Physicists From The United States

"One of the first scientific concepts taught to children is the idea that matter can be a solid, liquid, or gas. Indeed, if you were to ask most American adults how many there are, the most likely answer you would get is three. It would not be unreasonable to consider this to be common knowledge. Yet the scientifically savvy know of far more phases of matter than the familiar three. is another, as is . And there are many more that exist at extreme temperatures or pressures. Change the conditions under which matter finds itself, and it will act in unexpected ways."

"One very interesting idea is that when we get to the smallest size of all, we don't find a particle, but rather an ultra-tiny vibrating string."

"... Are we thinking about the wrong? Are we thinking about quantum field theory wrong? Are there particles at the Large Hadron Collider that are hiding from us? ... It's true that the Large Hadron Collider has vast data sets. And when you have a gigantic amount of data, if you don't ask exactly the right question, you might not see what's actually in there. So, we have to be very thoughtful about all the different questions that we should ask of this data."

"Two well-regarded measurements for the expansion rate of the universe disagree, leaving cosmologists very puzzled. It may be that something large has been overlooked in our theory of the . This discrepancy is called the and it has led to a very interesting conversation within the cosmology community."

"I'm not personally a fan of the idea of SUSY and I never have been. But it's possible and we should continue to look for it. For one thing, if supersymmetry is false, then superstring theory is false. I don't believe in superstring theory either, but I like it. I kind of hope it's right. But hope isn't good enough in science."

"What physics explains the enormous disparity between the gravitational scale and the typical mass scale of the elementary particles?"

"... there's an argument that the Standard Model plus gravity is all there is, and the has nothing to do with nature. And that argument is that the properties of the world, the properties of particle physics in particular, are determined partly ... largely? ... by a ."

"... a very special type of falsehood common in explanations of physics for nonexperts ... a physics fib or, more simply, a phib. Phibs are often found in articles and books about the universe. They arise when well-intentioned physicists, faced with a nonexpert's question, are trying to concoct a short, memorable tale to serve as a compromise between giving no answer at all and giving a correct but incomprehensible one."

"... in the seventies the work of and Rubin ... looked at galaxies and found evidence for dark matter in every single one."

"s and massive s in the mass range 2–20 have been proposed as candidates to provide the in the halo of our galaxy."

"... On my father’s side, I come from a family of artists and architects. My grandfather was a Bauhaus architect in Germany and my grandmother was a painter. When my father as a child was tinkering around in the basement with chemistry sets, his mother said to him, “You’ll never make a living in science. Why don’t you go into the family business, the arts?” Well, he defied that advice. He was actually a PhD student with Heisenberg in Göttingen, and then a post-doc with Enrico Fermi in Chicago. After that he went to Caltech where he switched to biology and became one of the founders of the field of molecular biology. He founded the department of molecular biology at the . My mother was from a town on the Swiss-German border called , and she actually got her PhD in biology at age 22."

""What is the Universe made of?" The question is one of the deepest unanswered mysteries in all of human existence. Solving the puzzle has been my life's work and is the hottest research topic in cosmology and particle physics today."

"India is truly a mystery containing all that is the worthiest, most spiritual, and intellectual in humankind and the worst aspects of humankind one could ever hope to find including total lack of concern for others, extreme material poverty, and spiritual bankruptcy and fraud. India is the world in other words with everything in the world revealed both of the highest form and lowest denominator. I love India. I hate India. I cannot ever go to India without returned with strong feelings about it. My later writings would not be the same without my frequent stays in India and the influences that this country has had on my thoughts and feelings. If India did not exist, we would create it just as it is perfect in its imperfection."

"[M]aterials [to reproduce the von Neumann machine] should be available in virtually any stellar system—including systems—in the form of meteors, asteroids, comets, and other debris from the formation of the stellar system. ...[M]aterial in asteroids are highly differentiatied; many... are largely nickel-iron, while others contain large amounts of hydrocarbons."

"As the copies of the space probe were made, they would be launched at the stars nearest the target star. When these probes reached these stars, the process would be repeated... until the probes covered all the stars of the Galaxy."

"[T]he von Neumann machine would be programmed to explore the stellar system... and relay information... back to the original solar system..."

"Even if there were no planets in the stellar system... the... machine could be programmed to turn some of the material into an O'Neill colony..."

"The payload of a probe to another stellar system would be a self-reproducing universal constructor with human level intelligence (...a von Neumann machine) together with an engine... travelling... within the stellar target system—[the engine] could be an electric propulsion system... or a ..."

