lucaspa

Yes. Sigh. I can see that you are going to repeat a lot of creationist fallacies. To answer your second question: NO! That the earth is young was falsified by 1831, 27 years BEFORE Darwin published Origin of Species. The people who showed the earth was old were all creationists. It would be IF that had been what was done. But it didn't happen that way. Long before evolution was an accepted theory geologists noted empirically that fossils appeared in unalterable order in strata. Pure empiricism. It was then noted that some fossils were only associated with particular strata. Usually these were small animals -- such as foraminifera. In conjunction with other means of identifying the strata, this allowed for relative dating and comparing strata from different parts of the world. It helped identify when some strata were missing from the column at particular locations (due to erosion). There are thousands of examples of transitional species. Archeopteryx is a famous one. So is Acanthostega. There are also examples of sequences of transitional individuals linking species and from species to species linking higher taxa. The creationists, quite simply, lie about the lack of transitional fossils. As I noted, we have seen the chemical reactions that form life. Been done. Here is a paper showing that any "irreducibly complex" system can be made by Darwinian evolution: http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/dave/JTB.html The first cell ate the amino acids and sugars made by the Miller-Urey (and other) reactions. Because abiogenesis is different from spontaneous generation! Once again the creationists have committed false witness. Spontaneous generation was the theory that multicellular, complex life arose from decaying living matter. Mice from grain, maggots from rotting meat, etc. Abiogenesis is the idea that life can arise from non-living chemicals. I don't know of a kinder way to tell you this, but you have been conned by the professional creationists. For people who profess to be Judeo-Christians, they violate the 9th Commandment on a regular basis. Stick around here, ask questions, and we will provide you with the correct information. Just remember: evolution is NOT atheism

Who says people are "not looking"? How many fossils of dinos from that time period have been found? How many had surviving marrow stroma? I suspect that every paleontologist is looking inside every new bone that they find, all looking to see if there is marrow stroma there.

1. Is being a generalist or a specialist the same as being "intelligent"? After all, both the generalist and specialist are designed by natural selection. Doesn't "intelligence" require some volition and choice on the part of the entity that is "intelligent"? Since neither the generalist nor specialist species had any volition in its evolution, how can you say that one is "intelligent" and the other not? All you can say is that one has a greater chance of surviving if the environment changes. 2. Pandas are indeed "efficient" in their niche. After all, they efficiently make use of their main food source -- bamboo -- and they efficiently mate to produce offspring. No one ever heard of a panda starving to death in the wild. Now, if their habitat is destroyed by another species (such as humans), you can argue that pandas are not capable of exploiting or surviving in the changed environment. But the same can be said of human beings. If an asteroid the size of Texas hits the planet, then humans could not survive in the suddenly changed environment either. Thermophilic bacteria deep underground would survive, but would anyone say bacteria are "intelligent"?

Actually, I think you will find that most of their lives are spent trying to find food. This is pretty much the case with all animals. Your definition of "intelligence" is apparently "do no work but play". I question the "we are constantly at war." I for one am 55 years old and have NEVER been "at war." I doubt you have ever been "at war" either. If you look at history you will find that most people are never at war or, if they are, that the war occupied a very small percentage of their lifespan. And, if you look, the reason humans engage in war is very practical: war is profitable. In some circumstances it is even essential for survival. For instance, in a situation of extreme drought where there is not enough food to sustain the population of 2 villages, if one village wages successful war against the other, it gains enough food so that the villagers survive. So, by one criteria for "intelligence" -- survival -- war is very intelligent under some circumstances.

