Colonies in space may be only hope, says Hawking
-
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/10/16/nhawk16.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/10/16/ixhome.html
Tuesday 16 October 2001
Colonies in space may be only hope, says Hawking
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 16/10/2001)
THE human race is likely to be wiped out by a doomsday virus before
the Millennium is out, unless we set up colonies in space, Prof
Stephen Hawking warns today.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Prof Hawking, the world's best
known cosmologist, says that biology, rather than physics, presents
the biggest challenge to human survival.
"Although September 11 was horrible, it didn't threaten the survival
of the human race, like nuclear weapons do," said the Cambridge
University scientist.
"In the long term, I am more worried about biology. Nuclear weapons
need large facilities, but genetic engineering can be done in a small
lab. You can't regulate every lab in the world. The danger is that
either by accident or design, we create a virus that destroys us.
"I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years,
unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can
befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out
to the stars."
Current theories suggest that space travel will be tedious, using
spaceships travelling slower than light.
But Prof Hawking, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, says
that a warp drive, of the kind seen in Star Trek, cannot be ruled out.
This method of space exploration and colonisation, apparently the
stuff of science fiction, could be one possible escape from the human
predicament.
Prof Hawking believes that genetic engineering could be used to
"improve" human beings to meet the challenges of long duration space
travel.
Cyborgs, humans with computers linked to their brains, will be needed
to prevent intelligent computers taking over. "I think humans will
have to learn to live in space," he said.
------------------------------
The Universe in a Nutshell, Prof Hawking's long-awaited follow-up to
the 1988 bestseller A Brief History of Time, is being
serialised in the Daily Telegraph, starting tomorrow.
25 May 2001: Hawking backs Labour on science
4 January 2000: A brief history of the future
External links
Stephen Hawking's home page
Telegraph Group Limited 2001.
----------------------------------------------------------------o
Milton N. Bradley
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/10/16/nhawk16.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/10/16/ixhome.htmlTuesday 16 October 2001
Colonies in space may be only hope, says Hawking
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 16/10/2001)THE human race is likely to be wiped out by a doomsday virus before
the Millennium is out, unless we set up colonies in space, Prof
Stephen Hawking warns today.
Current theories suggest that space travel will be tedious, using
spaceships travelling slower than light.But Prof Hawking, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, says
that a warp drive, of the kind seen in Star Trek, cannot be ruled out.
Milt
--
"Better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness."
Visit my web page at http://newyork.villageworld.com/users/bradleym/
-
>> http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/10/16/nhawk16.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/10/16/ixhome.html
>>
>> Tuesday 16 October 2001
>>
>> Colonies in space may be only hope, says Hawking
>>
>>
>> Current theories suggest that space travel will be tedious, using
>> spaceships travelling slower than light.
>>
>> But Prof Hawking, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, says
>> that a warp drive, of the kind seen in Star Trek, cannot be ruled out.
"Milton N. Bradley" <brad...@villagenet.com> wrote:
> Sounds plausible until one thinks about it a bit!
Additional thinking is supposed to make it -more- plausible.
See: Rene Descartes. "Whatever I can clearly and completely
think about has a possibility of being true..."
> As I recall it, according to Einstein momentum approaches infinity
> as one approaches the speed of light. But if that's true, how can you
> steer - not just to avoid seen objects but unseen ones, like Black Holes?
> Or am I missing something here? If so, I'm certain that many will hasten
> to tell me.
"The only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts
is that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences;
beyond this they have no legitimacy. I am convinced that the
philosophers have had a harmful effect upon the progress of
scientific thinking in removing certain fundamental concepts from
the domain of empiricism, where they are under our control, to the
intangible heights of the _a_priori_. For even if it should appear
that the universe of ideas cannot be deduced from experience by
logical means, but is, in a sense, a creation of the human mind,
without which no science is possible, nevertheless this universe
of ideas is just as little independent of the nature of our
experiences as clothes are of the form of the human body. This
is particularly true of our concepts of time and space, which
physicists have been obliged by the facts to bring down from
the Olympus of the _a_priori_ in oder to adjust them and put
them in a serviceable condition." (Chap.1 Pre-Relativity Physics)
_The_Meaning_of_Relativity_ A.Einstein 1921, 1954
- regards
- jb
.
