Forget Black Holes, How Do You Find A Wormhole?

For a start, they can be distinguished from black holes, as wormhole mouths do not have an event horizon. Secondly, if matter could possibly travel through wormholes, light certainly can, but the light emitted will have a characteristic angular intensity distribution. If we were viewing a wormhole's mouth, we would be witness to a circle, resembling a bubble, with intense light radiating from the inside "rim". Looking toward the center, we would notice the light sharply dim. At the center we would notice no light, but we would see right through the mouth of the wormhole and see stars (from our side of the universe) shining straight through.

The "Pioneer Effect" explained?

Astronomers describe violent universe

Much of what they keep finding plays out like a stellar version of a violent Quentin Tarantino movie. The violence surrounds and approaches Earth, even though our planet is safe and "in a pretty quiet neighborhood," said Wheeler, author of the book "Cosmic Catastrophes."

Our universe as virtual reality

Jacques Vallee, Hans Moravec and John Keel in the same sentence? Go for it!

Time is running out - literally, says scientist

The motivation for this radical end to time itself is to provide an alternative explanation for "dark energy" - the mysterious antigravitational force that has been suggested to explain a cosmic phenomenon that has baffled scientists.

(Via The Speculist.)

The Cosmos in a Test Tube

A collision between a brane and an antibrane can leave behind topological defects, including perhaps the Big Bang itself. But however elegant this theory, the problem with string theory is that it makes no falsifiable predictions, scientists being unable to find two Universe-sized objects that you can crash into each other. According to Richard Haley, who led the team at Lancaster University, a testable model can be found in a test tube of liquid helium.

Mankind 'shortening the universe's life'

"The intriguing question is this," Prof Krauss told the Telegraph. "If we attempt to apply quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole, and if our present state is unstable, then what sets the clock that governs decay? Once we determine our current state by observations, have we reset the clock? If so, as incredible as it may seem, our detection of dark energy may have reduced the life expectancy of our universe."

Possible . . . but what of ETI, provided that it exists?

Bruce Sterling writes:

Wait a minute -- in the entire 13.7 billion year history of the universe, nobody *else* ever made these "anthropic" observations about dark energy? That's a tad *egotistical,* isn't it? And these "observers" who are shortening the lifespan of the universe -- that's not "mankind," that's just eighty, ninety anthropic cosmologists, tops, right?

Ideas like this make my head spin in a most agreeable way.

Big Bang or Big Goof? Astronomer Challenges 'Seeds' Proof

Verschuur's research asserts that the seeds are not located on the edge of the universe at all. Rather, he says, the so-called seeds are very nearby: They're just previously unmapped clouds of "neutral hydrogen" gas located inside the Milky Way. In other words, astronomers who mistook the "seeds" for objects on the edge of the universe are like someone who looks outdoors through a window and mistakes smudges on the glass for clouds in the sky.

"Smoot said he saw the face of God. All I can say is, God lives in our neighborhood," Verschuur joked.

(Via The Anomalist.)

The Creationist crowd is going to love that remark.

Is this lively and elegant animation an accurate depiction of a Theory of Everything?



And just how long until we see it reproduced in a crop glyph?

(Thanks again to Steve S. for the lead.)

Huge Hole Found in the Universe

It is not a black hole, which is a small sphere of densely packed matter. Rather, this one is mostly devoid of stars, gas and other normal matter, and it's also strangely empty of the mysterious "dark matter" that permeates the cosmos. Other space voids have been found before, but nothing on this scale.

Astronomers don't know why the hole is there.

"Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size," said researcher Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota.

(Via KurzweilAI.net.)

I think this must be where Seth Shostak stores his ego.

The Simulation Argument Goes Way Back

On the other hand, if we could somehow demonstrate that we're living in a simulated reality then there might be some fairly major consequences for the whole idea of a "Theory of Everything". Finding a grand unified theory to unite all the forces of nature would then only be a description of this reality, but not necessarily a valid description of the universe which spawned ours, or the one that spawned that one. So the "end of science" would be pushed back indefinitely and quite possibly, forever. The prime goal of science would shift from seeking to attain a complete model of reality to the search for a means to communicate with the "programmers", or whatever you wanted to call them.

