scholarly journals Can quantum gravitational effects influence the entire history of the Universe?

2008 ◽  
Vol 78 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Edésio M. Barboza ◽  
Nivaldo A. Lemos
Keyword(s):  
Gravitational Effects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
The Universe

Eschatological Verification Reconsidered

1977 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hick
Keyword(s):  
Language Game ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Divine Presence ◽  
Psychological Need ◽  
Presence Of God ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
The Universe

The world in which we find ourselves is religiously ambiguous. It is possible for different people (as also for the same person at different times) to experience it both religiously and non-religiously; and to hold beliefs which arise from and feed into each of these ways of experiencing. A religious man may report that in moments of prayer he is conscious of existing in the unseen presence of God, and is aware - sometimes at least - that his whole life and the entire history of the world is taking place within the ambience of the divine purpose. But on the other hand the majority of people in our modern world do not participate in that form of experience and are instead conscious of their own and others' lives as purely natural phenomena, so that their own experience leads them at least implicitly to reject the idea of a transcendent divine presence and purpose. If they are philosophically minded, they may well think that the believer's talk is the expression of what Richard Hare has called a blik, a way of feeling and thinking about the world which expresses itself in pseudo-assertions, pseudo because they are neither verifiable nor falsifiable and are therefore factually empty.1 The religious man speaks of God as a living reality in whose presence we are, and of a divine purpose which gives ultimate meaning to our lives. But is not the world the same whether or not we suppose it to exist in God's presence; and is not the course of history the same whether or not we describe it as fulfilling God's purposes? Is not the religious description thus merely a gratuitous embellishment, a logical fifth wheel, an optional language-game which may assuage some psychological need of the speaker but which involves no claims of substance concerning the objective nature or structure of the universe? Must not the central religious use of language then be accounted a non-cognitive use, whose function is not to assert alleged facts but to express a speaker's, or a community of speakers', emotions within the framework of a factually contentless blik, ‘slant’, or ‘onlook’?

Time, Leeway, and the Laws of Nature: Why Humean Compatibilists Cannot Be Eternalists

Metaphysica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-71
Author(s):  
Andrei A. Buckareff
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Humean View ◽  
Strong Dual

Abstract Humean compatibilism combines a Humean conception of laws of nature with a strong dual-ability condition for free will that requires that agents possess the ability to decide differently when they make a free decision. On the Humean view of laws of nature, laws of nature are taken to be contingent non-governing descriptions of significant regularities that obtain in the entire history of the universe. On Humean compatibilism, agents are taken to possess dual ability when making free decisions because what the laws of nature will finally be is (at least partially) dependent upon how an agent decides. In this paper, I argue that the tenability of Humean compatibilism depends in part upon what theory of time is correct. More specifically, I argue that Humean compatibilism is untenable in a deterministic universe if eternalism is true.

Benjamin Apthorp Gould and the Founding of the Argentine National Observatory

1971 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
John E. Hodge
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Solar System ◽  
Major Change ◽  
History Of Astronomy ◽  
National Observatory ◽  
Great Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Shape And Size

The nineteenth century witnessed the first major change in astronomy since the birth of the science in antiquity. With the exception, in the eighteenth century, of William Herschel's great work in the course of which he speculated on the origin, composition and shape of the universe itself, man's concern with the heavens had been limited to plotting and cataloguing the positions and the movements of the stars and planets. The entire history of astronomy had consisted of more and more accurate observations of the solar system and the stars within our own galaxy, although only the haziest notions of the shape and size of that “island universe” were entertained by thoughtful astronomers.