Karl Lietzan
ok, because he's good for physics.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/science/story.jsp?story=98993
So don't sweat the doomsday stuff on his account.
karl
Karl Lietzan
(RIP) account either. They're physicists, for pete's sake.
karl
Bill Spight
>>
>> Current theories suggest that space travel will be tedious, using
>> spaceships travelling slower than light.
>>
>> But Prof Hawking, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, says
>> that a warp drive, of the kind seen in Star Trek, cannot be ruled out.
>
> Sounds plausible until one thinks about it a bit! As I recall it, according to Einstein momentum
> approaches infinity as one approaches the speed of light. But if that's true, how can you steer
> - not just to avoid seen objects but unseen ones, like Black Holes? Or am I missing something
> here? If so, I'm certain that many will hasten to tell me.
Ignore the Star Trek graphics, which suggest great speed.
The universe is expanding, like a balloon blowing up, and we are on the
3-D surface of a 4-D object (or maybe more than 4 dimensions). A warp
drive would not stick to the apparent 3 dimensions of ordinary
existence. When I was a kid, we used to talk about digging to China.
That would have been a short cut, if we could have done it. A warp drive
would take such a short cut through hyperspace.
Other short cuts could exist if gravity is strong enough to bend
space-time, bringing distant locations close together. Black holes could
produce such strong gravity, leading to worm holes, tunnels in
space-time. Worm holes have been a staple of sci-fi for decades.
Best,
Bill
-
Bill Spight <Xbsp...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> ... When I was a kid, we used to talk about digging to China.
Much simpler merely to provide the "cite" from Bertrand
Russell, who had already tried that project in his backyard.
> That would have been a short cut, if we could have done it.
This has enjoyed much banter, however most are of the
impression that even a rowboat would be faster than digging.
> A warp drive would take such a short cut through hyperspace.
Or (as some forget to mention), a "warp drive" could take a
longer cut into "lost in space."
> Other short cuts could exist if gravity is strong enough to bend
> space-time, bringing distant locations close together. Black holes
> could produce such strong gravity, leading to worm holes, tunnels
> in space-time. Worm holes have been a staple of sci-fi for decades.
Worm holes were present in some of the apples that bonked Newton.
With regards to "bent space-time" another difficulty there is finding
a "suitable endpoint" for one's journey, which more probably would
be further away, than closer, to where one began, or to where one
was going. This sort of heady pseudo-stuff is a staple of adventurers.
Jackie & Barry
- wrote:
> This has enjoyed much banter, however most are of the
> impression that even a rowboat would be faster than digging.
Walking between two distant places is usually "faster" than building a
roadway or a railway between them.
Once the "way" is built, using it is usualy faster than walking - and
often much cheaper.
Barry
-
> - wrote:
>> This has enjoyed much banter, however most are of the
>> impression that even a rowboat would be faster than digging.
Jackie & Barry <here...@mts.net> wrote:
> Walking between two distant places is usually "faster" than building
> a roadway or a railway between them.
>
> Once the "way" is built, using it is usualy faster than walking -
> and often much cheaper.
I am reminded of those discussions which ask for a definition
of the "good economy." Of course an economy that wrecks the planet,
or destroys human health, might be a "bad economy" instead. And
what should be a "good car," one with 400mm steel-wall armor on
all sides to protect occupants from those collisions with cyclists on
titanium-frame bikes, or one with a hybrid gas-electric engine so as
not to send gas-guzzling dollars to Saudi Arabia, and who knows who?
Now a premise was to "get to China" maybe by any means possible.
Had they considered the Star Trek transporter, or was it merely Warp
Drives within a frenzied imaginative leap of esteemed famed physicist
Stephen Hawking? That's not the general problem, however. One
seeks to go from point-J to point-B. If the geodesic route will not
satisfy, then the planet will just simply have to be turned into swiss
cheese so as to conform to those requirements for the Moon People
who would like to land here and finish-off their planned cannibalism.
One of the problems concerns where to put all of that dirt excavated
from the tunnels connecting all points J & B. A proposal was advanced
to send it off with barges from "Baghdad on the Hudson" to "Hudson on
the Baghdad." With more skyscrapers the tunnel excavations could be
turned into an "elevator planet." The idea would be to stretch it out
into one thin-line, or circular route with shuttles in each direction
such as Larry Niven's "ringworld" but then the question concerns a
matter of shortcuts between points on the ring. For this sort of math
one refers to (N\2)/N where ( \ ) references permutations. Then
an optimum occurs when N=5 owing to direct doubling, where the
reciprocal value of 1/2 was the real component for zeros of Riemann's
Zeta function, a thorny problem Daniel Bump was working for awhile
on the back of an envelope with a stubby pencil, but no eraser. So
office buildings shaped in the form of a Pentagon should be efficient.
