Universe: Arguments against flatness (plus exposing sloppy science writing)

According to the always entertaining New Scientist, "Flat universe may be the new flat earth (Eugenie Samuel Reich, 18 May 2009). We are informed,

FOR centuries the ancients believed the Earth was flat. Evidence to the contrary was either ignored or effortlessly integrated into the dominant world view. Today we dismiss flat-Earthers as ignorant, yet we may be making an almost identical mistake – not about our planet, but about the entire universe.

Which centuries were those? The fact that Earth is a sphere was determined by Eratosthenes in the third century B.C.

"Flat" just means that light beams travel parallel to each other, instead of converging or diverging - these conditions would imply a negatively or positively curved universe. Most astronomers currently believe the universe to be flat, but ...

In a paper accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.3354), they took data from WMAP and other cosmology experiments and analysed it using Bayes's theorem, which can be used to show how the certainty attached to a particular conclusion is affected by different starting assumptions.

Using modern astronomers' assumptions, which presuppose a flat universe, they
calculated the probability that the universe was in one of three states: flat, positively curved or negatively curved. This produced a 98 per cent probability that the universe is indeed flat. When they reran the calculation starting from a more open-minded position, however, the probability changed to 67 per cent, making a flat universe far less of a certainty than astronomers generally conclude.

Doubtless. But don't expect them to try that kind of rigour any time soon on origin of life theories or the ability of Darwinian evolution to produce vast amounts of new information.

(Note: Of course, it was always possible to think that Earth was a donut. But the examples of the sun and the moon would deter most reasonable people. Come to think of it, a donut-shaped Earth would be an interestng piece of artwork. Anyway, I think it is time to give up on myths about what our ancestors believed or else cite sources.)

Intelligent design of the universe as possible science finding

First, thanks to all patient readers who have waited for me to get past a relative's recent illness. Remember, bloggers are mostly volunteers (and special thanks to all generous PayPal donors).

A friend writes to say about this post at Discover Magazine's blog, "Big Surprises,":

This intriguing blog post (read to the end) suggests that Carroll sees design as a possible scientific finding, one that would be profoundly surprising.

Sean Carroll [pictured above] asks,

But there are plenty of other good possibilities; what if we discovered tachyons, or that there really was an Intelligent Designer? Suggestions welcome.

My friend notes,

One of the commenters points out, however, that the discovery of design would be surprising only to "those who don't believe in one -- which is a relatively small group," albeit a group that contains Sean Carroll, Steven Weinberg, and I'd bet most of Carroll's friends and colleagues. Those selection effects will bite you every time.

Fascinating to see how often ID comes up in the comments.

Someone provided a link to the film of Carl Sagan's Contact novel too.

And - aw, come on, you knew this was coming - here's the Contact film trailer:

Universe: Old-fashioned TV static is signal from deeps of time?

Apparently so.

Here's a cool site from the University of Toronto. It features stuff like:

These days astronomers aren't just picking up signals from a time shortly after the universe began – they're creating maps of those signals to answer some of our deepest questions about the cosmos.

An old-fashioned TV with rabbit ears is designed to pick up very high frequency radio waves. When the TV is tuned to a channel for which there is no nearby broadcaster, the screen shows a lot of static. The static – also known as noise – is caused by random radio waves coming towards the TV from various manmade and natural sources, including deep space.

In the 1960's, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, two researchers at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, began searching for sources of static for the purpose of improving satellite communication. They were searching in the "microwave" part of the radio spectrum, which lies at a somewhat higher frequency than a typical TV receives. What they discovered was that no matter where in the sky they pointed their special antenna it always picked up some microwave noise that could not be accounted for. Astrophysicists eventually realized that this noise was a predicted side effect of the birth of the universe billions of years ago.

Just remember that when deciding how to dispose of Grandpa's old TV in an environmentally friendly manner.

Design in the universe: All you people need is help with ignoring the elephant

A friend sends me these quotations from Leonard Susskind's book, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design:

"Let me be up front and state my own prejudices right here. I thoroughly believe that real science requires explanations that do not involve supernatural agents. I believe that the eye evolved by Darwinian mechanisms. Furthermore, I believe that physicists and cosmologists must also find a natural explanation of our world, including the amazing lucky accidents that conspired to make our own existence possible." (Page xi)

"In the past most physicists (including me) have chosen to ignore the elephant--even to deny its existence. ... Evidence has been accumulating for an explanation of the 'illusion of intelligent design' that depends only on the principles of physics, mathematics, and the laws of large numbers. " (Page xi)

"On one side are the people who are convinced that the world must have been created or designed by an intelligent agent with a benevolent purpose. On the other side are the hard-nosed, scientific types who feel certain that the universe is the product of impersonal, disinterested laws of physics, mathematics, and probability--a world without a purpose, so to speak. By the first group, I don't mean the biblical literalists who believe the world was created six thousand years ago and are ready to fight about it. I am talking about thoughtful, intelligent people who look around at the world and have a hard time believing that it was just dumb luck that made the world so accommodating to human beings. I don't think these people are being stupid; they have a real point." (Page 6)

"Unlike the debate between 'Darwin's Bulldog' Thomas Huxley and [Samuel] Wilberforce, the present argument is not between science and religion but between two warring factions of science--those who believe, on one hand, that the laws of nature are determined by mathematical relations, which by mere chance happen to allow life, and those who believe that the Laws of Physics have, in some way, been determined by the requirement that intelligent life be possible." (Page 6-7)

Of course, one possible explanation - assuming we are allowed to consider it - is that the elephant really is there.

