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Author Topic: How was the real universe created?  (Read 24025 times)
Culture20
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Re: How was the real universe created?
« Reply #30 on: May 27, 2003, 07:36:13 pm »

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Our section of the Universe may be finite, but how do you know an infinite distance away from us there is another "section" of the Universe with another set of a finite number of atoms.

Sorry, but the Universe is still infinite no matter how you spin it.


The universe could be 3 Dimensionally infinite in the way that the surface of a sphere is 2Dimensionally infinite.  Perhaps we live on the inside of a 10 dimensional torus with no space or time on the outside.  Reach the "edge" and you've really reached the center.

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Also, even if that weren't true that there is only one "section" of the Universe and a definitively finite number of building materials available...

The big bang theory states that eventually the Universe stops expanding and begins contracting, all mass gets sucked into one single small space, all atoms are there where a new big bang occurs and starts the process all over again.

Hmm... I always thought that was the big crunch theory (not directly tied to the big bang theory).
Also, you might be surprised to find out that for the last two years astronomers have been thinking that the universal expansion is accelerating (can't crunch that way).

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Hence infinite time creates the same results.

The application of infinite experiments can never increase a probability to 100%.  It can approach 100% to an extant that it is almost indistinguishable.  Each application of a random probability is independant (unless you use a psuedo-random function - which actually follows a predictable pattern).  An example:  if I flip a coin an infinite amount of times, I could get an infinite number of "heads."

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Re: How was the real universe created?
« Reply #31 on: May 28, 2003, 04:19:08 am »

yeesh, parallel universes. so I suppose its possible there's intelligent life somewhere else. it may be a problem when we expand into it.

there is theoretical evidence that there is an infinite amount of parallel universes. however, there's also theoretical evidence that some cracka named God made the world 5000 years ago. Granted, definately not as much and definately not as credible, but i think comparing the theory of creation to the theory of many parallel universes is apt; we can theorize and say "X says that the existence of parallel universes is a statistical probability" and equivelant statements. Provide me with hard evidence or observation and i'll happily bow down to the parallel universe theory. I take the same stance towards religious dogma; gimme proof and i'll convert.

meh. that's not it really; i'm all for parallel universes, it's just they seem far too much like wishful thinking to me.
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Re: How was the real universe created?
« Reply #32 on: May 28, 2003, 06:13:35 am »

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  • Thus, every possible version of Earth and its surroundings at any time exists somewhere right now in the universe.


Gene Roddenberry was right about all those Nazi, Communist, and Gangster planets in Star Trek!
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Re: How was the real universe created?
« Reply #33 on: May 28, 2003, 07:22:27 am »

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Of course, the problem with the entropy arguement is that it ignores that earth is not a closed system.  The law of thermodynamics dealing with entropy is meant to be applied only to closed systems.  Huge quanitities of energy are constantly coming into the earth from the sun, as well as quantities of matter from space.  Attempting to apply the principle of entropy to the earth, without accounting for the rest of the universe, is therefore an incorrect application of the law.  As long as the decrease in entropy via life is offset by a larger increase in entropy elsewhere in the universe, life does not violate that law.  Ergo, a creator is unneccessary - any decrease in local entropy that life would imply can be easily offset by an increase in local entropy elsewhere in the whole system.  Since the whole system is the entire universe, finding possible places where entropy could've increased is no trick at all.


The flaw in your reasoning is twofold:  first, I WAS referring to the entire universe, not just Earth.  Second, the Universe is NOT infinite.  All scientific knowledge points to the universe having a finite size, albiet a large and expanding one.
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Re: How was the real universe created?
« Reply #34 on: May 28, 2003, 09:11:27 am »

Dealing with the universe as a whole also fails to require a creator, for the reasons I've already listed - any entropy loss due to life can be offset by an entropy gain elsewhere.  Local decreases in entropy are quite common, and happen all the time - else water wouldn't freeze, and so forth.

