Last week, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking told a packed audience at Hong Kong’s University of Science and Technology that the late Pope John Paul II once discouraged him from asking too many questions about the origins of the universe.
It’s a pity we can’t hear the Pope’s side of the story – but maybe someday science will develop a method for squeezing a NEW interview out of the currently deceased Holy Father.
Sensible people laughed just then. because they “knew” in a flash that a new interview with Pope JP II, rest his soul, is just about as likely as hearing a new Lennon-McCartney hit performed by the original Fab Four.
But the joke, I’m afraid, is on you smug chucklers, because according to many renowned physicists – the late Richard Feynman among them – the universe may indeed contain alternate histories in which the Beatles recorded songs that that no one in our own Time Line has ever heard!
This is all covered under the Many Worlds interpretation of the universe where each particle in the universe simultaneously follows every possible path from the moment of its inception at the Big Bang to the moment of its dissipation at the Heat Death.
Thus somewhere embedded and preserved in the fabric of SpaceTime – some “new” Beatles recordings must exist.
Anyway, with all the media hubhub over “Intelligent Design” this past year, I wondered if Hawking’s recent public remarks were thoughtfully timed to elicit a rise from media outlets quick to capitalize on gossipy tales of friction between Science and Religion in the public sphere. And as of this afternoon (6/18 – Father’s Day – 2006) a search of Google News shows 141 results for the term “stephen hawking, pope“.
Well, cluck, cluck, cluck.
Speaking at the same lecture in Hong Kong, Hawking also said that The Final Theory – TOE – the Theory of Everything – is close to being solved.
As a media critic and publisher of this website, I thus grant myself the privilege of analyzing Hawking’s remarks in light of available knowledge – and by referencing Hawking’s own wildly bestselling book, The Universe in a Nutshell.
The Unified Field Theory: A Final Theory of Everything
It’s a funny thing, but one might here beg the Full Anthropic Principle and wonder if the much-heralded Theory of Everything is really such a difficult problem to solve in the first place?
Here’s another Theory: Suppose the formula for the Unified Field Theory – whatever it may be – proves that Information is never lost?
Under such a scientific finding, the implications for a mathematical description of God becomes doable for science.
Hey – maybe the Pope – God bless his Soul – had an informed opinion after all!
Deity to emerge under such conditions might be unmistakable even to non-scientists like myself.
For instance – suppose that the available evidence presented as M-Theory in Hawking’s Universe in a Nutshell, the very verge it see sitting on the verge of this his Theory of Everything must be so frightful – so career-killing – that no sensible scientist with any reputation to protect – not even Hawking – wants to be the first to advance it. This is because – I think – people think it will take at least two generations before our highest scientific and academic institutions can swallow the fact that God is an inevitable outcome of the observable universe.
Most laymen are cognizant of the basic theories for the TOE – Theory of Everything. Let’s review:
- Established science has identifed a few essential features, and the Theory of Everything must contain a Theory for Gravity on the one hand, and the troika of ElectroMagentism, plus the Strong and Weak Nuclear Forces on the other hand.
- E=MC2 is a formula that describes the theoretical escape Velocity of matter. The forula also describes TIME as a dimension akin to the 3 dimensions of space.
- Hubble’s Law describes the apparent expansion of the universe, and shows that the farther galaxies are FROM us, the faster they are moving AWAY from us. Thus the universe is (or appears to be) expanding at a rate that is equal to or greater than the escape velocity of matter.
- The Big Bang Theory explains this by saying the universe began in a titanic explosion that occured in the finite past, some 14 billion years ago. The explosion accelerated ALL matter in the universe to a rate is greater than or equal to c2 – and this is consistent with the observation that the rate of inflation increases with distance.
- Heisenburg’s Uncertainty Principle shows that it is impossible to precisely measure BOTH the position and velocity of a single particle AT THE SAME TIME. (Also note Schrodinger’s Equation.)
- Black Holes are gravity wells in which the speed of light is not fast enough to escape the Event Horizon of an imploding mass. (Hawking Radiation also shows that black holes actually EMIT quantum particles.)
Let’s sum it up:
The universe is a multidimensional object that exists in its own space-time, and within its own event horizon. There are no other similar sized “objects” within its proximity.
If I had to make a two-dimensional representation of the universe, I might use an astrisk in the center of a circle suggested by parentheses:
( * )
The * in the center is the “Big Bang” – radiating from the center to the perimeter with a force equal to (or greater than) the escape velocity of matter (c2). Time begins in the center of the astrisk and ends at the perimeter.
The perimeter ( ) is the border of the universe: an event horizon that describes the universe at its fullest expansion – the moment in time in which all particulate matter has become separated by at least 1 event horizon. It is also the “first” moment of 100% entropy. This is the Heat Death of the universe.
Let’s add a third dimension to the (*) two dimensional model:
My gGlobe
I imagine that on my desk sits the 2306AD edition of Google’s Desktop Globe of the Universe – The gGlobe.
This beachball-sized object is actually is a complete map of SpaceTime for the entire universe from its inception at the Big Bang to its dissipation at the Heat Death. It’s called My gGlobe because – of course – the map is slightly different for the individual who uses it.
Peering into My gGlobe, I see lines radiating from the center of the sphere to its surface. These lines represent the track of particles from the moment of their creation at the Big Bang to the moment of their obliteration at the Heat Death.
In its default setting, the gGlobe displays the entire universe from the outside looking in. At this orientation, the Big Bang is located at the very center of the globe, and the Heat Death is represented as a ring-shape on the surface of the sphere. The cone shape between the apex and ring represents the passage of time from beginning to end.
the globe is Of course that’s not possible in real life, but the user is able to see the relative orientation of any particle in the universe at any point in its history.
I gaze deeply into my beachball and say a few magic words… I have told the beach ball that I wish to find myself – wherever my body is located in the fabric of spacetime.
The beachball processes my request, and allows me to view myself as I lived during my time here on the good green Earth.
But as I look into the beachball, all I can see is a blur of shifting mass in the shape of a funnel, with the apex at the center and the mouth a ring on the surface.
My origin (my conception) now appears as a knot at the center of the sphere, and my termination (death) as a ring-shape merging with its surface.
The beachball allows me to view my entire life in toto, but it also allows me view the individual histories of all the particles that intersected with my body (and thus my mind) from the moment of my conception to the moment of my death.
Specifically, the magic beachball allows me to view both the individual and the cumulative lightcones of all the particles that made up my body in life. (I could add parenthetically that my magic beachball also lets me view alternate outcomes for my life by switching to MultiVerse mode – patent pending, of course.)
I tell the beachball to zoom into a particular moment in my life.
I navigate though the universe far enough to identify a particular carbon atom that once existed in my right earlobe.
I follow that carbon atom back in time to the moment of its creation in a supernova, and then through succesive generations of particles back to moment of first “creation” – the first appearance in spacetime of a Plank-length sized particle ejected in the Big Bang.
I stare at this particle displayed in the magic beachball.
Its lightcone is too small to be of much use in identifying its exact position and velocity relative to any other particle in the Big Bang explosion. In fact, even the magic beachball is restricted by the Uncertainty Principle and cannot identify the particle’s actual orientation at the moment of its creation.
On the otherhand,
Lightcones:
http://casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/sr/centre.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060615/ap_on_sc/john_paul_hawking_3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_anthropic_principle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_constant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_Principle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrodinger_equation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_holes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation
