[Oe List ...] NY Times editorial - AWE

[Geri Tolman]

Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium
is going to be on the second hour of Talk of the Nation on NPR radio today,
along with the author of the book "I Killed Pluto".  Perhaps they'll visit
this topic.
 
Geri Tolman


  _____  

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Subject: [Oe List ...] NY Times editorial - AWE



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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