This is the worst analogy I have heard in a long time. It's even bad for physics journalism.
And the subtitle says "timescape", which immediately clues me into what the theory is about, instead of "time zone" as in the title.
sega_sai · 27m ago
While it is possible that relaxing the homogeneity assumption is needed to resolve the tensions observed among different cosmological measurements, it is also worth noting that supernovae are a quite messy tracer, because we don't really understand their explosions well enough. So a lot of things are just empirically calibrated. We are also now limited by systematics when using supernovae for cosmology.
sanderjd · 7m ago
> We are also now limited by systematics when using supernovae for cosmology.
Could you say more about this part? I don't know what that means.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
This is timescape cosmology’s inhomogenous universe hypothesis [1] that competes with ΛCDM’s cosmological principle [2].
Can Vernor Vinge please spend just one day not being right about everything?
jvanderbot · 11m ago
I've read two of his books and loved them. Which is relevant here?
elliotf · 4m ago
The "fire upon the deep" series describes zones where the speed of light differs, causing deserts from which escape is difficult, did to the slow speed at which ships must travel.
at_a_remove · 2h ago
Or Poul Anderson's Brainwave (1953), in which the Earth finally leaves a part of the galaxy which inadvertently made thinking hard. And everything with two neurons to rub together gets smarter, not just humans. Essentially, we evolved in what Vinge would later call "The Unthinking Depths" (if memory serves) to deal with the strain.
b800h · 2h ago
Came here to say the same thing - this is uncanny.
In some of his novels - most notably A Fire Upon the Deep (from 1992), he imagines the galaxy as divided into concentric zones, each with different physical laws and limits on intelligence and technology. These are referred to as "Zones of Thought," each affecting the potential for intelligence and technological development.
It's not a perfect match, as I think the new theory refers to relative time based on the density of matter at a given location.
Part of me wonders if this analogous to the "watched pot never boils" issue. Wander into the wilderness to do magic...
jvanderbot · 6m ago
Deepness in the sky is top 5 scifi. Great programmer tropes hidden in there.
Others:
- first bobiverse book (followed by all the rest)
- permutation city (next: diaspora, etc)
- Diamond age (so relevant now with spread of LLMs)
- count to a trillion (A cowboy lawyer mathematician takes enough drugs to invent antimatter tech)
fifticon · 4h ago
I think he is dead, there is little he can do now?
wiml · 3h ago
Dang. I hadn't heard. RIP.
monkeycantype · 4h ago
If it’s all a swirling spinning turbulent mess is there enough difference in relative velocity that we’ve had more or less time since the Big Bang than other places?
monkeycantype · 4h ago
Finishing off above question…
Is that What this model is suggesting or is the uneven distribution of mass contributing too?
scotty79 · 3h ago
I think the idea is mostly about the distribution of mass influencing time flow.
> Instead, the basis of the timescape model is that, in fact, we see in the universe around us today that there are giant cosmic structures, enormous filaments and walls filled with galaxies and galaxy clusters. And in between those filaments and walls we have giant voids of nothing.
Could explain we haven't found life elsewhere?
chongli · 1h ago
No. We’re only searching for life in a tiny area around the Sun within our galaxy, the Milky Way. To find life we first need to find planets, which involves looking at stars over extended periods of time to detect tiny dips in brightness (transit method) or tiny wobbles causing minute redshift-blueshift cycles (doppler shift method).
Those cosmic filament structures are on the scale of millions and billions of galaxies over distances far larger than the size of a single galaxy. We can’t even resolve individual stars beyond our Local Group of galaxies and still most of the stars within the Milky Way are too far to use our exoplanet detection techniques (2 of them mentioned previously).
Finally, to search for life we’ve been attempting to search for spectral absorption lines of the gases in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, which involves recording a spectrograph during the transit method. This only works for stars with their orbital planes edge-on to us so that we can actually detect the planetary transits and record enough light from them over time to see how the spectrograph changes during the transit events.
chneu · 3h ago
Who says we haven't?
We have absolutely no real idea what life will look like.
What if there are already organisms that are so large or small that we just can't comprehend them?
Also, the universe is likely so large that we'll never encounter life like us.
dgfl · 2h ago
Are you proposing that atoms are organisms and/or that astronomical objects may be organisms? I feel like you are just inflating the meaning of “life” without justifying why.
Defining it properly is a very interesting problem, but I think this is an extremely active field of study. Saying “what if subatomic particles are actually living organisms” is not a productive line of thought.
lukan · 53m ago
"Saying “what if subatomic particles are actually living organisms” is not a productive line of thought."
Questions usually can be productive. To answer it, we have to look up and apply the (debated) definitions of life and atoms in our understanding clearly don't meet it.
But since we only know so very little when going really small or really big, I do say it is an interesting thought to give room for quark or dark matter based life, or the theoretical organism of a black hole.
We simply don't know and we will never know, if we think we already know.
mr_mitm · 46m ago
We do know a lot about the very small and the very big, though. We understand quark interactions extremely well. It's very hard to imagine interactions at that scale complex enough to yield something anyone would be comfortable calling "life". The defining property of dark matter is no or only weak interaction (which we also understand very well), so imagining life there becomes even harder.
> We simply don't know and we will never know, if we think we already know.
That's a very defeatist and intellectually lazy point of view. As is "just asking questions" which lack support by even a shred of plausibility.
lukan · 18m ago
"That's a very defeatist and intellectually lazy point of view. "
In my opinion it is the opposite. Claiming we understand life and quarks and quarks can therefore not be part of subatomic life is the lazy approach to me.
I am open for it. That doesn't mean I see indications for it, just that I am open for the concept. If I would not be open for unexpected ideas, I would never get them.
