True Horizon

While some skeptical scientists have had the temerity to question the speculative “Science of the Gaps” inherent in Superstring Theory and its Multiple Universe offspring, they have not abandoned the notion of a Grand Unified Theory (GUT) that serves to combine variant views of theoretical physics. The August, 2006 issue of Scientific American reports that Alain Connes of the Collège of France in Paris, wants to expel Rube Goldberg from the discussion altogether.

In place of the physical reconciliation of the macro/micro paradoxes of general relativity and quantum mechanics, Connes’ proposes a mathematical solution. By use of what he calls “noncommutative geometry,” Connes aims to replace the Cartesian definition of space with an altered geometry that recognizes the peculiarities of quantum theory and the spacetime implications of general relativity. Unlike its Superstring predecessor, Connes’ mathematical model removes the requirement for infinite solutions that have dogged its Superstring alternatives. (Read on …)

Theoretical physics has confirmed agreement between the predictions of General Relativity and its correlation to the physical world to within a trillionth of a percent precision – a precision that cannot be written off to chance. On the macro-scale, where general relativity predominates, this makes nature quite predictable. It also offers implications, the most profound of which is the suggestion that the universe must have had its beginning in a “singularity” of infinite density where all matter, energy, space and time were condensed.

At the same time, Quantum Mechanics has proven to be an extremely fruitful scientific discipline for predicting and understanding the micro-level workings of our universe. At the quantum level, indeterminacy reigns. But the probabilities describing unpredictable events succeed in some way to end in a predictable array of outcomes. Quantum mechanics offers its own view of the origins of the universe that also includes issues regarding the singularity. General relativity and quantum mechanics do well at describing their separate realms but they do not seem to be compatible with one another.

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It would take a larger space than I have (or could fill for that matter) to chronicle the many views of the universe’s origins that have existed through history. Suffice it to say that, because there was no scientific way to analyze or verify any of them, they stood as philosophical speculations. Plato thought that experimental science was unworthy of the attention of great intellects (like himself). Aristotle, Plato’s student, thought it self-evidentially obvious that the Earth could not move because it had already found its way to the center of the universe.

Newton, who tried to apply scientific evidence to the issue, determined that gravity, because it entails the attraction of all particles toward one another, would have caused the edges of the universe to collapse toward the center. Because this obviously was not going on the universe could not be finite. He therefore deduced that the universe must be infinitely large and matter evenly distributed within it. In the mid 18th century Kant’s cosmology added that, for various reasons, the universe had to have no beginning in time and be infinite in extent.

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