[extropy-chat] Tipler's report card (was: A crushing defense of objective ethics)

[John K Clark]

In his 1992 book Tipler made a number of predictions and I think it's time
to look back at some of them because Tipler himself said that every one of
his predictions must turn out to be correct or the entire  theory is dead.

Tipler predicted that the universe is closed, but we now know it is almost
certainly open.

Tipler predicted that the Higgs boson must be at 220 +- 20 GeV. The particle
has still not been found so it's still possible he's right but most think
that value is too heavy and even a few are starting to wonder if the Higgs
even exists. In looking around CERN's web page I found this educated guess:
"The Higgs boson should be lighter than about 220 GeV, with a best fit at
around 90 GeV."

Tipler predicted that the temperature fluctuations of the
cosmic  background  black body radiation must be less than
6*10^-5:  This prediction was good, the observed value is
about  6*10^-6.

Tipler predicted that the Hubble constant must be less than or
equal to 45 km/sec/Mpc, but today the best accepted value is 72.

   John K Clark