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When you look at the economics of it, saving the world just isn't worth it.
- alex 3-29-2001 5:38 pm [link] [add a comment]

couldn't get you a link to this upi story, but here is a more technical paper from the authors, and here are some highlights:

“Spanish and American astrophysicists claim the universe we inhabit contains an infinite number of other universes like our own, called O-regions, that we will someday be able to contact. Jaume Garriga, of the University of Barcelona, and Alexander Vilenkin, of Tufts University, call the concept "many worlds in one."

…these universes are likely similar to our own -- share similar life forms, for instance – because they share a key feature with our world: a finite number of distinct histories. A history is the way something has evolved in time and will continue to evolve. Until now, physicists have never been able to make such an assertion.

Are these ideas far-fetched? Alan Guth (MIT) says no. "Do I think that the ideas are viable? Definitely yes. In fact, I very much admire the precision with which the ideas are expressed. I consider the work of Alex Vilenkin and his collaborators to be the leading work in this field."

”Whenever a thought crosses your mind that a terrible calamity might have happened," Vilenkin told UPI, "you can be assured that it has happened in some of the other O-regions." Furthermore, since some O-regions have histories identical or nearly identical to our own, "if you nearly escaped an accident here, then you were not so lucky in some of the O-regions with the same prior history," he said

Guth also believes the many-worlds hypothesis has profound philosophical implications. "We already know that our planet is merely a tiny speck in a vast cosmos, but now we are being told that we do not even hold a unique copyright on our own identities," Guth told UPI. "Instead, each of us is actually only a single copy of an infinite number of beings that are completely identical to ourselves."
- linda 3-29-2001 4:36 pm [link] [2 comments]

More collectibles as entertainment.
I possess nothing of value, but Antiques Roadshow has become my excuse for never cleaning anything, just in case it might be worth a fortune.
- alex 3-29-2001 3:26 pm [link] [add a comment]

Yeah, but what does He look like now?
- alex 3-28-2001 3:43 pm [link] [add a comment]