The exact quote is: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species, pg 450. All this shows is that evolution is separate from abiogenesis. Just like gravity assumes the existence of spacetime (since gravity is a warping of spacetime), so evolution assumes the existence of life. Define "governing dynamics". Chemistry is the same thruout the universe. So the chemical reactions that led to life on earth would, of course, operate in any similar circumstances. And since the range of conditions under which those reactions will happen is very broad, there are going to be a lot of "similar circumstances". Define "through evolution". Natural selection is universal. Wherever you find the circumstances of 1) variation among individuals, 2) more individuals than the environment can support (struggle for existence), and 3) inheritance, then you will find natural selection. So yes, natural selection is going to be designing organisms. Because many design problems have a limited number of design solutions, there will be similarity of designs. For instance, the reason sharks, ichthyosaurs, and dolphins all have the same basic shape is because there is only one basic design for a predator in water. The physics of water and fluid dynamics mean there are a limited number of shapes that will move fast thru water with a minimum of resistance. The reason you have differences in detail is because there are differences in the variations available for natural selection to work from. Thus, dolphins have a modified running motion used for swimming because their ancestors did run. The reason you have homologies is because, when a trait is under 2 or more positive selection pressures, that trait becomes unchangeable. So on another planet you might find quadrupeds (because that is an efficient number of limbs for movement) but the internal arrangement of the bones will be different. There may not be a radius and ulna, but simply a single bone for the lower part of the limb.

They didn't. What Miller-Urey got were the building block chemicals that compose proteins and DNA. DNA and proteins are polymers of more simple molecules. Proteins are polymers of amino acids. DNA/RNA are polymers of nucleic acids. Nucleic acids, in turn, are composed of a sugar, a base, and phosphate joined together by covalent bonds. In RNA the sugar is ribose. In DNA it is deoxyribose (missing an -OH group). They then have the "bases" that are adenine, thymine, cytosine, uridine, and guanine. Miller-Urey took methane, carbon dioxide, water, ammonia, and hydrogen and, thru simple chemical reactions, got sugars, amino acids, and bases. Other chemical reactions (in other circumstances) combine the sugars and bases to make nucleotides (then the nucleotides to make DNA/RNA) and the amino acids to make proteins.

http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html Simple chemical reactions lead to the first living organisms. These did not have directed protein synthesis. That evolved later.

With all respect to Dr. Sampson, this is garbage. A result of life is to disperse energy. But that is not to say that the "purpose" of life is to do so. To say "purpose" requires some assumptions that Dr. Sampson is hiding.

No, new information is also introduced. This is done by 2 means: 1. Increasing the amount of DNA by mutations that add more DNA: gene duplication, transpositions, chromosome duplication, etc. 2. Selection. Selection actually increases information. Dembski << 1"Suppose that an organism in reproducing generates N offspring, and that of these N offspring M succeed in reproducing. The amount of information introduced through selection is then -log2(M/N). Let me stress that this formula is not an case of misplaced mathematical exactness. This formula holds universally and is non-mysterious. Take a simple non-biological example. If I am sitting at a radio transmitter, and can transmit only zeros and ones, then every time I transmit a zero or one, I choose between two possibilities, selecting precisely one of them. Here N equals 2 and M equals 1. The information -log2(M/N) thus equals -log2(1/2) = 1, i.e., 1 bit of information n is introduced every time I transmit a zero or one. This is of course as things should be. Now this example from communication theory is mathematically isomorphic to the case of cell-division where only one of the daughter cells goes on to reproduce. On the other hand, if both daughter cells go on to reproduce, then N equals M equals 2, and thus -log2(M/N) = -log2(2/2) = 0, indicating that selection, by failing to eliminate any possibility failed also to introduce new information. " >> Let's look at Darwin's formulation of natural selection. "IF, during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; IF there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; THEN, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I THINK IT WOULD BE A MOST EXTRAORDINARY FACT IF NO VARIATION EVER HAD OCCURRED USEFUL TO EACH BEINGS WELFARE, in the same ways so many variations have occurred useful to man. But IF variations useful to any organic being do occur, ASSUREDLY individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection." [Origin, p 127 1st ed.] Now, I bolded one of Darwin's "ifs", but this one says that more offspring are produced than those who actually reproduce. So, let's do some calculations on Dembski's equation looking at these numbers. 1. In a population, there are 4 offspring born but selection eliminates 3 and only one reproduces. So we have N = 4 and M = 1. -log(2) (M/N) = -log(2) (1/4) = -(-2) = 2. We have gained 2 "bits" of information in this generation. Selection does increase information. 2. Let's take a more radical example. An antibiotic kills 95% of the population. So we have 5 bacteria that can reproduce out of 100. N = 100, M =5. -log(2) (5/100) = -log(2) (.05) = -(-4.3) = 4.3. Now information has increased 4.3 "bits". The more severe the selection, the greater the increase in information. 3. Let's take a less severe example. A selection pressure such that of 100 individuals, 99 survive to reproduce. -log(2) (99/100) = -log(2) (.99) = - (-0.01) = 0.01. So now we have only an increase of 0.01 "bits" in this one generation due to selection. But remember, selection is cumulative. Take this over 1,000 generations and we have an increase of 10 "bits". Now, Nilsson and Pelger have estimated, using conservative parameters, that it would take 364,000 generations to evolve an eye. D-E Nilsson and S Pelger, A pessimistic estimate of the time required for an eye to evolve. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, B. 256: 53-58, 1994. Taking that over our calculations shows that the eye represents an increase of 3,640 "bits" of information. Finally, note that selection must result in an increase of information by Dembski's equation. Any fraction always has a negative logarithm. With the negative sign in front of the logarithm (-log) that means that the value for information must be positive as long as selection is operative. The only way to get loss of information is for the number of individuals that reproduce (M) to be greater than the number born (N). This is obviously not possible.

