Ah! It must be spring!
The swallows have returned to Capistrano, the buzzards to Hinkley, the monarch butterflies are on their way back, and Richard J. Hanak is back to tell us why the Universe does not exist.
By the way, I think the weak point of his first post is this:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Richard J. Hanak
The universe itself cannot be directly observed. Only a portion of what is out there can be directly observed. As for indirect observation, the universe does not seem to produce effects on the things that can be directly observed. Since the universe itself cannot be directly or indirectly observed, it seems to be a hypothetical thing.
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I think you are wrong in saying that "the universe does not seem to produce effects, ..." . Those who espouse Machianism hold that the very inertial masses that we experience are caused by the universe as a whole. They have yet to give a complete exposition of how this arises, however. My own research indicates a possible influence of the cosmological expansion upon the expectation value of the field that gives masses to the quarks, leptons and weak gauge bosons, which might qualify as an indirect effect of the whole universe upon the objects within it. Unfortunately publication is a long way off.
It is also worth noting that the value of the infamous Pioneer anomaly acceleration is approximately equal to H0*c, which may be another indirect effect, if this explanation for it pans out.