and later biological events, from a yet unidentified source.

I believe I answered your questions. I don't think you liked the answers I gave you. I can try to elaborate if I missed something.

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James Putnam replied on Feb. 11, 2010 @ 04:34 GMT

Dear Jason,

"Isn't consciousness just the stage, the platform on which many different kinds of thoughts are allowed to interact? ..."

What thoughts? Nothing intelligent can emerge from dumbness. Even higher intelligence cannot be caused by lower intelligence. The intelligence must be explained. The problem does not lie in naming parts of the body that clearly participate. The problem lies in introducing intelligent meaning into any of those parts, processing intelligent meaning through any of those parts, and generating complex intelligent thoughts. The problem is that those parts either contain the intelligent meanings as a given, something passed onto them by a cause that held that intelligence in abeyance, or those meanings can not be generated.

"Much of consciousness has a biological (nervous system) and chemical (endocrine system) origin. ..."

The origin of intelligence definitely must precede the mechanical interpretations of the parts involved. It must even precede the parts. The parts must have something meaningful to work with and assemble together or they can do nothing more than assemble themselves into something meaningless. There is no free connection to be made simply by association. Our ideas are not what generate reality. They must apply to reality. This means that mechanical thinking is of no use in explaining the birth of intelligent life.

"I can only imagine that the randomness of quantum mechanics allows 'degrees of motion' that can be used for signalling. ..."

The easy answer is that imagining is more a part of the problem than of the solution. Knowing is the solution. Imagining is for sciences that do not know the answers. However, it is your use of the word 'signalling' that points directly to the heart of the problem. Signals can only point to meanings that must already reside somewhere real. The signals have nothing to do with bringing meaning into existence. Signals are mechanical in the same sense that any sign is. Signs can only refer us to understanding that we already have.

James

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Jason Wolfe replied on Feb. 11, 2010 @ 05:42 GMT

Dear James,

You question has placed me in an awkward position. You don't your answer to be described mechanically (signals buried in waves, etc...). I'm also not comfortable about revealing some of my personal experiences within a forum of highly educated and intelligent readers each with their own preconceived ideas. What can I say? You start getting into the existence of Plato's absolutes and things of that nature. Thoughts begin to exist independent of the brain. Over the years and decades, I've become very sophisticated in my thinking. Was it the tension between (a) that which the logical mind says can exist and (b) that which I experience as being very sacred, beautiful, and occasionally so obvious it's like a smack across the head? Part of that sophistication came from trying to emulate great teachers. Sigh... I have to get back to work.

These are the kinds of questions that can drive you crazy. Maybe you should just ask the universe to reveal the answers to you quickly and intensely.

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James Putnam replied on Feb. 11, 2010 @ 17:24 GMT

Dear Jason,

Thank you for your reply. I don't think it is necessary to actually answer the question about: What was the origin of intelligence? I think it is a giant step just to make clear that intelligence must be accounted for and it cannot be explained away by any mechanical ideas. The tendency of some to try to substitute mechanical magic for intelligence must be exposed as being clearly inadequate science.

James

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Dear James,

You said, "The tendency of some to try to substitute mechanical magic for intelligence must be exposed as being clearly inadequate science." There are two schools of thought on the subject of consciousness and intelligence. One school of thought says that consciousness/intelligence can be accounted for within the known laws of physics. The other school of thought expects some kind of mysterious/magical/occult origin that still obeys its own version of laws of nature. Those are your two choices. There really is no third choice.

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Dear Jason,

Look at your own words. They are loaded in favor of propping up the 'certainty of scientific understanding' of theoretical physics: "...One school of thought says that consciousness/intelligence can be accounted for within the known laws of physics. ..." and then in opposition there is: "...The other school of thought expects some kind of mysterious/magical/occult origin that still obeys its own version of laws of nature. ..." Please do not propose the suggestion that my other option is limited to a 'mysterious/magical/occult origin.'

What you really appear to be saying is that you strongly believe in the mechanical type interpretations of the operation of the universe that are put forward by theoretical physics. The use of loaded words such as 'magical' can be thrown in either direction. I prefer to expose mechanical thought as so clearly inadequate to account for intelligent life that belief in it as a cause for such life amounts to its own form of 'mysterious/magical/occult' origin.

My opinion is that the laws of physics are representative of accurately recognizing patterns in changes of velocities and imagining reasons, i.e. causes, why those patterns change. No causes are known causes. All laws of physics that include definitions of causes are not to be held up as known laws of physics. The use of the laws will continue to be valuable, but, the imagined causes incorporated into those laws gum up the works for really understanding the operation of the universe.

Intelligence needs a cause just as change of velocity needs a cause. So, the mechanical causes are imagined into existence and intelligent causes are imagined out of existence. Is this supposed to be scientific learning or ideological indoctrination? I say that: The only two properties that are directly experienced by us are information and intelligence. Every other potential property must be deduced, at risk of being wrong, from our intelligent interpretation of information.

James

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Ray Munroe replied on Feb. 11, 2010 @ 22:56 GMT

Maybe everything is 'information'. DNA and ,therefore evolution, are just information. Intelligence is just information and having multiple ways to process that information. Now Verlinde makes gravity sound like information, and too much information creates a black hole. Is that what will happen to my brain when it finally overloads? Another Black Hole?

Where is that information stored? Is it all in neurons and elementary particles that exist in Spacetime? Or is some of that information stored in Hyperspace? Would we interpret a Hyperspace phenomenon as a supernatural event? How does an electron 'know' its properties?

When you look at everything from an information perspective, it makes Ed Klingman's 'radical' ideas unifying Gravity and Consciousness seem 'normal'.

Have Fun!

Dr. Cosmic Ray

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James Putnam replied on Feb. 12, 2010 @ 01:03 GMT

Dear Ray,

Hi, I don't really see the universe as consisting only of information and intelligence. It could be and we would not know the difference. I like seeing it as physically real. I use the information and intelligence argument to push theoretical physics back into the limited scientific perspective that it postulates. I don't think that Einstein was right. I think he made an error that has sent the rest of us off into areas of speculation that give questionable theoretical results. I think the use of transform equations gives reason to re-evaluate Einstein's theory. I think that black holes do not exist. Either they control both space and time or they are imaginary. I do not think that anything controls either space or time.

I do not doubt empirical evidence; however, with today's attitudes of theoretical physicists, the evidence for black holes must, for me, be cleaned free of theoretical interpretations. That is not an easy task for someone who is not a PHD in physics. I wish it was less important for theoretical physicists to defend past ideas and more important to concentrate on constantly re-evaluating empirical evidence, even the earliest evidence, free from previous theoretical bias. If you were to look at my essay entry into the first contest, you would see that I do not even hold electric charge as sacred to theoretical physics or to reality. I think that there is so much that is held as clearly correct and is possibly very wrong. The nature of the universe is intellectual territory where imagination, by qualified persons, should flourish. To flourish may mean to flush out. That is what I think.

James

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Jason Wolfe replied on Feb. 12, 2010 @ 01:10 GMT

Dear James,

As it turns out, I happen to like magical/occult phenomena; I prefer that explanation for consciousness. I have experienced it more times than I can count.

