It seems reasonable to ask questions about the earliest beginnings of our universe. I get that. However, humans seem unable to handle the basic reality that confronts us and until we get a grip on the basics, dabbling in questions about the origins of the universe seems a bit like trying to learn how to cook by first making a souffle. When we learn to walk, first we crawl, but science has always allowed us to think we know before we even have a clue about what it is that we have just "discovered". Even our terminology confounds our understanding. The far east is neither. The new world, same thing the dabbling we have done to this point into nuclear physics has yielded hazards beyond our comprehension and the "work" that so many scientists have done as well as the billions of dollars of "investment" into the nuclear age have yielded substances that will be dangerous through hundreds of generations, making certain areas on the planet inhospitable for life forever.
I have understood more deeply the fallacy of "scientific understanding" than I ever could explain, but since I first studied nuclear energy, I have seen the writing on the wall. Rich and powerful people have found a way to siphon off vast quantities of wealth for their own purposes. The more zeroes you add to the figures that represent the government subsidies, the more sacrosanct your activities become. The waste, fraud and abuse that takes place globally exponentially increases as the stakes rise. Simple, right? Not as simple as this. Who cares?
Say we do prove that the basic foundation of all religions is make believe. The origin of the universe was curious, I grant that, but the idea of understanding what went on that long ago has no use for today. Adding to the silliness of the whole undertaking is the fact that we are playing with a strange kind of battery technology that we cannot yet fathom. Like the nuclear energy complex, where we dig and rape the earth for rock that takes vast amounts of energy, we crush mountains to powder, concentrate the uranium ore, spending again, more energy. The process continues with more and more energy inputs through milling, "purification" and processing, concentrating the magic bullet, uranium. Eventually, after spending billions on tools and technology, we get to bleed of the energy that we put in with the added, and complicated problem of 60,000 years safe storage required to protect ourselves from the waste. We are doing similar things with the CERN and other colliders, superconducting or not. Pumping vast amounts of energy into events that last fractions of a second is again like stretching an infinitely long rubber band in the hopes of watching it snap back.
It seems to me that trying to re-create conditions that took place billions of years ago is a bit like burying the same dog for the rest of human history. With what we know already, the writing is on the wall, we just need to step back far enough to read it. Religion has been limping along for the better part of at least two centuries. The religion of science has caused as many problems as the esoteric religions of the past with one exception. Instead of claiming certain knowledge, science has admitted that it is only trying to understand what is. In the nuclear realm, our ability to understand has caused many times more grief than it has protected us from and nuclear physics seems to be doing the same thing, just a bit slower than the development of nuclear electric generating stations or the weapons of mass destruction that have been created from the "waste".
The reason that I put that in quotation marks is because it is waste of a new kind. I'm not even sure that the term is appropriate because in nearly the entire rest of the world, waste is just a resource for some other life form who uses it to thrive. In the case of nuclear waste, it not only remains dangerous for hundreds of centuries, but there seems to be no use for it, ever. Not for people, not for plants and not for any other life form on the planet. The deeper we look into the heart of the atom, the more ephemeral the particles become. The Higgs Boson might well have been "discovered", but whether or not it will feed anyone, love them or provide anything of use is yet to be proven. I'm expecting it to be about as life changing as the other sub-atomic particles that we have discovered. With a bit of luck, perhaps we can understand the dangers of the "new discovery" before anyone gets hurt. Understanding the history of science and technology makes it seem unlikely, but if we can put the superstitions of religion to bed forever, proving that peaceful loving people cause less harm to others than irate, angry and abusive ones, we may have a leg up to our eventual survival as a species. I'm sure we understand far less than we will need to to pull off a souffle, but if we end up with scrambled eggs, we can count ourselves blessed.
I have understood more deeply the fallacy of "scientific understanding" than I ever could explain, but since I first studied nuclear energy, I have seen the writing on the wall. Rich and powerful people have found a way to siphon off vast quantities of wealth for their own purposes. The more zeroes you add to the figures that represent the government subsidies, the more sacrosanct your activities become. The waste, fraud and abuse that takes place globally exponentially increases as the stakes rise. Simple, right? Not as simple as this. Who cares?
Say we do prove that the basic foundation of all religions is make believe. The origin of the universe was curious, I grant that, but the idea of understanding what went on that long ago has no use for today. Adding to the silliness of the whole undertaking is the fact that we are playing with a strange kind of battery technology that we cannot yet fathom. Like the nuclear energy complex, where we dig and rape the earth for rock that takes vast amounts of energy, we crush mountains to powder, concentrate the uranium ore, spending again, more energy. The process continues with more and more energy inputs through milling, "purification" and processing, concentrating the magic bullet, uranium. Eventually, after spending billions on tools and technology, we get to bleed of the energy that we put in with the added, and complicated problem of 60,000 years safe storage required to protect ourselves from the waste. We are doing similar things with the CERN and other colliders, superconducting or not. Pumping vast amounts of energy into events that last fractions of a second is again like stretching an infinitely long rubber band in the hopes of watching it snap back.
It seems to me that trying to re-create conditions that took place billions of years ago is a bit like burying the same dog for the rest of human history. With what we know already, the writing is on the wall, we just need to step back far enough to read it. Religion has been limping along for the better part of at least two centuries. The religion of science has caused as many problems as the esoteric religions of the past with one exception. Instead of claiming certain knowledge, science has admitted that it is only trying to understand what is. In the nuclear realm, our ability to understand has caused many times more grief than it has protected us from and nuclear physics seems to be doing the same thing, just a bit slower than the development of nuclear electric generating stations or the weapons of mass destruction that have been created from the "waste".
The reason that I put that in quotation marks is because it is waste of a new kind. I'm not even sure that the term is appropriate because in nearly the entire rest of the world, waste is just a resource for some other life form who uses it to thrive. In the case of nuclear waste, it not only remains dangerous for hundreds of centuries, but there seems to be no use for it, ever. Not for people, not for plants and not for any other life form on the planet. The deeper we look into the heart of the atom, the more ephemeral the particles become. The Higgs Boson might well have been "discovered", but whether or not it will feed anyone, love them or provide anything of use is yet to be proven. I'm expecting it to be about as life changing as the other sub-atomic particles that we have discovered. With a bit of luck, perhaps we can understand the dangers of the "new discovery" before anyone gets hurt. Understanding the history of science and technology makes it seem unlikely, but if we can put the superstitions of religion to bed forever, proving that peaceful loving people cause less harm to others than irate, angry and abusive ones, we may have a leg up to our eventual survival as a species. I'm sure we understand far less than we will need to to pull off a souffle, but if we end up with scrambled eggs, we can count ourselves blessed.
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