Why some self-proclaimed skeptics need a universal swivel joint in their necks ...

Previous to the twentieth century and the building of telescopes that can clearly see galaxies beyond the outer limits of the Milky Way, scientists and philosophers tended to complain that the universe was far too small to be the work of God. While acknowledging that the existence of the universe implied some kind of cosmic Creator, these researchers deduced that the Creator could not be very big or strong.

[ ... ]

The arrival of the twenty-first century and telescopes powerful enough to help us see back in time ... even as far aback as the initial moments of cosmic existence, has prompted a very different kind of complaint from scientists and skeptics. The universe as now measured appears absurdly too large to serve merely as humanity's home. Skeptics insist that a Creator, especially the biblical Creator, wouldn't make unnecessary matter and space or waste creative effort. (P. 20) - From Hugh Ross's Why the Universe Is the Way It Is (Baker, 2008).

Ross heads up Reasons to Believe, an Christian apologetics ministry aimed at scientists, based in Pasadena, California.

Universe: Dinesh d'Souza debates Richard Dawkins

The debate was hosted by Riz Khan on Al-Jazeera and that was probably the only reason it even happened, given how unwilling Dawkins has been to debate D'Souza. The latter writes,

The show went well and despite the format, the issues were engaged. (If you’d like to see the interviews they are now posted on YouTube.) I argued that it is reasonable to ask scientifically about the cause of the universe. Effects require causes, so what is the cause for which the universe is the effect? It seems unreasonable in the extreme to say that even though nature had a beginning, somehow nature is the cause of itself. So God is the name we give to the supernatural being that is the cause of nature as a whole.

In his segment that followed, Dawkins responded this way: "This leaves open the question of where did the creator come from?" Since the creator is this "great big complicated thing," what good does it do to invoke one complex thing to explain another? "If you postulate a designer you haven't explained anything." Basically what Dawkins is saying is that there is no point in using complex explanation A to account for complex phenomenon B if you cannot account for A.

But who said God was complicated? God has always been presented as a unity. Even a child would understand this.

In the Christian tradition, God is presented as a Person (actually Three Persons in One). But all complexities enfold into a unity. In the same way, your friend may be a complex person but you perceive that person as a unity, not as a bundle of complexities.

I think that Dawkins would be smart to retire. It's all just not working any more for atheistic materialism.

Call for Papers: "First International Conference on the Evolution and Development of the Universe."

As a friend explains, they are seeking cosmologists, physicists, astrobiologists, theoretical and evo-devo biologists, complexity, systems and hierarchy theorists, philosophers, and other scholars who wish to explore and critique hypotheses of evolution and development at universal and subsystem scales:

Evo Devo Universe is a global scholarly research community interested in quasi-organic models of the universe. We are seeking cosmologists, physicists, astrobiologists, theoretical and evo-devo biologists, complexity, systems and hierarchy theorists, philosophers, and other scholars who wish to explore and critique hypotheses of evolution and development at universal and subsystem scales.

Their first international conference on these topics will be occurring in Paris, France on 8-9 October, 2008. Their first deadline for abstract and paper proposal submission is July 30th, 2008. Go here for more.

Universe arranged like nautilus shell on a large scale?

Well, would you prefer it had been arranged like a losing hand in poker?

A recent report by Amanda Gefter in New Scientist, "Galaxy map hints at fractal universe" (June 25, 2008) suggests that matter in our universe may be arranged in fractals, like the shell of a nautilus:

Is the matter in the universe arranged in a fractal pattern? A new study of nearly a million galaxies suggests it is – though there are no well-accepted theories to explain why that would be so.

And therefore,

Many cosmologists find fault with their analysis, largely because a fractal matter distribution out to such huge scales undermines the standard model of cosmology. According to the accepted story of cosmic evolution, there simply hasn't been enough time since the big bang nearly 14 billion years ago for gravity to build up such large structures.

What's more, the assumption that the distribution is homogeneous has allowed cosmologists to model the universe fairly simply using Einstein's theory of general relativity – which relates the shape of space to the distribution of matter.

Well then, it just can't be true, can it?

Score one for Eugene Wigner's "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics":

... the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and that there is no rational explanation for it.

By "rational" explanation, Wigner may mean an explanation that appeals to causes (chaos, an unexplained further regress, et cetera) that are ultimately irrational in themselves.

It tells us something about our underlying assumptions that laws that actually work are not considered a rational explanation.

At one time - before the principal project in science had been to disprove the idea that an intelligence underlies the universe - the discovery of such laws would be satisfying rather than problematic. They would be considered the obvious rational explanation rather than a challenge to rational explanation.

Well, the universe is what it is - and if it is governed by intelligently framed laws, so much the worse for those whose science can't absorb that.

(Note: The image is from Sea Life Gifts, one of those fine places I should not see unless my charge card has been mislaid.)