I'll explain.

Mr. Greene is a great mathematician however I consider his work too wrapped up in justifying his time on String theory and to me this colours his entire approach to maths and his explanations, there is nothing wrong with that, there are nuggets of truth in String theory still to be found I feel.

I'm no more or less 'mainstream' than him, furthermore being 'mainstream' is the antithesis of what a theoretician has to be.

We all have our own ways of interpreting the maths.

So where does the foundation of his hypothesis come from?

Mainly from some of the resolution difficulties of 3 particular fields (QFT) mathematics, but they do not show what he postulates, they simply point to 'something'.

So it does have a foundation.

I'll tell you why I don't agree with it.

First, for Greene and the string advocates the Cosmos started in one shot, this finely balanced Cosmos formed in one attempt, this is the consequence of string theory mathematics, for me, a less close adherent of string theory, this Cosmos is simply too finely balanced to have been 'right' at the first attempt.

But I have to resolve that 'something' in the field maths and for me it is a result of the almost infinite attempts at a stable Cosmos, the maths allow this too.

The 'not a hole in one' postulation is not new, but the biggest stumbling block for us was the lack of remnants of the numerous failed starts, just like a cars engine that fails to start there had to be some 'soot' about from the moderately successful attempts... and lots of it.

It was postulated that this would be some sort of 'energy' that was either spent or non-interactive, the confirmation of huge amounts of Dark Energy (with remarkably similar properties to those hypothesised in the late 90s) has only bolstered my point of view, largely at the cost of the various competitive postulations including Multiverses.

Additionally, parsimony mitigates against the Multiverse concept from every angle whereas parsimony actually supports the existence of remnant of previous failures to produce this Cosmos.

That is why I'm so confident that Mr. Greene is wrong, almost every day something is added to the understanding of Dark Energy and to date every part of it seems to support my position and undermines his.

Yep, Capt Bravz did not go unnoticed. Good sport.

There's no evidence or reason to believe that metabolism or aging would experience time dilation any differently than any other chemical process. Before this thread I'd never even heard anyone suggest it as a possibility.

You almost certainly have, but in a form you haven't appreciated the ramifications of.

More later.

I would suspect the psychological impact of time dilation would be unnerving though probably not a major issue (ever read the Forever War?)
I wonder what the double slit experiment looks like at close to light speed though ?

Has he? I've missed that.


Ok.

On the subject of the distance shortening as one approaches velocity c, this is from an observer's perspective. SR is purely an observer-based phenomenon. From the observer's perspective, time as displayed by the traveller would appear to slow and the traveller would appear to gain mass (because energy directed at the traveller would have increasingly less effect on the traveller's velocity) until the traveller disappears between the event horizon after which the traveller would appear frozen in time, and the real traveller would be undetectable without an intermediate frame to relay signals. This is how I understand it.

No, no, no... it is only 'apparent to an outside viewer, you don't shrink/slim down in reality.

BD, you are normally clear minded on such things, very unusual... hard day at the office, a quick beer and you'll right-side yourself again, don't get lost now, you have a good mind.

Reading this, just after having read about the anthropic principle, it occurs to me that whereas (to use an o level physics metaphor) Greene posits multiple universes in parallel, you posit them in series.

Be that as it may, if you assign DE/DM to be the echo of previous failed attempts to get the big bang engine to turn over, should not you be able to calculate how many failed attempts there have been based upon the amount of DE/DM that is present in our universe?




Edited to correct iPad autocorrection.

I have some questions about the multiverses in series theory, do these failed attempts ever actually exist? The reason I ask is if a Universe was created before our current one and its ingredients weren't quite right, so what? Once all of the energy of the Universe has been released it can't suddenly decide, 'Ooh it's a bit chilly this one, I'll go back inside' or 'fk this, there's way too much antimatter, I'm out' etc. The energy has been released and cannot be destroyed so where does it go? Does it all go back into some metaphysical 'fields of potential' cauldron to be used again? As if it doesn't and it remains in the physical Universe, even if it that is as an infinitesimally small point with no extended dimensions, isn't that just this Universe?

I love Brian Greene's books and I am a complete layman in this field, but I too think the multiverses in parallel idea is a crock of st. It's like a get out clause as it can be used to explain away anything that doesn't make sense in this Universe. 'Oh, yeah, I don't know what happened to that particle either I think it must have jumped across to the other place'. I'd love to be proved wrong, but I think it stinks.

Gene, I take it you are not an advocate of M-Theory (as you mentioned your problems with string theory on which it is based)? If not what theory do you follow on the sub-fermion/boson scale nature of the Universe? I've always like strings, oscillations just made sense to me.

I'm still waiting on the biological time dilation hypothesis. I was thinking about it last night and all I could come up with was that a biological organism has processes running in different inertial frames and that the metabolism and ageing process is affected differently than an inanimate object would be. I still don't like the idea though, and I don't see the point of it. What's the problem with a person ageing less when they have been travelling very fast? There is no twins paradox, it was solved without even using GR.