Physics has Stopped Making Sense to Me

(H/T) to MR:

Crane first started thinking about artificial black holes 12 years ago when physicist Lee Smolin, now at Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, asked Crane to read the manuscript of his book The Life of the Cosmos.

Nobody knows what happens at the singularity of a black hole, the point where space and time become so warped that the laws of relativity break down. In his book, Smolin suggested that a new universe could be created and bud off. So universes in which black holes are likely to arise will give birth to more and more such universes. This means that our universe could be a baby universe, and is more likely to have come from one that is good at making black holes than one that isn't.

Crane then wondered what would happen if intelligent civilisations could make black holes. This would mean that life in these universes played a key role in the proliferation of baby universes. Smolin felt the idea was too outlandish and left it out of his book. But Crane has been thinking about it on and off for the last decade.

He believes we are seeing Darwinian selection operating on the largest possible scale: only universes that contain life can make black holes and then go on to give birth to other universes, while the lifeless universes are an evolutionary dead end.

His latest calculations made him realise how uncanny it was that there could be a black hole at just the right size for powering a starship. "Why is there such a sweet spot?" he asks. The only reason for an intelligent civilisation to make a black hole, he sees, is so it can travel the universe.

"If this hypothesis is right," he says, "we live in a universe that is optimised for building starships!"

Gattaca Tells us Nothing About Genetics

Every now and then, genetic testing advances a little bit, and people mutter darkly about an apocalyptic, Gattaca-like world. "You gotta check out this movie!" they say. "They start genetic screening for all sorts of jobs, and put in a genetic caste-like system!" Health insurance will break down, eugenics, etc. etc.

The perils and promises of genetic testing and experimentation remain to be seen. But Gattaca is a horrible way to make his point. I mean, [spoiler] the guy was prepping for a long-distance space flight, and hiding a pre-existing heart condition was deeply irresponsible and selfish. This is why we already screen astronauts; and I hope they do so in the future on genetic grounds as well. I'm sure this guy could have made it just fine as a banker; but noooo, he just had to get out there in space, and the costs in terms of mission success and the safety of his fellow crewmen just weren't his problem. Asshole.

The movie does raise an interesting point about the survival of humans during manned expeditions. In a trip to Mars, for instance, getting the astronauts back is the real challenge. This seems somewhat taboo to mention, but space exploration would be a lot easier if it were one-way. It does seem odd to spend so much money retrieving astronauts, when there are so many people willing to take the one-way ticket, and millions continue to die for want of a few dollars in health costs.

Incidentally, it looks like they're thinking of making a police procedural based on Gattaca's world. Hopefully the bioethics will be a little less butchered here.