Observations of Great Debate - ID and thermodynamics

Sure! I was agreeing with that perspective.

Sylas, I guess I have no idea what your talking about, thought things gravitate toward another object at rest. Like space warps inward why planets, suns, galaxies are rotating in circular orbit's in respect to the possible big bang outward momentum. The planets are not increasing in distance from the sun, so space is not increasing between them.I'm not sure what you mean that space forms between them, unless your saying at the fringes of the universe this status quo appears to change?The Earth rotates around the sun in its space, there is something in space that holds the earth in orbit. It seems you saying that space expands because some of these objects are moving faster than the speed of light in this space within space.I think your saying nothing exists between these objects to hold them in place in space so distance will increase between them. I think its a bit of both, that nothing to prevent them from moving away from each other but nothing exists to slow them from going faster than the speed of light. It could be that our universe is moving at over twice the speed of light, and your seeing an object that strayed behind the universe on its journey through space. It makes one wonder if our universe is actually orbiting thru space and that object got left behind as the universe sped away on its orbit(if so then the universe is speeding along at over twice the speed of light).Only God knows how he ordained the laws, in respect to infinity space. People say that God is already there, which means that no matter how fast the universe, earth is moving, God is already there. He knows the future(hes already there), Prophecy never fails. I find that more awesome than two objects separating at greater than twice the speed of light.

Do not try to deal with this, Tom.You are not ready. You may never be but you sure aren't now. Just stick to other stuff for now.

To everyone:I'd like to mention a few things that occur to me now that I feel are essential to learning:

1. You must understand that the foundation of knowledge is evidence. Evidence trumps intuition and sensibility.
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2. It also helps to have a basic idea of how we figure things out. I'm not talking about any detailed understanding of epistemology (theory of knowledge), just a rough idea of how we know what we know. Those who have no idea how man gains knowledge will find themselves engaged in an endless series of searches for those who "know", and an equally endless series of disputes with those who don't accept their gurus' pronouncements.
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3. It really helps to be able to tell the difference between someone who knows what they're talking about versus someone who is blowing smoke. You can learn a lot when you listen to the right people. While there are no strict rules of thumb for recognizing the right people, generally their arguments will be backed by evidence, and they'll be able to explain how we know what we know. See the first two points.
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4. You need to develop a good sense of when you know something and when you don't. Naturally it's impossible to correct your understanding if you're already certain you're right.

There is nothing wrong with being wrong. For example, the dunderheaded Percy recently committed a couple of real howlers (he denied the possibility of an infinite universe, and he claimed scientists believed mantle currents were responsible for the earth's magnetic field), but he was able to admit error, learn and move forward.No one's perfect, least of all me or Percy, but we have a solid set of Forum Guidelines to help guide the debate, and this is one of the most important:

2. Debate in good faith by addressing rebuttals through the introduction of additional evidence or by enlarging upon the argument. Do not merely keep repeating the same points without further elaboration.

This guideline is what of think of as the "keep the discussion moving forward" rule. If your view is contradicted by the available evidence, and if you can muster no evidence for your view, then you should not hinder discussion by continuing to insist on your viewpoint. Failure to recognize when you're bogging down discussion often results in moderator intervention.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

I understand that logic is not the problem. It's that to throw out all logic seems unwise. I asked the warehouse question and you have answered that. What I meant is that it's logical to apply the space in my warehouse to space in the cosmos, and you said that the space in my warehouse does expand but the small area is un-noticeable. I accept that and have learned by your answer exactly where your position is. Percy seems to interpret these kinds of questions as spurilous and confrontational. Likely some readers were wondering the same about expansion. Well, heh, forgive me for again committing the unpardonable sin, by using logic, but on the one hand, you say that everything on the stretching rubber mat {space) moves along with the stretch including the mighty galaxies, but the mighty little tin wall of my warehouse skids at a standstill on the stretching mat because it's powerful enough to resist and the mat (space) must then move through it?? 1. Our world and solar system are allegedly 4.5 billion years old or so. At the rate of expansion you say goes on in the cosmos's space, would you give us a calculation of how much our planet would expand per billion years and how far from the sun it would expand per billion years?2. I assume that you believe that all existing space emerged from the big bang potent particle that exploded. Is that assumption correct? If it is, I would assume then this expansion of space began at the big bang and has been going on ever since. I just want to know if this is your position. Some good scientific minds don't accept Einstein's science, according to my research. Thanks! There's where we disagree. To use logic is, imo, not to disregard the imperically visible evidence, but to at least consider what is logical in arriving at the conclusions and interpretations of that evidence. [qs]Another thing we know is that space expands. It takes a bit of time to learn about such things. It conflicts with expectations, but that just means intuition is inadequate as a guide for understanding the universe.

