its just so, and that's that.

[acroyear]

"According to the Just So Theory of Instantaneous Cosmogenesis, the universe came into existence suddenly, just as it is. This theory predicts that, if we examine reality, we will observe that things are the way they are. The theory is falsifiable: If things were not the way they are, it would be proven false. Observation has shown that things are, indeed, the way they are. Thus the theory is proven." -- David Canzi

Comments

[thatliardiego.livejournal.com]

Um, isn't that a tautology?

[bkleber.livejournal.com]

So beautiful, and yet, so empty. I love it.

[mshelby.livejournal.com]

the universe is more like it is now than it ever has before.

[tchwrtr.livejournal.com]

Why do I feel like I just read something by Douglas Adams?

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

I have a vague recollection from a quantum course I took many, many years ago, that very small amounts of matter can spontaneously pop into existence for very short amounts of time, then *poof* disappear again. The amount of matter, and the length of existence were based on porbability and available energy, or something like that. I suppose that if the probability and energy were available, then *poof* we'd have the current universe? Anybody have any clue what I'm talking about?

As far as the tautology, "If one dismisses the rest of all possible worlds, one finds that this is the best of all possible worlds." --Pangloss, in Berstein's musical version of Voltaire's Candide

physics geek stuff follows

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

The book, Origins, companion to the recent Nova TV series, does talk about that in layman's terms. the energy and mass involved are exactly proportional to e=mc^2 and it happens constantly. I don't remember the details about how much it happens now (though it occurred a LOT during the early microseconds of the Universe), and I can't look it up now 'cause I left the book for my father-in-law to read.

but yes, you're not imagining recalling it.

it might seem a fundemental contradiction with the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics except that at a certain level of depth, physicists aren't entirely sure which is more complex, matter or energy. increasingly they're seen as variations on the same thing when you get small enough (hence, why Einstein's equation works), and this String theory thing has taken that to an extreme interpretation.

the book didn't quite reach the point of connecting whether or not those micro-scale "flashes" (although that's a bad term because very few of them leave a "light" trail as their energy release) might, when done on a massive scale, constitute the "dark matter" or "dark energy" constants we've mathematically observed as being involved in the movement and position of the galaxies to each other. I think there's a connection, but I hardly have the numbers (or experience) to support it in any way.