Fascinating. I'm not so sure, now i think about it, that Einstein said time travel was an absolute impossibility either.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Baxter" <martinbaxt...@gmail.com> To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, May 3, 2010 12:17:27 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Digging Hawkins' "Into the Universe" Hawking's belief is *absolute*, with *no* way around the roadblock. As for this implying a belief in Deity, I can't say, because I've spent my entire life as a scientist trying to maintain an absolute separation between Deity and Science. Also, I ahve no notion as to what Hawking believes, one way or the other. I've never bothered to look into him beyond "A Brief History". As for what other scientists amy believe about the "impossibility" of time travel, I quote Dr Michio Kaku. "There's no law on the books saying that time travel is an absolute impossibility." On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 11:42 AM, Keith Johnson < keithbjohn...@comcast.net > wrote: It's tricky to do books/shows that are popular, entertaining, pull in the masses, but also appeal to people who want a bit more science. "Cosmos" and "Connections" did it brilliantly, though neither was as hard science as, say, an episode of "Nova". Hawking says time travel would be opposed by a *sentient* universe? Really? If he thinks the Universe is self-aware, isn't that akin to belief in a diety of sorts? How does his view of time travel's difficulties gel with Einstein and others, who i think also say it's impossible to travel time: i.e., not possible to travel freely in both directions at will. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Baxter" < martinbaxt...@gmail.com > To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, May 3, 2010 6:50:08 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Digging Hawkins' "Into the Universe" Keith, I'm not watching it for two reasons. 1) I keep forgetting that it's on. (Too many concussions.) 2) I'm not really a fan of Hawking's, partially because he's short on science, as you said (I bought both editions of "A Brief History of Time", and came away feeling cheated at the quality of the writing) and partially because he's managed to churn out what I consider to be the bane of my existence, the Chronology Protection Conjecture. In it, he states that time travel is inherently impossible, that the Universe itself is a sentient being that will act to prevent any alterations of the spacetime continuum. I don 't buy that. On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 10:09 PM, Keith Johnson < keithbjohn...@comcast.net > wrote: I'm watching Stephen Hawking's two hour "Into the Universe" on Discovery Channel. That's to be followed by "How the Universe Works", a one-hour show on black holes, one of my fav topics. I am really enjoying the show. The graphics are really cool, lending colorful visuals to the phenomena they discuss: the formation of black holes...how Sol condensed from a dust cloud and started fusing...how the "stuff of life" from which we're made originated in stellar fusion, released by the explosions of supernovae. Very entertaining. My only minor complaint is, like a lot of shows of this type, it's a bit light on the science for me. For example, they talked about how black holes formed, but didn't go into detail about why some black holes are larger than others (how does a point singularity equate with descriptions of size?), or explain the statement that smaller black holes actually aren't pure black, but give off energy. Of course they're covering a lot of time, and the show is crafted to be easily digestible by a diverse TV audience, so I won't quibble too much. I really like the show, but you know, decades later, I still haven't seen a science series that moved and informed me quite as much as Carl Sagan's "Cosmos". A close second is James Burkes' great series "Connections", a British science series in which the narrator shows, as the name implies, how discoveries and inventions across history and in various places are related to each other in amazing ways. He may, for example, start talking about the invention of the steam engine, and in the middle, tell you how a key part of its invention is related to...tea in India, then jump from that to the art of spinning yarn, and so on, ultimately showing how all these seemingly unrelated things in fact worked together. Fascinating stuff, which you can watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcSxL8GUn-g -- "If all the world's a stage and we are merely players, who the bloody hell wrote the script?" -- Charles E Grant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQUxw9aUVik -- "If all the world's a stage and we are merely players, who the bloody hell wrote the script?" -- Charles E Grant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQUxw9aUVik