And correct me if I am wrong, but I never met a scientist who claimed to really understand quantum mechanics. Well, I heard of some who do, but they are mostly not taken seriously by the rest. So sure, we do know a lot. But understanding it?
sanderjd · 12s ago
Basically, your point of view as expressed in this thread is mystical rather than scientific. That's fine if it's what you're into, but don't be surprised if it makes more scientific types roll their eyes.
mr_mitm · 3m ago
> quarks can therefore not be part of subatomic life is the lazy approach to me
For the record, I wrote "very hard to imagine". If you claim it can be possible, it is you who must produce at least a suggestion on how it could be possible.
> And correct me if I am wrong, but I never met a scientist who claimed to really understand quantum mechanics.
I know that's a popular trope, but what they usually mean is that they don't understand it on an intuitive level. You can understand the math of it just fine.
QM is by far the most successful theory we ever had and laid the foundations for the transistor, lasers, CCD chips, solar panels, MRIs, and much more. It's responsible for arguably the biggest transformation of society of all times. You don't get there without understanding even the smallest nook of that theory.
Maybe we have different definitions of what it means to understand something, but that's not a discussion I'm interested it.
iinnPP · 58m ago
It seems they are stating that life elsewhere may be vastly different than life on Earth.
How did you arrive at your understanding of the comment?
mr_mitm · 51m ago
I arrived at the same understanding as GP due to this line:
> What if there are already organisms that are so large or small that we just can't comprehend them?
As was discussed at the time, that news was overhyped. The finding is not strong evidence of life, it's strong evidence that we don't fully understand how that molecule gets formed. And the most recent news on that front is that the finding itself is being challenged.
exe34 · 3h ago
> Could explain we haven't found life elsewhere?
Or maybe we just haven't looked very far at all.
merek · 47m ago
Nor for very long.
XorNot · 4h ago
The scale here is "thousands of galaxies".
The problem with where's the other life is already enormous due to the size of our one galaxy.
And the subtitle says "timescape", which immediately clues me into what the theory is about, instead of "time zone" as in the title.
Could you say more about this part? I don't know what that means.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inhomogeneous_cosmology
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle
In some of his novels - most notably A Fire Upon the Deep (from 1992), he imagines the galaxy as divided into concentric zones, each with different physical laws and limits on intelligence and technology. These are referred to as "Zones of Thought," each affecting the potential for intelligence and technological development.
It's not a perfect match, as I think the new theory refers to relative time based on the density of matter at a given location.
Part of me wonders if this analogous to the "watched pot never boils" issue. Wander into the wilderness to do magic...
Others:
- first bobiverse book (followed by all the rest)
- permutation city (next: diaspora, etc)
- Diamond age (so relevant now with spread of LLMs)
- count to a trillion (A cowboy lawyer mathematician takes enough drugs to invent antimatter tech)
Is that What this model is suggesting or is the uneven distribution of mass contributing too?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6353482
> if you have less time in an area (i.e. due to a gravity well, like Earth's) you can equally view it as more space
are so nonsensical (with all due respect), they are not even wrong[0].
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
Could explain we haven't found life elsewhere?
Those cosmic filament structures are on the scale of millions and billions of galaxies over distances far larger than the size of a single galaxy. We can’t even resolve individual stars beyond our Local Group of galaxies and still most of the stars within the Milky Way are too far to use our exoplanet detection techniques (2 of them mentioned previously).
Finally, to search for life we’ve been attempting to search for spectral absorption lines of the gases in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, which involves recording a spectrograph during the transit method. This only works for stars with their orbital planes edge-on to us so that we can actually detect the planetary transits and record enough light from them over time to see how the spectrograph changes during the transit events.
We have absolutely no real idea what life will look like.
What if there are already organisms that are so large or small that we just can't comprehend them?
Also, the universe is likely so large that we'll never encounter life like us.
Defining it properly is a very interesting problem, but I think this is an extremely active field of study. Saying “what if subatomic particles are actually living organisms” is not a productive line of thought.
Questions usually can be productive. To answer it, we have to look up and apply the (debated) definitions of life and atoms in our understanding clearly don't meet it.
But since we only know so very little when going really small or really big, I do say it is an interesting thought to give room for quark or dark matter based life, or the theoretical organism of a black hole.
We simply don't know and we will never know, if we think we already know.
> We simply don't know and we will never know, if we think we already know.
That's a very defeatist and intellectually lazy point of view. As is "just asking questions" which lack support by even a shred of plausibility.
In my opinion it is the opposite. Claiming we understand life and quarks and quarks can therefore not be part of subatomic life is the lazy approach to me. I am open for it. That doesn't mean I see indications for it, just that I am open for the concept. If I would not be open for unexpected ideas, I would never get them.
And correct me if I am wrong, but I never met a scientist who claimed to really understand quantum mechanics. Well, I heard of some who do, but they are mostly not taken seriously by the rest. So sure, we do know a lot. But understanding it?
For the record, I wrote "very hard to imagine". If you claim it can be possible, it is you who must produce at least a suggestion on how it could be possible.
> And correct me if I am wrong, but I never met a scientist who claimed to really understand quantum mechanics.
I know that's a popular trope, but what they usually mean is that they don't understand it on an intuitive level. You can understand the math of it just fine.
QM is by far the most successful theory we ever had and laid the foundations for the transistor, lasers, CCD chips, solar panels, MRIs, and much more. It's responsible for arguably the biggest transformation of society of all times. You don't get there without understanding even the smallest nook of that theory.
Maybe we have different definitions of what it means to understand something, but that's not a discussion I'm interested it.
How did you arrive at your understanding of the comment?
> What if there are already organisms that are so large or small that we just can't comprehend them?
Or maybe we just haven't looked very far at all.
The problem with where's the other life is already enormous due to the size of our one galaxy.