Why does anything occur?

What is it that prevents everything that has, is, and will happen from happening instantaneously? From a very basic Newtonian standpoint friction prevents, say, a ball from rolling down a hill instantaneously so that it appears to traverse space instead of instantaneously reappearing at another location. What is it about "empty space" that keeps things on a quantum level from happening instantaneously and giving rise to all the amazing phenomena that results in us even asking these questions?I guess what's more is why is there a speed of light from our perspective when it seems that all "messages" in QED are at light speed and henceforth instantaneous from the information's perspective?

Hello "madeofstarstuff". Im gonna call you star for short,OK? Your topic sounds interesting, but I wanted to ask you which direction that you intended the topic to flow?
1) Do you want to discuss and tie in string theory with this again?
2) Is this a time/space continuum type of a question? Is this a Big Bang singularity type of a question? A Philosophical question? Is it a Faith/Belief or Is it Science?

Star is easier and fine with me.1) If need be, tie in string theory.
2) Definitely a time/space continuum sort of thing.This is more of a scientific question. I want to know more about what it is that allows entropy to do its thing. Something must be regulating it, to allow it to continue at a certain pace as opposed to it all happening instantaneously. I assume that this has the speed of light, quantum fluctuations, etc. tied into it somewhere.This message has been edited by madeofstarstuff, 10-10-2005 02:09 PM

OK..sounds like a start. I'll tell you what. Lets wait and see what some other admins have to say. If you would like, you can go and reword your opening statement.The way that we promote opening posts is that we allow the author(thats you) to work on building an idea into a mature and readable statement. For example, lets take what you have given me so far:
I will combine your two posts. OK now say that I was you. I have all of the above on my wordpad at home. I do this because it is easier to make a good opening topic on wordpad and transfer it to the EvC PNT only when I feel that it is readable and that other people can understand it. Are you with me so far?Next, I ask myself if my Topic Heading is good enough. Is that what I really want to talk about?Now its up to you to reword your opening statement. If you reword it and give us a new opening statement, we can go from there.Our goal is to have a topic that people can understand and reply to.
Its like turning in a paper in school. Get back to us with a reworded opening post.Thanks, Star.

In QED the messenger particle is the photon. The photon travels at light speed. Information regarding the behavior of matter and the electromagnetic force is thus transmitted at the speed of light. As I understand it, a photon, from its perspective, “instantaneously” relocates itself from one location in space to another. This would tell me that an electron over here is instantaneously affected by the emission of a photon by an electron over there. Of course from the perspective of a photon, “over here” and “over there” have no meaning and the former electron should be said to be instantaneously affected by the latter electron. From our perspective this is not the case, as light does traverse space. Photons reach “this location here” by originating from “that location over there” and occupying regions in spacetime in between these locations.Where does the in between come from? Why is it that what we experience is happening in time, when the messengers of these causes and effects are performing without the need of time. Why does anything even happen? Let’s say electron A emits photon A that is absorbed instantaneously by electron B, who, in turn, emits photon B that is instantaneously absorbed by electron C, who, in turn . ad infinitum. Does this absorption to emission take time to occur? If so, what is the mechanism by which this time is described? Is there any meaning to any question that doesn't involve the absorption of a photon to extract information?For a macro world example, I could see a ball fall from the top of a building and watch it occupy spacetime as it journeyed from the top to the bottom following its goedesic. What prevents the ball from instantaneously arriving at the ground as opposed to occupying all spacetime slices in between? After all, the ball is merely a conglomeration of tiny particles that are enacted mainly (in regards to our perception of it) upon by electromagnetism. Is this delayed only by the time required for an electron to absorb and subsequently emit a photon. Is this the mechanism by which time and events can be said to progress? I just don’t see how events go from one instant to another unless it is this timeless quality of a photon making it appear so. These things must not happen analogously, they must happen discretely, otherwise change would be meaningless. So, if every electron in the ball somehow failed to absorb or emit any photons until it hit ground, would it appear to instantaneously relocate from the top of the building to the ground?

Thanks for the advice, what do you think about my revised edition?

You still have so many questions rolled into one topic.To be honest with you, I am no scientist and so am unable to judge this topic as promotable or not. One suggestion that I have for you, however, is to submit a question or two to this site.Perhaps they can answer one or more of your sub-questions within the topic.Do you still want your Title of the topic to be Why does anything occur?I will keep this open until Ned or Ben or one of our science moderators can give you another perspective. Good effort, though!