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Author Topic:   Time and Beginning to Exist
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 166 of 302 (642636)
11-30-2011 11:09 AM
Reply to: Message 163 by designtheorist
11-30-2011 10:15 AM


Re: Reply to Son Goku
Hi DesignTheorist,
You did not need to change the subtitle of the message from "The universe did not begin to exist 13.7 billion years ago" to "Reply to Son Goku". If you look at the top right of your message it says, "Reply to: Message 158 by Son Goku".
The "Message 158" portion is a link to that very message. Just click on it and you're instantly taken to that message.
The "Son Goku" portion is a link to Son Goku's thread list.
This information is repeated at the bottom of your message, where it also lets you know whether Son Goku has replied yet.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 163 by designtheorist, posted 11-30-2011 10:15 AM designtheorist has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 168 by designtheorist, posted 11-30-2011 11:16 AM Percy has replied

  
designtheorist
Member (Idle past 3823 days)
Posts: 390
From: Irvine, CA, United States
Joined: 09-15-2011


Message 167 of 302 (642637)
11-30-2011 11:12 AM
Reply to: Message 164 by NoNukes
11-30-2011 10:27 AM


Reply to No Nukes #164
For one thing, what you state does not even conflict with what Son Goku has said. Given that the BB model says nothing about the universe as a singularity, there is no conflict between what you are claiming to disprove and what Son Goku has described.
The mathematics of the BB model breaks down at the singularity because of infinity but the laws of physics do not necessarily break down. Heat rises and expands in our universe, correct? Like charges repel each other? The electromagnetic force is more powerful than gravity, yes?
There is no reason to believe any of these would be different when the universe was in its earliest moments. Just as photons and neutrinos are flying out at the speed of light or faster, space itself is expanding.
But let's say, for the sake of argument, the singularity was real and the laws of physics were suspended. What triggered the change? Why would the universe, stable for aeons, suddenly expand in a flash of light and heat generating the cosmic microwave background radiation we see today? Did the laws of physics just get tired? Did gravity finally just give in to the push to expand?
It is just nonsense to assume the universe could exist for any period of time as a singularity. And it is pointless nonsense. Nothing is to be gained by the speculation. The theory makes no prediction and adds no insight to our knowledge.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 164 by NoNukes, posted 11-30-2011 10:27 AM NoNukes has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 169 by Straggler, posted 11-30-2011 11:31 AM designtheorist has not replied
 Message 171 by cavediver, posted 11-30-2011 11:33 AM designtheorist has replied
 Message 180 by Rahvin, posted 11-30-2011 12:29 PM designtheorist has not replied
 Message 187 by NoNukes, posted 12-01-2011 5:01 AM designtheorist has not replied

  
designtheorist
Member (Idle past 3823 days)
Posts: 390
From: Irvine, CA, United States
Joined: 09-15-2011


Message 168 of 302 (642638)
11-30-2011 11:16 AM
Reply to: Message 166 by Percy
11-30-2011 11:09 AM


Reply to Percy
Thank you Percy. When I am scanning the page, it helps me to find the comments I am looking for if I change the subtitle.
I appreciate the other hints as well. If I remember correctly, at one point I clicked on something that allowed me to find all of the comments of a particular poster on that one thread. I have not been able to find it since. Am I remembering correctly? If so, how do I do that again?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 166 by Percy, posted 11-30-2011 11:09 AM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 175 by Percy, posted 11-30-2011 11:39 AM designtheorist has replied

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


Message 169 of 302 (642641)
11-30-2011 11:31 AM
Reply to: Message 167 by designtheorist
11-30-2011 11:12 AM