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In Jehovah God's Universe, time, energy and boundless space had no beginning and will have no ending. The universe, by and through him, is, has always been and forever will be intelligently designed, changed and managed by his providence. buzsaw

I'm getting a partial post when I hit the submit button??I tried to edit in the rest of my post in and it failed. It was another short paragraph, but not all that important. I see we are nearing the 300 mark on this thread and wonder if that has something to do with it.This message has been edited by buzsaw, 01-26-2005 11:42 AM

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In Jehovah God's Universe, time, energy and boundless space had no beginning and will have no ending. The universe, by and through him, is, has always been and forever will be intelligently designed, changed and managed by his providence. buzsaw

If you hit your "Back" button enough times you'll return to the page where you entered the message text. You can recover the missing text there and append it to your message.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

[/qs]If you hit your "Back" button enough times you'll return to the page where you entered the message text. You can recover the missing text there and append it to your message.[/qs]I have it on notepad and tried to append it in with the edit button, but it didn't append to when I submitted.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ABE, somehow left this quote out initially.Buz,One thing I've gotten from discussions of the "Big Bang" here is that it was NOT an explosion or explosive event. I don't know if the initial theorizing that used the name Big Bang involved the notion of an explosion or not but the name is unfortunate since otherwise a big Bang does seem to imply an explosion. It's a semantically confusing name and it's too bad there isn't an easy to use alternative.But if you just remember that it was NOT AN EXPLOSION regardless of what it is called that will help in modeling the process. There was an expansion but not an explosion throwing stuff out the way say a bomb might.lfenThis message has been edited by lfen, 01-26-2005 12:04 AM

Buz,When you say "empirically visible evidence" I'm not sure what you mean. By visible do you mean what we can see with the naked eye? Sylas is writing about theories arrived at by empirical observation and that data has been reasoned from logically to arrive at the conclusions. I'm not sure what disagreement you could have with that unless you mean the observations with the naked eye should have some sort of precedence over measurements with instruments like telescopes, spectometers, radar, radio telescopes etc.lfen

Yes, your warehouse is plenty strong enough to resist forces which try to expand it by distances a bit less that the width of a proton every second. In fact, unless your warehouse is very badly built, it can hold together against far more powerful forces than this.In the same way, gravity holds solar systems, and galaxies, together. Even the local group of galaxies (Milky Way, Andromeda, Magellanic Clouds, and several others) will hold together against an expansion of only 71 km/sec/MPsec.You can only see the effects of expansion in increasing separations of galaxies that are not held together. That they are "mighty" makes no difference. Once again, I refer you to Message 228 and Message 276 of the thread.Calculation is the way to resolve these questions, not logic. There is no logic in thinking that galaxies have a special status by virtue of being mighty, because as I have explained any number of times now, expansion is not about moving things. Things at rest have increasing space between them. You can only overcome this expansion by MOVING things locally closer together at the same rate that the space between them is increasing.What counts is that two galaxies a long way apart have nothing to move them through space so as to hold them at the same separation. Therefore the distance between them increases, at a rate of 71 km/sec/MPsec. I’ve already done so, indirectly, in another thread. See Message 102; I have cited this to you previously in this thread. I’ll repeat the information here. The case for the orbit of the Earth is subtle; but it can be calculated. The expansion of space has effects analogous to a kind of pseudoforce acting to increase the radius of the Earth's orbit. The effect is much more complex than simply increasing orbit size by an amount relating to the amount of increased space, because the Earth is in constant motion. We have to calculate some rather hairy differential equations to combine the force of gravity with the expanding space. The calculations are available here: The abstract reads as follows: The calculations in the paper show that the expansion tends to separate the Earth from the Sun with a pseudo-force that is 44 orders of magnitude smaller than the force of gravity moving the Earth towards the Sun.They also calculate that over the life span of the solar system (4.5 billion years) the fractional change in Earth’s orbit due to expansion is about 10^-24. That works out to less than the width of an atom over the age of the solar system; our orbit expands by more than this every year due to tidal effects!Note that this is a dynamical calculation that combines the effects of gravity with the effects of expansion to see how Earth’s orbit is affected. You can’t just calculate an expansion and ignore the much more powerful effect of gravity. Details in the paper. Yes, existing space emerged from the big bang singularity, more or less. Expansion of the space of the universe began at the singularity and has been going on ever since.But as a minor quibble, the singularity is not about a particle that exploded. lfen has this correct in his comment. It is curious, but even a very intelligent person can be a crank. Einstein’s science is not absolute truth, and we know that general relativity is inadequate as a complete account of gravity. But by people who don’t accept Einstein’s science, I am presuming you refer to the many critics who object to relativity in those domains where it works just fine. For some reason, relativity attracts many cranks; though it is rather different to evolution objections, since the crankiness is not founded on religion, but invariably on a deep trust in various informal intuitions (logic!) that are just not true.Since you don’t give names, I can’t respond in any detail. But my guess is that your research has focused on people whose criticism is irrational, and that you are not able to tell the difference between irrational and well founded criticism. That is not a personal attack, by the way. I am quite sure you don’t actually know much about relativity, and in this you are in good company.Cheers -- SylasThis message has been edited by Sylas, 01-26-2005 16:41 AMThis message has been edited by Sylas, 01-26-2005 16:43 AM