Simulation cosmology appeals to me, in part, because of the ways it might explain "paranormal" phenomena. Maybe UFO encounters and near-death experiences offer portals into a computationally richer domain that we struggle to define for sheer lack of vocabulary.

Any Message for Whoever's Simulating Our World? Leave It Here and Win a Real Prize

If we are in that simulation, what's your message to the simulator? You can offer constructive criticism (think of the blog as a suggestion box), meditations, strategic flattery, pleas or rationales for letting humanity (or at least you) survive and prosper in this world and beyond. Post whatever you want, and I'll pick a winner next week.

Alternatively, feel free to leave your textual offering to the Great Simulator as a comment right here at Posthuman Blues (sorry -- no prizes available).

The End of Everything

It can be said that humans have a bit of a short term view of things. We're concerned about the end of summer, the next school year, and maybe even retirement. But these are just a blink of an eye in cosmic terms. Let's really think big, stare forward in time, and think about what the future holds for the Universe. Look forward millions, trillions, and even 10100 years into the future. Let's consider the end of everything.

Now we're talking!

Maintaining fictional galaxies not your bag? Try finding real ones:

The simple answer is that the human brain is much better at recognising patterns than a computer can ever be. Any computer program we write to sort our galaxies into categories would do a reasonable job, but it would also inevitably throw out the unusual, the weird and the wonderful. To rescue these interesting systems which have a story to tell, we need you.

Many lives in many worlds

From the bird perspective, Everett's multiverse is simple. There is only one wavefunction, and it evolves smoothly and deterministically over time without any kind of splitting or parallelism. The abstract quantum world described by this evolving wavefunction contains within it a vast number of classical parallel storylines (worlds), continuously splitting and merging, as well as a number of quantum phenomena that lack a classical description. From their frog perspective, observers perceive only a tiny fraction of this full reality, and they perceive the splitting of classical storylines as quantum randomness.

(Via Reality Carnival.)

I suspect the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) will prevail -- assuming our universe is predicated on quantum physics. Some thinkers (such as Rudy Rucker) hold that quantum phenomena might not be "deep" enough and could mask a more primal mathematical underpinning.

Let's have an informal vote. What do you think? Are other versions of you reading different blogs at this very moment? Is the MWI a valid assumption or somehow flawed? Feel welcome to leave a comment.

Black Holes are Key to the Evolution of the Universe

One of the most important findings of the simulation was the impact of black holes. Galaxies look the way they do because of the supermassive black holes at their centres.

No Stars Shine in This Dark Galaxy

An international team of astronomers have conclusive new evidence that a recently discovered "dark galaxy" is, in fact, an object the size of a galaxy, made entirely of dark matter.

An Atlas of the Universe

This web page is designed to give everyone an idea of what our universe actually looks like. There are nine main maps on this web page, each one approximately ten times the scale of the previous one. The first map shows the nearest stars and then the other maps slowly expand out until we have reached the scale of the entire visible universe.

(Via Beyond the Beyond.)

Could black holes be portals to other universes?

One might hope to distinguish the two by something called Hawking radiation, an emission of particles and light which should only come from black holes and would have a characteristic energy spectrum. But this radiation is so weak that it would be completely swamped by other sources, such as the background glow of microwaves left over from the big bang, making it unobservable in practice.

Another difference one might hope to exploit is that unlike black holes, wormholes have no event horizon. This means that things could go in a wormhole and come back out again. In fact, theorists say one variety of wormhole wraps back onto itself, so that it leads not to another universe, but back to its own entrance.

(Via The Anomalist.)

LIMITATIONS ARE OUR FRIENDS

Limitations are our friends. They make our existence possible, and they make the universe comprehensible. I like that while some advanced technologies might seem to be indistinguishable from magic, they will not BE magic. I like the word 'impossible'. Not impossible in the sense of "beyond our current capabilities", but impossible in the sense that there is a level of reality that we can never touch, never change and never appeal to no matter how passionately we might dream of one day being gods.