Now back to the universe, ... Each particle is now higher up the gravity well than before and so, in theory, could slip back down later on .... speed up, get hotter etc. ......
So...
Are we just a radical example of zero-point energy and we are riding one hell of an energy oscillation?...
Cue: Visualisation of the "pix-swarm"[*] screen saver but with all the pixels all rushing away and then back through the one attractor... Crunch - Bang!
Some scientists are believers in God, some are not. I have personally known both kinds and I do not want to be a name dropper. The existence of God cannot be either proven or disproven by science.
It's a bit off topic, but I can hardly resist to react.
I see and hear this statement often from Christians and sometimes from agnostics as well. I don't like it for several reasons. First, it seems to imply that the fact that a God created the universe can neither be proven nor disproven seems to indicate that both chances are about equal. This is obviously not true. You can see that when you substitute "God" by "Fairies" or "Santa Claus" in your statement. You can't prove or disprove those either but here everyone will agree that that doesn't make considering their existence worth wile and they all share the same wishful thinking background.
What's more is that most people that make these kind of statement are typically not referring to "a god", but refer to Yahweh, the Christian or Muslim God. These religions are founded on books that are supposedly revealing the truth about our universe. Modern close scrutiny of these books will reveal however, that these books don't contain any truthful predictions about the nature of the universe and actually portray events that are not scientifically feasible, nor are they consistent with observation, experience nor even logic. As such, they are scientifically rejectable. Also because we know the roots and precise history of these religions that actually have polytheistic roots doesn't make the truthfulness of these religions particularly trustful, unless you'd like to consider the existence of Zeus and Thor and the likes as well.
An even stronger argument is put forward by Hawking. The God hypothesis is often brought forward as a gap-explanation. We find it hard to understand where we come from, so we take a simple sounding explanation namely 'god did it'. As long as the God hypothesis is the only explanation we know of this seems to give the hypothesis some strength, even though we don't have a shred of evidence that even hints that this hypothesis is true. However, if we find an alternative hypothesis for our existence, one that is based on observable evidence and natural explanations, we have a strong case to reject the God hypothesis. And that is exactly what Hawking describes, a natural hypothesis for the universe that doesn't need the God-hypothesis.
Given that all information that we possess don't direct towards any credible god-theories I think it is scientifically sound to reject the God-hypothesis as incredibly unlikely. This can of course change if evidence does strongly points towards the necessity of the creator hypothesis. But until that day, I think the atheistic point of view is scientifically sound. The fact that a small shrinking minority of leading scientist (in all fields) have some personal believe in a god merely indicates that even scientists are prone to irrational believes that are instilled by indoctrination. In other words, we need to take into strong consideration how prejudiced we all can be.
Stephen Hawking recounts ( in one of his books, I can't recall which ) attending a Vatican symposium some years ago where he expressed his views on creation. They didn't give him a hard time or anything. I think they were simply very pleased that the Big Bang theory aligned, in their minds, quite well with the 'let there be light' part of scripture.
One of the un-provable corners of cosmology is a 'many universe hypothesis'. With variants like black holes spawning new universes, each with different values for fundamental constants etc. This is frequently linked to some variety of 'anthropic principle' ( we are here because we are here ) plus some sort of 'principle of mediocrity' ( we are nothing special ) and even some evolutionary flavors ( universes that spawn black holes will dominate some ensemble ). All very fascinating, but quite superfluous in that no observation can separate them, short of some ability to duck next door to an adjacent reality and return with a report. Great sci-fi though. After all, Jodie Foster's effort in Contact would be a dull story from the Earth end if she'd never came back.
I should mention inflation which, courtesy of Alan Guth, is a description of the bit after creation but just before the original Big Bang narrative. So this is 10^(-50) seconds or somesuch post T=0. It arose on account of explaining a difficulty with the cosmic microwave background pattern, that being : areas on the sky separated by greater than a certain angle ( from our perspective ) correlate very well in their temperature, BUT now and when winding the clock back would have always been beyond the distance they could have been in causal contact via influences travelling at the speed of light. That is, assuming the speed of light is truly the maximum rate of propagation of forces etc ( reasonable to have from our knowledge to date ) then why the special circumstance of very similiar temperatures? It's a bit like separated stock exchanges giving similiar price changes quicker than anyone can signal the state of one to another. So that suggested that these separated areas were influencing each other at some time, but later lost contact.