The microsecond old universe — Relics of QCD phase transition

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (23) ◽  
pp. 1430024 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bikash Sinha
Keyword(s):  
Phase Transition ◽  
Cold Dark Matter ◽  
Baryon Number ◽  
Qcd Phase Transition ◽  
First Order ◽  
Qcd Phase Diagram ◽  
Hadron Phase ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
The Universe

It is entirely plausible under reasonable conditions, that a first-order QCD phase transition occurred from quarks to hadrons when the universe was about a microsecond old. Relics, if there be any, after the quark–hadron phase transition are the most deciding signatures of the phase transition. It is shown in this paper that quark nuggets, the possible relics of first-order QCD phase transitions with baryon number larger than 1043 will survive the entire history of the universe up to now and can be considered as a candidate for the cold dark matter. The spin down core of the neutron star on the high density low temperature end of the QCD phase diagram initiates transition from hadrons to quarks. As the star spins down, the size of the core goes on increasing. Recently discovered massive Pulsar PSRJ 1614-2230 with a mass of 1.97 ± 0.04M⊙ most likely has a strongly interacting core. What possible observables can there be from these neutron stars?

scholarly journals Dust in Evolving Galaxies

2002 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 460-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Andreani
Keyword(s):  
Galaxy Formation ◽  
Dust Emission ◽  
Stellar Activity ◽  
Galaxy Formation And Evolution ◽  
History Of ◽  
Crucial Information ◽  
Entire History ◽  
Formation And Evolution ◽  
Lower Luminosity ◽  
The Universe

AbstractI will first review the observational evidence relating dust emission and the energy production in the far-IR/submm range. This latter contains crucial information on the global baryons transformation and the related stellar activity in the Universe. Present knowledge on this topic relies mainly on the far-IR local surveys of IRAS and ISO missions and on submm/mm surveys performed with SCUBA and MAMBO arrays. Further constraints are provided by the measurements of the Cosmic far-IR Background (CFIRB). Our scanty knowledge of galaxy formation and evolution is mainly caused by the difficulties of unveiling stellar activity at redshifts larger than 1 and at present we may only have detected massive objects in a transient hyper-luminous phase. We still lack an unbiased census of the much more numerous population of lower luminosity dusty objects. It will soon be possible to disclose the entire history of evolving dusty objects, and therefore of the stellar activity, selecting unbiased samples out of far-IR imaging and photometry in deep far-IR surveys.

Roshdi Rashed

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 279-295
Author(s):  
Mohammed Aref
Keyword(s):  
Review Essay ◽  
Great Book ◽  
Mathematical Language ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Galileo Galilei ◽  
Elementary Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Universe

This review essay introduces the work of the Egyptian scientific historian and philosopher Roshdi Rashed, a pioneer in the field of the history of Arab sciences. The article is based on the five volumes he originally wrote in French and later translated into Arabic, which were published by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies and which are now widely acclaimed as a unique effort to unveil the achievements of Arab scientists. The essay reviews this major work, which seems, like Plato’s Republic to have “No Entry for Those Who Have No Knowledge of Mathematics” written on its gate. If you force your way in, even with elementary knowledge of computation, a philosophy will unfold before your eyes, described by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei as “written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes—I mean the universe—but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols, in which it is written. This book is written in the mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.” The essay is a journey through this labyrinth where the history of world mathematics got lost and was chronicled by Rashed in five volumes translated from the French into Arabic. It took him fifteen years to complete.

Turning Aliens into Socialists

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Jessica Moberg
Keyword(s):  
Outer Space ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Swedish History ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Highly Evolved

Immediately after the Second World War Sweden was struck by a wave of sightings of strange flying objects. In some cases these mass sightings resulted in panic, particularly after authorities failed to identify them. Decades later, these phenomena were interpreted by two members of the Swedish UFO movement, Erland Sandqvist and Gösta Rehn, as alien spaceships, or UFOs. Rehn argued that ‘[t]here is nothing so dramatic in the Swedish history of UFOs as this invasion of alien fly-things’ (Rehn 1969: 50). In this article the interpretation of such sightings proposed by these authors, namely that we are visited by extraterrestrials from outer space, is approached from the perspective of myth theory. According to this mythical theme, not only are we are not alone in the universe, but also the history of humankind has been shaped by encounters with more highly-evolved alien beings. In their modern day form, these kinds of ideas about aliens and UFOs originated in the United States. The reasoning of Sandqvist and Rehn exemplifies the localization process that took place as members of the Swedish UFO movement began to produce their own narratives about aliens and UFOs. The question I will address is: in what ways do these stories change in new contexts? Texts produced by the Swedish UFO movement are analyzed as a case study of this process.

