[FPSPACE] Copernican Principle

Sat Jul 21 12:55:07 EDT 2007

I love to attach numbers to things, but this struck me as elegant but slightly overblown.  It seems to boil down to: the longer something has existed, the longer it will probably continue exist.  The implication that anything new has a short life expectancy is probably supported by the hardware concepts of burn-in and "infant-mortality" that acknowledge failures in some fraction of newly-manufactured items.  But I would have appreciated seeing some predictions being tested that demonstrated the usefulness of the Copernican Principle.
--------------------------
JBC via  BlackBerry

----- Original Message -----
From: fpspace-bounces at friends-partners.org <fpspace-bounces at friends-partners.org>
To: fpspace at friends-partners.org <fpspace at friends-partners.org>
Sent: Sat Jul 21 00:16:42 2007
Subject: Re: [FPSPACE] Copernican Principle

 The New York Times made a mistake when they pulled this
 article out of the April 1st drawer nine months early.

--
Jens Kieffer-Olsen
Slagelse, Denmark

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Wade [mailto:astronautix at gmail.com] 
> Sent: Friday, July 20, 2007 9:25 AM
> 
> Intriguing article on using the Copernican Principle to calculate the
> longevity of the human race and justify space exploration:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/science/17tier.html
> 
> -- 
> Mark Wade
> Encyclopedia Astronautica
> http://www.astronautix.com/
> astronautix at gmail.com

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