Without rupturing the rest of physics, the conclusion must be a period of superluminal expansion of space. This does not abrogate SR as light signals through space are still speed limited. Imagine the start of a NASCAR race, just before the flag fall, where all the cars are moving as a ( fairly organised ) block around the track. Two abreast I think and about 20 rows deep thereof. Suppose that very quickly the track surface expands enormously - more bitumen area is rapidly created between one car and the next - so that our 20 rows of 2 cars keep the same pattern. The race track is no longer a mile or two around, but a lap is some thousands of miles long. No car has broken any speed limit, it is the geometry of the track that has altered. I think the posited scale change for that briefest of instants covering inflation is around 10^(50). Yes, a one (1) with 50 zeroes.
Now maybe there had been some disturbance in the NASCAR grid pattern, a moment before the expansion, say one driver's car got a bit loose in the back end and the driver just behind then pulled to one side in expectation of a collision, so the guy in the car next to him got a nudge, making him slide causing the guy behind to brake hard, whereas the smoke from that obscured the vision of the one further back etc ..... then rapidly the track expands and suddenly everyone is well out of range of each other, and at no risk at all. If you looked at the pattern then you could swear the cars were in avoidance manouevres and trying not to pile up. But how could that be, as they are miles apart and the race hasn't been going for long enough for even the crew to driver radio comms to tell them of what the other cars are up to?
Strictly speaking inflation is a 'how' not a 'why'. It fits the data beautifully because it was derived from it - COBE, WMAP, Planck - but meaning beyond that is anybody's guess.
So the time sequence looks like :
T = 0 [ singularity, infinity, whatever ]
T = smidgen [ superluminal expansion ]
T = stuff all [ subluminal expansion ]
T = a snap [ force types freeze out, Higgs decay, yada yada ]
T = few minutes [ nucleosynthesis, baryon/photon ratio ]
T = ages [ CMB scattering surface forms ]
.
.
.
T ~ 14 billion years [ us talking 'bout stuff on E@H boards ]
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Prof. Abdus Salam, a Nobel prize winner in Theoretical physics, was a Muslim believer and interrupted his research to pray on a carpet in his room at Trieste International Center for Theoretical Physics. No Christian scientist, like late professor Nicola Cabibbo of Cabibbo angle fame, recently deceased, would have done the same. But I could make the list of scientists believing in God a lot longer.
Tullio
Prof. Abdus Salam, a Nobel prize winner in Theoretical physics, was a Muslim believer and interrupted his research to pray on a carpet in his room at Trieste International Center for Theoretical Physics. No Christian scientist, like late professor Nicola Cabibbo of Cabibbo angle fame, recently deceased, would have done the same. But I could make the list of scientists believing in God a lot longer.
Tullio
I didn't say you couldn't; the link in an earlier post showed that by now about 1 in 15 top scientists has a personal believe in God. However, it doesn't prove anything nor does it give the God-hypothesis any credibility. Similarly, the fact that Newton was maybe the most influential scientist ever doesn't give his personal believes in the occult, magic and alchemy any credibility, nor does Euclid's possible belief in Zeus give credibility to the ancient Greek gods.
I think that personal religious beliefs of top scientists is much lower than in the common population because it requires two opposite frame of minds. In one frame of mind you have to critically question every fact and theory you encounter, while in the other you have to unquestionably accept everything you are told by your peers and is written in an ancient book. This dualistic thinking is rare, but as your examples showed, possible.
Strictly speaking inflation is a 'how' not a 'why'. It fits the data beautifully because it was derived from it - COBE, WMAP, Planck - but meaning beyond that is anybody's guess.
There are different gradations in the quality of guesses. There is a big difference in quality between guesses that are based on thin air (god hypothesis, we-live-in-the-matrix hypothesis), guesses that fit observational data but include some gap filling (inflation hypothesis, string theory) and guesses that have a solid body of repeatable experimental evidence (theory of relativity, QM, evolution). As such, I tend to dismiss theories of the first sort as useless, hesitantly conditionally accept theories of the second sort as the best we might have but not necessarily right and mostly embrace theories of the third sort, even though future research might show these theories are not complete.
