ASP Stuff Radio conclude the two part series tribute to the late Stephen Hawking.  In this episode Steveocrates and Alberotle discuss the Hartle and Hawking “No-Boundary Proposal”—a theoretical explanation of what may have occurred before the inflation of the universe—along with some of its cosmic implications.  Alberotle introduces some classical philosophy by drawing parallels between St. Thomas Aquinas’s first cause argument—a traditional argument for the existence of God—and the big bang theory, and how they share a critical objection: If everything requires a cause then what caused God, or what caused or happened before the “explosion” of matter-energy?  It turns out that Aquinas and Hawking think alike albeit in different ways.  Steveocrates talks about how our ordinary temporal notions of past, present and future are significantly undermined if we assume that space and time share a single continuum. To further whet the intellect we conclude with a popular game called Would You Modify The Universe?  What cosmological features of the universe would you alter, and why?

Download and listen to episode #56!

Credits:

Music: “It’s Always Too Late to Start Over” by Chris Zabriskie
From the Free Music Archive
Attribution CC BY

Music: “I Should Have Been More Human” by Chris Zabriskie
From the Free Music Archive
Attribution CC BY

Music: “Another Version of You” by Chris Zabriskie
From the Free Music Archive
Attribution CC BY

Music: “What Does Anybody Know About Anything” by Chris Zabriskie
From the Free Music Archive
Attribution CC BY

Music: “I Don’t See the Branches, I See the Leaves” by Chris Zabriskie
From the Free Music Archive
Attribution CC BY

“Tesseract Sublimation” by Volition

“It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.”

—Stephen Hawking