Hi Tim, I've enjoyed and been edified by your articles over many, many months. Relevant to your current article questioning the Big Bang model, please know that I am about to submit an article to the AAS on this very topic that I've been working on on for several years. I have also been working on an alternative to the Big Bang model for several decades. With the help of other physicists, astrophysicists, and members of SpaceGroup (which I formed about sixteen years ago) I will soon submit for publication my paper offering an alternative to the BB model. It has some radical components, which seem perfectly reasonable in light of the challenges involved. Might you be interested in co-authoring the paper with me? I could use your insights and your expertise in areas where my technical knowledge and math skills are weak? Please email me at joel.levinson@verizon.net if you are interested in exploring a joint effort. Joel
Hi Tim, I understood every sentence in ur piece this time, but this one word: is "fine tuning" a part of the scientific methodology for cosmologists, or all scientists in general? This tweaking of the math to fit reality seems silly - if that's what they are doing - as I thought experimentation was supposed to validate the math, and not the other way around. What am I missing?
Fine tuning means that something has to be a precise value in order to explain observations but there is no intuitive explanation as to why it is that value. The cosmological constant is a good example.
yes, that's what I thought. So how many of these "assumptions" - isn't that what they truly are? - exist throughout all scientific math today? Can we list and name them, and categorize and analyze them in the aggregate, to see what message that could send? I hate to break out a GPT, so perhaps this has already been done before?
There are quite a few papers on it actually and it has been studied for some time. There are a large number of physical constants that are finely tuned for life and matter to exist. It is also a favorite topic for philosophers. This video is pretty good intro: https://youtu.be/EE76nwimuT0
Okay watched that vid. WTF. No, I don't believe in god, but maybe design. All that video told me is the opposite, and that's if we have observed numbers that seem to be constant, but we can't explain why or how, and then we have connected all those constants together in our math and then generated even more equations and theories of explanation, then could that not lead to a house of cards event anywhere along the way? Ps. In you article it seemed to me that you felt fine-tuning was something done by the cosmologists, but now we are saying fine-tuning is somehow the basis holding it all together, and not of our making?
I will watch, and I appreciate the replies, thx. But for the short answer: is everyone in the scientific community cool with this, and is this just a "best-can-do" situ? I'm a Sam Harris fan, and more and more it seems this (the universe) may all be computational, and the fine-tuning in this case is our biology and our ability to fine-tune these stories we tell ourselves. Just a thought.
Hi Tim, I've enjoyed and been edified by your articles over many, many months. Relevant to your current article questioning the Big Bang model, please know that I am about to submit an article to the AAS on this very topic that I've been working on on for several years. I have also been working on an alternative to the Big Bang model for several decades. With the help of other physicists, astrophysicists, and members of SpaceGroup (which I formed about sixteen years ago) I will soon submit for publication my paper offering an alternative to the BB model. It has some radical components, which seem perfectly reasonable in light of the challenges involved. Might you be interested in co-authoring the paper with me? I could use your insights and your expertise in areas where my technical knowledge and math skills are weak? Please email me at joel.levinson@verizon.net if you are interested in exploring a joint effort. Joel
Hi Tim, I understood every sentence in ur piece this time, but this one word: is "fine tuning" a part of the scientific methodology for cosmologists, or all scientists in general? This tweaking of the math to fit reality seems silly - if that's what they are doing - as I thought experimentation was supposed to validate the math, and not the other way around. What am I missing?
Fine tuning means that something has to be a precise value in order to explain observations but there is no intuitive explanation as to why it is that value. The cosmological constant is a good example.
yes, that's what I thought. So how many of these "assumptions" - isn't that what they truly are? - exist throughout all scientific math today? Can we list and name them, and categorize and analyze them in the aggregate, to see what message that could send? I hate to break out a GPT, so perhaps this has already been done before?
There are quite a few papers on it actually and it has been studied for some time. There are a large number of physical constants that are finely tuned for life and matter to exist. It is also a favorite topic for philosophers. This video is pretty good intro: https://youtu.be/EE76nwimuT0
Okay watched that vid. WTF. No, I don't believe in god, but maybe design. All that video told me is the opposite, and that's if we have observed numbers that seem to be constant, but we can't explain why or how, and then we have connected all those constants together in our math and then generated even more equations and theories of explanation, then could that not lead to a house of cards event anywhere along the way? Ps. In you article it seemed to me that you felt fine-tuning was something done by the cosmologists, but now we are saying fine-tuning is somehow the basis holding it all together, and not of our making?
I will watch, and I appreciate the replies, thx. But for the short answer: is everyone in the scientific community cool with this, and is this just a "best-can-do" situ? I'm a Sam Harris fan, and more and more it seems this (the universe) may all be computational, and the fine-tuning in this case is our biology and our ability to fine-tune these stories we tell ourselves. Just a thought.