"[T]he information to manufacture a human being is contained in the genes of a single human cell. Thus if an extraterrestrial intelligent species possessed the knowledge to synthesize a living cell—and... experts assert... the human race could develop such knowledge within 30 years—they could program a von Neumann machine to synthesize a fertilized egg cell of their species. If they possessed artificial womb technology—and such... is in the beginning stages... on Earth... they could... synthesize members of their species... As suggested by Eiseley... these beings could be raised... by the robots... free to develop their own civilization..."

"The Physics of Christianity... received... bad reviews from very smart people like John Walker."

"The Omega Point Theory suggests that the particle physics Standard Model (SM) is sufficient to explain both [dark matter and dark energy]: the Dark Energy is just the currently uncancelled part of the positive cosmological constant, and the Dark Matter is just the Standard Model SU(2)_{left} field, coupled to the SM Higgs field. I was very worried when I wrote PHYSICS OF IMMORTALTIY that the entropy in the CMBR would make an acceleration in the collapsing phase of universal history impossible. I propose to solve this problem by claiming the temperature of the CMBR — currently "measured"... 2.2726 degrees — is actually... ! I show in a paper I put on the lanl data base (xxx.lanl.gov) last November that such an apparently ridiculous claim is possible, because any quantized gauge field in a homogeneous and isotropic universe would NECESSARILY have a Planckian spectrum, even at zero temperature! What the measurements of CMBR showing that it is Planckian... are really measuring... not the temperature, but the size of the universe. In my paper, I show how to convert the... "temperature" of 2.2726 into the size of the universe."

"[I]f the observed acceleration were to continue forever, the Theory would be refuted. But the expansion of life to engulf the universe is EXACTLY what is required to cancel the positive cosmological constant (a.k.a. the Dark Energy)..."

"I relate deeply to Tipler’s... concept that future technology may... resurrect the dead... by... "copying them to the future" and... allow myself to contemplate such possibilities. There may be a point where consciousness becomes a important factor in the destiny of the universe, where conscious beings develop the capability to choose and build the universe they want to inhabit, and invite the dead of past ages to join the party by copying them to the future. ...[T]his soft rationalist, high level and not detailed concept ...will, I hope, be detailed and realized by future scientists and engineers."

"Tipler makes the point that the science of cosmology has tended to study the past... of spacetime. But most of spacetime lies to the future... Existing cosmology does address the issue of whether the universe will or will not recollapse, but... there has been very little theoretical investigation of the greater part of spacetime. ...[T]he lead-up to the has received far less study than the aftermath of the Big Bang. Tipler sees the omega-point theory as filling that gap. ...[It] deserves to become the prevailing theory of the future of spacetime until and unless it is experimentally (or otherwise) refuted. (Experimental refutation is possible because the existence of an omega point in our future places certain constraints on the condition of the universe today.)"

"The mechanics of 'steering' the universe to the omega point require actions to be taken throughout space. ...[I]ntelligences will have to spread all over the universe in time to make the first necessary adjustments. This is one of a series of deadlines that Tipler has shown that we would have to meet—and he has shown that meeting... them is, to the best of our... knowledge, physically possible."

"In his enthusiasm... Tipler has neglected part of the Popperian lesson about what the growth of knowledge must look like. If the omega point exists, and if... created in the way... Tipler... set out... the late universe will... consist of embodied thoughts of inconceivable wisdom, creativity and sheer numbers. But... problem solving means rival s, errors, criticism, refutation and backtracking. Admittedly, in the limit (which no one experiences), at the instant the universe ends, everything that is comprehensible may have been understood. But at every finite point our descendants' knowledge will be riddled with errors. Their knowledge will be greater, deeper and broader than we can imagine, but they will make mistakes on a correspondingly titanic scale too. Like us, they will never know certainty or physical security, for their survival, like ours, will depend on... creating a continuous stream of new knowledge. If they... fail, even once... to increase... computing speed and memory capacity... the sky will fall in on them and they will die. Their culture... will be split by passionate controversies. ...[I]t seems unlikely that it could... be regarded as a 'person'. Rather... a vast number of people interacting... disagreeing. ...often ...mistaken, and many mistakes ...uncorrected for... long periods (subjectively). Nor... ever... morally homogeneous...Nothing will be sacred... and... people will continually be questioning assumptions that other[s]... consider... fundamental moral truths. ...[B]y the methods of reason, every... controversy will be resolved. But... replaced by... more... fundamental controversies. Such... is very different from... God... But... some subculture within it... will be resurrecting us if Tipler is right."

