John Gribbin (2022) Impossible, Possible and Improbable. Science Stranger Than Fiction.

John Gribbin writes about physics. In modern parlance, he popularises science. As a starting point, he quotes Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes:

‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth’.

He offers some parameters:

Our Universe about 13.8 billion years old (Milky Way galaxy a little younger).

Solar System and Earth 4.5 billion years old

Formation of single-cell, eukaryotic, life on Earth around 3.8 billion years ago.   

2 billion years ago, more complex multicellular life (with nucleus and mitochondria).

13 million years ago, no ice sheets. Antarctica locked and merged with the South Pole.

Continent drift. 6 million years ago, Australia and South America break away from Antarctica.  

Homo habilis, out of Africa, around 2.5 million years ago. Posited less than a 1000 survivors.

Homo sapiens 500 000 years ago.

We are a fraction of a fraction of creation.  

‘Quantum physics is strange.’ Quanta can be both a wave and particle. It can be alive or dead, and be two places at once. You’re probably thinking it’s a Catholic saint, but the answer is there is no answer. Only interpretations based on probability and ‘as if’.

1) The world does not exist unless you look at it.

2) Particles are pushed around by waves, but the particles have no influence on the waves.

3) Everything that could possibly happen does, in an array of parallel realties.

4) Everything that could happen already has happened and we only notice part of it.

5) The future influences (bends) the past.

Are we alone in the universe?

Probably. There are other Solar Systems. And a plethora of Earth-like planets, but for intelligent life to emerge and thrive, our blue planet must suffer the right number of catastrophes and improbabilities. Everything is connected.  

Thomas Henry Huxley: ‘The great tragedy of science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact’.

We are people of the Ice Age. But as we evolved and burn fossil fuels we changed the climate. What matters isn’t how cold the winters are, but hot our summers. James Lovelock predicts a sudden shift as we become locked into global warming. No ice in Antarctica, again. I’m hypothesising. I couldn’t pass muster in what used to be called O’grade physics. I wouldn’t be allowed a university education because of my lack of maths. Gribbin is a genius, but compared to the most basic software, he’s slow and nothing in relation to digital intelligence. We’ve always lived in the Impossible, Possible and Improbable worlds. We just need to smell the digital roses. Worth a look or the world doesn’t exist. And if we live in multiple worlds we need multiple Christ figures, self-multiplying Muhammads and Buddhas, as well as your more mundane devils and Judas figures. We are not alone in this. Read on.