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A new link has been posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:\u00a0Conference Talks: \u201cJoseph Smith and Modern Cosmology,\u201d<\/a> given by Ron Hellings<\/p>\n In this Interpreter presentation, originally given in 2013, the late physicist Ron Hellings<\/a> took a look at some of the teachings of Joseph Smith to try to understand these in light of modern cosmology, the study of the foundations of matter, time, and energy throughout the universe. He found reasonable ways to harmonize these perspectives, and concluded that na\u00efve big bang challenges to the doctrines of the Restoration were out of date.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I now turn briefly back to writing down some notes that have been inspired by and\/or are based upon Michael Guillen\u2019s Believing is Seeing: A Physicist Explains How Science Shattered His Atheism and Revealed the Necessity of Faith<\/em> (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Refresh, 2021).\u00a0 They are, as I\u2019ve previously explained, an initial hasty and unpolished pass on the topic that they address:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I closed off my previous set of notes, a couple of days ago, with the idea that physics now sees itself, in the words of the great Nobel laureate physicist Werner Heisenberg, not merely as a detached and objective observer but \u201cas part of the interplay between man and nature.\u00a0 Dr. Guillen offers a very down-to-earth comparison:\u00a0 Suppose that you meet a woman for the first time.\u00a0 Prior to your meeting with her, she is, in a sense, a \u201ccloud of possibilities.\u201d\u00a0 When you meet her, though, she actually becomes<\/em> one of those possibilities.\u00a0 And the crucial point is that your interaction with her affects how she behaves and, thus, influences the outcome of the meeting.\u00a0 Had somebody other than you met with her, that different person would have elicited different behavior from her.<\/p>\n So . . . going back to that electron.\u00a0 When I open the box, I may or may not experience the same outcome that you would [with regard to clockwise spin versus counterclockwise spin].\u00a0 There\u2019s a fifty-fifty chance I will.\u00a0 And a fifty-fifty chance I\u2019ll get the opposite result.<\/p>\n Same electron.\u00a0 Same box.\u00a0 Opposite result.<\/p>\n If enough people open the box, the outcomes will average out to fifty-fifty.\u00a0 Half of the observers will see the electron spinning clockwise; half, counterclockwise.<\/p>\n We call this intriguing phenomenon the quantum measurement problem<\/em>.\u00a0 Why problem?\u00a0 Because we don\u2019t really understand how reality can be so subjective. . . .<\/p>\n \u201cHow do you go from the fuzzy, hazy reality of quantum probabilities, where things can be in many locations with different likelihoods, to the single, definite reality we observe when we do a measurement?\u201d asks Columbia University physicist Brian Greene.\u00a0 Answer?\u00a0 \u201cWe don\u2019t know.\u201d\u00a0 (129; italics in the original)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But this is a serious problem for science in general and for physics in particular.\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n For physicists, measurements are everything<\/em>. . . .<\/p>\n Back in the days of Aristotle and Newton, physicists believed there was no limit to how accurate a measurement could be.\u00a0 They had faith that one day \u2014 and with the right combination of cleverness, skill, and equipment \u2014 they could nail down every little thing about the universe with unlimited precision.<\/p>\n Then 1927 happened.<\/p>\n In that fateful year, Werner Heisenberg published a mathematical expression called the uncertainty principle<\/em>.\u00a0 It claims that no matter how hard we try, no matter how clever or skillful we are, we can never find out everything about the universe.<\/p>\n It\u2019s impossible to speak about Heisenberg\u2019s uncertainty principle without recalling G\u00f6del\u2019s incompleteness theorem.\u00a0 Both were shocking discoveries of insurmountable limits (of the scientific method and logic, respectively).\u00a0 (130)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What this means, Dr. Guillen suggests, is that the universe\u2019s inmost secrets are hidden behind a curtain of uncertainty that cannot be raised by science.\u00a0 It means that we can never know absolutely everything about the universe within which we live.\u00a0 He offers a very clear summary of the uncertainty principle, as follows:<\/p>\n Certain measurable quantities, Heisenberg discovered, are paired in an odd way.\u00a0 Two such pairs are momentum and location, and energy and time.\u00a0 Physicists call these odd couples conjugate variables<\/em> or incompatible observables<\/em>.<\/p>\n The more accurately we measure one member of the pair, the less accurately we\u2019re able to measure the other.\u00a0 Wonderland [which is what Dr. Guillen calls the physical universe as it\u2019s revealed by modern physics] is wired so that we can never nail down both members with perfect accuracy.<\/p>\n Suppose we experiment on fast-moving helium nuclei, such as are found in cosmic rays.\u00a0 The better we measure a nucleus\u2019s momentum, the worse we\u2019re able to measure its position.<\/p>\n It\u2019s like a teeter-totter.\u00a0 The higher the accuracy of one measurable quantity, the lower the other one will be.\u00a0 There\u2019s no getting around it.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also like what videographers call a rack focus<\/em>.\u00a0 When you have two subjects \u2014 one in the foreground and one in the deep background \u2014 and you focus on the front subject, the back subject immediately becomes blurry.\u00a0 And vice versa.\u00a0 You can never get both subjects into perfect focus.\u00a0 (131)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Thinking about this, I was oddly reminded of John the Baptist\u2019s prophecy about Jesus that is recorded at John 3:30:\u00a0 \u201cHe must increase, but I\u00a0must decrease.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I close with three absolutely dreadful articles that I\u2019ve retrieved from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u00a9.\u00a0 The third deals with an old horror that I think I failed to mention at the time.\u00a0 However, the crime is probably ongoing:<\/p>\n \u201cEven with our dirty sodas and cookie empires, Utah is the healthiest state in the nation: The Beehive State took first place in a new study from Florida-based wellness company Life Extension as the healthiest state in America\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>
Webb\u2019s image covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm\u2019s length by someone on the ground \u2014 and reveals thousands of galaxies in a tiny sliver of an inconceivably vast universe
(Public domain image from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n