Footnote Physicist

by Steven Gussman  THE HYPOTHESIS           Typically, the largest known structure of the universe, the cosmic filaments, are “explained” by the following argument: it is said that quantum fluctuations in the early universe were inflated during the inflationary epoch, seeding the locations where matter would clump in the universe. 1   I am proposing an alternative hypothesis that attempts a more precise and testable mechanism.  The philosophy of physics is simple: the early universe was a sea of interference between primordial gravitational waves. 2   Being curvatures in space time, these waves were inflated during the inflationary epoch to cosmically large sizes.  At these scales, the light-speed propagation of these waves is relatively slow (it's as if the pseudo-random state of the interference pattern at the time of inflation was preserved as it was inflated).  This allowed time in the post-inflationary epoch for matte...

by Steven Gussman           Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg admits (against my hopes) that To Explain The World isn't a philosophy of science book, but he does appear to claim that it's a history of philosophy of science book. 1   On this front, I believe it fails.  To be fair, Weinberg also admits that he's being intentionally irreverent throughout the text, sometimes judging history's thinkers with the full cumulative hindsight of present knowledge to gauge progress. 2   The occasional irreverence towards a scientist may be forgiven as the author tends to nevertheless take the subject matter very seriously.  But a noticeable exception to this rule is Weinberg's sometimes irreverence about philosophy of science itself (a trait not uncommon in physicists). 3   I argue that Weinberg, like many particle physicists, is too focused on particular kinds of experimentation as if it were the only tool, answering the only ...