In the next chapter we may examine forms of x^2 - a^2 observing
the source for spin=1/2 increments when shifting "x" or "a" along the
sideways direction for quantum mechanical basis so as to correlate
with appropriate relativistic hypotheses consistent with the preamble.
Now let's return briefly to your hypothesis that a swiss-cheesed
planet, with tunnels all about between points J & B, should offer a
more efficient means for traffic-jams than original spherical surface.
I would need to say that the point-displacement traffic for the two
dimensional map, high and low (allowing some air-traffic controllers),
would more efficiently be served by routing the point-displacement
traffic into a smaller volume without the advantage of external loops?
That might be the sort of question that sheeples prefer to ponder,
however I'll take the external world with its extra dimensionality, so
thanks very much all the same. No suitcases with "loose nukes."
- regards
- j^b
.
BobbySixer
Hawking says:
>But Prof Hawking, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, says
>that a warp drive, of the kind seen in Star Trek, cannot be ruled out.
Please remember to adjust for irony. This guy Hawking lives in a country that
can't even run a railway efficiently..and that's a technology from 2 centuries
ago..
Greycat Sharpclaw
There is an allegation that "Milton N. Bradley"
<brad...@villagenet.com> wrote:
>Sounds plausible until one thinks about it a bit!
>As I recall it, according to Einstein momentum approaches infinity as
>one approaches the speed of light. But if that's true,
>how can you steer - not just to avoid seen objects but unseen ones,
>like Black Holes? Or am I missing something here? If
>so, I'm certain that many will hasten to tell me.
Remember that most "relativistic effects" are according to outsiders
moving differently; everyone is motionless compared to themselves.
And "relativity" is so called because it all depends on your frame of
reference.
The steering will be done in the frame of refernce of the ship... in
which it is motionless, so steering is quite easy.
The difficulty is that all these obstacles will be coming at the ship
at near light-speed, meaning little time to dodge them.
--
Greycat Sharpclaw
- does anyone have any spare tunafish??
Remove "nospam" in address to reply
Simon Goss
>The steering will be done in the frame of refernce of the ship... in
>which it is motionless, so steering is quite easy.
In effect you'd be steering the whole universe outside the ship. Doesn't
sound all that easy :)
--
Simon
Milton N. Bradley
Greycat:
Huh??? Please correct me if I'm wrong but unless my knowledge of english
has just failed me, you've used a quite logically convoluted way of
agreeing with me!
Roy Schmidt
Especially since the whole Universe would be moving at near-light
speed! OC, there are mostly several-year-long gaps between the big
objects, so you are not likely to run into a star or black hole, but
those little thingies (say cricket ball size) smashing into the ship
at near-light speed would do considerable damage. Shields up!!!
-------------------------------------------------
my reply-to address is gostoned at home dot com
-------------------------------------------------
Roy Schmidt
Part-time Translator for Yutopian
Full-time Professor of Business Computer Systems
Bradley University
-
> Greycat Sharpclaw writes
>> The steering will be done in the frame of refernce of the ship... in
>> which it is motionless, so steering is quite easy.
Simon Goss <si...@gosoft.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In effect you'd be steering the whole universe outside the ship.
> Doesn't sound all that easy :)
This was the problem posed by E.Mach, and it was not premised
upon being easy. The "proper time," for an observer approaching
that of light-speed, will slow down, thereby shrinking the apparent
universe radius to a single-point, A.S.Eddington previously observed.
Jackie & Barry
Greycat Sharpclaw wrote:
> The steering will be done in the frame of refernce of the ship... in
> which it is motionless, so steering is quite easy.
If the ship is, and remains, motionless, steering is very difficult.
In effect, isn't it the rest of the Universe that you have to steer.
Barry
Greycat Sharpclaw
There is an allegation that Simon Goss <si...@gosoft.demon.co.uk>
wrote:
But it's the same problem if you are sitting at rest, Earth relative;
steering changes your frame of motion, hence your measurement of the
rest of the universe.
Greycat Sharpclaw
The result is similar (it's hard to avoid collisions), but the cause
is quite different.
