klazmon wrote:Well I don't know who Hawkins is but the Lambda value here



If lambda is positive then that would result in negative pressure, effectively opposing gravity.

BlackRogueDreams wrote:Without having read the book I can't say much but the gist of it is that he has sufficient evidence to conclude that natural processes were enough to create the universe and thus god is once again unnecessary and superfluous to requirements.

robinhood wrote:

klazmon wrote:Well I don't know who Hawkins is but the Lambda value here



If lambda is positive then that would result in negative pressure, effectively opposing gravity.

how can you not know who Hawkins is? He is THE leader in the field of black holes. The guy in the wheelchair who can't move a muscle yet is one of the smartest men alive in the field of physics and mathmatics? He is almost as popular as Einstein. Btw, what on earth is the Lambda value? I said I suck at math

robinhood wrote:I put an apostrophe after his name indicating that the idea is the Hawkin's. It's proper grammar. It's like if I said "my dad's truck" the apostrophe indicates that the truck is my dad's possession. Just like the idea is Hawkin's. At least, that is how we do it in America.

robinhood wrote:

BlackRogueDreams wrote:Without having read the book I can't say much but the gist of it is that he has sufficient evidence to conclude that natural processes were enough to create the universe and thus god is once again unnecessary and superfluous to requirements.

just assuming he is right because he is an authority figure is a fallacy. Also, that's not quite "skeptical" of you. I have great faith in the guy and I KNOW FOR A FACT he know far more than I ever will, however, I would like to know his reasoning behind this so I avoid using the fallacy.

BlackRogueDreams wrote:

robinhood wrote:

BlackRogueDreams wrote:Without having read the book I can't say much but the gist of it is that he has sufficient evidence to conclude that natural processes were enough to create the universe and thus god is once again unnecessary and superfluous to requirements.

just assuming he is right because he is an authority figure is a fallacy. Also, that's not quite "skeptical" of you. I have great faith in the guy and I KNOW FOR A FACT he know far more than I ever will, however, I would like to know his reasoning behind this so I avoid using the fallacy.

I'm basing it on everything I've read in the news. Note I did say I had not read the book, I merely summarized what I knew so far. Whether it's right or not I can't say yet, but given we are talking about a scientist who is preeminent in his field the likelihood of his being correct is much higher. If it was Richard Dawkins who came out with this I would have much more reason to doubt as this is not his field of expertise. Considering the source however I am willing to provisionally accept it for the time being but I will keep looking for new information. Which any good skeptic would do.

klazmon wrote:

robinhood wrote:

klazmon wrote:Well I don't know who Hawkins is but the Lambda value here



If lambda is positive then that would result in negative pressure, effectively opposing gravity.

how can you not know who Hawkins is? He is THE leader in the field of black holes. The guy in the wheelchair who can't move a muscle yet is one of the smartest men alive in the field of physics and mathmatics? He is almost as popular as Einstein. Btw, what on earth is the Lambda value? I said I suck at math

klazmon wrote:This would imply that lambda is changing with time.

robinhood wrote:This is the main portion of the article that bugged me. How did he draw that conclusion? I notice he says "laws SUCH AS" gravity and not gravity itself as I have origninaly misinterpreted. However, I still don't get the steps he took to reach this conclusion. I'm going to have to give google a workout to see what you guys are talking about but I think I can manage.


"Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing,"

Mr P wrote:Of course he's not saying anything new, Victor Stenger promotes the same idea (and goes one step further in the case of the Abrahamic god) that the universe can get along fine without a creator. Also a number of physicists are pushing the idea of a cyclic model with subsequent big bangs happening in succession i.e. Steinhardt and Turok, Lee Smolin and Roger Penrose. Penrose is about to release his new book Cycles Of Time later this month with his own take on the idea.

All of these rest on the theory that the (inherently) chaotic conditions present during the Planck era are unstable due to quantum fluctuations and it's this chaotic system that Stenger defines as nothingness. This arises from the fact that no meaningful information can be extracted from a system such as this and so rendering enquirey obsolete. This is opposed to the semantic skullduggery usually employed when people try to define nothingness.