What's really spooky is thinking about the things which we would have been able to observe if we had been around much earlier. Perhaps seeming constants have changed over the history of the universe, or other universes which drifted away from us along now-imperceptible dimensions. (I'm guessing you saw the same Brian Greene TED talk I did.)
Lawrence Krauss's longer talk in Toronto†[1] has a better explanation of the "privileged time" idea (and doesn't invoke string theory except to poke a bit of fun at it).
† Krauss has given more-or-less the same talk elsewhere, but the version recorded by TVO (the Ontario provincial public broadcaster) is probably the best recording. [Edit: I misremembered the location of the talk. Most of the physics talks on Big Ideas are from the Perimeter Institute; Krauss's wasn't.]
Comments
What's really spooky is thinking about the things which we would have been able to observe if we had been around much earlier. Perhaps seeming constants have changed over the history of the universe, or other universes which drifted away from us along now-imperceptible dimensions. (I'm guessing you saw the same Brian Greene TED talk I did.)
Lawrence Krauss's longer talk in Toronto†[1] has a better explanation of the "privileged time" idea (and doesn't invoke string theory except to poke a bit of fun at it).
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdvWrI_oQjY
† Krauss has given more-or-less the same talk elsewhere, but the version recorded by TVO (the Ontario provincial public broadcaster) is probably the best recording. [Edit: I misremembered the location of the talk. Most of the physics talks on Big Ideas are from the Perimeter Institute; Krauss's wasn't.]
Great talk, thanks for sharing.