Hi Norman,
I have no idea why it received a dishonorable mention. It could be because
some physicists/cosmologists don't like anthropic reasoning.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Norman Samish" <ncsamish.domain.name.hidden>
To: "Saibal Mitra" <smitra.domain.name.hidden>
Cc: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 12:57 AM
Subject: Re: How did it all begin?
> This is a teaser. Why did Tegmark's paper receive Dishonorable Mention?
> Who is Godfrey?
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Saibal Mitra" <smitra.domain.name.hidden>
> To: "everything" <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 6:14 AM
> Subject: How did it all begin?
>
>
> http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0508429
>
>
> Tegmark's essay was not well received (perhaps Godfrey didn't like it?
:-) )
>
>
> How did it all begin?
> Authors: Max Tegmark
> Comments: 6 pages, 6 figs, essay for 2005 Young Scholars Competition in
> honor of Charles Townes; received Dishonorable Mention
>
> How did it all begin? Although this question has undoubtedly lingered for
as
> long as humans have walked the Earth, the answer still eludes us. Yet
since
> my grandparents were born, scientists have been able to refine this
question
> to a degree I find truly remarkable. In this brief essay, I describe some
of
> my own past and ongoing work on this topic, centering on cosmological
> inflation. I focus on
> (1) observationally testing whether this picture is correct and
> (2) working out implications for the nature of physical reality (e.g., the
> global structure of spacetime, dark energy and our cosmic future, parallel
> universes and fundamental versus environmental physical laws).
> (2) clearly requires (1) to determine whether to believe the conclusions.
I
> argue that (1) also requires (2), since it affects the probability
> calculations for inflation's observational predictions.
>
Received on Thu Sep 01 2005 - 13:18:51 PDT