GOD IS DEAD

Ned is not making up definitions here, he , in fact, explained it perfectly.Space has no boundaries, yet it is not infinite.Here's a little example that might help you understand:If you take of from the earth in a space ship, and keep going in one direction long enough, you will eventually come back to the earth. You did not deviate from your path, you also didn't encounter any boundary, yet, you are still back where you started.Thus:Space: Unbounded but finite! As for thebit, I don't really understand what you're saying here, could you elaborate?

---

I hunt for the truth

No. 'No Boundary' is specifically defined by Hawkings 'No Boundary Proposal'.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/hawking/universes/html/bound.htmlWiki writes,

quote:

---

A universe that is finite in size but did not begin with a singularity is the result of one attempt to combine aspects of general relativity and quantum mechanics. The history of this no-boundary universe in imaginary time is like the surface of Earth, with the Big Bang equivalent to Earth’s North Pole and the size of the universe increasing with imaginary time as you head south toward the equator.

---

quote:

---

Hawking and Hartle then wedded this idea to general relativity’s view that gravity is just a consequence of curved space-time. Under classical general relativity, the universe either has to be infinitely old or had to have started at a singularity. But Hawking and Hartle’s proposal raises a third possibility”that the universe is finite but had no initial singularity to produce a boundary (thus the name).

---

It's not 'imagining time' that Hawkings proposes, it's Imaginary Time.
Imaginary time - WikipediaWiki writes,

quote:

---

Imaginary time is a concept derived from quantum mechanics and is essential in connecting quantum mechanics with statistical mechanics. Imaginary time t is obtained from real time via a Wick rotation

---

---

"All great truths begin as blasphemies""I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

If anyone can expand on how the no-boundary proposal eliminates the singularity at T=0, I'd love to hear it. Is it related to the "wraparound" nature of unbounded dimensions, and the globe-Universe analogy is just more appropriate than I had thought? Do we have any idea of the actual structure of the Universe (moebius strip, spherical, toroidal, etc), or is it simply too complex to derive a 3-D analogy with all of the warping of space from mass?Further, am I correct in understanding imaginary time as an additional time-like dimension (meaning at least 5-dimensional reality)? If not, what's a better way to understand it?To help Bertot a bit more, though:You seem to be having trouble understanding this whole boundaryless-but-still-finite deal. You've already been given the 2-D surface of the Earth as an example, but let's try some more.Where is the edge of an egg? The surface itself is unbroken - there are no edges. If you were an ant walking on the outside of teh shell, you could walk literally forever and never reach the "end" of teh egg...and yet the egg is certainly not infinite. There's only so much surface area of the shell, and yet it has no boundary.Te surface of a donut is similar, and shows another complex structure that is finite but unbounded. Remember, we're only talking about the surface as a 2-D structure - we aren't concerned about the surface itself being the boundary between the 3-D donut and the air around it. An any walking on the surface of the donut would, like with the egg example, never reach the "end" of the donut, and yet the surface area of teh donut is finite and measureable.Have you ever played the game "Asteroids?" The old one where you're a spaceship in the middle and you shoot all of the asteroids that come flying across the screen? If you remember, when an object crossed the left border of teh screen, it reappeared with the same speed and heading at the same spot on the right border. You could have an asteroid moving forever becasue there was no boundary in the simulated space, and yet there was still a very finite and measureable amount of surface area.That's what the Unvierse is like under the no boundary proposal. There's a finite amount of space and time, the Universe is not eternal, and yet there's still no actual edge you can reach. It's finite, but without any boundaries.

Hi Rahvin,Heres what I could find on the math behind 'Imaginary Time'. Which, in the no-Boundary Proposal, the equations that remove the singularity are done in imaginary time.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/hawking/strange/html/imaginary.htmlFrom link,

quote:

---

Mathematicians are a clever lot. Just because a concept may not make sense at an intuitive level doesn’t mean that it can’t be used to help understand nature. Take imaginary numbers, for example. If you start with any “real” number and multiply it by itself, you get a positive number. For instance, 2 times 2 equals 4 but so does -2 times -2. That means the square root of 4 equals both 2 and -2. But what would the square root of -4 be? Mathematicians invented imaginary numbers to answer this question, defining the number i to equal the square root of -1 (making the square root of -4 equal to 2i).

