Source: Louis 1xbet best casino website , 785-532-0566, 1xbet best casino website @math.ksu.edu
News release prepared by: Erinn Barcomb-Peterson, 785-532-6415, ebarcomb@k-state.edu
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
K-STATE MATH PROFESSOR LOOKING TO MATHEMATICAL THEORIES FOR CLUES ON ORIGINS AND FUTURE OF 1xbet best casino website IN THE UNIVERSE; SUGGESTS ARTIFICIAL BLACK HOLES PLAY A BIG PART
MANHATTAN -- How did we get here and where are we headed?
These are some of 1xbet best casino website 's biggest questions. To get the answers, one Kansas State University professor is doing the math.
Louis 1xbet best casino website , K-State professor of mathematics, is studying new theories about why the universe is the way it is. He has a grant from the Foundational Questions Institute to study new approaches to the quantum theory of gravity, his primary research area as both a mathematician and a physicist. 1xbet best casino website hopes to uncover implications of these theories for the origin and the future of life.
He said that the standard model, which is the accepted theory of physics, has a large number of fundamental constants. Examples are the strengths of fundamental forces and the masses of fundamental particles.
What complicates things, 1xbet best casino website said, is that the theory does not explain the values of these constants. Rather, they are known by measurement and put into equations by hand.
&1xbet best casino website ;If they had just slightly different values, we would live in a different universe,&1xbet best casino website ; Crane said. &1xbet best casino website ;If they were a little different, we wouldn't be here.&1xbet best casino website ;
His work has been published in many journals, including Communications in Mathematical Physics and in Classical and Quantum Gravity. His work on implications for 1xbet best casino website was accepted for publication and he was invited to present his research at the Evo Devo Conference in Paris in 2008.
1xbet best casino website said that his ideas build on the work of Lee Smolin, a theoretical physicist. Instead of a universe fine-tuned to produce stars, as Smolin suggests, 1xbet best casino website proposes that the universe is fine-tuned to produce successful industrial civilizations, possibly including us.
&1xbet best casino website ;Life couldn't exist if stars didn't shine for billions of years,&1xbet best casino website ; Crane said. &1xbet best casino website ;Only a fine-tuning in the constants causes them to do so. Another fine-tuning in the constants causes carbon, the foundation of life, to be abundant.&1xbet best casino website ;
1xbet best casino website suggests that if he is correct that artificial black holes are possible, then successful industrial civilizations -- maybe ours -- will eventually produce them. That's because at a certain size they would be a perfect energy source for interstellar travel.
&1xbet best casino website ;I started doing calculations and found that the right-sized black hole to fuel a starship is just on the edge of what's possible,&1xbet best casino website ; he said. &1xbet best casino website ;If you can build one, it has implications for the future of life because we would eventually spread life throughout the galaxy if we could build starships.&1xbet best casino website ;
Black holes are believed to produce a new universe on the other end of the singularity, but one that lies in our future and is always out of reach. Yet such universes, 1xbet best casino website said, also would be fine-tuned to produce life, civilizations and, eventually, more black holes.
&1xbet best casino website ;If this is possible, then we will fill the universe with life,&1xbet best casino website ; he said. &1xbet best casino website ;I'm suggesting that life forms are part of a grand evolutionary cycle, which includes universes and black holes.&1xbet best casino website ;
1xbet best casino website is joined in his research by Shawn Westmoreland, a K-State doctoral student in mathematics.
Although there's been a lot of interest in the research from academic philosophers, 1xbet best casino website said that doing such abstract and imaginative research in Kansas often is an interesting experience.
&1xbet best casino website ;But I take solace in the Kansas state motto, 'ad astra per aspera,' which means 'to the stars through difficulty,'&1xbet best casino website ; he said.