My main point is that the collision problem, if to be countered by
steering around obsticals, should be seen from the frame of reference
of the ship; and things look very different there then from the Earth
frame.
Greycat Sharpclaw
There is an allegation that Jackie & Barry <here...@mts.net> wrote:
>Greycat Sharpclaw wrote:
>
>> The steering will be done in the frame of refernce of the ship... in
>> which it is motionless, so steering is quite easy.
>
>If the ship is, and remains, motionless, steering is very difficult.
It remains motionless in a NON-inertial frame of reference; which is
quite different from remaining motionless in an inertial one.
>In effect, isn't it the rest of the Universe that you have to steer.
This is true at any speed.
Henric Bergsaker
> -
>
>> Current theories suggest that space travel will be tedious, using
>> spaceships travelling slower than light.
>>
>> But Prof Hawking, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge,
>> says
>> that a warp drive, of the kind seen in Star Trek, cannot be ruled
>> out.
>
> Sounds plausible until one thinks about it a bit! As I recall it,
> according to Einstein momentum approaches infinity as one approaches
> the speed of light.
What about the infinite improbability drive then?
Be sure to bring a magnetic go board anyway! As anyone familiar with the
rusty axe anecdote knows,
a go board is a very powerful instrument for time compression and may
well prove to be instrumental
in any interstellar travels.
h.
gerhard koops
relativity and you will enter the general relativity which is much more
difficult! If you change direction, you will experience gravitational
forces which makes the space ship not equivalent to another reference
frame!
Steering at the speed of light is nog trivial, making a 180 degrees turn
and still having the G-forces below 10G, this will take you more than 1
month!!
Regards,
Gerhard
Jon Diamond
"BobbySixer" <bobby...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20011016153456...@mb-dd.aol.com...
Bobby Six
news:9qn0ic$d3h$1...@plutonium.btinternet.com...
> When I read this I thought of pots and kettles .................
>
Suggest you take two panadol and lie down in a darkened room.
If symptoms persist beyond 36 hours, consult a doctor.
--
Posted from [164.36.142.217]
via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Eremin
AVE
Subscribing....
Posting.....
Unsubscribing.
>>> When I read this I thought of pots and kettles .................(?)
Get your teeth into some *real* physics.
*About* Julian Barbour and other things not Go related:-
http://www.futureframe.de/science/010129-platonia2.htm
*By* Julian Barbour and other things not Go related:-
timeless 16 Oct 99
Surely nothing is possible without time? But according
to physicist Julian Barbour, it doesn't even exist
TIME seems to be the most powerful force, an
irresistible river carrying us from birth to death. To
most people it is an inescapable part of life, a
fundamental element of the Universe.
But I think that time is an illusion. Physicists
struggling to unify quantum mechanics and Einstein's
general theory of relativity have found hints that the
Universe is timeless. I believe that this idea should
be taken seriously. Paradoxically, we might be able to
explain the mysterious "arrow of time"-the difference
between past and future-by abandoning time. But to
understand how, we need to change radically our ideas
of how the Universe works.
Let's start with Newton's picture of absolute time. He
argued that objects exist in an immense immobile
space, stretching like a block of glass from infinity
to infinity. His time is an invisible river that
"flows equably without relation to anything external".
Newton's absolute space and time form a framework that
exists at a deeper level than the objects in it.
To see how it works, imagine a universe containing
only three particles. To describe its history in
Newton's terms, you specify a succession of sets of 10
numbers: one for time and three for the spatial
coordinates of each of the three particles. But this
picture is suspect. As the space-time framework is
invisible, how can you determine all the numbers? As
far back as 1872, the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach
argued that the Universe should be described solely in
terms of observable things, the separations between
its objects.
With that in mind, we can use a very different
framework for the three-particle Universe-a strange,
abstract realm called Triangle Land. Think of the
three particles as the corners of a triangle. This
triangle is completely defined by the lengths of its
three sides-just three numbers. You can take these
three numbers and use them as coordinates, to mark a
point in an abstract "configuration space" (see
Diagram).
'Triangle land' to demonstrate timelessness
Each possible arrangement of three particles
corresponds to a point in this space. There are
geometrical restrictions-no triangle has one side
longer than the other two put together-so it turns out
that all the points lie in or on a pyramid. At the
apex of Triangle Land, where all three coordinates are
zero, is a point that I call Alpha. It represents the
triangle that has sides all of zero length (in other
words, all three particles are in the same place).
