reply to post by Philodemus
This is my first thread on this website, so take it easy 
As you can see if you look to the left of this paragraph, I have been on this website for more than six years. Yours may be the best-written post I
have ever read on it.
You make an elegant analogical case for your proposition – one that, should you wish, could easily be expanded into a book-length essay, every one
of your analogies being developed into a separate chapter. Consider writing that essay. A superior example of the way such things are done is the book
Frozen Desire by James Buchan.
A few nits need picking. Ordinarily I wouldn't bother, but what you have written is of almost professional standard and could be far better than that
with some necessary editing. First,
Consider the journey of sound. There exists in the deepest reaches of outer space to this very day, the first ever broadcast sounds of mankind
bouncing and pinging of the planets and stars. These parts of the past still exist somewhere and always will.
Science is tricky. Never assume you know something without checking it out. There are two errors in the above, both of which are deleterious to your
credibility among scientifically literate readers. First, you are mixing up sound and radio waves, which are actually a kind of 'light' and quite
different from sound waves. Second, both sound waves and radio waves are subject to an inverse-square law which makes them decrease greatly in
amplitude as they travel farther and farther from their source. In both cases the amplitude ('loudness' in the case of sound waves) eventually drops
to the level of ambient sonic or electromagnetic 'noise', at which point they cease to be effectively detectable. Very powerful radio sources are
detectable right to the limit of the visible universe, but the past we see when we look far out in space is only a gross outline, entirely lacking in
detail.
This isn't fatal to your thesis, but understanding it would have helped you manage the analogy better.
Here's another troublesome bit from a science point of view:
The multiverse appearing as blobs and loops and drops of water. Each universe slightly different. Each organized in a strange and fantastical
way...
This is speculative pop science based on string theory. We have no proof of the existence of any universe other than this one, nor indeed, by
definition, can such proof ever be found. But perhaps other universes do exist – we cannot prove they don't, either. All you needed to do was write
something like, 'According to string theorists, there is a multitude of universes, which they visualize appearing as blobs and loops and drops of
water...'
A third unfortunate scientific error:
Each universe expands and contracts, in and out from it's singularity.
Oh no, it doesn't. That all depends on the initial conditions. A universe can go on expanding for ever, or reach a limiting volume and then collapse
back into a Big Crunch (which may then, indeed, cyclically produce a Big Bang), or it could, just possibly, attain a kind of equilibrium between
gravity and expansion/inflation known as a 'steady state'. Once again, your error is not fatal to the particular analogy you are drawing from the
image; time, too, is conceived as cyclic, linear
and eternal. All you need to do is show yourself to be correctly informed (for the sake of
your thesis, whose credibility is otherwise impugned).
Finally, and for heaven's sake, learn when to use 'its' and when to use 'it's'. Such solecisms are of no consequence when perpetrated by groundlings
and footsoldiers, but you are neither. I have earned a good living with my pen for over thirty years and know what I am talking about: If you aren't
aware of it already, it is my pleasure to inform you that you have a writer's mind – and a pretty good prose style, too. You're wasted on Above Top
Secret; go professional.
Enough flattery. Go and write.
edit on 24/1/12 by Astyanax because: of flattery.
