From: Ray Dickenson <ray.dickenson@...>
  To: <...>
  Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 09:24:47 +0000
  Subject: Who's right Hoyle, Dicke, Anthropics, or I.D.-ers? 


  Science looked gloomily on the Universe, saying

  1) it's going to collapse in a Big Crunch (& kept twisting data to fit that),

  2) and even if it didn't collapse then it's doomed to die the "Heat Death" of lonely, cold stars
  finally winking out.

  Well, #1) has been disproved, the Universe is expanding too fast to collapse - ever.

  But #2) has still got everyone confused, pragmatists, anthropic fans and I.D. enthusiasts alike.

  Reason - Robert Dicke (quite reasonably) said - `if we're looking at it, it's got to be old enough
  to have made the atoms of which organic beings are built' - which was later taken (by some)
  to be the first "weak anthropic" argument.

  Subsequent stronger "anthropics" went all the way to - '... therefore it was designed just for
  us humans' - which you might agree is not a necessarily logical conclusion.

  (Hoyle seemed to be about half-way to that position)

  Dicke's time estimate for human existence was - "not before ten billion years" - but didn't
  allow us much after that. He said that stars can make heavy atoms like carbon, oxygen,
  nitrogen & phosphorus about ten billion years from day zero - but he also thought that
  significantly later (say another five or ten billion years?) the stars will have exhausted
  their fuel, no further heavy atoms will be made, stars go out and so do we!

  Now things have changed :-

  First, it seems that "life" is more or less inevitable in our Universe; large groups of "bits"
  will always self-organize, first to dynamic patterns (sand-pile experiments), then to
  chemical patterns (deep-space clouds of organic molecules coincidentally forming the
  amino acids needed for all Earth life), then to "life" and perhaps finally to "intelligence".

  (According to some science definitions we aren't intelligent yet, because we can't assure
  our own survival - a defining quality, apparently)

  [Incidentally, after "Chaos Theory' finally calmed down, comes some sort of excuse for
  sad human history - apparently all self-organizing systems choose to develop (are forced
  to an `attractor') just this side of chaos. Might explain a lot.]

  Second, although downplayed att. (probably from ignorance), "jets" are forcing themselves
  on our attention.

  [Check: << jets.html m87 jet >> or just << m87 jet >> in Google Images for one that'll scare
  the hell out of any sensible observer, wherever he's standing]

  Jets are pure plasma shooting out - from the N & S poles of neutron stars and even whole
  galactic cores - at relativistic speeds and for hundreds, maybe thousands of light-years.

  So? ... So they redistribute matter at its most basic, to be re-used in star formation (and
  I'm out on a limb flatly stating they're the cause of spiral galaxies).

  Which means Dicke's pessimistic "end-date" for humans doesn't apply - and never did.
  And one of the biggest `co-incidences' backing up the I.D. arguments has just evaporated.

  But all that might also mean the "Big Bang" is a bit further back than science says (and
  that Halton Arp might've had a point about red-shifts).

  Also, if you think about it, that a lot of other life-forms should be around, and that - toward
  galactic centers - they would've started a bit earlier than us (say a few millions, or billions
  of years or so?).

  Cheers
  Ray D

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Perceptions" http://www.perceptions.couk.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Note:

There's some general background at
<< sagan cohen stewart spinrad asimov >> in Google

and more lowdown on "jets" at

<< jets.html m87 jet >>

cheers
Ray

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