If the pin point expanded equally at all places it would have expanded equally in all directions from the pin point. Therefore the pin point would be the center.
Problem is - is that there is no pin point. It expanded. Where I am sat right now is as much a part of that pin point as where you are sat, as Mars is as Alpha Centauri is etc. You can point to the left, point to the right, point up and point down and you will be pointing at what you call the pin point.
That's why in whatever direction you look at - you see the CMBR. It is the earliest moments of the big bang and it isn't 'in the middle', or it would only exist in one direction - it's around us. Because there is no centre.
It's kind of hard to imagine 3D topology - hence why 2D or even 1D topology (such as the road) are used.
So imagine a spherical balloon the size of a pinpoint. All that exists however, is the surface of the balloon. There is no 'interior' to the balloon (that would be 3D and we're talking 2D only here), as the balloon inflates there is nowhere on the surface of that balloon that is the centre. There is no centre to the surface of a sphere! If you say 'the centre is the pin point' we would retort - 'but that's everywhere'. If you insist that the centre is in the middle of the sphere - then you are saying that the centre of the universe is not in the universe.
In one dimension this would be like the surface of a rubber band. There is no centre where the band is stretching 'from'. It's all stretching from every point along it.Even if the 'resting state' of the rubber band was only a pin point in size, and its now 100 million light years in length - the small size in the past is not the centre.
Did the pin point expand or did the material that the universe is composed of expand from that point?
The pinpoint expanded.
The material that is the farthest from the pin point is the oldest because it was the first material that left the pin point. Then the material that left a few seconds later would be closer to the pin point etc.
All material is the same age. When we look at the CMBR we are seeing the universe at its youngest.
The material that is the closest to the pin point was in the center of the pin point.
And that would be everywhere.
Everything has been expanding away from that pin point and leaving nothing but space behind.
But that's not what we observe. Otherwise we could tell the direction of the pin point.
Do you really want me to believe there is no 'interior' to a balloon?
There is no interior to the 2 dimensional surface of a balloon, no. There is left-right and up-down but no in-out. Until you can understand the principle in 1 or 2 dimensions, you haven't a hope of understanding it in 3.
I actually thought the standard theory said the space that existed at the pin point is what expanded
All of space expanded. It's size was at one point, the size of a pin point.
The parts that were nearer to the center of the pin point would not move nearly as far in the first second as those on the outside of the pin point.
There was no centre to the pin point.
My biggest problem with this little pin point is how everything in this massive universe was squished into such a small volume.
There was no other place for it to be.
All material is the same age. When we look at the CMBR we are seeing the universe at its youngest.
I would assume it was all the same age as it all existed at the pin point or at least that is what I am told, and read
Yes, all material is the same age. But when we look at CMBR we are looking at light that has taken 13 billion years to get to us. What we're seeing is what it looked like 13 billion years ago.
But it all could not have left the pin point at the same time. The outside would have left first and the last 3 whatever you want to call them would leave last and head in 3 different directions.
There was no leaving the pin point. The pinpoint was all of space - we have not left space. It all expanded.
And how would that be brought about? And what do you mean by everywhere?
How would what be brought about?
By everywhere I mean everywhere. All of space.
We observe stuff going in all directions from us. If you look east a lot of stuff is headed that way. If you turn and look west a lot of stuff is headed that way. If you look north a lot of stuff is headed that way. If you look south a lot of stuff is headed that way. If you were to look any direction on a circle you could turn you would see stuff heading that way.
Yes we do - so either you are right and the pinpoint was earth, or I am right and we'd see the same thing from every place in space. There is nowhere in the universe we could look and see 'more universe' to our left than our right.
If a balloon is filled with air it has height, width, and depth, that means it is a 3d object.
Correct. But I am talking about a 2D object that is the surface of the balloon. There is no depth to a 2D object.
Take a map of the earth - where is the centre? There is none. If your map is on a rectangular piece of paper there is a centre to the piece of paper - but that wouldn't be a place which would be regarded as the centre of the surface of the earth would it? After all we could produce another map with a different location in the centre of the paper. Because the surface isn't actually a rectangle.
As I said - until you can understand the expanding curved 2D topologies, your prospect at understanding a 3D curved topology is not going to work. You're ape brain, like my own, is used to dealing with flat 3D topology. You need to start simple. We can picture a curved and expanding 2D topology. But you still have to try.
A balloon with no air in it would represent anything other than an airless balloon. It certainly would not be representative of the universe.
