Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
2 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,806 Year: 3,063/9,624 Month: 908/1,588 Week: 91/223 Day: 2/17 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Creation
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(3)
Message 528 of 1482 (828168)
02-12-2018 2:54 PM
Reply to: Message 521 by ICANT
02-11-2018 4:36 PM


Re: Why NOT A Literal Bible?
Question #1 a 2 part question.
Did the universe have a beginning to exist, how?
Please give me the scientific answer to both parts of that question.
I believe the scientific answer would be 'Don't know'. Which is convenient since it's the same as my answer.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 521 by ICANT, posted 02-11-2018 4:36 PM ICANT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 529 by ICANT, posted 02-12-2018 5:29 PM caffeine has replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(1)
Message 538 of 1482 (828230)
02-14-2018 2:50 PM
Reply to: Message 529 by ICANT
02-12-2018 5:29 PM


Re: Why NOT A Literal Bible?
That is the only scientific answer to part two?
Now what about part one, did the universe have a beginning to exist?
I was answering Part 1. "Did the universe have a beginning to exist?" "We don't know"
I personally, of course, haven't the faintest idea. From the scientific point of view, it seems to be a matter of dispute among cosmologists.
Now Sir Roger Penrose says 'inflation' is a fantasy. If inflation is a fantasy as he says then the BBT collapse's.
I have a big book by Roger Penrose that either cavediver or Son Goku recommended to me long ago. I've never finished it, but I have read the bit about inflation. Penrose notes:
quote:
(...)I should make clear that my remarks do not tell us that inflationary cosmology is wrong. They merely provide strong reasons to doubt most of the initial motivations behind the inflationary idea.
The initial motivations he discusses are trying solve the flatness problem, horizon problem and smoothness problem (two of these were listed in the Shortcomings of Standard Cosmology you pointed us to earlier). Penrose claims that inflation is not a solution to these problems, and therefore there is no reason to postulate it.
That does not mean the Big Bang's collapse. He spends much of the rest of the book discussing other approaches to these issues that I don't pretend to understand. Unless and until I do get my head around what cosmologists are talking about; I'm sticking with "don't know" for these sorts of questions. I kind of get the impression that even if I ever do grasp modern cosmology I still won't know many answers; but I might have a better idea of what I don't know and why.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 529 by ICANT, posted 02-12-2018 5:29 PM ICANT has not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 552 of 1482 (828282)
02-15-2018 2:49 PM
Reply to: Message 540 by Astrophile
02-14-2018 7:46 PM


There appear to be only two possibilities: that the age of the universe is infinite, i.e. that the universe is eternal; or that the age of the universe is finite. The fact that the Bible picked the correct one doesn't prove that it was inspired by a god, any more than predicting that a die will give a number between 1 and 3 and then getting the number 2 proves that one is supernaturally inspired.
In fairness to ICANT, I don't think the universe having a beginning was supposed to prove that God exists. He was working through verse by verse to show that none of them were false. But we got stuck on verse 1.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 540 by Astrophile, posted 02-14-2018 7:46 PM Astrophile has not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 553 of 1482 (828285)
02-15-2018 2:57 PM
Reply to: Message 544 by ICANT
02-15-2018 2:56 AM


Re: Why NOT A Literal Bible?
It has a simple answer.
Either it had a beginning to exist.
OR
It has existed infinitely in the past.
Both those explanations are prima facie absurd. The universe is everything - there can not be anything before it or outside it that caused it to exist. Equally, it couldn't have come to exist from nothing; since nothing could have caused it to begin.
Equally, the universe cannot have always been here, since how then could we have got to here? An infinite amount of time would have to have passed to reach this point, and no matter how long time has been going for it cannot have reached the point of infinity.
If those of the only two explanations, then clearly no simple answer exists. Whatever the answer is it's necessarily something which does not make sense in terms of the simple everyday concepts you're using.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 544 by ICANT, posted 02-15-2018 2:56 AM ICANT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 558 by ICANT, posted 02-16-2018 5:48 AM caffeine has not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(2)
Message 589 of 1482 (828606)
02-21-2018 3:33 PM
Reply to: Message 588 by ICANT
02-21-2018 2:36 PM