​

Imaginary numbers can be used to help explain tunnelling, a quantum mechanical process in which, for instance, a particle can spontaneously pass through a barrier. In trying to unify general relativity with quantum mechanics, physicists used a related idea in which they would measure time with imaginary numbers instead of real numbers. By using this so-called imaginary time, physicists Stephen Hawking and Jim Hartle showed that the universe could have been born without a singularity.

---

And here's a lecture from Hawkiings about the No-Boundary Proposal and Imaginary Time.The page you were looking for doesn't exist (404)I could use some help with this myself so hopefully one of the guru's can help us. From what I read it would be like the geometry for a sphere, or Earth, exept in 4D. In that analogy the BB would be the North Pole; and like the North Pole doesn't have a singularity, nor will the BB have one either.Hope this helped.--Oni

---

"All great truths begin as blasphemies""I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

PaulK writith:NosyNedster from Canada writesWhen I say Ned I mean "anyone' that would take the simple word/s and change its meaning to apply to something that clearly does have a starting point as the super amazing guy in the wheelchair (I would like to know where the boxing glove is actually kept and can the nurse reset it when necessary), points out about the universe. The universe no matter how you would like to describe or imagine it, had a beginning. Hawkins view, is really refreshing, considering the past views like that of Sagan, that "the universe is all there ever was is now or ever will be"I read the whole article and I did not pick out of it only what supports my position. However, the following comments, out of the article itself, should make it painfully clear that these are not theories that can be tested, they are speculative at best. Pointing out or using the illustration of the circuference of the earth as existing with no boundary, is simplistic at best. Ofcourse it has boundaries at every single point at which I defy the law of gravity by jumping or in a space craft, it is obvious that it has boundaries. Hence if the universe had a beggining, it had boundaries then and has now.Satholic Chientist writes: Really? A inch higher than mount Eversest or just bend your knees and jump. How about going straight through the earth to the other side, then a couple of miles in space. No boundary? If space is anything close to the earth, there is probably something on the other side of space. If indeed space is finite there would of necessity have to be. My guess is that, that which appears to be boundless meshes with the eternal nature of things or God in a way we cannot identify. At any rate the universe is not eternal, if it had a start, it is therefore not the result of itself, asuming we dont want describe entropy as a characteristic of something eternal. Bertrand Russell in his debate with F.C. Copelstone (Catholic Philosopher) stated that the finite nature of things may be true of some things but not all things.If things are here however, this is the clearest indication that atleast something is eternal in the strictest since of the word. .The argument is not whether the universe is like a big circular argument but did it start at some point. If we know this we really only have to discuss the characteristics of that which would constitute the eternal character. Is it logically possible and it is not a logical contradiction, for the universe to be eternal, this is one logical possibility, or that which produced our universe and so on. There is also one other that is not a logical contradiction, they are the only choices. 15 Billion years ago doesnt sound like a "good start" ( no pun intended) for the eternal principle.The only other possiblity, the one that states "I Am that I Am", a statement that can actually be tested by the obsevation and existence of things and the fact that things like Carl Sagan which defines the decaying universe as "all" that there is,is now himself basically nonexistent in almost every respect. Now that is Iorny.Onifre writes: What then is the source and that which makes it finite? What is the consideration other than the big shlabang, that produced the boundless yet finite universe?Quote:Since "Imaginary time" cannot actually be demonstrated as really different from anytime, this principle as a third possibility cannot be considered as such. It is a deliniation and concepualitzation of the concepts finite and infinite. The very fact that it uses these terms abundantly with no real alternatives disqualifies it as any other possibility. The "purposal" attempts to give definition and meaning within the obvious context of that which can only be discribed as utimately eternal. There seems to be no other choice. Im sorry if the idea of an "Unmoved Mover" is unpalatable, but there are no other choices. The easiest way to demonstrate this is the fact that we are here, anything is here and we can contemplate this question.Quote:This is making way to much of a simple principle. This would be like saying that the water in the top of the glass is somehow different in character and nature than the water in the bottom of the glass. The simple principle is that its just time if you are here on earth or in deep space. Relative perhaps, but time nonetheless. Time would only have menaing from the standpoint of the universes starting point, correct. But time and actual space are two different things. Even though we cannot percieve or see it, space, if it had a starting point and can bend, it therefore would naturally have to have a boundary of some sort, even if it was that which originally produced it. Somethings got to be eternal eventually in the process.Rahvin writes:No I understand its principle, but besides being speculative as the above statements indicate, it falls short to expalin anything utimately. Like the examples you provide, they themelves invole the principle of contengency, no matter how we can imagine or percieve thier pos------------------------ibilites. Besides all of this me and my brother spent many ours in 7-11 playing that very game. The real problem was that darn ship that came out of nowhere and caused panic and terror in me. Missle Command, now that was a game. If you had either one of these original games, you would have acouple of vluable items What do you think will be next, after the "steady state theory" and now the No boundary Purposal". Do you think an eternal God will be a solution to the problem for science at some point. I understand the problem with the eternality, no beginning or end of a Being such as God. I have wrestled with it all of my theological life. There are simply no other solutions that I can fathom or find.An actual wall or boundary would not dignify an intelligence such as Gods. If there is actually no boundary, from our perspective and yet it is finite, this would actually dignify the expression which characterizes him. "I AM THAT I AM. An expression of eternality and absolute existence. The expression by the Apostle Paul, that at his appearing and our ressurection, we will be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye, and we will be like him, this, I believe will give us I suspect, the ability to transverse that alleged no bondary with the greatest of ease. That is ofcourse, if you believe in these things, I do. Ofcourse we would need the immortal body to both see and transverse that presently unseen boundary."Preach on, brother"!!D BertotEdited by Bertot, : No reason given.Edited by Bertot, : No reason given.

