Cosmology – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Mar 8
2023

More speculations on superfluid vacuum physics and theology

I recently speculated on a toy model for scientific theology, with superintelligent God-like entities that live in the bare quantum vacuum. More speculations below.

This is not (yet) science — it’s far too vague and speculative to be called that — or theology. Call it science fiction (or “religion fiction” in the sense explored in my article “Religion Fiction Inspires Real Religion”) without the fiction. I guess I should write a science fiction story as a container for these speculations.

Therefore, I’ll often refer to superfluid vacuum theory (SVT) as “Cooper-Hofstadter theory” — a SVT that was featured in “The Big Bang Theory” TV show, of all things! Also, I guess Sheldon Cooper is more known than Leon Cooper.

Mar 8
2023

Strange rebels

I recently read an interesting book on reality, entitled The Fabric of Reality. In the book, David Deutsch constructs a unified theory of reality by combining four fundamental theories: 1. Quantum mechanics (multiverse interpretation). 2. Turing principle of computers and artificial intelligence. 3. Popperian epistemology. 4. Darwinian evolution. Deutsch says: In all cases the theory […].

Mar 7
2023

In a first, scientists record shockwaves in the cosmic web

First evidence of magnetic fields in the Universe’s galactic web.

The cosmic web is the name astronomers give to the structure of our Universe. It refers to the clusters, filaments, dark matter, and voids that make up the basis of this ever-expanding Universe. We can observe this via optical telescopes by mapping the locations of galaxies.

In a new research published in Science Advances, for the first time, scientists claim to have observed shockwaves moving through these galaxy clusters and filaments that make up the galactic or cosmic web. A phenomenon that has long been a universal mystery.

Mar 7
2023

How Humans Could Go Interstellar, Without Warp Drive

The field equations of Einstein’s General Relativity theory say that faster-than-light (FTL) travel is possible, so a handful of researchers are working to see whether a Star Trek-style warp drive, or perhaps a kind of artificial wormhole, could be created through our technology.

But even if shown feasible tomorrow, it’s possible that designs for an FTL system could be as far ahead of a functional starship as Leonardo da Vinci’s 16th century drawings of flying machines were ahead of the Wright Flyer of 1903. But this need not be a showstopper against human interstellar flight in the next century or two. Short of FTL travel, there are technologies in the works that could enable human expeditions to planets orbiting some of the nearest stars.

Certainly, feasibility of such missions will depend on geopolitical-economic factors. But it also will depend on the distance to nearest Earth-like exoplanet. Located roughly 4.37 light years away, Alpha Centauri is the Sun’s closest neighbor; thus science fiction, including Star Trek, has envisioned it as humanity’s first interstellar destination.

Mar 7
2023

Fred Hoyle: “I don’t believe in the Big Bang”

Sir Fred Hoyle was an English astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. He also held controversial stances on other scientific matters — in particular his rejection of the “Big Bang” theory, a term coined by him on BBC radio, and his promotion of panspermia and the Steady-state theory of the universe.

Mar 7
2023

Scientists Glimpse Faint Shocks in Cosmic Web that Links the Universe

Over time, clumps of dark matter began to gravitationally pull in regular matter, forming recognizable structures, such as galaxies. Galaxies, in turn, coalesced together into massive galaxy clusters that are linked across huge stretches of space by filaments of dark matter, creating what is now known as the cosmic web.

For years, scientists have speculated that magnetic fields within the cosmic web would help to produce shocks that might glow dimly in radio light. Now, for the first time, astronomers have captured this “predicted emission from the formation and growth of the large-scale structure of the Universe,” according to a recent study in Science Advances.

Mar 7
2023

A mysterious object is being sucked into our galaxy’s black hole. Now, we may know what it is

A strange blob has been seen rapidly circling our galaxy’s central black hole. Now, astronomers have identified it as the exploded debris from two merging stars.

Mar 5
2023

Ask Ethan: Did our Universe really arise from nothing?

The Big Bang was hot, dense, uniform, and filled with matter and energy. Before that? There was nothing. Here’s how that’s possible.

Mar 5
2023

It from Bit: Pioneering Physicist John Archibald Wheeler on Information, the Nature of Reality, and Why We Live in a Participatory Universe

All things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe… Observer-participancy gives rise to information.

Mar 4
2023

Galactic Explosion Reveals New Details About the Universe

An international team of researchers stumbled upon an exploding supernova in a distant spiral galaxy, using data from the first year of interstellar observation by the James Webb Space Telescope.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb) is an orbiting infrared observatory that will complement and extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope. It covers longer wavelengths of light, with greatly improved sensitivity, allowing it to see inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today as well as looking further back in time to observe the first galaxies that formed in the early universe.