If you'd prefer you can forget the balloon. Consider a curved and expanding 2D space with no boundaries. Tell me how I could determine the centre of this space.
My question is whether there would be a way to hypothetically verify the redshift within a singularity.(or am I stupified by the explanation?)
Redshift occurs to the wavelength of light. If a singularity did exist, there would be zero space, and thus zero length. So what does wavelength even mean in this condition? It's all these zeroes turning up resulting in divisions by zero and the like that physicists are talking about when they say that our maths breaks down in singularities.
Nope, that expanded, and continues to expand. The space between you and your keyboard is expanding too. It's all expanding.
If you cut the point off a pin with a pair of side cutters you would have a relatively round object. That object would have a center just as the earth has a center.
Correct. But that's not how the universe is.
And just because there was no other place for all the stuff that is in the universe it had to exist in something the size of a pin point or a pea.
What would be a mechanism that could exert that much pressure on the contents of the universe that it could reside in such a small place?
There is nowhere else for it to go.
Since it did expand, why didn't it expand sooner?
It expanded immediately. You can't get sooner than that.
How do you know it took 13 billion years to get here?
Observations and mathematics.
Are you saying the universe is still the size of the pin point sized object that contained the universe?
I'm saying the pinpoint was the entire universe, which we have not left.
Correct for the map as it is a 2d picture.
Almost correct. It's not because it is a 2D picture. There is a centre to any given rectangular picture. The reason there is no centre is because it actually curves around on itself. When you get to the place that is furthest away, where you started is now the new furthest away. Agreed?
And if you reduce the size of the surface of the earth - the distances become less - but there is still no centre, correct? If you reduce it so that the furthest distance away is 1cm - there is still no centre, right?
Was that space outside of the pin sized object?
There was no space outside the pin sized object. The pin sized object (which is not actually an object, by the way) was all of space - all of it. Every single bit of space in the entire universe. And all of that space expanded. All of it. Every single bit of space in the entire pin sized universe expanded.
Ok the space in the Milky expanded. Is it still expanding at the same rate today?
The rate at which space expands has varied through time.
Since you say the space between me and my keyboard is expanding maybe you could explain how?
The same way that any space expands. It is expanding at about 70km/s per megaparsec.
If your keyboard is 1 metre away then the space between is expanding at a rate of
70 / 30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers per second. Or 0.00000000000000000000225 kilometres a second.
So an object that contained everything in the universe that is seen and unseen would not have a center as the object I mentioned?
Right.
But my question is what mechanism compressed and held everything seen and unseen in the present universe to the volume that existed when it began to expand?
There was no mechanism compressing or holding everything. Why would it need to be held? There's nowhere else for it to go.
Immediately after what?
Well, if there was no before - then it cannot be after anything. If there was a before - then immediately after it came into existence.
Observations would require someone to see the light when it left and observe it during it's entire journey.
Mathematics can be made to say anything you want the numbers to say, Einstein proved that.
While those observations would be interesting - it would probably involve being a photon so it's unlikely you'll be able to give a detailed account of your observations.
There are many other observations one can perform and use calculations to understand what is going on. If the big bang happened then there'd be a CMBR. If there is a CMBR it would be about 13 billion light years away. By definition any light that reaches us from that period must have taken 13 billion years to get here.
Actually I thought a rectangle had a coordinate as it would need to have depth to have a center. But I could be wrong.
A rectangle has a centre, which is described using a coordinate. It's x coordinate is half it's length and it's y coordinate it's half of it's height. The same applies to circles, but it's simpler with circles because x and y coordinates are always the radius (x=radius, y=radius).
How can a 2d picture curve around on itself unless you roll it up?
I'm talking about the surface of a sphere which the 2D map is merely a representation. The surface is also 2D and it wraps around itself to form a sphere.
Like Pac-man's maze world is a donut shape -> He goes off to the right and appears on the left. He goes up, and appears at the bottom. His world is wrapped around on itself to form a donut shape. There is no centre to his 2D world as there are no edges.
It would not make any difference how much you reduced the diameter of the earth the core would still be the center of the earth.
Still talking about the 2D surface of a spherical object, not a 3D object. You cannot point to the core on a map. If it's not on the map then it's not the centre of the surface of the earth.
You agreed the 2D map has no centre. Do you agree in general that 2D topologies can have no centre, if they are curved around on themselves like the earth's surface is?
Are you saying the universe is not an object?
Not in the way a ball of dough with raisins is an object. It does not have boundaries/edges like objects do.