Thanks very much, Sylas, for the things to ponder here.1. Even the minutest things like protons, electrons, and such occupy space. Do these expand with space? What is it that keeps a diamond from loosing it's hardness, due to the expansion of the space it occupies? I suppose if space can expand through my walls, it could expand through elements of rocks and for that matter, even earth. It would seem that if it expands through my walls, space would need energy characteristic to pull a galaxy along with it.2. Now, since gravity keeps galaxies from expanding apart, to effect this wouldn't space need to expand through these things as with my walls, and wouldn't this mean that space is expanding through the entire galaxy?

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In Jehovah God's Universe, time, energy and boundless space had no beginning and will have no ending. The universe, by and through him, is, has always been and forever will be intelligently designed, changed and managed by his providence. buzsaw

Taking these in reverse order, and Sylas can correct me if I'm wrong... Yes, that sounds right to me. Just as your warehouse and galaxies do not increase in size due to the expansion of space, neither do nuclear particles like protons and electrons. Imagine what it would mean to your warehouse if they did. The warehouse would remain the same size while the atoms of which it is made grew larger and larger, which wouldn't make any sense.Atomic bonds are what holds your warehouse together. The atoms of the wood from which your warehouse is built are bound into chemical compounds, and the chemical bonds are far too strong for the expansion of space to have any effect. In a similar manner, nuclear bonds hold the atoms together. Nuclear forces are far stronger than chemical bonds (which is why nuclear bombs are much stronger than traditional chemical explosives like dynamite), and so atoms also will not change in size with the expansion of space.Even stronger than nuclear forces are the forces that bind quarks together into the familiar subatomic particles. Quarks are bound together so strongly that we have never observed a lone quark, though we hope to one day. And so the size of the subatomic particles also do not change.I don't know if this is a helpful mental image for what happens locally due to expanding space, but imagine your house on your lot. Now imagine your lot expanding in size while everything on your lot remained the same size. Your house stays the same size, and the trees in the front yard stay the same size and remain the same distance from the front porch and from each other. But the edges of your property keep getting further and further away. This is a far from perfect mental analogy, but if it helps, what the heck. And if not, ignore it.--PercyThis message has been edited by Percy, 01-27-2005 09:27 AM

Percy has already given a good answer to this; but since I had started my reply, I’ll post as well. The expansion is an expansion of space only, not of particles. Protons and electrons don’t expand.A diamond is hard because of strong molecular forces. These are electromagnetic forces. Such forces are more than enough to hold a diamond together as space expands. The size of something made up of particles is a balance between forces. There is a naturally stable distance between atoms in a molecular structure like a diamond. If anything stretches or compresses it a little bit, it will spring back immediately to original size when the force is removed.Effectively, the forces holding the Earth or a diamond or a warehouse together are actually moving the particles involved at the infinitesimal rate required to compensate for the expansion of space. The size is a function of distances that minimize the local potential energy. The rates of movement involved to maintain this size are unbelievably tiny, and swamped by all kinds of other effects, like heat or even atmospheric pressure!So expansion does expand "through elements of rocks and the earth", as you put it; and forces on particles move them through space. The combined effect is to keep things like diamonds or warehouses or the Earth at the same size. When you calculate the rate of movement required to compensate for expansion, the rate for small objects (the Sun is very small, on these scales!) is much too small to be detected.It is not really accurate to speak of expansion pulling a galaxy along with it. A galaxy remains at rest. More accurately, it continues to move in a straight line. Even better, it moves along a spacetime geodesic defined by local gravitational forces. Expansion of space does not move it at all. It only expands the space that is around and within it.The distance to galaxies in deep space is increasing, not because they are being pulled along by expansion of space, but because the space between us and them is stretching. This is not the same as movement in space, and there is no local force between us to compensateOn the scales of the size of a galaxy (about 1% of a MegaParsec), the expansion of space would match a local movement of roughly a kilometer a second between stars at opposite ends of the galaxy. But such stars are already moving at something like 500 km/sec just from their orbit in the galaxy. A more useful calculation is to contrast the gravitational accelerations of a star with the effective accelerations of expansion. This is done in the paper I cited previously, and expansion is about 11 orders of magnitude smaller. The galaxy is a loose collection of gravitationally bound particles in constant motion, and so expansion has only a very minor effect on the net size of a galaxy; much too small to be detected.Cheers -- Sylas

Thanks Percy and Silas. Much appreciated. Yah, I got thinking later that I should have used the word "expandng" in place of pulling. I understand what you're saying.I'm still not comprehending how if space is expanding through things in the galaxy, as you say, it would not then be passing through the galaxy rather than carrying along the galaxy by it's expansion so as to increase timespace between galaxies, space being absent of energy to do it.