I know enough about Pascal and his wager to know that his arguments are fallacious. He also admitted himself his wager had nothing to do with reason. Our personal experience nor our desires effect how the universe intrinsically works.
RE: I've been beaten to
)
There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold
RE: ... So what happens if
)
So...
Are we just a radical example of zero-point energy and we are riding one hell of an energy oscillation?...
Cue: Visualisation of the "pix-swarm"[*] screen saver but with all the pixels all rushing away and then back through the one attractor... Crunch - Bang!
Keep searchin',
Martin
A screensaver of old, not sure of exact name...
See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)
RE: Some scientists are
)
It's a bit off topic, but I can hardly resist to react.
I see and hear this statement often from Christians and sometimes from agnostics as well. I don't like it for several reasons. First, it seems to imply that the fact that a God created the universe can neither be proven nor disproven seems to indicate that both chances are about equal. This is obviously not true. You can see that when you substitute "God" by "Fairies" or "Santa Claus" in your statement. You can't prove or disprove those either but here everyone will agree that that doesn't make considering their existence worth wile and they all share the same wishful thinking background.
What's more is that most people that make these kind of statement are typically not referring to "a god", but refer to Yahweh, the Christian or Muslim God. These religions are founded on books that are supposedly revealing the truth about our universe. Modern close scrutiny of these books will reveal however, that these books don't contain any truthful predictions about the nature of the universe and actually portray events that are not scientifically feasible, nor are they consistent with observation, experience nor even logic. As such, they are scientifically rejectable. Also because we know the roots and precise history of these religions that actually have polytheistic roots doesn't make the truthfulness of these religions particularly trustful, unless you'd like to consider the existence of Zeus and Thor and the likes as well.
An even stronger argument is put forward by Hawking. The God hypothesis is often brought forward as a gap-explanation. We find it hard to understand where we come from, so we take a simple sounding explanation namely 'god did it'. As long as the God hypothesis is the only explanation we know of this seems to give the hypothesis some strength, even though we don't have a shred of evidence that even hints that this hypothesis is true. However, if we find an alternative hypothesis for our existence, one that is based on observable evidence and natural explanations, we have a strong case to reject the God hypothesis. And that is exactly what Hawking describes, a natural hypothesis for the universe that doesn't need the God-hypothesis.
Given that all information that we possess don't direct towards any credible god-theories I think it is scientifically sound to reject the God-hypothesis as incredibly unlikely. This can of course change if evidence does strongly points towards the necessity of the creator hypothesis. But until that day, I think the atheistic point of view is scientifically sound. The fact that a small shrinking minority of leading scientist (in all fields) have some personal believe in a god merely indicates that even scientists are prone to irrational believes that are instilled by indoctrination. In other words, we need to take into strong consideration how prejudiced we all can be.
Stephen Hawking recounts ( in
)
Stephen Hawking recounts ( in one of his books, I can't recall which ) attending a Vatican symposium some years ago where he expressed his views on creation. They didn't give him a hard time or anything. I think they were simply very pleased that the Big Bang theory aligned, in their minds, quite well with the 'let there be light' part of scripture.
One of the un-provable corners of cosmology is a 'many universe hypothesis'. With variants like black holes spawning new universes, each with different values for fundamental constants etc. This is frequently linked to some variety of 'anthropic principle' ( we are here because we are here ) plus some sort of 'principle of mediocrity' ( we are nothing special ) and even some evolutionary flavors ( universes that spawn black holes will dominate some ensemble ). All very fascinating, but quite superfluous in that no observation can separate them, short of some ability to duck next door to an adjacent reality and return with a report. Great sci-fi though. After all, Jodie Foster's effort in Contact would be a dull story from the Earth end if she'd never came back.
I should mention inflation which, courtesy of Alan Guth, is a description of the bit after creation but just before the original Big Bang narrative. So this is 10^(-50) seconds or somesuch post T=0. It arose on account of explaining a difficulty with the cosmic microwave background pattern, that being : areas on the sky separated by greater than a certain angle ( from our perspective ) correlate very well in their temperature, BUT now and when winding the clock back would have always been beyond the distance they could have been in causal contact via influences travelling at the speed of light. That is, assuming the speed of light is truly the maximum rate of propagation of forces etc ( reasonable to have from our knowledge to date ) then why the special circumstance of very similiar temperatures? It's a bit like separated stock exchanges giving similiar price changes quicker than anyone can signal the state of one to another. So that suggested that these separated areas were influencing each other at some time, but later lost contact.