If all of that space expanded at the same rate how did anything ever get together to form anything we see in the universe?
The rate of expansion varies over distance, things that are close together experience less space expansion between them than things further apart. Things that start close together can stay close due to various forces - the Strong, Weak, Electromagnetic and Gravity holding them together.
When all of the energy in the universe is the size of a pin prick, everything is pretty close to one another. It was, as they say, very dense. Once conditions were sufficient it was still dense enough that gluons can bind together to form nuclei via the Strong force which acts at a range of 10-15 metres.
complexities don't always translate into analogies
You should have seen the comments to me and about me several years ago when I made a statement about standing of the surface of the universe looking up and what I might see.
10 years ago in fact Message 92. It was the same mistake as talking about the centre of the surface of a sphere. In the first case you were talking of looking up and today you are talking of looking down. But those dimensions don't exist in the 2D world we're talking of.
That would mean that the 1,000th raisin had traveled at 1,000 times the speed of light. If there was enough raisins to have 2,000 spaces that expanded the outside raisin would have traveled at 2,000 times the speed of light.
All of this distance was covered in 1 second.
Do you think this scenario is as preposterous as I do?
Yet that is what we are supposed to think is reality.
Well the raisins would not have travelled through the dough at all. They'd have remained stationary. So they haven't travelled at any speed in that sense - the distance between them has grown rapidly - but not because they are moving.
Find it preposterous all you like, that's what the evidence shows.
With these raisins representing the elements of the universe how could any 2 of them get together and produce anything in the universe. Remember the first atom did not exist until 380,000 years after expansion began.
Unlike raisins in dough there are a number of fundamental forces of nature. So let's introduce a cake-esque force of nature. Stickiness. Raisins can stick to each other, and sometimes the force of the raising dough isn't enough to pull them apart. If the dough and raisins start sufficiently close - the raisins will be clumped together as their sticky nature will resist the dough rising.
Remember the first atom did not exist until 380,000 years after expansion began.
And remember, the first nuclei were forming within minutes. They were attracted to each other by the fundamental forces of nature (the stickiness) which in some cases are VERY powerful. At short range - they are way more strong than the tiny amount of expansion that occurs at that range. Even a tiny bit of unevenness would magnify up to of of clumpiness which would stick together due to gravity, and the other forces in such a way as to overcome the rather slow rate of expansion of space between them.
It really sounds like a fairy tale someone wants me to believe.
Now if you can explain where my thinking is wrong please do.
It has been done. What needs to happen is for you to stop repeating the same questions and objections and advance forward given the explanations you have been provided.
quote:So much for the density-independent equilibrium state achieved over a lengthy period of time. But the case of the big bang is different. The matter was rapidly dispersed only a short time after the mixture of neutrons and protons had started the chain of fusion processes. Under these circumstances, the final abundances of nuclides depended on how many collisions were able to take place before the dispersion effectively brought the processes to a halt. This in turn means that the final mix of particles is expected to depend on the density. More specifically, it is encounters with protons and neutrons that are significant, so it is the cosmic density of protons, neutrons and matter based on protons and neutrons that is important. This particular contribution to the overall density of the Universe is known as the baryonic density, since the proton and neutron are the lightest members of a family of particles known as baryons. We shall represent the average mass density of baryonic matter in the Universe as ρb/c2, preserving the symbol ρb for the associated energy density of baryonic matter. Thus, the baryonic density prevailing at the time of nuclear synthesis had an important part to play in governing the relative abundances of the light elements formed.
Roughly speaking, you can think of the baryonic density as the density of ‘ordinary’ matter. You are essentially made of baryonic matter as are the Earth, the Sun and all familiar objects.
There is a second reason why the baryonic density was important. It arises from the fact that while these fusion reactions were taking place, free neutrons (those that had not yet been incorporated into nuclei) were decaying
Unlike the fusion reactions, the rate for this decay is independent of baryonic density. Thus when the baryonic density changes, the balance between the two types of reaction changes. At low densities, a neutron travels further before colliding with another baryon, so it has a greater chance of decaying before being captured into a nucleus. Contrast this with collision reactions which have less probability of occurring at low densities. It is these different dependences on density that provide the second reason why the final mix of nuclei will depend on the baryonic density during the period of nuclear synthesis.