Re: infinite
Why in the name of the God is this conversation continuing? The purpose of words is to communicate ideas. Words don't have a 'real' meaning, and when you've started arguing about what the 'real' meaning is you've stopped having a meaningful conversation. When there's a dispute about the meaning of words, the solution is to figure out what ideas people were trying to express. Let's go back to post 563. NoNukes said:
quote:
What's wrong here is that you changed the subject from an argument that the universe is infinite in expanse to an argument about whether the universe is eternal. Now given that I am not making the latter argument, what is the point of your current discussion?
Let's pretend that ICANT replied:
quote:
By 'infinite' in this context I meant 'infinitely old', not 'infinite in expanse'
and we can pretend the last 25 posts never happened, assuming anyone has anything of substance to say.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 588 by ICANT, posted 02-21-2018 2:36 PM ICANT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 590 by ICANT, posted 02-22-2018 5:31 PM caffeine has replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 616 of 1482 (830064)
03-20-2018 4:39 PM
Reply to: Message 590 by ICANT
02-22-2018 5:31 PM


Re: infinite
quote:By 'infinite' in this context I meant 'infinitely old', not 'infinite in expanse'
But I do not believe there is a difference in infinitely old and infinite in expanse.
As I have said many time I believe the universe has always existed just not in the form we see it today.
I believe the universe is infinite in every direction, that means in duration and size. The universe may change from point A to point B. But it never ceases to exist,
I retract my previous statement; as apparently NoNukes was correct. You were changing the subject from an argument that the universe is infinite in expanse to eternal.
No problem if you believe both of the above, but you can see that they are different, no?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 590 by ICANT, posted 02-22-2018 5:31 PM ICANT has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 618 by NoNukes, posted 03-22-2018 4:27 PM caffeine has seen this message but not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(2)
Message 855 of 1482 (833801)
05-26-2018 4:00 PM
Reply to: Message 854 by ICANT
05-26-2018 3:40 PM


Re: Speed of Light vs. Expansion of the Universe
I am here to try to understand but until some that know the subject well enough to explain it where a 5 grader can understand it there is no need in me wasting my time asking questions that nobody answers.
We are discussing topics that I, as an intelligent person in their mid-thirties, find extraordinarily difficult to understand. I've started writing a few posts in this topic, but kept deleting them because I realised I lacked confidence in my understanding. Why would you expect that anyone would ever be able to explain this to a child? You're an intelligent adult and yet are apparently flummoxed by the basics.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 854 by ICANT, posted 05-26-2018 3:40 PM ICANT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 856 by NoNukes, posted 05-27-2018 12:40 AM caffeine has not replied
 Message 858 by ICANT, posted 05-27-2018 1:04 PM caffeine has not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(1)
Message 884 of 1482 (834386)
06-04-2018 4:25 PM
Reply to: Message 883 by ICANT
06-04-2018 3:47 PM


Re: Speed of Light vs. Expansion of the Universe
I am risking a post in this thread well outside my subject area, at the chance of being shot down by those more knowledgable.
Consider you in the universe, 46 billion light years in one direction you see Fred the alien. 46 billion light years in the other you see Dave the Alien:
Fair enough. Now lets consider things from Fred's perspective. He still sees you 46 billion light years away.
Nonetheless, his observable universe is clearly the same size, since he can see 46 billion light years in the other direction as well. If we looked at Petunia, we would find that she can see46 billion light years in every direction as well.
So what's going on here? Well, one thing to consider is that there is no reason the observable universe has to be everything. Sure, there's a limit to how far light could have travelled since the Big Bang, but why should we assume there's nothing beyond that limit? 93 billion light years represents the diameter of what can be observed. We have no idea how much else there is.
Of course, it always possible that the diameter of the universe is less than 93 billion light years - even though that's that size of the obsevable universe. How can that be? Well, this is covered by the idea the balloon analogy was trying to get across, which you refused to understand.
If space has no boundaries, but is curved on itself, then if you could see to an infinite extent in any one direction you would eventually be seeing the point at which you're looking from (but, of course, at an earlier time). The same as if you could somehow cast your sight all the way around the surface of the earth you would see the back of your own head (I'm aware that the geometry of the earth makes this impossible - if that's bothering you then you missed the point of the analogy).

