But What Does Professor Hawking Say?

Science is a funny thing. Once we think a handle on a concept has been had, the new information comes in, and all bets are off because the theory doesn’t fit the facts any longer. Isaac Newton in the 1600s, thought he had explained the concepts of many things adequately, and with the invention of calculus, appeared to have the math to back it up.

Albert Einstein came along in the nineteenth century, and by the dawn of the twentieth, had turned the world of Newton upside down in certain ...

instances.

The mathematics, and verbal explanations of Dr. Einstein were enough to explain most things observed well after his death in 1955, but them things such as the postulation of black holes, and later, actual evidence of their being, brought some of the Einsteinian calculations into question.

Stephen Hawking has worked most all of his adult life trying to explain the rest; what Einstein never had time to do – develop the Grand Unified Theory – one all encompassing theory that explains all observed behavior of the universe.

Now, an article on slashdot gives yet another jolt to the ideas we have, possibly changing far-fetched, but mathematically substantiated things like string theory in the process.

“Petr Horava, a physicist at the University of California in Berkeley, has a new theory about gravity and spacetime. At high energies, it actually snips any ties between space and time, yet at low energies devolves to equivalence with the theory of General Relativity, which binds them together. The theory is gaining popularity with physicists because it fits some observations better than Einstein’s or Newton’s solutions. It better predicts the movement of the planets (in an idealized case) and has a potential to create the illusion of dark matter. Another physicist calculated that under Horava Gravity, our universe would experience not a Big Bang but a Big Bounce — and the new theory reproduces the ripples from such an event in a way that matches measurements of the cosmic microwave background.”

This could be a theory that works at the quantum level more like what we observe in everyday life. Kind of like saying that a person’s life can be ordered, working in a normal fashion, with the ability to absorb outside problems until a point where the train comes off the rails, and everything snaps.

It could become known as the ” **** Hitting the Fan” theory.

§

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Technorati Tags: Isaac Newton,Albert Einstein,theoretical physics,Stephen Hawking,Grand Unified Theory,Petr Horava,space-time disjoined,black holes,new theory of gravity

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

perhaps M.C Escher knew more than he was letting on…

•

•

Hide