Sky & Telescope August 1991 [antikvár]

FOCAL POINTAmateur CosmologyCREATE a universe in your basement?It may be theoretically possible, calculates MIT cosmologist Alan Guth (ST: September, 1988, page 253). But to do it, Guth notes, you'd have to manipulate space-time by controlling energies far beyond what the most advanced galactic supercivilizations may be able to get their hands, or tentacles, on.However, as Sky Telescope readers know, anything a professional astronomer can do an amateur can do better. And in fact amateurs are akeady creating profusions of universes in their basements, attics, and at their desks on lunch hour. We know this because they write to the magazine and tell us.Most of these universes are actually our own, reinvented the way it ought to be if only professional cosmologists knew what they were doing.Often these pieces of mail can be recognized before opening. The envelopes arrive registered, certified, and insured. They may bear other characteristic stigmata as well. Inventing universes is such demanding work that only the most abundantly creative humans are up to it, and when it comes to putting pen to paper, these people are not like the rest of us. Their one unifying belief is that no white space may remain unwritten upon, sometimes including the back of the envelope and most of the front. What's inside?Like everything else, amateur cosmology falls along a quality spectrum. At one end are intelligent, rational, and boring folks who wrestle with relatively mainstream topics such as by-the-bootstraps quantum universe creation and the nature of higher dimensions. They try to do so within the context of modern physics as best they can figure it out. These people are eager to learn and will abandon a pet notion when faced with a good reason. In other words, they are hopeless dupes of the estabUshment.At the other end of the spectrum are freer souls who recognize the boundless possibilities open to those brave enough to cast off the shackles of orthodoxy.One such gentleman can "produce pictures of the universe looking from outside to the inside from six sides. It would give astronomers a very good idea of the shape of our universe. I have a Meade 6-inch. I'm not faking it or lying or nuts. I've given much thought to this."Amateur cosmologists tend to have a high sense of responsibility, which is lucky considering the power they wield: "For two or three years, I debated with myself whether or not to take control of the universe with energy radiating from myself," writes a correspondent from the Massachusetts coast. "I now believe that such action would be unwise." His abilities stem from his discovery that "every theorem in math is logically equivalent to some statement that two sets are equal or not equal." He offers his findings to scientists and government officials in hopes they will put them to the wisest use.The inventor of the Graviton Atom's Vortex Theory was well known at amateur astronomy gatherings a few years ago. "Mr. Vortex" was treated politely perhaps because, like doctors and bankers, we find it unseemly to say anything against one of our own. He details how "primary cosmic rays are the Prime Force of the universe the source of all power, and of all life." We know this to be true because cosmic rays "are projected reverse-rotating hydrogen atoms that rotate faster than normal, that are more-or-less frictionless atom gears, that cause all rotating atoms to rotate, directly or indirectly."The vortex man is no mere theorist; he checks his ideas in the laboratory: "I have used Weyher's fast-rotating globe experiment (tested with a manometer) to prove that the solid and liquid Sun feeds upon external molecular space-debris (food) by way of two opposite polar axis tornado vortexes (mouths) that partially digest the food with detonating lightning flashes," as it's on its way to "two reversed-orbiting inner-and-outer equatorial ecliptic vortexes (stomach)."One of the most promising new cosmologies comes from a New Yorker whohas formulated the New Science of Irrational Physics (NSIP). Using tightly reasoned logic in which, frankly, we can point to no specific flaw, he derives the First Law of NSIP: "If it sounds right, it is!" This discovery opens up vistas un-imagined by the stodgy. Nor does the author shrink from them: "There are four terms which we employ in NSIP to describe everything. They are matter, energy, life, and zchlit. The latter means anything else."We never know what the mail will bring. From Washington, D. C., come 11 pages, single-spaced, of multigeneration photocopies ("publish if acceptable, no return necessary") dealing with the "Peter and Paul, Paul and Peter" theory of galaxy formation. "The only way that a galaxy (Peter) can come into existence from the void, is for an adjoining or surrounding area (Paul) of the void to be reduced to less than Absolute Zero temperature . . . But now it is Paul, who by virtue of being more vacuum than Peter, is capable of immediately, if not sooner, retrieving its lost nothingness from Peter. You have to rob Peter to pay Paul." Such knowledge "should not be lost before man becomes extinct, 200-300 years."From Bangalore, India, comes the announcement of Universal Cybernetics, which will address "how the Master Clock of Our Universe is regulated and which mechanisms are involved in it." From Austria we receive news that "Stellar Rings" are actually "living individuals of the highest intelligence. They are comparable to the cancer-parasites which are affecting manhood. . . . Examples: Pleiades, Orion region. Beehive cluster."