You said, "The only two properties that are directly experienced by us are information and intelligence. " That sounds to me like "information content" and "information processing". Since information (content) and intelligence (information processing) can cover such a wide range of phenomena, I'll go along with it.

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James,

Lots of people (and physicists) have ideas. These ideas are either useful towards achieving some result, or they are not useful (slightly useful).

When you say "...chained to a mechanical perspective...", do you think that intelligence 'just happens'? I understand that "mechansistic" thinking is a klunky way to approach intelligence/consciousness. A heuristic approach is probably better.

As for approaching everything from an "information" perspective, "information" is just a word that refers to distinctions between this and that. If we can't tell if two thinks are different, then we have lost our ability to understand and experience the universe.

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James Putnam replied on Feb. 12, 2010 @ 03:44 GMT

Dear Jason,

I presented my case about theoretical physics, mechanics, information and intelligence in my essay submission #490 to this latest contest.

James

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Astrotheology: Do Aliens Have Their Own Jesus? Are Aliens Sinless?

I think, that if aliens exist on a planet that has different mixtures of "air", then if there is a lack of "oxygen" then they may have MORE experience at survivalistic tendancies?

If one speculates that most religeous "rules/laws/comandments" here on Earth are formed by Humans that have tended to walk into situations of extreme envirnment locations. For example if elderly Moses, being in his later years, went high up into environment that was extremely dangerous, ie oxygen deprived, and with physical exertions taken effect, then could speculate that humans barter with "Gods" by pleading their existence(let me survive and I will never do this/that again?)..or at least let them survive long enough to pass on their delerious/oxygen starved experience's?

I think other humans/aliens on other planets would maybe have extreme views, dependant on their gas ratios in their environments? This would not be a bad thing, if it inspires better understanding of existence, rather than other aspects on non existence, ie death and which way to get there war or peace_ful?

Sins must be derived from environment inputs?

p.v

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Georgina Parry replied on Feb. 17, 2010 @ 22:05 GMT

Paul,

the life forms will be adapted to the particular environment in which they evolved.Giving optimal performance in those conditions. Sin or error is a misjudgement. Although environmental input may be misleading and sometimes lead to error it is often due to the mental processing itself.

Apropriate social behaviour is more likely with "normal" brain structure and function, particularly of frontal lobes and amagdyla, "normal" social development and balanced neurotransmitter levels.

There is some scientific evidence that genetic factors combined with violent social environment can lead to differnces in neurotransmitter levels, that gives a greater likelihood of violent behaviour, joining gangs and being amongst the most brutal members. This behaviour may be regarded as sin or error, (although it may function to enhance an individuals survival in a violent environment), but it also has a clear biochemical origin.

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Ray Munroe replied on Feb. 17, 2010 @ 22:08 GMT

Georgina, The 'reply to this thread' worked!

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Georgina parry replied on Feb. 18, 2010 @ 00:42 GMT

Yes,. now using microsoft explporer, muuh to my annoyance.

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Jason Wolfe replied on Feb. 18, 2010 @ 03:16 GMT

Dear Georgina,

Sin and error would have to be defined, I would think. On the one hand, sin and error is expected to be some behavior that inflicts unjustified harm on some else. However, by Biblical definition, there are seven sins. I would argue that some of those sins, such as greed, lust, envy, sloth, ... are not entirely worthy of the "error in judgement" distinction. I would argue that human beings sometimes need to engage in some less than ideal behaviour; it's called destressing and relaxing.

This is just my personal view.

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Georgina Parry replied on Feb. 18, 2010 @ 08:55 GMT

Ah Google chrome seems to work too but not Mozilla Firefox.Odd.

Jason,

I am sure there are lots of different definitions depending on the particular religious sect one belongs to or the dictionary used. However the third definition in my dictionary says "any offence against a principle or standard." That pretty much has it covered, although it does not say who's principles or standards.

The seven deadly sins are deadly in that they ultimately cause harm to ones self and may ultimately lead to one's own early death. Therefore I think they do qualify as error in judgement. That is because one is putting one's own short term gratification before long term health and welfare. A chocolate bar might be a relaxing treat but enough gluttony and one has serious health problems for example.

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Dear Paul,

People barter with God all the time in places like the hospital, the unemployment line, at church, at home, while driving, etc...

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paul valletta replied on Feb. 27, 2010 @ 18:19 GMT

Dear Jason, I do believe that there is an inherent need for the principle of a "God", and thus there is also a viable reason for "prayer/requests"?

One can ask onself this:If there were no life-Humans-Observers in the Universe would the Universe exist? Think hard about this, there appers to be a need for co-existence, the Universe needs us as much if not more than we need it?

Best Paul V

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Steve Dufourny replied on Feb. 27, 2010 @ 18:24 GMT

The interpretation of God by humans is like the comparison of the Ocean and a water drop.

Thus you can imagine where we are......the truth is more more more than our simple interpretation....The contemplation and the catalyzation thus are better than a lost of time.

Regards

Steve

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Rob Edwards replied on Mar. 5, 2010 @ 00:18 GMT

History demonstrates rather effectively that the discovery of extraterrestirals wouldn't have much of an impact on religious beliefs.

The existence of extraterrestrials was proposed by Nicolas of Cusa, then a catholic priest and later a cardinal, in 1440.

Giordiano Bruno was a noted proponent of extraterrestrials in the 16th century, and believed that their existence would glorify...

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History demonstrates rather effectively that the discovery of extraterrestirals wouldn't have much of an impact on religious beliefs.

The existence of extraterrestrials was proposed by Nicolas of Cusa, then a catholic priest and later a cardinal, in 1440.

Giordiano Bruno was a noted proponent of extraterrestrials in the 16th century, and believed that their existence would glorify God. He was burnt at the stake by the spanish inquisition in 1600 for a raft of heretical views. One of the eight charges against him was the belief in an infinite number of inhabited worlds. However, as Nicolas of Cusa's success in the Catholic church attests, it wasn't this idea alone that was deemed heretical. He believed that these worlds were eternal, and thus denied a universe of finite duration created by God. In the wake of Bruno's burning the idea came to be falsely viewed as rather dangerous to support. Mounting evidence in support of the Copernican hypothesis throughout the 17th century gradually eroded this view.

By the end of the 17th century extraterrestrials had enjoyed considerable exposure in popular literature and had recieved both scientific and religious endorsement. Throughout the 18th century the vast majority of people believed emphatically in the existence of extraterrestrials, both within our own solar system and beyond, largely on religious grounds. It was generally believed that god 'created nothing in vain' and that a world without intelligent inhabitants would be a vain creation. Good christians believed in extraterrestrials. You were just as likely to hear extraterresrials being talked about it in church as you were at the Royal Society.

The idea persisted throughout much of the 19th century. In 1853 William Whewel, a close friend of the Astronomer Royal, wrote a book called 'of the pulraity of worlds'. In this book he marshalled impressive scientific arguments against the existence of extraterrestrial life. While he eschews theology in his book, his primary motivation appears to have been religious as he had come to believe that the existence of extraterrestrials invalidated the Christian faith. Hints of similar opinions are found much earlier. While many religious people continued to believe in extraterrestrials, religion and extraterrestrials gradually parted company throughout the latter half of the 19th century. As an interesting asside, Mormonism and Seventh Day Adventism were founded in a climate of popular belief in extraterrestrials, and still accept their existence without qualms today.