Now let us take a look at the result of detailed calculations. The rate of each reaction depends on the concentrations of the parent nuclei, on experimentally determined relationships between the reaction probability and the energies of the particles, and on the relationship between the equilibrium distribution of energies and the temperature. To find out the net effect of all the reactions is, mathematically, simply a matter of solving simultaneous differential equations; but they must be solved numerically, and judgement must be exercised in interpolating the experimental data. It is a lengthy computer calculation, even though it is basically straightforward.
Look first at the basic particles: neutrons and protons. Initially, at time 1 second, we have essentially 13% neutrons and 87% protons. This ratio can be calculated with confidence as it depends only on the mass difference between neutrons and protons.
As far as we are concerned, the interesting action starts just above 109 K, the temperature at which the proton and neutron numbers begin to drop because they are being used up in thermonuclear reactions (similar numbers of neutrons and protons are used up — it is only the logarithmic scale that makes the drop in the proton curve almost invisible). Some elements, such as helium. The deuterium concentration, on the other hand, increases rapidly but later (below 6 108 K) the concentration falls a little, because more deuterium is being used in making helium than is being synthesised from raw neutrons and protons.
. The point is that at this stage we are dealing with periods of time comparable to the mean lifetime of the neutron (930 s, i.e. about 15 minutes). Neutrons are being removed by decay — note the steady decline in its curve — and are thus no longer available for synthesising deuterons. However, there are still collisions going on that are destroying the deuterons. From a cosmologist's point of view, this is the crucial stage. The greater the baryonic density of the Universe at that time, the longer the process of deuteron destruction can continue after the synthesis of deuterons has effectively ceased, and therefore, the lower the final concentration of deuterium. It is true that this effect is partly offset by the fact that in a denser Universe, more deuterium would have been formed in the first place. But the destruction of deuterium is more sensitive to density than is its initial formation.
What we have seen is that a theoretical model based on the assumption that there was a big bang, and incorporating an assumption about the present-day value of the baryonic density
leads to definite predictions as to what the nuclear abundances must have been when the elements froze-out. This, therefore, provides us with a third way of checking out the big bang hypothesis: Do the present-day cosmic nuclear abundances agree with these predictions for any plausible value of the present-day baryonic density?
Obtaining an answer to this question is not as easy as one might think. The trouble is that since the freeze-out abundances were established, about 20 minutes after the big bang, further modifications to the nuclear abundances have been going on. The story of most matter is that it exists for a few hundred million years as a rarefied gas, and then is slowly drawn into a star, where its nuclear composition is altered because it is heated up to temperatures at which further nuclear reactions take place. Because the temperature and density conditions in a star are very different from those encountered during the big bang epoch of nuclear synthesis, the thermonuclear reactions in stars are different, and they lead to a different mix of end products. Therefore, the freeze-out concentrations of the various elements are not reflected directly in the abundances found in stars, or indeed on the Earth which itself condensed out of stellar matter thrown out of stars during supernova explosions.
....
Bringing all of the observed abundances together, it does seem that they are consistent with the predicted primordial abundances (Figure 32), provided the present-day baryonic mass density is around 10−28 kg m−3.
Pleasingly, at least to those who like consistency, a present-day baryonic mass density of a few times 10−28 kg m−3 is in excellent agreement with the rather precise value of ρb/c2 deduced by those who attempt to deduce cosmological parameters from the observed anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation (as described in Section 6.3). The fact that there is a narrow range of values for the present-day baryonic densities in which the predicted and ‘observed’ light nuclear abundances agree, is a significant success for big bang cosmology. The fact that this narrow range of baryonic densities includes the value deduced by a quite different technique is a truly remarkable achievement.
So rather than trying to dismiss things as fairytales through analogy, it pays to remember that the rate of expansion, it's impact on density and how fundamental particles actually act are all taken into account by physicists who agree than when you put it all together - atoms can and will form, those atoms will come together to form stars and further nuclear synthesis will occur creating denser elements.
The raisins in the dough analogy is meant to illustrate the recession of the galaxies in simple form - it does not work to describe fundamental forces of nature operating in very hot and dense early conditions of the universe. That's a bit more complex than an analogy about cake is going to be able to model.
And the fact that cakes have boundaries and the universe does not, has caused you all manner of confusion about the centre of the universe. You say the balloon analogy is confusing - but the cake one seems to have confused you way more. Like I said earlier - try to understand the principles in 2D before leaping into higher dimensional understandings.
So, where does Bible give its predictions on nuclear abundances, the magnitude of the CMBR etc? I mean - all of this did begin with you claiming stuff about the Bible right. You haven't lost sight of the goal in order to pursue your pet subject have you?
