I really enjoyed this blog post!

As an editor for The Issue, a recently launched Blog Newspaper, I’ve decided to feature it in todays’ publication. You can find a link back in the Science and Health Section at http://www.TheIssue.com

Thanks for sharing your insight- and I’ll keep close tabs on your blog. Feel free to send me an e-mail, I would like to stay in touch.

Cheers
JB Cossart

Science&Health | The Issue
http://www.TheIssue.com

P.S. SUGARAT,

As I understand it you can argue that any (and every) point actually is the center of the universe, so the Earth really is the center of the universe, as am I, and you, and the sun, and… Isn’t physics fun?

now ask, what does it change if some person wasnt around to hear the tree fall, IT STILL HAPPENED, common sence dictates that just becuase we didnt “see” it,,, doesnt mean it didnt happen or that iw would happen any other way. and same if an astronomer would come acros a supernove remenant, hey we didnt see the star explode but theres this big odd explandin cloud out in the middle of no where

BUT!!! if the universe where anything like people, and the “observers” where TV cameras then ohh ya things change. but thankfully the universe is rationally explainable whereas people – arent

Knowlege of events prior to the big bang is unattainable at present.
The miracle is: An event is precipitated, and at that moment it contains the infinite potential of all existence, creation, action, and thought that will ever occur.
Think about it every thought you have ever had multiplied by every brain thats ever existed.
The program is so good it needs no maintenance.
That is perfection.
That is the miracle.
That is.
GOD

Are the Cubbies metastable?

If a fielder misses a fly ball and there aren’t any fans in the stadium does the ball make a noise when it hits the ivy?

Could it be just as likely that observations could extend the life of the universe such that the Cubbies may eventually win the World Series???

“I Spy, the Universe dies.”

That’s a great title for a short story based on the above.

Actually, Greg Egan has already written it as a novel: “Quarantine“. One of the subplots is that aliens have built a sphere around the solar system to prevent humans from observing the rest of the universe and collapsing the wave functions on which the aliens’ biology depends. Or something like that. It’s been a while.

“What if a hypothetical alien has already observed it? Has the fate of the universe already been altered?”

Well, first of all, if we haven’t seen the alien, does he/she/it really exist and can he/she/it really affect the Universe we observe?

The only question now is, which will come first, the end of the Universe, or the end of the world by global warming? I’m certain we can do something about the end of the Universe, if only we spend a lot of money working on it.

I’ve heard more complaints about New Scientist than about any other science magazine, and from a wider variety of fields, too: astronomy, computer science, linguistics, medicine, physics. For my writeup of one such incident, with lots of sources cited, see here, and for an editor of New Scientist not caring, see here. (In the latter case, said editor dared me to write 2400 words of pop science that he could critique. I picked a topic and wrote about 1800 of those words before John Baez and Chris Hillman convinced me that it’d be a waste of my time: “No Man but a blockhead ever did anything involving being peppered with buckshot, except for money.” I’ll probably finish up that piece soon anyway; it’s on Jack Cowan’s theoretical neuroscience. I have written material aimed for high-school students, who might be a more sophisticated audience than the editorial teams of glossy magazines.)