Planck Epoch
dt writes:
The mathematics of the BB model breaks down at the singularity because of infinity but the laws of physics do not necessarily break down. Heat rises and expands in our universe, correct? Like charges repel each other? The electromagnetic force is more powerful than gravity, yes?
What you seem to be alluding to here (unwittingly) is the Planck epoch. Without a quantum theory of gravity (a quantum theory of space-time itself) our existing theories are innately inadequate to describe this period.
dt writes:
There is no reason to believe any of these would be different when the universe was in its earliest moments.
There is every reason to think that things would be very different to the sort of naively ill informed "common sense" approach you are attempting to apply here.
Wiki on the Planck epoch writes:
In physical cosmology, the Planck epoch (or Planck era), named after Max Planck, is the earliest period of time in the history of the universe, from zero to approximately 10−43 seconds (Planck time), during which, it is believed, quantum effects of gravity were significant. One could also say that it is the earliest moment in time, as the Planck time is perhaps the shortest possible interval of time, and the Planck epoch lasted only this brief instant. At this point approximately 13.7 billion years ago the force of gravity is believed to have been as strong as the other fundamental forces, which hints at the possibility that all the forces were unified. Inconceivably hot and dense, the state of the universe during the Planck epoch was unstable or transitory, tending to evolve, giving rise to the familiar manifestations of the fundamental forces through a process known as symmetry breaking. Modern cosmology now suggests that the Planck epoch may have inaugurated a period of unification or Grand unification epoch, and that symmetry breaking then quickly led to the era of cosmic inflation, the Inflationary epoch, during which the universe greatly expanded in scale over a very short period of time.
Link
Seriously - If discerning the behaviour of the very early universe were as simple as "well it seems obvious and common sensical to me" we really wouldn't have to bother doing physics courses, building telescopes or spending billions on particle accelerators would we?
Instead we could all go down the pub and simply decide what happened over a few beers.
Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 167 by designtheorist, posted 11-30-2011 11:12 AM designtheorist has not replied

  
Son Goku
Inactive Member


(2)
Message 170 of 302 (642643)
11-30-2011 11:33 AM
Reply to: Message 163 by designtheorist
11-30-2011 10:15 AM


Re: Reply to Son Goku
Briefly, it is impossible for an infinitely hot and infinitely dense singularity to remain in that condition for any period of time without immediately expanding rapidly.
Allow me to explain again. The standard Big Bang model does not contain a singularity. The Big Bang model will develop a mathematical artefact, known as a singularity, if you push it beyond its current limits. We know however that the model cannot be pushed back this far, since several approximations it makes are no longer valid.
So the standard Big Bang model only says that 13.7 billion years the universe was microscopically small and it has been expanding since then. It does not discuss the beginning of the universe. For all we know the universe is 100 trillion years old, infinitely old, e.t.c. We don't know. However, we do know that it was microscopically small 13.7 billion years ago (but not an infinitely small singularity) and that the vast majority of its present day features can be explained from this fact.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 163 by designtheorist, posted 11-30-2011 10:15 AM designtheorist has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 172 by cavediver, posted 11-30-2011 11:35 AM Son Goku has replied

  
cavediver
Member (Idle past 3633 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


(2)
Message 171 of 302 (642644)
11-30-2011 11:33 AM
Reply to: Message 167 by designtheorist
11-30-2011 11:12 AM


Re: Reply to No Nukes #164
It is just nonsense to assume the universe could exist for any period of time as a singularity. And it is pointless nonsense. Nothing is to be gained by the speculation. The theory makes no prediction and adds no insight to our knowledge.
And you have been told repeatedly that is a completely incorrect representation of the Big Bang. The Big Bang singularity can no more exist for a period of time as the geographical North Pole extend over a range of lattitudes.
The mathematics of the BB model breaks down at the singularity because of infinity but the laws of physics do not necessarily break down. Heat rises and expands in our universe, correct? Like charges repel each other? The electromagnetic force is more powerful than gravity, yes?
There is no reason to believe any of these would be different when the universe was in its earliest moments.
There is every possible reason. Just for starters, we are dealing with a region of the Universe where there is no electromagnetic force (we are way above the energy scale where EM appears) and we may well be dealing with a region surrounding topology change.
What triggered the change? Why would the universe, stable for aeons...
Again, a hopelessly incorrect view of the Big Bang.
Try again.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 167 by designtheorist, posted 11-30-2011 11:12 AM designtheorist has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 176 by designtheorist, posted 11-30-2011 11:48 AM cavediver has replied

  
cavediver
Member (Idle past 3633 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


(1)
Message 172 of 302 (642645)
11-30-2011 11:35 AM
Reply to: Message 170 by Son Goku
11-30-2011 11:33 AM


Re: Reply to Son Goku
However, we do know that it was microscopically small
By microscopically small I'm assuming you mean infinitely large?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 170 by Son Goku, posted 11-30-2011 11:33 AM Son Goku has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 174 by Son Goku, posted 11-30-2011 11:39 AM cavediver has not replied

  
designtheorist
Member (Idle past 3823 days)
Posts: 390
From: Irvine, CA, United States
Joined: 09-15-2011


Message 173 of 302 (642646)
11-30-2011 11:38 AM
Reply to: Message 165 by PaulK
11-30-2011 10:30 AM


Reply to PaulK #165
I wrote:
quote:
It is not irrelevant as you have already admitted in Message 124 where you wrote:
The argument deals with the case where there is no prior time in any time dimension. Assuming otherwise creates a contradiction.

