Matryoshka World


Wednesday, August 8, 2012

How Do You Count Parallel Universes? You Can’t Just Go 1, 2, 3

Blog post from Scientific American about the "measure problem" of counting parallel universes:

Counting Parallel Universes

"The process produces a family tree of universes. The tree is a fractal: no matter how closely you zoom in, it looks the same. In fact, the tree is a dead ringer for one of the most famous fractals of all, the Cantor set."

Sunday, August 5, 2012

NASA's Press Kit for the Curiosity Landing

Mars Curiosity Landing Press Kit from NASA

This NASA PDF is a treasure trove of information on the Curiosity rover and the current Mars mission.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

The "Evo Devo" Universe



The EDU hypothesis is a “just so” story, a self-selected and suspicious fantasy that must be held at arms length until it can be more objectively evaluated. It has parsimony of sorts and intuitive appeal to (at least some) purpose-seeking, biological minds. We present it in a long tradition of Goethe (1790), Schelling (1800), Chambers (1844), Darwin (1859,1871)...and other philosophers of science who suspect a naturalistically teleological (directional, progressive, and partly purposeful) universe that uses natural selection as an integral process, but not the only process in its successive self-improvement.