New Category… My Quotes. Why repeat things? Post ‘em, reference ‘em, be done with it. First up, explaining the results of Drake Equation…

“To explain the results of the Drake equation to other people — especially people who understand the Fermi Paradox — I would say, consider first that life as we know it, is rather small relative to the scale of the Universe. And second, that there are forgotten factors in the Drake equation, things like time, or the distribution of civilizations over such a factor as time or even space. So, because life as we know it hasn’t evolved on the scale of the Universe and has only ever thrived on the planetary scale, it is unlikely given the results of the Drake Equation, given observations like the Fermi Paradox, given existing physics, and given the size of the known Universe, that we shall come to contact some alien intelligence of a form of life as we know it. Though, I believe of all that rubbish… the greatest constraint is really philosophical and it is in how we define things like alien, intelligence and life.”

An assumption based in logic, that seems unfortunately too true about our Country is that, in the United States of America, not knowing something makes one popular. This is because, more Americans “don’t know” than those that “do know”,  making ignorance a more socially acceptable attribute at times than intellect.

America, in an age of information, has become a home for a Culture of the Stupid. So says the Washington Post and its sources in a piece titled The Dumbing of America. We have to wonder if this phenomena is the result of people mistaking vision for academic, intellectual or social elitism. Or, if this is just the beginning of an era of Anti-Intellectualism.

In August of 2007, scientists found a one billion light-year sized hole in the universe. Left to my unending curiosity, I’ve done a bit of thinking. And now, I’d like to offer the few ideas I had about the discovery. Ponder what intrigues, enjoy what silliness entertains.

Theory #1 - The Hole — the cold spot — is the area associated with the events of the Big Bang.

Not unlike a crater on some surface, this cold spot could represent an area where billions of years ago, the event we commonly refer to as The Big Bang, took place. While over time space itself (we believe) has expanded, one would expect most everything was expelled outward from that point at extremely high temperatures (leaving the most immediate area entirely barren). Everything was “vaporized” or more accurately put, transitioned to highly energetic plasma and gas. The CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) tells how just how it was distributed. Does this “hole” give us an indicate from where?

Theory #2 - The Hole is Aliens!

By creating electromagnetic fields many linear detection methods can be deflected or subverted. It makes sense, at least depending on how you look at projects like SETI. And, of course these aliens would need to know the ole’ saying: out of sight — out of mind.

Theory #3 - The Hole represents the discovery of new physics

Last, the most likely: this region of space contains unknown properties or material with unknown properties to physics. This would lead to our inability to make accurate detections and potentially offer us a region of space that seemed to lack all features. We’ve only narrowly escaped our home venue of Earth. While it may seem a radical idea to accept, there is no evidence that our observations from Earth aren’t dramatically limited to a subset of realities describable by our derived physics only.

Man’s peerage has always been founded upon his study of the truth, and the elegant constructs which have been discovered as a result. In that aristocracy of the mind, many stand out: Tesla, Bohr, Einstein, Rosen, Hawking, or even Poe, Dostoevsky, and/or Asimov. Yet, of those elite minds, there should always be room for at least one more very interesting gentleman, named John Bell, to find his mention.

Early on Bell introduced thought experiments which hoped to address human curiosity about the nature of reality itself. This may not have been his intent, but, it was the resultant product. His notions led to a wildfire of other derived works as well. Just recently howsoever, the revolutionary ideas Bell put forth, those which have inspired generations, have been challenged.

Should Bell’s theorem prove to be mistaken, it would bring back a dark age, full of philosophical challenges to what seems somehow, a less mature science. We can only hope those people invalidating Bell’s work are capable of forging greater constructs. And, by that, we do not mean, just a place for themselves in that aristocracy of the mind.

The Scary Science in this article, should leave you staring blindly, and then into a puddle of drool, collecting slowly at your feet, as you read deeper and deeper. Its at the very least “a little heady.” But, hey, if you think String Theory has been burrowing much from the patience, and complication piles, and aren’t interested in all that complex geometry they’ve made with strings, then, let enter: The Spinorial Theory!

The Spinorial Theory seems a much more simple ship to put to sea, in my opinion. While String Theory can tote a much broader adoption amongst scientists, the theory is amazingly complex and requires a great deal of training to understand, which may indicate its over-architecture. And, String Theory actually fails to make very many accurate predictions. With complexity in overdrive, and the subject of study being the nature of the universe, science is likely to pull a metaphorical muscle just trying to test String Theory’s predictions, as they stand now. Meantime, they could have been wrong at the inset.

The Spinorial Theory offers a fairly simple alternative to using Strings in a specially constructed 11 dimensional space, the controversial and rather complicated geometric explanation of the nature of the universe as provided in String Theory. The alternative presented in Spinorial Theory, is that perhaps these other dimensions (for which our senses do not account) belonging within Einstein’s space-time, aren’t “folded-up” spacial dimensions, but instead, are “invisible” temporal (time-like) dimensions.

The simplicity resonates with me, while some predictions made here seem just as difficult to prove as those made in String Theory.