Religious people have happily accomodated the existence of extraterrestrials past, albiet as a belief, and continue to do so today. They will be able to do so in the future with ease.

A religious perspective allows you to interpret facts in a manner that supports your pre-existing beliefs. It also allows you to reject facts that contradict your beliefs outright, accepting patently false refutations to shore up your religious world view. This ability is built into the human brain and isn't necessarily a purely religious trait. In short, religion can cope with just about anything you might want to throw at it. I guess Christianity would still be around if Ganesh manifested in Trafalgar Square tomorrow. A UFO would have even less impact.

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Mar. 6, 2010 @ 01:59 GMT

I suspect that contact with ETI will impact religious believers differently. I would imagine your more fundamentalist types will tend to recoil at this or deny the existence of the results. In the past people thought of beings which lived in the sky as "angelic." This changed a bit with HG Wells, who promoted aliens as physical beings, and in his case not so angelic.

Cheers LC

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Steve Dufourny replied on Mar. 7, 2010 @ 12:27 GMT

hihihi some years ago, I worked in my small garden, it was the begining of the night.And I me them Lawrence between some flowers hihihi ,smalls , big eyes sphericals and a color between the pink and the blue.They are verry intelligents, and they have said me, The spherization brother human the spherisation of our unique universe and its billions billions lifes , they evolve everywhere and wait the ultim harmony hihihih yes dear Lawrence I am not crazzy I met them ,hihihii in all case the spherisation is the universality.

It is them who say that, it is not me hihihih ETs exist ouhah welcome on this beautiful Earth where the ground shines and sings.

Welcome on Gaia brothers of the Universe, here is the world and pay attention hihihihihi and they are returned at home , an other sphere.

Friendly

Steve human on Earth, unfortunally hihihi

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Dear Paul,

The universe would still exist whether or not humanity was here to observe it. I'm not a supporter of the idea "consciousness" is defined by the collapsing of wave functions. However, I do believe that consciousness itself is built into the universe (multiverse).

As for intelligent extraterrestrials, I am sure if contact was made, that human beings would hang on their every word. It wouuld require a very verbally skilled alien embassador to convey a message of openness. It would be a very slippery slope for such an embassador to articulate without mistakes. I promise you that human beings would listen so intently, with magnified hope of prosperity/trade/medicine/utopia and hyper-paranoid fear that the aliens were planning an attack or something bad.

I personally feel that the aliens would have the best and most honorable intentions. And as Murphy's law would have it, there would of course be some unfortunate miscommunication that would be misinterpreted in the worst most pessimistic way. The alien embassador would speak cautiously about giving us new technology; the New York Times would than report "Aliens Don't Trust Us!!! ...with technology..."

If they do decide to come down to visit us, EVERYTHING will be impacted, culturally, socially, economically, spiritually. Governments will have to decide if they are an opportunity or a threat. Corporate executives will be spending millions of dollars, trying to make a deal with them, for technology or products. Of course, initially, there will be the world wide shock that they really do exist.

Such an alien embassador would have to pay highest respects towards the Earth's God/religious ideals; not doing so might be seen as disrespectful. Such a diplomatic blunder could color relations between them and us.

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paul valletta replied on Mar. 7, 2010 @ 15:52 GMT

Dear Rob, I think there is a legit reasoning for expecting any alien lifeforms, that have the same chemical needs as on Earth, ie the right mix of oxygen, to be not willing to make any contact with us, even if we share the same genetic makeup?

I believe they would rather choose to stay silent. If I was veiwing the Earth remotely, and could intercept satellite data, then using "google_earth" or military sats, would increase my desire to walk away, sorry but I think this is the only option today, I am not saying that I never had made contact, I just believe these times today are not a valid representative of the Human Species?

Drakes Equation of expected "life" out in the cosmos neglects other lifes expectant "social" status's, if they are anything like us humans, how can we expect them to like us?

best p.v

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I tend to doubt that interstellar travel will happen, either by us for by any ETI. It might be possible to send probes to the interstellar neighborhood, but long distance trips are unlikely. Actual travel between stars is unlikely I think. So an ETI 100 light years out or more might not have any of these worries. If nothing else they might be intrigued to figure out what kind of schmucks were are after all.

Cheers LC

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Jason,

you said "I personally feel that the aliens would have the best and most honorable intentions." Why on Earth do you feel that?

Symbiotic relationships are comparatively rare on Earth. Most life is in competition for resources and fights for survival of self and closely related organisms. The "Harmony of nature" is produced from the balance of competing organisms which starve, smother, poison, digest or otherwise harm their competitors. Look how we factory farm our fellow earthlings. Look how animal habitats are destroyed by human activity.

Why shouldn't these aliens see us as a food source, slave labour, or nuisance on an otherwise colonise able planet? Why should they behave differently from other biological organisms driven by their selfish genes.Intelligence does not necessarily equate to a compassionate attitude towards all other life forms. Logic is not the same as empathy.

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Dear Georgina,

To explain why I think their intentions would be honorable, I would have to explain to you some personal experiences I've had. However, I'm already considered too be a strange blogger on this website.

But to give you a more satisfactory answer, I do know what it takes to build a hyper-drive propulsion system. If anybody alien species actually achieved it, they have technological sophistication which vastly outstrips ours. They have the ability to build machinery in both our space-time, and a coexisting hyper-space. They have the ability to combine both parts into a single machine that exists in both space-time and hyperspace, simultaneously. This is a very expensive machine to maintain. Replacement parts would be expensive. They would have to have a very developed economy to maintain hyper-drive propulsion capability.

Yet, I will admit that it's still possible for some advanced civilization that achieved it's technological and cultural peak, to decay into some desperate situation.

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Dear Jason,

An advanced civilisation is not necessarily compassionate, well intentioned or honourable to other races let alone other species. Why equate advanced technology and civilisation with benign interspecies behaviour. Our most technologically advanced nations do not on the whole treat non humans benignly. They are used for our own purposes or eradicated. While token conservation and animal rights legislation, often unenforceable, give the pretence that humanity as a whole actually cares. Since other earthling species are denied even the basic right to life and liberty, why should aliens treat us any differently?

Also don't forget that deception is easiest when people wish to believe in the best. A tame animal is more easily led to the slaughter.

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Steve Dufourny replied on Mar. 8, 2010 @ 09:48 GMT

Hi dear Georgina,

I don't agree because at a specific step of evolution, the consciousness is correlated,and thus the respect of the lifes and creations too.

Furthermore, if their technology permits to arrive here on Erath, thus their consciousness is correlated too, that has no sense to say the bad intentions of these lifes.

Don't confound our Earth and its stupidities with an other intelligence.

