I'm in The Sky at Night

[KenGee]

I got a letter published in this months issue. I was unhappy with the way they treated a readers question about the "fine tuning problem" ie why are we here if just one of ten constants was slightly different. What do you guys think?

[Dennis]

Is that the UK magazine? I haven't seen the magazine recently so unfortunately I am not able to comment. Good of them to publish a correction if that is what it was. Often mags seem to hide these in the small print, out of embarrassment?

Cheers

Dennis

[astroron]

This is Kens letter in the January issue of the magazine, unfortunatly I don't have a copy of the September issue to read the original letter.
It seems to me that they still give at least an equell but to my mind undeserved credence to Inteligent Design:(
The Magazine has just come into the Newsagents:thumbsup:
Ken do you have a copy of the September letter so we could see what the letter and answer were?
Ron

[OneOfOne]

My personal opinion of Intelligent Design is that it is a theory offered by Un-intelegent people and is basically a "cop out". Just because YOU don't understand something, it doesn't mean that YOUR theory must be right, or even that it IS a theory rather than just rationalisaton to fit with your preconceived ideas of how the universe came to be. I don't know how memory works (very few, if any, do), but that doesn't mean I can't remember anything....now where was I? :shrug:

Maybe there are other universes that we know nothing of where they are saying "if gravity was just a little stronger...we wouldn't be here!" Of course, just because there MAY be other universes, it doesn't mean they have to exist! Maybe there are, but the constants are always the same...because they are fundamental to how things exist. The constants may always be the same in every universe...they are, after all....constants!:)

[Kokatha man]

Good stuff, OneOfOne - I'm going to credit you with some really great satire in that last para (hope it was intended!)

As for intelligent design - why don't we opt for "The Theory of Intelligent Designing" - you know, a sort of "The Collaborative Compendium from A Work in Progress - edit. A Specific Life-form*" take on the evolution model: though we'd best tread carefully; too much inherent insinuation therein, and we'd also have to democratise "faith" and "perceived wisdom" to the point where "revelation" at best becomes an ongoing experience (like knowledge/understanding) - and purveyors of brand-names could lose more business and ramp up their own inadequacies!

From the little I've read on memory process, it seems that we only retain specific "reference points" and reconstruct repeatedly from these references - maybe analogous to the fewer pixels in a low resolution image where we fill in the detail: reminds me of the scrabble player who invents words to win!

* Harping & Culling 2008

[KenGee]

The Sky at night is a great mag, Pommy Mags tend to be and Patrick More is a legend. One of the sections they have is for readers to write in questions they would like to have answered. One of the questions was about the Goldilocks enigma. Better know as the fine-tuning problem in some circles of cosmology. It's a question that can quickly divide groups. Now it is a interesting topic and I realise they have limited space, however the person replying basically said there was only two possible answer to the question either this universe is just one in a multiverse that just happens to have the right conditions or... The Universe was design like that.
Not only didn’t I like the reduction of the problem to that I didn’t like reference to intelligent design. Given that intelligent design is a well designed (Ha Ha) well-funded attack on science, as we know it, I was somewhat confused as to why a science-based magazine would give them such footing.

The fact is there are quite a few possible answers to the question. I think people can have very different views on what reason means. There is a reason for everything but that doesn’t need to suggest purpose.

The Multiverse answer seems to come from the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics, whenever an event occurs that can have two or more out comes then they all happen!! The universe splits into two or more copies of itself with one having one outcome in it while the alterative is played out in the other. This to me is where theoretical physic needs to get out more.

[White Rabbit]

First of all let me state that I dont believe in the big guy up in the sky theory, but I do think that it is a valid question for science to be asking. Intelligent design is a theory like any other and I think deserves investigation even if it is only to discount it.

You cannot rule out Intelligent design because you can not disprove it, you can only (like me) "believe" it to be BS, but then you are spouting a belief and not a proven fact.

Have a look on google video for a video called "What we still dont know" there have been a few moments in science where scientists have almost proclaimed to have found God

It's a great topic and one that has been going for thousands of years and one I fear we will never know the real answer to.

Sandy