Cosmology - Bryant McGill

# Cosmology ## Definition **Cosmology** is the scientific study of the origin, structure, evolution and possible futures of the universe. It connects observation and fundamental physics while retaining major open questions about the Big Bang, quantum gravity, dark matter, dark energy and whether observable space-time is the whole of physical reality. ## Conceptual relationships [[wiki/Big Bang|Big Bang]] · [[wiki/Cosmic View|Cosmic View]] · [[wiki/Scientific Inference|Scientific Inference]] ## Martin Rees research route [[research/Martin Rees on Machine Succession, Post-Human Intelligence, and the Cosmic Future|Martin Rees on Machine Succession, Post-Human Intelligence, and the Cosmic Future]] supplies a primary quotation dossier connecting this concept to Rees's work on cosmology, technological risk, machine intelligence, posthuman evolution and deep time. ## Article and collection routes - [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - [[articles/We Cannot Un-Strike the Match|We Cannot Un-Strike the Match]] - [[articles/The Last Migration Will Not Be Human|The Last Migration Will Not Be Human]] - [[articles/We Were Never Going to Make It|We Were Never Going to Make It]] ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts  > “Some physicists don’t like the multiverse: they’d be disappointed if some of the key numbers they are trying to explain turn out to be mere environmental contingencies governing our local space-time patch—no more truly ‘fundamental’ than the parameters of the Earth’s orbit round the Sun. But that disappointment would surely be outweighed by the revelation that physical reality was grander and richer than hitherto envisioned. In any case our preferences are irrelevant to the way physical reality actually is—so we should surely be open-minded.” > **— Martin Rees**, *2017: What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to Be More Widely Known?, Edge, 2017* [[reminders/Cosmic Perspective/Reality Does Not Care Whether Physicists Like the Multiverse by Martin Rees|Reality Does Not Care Whether Physicists Like the Multiverse by Martin Rees]] > “There is plainly unfinished business in cosmology. Einstein’s theory treats space and time as smooth and continuous. We know, however, that no material can be chopped into arbitrarily small pieces: eventually, you get down to discrete atoms. Likewise, space itself has a grainy and quantised structure—but on a scale a trillion trillion times smaller. We lack a unified understanding of the bedrock of the physical world.” > **— Martin Rees**, *2014: What Scientific Idea Is Ready for Retirement?, Edge, 2014* [[reminders/Cosmic Perspective/Space-Time May Have a Grain We Cannot Yet Explain by Martin Rees|Space-Time May Have a Grain We Cannot Yet Explain by Martin Rees]] > “All these multiverse ideas lead to a remarkable synthesis between cosmology and physics. But they also lead to the extraordinary consequence that we may not be the deepest reality; we may be a simulation. The possibility that we are creations of some supreme, or super-being, blurs the boundary between physics and idealist philosophy, between the natural and the supernatural, and between the relation of mind and multiverse and the possibility that we’re in the matrix rather than the physics itself.” > **— Martin Rees**, *In the Matrix, Edge, 2003* [[reminders/Simulation/The Multiverse Could Mean We Live in a Simulation by Martin Rees|The Multiverse Could Mean We Live in a Simulation by Martin Rees]] > “Today we know that the universe is far bigger and stranger than anyone suspected.” > **— Martin Rees**, *How Astronomers Revolutionized Our View of the Cosmos, Scientific American, 2020* [[reminders/Cosmic Perspective/The Universe Is Stranger Than Anyone Suspected by Martin Rees|The Universe Is Stranger Than Anyone Suspected by Martin Rees]]