Organization of restrictive quarantine measures to prevent especially dangerous infections

2020 ◽  
pp. 6-11
Author(s):  
Petr Ilyin
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Clinical Symptoms ◽  
International Health ◽  
World Health ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Former Ussr ◽  
Health Regulations

Especially dangerous infections (EDIs) belong to the conditionally labelled group of infectious diseases that pose an exceptional epidemic threat. They are highly contagious, rapidly spreading and capable of affecting wide sections of the population in the shortest possible time, they are characterized by the severity of clinical symptoms and high mortality rates. At the present stage, the term "especially dangerous infections" is used only in the territory of the countries of the former USSR, all over the world this concept is defined as "infectious diseases that pose an extreme threat to public health on an international scale." Over the entire history of human development, more people have died as a result of epidemics and pandemics than in all wars combined. The list of especially dangerous infections and measures to prevent their spread were fixed in the International Health Regulations (IHR), adopted at the 22nd session of the WHO's World Health Assembly on July 26, 1969. In 1970, at the 23rd session of the WHO's Assembly, typhus and relapsing fever were excluded from the list of quarantine infections. As amended in 1981, the list included only three diseases represented by plague, cholera and anthrax. However, now annual additions of new infections endemic to different parts of the earth to this list take place. To date, the World Health Organization (WHO) has already included more than 100 diseases in the list of especially dangerous infections.

The Paving Stone Theory of World Tectonics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy Livermore
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Transform Faults ◽  
Plate Motions ◽  
Euler’S Theorem ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Entire History ◽  
The Indian Ocean

Tuzo Wilson introduces the concept of transform faults, which has the effect of transforming Earth Science forever. Resistance to the new ideas is finally overcome in the late 1960s, as the theory of moving plates is established. Two scientists play a major role in quantifying the embryonic theory that is eventually dubbed ‘plate tectonics’. Dan McKenzie applies Euler’s theorem, used previously by Teddy Bullard to reconstruct the continents around the Atlantic, to the problem of plate rotations on a sphere and uses it to unravel the entire history of the Indian Ocean. Jason Morgan also wraps plate tectonics around a sphere. Tuzo Wilson introduces the idea of a fixed hotspot beneath Hawaii, an idea taken up by Jason Morgan to create an absolute reference frame for plate motions.

Galileo Unbound

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Nolte
Keyword(s):  
Free Fall ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Quantum Field ◽  
Many Worlds ◽  
Quantum Particles ◽  
Light Rays ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Insight Into

Galileo Unbound: A Path Across Life, The Universe and Everything traces the journey that brought us from Galileo’s law of free fall to today’s geneticists measuring evolutionary drift, entangled quantum particles moving among many worlds, and our lives as trajectories traversing a health space with thousands of dimensions. Remarkably, common themes persist that predict the evolution of species as readily as the orbits of planets or the collapse of stars into black holes. This book tells the history of spaces of expanding dimension and increasing abstraction and how they continue today to give new insight into the physics of complex systems. Galileo published the first modern law of motion, the Law of Fall, that was ideal and simple, laying the foundation upon which Newton built the first theory of dynamics. Early in the twentieth century, geometry became the cause of motion rather than the result when Einstein envisioned the fabric of space-time warped by mass and energy, forcing light rays to bend past the Sun. Possibly more radical was Feynman’s dilemma of quantum particles taking all paths at once—setting the stage for the modern fields of quantum field theory and quantum computing. Yet as concepts of motion have evolved, one thing has remained constant, the need to track ever more complex changes and to capture their essence, to find patterns in the chaos as we try to predict and control our world.

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