PaulK writes:
The basic problem here is that the quote doesn't support your claim in the slightest.
Paul, I am afraid you must be feeling emotional right now. Emotion has been shown to destroy the ability to reason correctly. Read the words again. You admit your argument depends on a time dimension where there is no prior time in any time dimension. You also admit that postulating a prior time dimension creates a contradiction.
In Message 94 you wrote:
As I have stated in other posts in this thread we can postulate other time dimensions which would allow there to be a first moment of "our time" and a temporally prior state (prior in a different time dimension).
By the way, I searched for "postulat" using Command F and the word was never used prior to Message 94. I have not been able to locate the "other posts in this thread" you are referring to here. If you can identify them for me, I would appreciate it.
I wrote:
quote:
As I made clear very early on, one does not have to assume the existence of an immaterial realm - only the possibility of an immaterial realm.
PaulK writes:
No, since you want to argue that the cause of the universe MUST be immaterial, you pretty much need your immaterial realm.
We are not discussing my argument in this thread. We are discussing your argument. This is important because the person making the argument has the burden of proof. All I have said is that your argument has an unexamined/implicit premise that a prior time in another time dimension is not possible and this is circular reasoning. At first you denied it. Then you admitted it. Then you denied it again. Now you are saying it is irrelevant. It is getting rather tiresome.
PaulK writes:
All you are demonstrating is that you are irrational and have no care for the truth.
This is an ad hom attack. You are better than that, Paul. Try to get control of your emotions.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 165 by PaulK, posted 11-30-2011 10:30 AM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 179 by PaulK, posted 11-30-2011 12:13 PM designtheorist has not replied
 Message 181 by Straggler, posted 11-30-2011 12:37 PM designtheorist has not replied

  
Son Goku
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 174 of 302 (642647)
11-30-2011 11:39 AM
Reply to: Message 172 by cavediver
11-30-2011 11:35 AM


Re: Reply to Son Goku
Woops! Bit of clarification needed there.
I should have said the observable part of the universe (i.e. what we can see today) was microscopically small. The whole universe is a different story, we don't even know how big it is now.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 172 by cavediver, posted 11-30-2011 11:35 AM cavediver has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.7


Message 175 of 302 (642648)
11-30-2011 11:39 AM
Reply to: Message 168 by designtheorist
11-30-2011 11:16 AM


Re: Reply to Percy
designtheorist writes:
If I remember correctly, at one point I clicked on something that allowed me to find all of the comments of a particular poster on that one thread. I have not been able to find it since. Am I remembering correctly? If so, how do I do that again?
Yep, you remember correctly. If you look in the left hand column next to any message you'll see that one of the links is (in the case of this message) Percy Posts Only. This will display all the messages in the thread that are from that member. When in this mode of displaying only the messages of a single member this link becomes Normal Thread Display, and clicking on it returns you to viewing all the thread's messages.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 168 by designtheorist, posted 11-30-2011 11:16 AM designtheorist has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 177 by designtheorist, posted 11-30-2011 11:49 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
designtheorist
Member (Idle past 3823 days)
Posts: 390
From: Irvine, CA, United States
Joined: 09-15-2011


Message 176 of 302 (642651)
11-30-2011 11:48 AM
Reply to: Message 171 by cavediver
11-30-2011 11:33 AM


Reply to Cavediver
And you have been told repeatedly that is a completely incorrect representation of the Big Bang. The Big Bang singularity can no more exist for a period of time as the geographical North Pole extend over a range of lattitudes.
From the perspective of inside our own universe, this is true. However, from the perspective of a realm where we could watch colliding branes creating numerous universes, it would be theoretically possible but physically impossible. Do you agree or disagree?
There is every possible reason. Just for starters, we are dealing with a region of the Universe where there is no electromagnetic force (we are way above the energy scale where EM appears) and we may well be dealing with a region surrounding topology change.
I would like to see you evidence that the energy scale is way above where EM appears. I have read a number of physicists who have described the big bang as a flash of heat and light. How many microseconds after the expansion begins would EM be able to appear in your opinion?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 171 by cavediver, posted 11-30-2011 11:33 AM cavediver has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 178 by Son Goku, posted 11-30-2011 11:55 AM designtheorist has not replied
 Message 182 by Percy, posted 11-30-2011 12:40 PM designtheorist has not replied
 Message 184 by cavediver, posted 11-30-2011 4:09 PM designtheorist has not replied

  
designtheorist
Member (Idle past 3823 days)
Posts: 390
From: Irvine, CA, United States
Joined: 09-15-2011


