Guest guest Posted January 20, 2006 Report Share Posted January 20, 2006 Source: The Daily Emerald - at the University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon http://www.dailyemerald.com/vnews/display.v/SEC/About+Us January 18, 2006 Physicist Hypothesizes Creator Left Messages Professor Stephen Hsu says it may be 20 or 30 years before scientists have tools to test the hypothesis By Eva Sylwester Seinor News Reporter A University physicist has proposed that temperature fluctuations in microwave radiation may contain messages from the universe's creator. " It's one of the most speculative possible hypotheses, " said associate professor Stephen Hsu, a member of the University's Institute of Theoretical Science. However, it may be 20 or 30 years before experimental physicists develop instruments refined enough to collect the data necessary to test this hypothesis, Hsu said. Hsu said he thought of the idea many years ago, when theoretical physicists at Stanford and MIT addressed whether a universe could be created in a laboratory. They hypothesized that this could be done by creating a bubble of super-dense matter that would expand into extra dimensions. " If you did create such a universe, how would you tell the occupants of that universe that their universe was made in a lab at MIT? " Hsu said. " One place to put the message would be in a microwave background. " According to the Big Bang theory, matter was distributed almost uniformly at the beginning of the known universe, shortly after the Big Bang, Hsu said. Through small matter density fluctuations, this evolved into galaxies, stars and planets. Cosmologists know this by looking far out into the universe. Because the speed of light is finite, light from distant objects is therefore light that originated long ago, so this is actually the same thing as looking backward in time, Hsu said. Cosmologists have also found that there is microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang in the background of the universe. Similar to the fluctuations of density in matter that created planets, the microwave radiation has very small temperature fluctuations, and Hsu hypothesized that a message could be hidden in those fluctuations. Who would the message be from? " Who knows? " Hsu said. " It could be some person at MIT Prime in some other universe. " Hsu said that while the existence of such a message is not known, and probably highly unlikely, microwave radiation would be an ideal medium for communicating with advanced civilizations. Hsu decided to publish the idea after discussing it with Anthony Zee, professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Zee said the paper, which is currently under review at an unnamed scholarly journal, is written in two parts: one describing the medium for the message, and one describing the content of the message. He said he's confident that microwave radiation would be the medium, but less confident about the message. Hsu and Zee calculated that the maximum amount of information that could be contained in such a message is about 10,000 characters of text. " The longer the message is, the more likely you're going to be convinced that that's what the message really says, " Hsu said. Hsu said the minimum length for a message to be believable would be 1,000 characters. " If you could get a 1,000-character message and encode it in some reliable way, I think people would agree, 'Yeah, that's a message,' " Hsu said. Hsu said the equations describing the fundamental laws of physics are compact enough to fit into a chunk of text that size, and would be a likely subject for such an encoded message, given the universal utility of math and physics. " That may just be bias on our part, but if it's going to be read by all civilizations, it's not going to be about the price of oil, " Hsu said. Zee elaborated that the gauge laws, as they are called, explain how the world is put together through four fundamental force fields: gravitational, electromagnetic, weak and strong. Hsu said finding a message from the creator of the universe would not necessarily resolve disputes over intelligent design and evolution, because the existence of a message would not imply that the message's writer designed humans. " Humans are probably still a random evolutionary occurrence on this planet, " Hsu said. Hsu and Zee are not the only scientists looking for messages in outer space. At the SETI@home Web site (setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu), people can download screensavers that allow scientists working in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence to use their computers' processing power to analyze radio wave signals SETI has collected for patterns. According to the SETI@home Web site, 78 computer users who identified themselves as affiliated with the University have contributed 549,768 credits to this effort. Hsu said SETI's work differs from his because the radio waves SETI is looking for would be produced by a particular source, such as an alien civilization, and that encoding a message in the microwave background at the time of the Big Bang would probably be beyond the capabilities of any civilization within the known universe. Contact the business, science and technology reporter at esylwester Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted January 20, 2006 Report Share Posted January 20, 2006 I see a contradiction here. While on one side the physicist only believe after the hypothesis is accepted and