New Frontiers Flashcards
What four natural forces account for everything in our universe?
Gravity; electromagnetism; the strong nuclear force which holds the nucleus of atoms together; the weak nuclear force which allows radioactive atoms to decay. They can be found within a single atom. Any tiny change in the relationship between any of the four forces would mean the dissolution of the cosmos as we know it.
What is the Anthropic interpretation of the four natural forces?
At the Big Bang, the laws of physics must have been created in the same instant. Possible varieties of unstable balance between the four forces are infinite. We might be able to prove the existence of a creator by virtue of this incredible statistical fluke.
What are black holes?
Created when some very large stars die. They explode with such immense force that material is pushed inwards as well as outwards. The inward rushing mass becomes so dense that it collapses under its own gravity until it suddenly blinks out of the realm of time and space. It becomes a dimensionless point of infinitely condensed matter with a truly monstrous gravitational field. Nothing can escape this field, not even light.
Black holes as creators of universes?
Some cosmologists suggest that when a black hole reaches its point of infinite compression then it creates an equivalent “white hole” in another universe, spewing out matter in a “Big Bang”. Our universe emerged from a dimensionless point of infinitely compressed matter. A black hole is a… dimensionless point of infinitely compressed matter.
What is the likelihood of habitable worlds in relation to our universe’s black holes?
- Our universe must be well-tuned for life because we are here to discuss it.
- Our universe also makes plenty of black holes as a result of the four fundamental natural forces that make life possible.
- The black holes, in turn, are spewing out plenty of other new universes.
- So a universe that’s good for black holes, and also suitable for life, is more likely to create new universes.
- Hence, life-suited universes would likely predominate.
What is string theory?
That all particles of matter and all force-carrying particles are generated by extremely tiny “strings” of energy.
One mode of vibration or “note” makes a string behave as an electron, another as a photon and so on. Another as a “graviton”, the unfound particle that may convey the force of gravity.
But as strings are smaller than particles then there is no prospect of detecting them and, while we experience the world in four dimensions (one in time, three in space), strings supposedly exist in ten, eleven or more dimensions.
How might information be the key building block?
Physics seems to show that everything is made from atoms and subatomic particles: ie from a relatively small kit of fundamental entities out of which the sum total of existence is made. Scientists tend to believe that some truly simple building block, even simpler than the subatomic components we’ve so far explored, accounts for all of the universe’s matter and energy. Strings perhaps. Information as the true mechanism at the heart of existence? The cosmos behaves like a computer, “outputting” the version of reality that we observe, rather than being the reality. Some kind of virtual construct.
We are stardust but how?
The first generation of stars was made entirely of helium and hydrogen. Nuclear fission inside some of the stars made all the complicated chemical elements (atoms) that we are familiar with: oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, iron, magnesium etc.
We have borrowed them and they are already billions of years old. After our bodies have finished with them, those atoms will survive for many more billions of years.
Living creatures could be thought of as fleeting patterns made from these long-lived bits of information. What, then, makes us think we are “real”?
