[Martin Elster]

Originally Posted by John Isbell

I believe the dominant organism on Earth is Pelagibacter ubique.

Yes, that's true. On the other hand:

It was reported in Nature in February 2013 that the bacteriophage HTVC010P, which attacks P. ubique, has been discovered and "it probably really is the commonest organism on the planet".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelagi...#Bacteriophage

So HTVC010P might, in fact, be the dominant organism.

[Martin Elster]

Originally Posted by Jim Moonan

Btw, am I wrong to think that we are circling the drain? Is that the right analogy? That all of what exists eventually goes down the drain of a black hole and, as the NYT put it, "enter into the smoke ring that is the portal to eternity"? Is that it? The good news: we are here for eternity. The bad: eternity sucks when your in a black hole.

It "sucks" in more ways than one. Some think that a black hole leads to a whole other universe.

[Allen Tice]

Originally Posted by Jim Moonan

A hole is nothing.

It’s been pretty well established that interstellar space is not empty, but apart from random regular particles and radiation, it functions as a quantum matrix that constantly emits and reabsorbs oppositely signed “virtual” particles, and that same space, of course, is also bent or curved to a greater or lesser degree by the presence of regular mass. It’s not quite the old “luminiferous ether”, but, hey, apart from those caveats, it’s not so different... Then there’s “dark” energy and mass that aren’t dark, just invisible. And here we are, self-aware dynamisms with a long primitive history. Weird, eh.

[Erik Olson]

Originally Posted by Allen Tice

Then there’s “dark” energy and mass that aren’t dark, just invisible. And here we are, self-aware dynamisms with a long primitive history. Weird, eh.

Still, dark is apt. Not that we see the dark in the matter, but that the matter leaves us in the dark. At least it does me.

I was put in mind of a black hole from one of Swift’s satires:

... However spiritual intrigues begin, they generally conclude like all others: they may branch upwards towards heaven, but the root is in the earth. Too intense a contemplation is not the business of flesh and blood; it must, by the necessary course of things, in a little time let go its hold and fall into matter. Lovers, for the sake of celestial converse, are but another sort of Platonics, who pretend to see stars and heaven in ladies' eyes, and to look or think no lower; but the same pit is provided for both; and they seem a perfect moral to the story of that philosopher, who, while his thoughts and eyes were fixed upon the constellations, found himself seduced by his lower parts into a ditch.

I had somewhat more to say upon this part of the subject; but the post is just going, which forces me in great haste to conclude.
I had somewhat more to say upon this part of the subject; but thesomewhat more to say upon this part of pos justSir, yours, &c.
Pray burn this letter as soon as it comes to your hands.

[John Isbell]

This seems called for:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima...f_the_universe

Cheers,
John

[Michael F]

Originally Posted by Erik Olson

Lovers, for the sake of celestial converse, are but another sort of Platonics, who pretend to see stars and heaven in ladies' eyes, and to look or think no lower;

LOL!

As for the fate of the universe, and pace Frost: what if creation is perpetual? Makes as much sense to me as anything else.

[Allen Tice]

There are those who have advanced the idea that banglets, (baubles, bangles, and beads?) or new subordinate bangs called baby universes, might might possibly arise in calm volumes of our own really big universe because of quantum instability. Dunno, and really, neither do they yet. Would we be able to spot these things? Potentially they could be as big (inside themselves) as ours is. This seems like an attempt to revive the steady-state, eternal ongoing creation theory of Gold et alii that was popular just before the Big Bang idea triumphed. That I wasn’t so long ago: the young Hawking was interested in steady-state. Our own situation isn’t much changed either way, to my small way of thinking.

[Jim Moonan]

Allen: It’s been pretty well established that interstellar space is not empty, but apart from random regular particles and radiation, it functions as a quantum matrix that constantly emits and reabsorbs oppositely signed “virtual” particles, and that same space, of course, is also bent or curved to a greater or lesser degree by the presence of regular mass.

Allen, are you doing the famous Ali shuffle on me? My mind gets nary a whiff of what you say but hey I'm never one to understand anything anyway. I marvel, I wonder, I muse, I ruminate and all the rest of them, but I forget too much to understand anything.
You, sire sir, will always be one with the cosmos of wordness.
x
x

[Michael Cantor]

Jim - I guess you're the last person on the Sphere to get the word that the reason you're sometimes having trouble understanding Allen is that Allen isn't a person - he (it) is a computer program, cleverly designed to mimic many aspects of human speech, with a knowledge base particularly focused on the Ancients. Who is behind this is the deepest secret on the Sphere, but I suspect Julie Steiner on account of (a) she's the smartest, and (b) I can almost always understand her. So if you sometimes have trouble following Allen, don't worry your pretty little head about it. He's still in beta phase. (And, now that I think of it, perhaps we all are. Does that explain the black hole?)

[Martin Elster]

I've suspected that Allen is really an AI invented by Julie. Nevertheless, I'm going to address him now ...

Allen - Fred Hoyle (a great scientist) was a proponent of the steady state theory of cosmology, but the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation terminated that theory. The multiverse is a newer theory that is not a theory. It arose from the implications of string theory, which says that there is an infinity of universes and every kind of possible universe is possible. But a theory that says everything is possible is a theory of nothing, right?

It’s true that the fabric of space-time is not nothing, though it’s not really like the luminiferous aether, either. That doesn't necessarily mean string theory will not someday be confirmed. But we need much more advanced and sensitive technology for that to happen.

Luminiferous aether or ether[1][2] ("luminiferous", meaning "light-bearing"), was the postulated medium for the propagation of light.[3] It was invoked to explain the ability of the apparently wave-based light to propagate through empty space, something that waves should not be able to do. The assumption of a spatial plenum of luminiferous aether, rather than a spatial vacuum, provided the theoretical medium that was required by wave theories of light.

The aether hypothesis was the topic of considerable debate throughout its history, as it required the existence of an invisible and infinite material with no interaction with physical objects. As the nature of light was explored, especially in the 19th century, the physical qualities required of an aether became increasingly contradictory. By the late 1800s, the existence of the aether was being questioned, although there was no physical theory to replace it.

The negative outcome of the Michelson–Morley experiment (1887) suggested that the aether did not exist, a finding that was confirmed in subsequent experiments through the 1920s. This led to considerable theoretical work to explain the propagation of light without an aether. A major breakthrough was the theory of relativity, which could explain why the experiment failed to see aether, but was more broadly interpreted to suggest that it was not needed. The Michelson-Morley experiment, along with the blackbody radiator and photoelectric effect, was a key experiment in the development of modern physics, which includes both relativity and quantum theory, the latter of which explains the wave-like nature of light.