“In some pockets of space, far beyond the limits of our observations,” wrote cosmologist Dan Hooper at the University of Chicago in an email to The Daily Galaxy, referring to the theory of eternal inflation and the inflationary multiverse: “the laws of physics could be very different from those we find in our local universe. Different forms of matter could exist, which experience different kinds of forces. In this sense, what we call ‘the laws of physics’, instead of being a universal fact of nature, could be an environmental fact, which varies from place to place, or from time to time.”
Avi Shporer, Research Scientist, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. A Google Scholar, Avi was formerly a NASA Sagan Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). His motto, not surprisingly, is a quote from Carl Sagan: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
Another amazing week of news from the Cosmos: from the New York Times’ Carl Zimmer on the origins of life and how it may have evolved on other worlds to the the creeping suspicion, that there is something substantial missing from our standard model of the Universe to Albert Einstein’s demon-haunted quantum world.
“If space is truly infinite,” observes Dan Hooper, head of the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, in At the Edge of Time, “the implications are staggering. Within an infinite expanse of space, it would be hard to see any reason why there would not be an infinite number of galaxies, stars, and planets, and even an infinite number of intelligent or conscious beings, scattered throughout this limitless volume. That is the thing about infinity: it takes things that are otherwise very unlikely and makes them all inevitable.”
Avi Shporer, Research Scientist, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. A Google Scholar, Avi was formerly a NASA Sagan Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). His motto, not surprisingly, is a quote from Carl Sagan: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
Albert Einstein was fond of saying that “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” What if our world, our universe, following Einstein’s insight, is the result of a quantum-physics experiment performed by some ancient hyper-advanced alien civilization. A civilization that, as astrophysicist Paul Davies speculates, may exist beyond matter.
“Ancient black holes would give us access to physics we would never otherwise be able to do,” wrote Dan Hooper, head of the theoretical astrophysics group at Fermilab, in an email to The Daily Galaxy. If primordial black holes are real, they’d have potential to solve a whole host of the biggest problems in cosmology, not the least being the mystery of dark matter, considered to be the backbone to the structure of the universe.
“There is probably no way to tell whether the mysteries faced by cosmologists today are the signs of a coming scientific revolution or merely the last few loose ends of an incredibly successful scientific endeavor. There is no question that we have made incredible progress in understanding our universe, its history, and its origin,” says Dan Hooper, a senior scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory about 40 miles west of Chicago and a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago.
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Triple-Star System of Eta Carinae – Five Million Times Brighter than Our Sun
Evolution May Be a Cosmic Universal to the New Search for Alien Tech (The Galaxy Report)
Stephen Hawking’s Warning –“Treating AI as Science Fiction Would Potentially Be Our Worst Mistake Ever”
The Missing ‘Ghost’ in the Machine –Why Massive Black Holes are Not Found in Observatory DataLast Week’s Top 5 Space & Science Headlines –The Quasar Enigma to Life is Electric
Rise of Oxygen –The Evolutionary Moment that Shaped Our Habitable Planet
Scientists Warn of Extraterrestrial Microbial Invasion to How Dangerous is COVID Mutant B.1.1.529 (Planet Earth Report)
“Life is Electric” –NASA Explores Origins of Life on Earth & Beyond (Holiday-Weekend Feature)
Humans Could Be the Dominant Species in the Universe to Albert Einstein’s Forgotten Idea (The Galaxy Report –Holiday Feature)
“Shaking the Fabric of Spacetime” –Recreating Quark Matter of the Big Bang