Best Regards

Steve

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Dear Georgina,

Your reasoning is undeniable. But if I told you I had a visitation when I was a young kid, you would think I was nuts. If I told you I've had telepathic contact with beyond this world intelligences who emphasized many facets of the Golden rule, you would think I was off my rocker. If we were to come face to face with an extra terrestrial intelligence, we should exercise a reasonable amount of caution. I am certain we would be able to guess there intentions pretty quickly. I would hope that they would want to help us with our spiritual and technological advancement, but that could just be my own fantasy. Nevertheless, I will continue to nudge them and ask for their help on behalf of humanity. I suspect that they are comfortable with us not knowing if they exist. It would be like you or I going to a starving village in Africa and trying to help. The natives would generally be very curious and friendly, until one of us got shot at. I am sure they feel the same way towards humanity.

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Dear Jason,

I understand your viewpoint is based on your personal subjective experiences. I can not know whether they were generated from external sources, giving sensory input or not. There is not necessarily any qualitative difference between experience generated from external sources giving sensory input, or internally generated input. If these are hallucinations it does not indicate mental illness. The mentally well hallucinate too, as sleep can intrude into periods of wakefulness and not be acknowledged as sleep by the mind.

You said " I am certain we would be able to guess there intentions pretty quickly." I doubt this very much. Sociopathic humans do a very good job of deceiving other people by imitating the expected behaviour and manipulating perception. Many animals species have evolved forms that work to deceive other species. Having studied our behaviour and physiology it would not be too difficult for an intelligent alien species to use our own biology against us. It is possible to buy dog appeasing pheromone, to calm domestic dogs. A reasonable imitation of acceptable human-like behaviour, and a few human pheromones for good measure would be all that is necessary to make us feel good about a covertly malevolent alien species, imo.

Why not consider the possibility of interplanetary predation and exploitation. (I'm sure humans would do this pretty well if we could only get to other inhabited planets.) If the prey species willingly cooperate how much easier for the predator. I think we should hope we aren't discovered and certainly not send out any more invitations.

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paul valletta replied on Mar. 14, 2010 @ 17:33 GMT

I think you have it nailed on Georgina, if any far off species could see our Kill Ratio, human as well as biological I would be certain they wouold have no option but to take us out in one easy swoop, maybe a Blazar Gesture or something like?

What also makes me feel a little uncomfortable, is the fact we have NOT been contacted, we may be on our funal warning?..beit unknown?.. not the most optomistic outlook, but very most likely the most realistic though.

Be honest, how many people would put their hands up to volenteer to make first contact with our species, based on our Kill_Kill ratio?

First contact would most likely be our last?..it may spell out our downfall?

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Jason Mark Wolfe replied on Mar. 14, 2010 @ 21:55 GMT

Paul,

What do you mean by "kill ratio"? In all seriousness, I think that they have already tried to make communication with humanity telepathically. A few people with a predisposition towards "magical thinking" are able to respond. The rest of us just think our thoughts are getting weird, and we disregard it. So you wonder why they haven't landed a spaceship here on earth? FTL propulsion really requires the extraordinary use of multi-space-time engineering. There are probably UFO reports that sound like just a bunch of lights floating by. But if you're emerging, or partially emerging into this space-time from some kind of hyper-space, why wouldn't that generate electromagnetic emissions?

Also, several comments by bloggers suggest that aliens would be unwise to visit us. The aliens talk amongst themselves, comparing their experiences and intelligence reports. They know that visiting earth is potentially dangerous for them.

Aliens are well aware of what we think about them. We think they are slimy bio-hazard monsters who want to kill humans, exterminate the human race and steel the earth's resources.

In reality, the aliens see humanity as a paranoid and morally backwards planet. In regards to our fears about them steeling our resources, they would tell us to go take them and shove...

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Steve,

I'm sorry I can't reply to thread at the moment.

However you said "Don't confound our Earth and its stupidities with an other intelligence."

I think I should because it is just wishful thinking to believe that hypothetical entities on other planets are nicer than us. Presumably they have done whatever is necessary to survive. It is not unreasonable to assume that that may have involved exploitation and predation of other life forms. Nature is cruel and survival can be brutal. A hyaena is not kinder than a possum although more highly evolved. Hyaenas are a successful, opportunistic and highly aggressive species. They are social animals but not nice to each other or other species. Why shouldn't a similar well adapted predatory species, with a brutal hierarchy evolve into a well adapted interplanetary predator? Who made the rule that only the human friendly species may travel in space?

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Steve Dufourny replied on Mar. 8, 2010 @ 10:46 GMT

Hello Georgina,

I am understanding, I will answer you too about the predation, the human instinct and the evolution, the adaptatin, the optimization, the imptrovement.

The nature is more than this simple conclusion.

The evolution is globaly harmonic, only the locality in a SHORT moment can be chaotic.

The harmonization permits to spherisize thus the chaos.

Until soon for a better answer from me, because you speak about a very very important point in my humble opinion.The human comportmemnts are so importants at this moment.

Regards

Steve

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Dear Georgina,

You asked: "Who made the rule that only the human friendly species may travel in space? "

The answer is: hyper-drives require a multi-dimensional propulsion system. There is a multi-verse that can be used. However, we can't reach it on our own. It is a multi-versal effort; in other words, there are parts that human beings cannot build because we do not exist in that...

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Mar. 8, 2010 @ 13:21 GMT

An ETI invasion from space will not happen. We can imagine a planet that bears intelligent life, where those ETI look with coveted eyes upon another planet as they are using up their planet and turning into a husk. Dreams of space colonization and the like bear a resemblance of this sort --- and we are raising the entropy of Earth to some equilibrium or maximum where upon we will tank. So we are not exempt from this. Yet the problem is that the energy and resources required to exploit that other planet are far greater than what you can expect to extract from that planet. This is far more extreme with interstellar distances. An ETI might look with hungry eyes at Earth, or for that matter we might do in kind, from a distance of say 1000 light years, but the energy and resources required to schlep a significant number of that ETI that distance is huge. This of course requires the machinery and manpower, or ET-power, to subdue that planet, which might include other intelligent life (HG Well “War of the Worlds”) and so forth.

Cheers LC

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Jason Mark Wolfe replied on Mar. 8, 2010 @ 19:33 GMT

I agree with Lawrence on this one. A single spaceship is expensive to operate. We would be lucky to get an alien ambassador from a nearby planet. An armada with millions of conquering alien soldiers would be too expensive to feed and supply.

As for using up planetary resources, unwise civilizations might be forced to genetically engineer "sanitation monsters". Sanitation monsters are huge gelatinous creatures that eat garbage and poop ores and usable resources. However, you run into ethical problems because if they are intelligent enough not to digest a living creature that happens to fall in or get too close, then they are intelligent enough to curse their creator for creating such a hideous monster.

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Lawrence ,

you base your assumption on our present level of technology and scientific understanding. Alien life need not necessarily have to travel from light years away. There may be species adapted to a "pelagic" inter planetary drifting that specialise in opportunistic predation and exploitation. Further more if there is another spatial dimension with the technology and scientific understanding to do so, it would be possible for "next door" alien life to appear directly into our 3D space without having to travel huge interstellar distances.

Jason makes the assumption that large numbers of warriors would have to be transported and fed. It seems more likely that opportunistic colonisers would have small numbers or remain dormant whilst travelling between planets but awakening, replicating or reproducing radidly to consume new resources on arrival at a new host planet.

It would not take huge alien-power or machinery to subdue us. As we are extremely vulnerable to biological, chemical or electromagnetic disruption of our metabolism and brain functions. Such weapons of alien origin would be unknown to us and we would therefore be unprepared to defend ourselves against them. A purpose built alien virus that rapidly adapts to colonise new hosts would do nicely. For that matter even a friendly but "unwashed" alien visitor could bring deadly new diseases.

I can also imagine that well meaning, intelligent alien life could come to help us, as an interplanetary conservation exersize. Though not in the way we would choose for ourselves. When non humans destroy their environment or risk starvation because they are no longer free to migrate to new areas, we do not solve the problem by giving them more food and telling them to tread softly.

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Dear Georgina,

I've been in the army. Armies march on their stomachs. A hungry soldier is an unmotivated soldier. Just ask the Iraqi soldiers that surrendered to International forces so easily.

The first few face to face meetings between humans and aliens are going to be with us wearing bio-hazard suits and the aliens wearing space-suits. It might even become trendy.

If there were a predatorial alien life form in the solar system, we would have noticed. By that line of reasoning, we might have telepathic alien lifeforms nearby. No I don't think they are visiting us for hamburgers (cow mutilation) and rectal probing; I think that's a bad human reaction to their telepathic communication.

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Jason,

firstly I made no claim that aliens will be marching on mass to planet earth.

It is more likely to me, if such beings exist, that they would drift in a dormant state to awake or rapidly rerproduce or replicate on arrival at a suitable host destination. An alien species in a new host environment could potentially easily out compete existing endemic species by use of novel biological or chemical warfare, if the environment is suitable for them.

Who is going to tell the aliens what they must wear? We can not yet meaningfully communicate with the highly intelligent cetaceans of our own planet. Why should we assume there will be meaningful communication with alien lifeforms? They may be highly intelligent but that does not mean that they would want to make friends and treat us as equals. We would either be useful to them and exploitable as a resourse, or a nuisance species to be dealt with as such. That is, after all, how intelligent humanity, as a species, regards non humans generally.

You said "If there were a predatorial alien life form in the solar system, we would have noticed." How can you be so sure? I doubt that there are too but we are assuming that these hypothetical aliens have technology and intelligence in advance of our own. We are already developing materials that can act like cloaking devices. Perhaps we just do not have the sensory apparatus to readily detect them. Also many lifeforms on earth have developed camoflage or mimicry to facilitate ambush of prey or avoid detection. Why couldn't a more highly evolved interplanetary version of such biological strategy exist?

Even if they say their intentions are entirely benign, by direct verbal communication or telepathically, that is not necessarily true. I do not underestimate our capacity to be decieved by other humans and similarly other non human intelligence. I would trust them no more than a smiling saltwater crocodile. Though highly impressive to observe, with extreme caution, from a safe distance. Perhaps films such as "The Thing" and "Predator" have made too great an impression on me.

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Marshall Barnes replied on Mar. 14, 2010 @ 18:20 GMT

Georgina:

I agree with a number of your points. I think that any discussion on the existence of ETI is fraught with the unknown. There's just too much that we don't know and couldn't accurately imagine. It is also quite possible that there are world where ETI exist but are no more able to travel here or anywhere in space than we are for a whole myriad of reasons. Estimations of how many advanced ETI civilizations there are based on how many stars in the observable universe, miss important potential factors that would preclude such civilizations from rising to the point of space travel.

At some point I will be writing a paper on this topic, that will review all of these issues in appropriate detail. I'll place the abstract here and a ink to where the paper will be deposited.

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The bio-hazard suit is a clue to another problem. There are likely considerable alternative biochemistries between planets with life. Contact is problematic, for our immune systems and their's as well, are evolved to manage microscopic life on their respective planets. A microbe from an alien planet might take advantage of our bodies as mold is able to consume a loaf of bread. Think of the invasive species problems we have here on Earth, but in a potentially far more disturbing way.

At any rate, if there are no quick and dirty short cuts, ie. warp drives which don't require whole stellar mass equivalents of energy and so forth, then interstellar flight is difficult in the extreme. I cover some of these issues in my book Can Star Systems Be Explored?: The Physics of Probes . There I present the physics required to send probes into the interstellar neighborhood. Sending enormous spacecraft with a contingent of people on board is very energy intensive and costly.

Cheers LC

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Dear Georgina,

It is prudent to be suspicious. As I think about it, I'm not sure why an advanced civilization would land here at all if they didn't have to. It would be such a headache to have to deal with innoculations, legal/property issues, treaties, sharing medical information. If they exist at all, they would be wise to avoid interacting with us, at least directly. But I've watched various television shows where scientists/explorers go into the jungles of Africa and South America to visit with the natives there. I find it odd that they are not asking for our help more often. Of course, they are experts at living off the land.

I saw the movie, the Thing. It was a scary movie, but I'm not too enthusiastic about aliens like that having the technical know how to build spaceships.

If you're at the mercy of your environment, like we are, then we expect aliens to be, likewise. I still say that the technical know-how and availibility of parts to run an FTL propulsion system does require a great degree of cooperation. But come on? If they can manipulate space-time and hyper-space in energetically reasonable ways, they sure as hell should be able to solve problems like starvation, poverty, disease/death, and boredom, right?

I like the fantasy. But I can't imagine why they would go through the hassle of trying to earn our trust. Why would they even bother with us? Why would we bother helping the poor and starving villages of Africa? Like I said, I like the fantasy. I just don't have any real enthusiasm towards looking at the world/universe with the kind of mathematical pessimism that everyone else has expressed.

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Jason Wolfe replied on Mar. 9, 2010 @ 05:41 GMT

Dear Lawrence,

What makes FTL propulsion difficult (impossible) is our inability to detect and/or manipulate particles and forces beyond our own space-time. You could say that I've worked backwards, starting with the premise that FTL propulsion is possible. Then, it becomes an issue of smuggling a spaceship from our space-time on board a rocket-like propulsion system built from materials in hyperspace. Yes, it's expensive to operate and maintain, but the bigger problem is getting help from someone/something that exists in hyper-space.

Space-suits/biohazard suits, air filtration systems, innoculations, blood and tissue samples (asked for nicely, not taken forcibly), are all part of a process to manage the risks of astro-biological contamination.

At the risk of becoming more paranoid, why don't I share illnesses with my cats? Can physiology be so dramatically different that there are no diseases that can be transferred? Yes, that would be a bit too optimistic.

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We have to integrate rational analytic and conscious synthetic experience of the world.

yours amrit

attachments: PLANETARY_EDUCATION.pdf

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Jason Wolfe replied on Mar. 9, 2010 @ 10:05 GMT

Oneness and timelessness sound very relaxing. But let's call it something that is easier to remember, like "yoga". After a long hard day at work, I can't even fit "rational analytic and conscious synthetic experience" into my short term memory. Trust me, 18 syllables and six words does not sound relaxing.

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Jason,

a "Thing" like parasite that hitches a ride within an intelligent being in order to reach new host species has a brilliant interplanetary survival and dispersal adaptation. No need to develop technological know how or intelligence, it just uses whatever is already available for its own biological purposes.

