Saturday 28 June 2008

YOD and the The Anthropic Principle

This afternoon, thanks to conversations with the more scientifically minded in my family, I have been trying to get my head around the Anthropic principle and it's relationship to the existence of YOD. The theory of the principal states (as far as I can make out) that when making observations about a universe, these observations are constrained because the only universe we can know is one that is governed by a set of properties that supports life (such as our own humanity). If this was not the case then we would not exist to be able to make any observations at all. The implication of such a principal becomes quite mindblowing when you consider that if scientists wish to study the possibility of other universes (which they do), they would have to develop tools of analysis within a completely different set of fundamental parameters to that of our own universe. That is to say that the laws of physics would be completely different to those that we know.

How can this be possible? How is this science? This principle falls within the realms of physics and cosmology whereas it would seem to me to be a philosophical question. I have always felt this about Schrödinger's Cat Theory too.

As I continued to trawl the internet trying (and failing) to understand this abstract principal and fit this with my understanding of YOD, I was soon diverted by a new theory. I realised that this area of physics (and cosmology) was an absolute goldmine of possible names for rock bands. Here are a few I felt were quite appealing:

The Cosmological Constant (Retro 60s Psyche)
Euclidean Space (Ambient/Electronic)
Riemannian Manifold (Art Rock)
Hausdorff (Minimal Techno)
Hubble Redshift (Grebo/Grunge)
The Expanding Space Paradigm (Prog Rock)
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (more Prog)
120 Orders of Magnitude (Doom Metal)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I dig The Cosmological Constant, Euclidean Space, Riemannian Manifold, and Hubble Redshift, but you forgot to mention the most obvious of them all:

Schrödinger's Cat (Post-Hardcore)

THE TRILOGY TAPES said...

Hausdorff!!!

Big Bounce (Nola Bounce)