In the same way, the configurations of a four-particle
universe form Tetrahedron Land. It has six dimensions,
corresponding to the six separations between pairs of
particles-hard to conceive, but it exists as a
mathematical entity. And even for the stupendous
number of particles that make up our own Universe, we
can envisage a vast multidimensional structure
representing its configurations. In collaboration with
Bruno Bertotti of Pavia University in Italy, I have
shown that conventional physics still works in this
strange world. As Plato taught that reality exists as
perfect forms, I think of the patterns of particles as
Platonic forms, and call their totality Platonia.
Platonia is an image of eternity. It is all the
arrangements of matter that can be. Looking at it as a
whole, there seems to be no more river of time. But
could time be hiding? Perhaps there is some sort of
local time that makes sense to inhabitants of
Platonia.
In classical physics, something like time can indeed
creep back in. If you were to lay out all the instants
of an evolving Newtonian universe, it would look like
a path drawn in Platonia. As a godlike being, outside
Platonia, you could run your finger along the path,
touching points that correspond to each different
arrangement of matter, and see a universe that
continuously changes from one state to another. Any
point on this path still has something that looks like
a definite past and future.
Now's the place
But we know that classical physics is wrong. The world
is described by quantum mechanics-and in the arena of
Platonia, quantum mechanics kills time.
In the quantum wave theory created by SchrÖdinger, a
particle has no definite position, instead it has a
fuzzy probability of being at each possible position.
And for three particles, say, there is a certain
probability of their forming a triangle in a
particular orientation with its centre of mass at some
absolute position. The deepest quantum mysteries arise
because of holistic statements of this kind. The
probabilities are for the whole, not the parts.
What probabilities could quantum mechanics specify for
the complete Universe that has Platonia as its arena?
There cannot be probabilities at different times
because Platonia itself is timeless. There can only be
once-and-for-all probabilities for each possible
configuration.
In this picture, there are no definite paths. We are
not beings progressing from one instant to another.
Rather, there are many "Nows" in which a version of us
exists-not in any past or future, but scattered in our
region of Platonia.
This may sound like the "many worlds" interpretation
of quantum mechanics, published in 1957 by Hugh
Everett of Princeton University. But in that scheme
time still exists: history is a path that branches
whenever some quantum decision has to be made. In my
picture there are no paths. Each point of Platonia has
a probability, and that's the end of the story.
A similar position was reached by much more
sophisticated arguments more than 30 years ago.
Americans Bryce DeWitt and John Wheeler combined
quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of general
relativity to produce an equation that describes the
whole Universe. Put into the equation a configuration
of the Universe, and out comes a probability for that
configuration. There is no mention of time.
Admittedly, the Wheeler-DeWitt equation is
controversial and fraught with mathematical
difficulties, but if quantum cosmology is anything
like it-if it is about probabilities-the timeless
picture is plausible.
So let's take seriously the idea of a "probability
mist" that covers the timeless Platonic landscape. The
density of the mist is just the relative probability
of the corresponding configuration being realised, or
experienced, as an instantaneous state of the
Universe-as a Now. If some Nows in Platonia have much
higher probabilities than others, they are the ones
that are actually experienced. This is like ordinary
statistical physics: a glass of water could boil
spontaneously, but the probability is so low that we
never see it happen.
All this seems a far cry from the reality of our
lives. Where is the history we read about? Where are
our memories? Where is the bustling, changing world of
our experience? Those configurations of the Universe
for which the probability mist has a high density, and
so are likely to be experienced, must have within them
an appearance of history-a set of mutually consistent
records that suggests we have a past. I call these
configurations "time capsules".
Present past
An arbitrary matter distribution, like dots
distributed at random, will not have any meaning. It
will not tell a story. Almost all imaginable matter
distributions are of this kind; only the tiniest
fraction seem to carry meaningful information.
One of the most remarkable facts about our Universe is
that it does have a meaningful structure. All the
matter we can observe in any way is found to contain
records of a past.
The first scientists to realise this were geologists.
Examining the structure of rocks and fossils, they
constructed a long history of the Earth. Modern
cosmology has extended this to a history of the
Universe right back to the big bang.
