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December 26, 2011 at 11:57 pm 
Justin Griffith A 900 year old alien says crazy things about time. I’m referring to Pat Robertson, obviously.
I dare Pat Robertson to make less sense.
He’s babbling aimlessly about a topic he clearly doesn’t understand. He’s an inexplicably powerful man in the United States. Everything he says is some combination of shocking and stupid.
You guys are usually brutally honest. I just made this video, what do you guys think?
Any physicists that can comment on the ‘universe has a skin around it’ would be appreciated. I suspect this is a misunderstanding of string theory or m-theory. Perhaps it was a reference to chaotic inflation’s bubble universes forming in the multiverse. Possibly something analogous to D-branes… and I’m being very generous for even suggesting he ‘heard it somewhere’.
Update: Thanks to reader John Morales for the following transcript:
You know, when ye get down right inta it, I don’t wanna get too spooky about this, but: what is time?
Where does time come from?Before there was a creation, there was no time — before there was matter, there was no time.
Time is a continuum, and there’s some people that think there’s a skin over all the universe, and everything is there, all laid out — umm, but what’s time?
So, you say, “well, I had a feeling about something — well… it coulda happened in time, and there is no time! And God says there is no time, and so, if he lets you enter into his feeling, there’s no time — so things happen, and you say: “well, you know, A went first, and B went second and C went third and D went fourth — it doesn’t happen that way in eternity
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I still not sure what time is, the only thing I know is that Pat robertson doent has much left
The old goat has finally gone senile…he’s blabbering total nonsense now!!
At my next job if I am late for my shift I will say “But Pat Robertson said there is no time. So do I still have a job ?”
He… he said nothing. Nothing at all. That was completely content free.
Uh….wow……. sounds like someone did a little too much “puff puff” and not enough “pass”. Pretty sure I had this conversation once or twice in the drive thru line at Jack in the Box.
Maybe he’s attempting to refer to some version of a holographic theory, where all the information in 3-dimensional space is available on a 2-dimensional “skin”?
The skin of the bubble that is our universe I believe refers to the current model of space-time. Because space-time is actually a fabric that fabric must eventually curve in on itself forming a sphere. Because gravity exists where ever matter causes a “depression” in space-time we can also conclude that all the matter that we experience exists on the surface of that sphere. To the best of my knowledge this has not been proven yet but is a potential solution of Einstein’s equations.
Obligatory transcript of his deepity:
[Interviewer]
“Myeah.”
The very first thing he said is correct according to Stephen Hawking. Time is one of the many variables which are altered by events at the creation of the universe. This includes things such as the amount of gravity. Discovery’s “How the Universe Works” went into this pretty well if I remember correctly.
Thanks @John Morales #8
So putting that in the post.
I think he said “And God Says – there is no time”
I think it was actually
The S in “doesn’t” comes out sounding almost silent with his accent, but with a little bit of a breathy H rather than completely silent. He’s from Virginia, but oddly some of his accent reminds me of what I hear right here in Minnesota.
Regardless, I think I like the Doctor’s explanation better than Robertson’s. However, he’s not the only one who’s heard of a “skin” on the universe (no, I don’t remember where). I’ve even read that some scientists have been looking for evidence of other universes bumping into ours, and they likened it to “bruises” on the universe. Am I misunderstanding or misremembering what I read? Very likely. Or, the writing may have been dumbing things down a lot. Also very likely.
Heh. I was typing as I listened.
Yeah, that seems right.
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So very fatuous, it was.
Why do such as he get away with such as that?*
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* Rhetorical. :|
Skin of the Universe? Does Robertson still has his foreskin? Maybe he is referring to that.
That… could easily be the most well-reasoned argument I’ve ever heard from Pat Robertson.
Which only goes to show how batshit crazy he’s been all along.
@7 Brian Actually, the whole “spherical space time” thing is but one of three possible shapes of the universe. The other two are flat and a hyperbolic/saddle universe. Without dark energy, they correspond to the final end state of the universe as well (expand forever (hyperbola), expand and stop (flat), and big crunch (spherical). The more relevant consequence (since now we know dark energy or some equivalent must exist) is what happens to two beams of light sent out on parallel tracks. In the spherical universe, eventually the beam of lights converge. In the hyperbolic, they diverge, and in the flat, they remain parallel. Within error bars of 0.5%, the universe is flat. For a much longer discussion you can read the wikipedia article on the shape of the universe.
About the main video, I’m an astrophysicist in training and I have no idea WTF he means when he talks about the skin of the universe. nothing like it ever came up in my cosmology courses….
Can you imagine his faithful followers trying to figure out what he is saying and then believing it?
What did they just ingest, hook line and sinker?
Timeywhyme stuff?
How could any intelligent person watch Pat Robertson?
“Any physicists that can comment on the ‘universe has a skin around it’ would be appreciated.”
“there’s some people that think there’s a skin over all the universe, and everything is there, all laid out”
Although it all sounds pretty much like gibberish, I think he actually might be referring to the Holographic Principle, which demonstrates that all of the ‘information’ needed to describe the three-dimensional universe and the laws of physics can ‘fit’ into a two-dimensional space. The two descriptions may be practically interchangeable, so it may be the case that we are ‘really’ two-dimensional, but the dynamics of the 2D laws of physics mimic that of a 3D world.
Whether he was actually thinking of that or not, it doesn’t have much relevance to time, except in the very distance sense of “Dimensions (including time) may not be at all like we think they are.”
I like Ranch Dressing with my word salad..
The “skin” thing he was talking about was an oblique reference to the Holographic Universe theory that all of the information contained in our universe is also contained on the surface as in any black hole. According to the holographic principle the amount of entopy a black hole can contain is expressed by radius squared rather than cubed as one would expect.
This is more rational and cogent. Which isn’t all that surprising, honestly.
Pat Robertson knows his stuff, he is an undercover time lord.
You may address him as Dr. WTF.
Time is hard to understand so Pat had a hard time to put in to words, but I understand what he was get at and if you do not than you do know what you talking about to. So grive him a brack.
What the hell is this guy talking about??????????????????????
Diane, Like someone said the other day: Christians (and many others I suspect) treat the Bible and the tenets of their religion like a Terms of Agrrement contract: They don’t bother to read, ingest, and try to understand one word of it, they simply scroll to the bottom and check the `I agree” box.
Religion is a software end user license agreement? Wow, I like the comparison.
It’s 25 or 6 to four.
@Leonard Bollinger #22
I’m glad you “understand what he was get at”. I don’t understand him OR you. What does “if you do not than you do know what you talking about to.” mean?
I won’t “grive him a brack” or you until you learn how to write. I probably wouldn’t give either of you a break even if you could write coherently, because you’re obviously both babbling idiots, but, at least, it wouldn’t be so annoying to ‘try’ to read your comment.
He makes a lot of sense!
That first guy, anyway. Didn’t really watch that second guy.
Best leave explanations of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff to the Doctor, yeah?
Dr. Who wins again.
Pat is part of a long list of people smacking their lips on God’s behalf, claiming the know the future, and repeatedly contradicting themselves. He claims to quote God directly and relays God’s message that the country will go through a large economic collapse. Is God Captain obvious now or what?
Also, what happened to the 2007 nuclear genocide God told him about below?
http://doodiepants.com/2012/01/11/pat-robertson-quotes-god-gets-called-out-by-colbert/