quote:

---

When I say Ned I mean "anyone' that would take the simple word/s and change its meaning to apply to something that clearly does have a starting point as the super amazing guy in the wheelchair...points out about the universe. The universe no matter how you would like to describe or imagine it, had a beginning.

---

This seems to be a rather weird way of admitting that your charge against Ned was false and Ned was right all along. And you are missing the most important part of the "no boundary" proposal - that the universe is completely self-contained and nothing outside is needed to explain the "beginning".

quote:

---

I read the whole article and I did not pick out of it only what supports my position. However, the following comments, out of the article itself, should make it painfully clear that these are not theories that can be tested, they are speculative at best.

---

Even reading the quotes that you provide it is painfully clear that you did not read it well enough. I have bolded the relevant portion for emphasis. Clearly Hawking does not think that it is untestable.As for your understanding of imaginary time:

quote:

---

This would be like saying that the water in the top of the glass is somehow different in character and nature than the water in the bottom of the glass. The simple principle is that its just time if you are here on earth or in deep space. Relative perhaps, but time nonetheless. Time would only have menaing from the standpoint of the universes starting point, correct.

---

I can only describe it as painfully wrong. The whole point of the part you quoted is that imaginary time is orthogonal to real time. It is a whole different way of looking at time, not an assertion that time is different somewhere else.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

You can't do that when you're limited to 2d movement Bertot. We can do that because we are NOT limited to 2d, we're limited to 3d movement. And so for us, 4d space-time, has no boundaries, because we are limited to 3d movement. This might very well be the case, however, we have NO way of crossing this boundary because, again, to us, space has no boundary. I don't see how this comment you reacted to is a circular argument, nor does it having a boundary have anything to do with when it started. What does ANY of that have to do with an unbounded Universe? Furthermore, as demonstrated by your comments above, I don't think you DO understand the principle. I don't think God's EVER been a problem to science.