This message is a reply to:
 Message 883 by ICANT, posted 06-04-2018 3:47 PM ICANT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 886 by ICANT, posted 06-05-2018 5:23 PM caffeine has not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 901 of 1482 (834464)
06-06-2018 3:59 PM
Reply to: Message 898 by ICANT
06-06-2018 3:07 PM


Re: Speed of Light vs. Expansion of the Universe
Hi ICANT,
I've skipped your reply to me, since Mod answered it all better than I would already. I am out of my depth with a lot of this stuff, so I will also not touch on most of your questions here, but there's one persistent misunderstanding I wanted to correct.
If that space expanded at 186,000 miles per second that would put 186,000 miles between each electron.
Firstly, the idea that inflation happened 'at the speed of light' is yours. This doesn't seem to be part of any standard model. More importantly, expansion of space can't happen at one 'speed'. As space expands, more space is created, which is itself expanding. This means that, as space expands between two objects, the rate at which the distance between them increases will also increase. This is why expansion is given in terms of distance/time/distance; rather than just distance/time.
But that's not the important misunderstanding. You're imagining what would happen after a second of inflation; but this means you're not looking carefully at the numbers Mod gave in his account of inflationary cosmology:
quote:
Inflationary epoch: 10−36 - 10-32 seconds.
10^-36 to 10^32 seconds means a period of slightly less than 0.00000000000000000000000000000001 seconds. How things would look after a second of inflation is not really relevant, since this is supposed to have gone on for only the tiniest fraction of a second,
You're a big fan of quoting Roger Penrose, so to clarify what he's saying - it's the infinitesimally tiny fraction of a second referred to above that he has major doubts about. He does not doubt the observed expansion of space (which is very slow); he merely believes that most cosmologists are wrong in thinking that expansion much have happened at an enormously faster rate for an incredibly short time to explain how the universe looks today.
Does the concept of inflation lasting only 0.00000000000000000000000000000001 seconds clarify why things would still be pretty close together when it ended?
Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 898 by ICANT, posted 06-06-2018 3:07 PM ICANT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 909 by ICANT, posted 06-12-2018 5:56 PM caffeine has replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 902 of 1482 (834465)
06-06-2018 4:11 PM
Reply to: Message 900 by NoNukes
06-06-2018 3:49 PM


Re: shapes
Is there a possibility, consistent with the big bang theory, that the universe is infinite? If so, I'd appreciate a pointer.
As mentioned above, I'm a bit out of my depth with this stuff; but why would an infinite universe not be compatible with the big bang theory?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 900 by NoNukes, posted 06-06-2018 3:49 PM NoNukes has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 905 by NoNukes, posted 06-07-2018 8:34 AM caffeine has seen this message but not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(1)
Message 914 of 1482 (834840)
06-13-2018 2:24 PM
Reply to: Message 909 by ICANT
06-12-2018 5:56 PM