Unfortunately for creationists, one of the most prominent of creationists -- William Dembski -- has shown that natural selection must add information. Natural selection cannot reduce information. The first life did not "evolve". Instead, it resulted from chemistry. Start here --http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html -- and we can discuss it further if you wish.

That does not follow. As it turns out, the genetic code is superior in minimizing errors. Thus, the present code would have been selected for among all the codes that might have been in use at one time. There is one code now because all life is descended from a common ancestor that had this code. You do realize that you just negated your argument for panspermia, don't you? First you argue that all organisms have the same genetic code, but then list one that doesn't.

Evolution is NOT creating life from non-life. Evolution happens after life exists. But yes, evolution by natural selection is probably universal. I can't see any reason why living organisms would limit the number of offspring to only what the environment can support. Also, since it is impossible to completely faithfully reproduce any genetic material (second law of thermodynamics forbids it), there is going to be variation among individuals. So, with variation and competition for scarce resources, natural selection is inevitable.

Define "at its animal level". Obviously any extant species (plant and animal) exhibit "life" (otherwise they would not be alive), strategies, skills, activities "at their level". IOW, in their ecological niche. If they did not, they would be extinct thru competition for that niche. So when you added "at its animal level" you pretty much negated any comparison between species. Natural selection -- an unintelligent process -- is going to design the species to fit its ecological niche, which includes all the things you included as comprising "intelligence". Very few species, and certainly no species of animals, is "self-sufficient". All animals require at least the existence of plants to convert sunlight to glucose. Most require all the other species in their ecosystem. Land dwelling multicellular plants require, at least, the action of more primitive plants to prepare soil. Many require animals for fertilization. I suppose blue-green algae would come closest to "self-sufficient" since they take sunlight and the minerals dissolved in seawater and make all the chemicals they need. However, I don't think blue green algae are going to fit the intuitive sense we have of being "intelligent".

That's the problem: the idea that some traits are absolutely "maladaptive". In the technological environment we have now, poor eyesight is not "maladaptive" for humans. In the environment that rhinos live in, poor eyesight is not "maladaptive". Now, if we were all fighter pilots engaged in combat every day, then poor eyesight would indeed be "maladaptive". In that environment What everyone tends to forget is that "maladaptive" and "adaptive" always apply to specific environments. Change the environment and you change what is "adaptive" and "maladaptive".