paulK writes:This statement makes no sense, since even hawkins admits it had a beginning. Self-contained would mean it was eternal and did not have a beginnig. That which is contengent on something else, in this case an admited beginning cannot be described as self-supporting. The Purposal address no real solution to anything, except to ignore obvious facts. Testable does not mean the same as an actual observation of the limits of space and its entire properties, as he clearly indicates. Read the article again. Thats the point. These so-called discriptions of time are imaginary, theres only real time or just time, nothing intersects anywhere else with anything else in connection with time, its fluidic in its entirity, its all the same in all its parts, everywhere at the samtime, like a glass of water.In fact there is only space and matter and time is only a concept not a thing that can be measured or tested like a physical property, except from a relative position of a person and thier surroundings or the beggining of the universe itself. If i were there at the exact moment of thecreation of the universe, "I" could say or call it the first second in time. Yet that is simply what I would describe it, not that is actually something as real or tangible, as if it were a measurable thing in and of itself, verses anything that came before or after it.Further, the idea or contemplation that some other reality (time) if you will exists at the same time or place that I am in is simply a contemplation, since there is nothing but this exact moment, all else like "imaginary time" is speculation. There is only a present condition or situation in space or existence in the entire universe at one time and at the same time. No time lines, no imaginary time, etc.Its just a way of imagining time. Its just time and you or he could not demonstrate it in other '"real" way, than theory, as he indicates. Read the article again. If its not put it on a tape and I will watch it. Show me this theory in actuality.D BertotEdited by Bertot, : No reason given.Edited by Bertot, : No reason given.Edited by Bertot, : No reason given.

Again, nothing in this so-called puropsal offers a solution to the question of what caused the big bang. This is simply a discription of what the essence of space may or may not be like. An ant in the center of the earth that never reaches this so-called unbounded surface would not need to experience its context to understand he came from something other than his limited self, assuming he could think about it. But it did have a beginning, so a boundary is a foregone conclusion. The start of anything is obvious that it came from somthing else, correct? Great, then since God as a creator,is a very plausible explanation and no problem to science, it will be no problem for him to be discussed in the classroom, correct?D Bertot

Why would this have anything to do with the beginning of the universe? It was just an explanation of the universe having no boundary. However the universe came into existence, this still holds true. An ant is a 3d entity, not a 2d one, so the analogy is flase when using an ant, in fact it is walking on the edge of the surface. I don;t see how one follows from the other. Again, reagrdless of how the universe came into being, as far as we know now, it has no boundary and yet is finite. I'm not knowledgeable enough in physics to feel commenting on this, but let's say this is true, God could've made the big bang happen, I see no problem with this. What made you think I have a problem with God in the classroom? In fact I encourage teaching everybody about religion. I however DO NOT encourage teaching a religion as science. About God's plausability as a creator....He is no more plausible then any god ever thought of as the ultimate creator. Since there is no evidence pointing to ANY god as a creator, they are all just as likely.

Actually, that is the whole point. There is no "cause" outside that which already exists. If you demand a cause for what happened at T=0, then it could be said that it is the surrounding space-time at T>0. At this point in the Universe, we essentially have what we call a Euclidean region of space-time - its "evolution" is generated elliptically rather than hyperbolically, and is determined by consistency rather than causality - entirely analogously with elliptic vs hyperbolic 2nd order partial differential equations. And so no cause beyond consistency is required. Nothing is requried other than the Universe itself. This is an extremely elegant and aesthetic concept. Of course, this is not some wild guess. The above is simply a limited description of the results of very serious quantum cosmological calculations. Only in the same naive sense that the north pole is a boundary for lines of longitude. As described above, incorrect You mean how gods were a very plausible explanation for thunder and lightning; and fire; and magnetism; and nuclear binding energy; etc, etc?

