Forget Global Warming, we’re killing the entire universe
It turns out that we’re killing the universe — just by our existence. When we merely look at the 14 billion year old universe, we shorten its life, according to a new theory. Telegraph:
the theory suggests that we change things simply by looking at them and theorists have puzzled over the implications for years. They often illustrate their concerns about what the theory means with mind-boggling experiments, notably Schrodinger’s cat in which, thanks to a fancy experimental set up, the moggy is both alive and dead until someone decides to look, when it either carries on living, or dies. That is, by one interpretation (by another, the universe splits into two, one with a live cat and one with a dead one.)
New Scientist reports a worrying new variant as the cosmologists claim that astronomers may have accidentally nudged the universe closer to its death by observing dark energy, a mysterious anti gravity force which is thought to be speeding up the expansion of the cosmos.
The damaging allegations are made by Profs Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and James Dent of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, who suggest that by making this observation in 1998 we may have caused the cosmos to revert to an earlier state when it was more likely to end. “Incredible as it seems, our detection of the dark energy may have reduced the life-expectancy of the universe,” Prof Krauss tells New Scientist.
Someone should have told Toni Vernelli. Perhaps she would have reconsidered her decision. And by the way, what if some space aliens discovered dark matter billions of years ago? Should we be looking for a letter to the editor of New Scientist from some fellows on Rigel VII demanding a correction?
November 24th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Quantum ecocosmology, the transcendent new metascience that I just founded, teaches:
The Multiverse is an All-Nurturing Overmother Who shelters Gaia and her sister worlds. Negative thinking releases cosmic cognitive pollutants that threaten not only Gaia but also her sisters and the Overmother Herself.
Toni Vernelli is on the right track, but stronger measures are needed.
Think multiversally, act locally!
November 25th, 2007 at 1:24 am
Lawrence Krauss has backtracked and “sort of” apologized.
Alas, there’s more–much more–where that came from.
Although biology and, arguably, computational science are ascendant, traditionally physics has been first among the sciences. Perhaps, like some civilizations, a science decays from within before it is overthrown from without.