Merlin wood/elas: From your webpage http://foranewageofreason.blogspirit.com/ "Then given our hypothesis we could reason that if this spherical vortex was reflected as a causation off at least one additional dimension of space, it would be universalised so as to pervade all 3D space as spherical causal vortices. Since the energy density of the cosmos would reduce as it expands this would explain how the energy of radiation decreases as its wave length increases. " There are equations describing the relationship of the energy of electromagnetic radiation as a function of wavelength. They are: lambda x nu = c Or, wavelength x frequency = c. The there is: E = h x nu. or Energy = Planck's constant x frequency. nu = c/lamba. So, the relationship of Energy to wavelength is E = h x c/lambda. What you need to do is start from the hypothetical "spherical vortex" and show how to derive that equation. You state that you can do so. So do it!. That is just one example out of dozens, but it gives you a place to start. BTW, notice that the equation E = h x c/lambda has nothing to do with the expansion of space. At any given instant (when space is not expanding since expansion involves time), the relationship of energy to wavelength holds. So your "cause" should also reduce to the equation above when delta t = 0 (where change in time = 0 and therefore there is no expansion of space occuring).

Martin, simply go to the webpages I posted. On the page on submission requirements, it says simply that you have to be registered to submit. It then goes on to lay out the format the submission must be in. No mention of a sponsor. Go to the registration page and all it says you need to register is a name and e-mail address! I can't find mention of a "sponsor" anywhere. If you can, please let me know. That's right. Open but not selective. It puts the paper out there where people can make critical comments on it. Which is the whole point for elas/ merlin wood (either I'm getting the 2 of them confused or they are the same person with 2 different names). Get some competent critical review from physicists. But this critical review is being avoided. Instead, I get criticism of my critical review, which is then taken by elas/merlin wood that the paper is valid. The point is NOT to argue the theory/paper with those of us on sciencforums.net but to argue the paper to professional physicists. Those are the people that must be convinced, but those are the very people that are being avoided.

Yes, they do. Look up "cladistics" and you will find that it is always described in terms of mathematics. The summary is a translation of the math to English, but you must describe the cladistics mathematically. Read some original papers. Theories are not "grown-up" or expanded or more certain hypotheses. Basically, hypothesis and theory are interchangeable terms. Both are statements about the physical universe. Generally, hypotheses are more specific statements while theories are more general statements. So, since you think there are other predictions to make, then make them. The attractions of a force are described mathematically. Let's face it, gravity is a force of attraction and the equations describing it are well known! The problem with your paper is not that it contains equations and no text, but that it contains text and no equations! Your hypothesis should lead to equations that describe the physical universe. As it is, what you claim is that your hypothesis just leads to Bohmian equations, but you don't demonstrate that, you simply assert it. Translate your hypothesis to mathematics and then walk people thru the mathematical steps that end with the Bohmian equations. Of course, getting the Bohmian equations doesn't really help you. A real problem with them is they have particles following a wave path. But to do that the wave has to move thru a medium, but there is no medium. Then where are those mathematical formulae? I disagree. The hypothesis is very vague and the diagrams are useless. If you think they are "essential" to the argument, then the argument is worthless. Diagrams should be illustrations of equations. You have no underlying equations to give you the diagrams. They are merely attempted visual representations of unfounded assertions. Then you are still wrong. ST does indeed make testable predictions. The reason ST is in trouble is that it is failing those tests. Read the article I cited. Those "rolled-up" dimensions are supposed to have consequences that can be measured. Physics has gotten to the measurement scales and not found the consequences. So far, ST has been avoiding falsification by modifying the theory to make the consequences once again below detection level. But detection is getting better and better and the consequences are not there.

