THE UNIVERSE IS PERFECTLY DESIGNED
Latest 4th December 2007

NOV 30th 2006
Stephen Hawking takes longer than most people to perceive the obvious (see below) and even then he gets it mostly wrong.


The Human race could indeed colonise other planets if it succeeds in managing life on this one long enough to develop the means of travel. That could mean also developing planetary defense against incoming asteroids, meteorites and comets, as well as means of personal and vehicle defense against radiation and particular hazards. It is true that while some of Star Trek technology is impossible because logically inconsistent, there are elements which are not. However, we need Ockhams razor here to look at what is actually necessary. Not for us individually or even collectively, but for universal life.

If humans as we know them now were to succeed in this, it would be disastrous for the universe, which would indeed become a version of Star Wars. But if as I suspect nature will work in the future as it observably has for the last 14 billion years or so, only life forms that have learned how to manage a planet can emerge to inseminate other star/planet systems, if this is indeed the necessary future of LIFE.  It does not have to be, as there are other ways forward toward which we may well be building that do not require the physical travel of life in human form, even though we can be the progenitors of this future.

The idea that a planet at war will achieve a physical exodus is not reasonable, though war may well have honed the human and technological advance that enables it. But it is more likely that if and when in a thousand years there are beings around to look back on Start Trek they with see it as a symbolic, metaphorical description of reality, rather like we can appreciate the myths and fables of the past. Our understanding will evolve..The human race as we know it could well, and in my view should, be confined to a single planet till we have learned collectively and know instinctively what has been taught, mis-taught and not generally understood for 2 millennia. Only that can produce a version of humanity capable of managing itself and its resources and a universal future.

It will not, however, be perfection or faultless. It could still go wrong, but not in the human way we screw up here and now. The universe is perfectly designed to do what it can, which is to BE and do that to the ultimate, which includes KNOWING THAT IT IS.

In the meantime we here, as part of this, have to work out how to get through the very next stage. Nature will force us, if we don't figure out how to avoid the hard way. So far the problems we have to deal with have been staring us in the face for decades, but politicians are not often scientists, and scientists are not necessarily polymaths so it seems to have come as a shock. Hawking says: "The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet,".  That is not only true it is essential. If this lot were to get out in its present form, the whole universe would be in trouble. That's why life-favourable planets are so far apart in the universe that has survived/exists/produces life/observes itself. The long-term survival of what we refer to as 'the missing link' between apes and men would no doubt have worried them if they could have thought about it instead of their immediate survival. Now we can see their long-term survival would not have been the way forward.

Hawking says humans must colonise other planets

Reuters Thursday November 30, 10:48 AM

LONDON (Reuters) - Renowned cosmologist Stephen Hawking, author of the best-selling "A Brief History of Time," said on Thursday humans must colonise other planets in different solar systems or face extinction.

However, the wheelchair-bound Cambridge University physicist who has a crippling muscle disease said this would require spaceships using technology similar to the "warp drives" of TV science fiction show "Star Trek".

"The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet," Hawking told BBC Radio.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/30112006/325/hawking-says-humans-must-colonise-other-planets.html


SEPTEMBER 22nd 2007
Here is a useful up-to-date summary of scientific thinking on the nature of the material universe. However, it does not get into the multidimensional geometry of space-time and therefore gets no nearer to understanding or explaining the fundamentals. It is still talking about what things are 'made of', and 'particles', and until scientists can get beyond this they will get nowhere fast and somewhere ever more slowly. Gravitational waves would be better described as Inertial Waves. But the articles is still useful u to a point foir reference.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20070922/tts-science-astronomy-astrophysics-unive-c1b2fc3_1.html


DECEMBER 4th 2007

The Ice Cream Man Cometh

Tuesday 4 December 2007 11:00-11:30 (Radio 4 FM)

A Danish Global Warming sceptic speaking on this programme claimed that while many would die from drought, famine and overheating, fewer people would die of cold; so we should live with global warming and stick with economic growth as the vital priority. This is hogwash.
In the past, Nature was in charge. Now, we are consciously responsible. That is the scientific fact and the religious truth as well. The absurd misunderstanding of the parable of the Garden of Eden (not to mention the entire New Testament), by scientists and theologians alike, has really got to be put to bed. It is getting beyond a joke. On the other hand, climate change is hard to control unless we can stop global population growth. If we do not, Nature will do it for us. The Universe is perfectly self-designing.


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