What is more, we are somehow directly aware of the
passing of time, and we see motion-a change of
position over time. You may feel these are such
powerful sensations that any attempt to deny them is
ridiculous. But imagine yourself frozen in time. You
are simply a static arrangement of matter, yet all
your memories and experience are still there,
represented by physical patterns within your
brain-probably as the strengths of the synapse
connections between neurons. Just as the structure of
geological strata and fossils seem to be evidence of a
past, our brains contain physical structures
consistent with the appearance of recent and distant
events. These structures could surely lead to the
impression of time passing. Even the direct perception
of motion could arise through the presence in the
brain of information about several different positions
of the objects we see in motion.
And that is the essence of my proposal. There is no
history laid out along a path, there are only records
contained within Nows. This timeless vision may seem
perverse. But it turns out to have one great potential
strength: it could explain the arrow of time.
We are so accustomed to history that we forget how
peculiar it is. According to conventional cosmology,
our Universe must have started out in an
extraordinarily special state to give rise to the
highly ordered Universe we find around us, with its
arrow of time and records of a past. All matter and
energy must have originated at a single point, and had
an almost perfectly uniform distribution immediately
after the big bang.
Hitherto, the only explanation that science has
provided is the anthropic argument: we experience
configurations of the Universe that seem to have a
history because only these configurations have the
characteristics to produce beings who can experience
anything. I believe that timeless quantum cosmology
provides a far more satisfying explanation.
In Platonia, there are no initial conditions. Only two
factors determine where the probability mist is dense:
the form of some equation (like the Wheeler-DeWitt
equation) and the shape of Platonia. And by sheer
logical necessity, Platonia is profoundly asymmetric.
Like Triangle Land, it is a lopsided continent with a
special point Alpha corresponding to the configuration
in which every particle is at the same place.
From this singular point, the timeless landscape opens
out, flower-like, to points that represent
configurations of the Universe of arbitrary size and
complexity. My conjecture is that the shape of
Platonia cannot fail to influence the distribution of
the quantum probability mist. It could funnel the mist
onto time capsules, those meaningful arrangements that
seem to contain records of a past that began at Alpha.
This is, of course, only speculation, but quantum
mechanics supports it. In 1929, the British physicist
Nevill Mott and Werner Heisenberg from Germany
explained how alpha particles, emitted by radioactive
nuclei, form straight tracks in cloud chambers. Mott
pointed out that, quantum mechanically, the emitted
alpha particle is a spherical wave which slowly leaks
out of the nucleus. It is difficult to picture how it
is that an outgoing spherical wave can produce a
straight line," he argued. We think intuitively that
it should ionise atoms at random throughout space.
Mott noted that we think this way because we imagine
that quantum processes take place in ordinary
three-dimensional space. In fact, the possible
configurations of the alpha particle and the particles
in the detecting chamber must be regarded as the
points of a hugely multidimensional configuration
space, a miniature Platonia, with the position of the
radioactive nucleus playing the role of Alpha.
Ageless creation
When Mott viewed the chamber from this perspective,
his equations predicted the existence of the tracks.
The basic fact that quantum mechanics treats
configurations as whole entities leads to track
formation. And a track is just a point in
configuration space-but one that creates the
appearance of a past, just like our own memories.
There is one more reason to embrace the timeless view.
Many theoretical physicists now recognise that the
usual notions of time and space must break down near
the big bang. They find themselves forced to seek a
timeless description of the "beginning" of the
Universe, even though they use time elsewhere. It
seems more consistent and economical to use an
entirely timeless description.
But for these ideas to be more than speculation, they
should have concrete, measurable results. Fortunately,
Stephen Hawking and other theorists have shown that
the Wheeler-DeWitt equation can lead to verifiable
predictions. For example, established physical
theories cannot predict a value for the cosmological
constant, which measures the gravitational repulsion
of empty space. But calculations based on the
Wheeler-DeWitt equation suggest that it should have a
very small value. It should soon be possible to
measure the cosmological constant, either by taking
the brightness of far-off supernovae and using that to
track the expansion of the Universe, or by analysing
the shape of humps and bumps in the cosmic microwave
background. And a definitive equation of quantum
cosmology should give us a precise prediction for the
value of the constant. It is a distant prospect, but
the nonexistence of time could be confirmed by
experiment.
The notion of time as an invisible framework that
contains and constrains the Universe is not unlike the
crystal spheres invented centuries ago to carry the
planets. After the spheres had been shattered by Tycho
Brahe's observations, Kepler said: "We must
philosophise about these things differently." Much of
modern physics stems from this insight. We need a new
notion of time.