One of my favorite subjects for speculation. :) Actually, the concepts themselves aren't too brain-rupturing for me. The idea of virtual particles, De Sitter space, anti-gravity, superfluid helium - I can deal with that (at least, the popularizations). It is the true enormity of the whole thing that boggles me. I have on my "computer wallpaper" Hubble Deep Field WFPC2. It shows some galaxies in the foreground as small discs, some as big as a button on your watch. In the background, you see smaller and smaller ones, and eventually you see a set of dots so small and dim they aren't even star sized. They're *all* galaxies. Each galaxy is billions of stars. (shudder) I get a religious awe every time I contemplate it.
As Sagan put it, an awful waste of space if there isn't *something* else out there.
Yeah - Reagan spent so much on SDI (and now Bush will do the same with NMD - same stuff, different name) he killed the space program. (sigh)
I'll check out the article, thanks.
Cheers,
Bryan