The feedback from my posting of Harlan Ellison's story about how he was there to hear L. Ron Hubbard make is famed statement about giving up writing pulp fiction and inventing a religion--Scientology--included some skepticism of Ellison's account. Everyone agrees that Hubbard made the statement (and, as we can all see, he certainly did just that), but some are skeptical that Ellison was there. Here is a web address you should check out for more on the founding of Scientology:
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/scientology/start.a.religion.html

I presume most of you saw this, but if you didn't, the final stat is a real howler.
From USA Today, Tues, Jan 5:

Fortune Tellers?
Five times as many Americans believe biblical prophecies can predict the future as think pollsters can. Percentage who say each of these can predict the future:
Biblical prophecies 49%;
The Farmer's Almanac 22%;
Astrologers 21%;
Psychics 16%;
Pollsters 10%;
The Ouija Board 3%;
The Magic Eight Ball 2%.

Personally, I'll take the Magic Eight Ball over all of the above with the exception of some pollsters some of the time (only after I've seen in hindsight how they did!)

Those of you who have read my book and/or Skeptic mag over the years know that we have been following the Tulane University-based Dr. Frank Tipler's work on "The Physics of Immortality" (his 1994 book by that title published by Doubleday) and his work on the "Anthropic Cosmological Principle" (his book with John Barrow, 1986, Oxford University Press). The Omega Point Theory (OPT) in Tipler's work, that will ultimately (he says) resurrect us all in a virtual-reality type existence, depends upon the universe being closed (along with a bunch of other parameters and events). It now appears that the universe is open. If the latest research findings hold up, there is no chance that we will be resurrected in the far future of the universe (therefore when you die you are dead and that's that). When I read this report in the journal, Science, I wondered how Tipler reacted. Since he has always claimed his was a testable scientific theory, such disconfirming evidence cannot be seen as good news. Since I have always found Frank to be an intellectually honest man, I found his response to my e-mail query very honorable ... and enlightening.

Here is an excerpt from the Science report, followed by Frank's reply:

"Not only is there too little matter in the universe to ever halt the expansion on its own, but the outward motion appears to be speeding up, not slowing down. ... both teams announced ... The relative dimness of the supernovae showed that they are 10% to 15% farther out than expected even in a universe with little matter, indicating that the expansion has accelerated over billions of years ... with dozens of supernovae analyzed... those conclusions stand. ... 70% of the universe's energy is in the form of lambda (cosmological constant field) and only 30% is matter." Science 18 Dec 1998, Vol 282, No 5397 p.2156

Hi Michael ---
You are completely correct that if the above statements are correct, then the OPT is FALSE (an indication, by the way, that the OPT is a scientific theory, since it is falsifiable). The OPT requires the universe to be not only closed (spatially a three-sphere), but also collapse in the future to the Omega Point. If Lambda were as large as claimed above, then the universe would expand forever even if it were a three-sphere. Therefore the OPT asserts the above claims are incorrect.

I've been worried about the above measurements ever since the preliminary results were announced in December of 1996. One possibility of where the error might lie is that the measurements simply do not go out far enough. I have a paper forthcoming in THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL (February 1999) in which I show that to eliminate local effects, to be really sure that you are seeing the true cosmological expansion rather than a local expansion (which could be much higher that the true global rate) you have to go out to a redshift of at least 3. The above measurements went out only to a redshift of 0.8.

There is some indication that the local and global expansion rates are different. Charley Lineweaver (Ph.D. from Berkeley; the Silk-Smoot group) published an article in THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL early last year in which he pointed out that the preliminary value of Hubble's constant obtained from the CBR (cosmic background radiation) was 40 km/sec-Mpc, whereas the local values (i.e., using the data mentioned above) give 70 km/sec-Mpc. The CBR measurements are out at a redshift of 1,100, which would definitely give a global rate.

In other words, independent of my OPT, there are reasons to take the observations you mention with a great grain of salt.

But I accept the OPT, since the known physical laws leave me no choice. As I pointed out to you in an earlier e-mail, if the universe were to expand forever, either because it is open or it is accelerated by a postive Lamdba, then Hawking has shown that unitarity would be violated. But unitarity is one of the central postulates Quantum Mechanics, confirmed again and again by every experiment to date. (Most recently at Fermilab and CERN, when they demonstated --- see the science section of the NEW YORK TIMES a few weeks ago --- that T-reversal invariance was violated in precisely the amount required by the CPT Theorem, which is implied by unitarity.)

As I wrote you earlier, I can derive the OPT using different laws of physics, different fundamental laws of physics so I am completely confident it is correct. I have a "consilience of inductions" to quote your test. [REFERENCE TO WILLIAM WHEWELL'S ARGUMENT FOR HOW WE DERIVE CONCLUSIONS IN THE INDUCTIVE SCIENCES--"CONVERGENCE OF EVIDENCE" IS A SIMILAR BUT LESS ACCURATE DESCRIPTION.] A conclusion following from the most firmly tested and fundamental physical laws outweighs an experimental claim which is inconsistent with other experiments in the same area.

Sincerely yours,
Frank Tipler