The alien parasite, whilst travelling in interplanetary space, could survive as "viral" code, eggs or cysts that can be activated under the correct conditions. Perhaps it remains dormant and benign within its first host and only develops when new life forms are encountered.Re. cat diseases. Here is a nice little parasite. Still want to meet the friendly alien Ambassador?

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Jason Mark Wolfe replied on Mar. 9, 2010 @ 12:26 GMT

Georgina,

I always knew my cats were up to something. Nermal, my long haired gray cat, would stare at me while I nervously stuffed my face with snacks, but didn't share. He would look at me with those judgmental cat-eyes. I knew it! I knew it.

Anyway, we'll give ambassador Spock a good scrub bath before we let him mingle. Everybody gets inoculations, and hand soap. Don't worry, it'll be fun. We'll offer a very handsome salary to the first human guinea pigs who want to talk to the ambassador. We'll keep a medical team handy. Either that, or we use Plexiglas windows. Don't worry, we'll figure out the inoculations before too many humans/aliens die from illness. Don't worry, it'll be worth it. The economy will be so super-stimulated with new technologies, you won't mind that purple rash on your chest, the one with eyes and a mouth, that keeps saying, yum, yum, yum.

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Mar. 9, 2010 @ 13:25 GMT

I first heard about this role of Toxoplasma gondii a year ago. This protistan infects an animal so it has a certain affinity for the smell of cats, in particular their urine. This increases their chance of becoming cat food and extending the life cycle of the protistan I suppose I am not infected as such, for to me that smell is about the ultimate chemical warfare agent --- YUCK :-o

Interstellar distances, and chronology/censorship protection against faster than light technologies, might considered a blessing of sorts. If we get a signal from an ETI hundreds or thousands of light years out we may get information from them, or send information in kind, and have an exchange that spans centuries of time. We might get to learn all about them, and them about us. We might also find it good that no direct is possible --- particularly if they have some resemblance to Predator or the Geiger alien.

Cheers LC

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Jason,

1. we can not vaccinate against the completely unknown. It would take time to study the new infection, produce a possible treatment and then test for its efficacy and safety.

2. It is nigh on impossible to completely eradicate an invasive species that has escaped into a region that is suitable for its proliferation but is without natural biological control to restrict its growth.

3. Washing alien pathogens off of hands or body and into the environment is in itself a potential source of further contamination and wider spread of the disease.

All extra terrestrial lifeforms represent a potentially extreme bio-hazard, not just to human life, what ever their intentions.

Life gets new operating system Mankind's technological solutions to problems have frequently created new problems. Perhaps these novel proteins, never produced by life before, might actually be highly toxic to life, as it has not evolved to handle them. Isn't this synthetic alien DNA?

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Jason Wolfe replied on Mar. 9, 2010 @ 22:05 GMT

Georgina,

OK, for a first contact situation, everyone (us, them) wear (bio-hazard,environmental)suits. We'll have to use Plexiglas and air filtration systems for a while. Perhaps even a realistic virtual environment could be created to allow for interaction/communication. If we go with a virtual environment, we can designate some satellites for their use while they remain in orbit/some safe location. Perhaps eventually, with enough scientific research, something more interactive can be worked out.

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As a Christian, I consider it likely that God has created many intelligent alien beings. In fact, the Bible repeatedly mentions one class of these beings; they are commonly called angels. But since God is the Creator, all these beings would have been created sinless. And most likely, they still are sinless, in which case, they have no need of a Savior.

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Georgina Parry replied on Mar. 10, 2010 @ 20:40 GMT

Hi Bob,

Are you saying that you think Homo sapiens intelligence is uniquely capable of error and misjudgment out of all potential intelligent life in the universe? That seems highly unlikely to me. Any organism capable of free self determination is also capable of error, and thus contravening standards or principles, which may be interpreted as sin. Whether those errors are accident, mistake, or for strategic or material advantage for self or kin.

If as you say they are most likely still sinless they must have no capacity for free will and be completely infallible, never mistaken, never fooled, never careless, never selfish. They sound like robots. Or they have no principles or standards to contravene.

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Georgina,

What if they give up free will in return for blissful happiness; is that a good trade?

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Jason,

is that a rhetorical question?

Would I accept a brain implant, in order to give up the ability to make my own decisions and mistakes, so that I am always perfectly compliant with every externally applied standard and principle, in return for a electrode that stimulates my brain's pleasure center so I may enjoy permanent blissful happiness? Absolutely not. I would not choose to become a blissful auto-compliant zombie slave. Nor would I choose to become a crack addict.

Freedom for happiness? No, doesn't sound a good trade to me. Though if my circumstances were particularly dire and the suffering unbearable I might think differently.It might be a milder and easier form of suicide where the self is surrendered but the body survives.

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Jason Wolfe replied on Mar. 11, 2010 @ 03:24 GMT

Georgina,

Thanks for a good laugh! But you are right, freedom is better than happiness unless life IS unbearable.

I've been under some stress lately. Living with ADD,... and then wondering if one of my stupid cats gave my something that makes me feel guilty??!!! That's when the thought crossed my mind: servitude in return for bliss? I'm sure my cat Nermal is not exerting mind control on me; but then I look at those eyes and...

Actually, I do think about how, during the middle ages, monks would cloister themselves within the monastery, or convent,.. Just go along with what you're told; it requires TOTAL TRUST. The problem is that when someone tells you to do something immoral: murder, hurt others, blow up innocent people, express unfairness to others or select groups of people, ... Well, then your stuck with a choice: DO IT or suffer terribly.

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Nermal, Jason's cat replied on Mar. 14, 2010 @ 01:03 GMT

Hi,

I am Nermal the cat. Jason was right about me, but nobody listened. Now, I have mentally enslaved Jason's mind using the Toxoplasma gondii virus. Over 3 billion of you humans will soon be under our control. You will be slaves to catkind everywhere. Ha ha hahahahahhahahahhahahahahhahhahahahaaaahaa!!!!!!

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Hi Jason, Georgina, Bob, Lawrence,

It is cool this thread, the discussions are interestings.

Don't stop dear Friends,

ps Georgina, I prefer read than answer hihihi,it is very cool this thread,

Regards

Steve

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Hi all,

Before being invited out of the Maths blog, someone said that my ideas were similar to those of Bernard D’Espagnat. So, I went and checked this author again.

And then it hit me. The reason I now speak in this blog, which I was trying to stay away from. I don’t like the usual babbling about God this and God that…. Usually meant to inflate the speaker more than for His Glory....

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Hi all,

Before being invited out of the Maths blog, someone said that my ideas were similar to those of Bernard D’Espagnat. So, I went and checked this author again.

And then it hit me. The reason I now speak in this blog, which I was trying to stay away from. I don’t like the usual babbling about God this and God that…. Usually meant to inflate the speaker more than for His Glory. Now, this is but a summary and but will proceed as if true without any form of proof, but some apparent logic in my heart.

