Comments on: Is Our Universe a Big Schrödinger’s Cat—Where It’s Alive Is Where We Live?

By: David Brown

David Brown — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 11:27:38 +0000

“… variations in the fine structure constant amounting to about 1 part in 100,000.” Are such variations merely a consequence of failure to correctly model Milgrom’s Modified Dynamics? By carefully studying the paper by P. Kroupa, B. Famaey, K.S. de Boer, J. Dabringhausen, M. Pawlowski, C.M. Boily, H. Jerjen, D. Forbes, G. Hensler, M. Metz, called “Local-Group tests of dark-matter concordance cosmology. Towards a new paradigm for structure formation”, http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010A%26A…523A..32K A&A 523, 32 (2010), one can learn that something is seriously wrong with the standard model of cosmology. I call the Rañada-Milgrom apparent-or-real effect the apparent or real necessity of replacing the -1/2 in Einstein’s field equations by -1/2 + sqrt((60±10)/4) * 10**-5. Note that the alleged variations in the fine structure constant, the Pioneer anomaly, and the OPERA neutrino anomaly are in the range predicted by the Rañada-Milgrom effect.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 06:14:36 +0000

Really fantastic, thoughtful, very well written post. Thank you! I shared it with a number of people and they enjoyed it too.

By: Mephane

Mephane — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 08:36:00 +0000

I think Schrödinger’s Cat is quite a bad analogy here, as it is about two states superposed on an entire object simultaneously.

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 22:32:47 +0000

Wow, fascinating stuff. This raises so many questions I don’t know where to start. I’m not a physicist, of course, so that probably doesn’t help.
I wonder if eventually after studying the variation in the fine structure constant we might be able to determine a rate of change over distance in the distribution of its values pointing to a sort of ‘center of the known universe’. If so, it would be interesting to be able to pinpoint our actual proximity to such.
What if we discovered several such ‘centers’? Could these indicate the location of other ‘pockets’ of life?
Is there a causal connection is between the evolution of life and the evolution of the universe? It seems obvious (though not necessarily true) that an ordered universe of some kind would be required for life to arise, but is it possible that some sort of feedback loop exists, where a certain degree of coherence allows the beginning steps toward life, and life and consciousness then somehow reinforce the process?
Do we somehow shape the observable universe through our observation of it? Is the rate of expansion of the universe equal to the rate of our increased awareness of it?

How wonderful that science enables us to consider such questions! Thanks for the share.

By: J-Doug

J-Doug — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:59:51 +0000

“But if constants of nature are simply what they are, nothing more can be said about them, right? Well, our viewpoint may suddenly change if a startling new finding should be confirmed through independent research by other scientists…”

“Such a conclusion would greatly amplify the weight of the anthropic principle as a powerful argument for why we observe and measure the physical parameters we do.”

To me, those two statements read as a contradiction. The viewpoint you state in the first quote seems perfectly compatible with the anthropic principle. So why would amplifying its weight change someone who has that viewpoint in the first place? Or are you referring specifically to the Weak or Strong Anthropic principle?

Nor would confirmation of the Anthropic Principle (however possible) say anything about Weinberg’s Schrodinger analogy. A macro-Schrodinger explanation would require an anthropic universe, but an anthropic universe doesn’t require Schrodinger writ large.