Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Science On How It All Began

From Dr. Shroeder's website:

Michael Turner, astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and Fermilab: "The precision is as if one could throw a dart across the entire universe and hit a bulls eye one millimeter in diameter on the other side."

Paul Davies, professor of theoretical physics at Adelaide University: "The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge and would be total chaos if any of the natural 'constants' were off even slightly."

Roger Penrose, the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, writes that the likelihood of the universe having usable energy (low entropy) at its creation is "one part out of ten to the power of ten to the power of 123." That is "a million billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion zeros." [Meaning - if I understand correctly - that the odds of the world not being יש מאין are many times less than the odds of me being a cow, rhinoceros, pot of cholent, baseball bat, car engine and nail clipper, all at the same time, who is pregnant with two dogs, a cat and three mice who particularly enjoy reading books of western philosophy in utero while simultaneously expounding on the pros and cons of intercollegiate sports. Quite unlikely...:)] 

Steven Weinberg, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, and an anti-religious agnostic, notes that "the existence of life of any kind seems to require a cancellation between different contributions to the vacuum energy, accurate to about 120 decimal places. This means that if the energies of the Big Bang were, in arbitrary units, not: 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000, but instead: 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000001, there would be no life of any sort in the entire universe."