1. QM "owes its origin" to the observation that many phenomena happened in discreet bundles (quanta) and were not continuous! 2. Later data showed that pure determinism did not operate at the quantum level. 3. Classical physics is still very much present in Relativity. Therefore: is wrong. What they are convinced of, by the data, is that strict determinism does not work. It is up to you to convince them. After all, at one time all physicists were strict determinists. They were able to be convinced that they were wrong. Most importantly, what you are confusing is whether your paper gets published and whether it gets critiqued properly. I'm going for the second. You are providing excuses to avoid that. Not good. You are so convinced that your paper is correct that you won't submit it to find out where you might be wrong. That is not being a good scientist. arXiv.org has a section on classical physics: http://www.arxiv.org/list/physics.class-ph/recent And, no, you do not need to have a sponsor. All you need to do is register. Registration is here: http://arxiv.org/help/registerhelp and all you need is a name and e-mail address! Submission is here: http://arxiv.org/help/submit Nothing about a sponsor, but only the form your paper has to take. Elas, you are trying to feed us BS excuses why you don't submit. But we can check whether you are telling us the truth. If your paper has similar quality, no wonder you don't want to submit. It wasn't "existing" when I started 15 years ago. I remember presenting data at one meeting and having a prominent scientist come up afterward and announce dogmatically "the only stem cell in adults is the hematopoietic stem cell!" The language of physics IS mathematics and so mathematicians have always dominated physics. Newton was a mathematician, remember. Inventor of calculus. The English in the text of papers is just translations of the math. And those translations cause some trouble. What is clear in the math is not always easily said in English. That you are avoiding the math simply means that you aren't doing physics. As you said, you might be doing philosophy. But here the philosophy is not going to work unless you have the physics to back it. So, submit to arXiv.org (since your excuses for not doing so are not valid), and look at the criticisms you get. If you can answer the criticisms, then do so. If you cannot answer the criticisms reasonably, then be a mensch and admit your theory is wrong.

Send it to a physics journal. At least send it to http://www.arXiv.org. I'm a biologist, not a physicist. Therefore I can offer a criticism of only the most glaring of errors. If you really think this is a valid scientific hypothesis, then put it up for criticism of professional physicists, don't peddle it on various internet boards of amateurs. You notice I don't put my theories on adult stem cells on this board. I send them to professional journals to be reviewed by my peers who are experts in the fields of stem cells and tissue engineering! You need to do the same.

Merlin, "prediction" in science does NOT mean "predict the future". It means "predict knowledge/observations that should be there if the theory is true." That is, observations that have not yet been made. An example of this in evolution is the following: "For example, scorpionflies (Mecoptera) and true flies (Diptera) have enough similarities that entomologists consider them to be closely related. Scorpionflies have four wings of about the same size, and true flies have a large front pair of wings but the back pair is replaced by small club-shaped structures. If Diptera evolved from Mecoptera, as comparative anatomy suggests, scientists predicted that a fossil fly with four wings might be found—and in 1976 this is exactly what was discovered." Teaching about Evolution and Science, National Academy of Science Chapter 5 Frequently Asked Questions About Evolution and the Nature of Science http://books.nap.edu/catalog/5787.html You will find that paleontological papers and papers on population genetics are very mathematical. As far as I can see, your "theory" doesn't make any predictions. But physics is about describing the natural world by mathematical equations. If your "theory" can't do that, then no one is going to consider it valid. It's fine to have an English description of the math, but you MUST have the equations. 1. String Theory does make predictions in the scientific sense. In fact, it is the failure to turn up the evidence that ST predicts that has ST in trouble: Kaku M, Testing string theory. Discover August 2005 http://www.discover.com/issues/aug-05/cover/ 2. ST's equations had to describe the physical universe we see. If you look at the history of ST you will find that early versions of ST were falsified because the equations did NOT give the physical universe we already observe. That's why we need to see equations in your "theory". So far your "theory" is so vague that we can't tell whether it matches up, in detail, with the universe and observations that have already been made.

IOW, articles in arxiv receive NO peer-review. I inferred it from some grammatical mistakes in Bojowald's paper, plus the contradiction about whether there is a bounce or not. The Discussion was rambling and contradictory, which would be fixed by the reviewers. Also, Bojowald "batting 1,000" for getting articles published is not that hard. I have the same batting average for my publications! What you need to look at are any differences between the arxiv papers and the peer-reviewed ones.