Without rupturing the rest of physics, the conclusion must be a period of superluminal expansion of space. This does not abrogate SR as light signals through space are still speed limited. Imagine the start of a NASCAR race, just before the flag fall, where all the cars are moving as a ( fairly organised ) block around the track. Two abreast I think and about 20 rows deep thereof. Suppose that very quickly the track surface expands enormously - more bitumen area is rapidly created between one car and the next - so that our 20 rows of 2 cars keep the same pattern. The race track is no longer a mile or two around, but a lap is some thousands of miles long. No car has broken any speed limit, it is the geometry of the track that has altered. I think the posited scale change for that briefest of instants covering inflation is around 10^(50). Yes, a one (1) with 50 zeroes.
Now maybe there had been some disturbance in the NASCAR grid pattern, a moment before the expansion, say one driver's car got a bit loose in the back end and the driver just behind then pulled to one side in expectation of a collision, so the guy in the car next to him got a nudge, making him slide causing the guy behind to brake hard, whereas the smoke from that obscured the vision of the one further back etc ..... then rapidly the track expands and suddenly everyone is well out of range of each other, and at no risk at all. If you looked at the pattern then you could swear the cars were in avoidance manouevres and trying not to pile up. But how could that be, as they are miles apart and the race hasn't been going for long enough for even the crew to driver radio comms to tell them of what the other cars are up to?
Strictly speaking inflation is a 'how' not a 'why'. It fits the data beautifully because it was derived from it - COBE, WMAP, Planck - but meaning beyond that is anybody's guess.
So the time sequence looks like :
T = 0 [ singularity, infinity, whatever ]
T = smidgen [ superluminal expansion ]
T = stuff all [ subluminal expansion ]
T = a snap [ force types freeze out, Higgs decay, yada yada ]
T = few minutes [ nucleosynthesis, baryon/photon ratio ]
T = ages [ CMB scattering surface forms ]
.
.
.
T ~ 14 billion years [ us talking 'bout stuff on E@H boards ]
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Prof. Abdus Salam, a Nobel
)
Prof. Abdus Salam, a Nobel prize winner in Theoretical physics, was a Muslim believer and interrupted his research to pray on a carpet in his room at Trieste International Center for Theoretical Physics. No Christian scientist, like late professor Nicola Cabibbo of Cabibbo angle fame, recently deceased, would have done the same. But I could make the list of scientists believing in God a lot longer.
Tullio
RE: Prof. Abdus Salam, a
)
I didn't say you couldn't; the link in an earlier post showed that by now about 1 in 15 top scientists has a personal believe in God. However, it doesn't prove anything nor does it give the God-hypothesis any credibility. Similarly, the fact that Newton was maybe the most influential scientist ever doesn't give his personal believes in the occult, magic and alchemy any credibility, nor does Euclid's possible belief in Zeus give credibility to the ancient Greek gods.
I think that personal religious beliefs of top scientists is much lower than in the common population because it requires two opposite frame of minds. In one frame of mind you have to critically question every fact and theory you encounter, while in the other you have to unquestionably accept everything you are told by your peers and is written in an ancient book. This dualistic thinking is rare, but as your examples showed, possible.
RE: Strictly speaking
)
There are different gradations in the quality of guesses. There is a big difference in quality between guesses that are based on thin air (god hypothesis, we-live-in-the-matrix hypothesis), guesses that fit observational data but include some gap filling (inflation hypothesis, string theory) and guesses that have a solid body of repeatable experimental evidence (theory of relativity, QM, evolution). As such, I tend to dismiss theories of the first sort as useless, hesitantly conditionally accept theories of the second sort as the best we might have but not necessarily right and mostly embrace theories of the third sort, even though future research might show these theories are not complete.
You are forgetting the
)
You are forgetting the personal experience. Read Blaise Pascal.
Tullio
I know enough about Pascal
)
I know enough about Pascal and his wager to know that his arguments are fallacious. He also admitted himself his wager had nothing to do with reason. Our personal experience nor our desires effect how the universe intrinsically works.
We know very little about the
)
We know very little about the universe. 72% is dark energy, 24% dark matter. What we know is about 4%. The rest is mystery.
Tullio