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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] Interesting new book by John Barrow: "The Constants of Nature"
  • Date: Sat, 05 Apr 2003 08:08:12 -0800

On Tech Nation, public radio talkshow, this morning, Moira Gunn interviewed
Cambridge University
mathematician John Barrow, author of "The Constants of Nature".
There are a lot of interesting new and old concepts in this book that are
stimulating to say the least.
Among them is the notion that life as we know it, i.e the existence of
observers of the universe, is possible
because of acceleration of the expansion of the universe. This acceleration freezes variability in certain constants (i.e. the speed of light) that otherwise, through chaos, might preclude the existence of life.

As for communication, trying to convey the meaning of our current standards of measurement, i.e. length, a meter, a stick in an institute in France, to an inhabitant of another solar system, might better be done by saying that, for example, my height, 5" 6 1/2" is equivalent to
so many units of the wavelength of light emitted by a certain element.

He suggests that we might be dealing with a ten dimensional universe and that we should be thinking in terms of conditional probability rather than absolute probability.

Other books he has written include:

"The Book of Nothing"
"Theories of Everything"

--
L.F.London
lfl@intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech




  • [permaculture] Interesting new book by John Barrow: "The Constants of Nature", Lawrence F. London, Jr., 04/05/2003

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