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I found this fascinating story The Fundamental Constants Behind Our Universe at medium.com's "Starts with a Bang" column. Ethan Siegel posits:
But the Universe itself experiences continual growth, constant change, and new experiences all the time, and it does so spontaneously.
And yet, the better we understand our Universe — what the laws are that govern it, what particles inhabit it, and what it looked/behaved like farther and farther back in the distant past — the more inevitable it appears that it would look just as it appears.
[...] We’d like to describe our Universe as simply as possible; one of the goals of science is to describe nature in the simplest terms possible, but no simpler. How many of these does it take, as far as we understand our Universe today, to completely describe the particles, interactions, and laws of our Universe?
The answer? "Quite a few, surprisingly: 26, at the very least." He then goes on to explore what these are and how they are computed.
Sadly, we don't know enough to be able to predict everything. As the article notes, there remain problems with explaining CP violations, matter-antimatter asymmetry in our Universe, cosmic inflation, and what dark matter actually is.
Separately, but related: many years ago I came upon a site that provided interactive exploration of the scale of things in the universe from Planck length on up to the the visible universe. (And, no, it was not powersof10.com) I have a niece who is curious about such things and I would love to share such a site with her. Sadly, I can no longer locate a link. Any suggestions?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TheLink on Sunday February 08 2015, @06:05PM
The 25 fundamentals don't appear to cover "chocolate", that is to say the subjective experience of it (nor many of the different things it means to different people).
In theory a universe with those 25 fundamentals and our known laws of physics does not require[1] the existence of consciousness nor "chocolate" and other subjective experiences (Qualia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia [wikipedia.org] ). I cannot prove to others consciousness exists and yet I know for sure it exists.
Some scientists think consciousness is a fundamental or even universal: http://www.scienceandnonduality.com/consciousness-as-fundamental-building-in-the-universe/ [scienceandnonduality.com]
[1] You could in theory have a simulation of the universe with all these fundamentals and laws and there isn't a need for consciousness to exist is there? But in this universe it somehow exists. If you did the simulation with pen and paper (or with a bunch of rocks: https://xkcd.com/505/ [xkcd.com] ) would consciousness still be emergent?
Or am I the only conscious person in this universe and the rest of you aren't and are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday February 08 2015, @06:42PM
I cannot prove to others consciousness exists and yet I know for sure it exists.
Can't overlook self deception as a possible failure mode of the argument.
As far as memes go your assumption is invalid as it seems to be an epidemic meme, its hard to find an individual self reporting as uninfected, and it mostly seems to be transmitted by speech, so obviously somebody is telling some persuasive stuff about it somewhere...
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Sunday February 08 2015, @07:54PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @08:43AM
My own consciousness is the only thing I can be 100% sure exists. Can't be as sure of everything else.