What did god ever create? Your answer to this question is the answer those many you refer to would give to the question 'what did nature ever create?'
I assume you are talking about something that nature could not create.
I would put the modern human mind in that category. It can reason, love, hate, choose to do anything decided to do. It can even go against everything that is precious to all human beings.
I would put the information in each cell in the human body in that category. The human cell has complete information in it to be able to build a completed, living, functioning human body.
And I'd say that nature created both those things. For those particular things the evidence suggests that is likely true. You said "I can't find anything nature ever created." I look at these and don't see something God ever created, there's certainly no evidence that he did. Your best argument, judging by this thread (and others) is that you can't see how nature created them, but there's more information detailing how nature went about that than there is detailing how God went about it - which I understand from your general thesis amounts to six terse chapters in a text with a claimed, but uncertain authorship by a group or individual who you regard as uneducated and possibly even less intelligent that you or I. Hardly a strong case. And you can't argue 'since I don't understand how nature could have done it, it therefore must have been the specific God discussed in the book of Genesis' as that relies on a false dichotomy which seems persuasive only because you start from that perspective. I'll happily concede that the chance of it being your God is as supported as any other supernatural explanation. Thus, even if it was not nature - it still doesn't mean it was YHWH.
Re: complexities don't always translate into analogies
Glad you took time to look it up. But did you read enough to understand what the discussion was about?
Yeah.
You can spin it any way you want you can not change the fact that the 1,000th raisin's location had changed by 186 million miles in one second.
No, it's location has not changed in the reference frame of the cake - which given the analogy is all that matters.
It does not make any difference about the stickiness of the raisins.
It does if we're comparing them to fundamental particles, yes. The density of raisins and their stickiness are vital in understanding how they interact in an expanding cake.
From the moment expansion began they were not touching as they had already been ripped apart and being 186,000 miles of space between them in 1 second.
Maybe in your example, but in the universe that didn't happen. There were certainly some fundamental particles that were far enough away from one another that the space was increasing between them faster than light could overcome - but there were also those that were close enough together such that the expansion was much lower.
You are talking about minutes but in 1 second there was 186 thousand miles of space between them. Whether this is the elements of the universe or the raisins the space would grow at the same rate.
At the end of 60 seconds there would be 11,345,000 miles of space between each raisin. The last raisin would be 11,346,000,000 miles from the original position in the 3" ball of raisins. That is eleven billion, three hundred and forty six million miles of space from the original position.
BTW you would have space in the place where the 3" ball had existed. That space would be 22,692,000 miles in diameter.
Which is a problem for the hypothetical universe you just invented. But when you use the actual numbers in the actual universe - that problem doesn't exist. As explained in my previous post with reference to some of those actual numbers.
A proton is a positively charged subatomic particle found in the nucleus of an atom. ....
Yeah - forming neclei is the hard part. Getting the electrons is easy money after that.
No one knows anything that happened until after 380,000 years after expansion began. It was that long before any light shined through.
So what are they basing their assumptions on?
I gave you that information already. We understand how protons and neutrons act, we can use observations to calculate density today and apply the maths for what the density would be like when the universe was smaller and deduce at what density protons and neutrons must be at for nuclei to form. The universe had the right kind of density to allow the formation of nuclei despite your protestations to the contrary. Thinking about cake and understanding nuclear physics are world's apart. The scientists do the latter, and all the thoughts about cake won't overturn their work.
My raisins in my thought experiment is simply for the purpose of showing the distance that the space grows between each element before anything can be joined together to form anything.
Yeah - but your cake thought experiment has several important flaws that result in your conclusions being invalid.
1) Fundamental particles don't act like raisins 2) The density of particles and the energy involved show nucleus formation is almost certain to happen. The probability that it would not happen is so low that it can be discounted. 3) Space doesn't expand at the speed of light in the way you describe. 4) Raisins don't form until after the inflation in inflationary theories, and when they do, there will be regions of density sufficient to allow for the formation of nuclei and later stars etc. 5) The speed of expansion after the raisins appear is closer to 70km/s per megaparsec rather than a uniform 'light speed everywhere'. Slow enough that particles can reach other for interactions, and still high enough energy for nuclear synthesis to occur.
You have to move past the cake if you want to tackle the reality. Or at least use more realistic numbers. Say 7cm a second per 100 miles of cake or something like that.
But the universe does have boundaries. You can not go past the fabric of the universe. You are stuck inside.