put to investigation using the empirical methods known to science but on other hand they believe that there are higher and more evolved civilizations. Ashok Jane MacRoss <HIGHFIELD wrote: Source: The Daily Emerald - at the University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon http://www.dailyemerald.com/vnews/display.v/SEC/About+Us January 18, 2006 Physicist Hypothesizes Creator Left Messages Professor Stephen Hsu says it may be 20 or 30 years before scientists have tools to test the hypothesis By Eva Sylwester Seinor News Reporter A University physicist has proposed that temperature fluctuations in microwave radiation may contain messages from the universe's creator. " It's one of the most speculative possible hypotheses, " said associate professor Stephen Hsu, a member of the University's Institute of Theoretical Science. However, it may be 20 or 30 years before experimental physicists develop instruments refined enough to collect the data necessary to test this hypothesis, Hsu said. Hsu said he thought of the idea many years ago, when theoretical physicists at Stanford and MIT addressed whether a universe could be created in a laboratory. They hypothesized that this could be done by creating a bubble of super-dense matter that would expand into extra dimensions. " If you did create such a universe, how would you tell the occupants of that universe that their universe was made in a lab at MIT? " Hsu said. " One place to put the message would be in a microwave background. " According to the Big Bang theory, matter was distributed almost uniformly at the beginning of the known universe, shortly after the Big Bang, Hsu said. Through small matter density fluctuations, this evolved into galaxies, stars and planets. Cosmologists know this by looking far out into the universe. Because the speed of light is finite, light from distant objects is therefore light that originated long ago, so this is actually the same thing as looking backward in time, Hsu said. Cosmologists have also found that there is microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang in the background of the universe. Similar to the fluctuations of density in matter that created planets, the microwave radiation has very small temperature fluctuations, and Hsu hypothesized that a message could be hidden in those fluctuations. Who would the message be from? " Who knows? " Hsu said. " It could be some person at MIT Prime in some other universe. " Hsu said that while the existence of such a message is not known, and probably highly unlikely, microwave radiation would be an ideal medium for communicating with advanced civilizations. Hsu decided to publish the idea after discussing it with Anthony Zee, professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Zee said the paper, which is currently under review at an unnamed scholarly journal, is written in two parts: one describing the medium for the message, and one describing the content of the message. He said he's confident that microwave radiation would be the medium, but less confident about the message. Hsu and Zee calculated that the maximum amount of information that could be contained in such a message is about 10,000 characters of text. " The longer the message is, the more likely you're going to be convinced that that's what the message really says, " Hsu said. Hsu said the minimum length for a message to be believable would be 1,000 characters. " If you could get a 1,000-character message and encode it in some reliable way, I think people would agree, 'Yeah, that's a message,' " Hsu said. Hsu said the equations describing the fundamental laws of physics are compact enough to fit into a chunk of text that size, and would be a likely subject for such an encoded message, given the universal utility of math and physics. " That may just be bias on our part, but if it's going to be read by all civilizations, it's not going to be about the price of oil, " Hsu said. Zee elaborated that the gauge laws, as they are called, explain how the world is put together through four fundamental force fields: gravitational, electromagnetic, weak and strong. Hsu said finding a message from the creator of the universe would not necessarily resolve disputes over intelligent design and evolution, because the existence of a message would not imply that the message's writer designed humans. " Humans are probably still a random evolutionary occurrence on this planet, " Hsu said. Hsu and Zee are not the only scientists looking for messages in outer space. At the SETI@home Web site (setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu), people can download screensavers that allow scientists working in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence to use their computers' processing power to analyze radio wave signals SETI has collected for patterns. According to the SETI@home Web site, 78 computer users who identified themselves as affiliated with the University have contributed 549,768 credits to this effort. Hsu said SETI's work differs from his because the radio waves SETI is looking for would be produced by a particular source, such as an alien civilization, and that encoding a message in the microwave background at the time of the Big Bang would probably be beyond the capabilities of any civilization within the known universe. Contact the business, science and technology reporter at esylwester Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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