Let there be light…
Conservation of matter and energy
works somewhere.
Imagine if a God had created the universe and he had
said: “I’m going to insert a fixed amount of energy into this
universe of mine. I will let stars form and explode, and planets move in their
orbits, and I will have people create great cities, and there will be battles
that destroy those cities, and then I’ll let the survivors create new
civilisations. There will be fires and horses and oxen pulling carts; there will
be coal and steam engines and factories and even mighty locomotives and
iPhones.
“Yet throughout the whole sequence, even though the types of energy that people see will change, even though sometimes the energy will appear as the heat of human or animal muscle, and sometimes it will appear as the gushing of waterfalls or the explosions of volcanoes; despite all those variations, the total amount of energy will remain the same. The amount I create at the beginning will not change. There will not be one millionth part less than what was there at the start.”
Expressed like this, it sounds the sheerest mumbo jumbo, like something Yoda would mysteriously speak in Star Wars; or like the popular superstitions that would drive Richard Dawkins into an apoplexy.
What’s extraordinary, though, is that it’s true (although the God part is contestable).
Gee - I wonder if the Associated Press will pick this one up?
I get to read a newspaper like The Guardian which offers up sound science on a daily and weekly basis - turn around - and wander through the wasteland of American media.
“Yet throughout the whole sequence, even though the types of energy that people see will change, even though sometimes the energy will appear as the heat of human or animal muscle, and sometimes it will appear as the gushing of waterfalls or the explosions of volcanoes; despite all those variations, the total amount of energy will remain the same. The amount I create at the beginning will not change. There will not be one millionth part less than what was there at the start.”
Expressed like this, it sounds the sheerest mumbo jumbo, like something Yoda would mysteriously speak in Star Wars; or like the popular superstitions that would drive Richard Dawkins into an apoplexy.
What’s extraordinary, though, is that it’s true (although the God part is contestable).
Gee - I wonder if the Associated Press will pick this one up?
I get to read a newspaper like The Guardian which offers up sound science on a daily and weekly basis - turn around - and wander through the wasteland of American media.
Posted: Wed - April 30, 2008 at 10:30 AM