Is the impact of advances in cosmology on a narrative-driven metaphor-rich human brain appropriate?

Roger Penrose (a prominent cosmologist) has a new idea about the universe: instead of starting outright with the Big Bang, the universe passes through an eternal series of aeons. Each aeon draws toward a close as all matter is sucked into black holes. The holes evaporate through Hawkings radiation, and the resulting evaporated particles then suddenly become massless and start travelling at the speed of light. At this point, from the particle perspective, space contracts to nothingness and time stands still, setting the stage for a new Big Bang.

Penrose’s theory diverges from Alan Guth’s prevailing inflation model, whereby the universe is a one-off result of a quantum fluctuation in nothingness which inexplicably inflated itself by a factor of 10E78 in 10E-32 seconds. The inflation is impelled by a still-undiscovered Higgs field through a process likened by Brian Greene to a frog hopping onto the ledge of a heated Bundt pan. Penrose reckons he can defeat Guth by detecting spherical ripples in the fabric of spacetime left over palimpsestically from the black holes of bygone aeons.

The truth is, it’s all pretty far out. I mean, which one seems more likely to you? It’s as though there’s one person telling you the universe is carried around on the back of a tortoise, but then someone else insists that no, it floats, having once been blown from the navel of an obese reclining man. – ?

What gets me though is that it still seems somehow profoundly important to my understanding of life. If the universe really is a one off, or is infinitely reincarnated, strikes me as pretty material to my figuring out how I feel about time, other people, consciousness, and what to take out of the fridge when I’m next standing in front of it. If one or the other of these theories is right, I need to know. Or I feel I need to know. Just like with whether or not there’s such a thing as a quantum of time, or if particles really are entangled in different regions of space. Obviously it’s not material at all, but I feel it is, at which point it instantaneously becomes material.

So the question I find myself asking is: is the impact of advances in cosmology and particle physics on a narrative-driven metaphor-rich human brain appropriate?

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3 Responses to Is the impact of advances in cosmology on a narrative-driven metaphor-rich human brain appropriate?

  1. Ariane says:

    Yes, because both are quantumly entangled…non?

  2. tim says:

    Yes! Yes! Yes! Exactly! Yes!

    Hawking et al are looking for a unified theory of everything. SO AM I.

    My most recent research led me to an article on a website (name of author, website, etc. sadly subsequently have fallen out of my memory) in which vibration is postulated as the all permeating etheresque unificatory concept. A vibrating particle displays a wave – there is no paradox. Both shape and motion arise from the same first principle of vibration.

    Sound, colour, chemical properties of elements, healing properties of minerals, the seasons, the emotions, the planetary motions, chakras, yantras, the eidophone all are manifestations of vibration.

    What is more all of these phenomena can be classified according to their frequency. In music for example if you take an A (defined as 440hz currently but rising steadily as classical soloists and ambitious conductors tune their instruments slightly sharp to give them an edge) and double its frequency you get an A an octave (8 notes of a major scale) above it. Successive doubling of the frequency of vibration will quickly pass out of the audible spectrum. Continue doubling and the frequency reaches the magnitude associated with the visible spectrum of light.

    Does this mean that an audible A can be equated to a specific visible colour?

    Apparently (according to the lost site) a slightly sharp B is in fact a multiple of the fundamental frequency upon which all subsequent multiples are based. In the visible spectrum this glows a deep red.

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