The Critical Rationalist                       Vol. 03  No. 02
ISSN: 1393-3809                                    23-Sep-1998


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Technical Appendix: Why the Acceptance of the Known Laws of Physics Requires Acceptance of the Omega Point Theory

(46) Astrophysical black holes almost certainly exist, but Hawking has shown that if black holes are allowed to exist for unlimited proper time, then they will completely evaporate, and a fundamental quantum law called "unitarity" will be violated. Unitarity, which roughly says that probability must be conserved, thus requires that the universe cease to exist after finite proper time, which in turn implies that the universe must be closed in space, with the universe ending in a finite proper time at a final singularity (Tipler, 1987). The Second Law of Thermodynamics says the amount of entropy--the amount of disorder--in the universe cannot decrease, but the amount of entropy already in the cosmic background radiation will eventually contradict the Bekenstein Bound near the final singularity unless there are no event horizons, since in the presence of horizons the Bekenstein Bound implies the universal entropy must be less than the square of the radius of the universe, and the radius of the universe goes to zero as the final singularity is approached. Roger Penrose showed how to define the shape of a singularity by using the number of horizons that terminate in that singularity. The absence of event horizons in Penrose's construction by definition means that the shape of the final singularity is a single point, call it the Omega Point (Tipler, 1986,1992). The British physicist Malcolm MacCallum has shown that a closed universe with a single point final singularity is very improbable; technically we say "of measure zero". The English astronomer John D. Barrow has shown that the evolution of a closed universe into its final singularity is chaotic. The American physicist James Yorke has shown that a chaotic physical system is likely to evolve into a measure zero state if and only if its control parameters are intelligently manipulated. Thus life (which in the far future is more appropriately thought of as intelligent computers) almost certainly must be present arbitrarily close to the final singularity in order for the known laws of physics to be mutually consistent at all times. The American physicist Charles W. Misner has shown in effect that event horizon elimination requires an infinite number of distinct manipulations, so an infinite amount of information must be processed between now and the final singularity. The amount of information stored at any given time diverges to infinity as the Omega Point is approached, since the total entropy of the universe diverges to infinity there, implying divergence of the complexity of the system that must be understood to be controlled.

(47) When a closed universe collapses into its final singularity, the average temperature of the universe increases without limit. So in order to survive, life must transfer its information into some other medium besides carbon, a medium which can withstand the arbitrarily high temperatures near the final singularity. The ability of life to transfer its information has several implications. First of all, the density of the universe must be great enough to close the universe. This means that the "density parameter" which cosmologists call "Omega-naught" (not the same thing as the "Omega Point"!) must be greater than one. But it can be shown that the ability of life to transfer its information to another medium means Omega-naught must be quite close to one. Specifically, (Omega-naught - 1) must be between a millionth and a thousandth.

(48) In the body of this paper, I mentioned another prediction: the mass of the most important elementary particle, the Higgs boson. The successful transfer of life's information from its current basis to a high temperature basis implies that the Standard Model Higgs boson mass must be within 20 of 220 GeV, where "GeV" is a measure of mass used in particle physics (Tipler, 1994a). "Supersymmetry", a hypothetical property which many particle physicists believe in (without any experimental evidence) gives a Higgs boson mass of at most 100 GeV. If the universe is indeed open (as some astrophysical evidence suggests) and unitarity is violated, then Hawking has shown that the Higgs particle will never be seen in a particle accelerator. Experimentally, the question of the Higgs boson mass should be resolved fairly soon: the Tevatron at Fermilab is currently being upgraded, and if the Higgs is less than 100 GeV, the upgraded machine--expected to go on line before the year 2000, will be able to detect it. The Large Hadron Collider currently being built at CERN in Geneva, will be able to detect the Higgs if it has a mass of less than 300 GeV. The Large Hadron Collider is projected to start collecting data in the year 2005, so the Open Society/Open Future prediction of the Higgs mass should be confirmed within the decade.



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The Critical Rationalist                       Vol. 03  No. 02
ISSN: 1393-3809                                    23-Sep-1998


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TCR Issue Timestamp: 1998-09-23

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