Message 177 of 302 (642652)
11-30-2011 11:49 AM
Reply to: Message 175 by Percy
11-30-2011 11:39 AM


Re: Reply to Percy
Thank you! I knew I had seen it somewhere and was frustrated I was not able to find it again.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 175 by Percy, posted 11-30-2011 11:39 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
Son Goku
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 178 of 302 (642653)
11-30-2011 11:55 AM
Reply to: Message 176 by designtheorist
11-30-2011 11:48 AM


Re: Reply to Cavediver
The energy scale at which electromagnetism disappears is known as the electroweak unification scale. Its value is 200 GeV which is about 2,400,000,000,000,000 Kelvin in terms of temperature. (2.4 PetaKelvins)
The early universe's energy reached well beyond this. Light and electromagnetism came into existence about 0.000000000001 seconds after the earliest point described by the Big Bang model.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 176 by designtheorist, posted 11-30-2011 11:48 AM designtheorist has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 189 by Son Goku, posted 12-01-2011 9:34 AM Son Goku has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17815
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.1


Message 179 of 302 (642662)
11-30-2011 12:13 PM
Reply to: Message 173 by designtheorist
11-30-2011 11:38 AM


Re: Reply to PaulK #165
quote:
Paul, I am afraid you must be feeling emotional right now. Emotion has been shown to destroy the ability to reason correctly.
No, there is nothing wrong with my reasoning.
Let me remind you that you claim that the existence or non-existence of an immaterial realm is relevant to my argument.
ABE: In fact your specific claim was:
PaulK could strengthen his argument if he could prove an immaterial realm does not exist
In "support" of this claim you produced a quote which had nothing to do with the existence of non-existence of an immaterial realm.
Clearly if anyone's reasoning is impaired, it is yours.
quote:
Read the words again. You admit your argument depends on a time dimension where there is no prior time in any time dimension.
I "admit" that my argument deals with the case where there is no prior time in the absolute sense.
However, you still haven't shown any connection to the existence or non-existence of an immaterial realm, which is the point in question.
quote:
You also admit that postulating a prior time dimension creates a contradiction.
I "admit" that postulating that there is a prior moment of time in the case where there is no prior moment of time is a contradiction.
But let us note that neither of these have anything to do with the existence of an immaterial realm. Therefore you have still failed to support your assertion. It seems that you are the one who is having problems reasoning. Perhaps you should try calming down and being less emotional ?
quote:
By the way, I searched for "postulat" using Command F and the word was never used prior to Message 94. I have not been able to locate the "other posts in this thread" you are referring to here. If you can identify them for me, I would appreciate it.
Searching for "postulat"was not a good idea since there is no necessary link between the word and the point you are looking for.
The issue was addressed in Message 15 Written before you admitted that when you use the word "timeless" you don't mean "timeless".
quote:
We are not discussing my argument in this thread. We are discussing your argument. This is important because the person making the argument has the burden of proof
My argument - if you mean the one in the OP - does not address the issue of an immaterial realm at all. It is irrelevant to it. So obviously we can't be discussing my argument when talking about an immaterial realm.
quote:
All I have said is that your argument has an unexamined/implicit premise that a prior time in another time dimension is not possible and this is circular reasoning. At first you denied it. Then you admitted it. Then you denied it again. Now you are saying it is irrelevant. It is getting rather tiresome.
Perhaps if you were to pay attention to what I am saying - and took the time to understand what a circular argument is - things would go better. If you keep repeating the same falsehoods over and over again - without addressing the rebuttals then you will get the same responses.
A circular argument must use the conclusion as a premise.
The premise you object to is NOT the conclusion
Your objection is invalid since the premise simply describes the situation the argument is addressing (and in fact it does not even assert that the situation actually applies anywhere !)
You haven't addressed any of these facts.
quote:
This is an ad hom attack. You are better than that, Paul. Try to get control of your emotions.
Perhaps it would be better for you to stop ignoring points that refute your arguments, stop misrepresenting your opponents, and stop making a fool of yourself by talking about logical fallacies you don't understand.
Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.
Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 173 by designtheorist, posted 11-30-2011 11:38 AM designtheorist has not replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4024
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 8.8


