Foreword

This is a book that after several years in the making was written and completed just before the midnight of December 31, 1999, just before the start of the new millennium. The timing was not due to any deliberate planning, nor was it anticipated that the completion of the book would extraordinarily coincide with such a date; it just so happened. It could not have been done earlier due to the author's workload as an industrial consultant.

The book reflects the observations and analysis of an individual who was trained as a physicist, with a formal scientific background. It is not intended to proclaim any dogma, nor does it intend to shatter the convictions other people may have formed themselves about the origins of the universe. The book tries to be as factual as possible. It is the belief of this author that certain issues raised by science itself have long been overlooked. Whether deliberately or intentionally , overlooking these issues is tantamount to hiding the dust of the living room under the rug; we can choose to ignore them, but they will certainly not go away. Not any time soon. The facts are there, waiting for us to take a close look at them. And after taking a close look at them, it becomes extremely hard to deceive oneself into believing that these issues have a simplistic resolution.

This book is being released over the Internet in the hope that sharing with others these observations and points of view will stimulate new fresh points of view and, at the very least, some serious discussions on the issues. The publication of the book on the Internet entailed some adjustments, because of the current lack of some capabilities in the browsers that are capable of displaying text and images but are incapable of duplicating other features available to the printed book. All of the footnotes in the book had to be incorporated inside the main body of text since web based printing does not yet allow for footnotes; this was done by placing the footnotes between square brackets and setting the font size to a smaller value plus using italics to distinguish these footnotes clearly. Thus, whenever the reader sees something like [this] he will now that it used to be a footnote in the book, and the text so cited should still be considered as a footnote. And the index that was placed at the end of the printed version of the book had to be discarded altogether, since each “page” of a printed book becomes a meaningless concept when all the text is displayed in a monitor, there is no "page" at which to send the reader from an index, although the lack of an index can be overcome with the help of the “Search” of “Find in This Page...” option that most Web browsers incorporate in their menu lines, so what one hand takes away the other hand gives back in a different fashion.

One thing that was added to the online edition of the book Initial Conditions is the citing of Wikipedia references, which is fast becoming the dominant power of online encyclopedias around the world, displacing the hard copy expensive encyclopedias most of which have to be consulted by making a special trip to the local library.

As a species, we have travelled a long road in an understanding of ourselves. It certainly seems that we still have a long way to go. But whatever surprises the future may bring upon us, it is hoped that some of those surprises will come as new revelations upon us, carved out by means of our own intellects in our never ending voyage of discovery. For that’s precisely what we have been doing ever since we were put in this planet, we are in a never ending voyage of learning and discovery.

The book is being released and published on the Internet precisely about seven years after it was completed way back on December 1999. Again, this was not a deliberate act of planning, nor was there any original intention of making dates coincide. It just so happened. And again, it could not have been done earlier due to this author's heavy workload as an industrial consultant. Nevertheless, the author is still wondering whether there is something behind these rather funny coincidences.

Armando Martinez Téllez

Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, México