"Tipler has been criticized... for mixing religion with science. ...also ...for making wrong scientific assumptions. ...[I]t appears that the is accelerating and ...left to itself, will never enter the phase ...a prerequisite for the scenario ...Tipler is certainly wrong on many points that will be corrected by future scientists. But dismissing him as a crank is... like dismissing Leonardo as a crank because his aircraft sketches wouldn’t fly..."

"I take the last existing copy of the complete works of Tipler and heave it across the event horizon of my TidyTrash™ home black hole."

"And how are we going to use the Higgs field to compute, organise information systems out of free quarks and pure energy... the Boundary Condition Postulate... that says that on Easter Day, 2001, Jesus Christ will return, raise the dead, etc. ...inevitable."

"Tipler's Taub universe event horizon can opener makes the black hole horizon go away. What about the singularity? ...[Y]ou now have a very large number of naked singularities... converging toward the Omega Point, which should make things even more interesting for the universal brain emerging there."

"What a pile of crap."

"Suppose there were a computer... which could run a completely faithful simulation of me—even a simulation at the quantum level so good the Pauli Exclusion Principle wouldn't let us in the same room. Would it be me? Would my consciousness somehow be shared..."

"Tipler says, it will be omnipotent. But... this... is not absolute. ...[I]t is strictly limited by the available matter and energy, and is subject to the laws of physics."

"Since the intelligences in the computer will be creative thinkers, they must be classified as "people". ...And so he claims... at the omega-point limit... an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent society of people. This society, Tipler identifies as God."

"Tipler makes... additional assumptions—some plausible, others less so—which enable him to fill in more details of future history. ...[His] quasi-religious interpretation... and his failure to distinguish that... from the underlying scientific theory, that have prevented the latter from being taken seriously."

"The review in Nature called POI a "masterpiece of pseudoscience". ...I don't think it's that good."

"Tipler notes that an infinite amount of knowledge will have been created by the time of the omega point. He... assumes... the [far future] intelligences will, like us, want (or... need)... knowledge other than... necessary for... survival. ...[T]hey have the potential to discover all [physically knowable] knowledge, and Tipler assumes that they will do so. So in a sense, the omega point will be omniscient."

"Tipler uses the theological term 'omniscient'... but... The omega point will not know everything. The overwhelming majority of abstract truths... will be inaccessible to it as they are to us."

"[H]ow would this work if the brain and computer were separated by several light years? And if not, then what difference does it make if 1032 years of death intervene before the simulation begins to run? ...continuity of consciousness?"

"[P]eople near the omega point could not... communicate their wishes to us, or work miracles (today). They did not create the universe... [nor] invent the laws of physics—nor could they violate those laws... They may listen to prayers... (perhaps by detecting very faint signals), but they cannot answer them. They are... opposed to religious faith, and have no wish to be worshipped. ...But Tipler ...argues that most of the core features of the God of the Judeo-Christian religions, are... properties of the . Most religious people will... disagree..."

"I really admired Barrow and Tipler's Anthropic Cosmic Principle, and now... it's clear how much of the actual wordcraft... was the work of Barrow."

"ouch—what a disappointment! Nothing prepared me for just how B-A-D it is."

"I don't have any trouble... imagining nanotechnology, von Neumann probes, AI exceeding human intelligence within 50 years, or the biosphere expanding to fill... the universe. But none of that is new, and Tipler tells it less clearly than others..."

"[T]his necessary existence... and omniscience... can... be consistent with... free will... by showing that... William James's definition of and free will might be physically realized in . This physical indeterminism can arise only in the context of quantum gravity... completely different from the "indeterminism" arising from the uncertainty principle. (Nonrelativistic quantum mechanics is... deterministic)"

"It would... not be... inaccurate to regard one of the subprograms of the universal mind in the far future, one with a Turing Test-passing subprogram, as an "angel.""

"[I]nclusion of the whole past, present, and future universal history in the Omega Point is more than a mere mathematical artifact. ...[T]he Omega Point "experiences" the whole of universal history "all at once.""

"[U]nless I'm missing something, the wheels fall off Starship Eternity."

"[I]s the God (...Person ...) the God? ...the uncreated Creator of the ...universe ...Who exists necessarily ... i.e., the Person's nonexistence would be a logical contradiction."

"Paul Dirac was the first physicist to argue for the Postulate of Eternal Life: "With my assumption... life need never end. There is no decisive argument for dediding between [certain] assumptions. I prefer the one that allows the possibility of endless life. One may hope that some day the question will be decided by direct observation."

"Only if God is not in any sense contingent can one avoid regress posed in the query, who created God?"