(2)
Message 180 of 302 (642664)
11-30-2011 12:29 PM
Reply to: Message 167 by designtheorist
11-30-2011 11:12 AM


Re: Reply to No Nukes #164
The mathematics of the BB model breaks down at the singularity because of infinity but the laws of physics do not necessarily break down. Heat rises and expands in our universe, correct? Like charges repel each other? The electromagnetic force is more powerful than gravity, yes?
NO.
The forces we know today also broke down around T=0. Matter did not even exist yet in any form we would recognize, the Universe was too hot and dense even to be comprised of subatomic particles like neutrons and protons. We're talking more like a superdense, superheated quark-gluon plasma, not atoms making gasses and solids and liquids. As Cavediver and Son Goku mentioned, electromagnetism couldn't even exist yet at the high energy density in the first few moments after the Singularity.
There is no reason to believe any of these would be different when the universe was in its earliest moments. Just as photons and neutrinos are flying out at the speed of light or faster, space itself is expanding.
There's every reason to believe they were different. Stars didn't even exist yet. Hydrogen didn't even exist yet. Photons weren't flying around because there was no electromanetic force yet! Neutrinos pass through normal matter, but the Universe was more dense than a black hole, even neutrinos can't just pass through that.
When we say "the math breaks down," we really mean just about all of it. We lack any predictive model that can describe conditions at the Singularity with any degree of accuracy, that's why we made the Large Hadron Collider - to try to replicate the superhot, superdense quark-gluon plasma for a fraction of a second and take some actual observations and develop a framework. It's why Big Bang cosmology is not about the origin of the Universe, but rather a descriptive, predictive model of how the Universe appeared at different points in time.
But let's say, for the sake of argument, the singularity was real and the laws of physics were suspended. What triggered the change? Why would the universe, stable for aeons, suddenly expand in a flash of light and heat generating the cosmic microwave background radiation we see today?
Who said anything about stability, or eons? Why do you assume the Universe existed as the Singularity for any amount of time greater than a bare moment? Why do you assume the Universe was stable? Why do you assume the Universe sat as a Singularity for eons? If space was compressed into a single point, what would time look like, since it's tied to space? What would the effect of all of the mass of the Universe existing in such a dense state have done to warp spacetime?
The Singularity is not an "object." It's not a bomb waiting to explode! It's a mathematical breakdown where the usual predictive models we use stop applying because the conditions are too different from what we observe today to use our normal math. The word "Singularity" just means "this is a state we cannot currently explain, the laws of physics as we know them don't work here, we need more information about the deeper underlying laws of the Universe to make any predictions."
It is just nonsense to assume the universe could exist for any period of time as a singularity. And it is pointless nonsense. Nothing is to be gained by the speculation. The theory makes no prediction and adds no insight to our knowledge.
Of course it does. Tracing expansion back to the Singularity is what predicted the CMB. That observation of a predicted phenomenon was one of the best bits of evidence supporting the theory that the Universe is expanding and therefore must have been smaller and hotter in the past. It's a pillar of modern cosmology, how can you possibly say that it "adds no insight to our knowledge?" But of course no cosmologist says that "the Singularity existed for any amount of time." The Singularity is a mathematical error from the laws of physics we know exceeding their limits, just as Newton breaks down at the scale Einstein takes over. It's not an object, not a state of the Universe, not something that "existed."
What if, DT, spacetime really is like the surface of a globe, and when you look into the past and approach the Singularity at the North Pole, you suddenly find yourself looking into the future and moving South? What if time has a minimum value, but has no boundary, just like the latitude and longitude of a globe? What if what we call "causality" is really just a Universal law regarding the relationship between adjacent coordinates of time?
What makes you think a behavior of the Unvierse, like gravity or time or causality, applies to the Universe itself?
Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers

This message is a reply to:
 Message 167 by designtheorist, posted 11-30-2011 11:12 AM designtheorist has not replied

  
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