Being stuck inside doesn't mean there are boundaries in the sense that the cake has boundaries. If the universe is infinite in size - then you can't get out, there is no edge. If it is finite in size but it curves back on itself like the surface of a sphere - travelling in a straight line long enough could result in your arriving back where you left (assuming you could travel fast enough for long enough) - just like walking east on the planet's surface will not result in you reaching an edge, a boundary. You can keep going east forever. The surface of the planet is edgeless, it has no boundary. The cake has those boundaries, which is where you have tripped up a few times.
I think I have presented mathematical evidence that expansion can not have existed as has been proposed.
You've applied mathematics using arbitrary numbers to a hypothetical cake and shown that the raisins will grow further apart over time. You haven't tackled the more complex problem of the universe and fundamental particles. IT's the latter that matters. And it would be tricky - because we've already run the numbers and the scenario you describe isn't what actually comes out of them.
So my aim is the same, causing people to question what they have been force fed. I know the hard core posters here will never do that but the lurkers will that is the reason they are here.
Good luck with that. I'd hope the lurkers can recognize the cake is a lie {cultural reference} - and that you have a lot more work if you want to prove the problem you describe actually exists.
My answer is simply that the creator is infinite. Science seems quite happy to deal with infinities so why can't theists?
Indeed - and the counter is that nature is infinite.
You have to explain all the unintelligent processes that started from a singularity at time=0, that without intelligence, resulted in a world with consciousnesses, intelligence and a sense of morality. I think that you have the bigger problem.
I disagree.
First of all in an infinite universe the processes didn't start, they just continued. In a finite universe they didn't start either, T=0 is just an interesting feature of the geometry of the universe.
Evolution explains a world with consciousness so that's covered.
You however, have to explain a conscious god somehow existing eternally without being able to reference prior states. You can't do this so you can't explain consciousness at all by definition. That's a bigger problem. You have to assert consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe, whereas science is looking at far simpler fundamentals from which evolution can develop in a well understood fashion.
Fair enough but that still doesn't make a case for either an intelligent cause or a non-intelligent cause. It could still be either.
It's not intended to. I am simply pointing out that appealing to a deity doesn't solve the problem and ascribing special properties to said deity either present their own problems, or could equally be applied to nature. Thus an appeal to a deity does not solve any problem that an appeal to nature could not also.
Mathematics tell us that time should be able to flow in either direction even though we only experience it in one direction,(or so I've read).
Not quite - there is nothing we know of that prohibit a region of reality in which time flows in another direction...physics at best says regardless of the direction of flow, entropy would increase.
Things like string theory involve multiple dimensions of time.
It certainly opens up the possibility, but the extra dimensions could all be spatial. I think this is the general consensus, though some physicists have had some successes with additional time dimensions so it's still an open area of investigation.
If change can be experienced in more than one direction then we should be able to experience change infinitely as we are able to move around infinitely in our 3 spatial dimensions.
The geometry of spacetime does place limitations on our movement determined by the speed of light. It is possible for a region of spacetime could exist in which we are free to move around through the time dimension - but in such a case we would be constrained to a directional spatial situation. That is, we'd be able to go back in time, but we'd continuously be moving in a particular dimension. Examples of such possibilities would be beyond the event horizon of a black hole where the descent into the black hole's centre is an inevitable path through space that cannot be escaped and space time is very curved. But the mathematics is tricky.
If consciousness is simply something that is a result of the evolutionary process then what is the process that produced evolution and so and so on and so on.? When we want to argue the support for our opposite opinions we are both faced with the same problem.
Though I think a prediction that the base of all these questions would be fundamental in nature. Just as a river flow is dynamic and interesting but is ultimately just jostling molecules which are themselves perturbations of a field.... I have no problems with there being a fundamental fact that has no prior explanation, but I expect the answer won't be a thinking being with motivations.
As I've said before, I contend that it is far more reasonable to believe that the intelligence that we experience in our world is the result of intelligence as opposed to it being produced by chance from mindless particles.
An answer that has been given for many phenomena, but closer examination has shown it to be false. Our brains are wired evolutionarily to infer intent, it's been termed the hyperactive agency detection - it's a useful survival mechanism that causes us to be wary of a rustling in the bushes...but feelings don't mean truth.
If you suppose our intelligence must come from another intelligence you are engaging in this practice. It may feel right, but we need more. We know that intelligence does come in a scale, we know its the product of an organ and we know that organs evolve and there is no need for this evolution to be directed.