Re: Speed of Light vs. Expansion of the Universe
Just a suggestion, but I find conversations make more sense if you read an understand an entire argument at a time, rather than breaking a paragraph into individual clauses and treating them as isolated aphorisms. Maybe this approach would mean less repetition. I mean, if I wrote to somebody "I can't come on Wednesday. I'll be on a business trip in Brussels", and received the reply
quote:
I can't come on Wednesday.
Why not? It will be great fun.
quote:
I'll be on a business trip in Brussels
When?
I would have my doubts about how interested they are in trying to understand me.
Why not? Especially when the total volume of everything is no larger than a pin point.
quote:The universe was born with the Big Bang as an unimaginably hot, dense point. When the universe was just 10-34 of a second or so old that is, a hundredth of a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second in age it experienced an incredible burst of expansion known as inflation, in which space itself expanded faster than the speed of light. During this period, the universe doubled in size at least 90 times, going from subatomic-sized to golf-ball-sized almost instantaneously.
The work that goes into understanding the expanding universe comes from a combination of theoretical physics and direct observations by astronomers. However, in some cases astronomers have not been able to see direct evidence such as the case of gravitational waves associated with the cosmic microwave background, the leftover radiation from the Big Bang. A preliminary announcement about finding these waves in 2014 was quickly retracted, after astronomers found the signal detected could be explained by dust in the Milky Way.
What slowed the speed of that expansion down to the Hubble speed?
I reckon a better question would be is, what started that expansion from zero to the speed of light?
Actually I can't find any scientific evidence prior to 380,000 years after the BB.
So, as I mentioned, the idea that inflation happened "at the speed of light" remains yours, and yours alone. "Faster than the speed of light" and "at the speed of light" are not the same thing.
More importantly, however, the above quote is not referring to inflation. It's talking about the incredibly slow expansion of space happening right now. We're not discussing an initial state of expanding at the speed of light which has now slowed; rather the slow expansion of space means that some things are being moved apart from one another at faster than the speed of light, because of the scale of the universe.
How is more space created?
All the space that is in the universe existed at 10-34s.
As I understand it that existing space is what expanded. Nothing was created as it was a self contained universe at that time.
If space expands then there is more space. This is surely self-evident. The amount of stuff contained in that space remained the same, just more spread out, but it doesn't make any sense to say that there is the same quantity of space, just more spread out. Space doesn't have a volume - it's empty. That's kind of the definition. Objects that are far apart have more space between them than objects that are close together. Otherwise they would not be far apart.
How can the rate increase?
In Message 884 You presented a couple of pictures.
Dave the Alien is on one edge of your picture I am in the middle and Fred the Alien on the other edge of the picture. If the space between Dave and I expands and the space between Fred and I expands the distance between Fred and Dave is twice what it is between Dave and I or Fred and I.
Dave sees the space expand between himself and I and also he sees the space expand between myself and Fred so the space has doubled between Dave and Fred.
Mod answered this already, but I thought I'd to make the point clearer.
To choose some arbitrary numbers, let's say you are one parsec from Dave, and one parsec from Fred.
Over the course of time, space expands, and after one year you are now two parsecs from Dave, and two parsecs from Fred. The distance between you and Dave has increased by one parsec in one year; so the space has expanded at an average rate of one parsec/year. Simple.
But what about Dave and Fred? They began two parsecs from each other; but they are now four parsecs apart. The space between them has expanded at an average rate of two parsecs/year.
Thus we see that it makes no sense to talk about space expanding at one speed. The rate at which space expands between two objects increases with distance. That's why distant galaxies can be receding faster than the speed of light; while the objects within our own galaxy are not flying apart from one another.
Roger had doubts about string theory, quantum mechanics, and cosmology. He came up with his twistor theory.
He did indeed come up with twistor theory. And if you asked him he would also affirm that space is expanding at faster than the speed of light. As I described in a previous post without apparently making any impact; his primary problem with inflationary theory is that he believes it does not solve the problems it was invented to solve; and thus there is no justification to invoke it. Kind of like 'God did it'.
You know inflation lasted 0.00000000000000000000000000000001 seconds because _______________________________________________________________ Fill in the blank present any scientific facts you have.
I don't claim to know this, and nor do I know how this is calculated. You seem to be fond of arguments along the line of "Standard cosmology says x. If x, then y, which is absurd." I'm just trying to point out some of those cases where you're wrong about what standard cosmology actually says; so your objection is not relevant.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 909 by ICANT, posted 06-12-2018 5:56 PM ICANT has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 915 by NoNukes, posted 06-13-2018 3:46 PM caffeine has not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(1)
Message 1186 of 1482 (842617)
11-03-2018 6:20 PM
Reply to: Message 1184 by creation
11-03-2018 2:34 PM