I never claimed the universe was infinite, as it doesn't need to be.  All it needs to be is big enough to have an increase in entropy that would offset the decrease from any form of life, and possible sources for those are as many as there are stars in the sky.
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Re: How was the real universe created?
« Reply #35 on: May 28, 2003, 09:37:18 pm »

though, isn't it theorized that, if the universe expands infinitely like it's fixin' to, energy will be spread over more and more area and thus will decrease to observers our size?

either that, or just become chronically unusable.
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Re: How was the real universe created?
« Reply #36 on: May 28, 2003, 09:56:26 pm »

You do not seem to understand entropy.  There is only one way the overall entropy of a system can decrease -- an outside force.  The decrease in entropy required to create life is humoungous, and where would the energy go in your theory?  Earth does not naturally emit energy!
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Re: How was the real universe created?
« Reply #37 on: May 28, 2003, 10:12:15 pm »

Scientifically, we have very little evidence either way on the universe being infinite or not. Due to the tremendous homogeneity we see, it sure LOOKS infinite - and we cannot see to any edge, nor can we see to some point far far away where it 'wraps around'. So if the universe is finite, then the edge is awfully far away from us.

As far as the expansion -- this does not require the universe to be finite. What we DO know is that the distances between things are getting larger over time. However, the distances could be expanding 'in-place' as it were. (Alternately, there is the infinite hotel solution -- you have an infinite number of rooms in a hotel, all of them full. An infinite number of additional guests arrive. You can give them all a room. How?)

Please note that much of this is not a discussion of physics, but metaphysics. Very few things can be proven in metaphysics. Many things can be disproven, but that still leaves the field wide open.

As far as the SciAm article, note that the assumption was that the temperature was lower than some threshold on average. Wavelength is inversely proportional to energy, so limiting the energy limits the wavelength, and thus the quantum information per volume.
Now, we do have things over that temperature limit, but they have very low structure  and are thus largely interchangeable -- like, say, white dwarf stars. Take the mass, charge, and the linear and angular momentum vectors, temperature distribution and modes of vibration of a white dwarf, and you have the essence of its behavior, even though the actual particles within have a LOT more meaningless information in them at their temperatures above 10^9 kelvins.

So the distance they gave was probably a little high, but basically right.

However, it doesn't mean what they often use it for -- it's simply a distance within which you have ROOM for every quantum state. This does not mean that they will all be represented, since some are, shall we say, unlikely. I am not referring to life, since we don't know about that. I am thinking of 10^50 parsecs of vacuum with a cubic light year of delicious Gouda cheese in the middle. The structure is horribly unstable; it will quickly form a black hole, in fact -- but it is a valid quantum state. Would you expect to find that within that distance? Well, how the heck would it get INTO that situation?
The same argument can apply to life, if you think that it's that unlikely; I don't think it is all that unlikely (though abiogenesis is certainly not something you should expect to have happen on alternate tuesdays)
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Re: How was the real universe created?
« Reply #38 on: May 28, 2003, 10:19:53 pm »

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You do not seem to understand entropy.  There is only one way the overall entropy of a system can decrease -- an outside force.  The decrease in entropy required to create life is humoungous, and where would the energy go in your theory?  Earth does not naturally emit energy!


Daily we come in pretty decent thermal contact with an object that is approximately 4,000 kelvins on its surface. That sounds like energy input to me.

Also, while the amount of energy needed to create the full biomass now present on earth is large, creating biomass is what life DOES -- so you don't need much energy to get things started. Of course, in order to get things started you're going to need to make the attempt gajillions of times, so the energy spent does add up again. Still, we have the sun.
Oh, and the nuclear processes within the earth bring it out of thermal equilibrium - it could emit energy which can be exploited by life or proto-life.

Incidentally, the Earth does emit energy, since the cosmic microwave background is cooler than it is. I do think you're meaning emit energy toward life, not away from life. But remember, cooling is important too.
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Re: How was the real universe created?
« Reply #39 on: May 28, 2003, 11:19:43 pm »

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Provide me with hard evidence or observation and i'll happily bow down to the parallel universe theory. I take the same stance towards religious dogma; gimme proof and i'll convert.


But wouldn't that be like the babelfish?
"Proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
Proof of God would only prove that there is no God?
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Re: How was the real universe created?
« Reply #40 on: May 29, 2003, 02:24:27 am »

Basically, the problem is that in order to give Humans choice God has to restrain his power.  If He fully revealed himself, the essence of free will would be gone in the face of His presence -- so, in order to let humanity choose evil, he hides.  One cannot prove that God exists using science.

"reason and faith are like the shoes on your feet; you can get a lot farther with both than with just one."
- Babylon 5
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Re: How was the real universe created?
« Reply #41 on: May 29, 2003, 02:45:35 am »

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Provide me with hard evidence or observation and i'll happily bow down to the parallel universe theory.