As I said - proposing an intelligence to explain intelligence doesn't explain intelligence. It would be like proposing that the sea came from a bigger sea and then suggesting there is some primordial and eternal sea that explains seas in general. Alternatively water exists as a molecular fusion of hydrogen and oxygen, which can be synthesized in stars which form...and we can get this explanation all the way back to the beginning. Are there further explanations beyond 'a period of highly dense energy existed'? Maybe. Is the explanation of the highly dense energy's existence likely to be a primordial sea of all seas who loves seas so much he'd create a universe with very apparently few of them relative to its size? Seems a bit far fetched.
An explanation should advance us to deeper understanding. Explaining that the seas come from a primordial sea or that lightning originates from primordial creatures or that intelligence can only be explain by an intelligence says nothing, explains nothing. It cannot be the best explanation if it does not explain it. Why is God intelligent? Cannot be answered.
Agreed -it seems there must be one question that cannot be answered. Often put as 'why is there something rather than nothing', but all our investigations leading to that, trying to understand what that something actually is, point to that something being very boring like...a field. Why does the field exist? It may be unanswerable, but if we're clever enough to ever answer it I suspect it would take the form of 'because it cannot not exist, it is existence and there is existence because existence exists'. I doubt we'll get there but 'God done it' only increases our questions, rather than satiates them. Does God even know why God exists?
To conclude, proposing a deity doesn't explain anything. We know nature exists so proposing that isn't controversial. If you want to propose some new thing, you need to do better than say, 'I can think of no other way feature x could exist'. That's just a rationalization for giving up the search for an explanation borne out of owning an ape's brain. This is not to say this therefore proves God does not exist, but simply to point out that a lack of understanding does not justify resorting to some supernatural mind being responsible. Not a thousand years ago, not today.
Re: complexities don't always translate into analogies
When did fundamental paricles begin to exist?
This period was between a millionth of a second and several minutes in.
I am not the one claiming that the space expanded at the speed of light. Everywhere I read anything about the early universe that is the speed given and some claim the space expanded faster than the speed of light.
You are misinterpreting or being misinformed. The inflationary period was rapid expansion, but there was just a pretty uniform sea of energy at this point (in fact - the most uniform it has ever been -> which even thermodynamics predicts, no fancy post newtonian phyiscs required!). During the period when quarks became of interest the rate of expansion was much closer to the 70km/s per megaparsec that we're used to dealing with than during the inflationary epoch. You can see this represented in the diagram you were having trouble with earlier:
1 second to several minutes is about halfway into that diagram - as you can see the expansion is much slower here than at the left most area representing time before 10-32 seconds. In that very early state - there were no raisins.
An assumption that might be true or not be true.
Naturally it may or not be true - but it's not an assumption, its an empirically derived fact. It is much closer to reality than your raisin notion.
It is not my description.
quote: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.
Exactly. There are no raisins, or particles at this time. It goes on to say:
quote:According to NASA, after inflation the growth of the universe continued, but at a slower rate. As space expanded, the universe cooled and matter formed. One second after the Big Bang, the universe was filled with neutrons, protons, electrons, anti-electrons, photons and neutrinos.
See that? A slower rate. The formation of particles, and where they are in relation to one another is what you are discussing - during that period the expansion was nowhere near that of the inflationary period.
There was something at Planck Time and this something is what the space between the sub-atomic particles expanded.
Not sub-atomic particles. There were none at that time. You have to look at the time there were some.
If the space which would be between the smallest units of what existed at Planck Time began to expand at the speed of light in 1 millionth of a second the space between each unit would expand by 982.08 feet. There would be 186,000 miles between each unit in 1 second.
Yes, we know. But that has nothing to do with whether atoms could form during the period after this. In order to understand this - we have to understand what the density of 'raisins' was at this time, what the energies involved were and the rate of expansion etc.
If you want to use the raisin analogy, think of it like this. At first there are no individual raisins. Just a uniform raisinesque goop. It rapidly expands and then slows down its expansion. Then individual raisins start to break away from the goop. They are still very densely packed. The space between them is not expanding faster than they are able to move.
What would be a mechanism that could cause the expansion to slow down?
A phase transition of dark energy.
The universe is a sphere and we are inside of it.
That's the universe as you imagine it - but that's not what the evidence actually tells us. It might be true, but it seems increasingly likely that it is not.
And it would not make any difference which direction you went in you would never reach the fabric of the universe.