So where did that collapsing spacetime come from? Do the LQC people ever speculate about that? Which means, without the "big rip", there is no origin for that collapsing spacetime. That is different from your earlier claims. You said that, since time didn't stop at the BB, that we could know "before". Does this represent some newfound caution on your part? BTW, you never really answered whether LQG was also gaining in popularity. Bojowald makes it very clear that LQC is dependent on LQG. You went off into a diversion about the "new" LQG being different from the old, but were never specific about that. Also, you never answered the question: is LQG enjoying the same increase in "popularity" as evidenced in publications in the physics literature? If so, why is Smolin writing his book deriding the monolith of SST? After all, LQG is Smolin's.

Martin, can you cut and paste the webpage address in there, please? Otherwise, I'm having a difficult time finding the articles. And Martin? You still aren't being all that helpful yet. You still aren't pointing us to the portions of the paper that you think explain what you are trying to say.

1. The problem here is where did the first universe come from that contracted for the bounce? "Extending indefinitely into the past" doesn't tell us where that universe that is indefinitely contracting came from. All we've done is move the same mystery -- origin of our universe -- off to another hypothetical universe we are not even sure exists. 2. The indefinite cyclic universe was found to be impossible in the 1960s. The problem was entropy. Too much entropy -- what Bojowald would call the entire quantum state -- is "lost". Therefore, since our universe is "determined" by the conditions pre-bounce, in a very few (< 5 if I remember correctly), the entropy state would ensure that you could not get a universe like we see today. So there goes the "indefinitely". Otherwise, running our universe backwards in time to a "bounce" doesn't really tell us anything. Then, of course, there are the quotes I gave you from Bojowald's paper showing that a bounce is not mandatory! There may not have been a bounce at all. In which case LQC serves the purpose of eliminating the singularity, but still doesn't give us anything "before" the universe and we are still stuck with the question: why is there a universe at all? At least ekpyrotic answered that. Even it it turns out to be an incorrect answer.

