Year: 2016

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5981472/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-universe-here-is-one-possible-answer

Well, it just so happens that there is a theory that gives a kind of raison d’etre to our universe and all the objects flying through it. If true, it would mean that our universe is nothing more than a black hole generator, or a means to produce as many baby universes as possible. To learn more, we spoke to the man who came up with the idea.

It’s called the theory of Cosmological Natural Selection and it was conjured by Lee Smolin a researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and and an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo. Smolin proposed that Darwinian processes still apply at the extreme macro-scale and to non-biological entities. Because the universe is a potentially replicative unit, he suggests that it’s subject to selectional pressures. Consequently, nearly everything the universe does is geared toward replication.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5891740/quantum-suicide-how-to-prove-the-multiverse-exists-in-the-most-violent-way-possible

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5945801/8-philosophical-questions-that-well-never-solve

1. Why is there something rather than nothing?

2. Is our universe real?

3. Do we have free will?

4. Does God exist?

5. Is there life after death?

6. Can you really experience anything objectively?

7. What is the best moral system?

8. What are numbers?

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/11/opinions/lincoln-einstein-dark-energy/index.html

Current thinking is that the effects of dark energy will increasingly dominate. As the speed of the expansion of the universe speeds up, distant galaxies will be pushed away until they are no longer observed. In the far future, astronomers will see a very different night sky than they do now. Our universe will consist of but a few nearby galaxies (called the Local Group), with all the others pushed too far away to see. Indeed, we live in a privileged time in cosmic history that allows us to study the story of our universe from the beginning to now.