Good topic dmill! I don't think I'm knowlegeable enough to evalute a favorite cosmological theory, but I'll take a stab at a comment or two. I am currently fascinated by the idea of the Holographic Principle, as cursorily explained here in Wiki:
Quote:
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The holographic principle is a speculative conjecture . . . claiming that all of the information contained in a volume of space can be represented by a theory that lives in the boundary of that region. In other words, if you have a room then you can model all of the events within that room by creating a theory that only takes into account what happens in the walls of the room
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and here:
Quote:
Reasons for the holographic principle
Given any finite, compact region of space (e.g. a sphere), this region will contain matter and energy within it. If this energy surpasses a critical density then the region collapses into a black hole.
A black hole is known theoretically to have an entropy [1] which is directly proportional to the surface area of its event horizon. Black holes are maximal entropy objects [2], so the entropy contained in a given region of space cannot be larger than the entropy of the largest black hole which can fit in that volume.
A black hole's event horizon encloses a volume, and more massive black holes have larger event horizons and enclose larger volumes. The most massive black hole that can fit in a given region is the one whose event horizon corresponds exactly to the boundary of the given region.
Greater mass entails greater entropy. Therefore the maximal limit of entropy for any ordinary region of space is directly proportional to the surface area of the region, not its volume. This is counter-intuitive to physicists because entropy is an extensive variable, being directly proportional to mass, which is proportional to volume (all else being equal, including the density of the mass).
If entropy of ordinary mass (not just black holes) is also proportional to area, then this implies that volume itself is somehow illusory: that mass occupies area, not volume, and so the universe is really a hologram which is isomorphic to the information "inscribed" on its boundaries [3].
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The key point here, for me anyway, is the finding that the entropy of a black hole is directly related to it's surface area rather than to volume. In any case, just the mere thought of what we think of as our universe being essentially illusory due to some kind of holographic effect projected (to represent the universe you and I observe) from an encompassing area boundary, seems so elegantly weird!
Another pet idea I entertain often is that there actually is a smallest chunk of space and a smallest chunk of time. I think this actually follows from the cosmological theory that all of spacetime exists at once and that you and I only experience a "forward" arrow of time as a consequence of traveling through spacetime in a particular "direction" at the speed of light, but in tiny steps from one state to another - sort of like how a movie proceeds one frame at a time. And so objects can move entirely through space but not time (like light), or entirely through time but not space (like someone standing motionless), or some combination of space/time vectors (like someone driving northeast whereby their motion is partly north and partly east).
I think having a smallest unit of time and a smallest unit of space would eliminate a lot of those nasty infinities that mathematical analysis of space and time currently has to deal with. Curiously, if this is so, then Zeno's Paradox is solved easily without resorting to analyzing either the logic or mathematics of traversing infinitely divisible distances.
Whew, that's all the brain matter I can spare at the moment. But I'm looking forward to other folks' posts here.