Martin, you aren't explaining anything! You give papers but give no quotes from the papers that indicate that they actually do what I asked or explain how they do what I asked. If this discussion is to be more than you assert and I question, I need you to participate more. If it is simply going to be you assert without providing specifics and explanations, then it isn't worth anything. What part of the paper gave you that impression? But that makes no sense. This is sounding like the latest problems with String Theory: you can get lots of cases and there is no compelling reason to get the case that is our universe. What is the reason for thinking you can relax the assumptions? Just getting a universe like ours? That's circular reasoning. Martin, that doesn't get to my puzzle. A very dense spacetime gives a "bounce" that obviates the singularity. OK, but how do you get the dense spacetime to being with? Our universe does NOT run backwards in time! It started as very dense spacetime, but that's the problem: the source of the very dense spacetime. Basically, what I hear is that LQC is talking about a cyclic universe of expansions and collapses -- with the collapses giving the dense spacetime for the next expansion. BUT, our universe is not going to collapse! So, either our universe is the last of the cycles (and why would that be so?) or there is another way to get a dense spacetime. That isn't what Bojowald is saying. He is saying that in LQC time "penetrates" the "pure quantum regime" "does the question arise if time continues during the transition through the pure quantum regime. At least in the special model of a free massless scalar in isotropic cosmology the answer to both questions is affirmative, based on the availability of a physical inner product and quantum observables in this model [24]. " But this isn't the same as "continuing back into the past". "In this sense, quantum gravity is free of singularities and provides a transition between the two branches. The more complicated question is what this means for evolution in a literal sense of our usual concept of time (see also [200])." Look at the qualifier "in this sense", which means we are not talking about conventional ideas of time and the last sentence. Bojowald doesn't know whether time "continues into the past". All he knows, from the math, is that time doesn't break down because there is no singularity. A question I have is: what is the other "branch"? We have this branch on this side of the BB. Yes, LQC would remove the singularity at the BB, but it does so by making another "branch". Have you come across anything Bojowald has said about the identity of that branch? It's not that "time stops", but rather that "time begins" 13.7 billion years ago. If time does not begin, what is it connecting to? I'll look more, but I need more help from you, Martin. It's not enough to just give the citations. You need to point us to what caused you to assert what you do about Bojowald. Also, look for things against your assertions. Keep testing what you are saying by looking for things that would be against it. That will help everyone and keep this from being adversarial (which it has gotten pretty close to being in places). That 2005 was the last review Bojowald wrote. Do you know of a more recent review. I didn't find one with my google search. We both need a review, since you admit you don't follow all the mathematics of the situation and I never claimed to follow all the math. "Our general solution (13) for p allows bouncing3 solutions for AB > 0 as well as “singular” solutions for AB < 0 which reach p = 0 in finite time . (Although isotropic loop quantum cosmology is non-singular for any solution [33, 34], additional correction terms become manifest at small volume which are not included here in the solvable model. The model itself thus breaks down before p = 0 is reached. The singularity in our equations only indicates that a deep quantum geometry regime is reached, just as one commonly expects the general singularity problem to be resolved. Nevertheless, we keep solutions with AB < 0 for now since they will be ruled out even within our model shortly.) The internal time variable has just been chosen for convenience of the mathematical description, rather than referring to physical observers. For a solution reaching p = 0 to be considered singular one must also verify that proper time remains finite. We thus need to interpret our relational solution (p and J as functions of ) as a space-time geometry subject to modified dynamics as it arises from the loop quantization." That first sentence implies that LQG or LQC will also work if time does not go "back". "Fig 2 Two bouncing solutions for the expectation value of ˆp and the spread around it. Generic states have different spread before and after the bounce (dashed lines), while unsqueezed Gaussian initial states lead to solutions which are symmetric around the bounce not only in their expectation values but also in spreads (solid lines)." Bojowald must be using "deterministic" in an unconventional sense, because this says, to me, that there are many possible outcomes from the initial conditions -- "different spread before and after the bounce". This is reinforced by the Abstract: "Results are evaluated with regard to their implications in cosmology, including a demonstration that in general quantum fluctuations before and after the bounce are unrelated. Thus, even within this solvable model the condition of classicality at late times does not imply classicality at early times before the bounce without further assumptions." Notice that Bojowald can't get from one classical state to another without assumptions. "Although we have proven that the solvable quantum system is exactly described by the effective Hamiltonian H = h ˆH i = 12i (J − ¯ J) = p sin c (determining the same equations of motion for p and J as ˆH does for hˆpi and h ˆ Ji) it is possible, depending on the initial state, that the system does not bounce but reaches p = 0 in finite proper time." Eeek! We can have a bounce, in which case we have time "before", or maybe under LQG, there is NO bounce, in which case we are back to having a beginning of time! Which is it in reality? OK, found it. "As shown explicitly, zero volume is reached when the parameter c1 is negative and large. While this can be achieved respecting the spositivity condition H ≪ H, such a state would never be semiclassical. Thus, any state which is semiclassical at one time will give rise to a bounce." Since our universe is semi-classical, it would have a bounce. Of course, did it have to start out as semi-classical? OOPS! We are back to having no bounce again! I wish Bojowald would make up his mind! "We end by repeating that any physical statements derived from a single model have to be confirmed by a perturbation analysis around the model. This is feasible in our case, as it is for perturbations around any solvable model, but still requires detailed work which is now in progress. Only such an analysis could justify the transfer of results from single models to our own universe. It may well be that this removes the bounce through back-reaction of quantum variables Ga,n on the expectation values. In particular, it is then conceivable that a state starts out perfectly semiclassically at large volume where its expected volume collapses, evolves for a long time to small volume and all along picks up corrections from quantum back-reaction. Since also quantum variables evolve, it cannot be ruled out without further analysis that the analog of c1 does become negative and large close to the would-be bounce. If this happens, the bounce is avoided for the self-interacting state even if it starts out semiclassically by all possible conditions one could pose." Martin, how much peer-review do articles in arxiv.org undergo? I think the strongest statement that can be made now by people such as you and I is that LQC is being worked on and may represent a way around a beginning to time. Then again, it may not, because 1) it turns out to be wrong and 2) it is possible to still have a beginning of time under some versions of LQC. One other minor thing. Bojowald is single author on the paper but keeps saying "we" all thru the paper! I'm hoping that means tacit acknowledgement of his discussants and not the royal "we".