According to most, and especially D`Espagnat, quantum entanglement is omnipresent in the whole universe. According to many, this entanglement is, somehow, the basis of consciousness. Here is a natural conclusion. Consciousness would normally display entanglement beyond the individual. This would suggest that the norm for consciousness, in the universe, would be a shared consciousness. In other words, a collective of individual connected by a common consciousness. This is what I would call the hive configuration. So, you could have whole civilization, highly successful, but without a single individual. Self and emotions come not from what everyone knows but rather from what you hide from everyone else. Your own point of view, your feelings, dreams and ideas etc. is you, an individual. You may truly create something as an individual self. As a hive, it is a task. Other sentient civilizations in the universe are most likely hives, highly efficient but heartless, emotionless.

God knows about individuality, self-consciousness and creativity. He makes us come to being, not as a heartless hive but as a collection of self, individuals. In is image, we are created, different from the universal norm of consciousness, the hive. This gift of individuality and creativity makes us appreciate nature, write poetry and music, danse and play, thank Him, nothing that the hive can do. This is our hearth, our soul. (Would I venture in saying God loves that?)

To get all this we needed to loose this entanglement, this connection with others, this telepathy, to free us from a collective, hive configuration. . It was not by design at first. The first ones, had both physical form and access to the collective consciousness aka the holy spirit. Guess what? This combination did not work. These guys goofed, curiosity being human, they tried to find God by hacking into the network which they had access to, the “tree of truth”. The original sin was curiosity + access to the net = hacking. This would have to be the eleventh commandment: You shall not look for God, but in others like you and His creation.

So, this connection was lost long ago, and loaned only to a few trusted ones for a specific purpose, Saints , Prophetes etc. How does he do it? I mean keep us separate individuals, not hive like by way of normal entanglement? That is His business. Of course, there are problems associated with a collective of free thinking, self centered conscious individuals War, theft, greed etc. ….That he did not like, I would surmise. How can We get the harmony of the hive and still have a collection of individual self? He sent us a manual for us to follow, the 10 commandments, a guide with rules and behaviors for the newly freed individual type configuration. Did not really work. He sent us His Son. Worked for a while …

So, where do we stand in this year 2010? He loves us so much, He leaves us free, makes us free still, even if the commandments are broken every seconds… We are still far from the harmony of the hive for a collective of individual selves. Was religion our attempt at this goal? I mean, if it does support the harmony under the guidelines, respects the individual selves as created by God, and, at the same time is a mean to worship Him, it should have worked! But, in the hands of man, religion looses this goal, often for power, control and the likes... I still think that there is a need for a good religion, for the laws may try, a real moral requires deeper roots, and an essential love and acknowledgment of the creator.

With our advancing technology and philosophy, the tree of truth may one day become accessible to us…And, there is one thing he will never ever permit again; the breaking the eleventh commandment. Trying to reach him directly. Lets make sure we Never make this mistake again and thank him for what we are, His creation.

Lord, forgive me,

Marcel,

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The source of the idea that the discovery of aliens, or even the artifacts of a long dead alien civilization, would adversely effect religion (and society in general) lies in the 1960 Brookings Institute report that surmised that the two groups most vulnerable to such a discovery would be the religious and scientific communities.

Wikipedia on Brookings Report

Page from the Report with the quotes about the effect on the religious and scientific communities.

Especially check the last paragraph at the bottom which states:

"It has been speculated that of all groups, scientists and engineers might be most devastated by the discovery of relatively superior creatures since these professionals are most clearly associated with the mastery of nature rather than the understanding and expression of man."

Imagine that...

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I doubt we will find artifacts from space aliens on the planets. That was of course one element of Arthur C. Clarke's “2001 A Space Odyssey,” where the first part is based on his short story “The Sentinel” about an alien system found on the moon. It is most likely if we contact ETI it will be through radio or electromagnetic means. As EM waves drop in amplitude through a fixed unit area by 1/r^2 the reception likely has to be fairly local.

I suppose from the perspective of science the difficulty in contacting ETI would lie in its potentially reducing research on outstanding scientific questions to some interstellar NOVA program. We would be deprived of the fun of figuring things out and be reduced to passive watchers who get answers from this interstellar oracle. The same might hold for mathematics as well. Can the Claymath award for solving the Riemann hypothesis be given to some ETI 300 light years away? Of course after we have absorbed the limits of their knowledge I might imagine we would be back in the intellectual Q&A game of science.

I don’t think that the discovery of ETI would particularly shock the foundations of science. If nothing else it would conform to the general Copernican principle that the universe is the same everywhere, and specific configurations are not exclusive or unique to some location. So clearly there are ETI which exist in the universe. The big question is whether they lie within a few hundred light years where contact is possible, or beyond a 100 million light years in other galaxies where contact is essentially impossible.

Cheers LC

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If advanced civilizations exist, engage in interstellar travel, and happened upon our solar system, I do not believe we would find artifacts on the moon or any other bodies, simply because we have never found artifacts on Earth.

Any civilization advanced enough to engage in this activity obviously doing so under the pretext of exploration and discovery. Why else would they be wasting the time and effort? --- Perhaps some alien citizen paid a trillion Zoldans to be a space tourist to offset the cost of exploration:)

I would believe that if there are interstellar travelers they would likely find a place like Earth to be of more scientific interest than a barren body such as the moon or the outer planets. If I was an explorer visiting our solar system I would be looking for unique things. I would likely have been to other systems and gas planets and the like are not that unique -- the same for barren bodies like the moon.

The Earth would represent a very interesting study from the point of diversity of objects in the solar system. Explorers would likely be looking for life just as we do when sending probes to other bodies. Earth would represent an interesting candidate.

We have never found artifacts of alien exploration on the Earth so I doubt we would find any on the moon -- unless, of course, they were really boring creatures and decided the Moon was a more interesting place to visit than the than the Earth.

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The existence of ETI alone might not shock the science community. But if they have an operational hyper-drive, it will shock the physics community. They don't use an Alcubierre drive. I am still wrestling with it's concepts like...

1. Particle-space conjecture: quantum particle eigenstates are analogous to physical objects being located somewhere in space. In other words, quantum states are all of the possible places the particle could be, just like space represents all of the possible places any physical object could be. Therefore, space-time itself and probability wave amplitudes are similar enough that the properties of each can be substituted to answer questions about the other.

2. The multiverse consists of different space-times, each with a unique speed of light and Planck constant. Space-times can

(a) coexist,

(b) be partitioned,

(c) be internally interactive and

(d) be externally interactive.

3. Universes have (a) inner space and (b) outer surface.

(a) inner space: Physical object, atoms, standard model particles, etc., all exist within the internal space of our physical space-time universe.

(b) outer surface: The outer surface prevents external observers from knowing exactly where things are located inside, except for their gravitational effects. Electromagnetism does not work beyond the outer surface.

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The only problem is that multiverses have not been empirically shown to exist in nature, nor have Alcubierre warp drives--or warp drives of any kind. Such things currently exist only as highly abstract mathematical formalisms and in episodes of Star Trek. The theorists that speculate on the corporeal existence of such things have been very successful in capturing the imagination of the lay public and convincing them such things are real; but beyond that, there is not an iota of emperical evidence indicating that such abstract mathematical constructs have an ontological counterpart in in physical reality.

The idea of alien civilizations using warp drives to jump about the Universe is at best an unorthodox theoretical conjecture, and at worse nothing but fanciful speculation.

