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- Dennis Sciama has argued that the existence of life depends on many quantities—the fundamental constants—so in a random universe life should be highly unlikely. However, without full knowledge of these constants, his argument implies a universe that could appear to be ‘intelligently designed’.
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What was Sciama's thesis?
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Sciama earned his PhD in 1953 at the University of Cambridge supervised by Paul Dirac, with a dissertation on Mach's principle and inertia. His work later influenced the formulation of scalar-tensor theories of gravity.
Initially Sciama planned to write a thesis in statistical mechanics regarding cooperative phenomena under Neville Temperley, but his interests soon shifted to relativity and cosmology. As a result Dirac was assigned to be his advisor, although two young Cambridge fellows, Herman Bondi and Thomas Gold, had much more influence on Sciama’s research.
Feb 17, 2000 · Sciama developed a theory of gravity that incorporated this principle, his PhD thesis on the subject being widely quoted. Benefiting from many discussions with Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold...
- George F.R Ellis
- ellis@maths.uct.ac.za
- 2000
As Sciama explains [Sciama, 1953a, p.35].: In Newtonian language we could say that the universe moves relative to any body in such a way that the body never experiences a force—the difference from ordinary Newtonian theory being that the forces acting on a body are derived entirely from the matter of the universe.
Fred Hoyle, the originators of the "steady state" cosmology. Sciama became enthusiastically committed to this theory, and to the concept known as "Mach's principle," according to which the inertial frame-the frame of reference in which a gyroscope or pendulum stays fixed-is determined by the most distant galaxies. His thesis on the origin of
Jun 20, 2023 · Dennis Sciama has argued that the existence of life depends on many quantities—the fundamental constants—so in a random universe life should be highly unlikely. However, without full knowledge of...
Dec 7, 2022 · Sciama made connections among some topics in astronomy and astrophysics. He wrote on radio astronomy, X-ray astronomy, quasars, the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave radiation, the interstellar and intergalactic medium, astroparticle physics and the nature of dark matter.
