Far out cosmology (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, December 25, 2013, 22:28 (3984 days ago) @ David Turell

Matt: I follow Krauss, not Brian Greene. An unanswered question by Krauss, if the universe as it is guarantees a multiverse, at what point does this begin? 
> 
> Still all supposition which may make sense to you but not many:-And other quotes:-"In an Amazon.com's review of Krauss' book, Don N. Page,
professor of (theoretical gravitational) physics, University of
Alberta, strongly disagrees with Krauss:
Many physicists recently, not least Hawking himself, have
ventured to make many controversial philosophical speculations
going far beyond the science that is presently well
understood.
But in my mind as another physicist working in the
same general area of cosmology (and perhaps focusing
deeper into the quantum aspects of cosmology), its
philosophical argumentations fall far wide of the mark
of answering the age-old question of why there is something
rather than nothing. Krauss essentially redefines the
ancient difficult question into different forms that science
26 David J. Turell, M.D.
can address, discusses possible solutions to the restricted
questions (themselves highly speculative, as Krauss carefully
recognizes) and then seems to imply that these
speculative answers to the restricted questions solve the
ancient difficult problem.
In his preface, Krauss admits that philosophers and
theologians have objected to his meaning of "nothing"
and claim that he does not understand it. Krauss's initial
response is to make the gratuitous ad hominem reply, "I
am tempted to retort here that theologians are experts at
nothing." He then says that for them, "Nothing is 'nonbeing,'
in some vague and ill-defined sense." Well, even
though I am a scientist rather than a philosopher or theologian,
on this issue I agree with them and think that the
idea of nothing as the absence of anything not logically
necessary is much more precise and well-defined than
Krauss's imprecise ideas of "nothing," such as "the absence
of space and time itself."
Page also noted a comment by Richard Dawkins: "In
the final paragraph of his afterword, Richard Dawkins
makes the prematurely triumphalist statement, 'And now
we can read Lawrence Krauss for what looks to me like
the knockout blow.' To me as a fellow scientist, it appears
Krauss has instead swung far wide of the goal, striking
only the air with his philosophical speculations that do not
address the truly deep questions of existence" (http://www.
amazon.com/review/R20NRSZ698T31J)."-"John Horgan of Scientific American is also horrified by Krauss
and Dawkins: "But Krauss asks us to take the quantum theory
of creation seriously, and so does evolutionary biologist Richard
Dawkins. Even the last remaining trump card of the theologian,
"Why is there something rather than nothing?" shrivels up
before your eyes as you read these pages," Dawkins writes in an
afterword to Krauss's book. If On the Origin of Species was biology's
deadliest blow to supernaturalism, we may come to see A
Universe from Nothing as the equivalent from cosmology.( h t t p : / / b l o g s . s c i e n t i f i c a m e r i c a n . c o m / c r o s s -
check/2012/04/23/science-will-never-explain-whytheres-
something-rather-than-nothing/?WT_mc_id=SA_
DD_20120423)."