Will the real Jesus please stand up …

If you went back a few years and asked for my thoughts on who Jesus was, then, as a believer, I would have claimed that he was the son of God. As proof, I would have pointed to the four Gospels in the New Testament and explained that they are four independent biography’s written by … Read more

Faith vs Facts

Science is well understood and is all about an evidence based approach; gather data, form a hypothesis and then test it. The results will confirm or invalidate the hypothesis, and so over time as you repeat this loop your understanding grows and is refined, but of course you already know all this. Religion on the … Read more

Islam – Arrests and puts of trial two men for eating lunch!!!

Just to illustrate how crazy and totally insane some belief systems can be, we have the case of Hocine Hocini and Salem Fellak who were arrested last august. The hideous crime they are accused of is simply eating lunch on the building site where they worked in Kabylie, northern Algeria … and thats it, nothing … Read more

Anti Islamic statements …freedom of speech or a hate crime?

The Dutch Anti-Islamic politician,  Geert Wilders, is currently on trial, which should prove to be rather interesting, because he is also playing a decisive role in the formation of a new Dutch government. “The freedom of speech of at least 1.5 million people is on trial with me,” Wilders said on a social media site, … Read more

UK Centre for Intelligent Stupidity

An article appeared in the Guardian a few days ago announcing … UK Centre for Intelligent Design claims it will focus on science, not religion The Centre for Intelligent Design features a video introduction from Dr Alastair Noble, who has argued that ID should not be excluded from the study of origins. He says, among … Read more

Wild Science – Pushing the boundaries of understanding

Here is a science article from MIT Technology Review that is not just reporting a discovery, but instead is exploring beyond what we know and understand. I’ve a few things to say, but first the article …

Time Likely To End Within Earth’s Lifespan

There is a 50 per cent chance that time will end within the next 3.7 billion years, according to a new model of the universe

Look out into space and the signs are plain to see. The universe began in a Big Bang event some 13 billion years ago and has been expanding ever since. And the best evidence from the distance reaches of the cosmos is that this expansion is accelerating.

That has an important but unavoidable consequence: it means the universe will expand forever. And a universe that expands forever is infinite and eternal.

Today, a group of physicists rebel against this idea. They say an infinitely expanding universe cannot be so because the laws of physics do not work in an infinite cosmos. For these laws to make any sense, the universe must end, say Raphael Bousso at the University of California, Berkeley and few pals. And they have calculated when that is most likely to happen.

Their argument is deceptively simple and surprisingly powerful. Here’s how it goes. If the universe lasts forever, then any event that can happen, will happen, no matter how unlikely. In fact, this event will happen an infinite number of times.

This leads to a problem. When there are an infinite number of instances of every possible observation, it becomes impossible to determine the probabilities of any of these events occurring. And when that happens, the laws of physics simply don’t apply. They just break down. “This is known as the “measure problem” of eternal inflation,” say Bousso and buddies.

In effect, these guys are saying that the laws of physics abhor an eternal universe.

The only way out of this conundrum is to hypothesise some kind of catastrophe that brings an end to the universe. Then all the probabilities make sense again and the laws of physics regain their power.

When might his be? Bousso and co have crunched the numbers. “Time is unlikely to end in our lifetime, but there is a 50% chance that time will end within the next 3.7 billion years,” they say.

That’s not so long! It means that the end of the time is likely to happen within the lifetime of the Earth and the Sun.

But Buosso and co have some comforting news too. They don’t know what kind of catastrophe will cause the end of time but they do say that we won’t see it coming. They point out that if we were to observe the end of time in any other part of the universe we would have to be causally ahead of it, which is unlikely.

In other words we’ll run headlong into this catastrophe before we can observe its effects on anything else.

MIT Technology Review: Continue reading …

Its not only a wild idea but is also outrageously fascinating. Here we have a great example of the manner in which science does not stand still, but instead ambitious thinkers will attempt to push the boundary and probe the unknown. Its all about gathering data, speculating about what it might imply by forming a hypothesis, then testing to see if it stands or falls. From that we get more data, and so our understanding grows. Is the above article correct? I simply don’t know, but its an interesting idea. If others come along and pull it apart with a detailed explanation, will the author be offended, or discard the newer evidence and cling to the above as an act of faith? Of course not, they will instead discard the dis-proven hypothesis, embrace newer thinking and proceed to run with that instead. Science is not about being right or wrong, but is instead a joint effort to explore.

In stark contrast, belief generally stands still and does not change very much. Challenge a belief with facts that contradict it and you quickly meet resistance, many believers will not accept reality but prefer to embrace the fairy tale.

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