ThePurpleSmudge

This is such a fascinating idea. One can imagine universes in which the physical constants are unfit for black hole production, universes (like ours) fit to produce multiple black holes, and most interestingly, universes which instantly collapse into a giant black hole and "reproduce" only once and give birth to another universe that does the exist same thing, ad infinitum. BTW, Martin, do you know if there are any theories (or even vague notions) as to what constants might govern the whole of the multiverse (to use a term you hate)? Obviously all of our physical constants would be arbitrary to it, and it seems that conservation of energy is also right out the window. I would imagine that every individual universe would be bound by some sort of conservation law, and that Newton's 2nd law would apply to them as well, but what about at the multiverse level? Kind of puzzling to imagine that, at the grandest scale, there may be no real order.

I agree with badfella. I think this is more of a linguistics question than a biology question. As I understand it, the word "being" is used to denote sentience. When we discuss the search for intelligent extraterrestrial life we often refer to seeking out "other beings." Meaning other self-aware organisms with culture and technology. As I see it, the term "beings" isn't really a value judgment as much as a simple (and useful) descriptor. And as badfella said, by now the words "human being" are probably being parsed at a phrasal level rather than analyzed individually.

I've read that the LHC will be producing something like 400GB of data per second while in operation. Is there a thread about "the grid" (the massive new network that is being constructed to manage/distribute the LHC data)? Also one of the main goals of the LHC is to detect the Higgs Boson (the particle which gives mass to other particles).