As I hope you are starting to appreciate, layman commonsense and logic are utterly irrelevant. When it comes to physics, layman commonsense was thrown out over 100 years ago. It was replaced with theories that, no matter how counterintuitive, were consistently demonstrated to be the most accurate realisations of our Universe ever constructed. Now, if you want to talk about commonsense and logic *within* the context of relatvistic and quantum physics, then fine. But then you still have to lay out your logic that leads to your assertion.While you are mulling over the HH NB Proposal, here's another possibility. It falls into a similar picture, but rather than using a Euclidean region of space-time to smooth over the potential discontinuity at the singularity, we simply map the t=0 region to some later T. So causation remains around T=0 becasue we are still in Lorentzian space-time (and "evolving" parabolically) but now our Cauchy data (i.e, that which causes that at T=0) is simply to the far future of T=0. We simply wrap the Universe round as one huge time-machine, and again simple self-consistency generates our internal evolution. So again, no external causes.At some point, I would also like you to revisit what I quoted regarding your preferred possibility: Is this what you want to be taught in the classroom?

quote:

---

This statement makes no sense, since even hawkins admits it had a beginning. Self-contained would mean it was eternal and did not have a beginnig. That which is contengent on something else, in this case an admited beginning cannot be described as self-supporting. The Purposal address no real solution to anything, except to ignore obvious facts.

---

No, it simply contradicts your opinions. Hawking does not accept that the universe had a beginning in the sense that you mean.

quote:

---

Testable does not mean the same as an actual observation of the limits of space and its entire properties, as he clearly indicates. Read the article again.

---

Ah yes, a typical example of "moving the goalposts". Rather than rereading the lecture, those interested in the truth should read my Message 216 (Message 216)< !--UE--> again.As is quite clear, the issue was your statement: (my bolding for emphasis)As I pointed out, your assertion was untrue, since Hawking in fact DID talk about testing the hypothesis, with no hint that it was impossible.As we note there is no mention of "actual observation of the limits of space" - that is just a red herring that you have presumably invented jut now in an attempt to obscure your obvious error.

Conceptually its finite like Earth is finte; yet Earth has no boundaries which prevent you from continuing to walk in a straight line for eternity. Removing the singularity does not remove the BB. The singularity is an mathematically derived concept. It is not a thing that produces universes. In Hawkings' No-Boundary theory the BB is still the beginning of our universe in real time. Before the BB there is no space therefore there is no time, or rather theres no real time before the BB. Thanks for your arm chair mussings. I'd like to see if you can give a better explanation as to how you come to that conclusion without actually understanding the physic, other than 'this just can't be right'. You are applying your own personal concepts of finite and infinite to this. In physics finite and infinite are mathematical expressions...
Finite difference - Wikipedia...which cannot be manipulated to represent theological concepts of eternity. These are mathematical expressions that represent a specific theory, you can't just twist it to fit your concept of infinity. The proposal deals with physics, it expresses it's concepts mathematically. Eternity is a made-up religious concept that is basically meaningless outside of theological conversations. It no more bothers me than any other religious concept of the nature of reality...it just simply lacks any evidence outside of the subjective interpretation, therefore I just ignore it. I suggest trying to understand the theory before you write stuff like this. This does not make sense to me perhaps you can clarify it a bit more. For the purpose of the No-Boundary proposal, yes, however, real time. They are perhaps 2 different words, with 2 seperate definitions, but if we are speaking about the universe space and time are inseparable. You can't be in space without time, and there is no time without space. The Earth bends, right? Its a sphere, right? All spheres have a curvature, yet they are boundaryless. If you think of a no-boundary universe in the same sense that you think of the Earth, as a spherical object, then the eterity you seek would be you walking on this planet in a straight line, never being bounded by anything, just a continuous walk...for eternity. And yet the Earth is finite...are you kinda getting it?Edited by onifre, : No reason given.

---

"All great truths begin as blasphemies""I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

In relation to this exchange I would like to quote from astronomer Robert Jastrow, the founder of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, a confessed agnostic. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.