Well, if you want to criticize the model, you have to use the model. Not your model. The model cosmologists use very strongly points towards the notion that there is no edge.
What I want to know is why you could fly in a circle like you can in an airplane around the world. Do you actually believe that the universe is like your balloon? Do you believe we live on the surface of the universe?
I think it likely we live in something like a 3-sphere. A 2-sphere would be like the surface of a balloon. We can easily visualize a 2-sphere. It has two dimensions (north-south and east-west for example) but it wraps around itself in a 3d space - every point on the surface of the balloon being equidistant from the centre of this 3d space. A 3-sphere would be wrapped around itself in a 4d space. I'm not proposing an actual 4th dimension in which it is wrapped, although that might be the case, just that to describe the universe in terms of a shape, it would involved talking about points equidistant from a point in a fourth dimension - its a mathematical description, the point in the fourth spatial dimension does not need to exist for this topology to exist.
We talk about the 2-sphere - the surface of balloon because its conceptually easier. IF the universe was two dimensional we can kind of picture existing on the surface of a '3d sphere' as we know what a 3d sphere looks like. Imagining existing on a 3 dimensional surface of a 4d sphere is more brain melting!
Show me where my math is wrong.
The maths isn't the problem so much as your physics. I've shown you that error, you have to address that now.
Where was the speed of light before the distance 186,000 miles even existed?
Well you can define the speed of light in terms of centimetres or any other distance unit or time unit. It's just how far light can travel, in a vacuum in a given time. I drive to work at 30mph but I neither travel 30 miles nor do I travel for an hour.
How did the maths break down in the early singularity?
It's not like math's developed an engine fault or something. The best examples I've heard go like this:
1) Travel north. Keep travelling north. When you get to the north pole, keep travelling north. What? you can't? Your entire understanding of travelling in a straight line breaks down. The concept of north, east, and west cease to exist at the north pole. There is only south. The pole is a sort of singularity. If you are 60 miles south of the north pole you can point north and say 'I'm going to travel 100 miles that way', and at that point it would be '100 miles north' of where you are. But there isn't 100 miles north of you. At 1 mile to go to the pole, you can still point in the same direction. But that suddenly changes when you get there. It's a singularity in our coordinate system. If you were calculating speed as distance travelled north / time what would be your speed at the north pole? The maths can't handle that because suddenly you aren't travelling north.
2. Imagine some object that becomes more and more brittle the colder it gets. Now heat up the object slowly. It's brittleness lowers over time. We could create an equation that tells us how brittle the object is for a certain temperature - but then, suddenly, there is a phase transition and the object becomes liquid. What does the brittleness even mean of a liquid? This phase transition creates a singularity in our equation where the object suddenly obtains zero brittleness or brittleness ceases to make sense or something.
So imagine a sphere of water getting larger and larger. The density is mass per volume, but the mass, M, is always the same and the volume increases so the density goes down. The volume, V, is (4/3) π R3 the density is Mass / V
Let's describe the history of the sphere though. As it goes back in time the R, radius, decreases. This means V decreases, M stays the same and the density increases Let's say the mass is 1kg and the radius is 1metre.
4/3 * π * 1 = 4.2
so density is about 1/4 - the units don't matter right now.
So now we half the radius.
4/3 * pi * 0.125 = 0.5
The volume drops and the density is now 2.
Half it again and the volume goes to 0.08 and density rises to 12.5
We keep going back and back and back. But what about the origin - if we extrapolate back at some point the radius is equal to zero.
4/3 * pi * 0 = 0
It has no volume.
The density is 1 / 0 which is...erm...erm...what?
That's a singularity.
So what does this mean?
It probably means that the idea that we can keep going until the volume is zero is probably wrong. In cosmology - there is no reason in General Relativity why we can't go to zero, so General Relativity gives us singularities.
But what if zero volume is not possible? What if there is some minimum size? This is the notion that quantum theories get involved in. In classical physics we can think of the earth's gravity as emanating from a central point of zero volume and it works out - but do points really exist? What if particles don't act in a 'point like' fashion but are 'smeared out'? Instead of a point, we instead have some kind 'stringy' object?
Were laws discovered by humanity through testing or were they invented by humanity?
They're just descriptions of the way things happen. The descriptions are human created, but the way things happen is independent of humans.
If the answer is yes does this not mean that laws can exist without our need to define them?
Things happen a certain way even if nobody is describing them. There's no reason to suppose there must be some cosmic regulator ensuring the laws are followed.
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