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Author Topic:   Time and Beginning to Exist
Omnivorous
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Posts: 3973
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 6.9


Message 14 of 302 (641959)
11-24-2011 10:04 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by PaulK
11-24-2011 8:36 AM


Local effect
dogmafood writes:
Is there anything beside the Universe that is considered to potentially not have a cause? Almost everything in the collective experiance of man has been shown to have had a precedent cause. Some of these causes we can not identify but that is mearly temporary ignorance.
PaulK writes:
Of course, this fails to address the point. The point is that IF there is no time prior to our universe, we have good grounds to question whether it needs a cause - grounds that CANNOT be answered by our experience, since the situation is completely outside our experience.
Dogmafood's comment fails to address the point only if we add the key word here to your previous formulations, here being the observable or deducible universe which we trace back to an origin of space-time. The same definitional effect is achieved if we define "universe" in that particular way, and both seem to beg the question.
With supersymmetry and M-theory (as I dimly understand it) we see the possibility of our universe originating in the collision or intersection of extra-dimensional branes.
So, yes, I see how one can fairly say our local universe has no local cause, as there is no local time in which it did not exist; but we also must entertain the possibility that the cause(s) of our local universe and time exists/existed elsewhere.
Similarly, as everyday experience suggests causal origins, it also suggests that a cause is external to its effect. This also would be preserved in an M-theory multiverse explanation of our local space-time.
Perhaps the idea that our universe, whether it is local or total, had no beginning is true is the most profound and absolute sense rather than within a qualifying, bracketed here. But we don't know that as yet, and we have at least some theoretical grounds to suggest it may not be so.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by PaulK, posted 11-24-2011 8:36 AM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 15 by PaulK, posted 11-24-2011 11:01 AM Omnivorous has replied

  
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3973
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 6.9


Message 16 of 302 (641964)
11-24-2011 11:09 AM
Reply to: Message 15 by PaulK
11-24-2011 11:01 AM


Re: Local effect
Understood.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

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Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3973
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 6.9


(1)
Message 27 of 302 (642021)
11-24-2011 10:49 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by kbertsche
11-24-2011 4:39 PM


Let There Be (Self-Caused) Light
kbertsche writes:
Claims that the Big Bang could have caused itself, or that it needed no cause, are nothing more than "special pleading". There are no other examples of things which are either uncaused or self-caused (in the philosophical sense of causation).
Oh?
Let There Be Light
quote:
Turns out creating light isn’t such a divine act after all. Not in the sense of powering on a lightbulb or firing up a star or discharging some static electricity. No, creating light in the Genesis let there be light sense. Light from nothing at all. This is, essentially, the accomplishment of Chris Wilson and pals at Gothenburg’s Chalmers University of Technology, as detailed in a new piece in Nature. Take the most exquisite nothing-nothingness in the whole wide universe and create light from it.
As an idea, called the dynamic Casimir effect, this is actually about 40 years old. It stems from one of my own personal favorite weirdnesses about the universe: that there is no such thing as empty. Like, if you remove absolutely everything from a region of space every atom, every particle, all of it it will still bubble with virtual particles that result from quantum fluctuations. The uncertainty principle applies even in a vacuum. That is, way oversimplified, a true vacuum (zero energy) is too certain for quantum physics (for the universe). Thus, pairs of virtual particles are created constantly. They exist for an extremely short time and pop back out of existence.
This is manifested in the Casimir effect. If you take two mirrors and place them side by side in a vacuum, they will pull toward each other. This happens because there’s a limited amount of space between them for virtual particles to come into existence, so more are popping out of space outside of the mirrors. This results in an increase in pressure outside the mirrors, and they pull toward each other.
With the dynamic Casimir effect, we’re actually harnessing those virtual particles (photons, actually) and turning them into light. It’s not easy. Four decades ago, the idea of speeding a mirror up to near light speed and sending it through a vacuum came about as a way of turning virtual photons in real photons and, thus, light.
Of course. we can’t very well fire a mirror at light speed through a vacuum. So Wilson and co. devised an alternate way involving changing the length of the pathway an electron follows in a circuit very, very quickly, such that it nears the speed of light. Well, it worked. The researchers made out with real light from nothing.
See also: dark energy, the mysterious stuff that’s supposed to make up most of the energy in the universe. It’s thought to be a result of this sort of virtual background energy, the energy of the vacuum. So think on that for a while it’s easier, more natural, for the universe to have stuff in it than it is for it to be empty.
What caused the virtual photons to begin to exist?
Nothing would be difficult to explain: something, not so much.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 25 by kbertsche, posted 11-24-2011 4:39 PM kbertsche has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 40 by thingamabob, posted 11-26-2011 11:53 AM Omnivorous has replied

  
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3973
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 6.9


Message 30 of 302 (642040)
11-25-2011 12:24 AM


Scientists wrestle with phenomena; it takes a philosopher to ignore them.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

  
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3973
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 6.9


Message 49 of 302 (642220)
11-26-2011 5:56 PM
Reply to: Message 40 by thingamabob
11-26-2011 11:53 AM


Re: Let There Be (Self-Caused) Light
thing writes:
Question
Where did the vacuum exist that the particles popped into existence in, exist?
thing,
Sorry I didn't make that clear:
Gothenburg, Sweden

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 40 by thingamabob, posted 11-26-2011 11:53 AM thingamabob has not replied

  
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