Passing off such things as real is not science -- it is unsubstantiated conjecture. The more scientists play up such ideas, the more science will get a bad name in the long run, when and if such things turn out to be busts.

Beam me up, Scotty.

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There are long discussions about these faster than light schemes. The problem is that warp drives and wormholes are solutions to the Einstein field equations which violate certain energy conditions. The energy E = T^{00} < 0, which since the source is quantum mechanical it leads to unbounded eigenvalues for energy. This is a disaster and strongly indicates even theoretically that these don't exist.

As for other universes, or spacetime cosmology in a grand universe or multiverse, these could in principle be inferred from experimental results. There is with this something called the AdS/CFT correspondence, where the M-theory Dp-branes for other cosmologies. These subsequent other cosmologies can manifest signatures in scattering cross sections. There are some possible indications of this with the RHIC already. The LHC may in 20 years be converted to a heavy ion collider, which will probe this sort of physics within the reduced AdS/QCD duality at lower energy. So the multiverse concepts are not utterly untestable, just subtle.

Cheers LC

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But the assumption would need to be made that no other theoretical framework or phenomenon could account for the observation of such a subtle signature as the one you are discussing.

Even with such subtle signatures, there are too many loose-ends with stating multiverses as an empirical fact. The problem is that many theorists are proceeding as if it is a fact. There is not one shred of physical evidence which would could be used as conclusive proof of the existence of a multiverse. Theorists are writing pop-sci books telling the reader that we live in a multiverse which contains such-and-such a number of variants. This is not how science should go about communicating theory to the pubic, IMO. It gives the whole scientific enterprise a bad name and tarnishes the reputation of everyone, should such assumptions of fact turn out to be a bust.

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The issue is similar to detecting an isolated quark in QCD, which can’t be done. Yet the existence of quarks is inferred through the physics of hadron scattering, and the sorts of channels or amplitudes detected. The matter of the multiverse, a term that I frankly do not like, is that QCD is an elementary example of a field theory with a correspondence with AdS spacetime. This involves M-theory or Dp-branes which couple to strings. Dp-branes are “defects” of sorts with solitonic physics, and these define the physics of extended spacetime objects, such as the anti-de Sitter spacetime. At sufficiently high energy the channel effects scale as ~ const*log(Λ/E), so even at the TeV range in energy some stringy signatures should be apparent. This is particularly where a type IIB string which ties D3-branes together in an AdS setting transition into closed strings. From an experimental perspective there will then be the growth of certain scattering amplitudes which are reflected in this physics and this “stringy-braney” structure inferred --- along with the mulitverse.

It is the case that our connection to physics and cosmology is becoming increasingly oblique. There appears to be no escape from this, as our astronomical observations take us out onto scales of extreme distances, while on the other we have to infer physics at a string scale from detection of particle production many orders of magnitude larger. In the case of the cosmos we have to construct a ladder of scales, Cepheid variables to get galaxy distances and v = Hd Hubble relations, redshift data further out to get commoving galaxies further out, SNI data beyond that and … . This may be far more the case, particularly if Tegmark’s multiverse level IV is real, where there is whole meta-class of cosmic structures which obey entirely different mathematical principles. It is unclear how we can ever test that. Sadly we may ultimately lose our grip on understanding physics and cosmology, but we might be able to unify quantum theory with gravity along with gauge fields to at least get some first order understanding of things. This appears to require the multiverse.

I can’t go much further with this in a blog post. The basis for this is a considerable amount of physical and mathematical development. While it is true we will never directly observe one of these other spacetime cosmologies, such as observing or probing their interiors or venturing into them, we can in this indirect way infer their existence in a larger supergravity spacetime.

Cheers LC

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Anonymous replied on Mar. 16, 2010 @ 15:59 GMT

I am aware of the mathematical formalisms. If theory is the ultimate decider of facts about the world we live in, we have really lost our way and no longer deserve the title of scientist. Physics departments should be closed and merged with the mathematics departments. We can simply construct deductive proofs to infer the existence of physical objects in nature. No need for experiment -- we will simply make inferences from mathematical relationships and pass them off as facts about the world.

Phasers set to stun.

Warp Drive. Give me all she's got, Scotty.

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Steve Dufourny replied on Mar. 16, 2010 @ 16:12 GMT

The multiverses like strings are a lost of time, like hidden dimensions, like others stupidities.

The axiomatization must be realistic , deterministic and indeed we have proofs about that, only the confusions are the sisters of these things.....

Sometimes I think it is a road to imply confusions in the sciences community because perhaps the truth is not the welcome....it is not possible.

These things are a method of confusions, it is sure .

Our datas are our datas and our experiments are our experiments , our laws are our laws simply .....

Regards

Steve

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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Mar. 17, 2010 @ 00:52 GMT

@Anonymous: If you read what I wrote I do indicate there are observational or experimental consequences of M-theory and the multiverse. It is not just pure mathematics, though the subject is pretty mathematical. Actually the theory of gauge fields and charges on Dp-branes is very similar to advanced undergraduate or first year graduate course work on electromagnetism with Gauss’ law and the rest. So it really is not entirely that unapproachable. We may be able to make experimental contact with string-M-theory over the next 20 years. The future plans to convert the LHC into a heavy ion collider in its second phase of life will permit us to probe quantum amplitudes associated with black holes and AdS spacetimes in the 10TeV range. We may then be getting signatures of multiverse structure.

Cheers LC

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Anonymous replied on Mar. 17, 2010 @ 13:49 GMT

The assumption that all possible perturbative solutions to the equations correspond to reality is what is suspect. Stating that the infinite number of degrees of freedom present in the solutions means this indicates there are actually an infinite number of other universes, each with their own paramaters and laws of physics, is quite a stretch. This is similar to the cases in the past where theorists solves some relativistic equation for a new particle and came up with negative time dependance--they indicated this means a particle is going back in time. One can come up with all sorts of fanciful absurdities if one does not question the physical admissability of a solution. That's why experimentation is so critical. In the end, we need to trust our eyes, not our math.

More and more are starting to question whether String Theory is really going anywhere, anyways. Its been twenty years now since we were first told that we were only a week away from solving the final riddle. What we have now are hieousy complex and convoluted mathematical structures that every assumes corresponds to reality.

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Ray Munroe replied on Mar. 17, 2010 @ 14:28 GMT

Dear Anonymous,

You said "Stating that the infinite number of degrees of freedom present in the solutions means this indicates there are actually an infinite number of other universes, each with their own paramaters and laws of physics, is quite a stretch."

I am not a fan of an infinite number of multiverses either (or 'infinity' for that matter), but I suspect that Lawrence is implying that Bott periodicity and the graphene-like nature of the M2-brane implies either multiple Universes or multiple copies of our Universe.

Have Fun!

Ray

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Anonymous replied on Mar. 17, 2010 @ 20:43 GMT

Fair enough. Where is the emperical data that definitively proves the Bott periodicity and the graphene-like nature of the M2-brane?

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Ray Munroe replied on Mar. 17, 2010 @ 21:06 GMT

HA! Obviously we don't have data on hyperspace. It wouldn't be so controversial if we had definitive data. As Lawrence says, a future purpose of the LHC might be to probe the possibility o