Re: Creation
So your claim was sarcasm, and you don't actually thin the current physics/nature we see is indicative of the future or past? Spit it out.
Yesterday, I went to work.
But how can I know this? How can I know that I was really here yesterday and these ideas were not implanted in a brain fully made this morning?
I'm having difficulty seeing how your arguments about things a long way away or a long time ago differ from the above. You're just saying over and over "but maybe there's something that makes what's really x look like y!', without ever giving any idea of what x is or why anything would make it look like y.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1184 by creation, posted 11-03-2018 2:34 PM creation has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1189 by creation, posted 11-04-2018 12:10 PM caffeine has not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 1289 of 1482 (844592)
12-02-2018 1:54 PM
Reply to: Message 1282 by ICANT
12-01-2018 2:19 AM


Re: Creation
[qs]in the late 1700's the first successful human artificial insemination was performed.[/b][/qs]
Is that a typo, or do you actually know of an artificial insemination in humans in the 18th century? A quick Google turns up nothing.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1282 by ICANT, posted 12-01-2018 2:19 AM ICANT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1294 by ICANT, posted 12-02-2018 4:52 PM caffeine has replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 1307 of 1482 (844662)
12-03-2018 3:35 PM
Reply to: Message 1294 by ICANT
12-02-2018 4:52 PM


Re: Creation
Below is the actual address but I prefer you use the search above.
The content of Google searches is different depending on your IP and your cookies. Would have been more useful to just point me to the Encyclopedia Britannica article, but thanks.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1294 by ICANT, posted 12-02-2018 4:52 PM ICANT has seen this message but not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(1)
Message 1481 of 1482 (848810)
02-15-2019 4:45 PM
Reply to: Message 1480 by AZPaul3
02-12-2019 5:02 PM


Re: Creation
[qs]
Just like inflation was proposed to solve a lot of problems with the Standard Model. Sir Roger Penrose says inflation is a fantasy. He is one of the most noted cosmologist of my lifetime.
With all due respect to Dr. Penrose he doesn't make a consensus. While he is very smart indeed, and may be right, there are thousands of equally smart others who disagree.
More's the point, why is this supposed to be relevant? ICANT brings up Penrose and the same four word quote in every post, but I can't figure out why he thinks this is relevant to anything.
Penrose's most recent hypothesis of the history of the universe/multiverse, if I understand it right, is a cyclic one; in which the universe was formed from an ancient and dead universe. He had some mathematical argument which I didn't understand to show that the state of the universe after heat death was essentially the same thing that inflation was hypothesised to explain for the isotropy and flatness of the early universe. And thus when out own universe suffers its own inevitable heat death it will spawn a new one.
All totally beyond me, but I don't see what the relevance is.
Significantly, I also saw an interview with Penrose where he was talking about all the people who write to him with their own pet whackjob theories on the basis that he's a man who challenges the status quo and thus would understand. He explained, far more politely than I do, that not every controversial hypothesis is created equal, and if your pet theory contradicts General Relativity (as ICANT does for reasons that I don't understand and which don't seem to be relevant to his theology) then it's obvious nonsense contradicted by all experimental evidence.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1480 by AZPaul3, posted 02-12-2019 5:02 PM AZPaul3 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1482 by AZPaul3, posted 02-15-2019 5:35 PM caffeine has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024