Hi Norman, I have no idea why it received a dishonorable mention. It could be because some physicists/cosmologists don't like anthropic reasoning.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Norman Samish" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Saibal Mitra" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 12:57 AM Subject: Re: How did it all begin? > This is a teaser. Why did Tegmark's paper receive Dishonorable Mention? > Who is Godfrey? > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Saibal Mitra" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "everything" <[email protected]> > Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 6:14 AM > Subject: How did it all begin? > > > http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0508429 > > > Tegmark's essay was not well received (perhaps Godfrey didn't like it? :-) ) > > > How did it all begin? > Authors: Max Tegmark > Comments: 6 pages, 6 figs, essay for 2005 Young Scholars Competition in > honor of Charles Townes; received Dishonorable Mention > > How did it all begin? Although this question has undoubtedly lingered for as > long as humans have walked the Earth, the answer still eludes us. Yet since > my grandparents were born, scientists have been able to refine this question > to a degree I find truly remarkable. In this brief essay, I describe some of > my own past and ongoing work on this topic, centering on cosmological > inflation. I focus on > (1) observationally testing whether this picture is correct and > (2) working out implications for the nature of physical reality (e.g., the > global structure of spacetime, dark energy and our cosmic future, parallel > universes and fundamental versus environmental physical laws). > (2) clearly requires (1) to determine whether to believe the conclusions. I > argue that (1) also requires (2), since it affects the probability > calculations for inflation's observational predictions. >
