DaveR
08-08-2007, 06:41 PM
I went to talk last night at UWA by Sir Roger Penrose. It attracted about 400 people including 10 from AGWA. The topic was ' what happended before the big bang?'
Sir Roger's notion is that the universe expands until near maximum entropy and then 'forgets' its state and restarts. Therefore our current universe is just 1 in a series, though he argued that it was not the same as big bang/ big crunch/ big bang, etc. ( I hope I have have not missed the point trying to reduce a 90 minute lecture into 1 paragraph!)
In the course of the lecture, Sir Roger discussed Enstein's constant, open, closed and equibliritic universes, the problem of the cosmic background radiation indicating maximum entropy, not low entropy as expected from the start of the universe. A point that caught my eye was his view that the sun provides low entropy to earth rather than energy.
He was very entertaining, obviously extremely sharp and proud that he had not advanced to Powerpoint - the night was based on o/head slides.
The night finished with the audience singing happy birthday to which Sir Roger said it would be a long birthday as he was flying to the US across the dateline. Time dilation happens in strange places:lol:
I think I will have to get one of his books
Dave
Sir Roger's notion is that the universe expands until near maximum entropy and then 'forgets' its state and restarts. Therefore our current universe is just 1 in a series, though he argued that it was not the same as big bang/ big crunch/ big bang, etc. ( I hope I have have not missed the point trying to reduce a 90 minute lecture into 1 paragraph!)
In the course of the lecture, Sir Roger discussed Enstein's constant, open, closed and equibliritic universes, the problem of the cosmic background radiation indicating maximum entropy, not low entropy as expected from the start of the universe. A point that caught my eye was his view that the sun provides low entropy to earth rather than energy.
He was very entertaining, obviously extremely sharp and proud that he had not advanced to Powerpoint - the night was based on o/head slides.
The night finished with the audience singing happy birthday to which Sir Roger said it would be a long birthday as he was flying to the US across the dateline. Time dilation happens in strange places:lol:
I think I will have to get one of his books
Dave