[Oe List ...] Salmon - AWE COME ON!

[William Salmon]

Concerning the awe, Jaime comes close to summarizing the issue for me. 
    Bill Salmon
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jaime Vergara 
  To: oe at wedgeblade.net 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2010 7:35 PM
  Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] NY Times editorial - AWE


  When it was that we decided science defined boundaries rather than point to the vast unknown of knowledge is itself a display of human folly. The Big Bang, like the Flat Earth theory, served its purpose in its time.  Now, new data expands our horizon and we are thankful, as our ancestors were, I am sure, in their time's breakthroughs. 


  Thanks Laurel and Jack for your reminders of our continuing appropriation of our human faculty of thought.


  Jaime


  For all that was, thanks; for all that will be, yes; for all that is, amen!





  -----Original Message-----
  From: Jack Gilles <icabombay at igc.org>
  To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe at wedgeblade.net>
  Sent: Thu, Dec 9, 2010 3:25 am
  Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] NY Times editorial - AWE


  Dear Laurel, 


  Just to share with you and others that there are other alternative understandings.  There are many scientists who do not "buy" into the Big Bang theory at all.  There is a highly respected group who have talked that we live in a "steady state" universe with continuous creation and destruction of galaxies.  The "red shift" that is one of the "proofs" cited for the Big Bang theory can be explained in other ways that do not have the distant galaxies receding at ever increasing speeds.  I know that this is counter to the CW, but I, for one, am a follower of the steady state universe.  This is a very complex and highly scientific argument, but just to let you know that there are other explanations that do not require exotic solutions.   For those who might be interested in this other view they can contact me, but I don't think this is the forum for exploring theories, but I do appreciate your reflection on the awesome mystery we are a part of.


  Jack





  On Dec 8, 2010, at 11:46 AM, LAURELCG at aol.com wrote:


    Editorial
    Before the Boom
    Published: November 30, 2010
    New York Times 
    Astronomers and astrophysicists have given us insight into what happened in the first trillionths-of-a-second after the Big Bang, nearly 14 billion years ago. But the current cosmological hypothesis is that before the Big Bang there was nothing. 
    Now Roger Penrose, the eminent British mathematician, is arguing that there is physical evidence that may predate the Big Bang. In a recent paper, he and his co-author, the physicist V. G. Gurzadyan, describe a pattern of concentric circles detected against the universal backdrop of cosmic microwave radiation generated by the Big Bang. These circles, they say, may be gravitational waves generated by collisions of superbig black holes before the Big Bang. 
    The two scientists go even further, claiming that the evidence also suggests that our universe may “be but one aeon in a (perhaps unending) succession of such aeons.” What we think of as our “universe” may simply be one link in a chain of universes, each beginning with a big bang and ending in a way that sends detectable gravitational waves into the next universe. 
    The argument is highly controversial. But if the circles the two scientists have detected stand up to further examination — if they’re not the result of noise or instrumental error — it could radically change the way we think about our universe. And the notion is no more radical than that of some cosmologists who argue that our universe is only one in a multiverse — a possibly infinite number of co-existing, but undetectable, universes. 
    The question is: What do we do with these possibilities? Our answer is to marvel at them and be reminded, once again, that we live in a universe — however we define it — that contains more wonders than we can begin to imagine. 
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