Strangely enough, I had a conversation on this topic not long ago --

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Suppose you have a step potential barrier. Suppose you have a particle approaching that barrier with enough energy to cross over the barrier. Calculate the time-independent wavefunction for this circumstance. You will see three components:
1) a component representing the particle approaching the barrier
2) a component representing the particle passing the barrier
3) a component representing the particle being reflected from the barrier
Since the particle has enough energy to get over the barrier, component 3 will be smaller than component 2, but for close calls the two can be quite close in magnitude.
The wavefunction has been split into two possibilities for how the particle and the barrier interact -- permit, and reflect.
If you work out the time-dependent version of this, then you will see the particle come in, hit the barrier and scrunch up, then proceed in both directions at reduced magnitude . If you then have another barrier, the permitted component will have another chance to be reflected. Note that the originally reflected component is completely unaffected by whatever happens to the permitted component. Any other particles it meets won't depend on the originally permitted version of the particle. It's as if... it were in a different world.

That's what many worlds is. Just saying that QM needs no additional principles in order to predict the choices we see it making all the time.


In a later post, I went on to say that 'Many worlds' is a REALLY bad name, and the theory should be called 'uncollapsing wavefunction'.

Viewed in this way, do you find a parallel universe theory palatable? Note that you cannot get from one of these worlds to another.
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Re: How was the real universe created?
« Reply #42 on: May 29, 2003, 09:38:54 am »

actually, proof of God disproves God for Christianity. That leaves all them other religions to be proven Wink. Besides, faith is overrated.

Er? We do emit energy into our surround space. Space ITSELF cannot lose energy -thermodynamics- but the STUFF in space can lose the energy into things like black holes <which render mass/energy irretrievable>. The inevitable end of the universe has something to do with crazy quantum physicists talking about evaporation of black holes <? wha?> but really, in the short long term <some hundreds of trillions of years if my less'n faithful SciAm reading i remeber correctly> most or all mass/energy will be consolidated into a number of bigass singularities. That, and space will be a buncha zillion times bigger too, stretching the size of molecules. Making existance of LIFE itself a toughie. We can lose energy <entropy- relative to us> - but relative to an objective observer we can't lose energy; you're right. It just becomes chronically unusable.
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Re: How was the real universe created?
« Reply #43 on: May 29, 2003, 03:07:51 pm »

Ok this is all silly..

1) The universe is not infinite:  The universe is expanding.  This has been proven due to the combined efforts of: Einstein, Doppler, Hubble, and this priest guy (forget his name).
Everyone always thought that the universe was infinate and constant, in fact when Einstein 's math said that it wasn't, he fudged the numbers to make sure it was (called the 'universal constant' [later dubbed by Einstein to be 'The greatest mistake of my life']).  If something is expanding, how can it be infinte?  Every single nanosecond that the universe gets a little bit bigger the word 'infinite' is re-defined to be this new size?  The universe is NOT infinite, its just really really big (299,792,458.2 Meters per/sec X 16,500,000,000 years).
(Bored did the math: 15 x 10^23 km  How big is that? I have no idea, like most humans my brain cannot even begin to think about it.)

2) Entropy is a crock:  Applying it just to the Earth as we have seen doesn't work because of the sun.  But  entropy is an overall thing, saying that entropy doesn't allow the universe to create life is just silly and wrong.  Yes entropy does apply to the whole universe but its not that simple.  Life being created in the universe (earth) does not go against entropy, the Earth gets its entropy to bend the rules from the sun, the sun then loses entropy, becomes more orderly.  In the long run (read: billions of years) the universe will becomely completly orderly (big crunch??), but in the mean time certain areas will be less and less orderly due to other things becomming more orderly.  The sun becomes more and more orderly, as a side effect of this the earth is becomming less orderly (but if you averaged it out the solar system is still losing entropy).

3) Multiple Dementions: First of all its complety silly to argue, yeah there could be a 4D demontion right on top of us, or parralle dementions around us, but in all liklyhood we will never see it nor any evidence of this.  A 2 demontional being could do nothing to prove nor disprove a 3rd demontion, arguing it is just mental masturbation.


Rant: One thing I have learned from discussing creation/religion/science with many people over the years is this: Religion people should not try to use sciece for thier arguements.  Its just stupid:

1) 90% of the times its stupid hald-facts (entropy) passed around by people who have been tricked by people who designed these 'facts' just to trick and manulpulate people into beleving in religion.

2) Whenever a religion person is proved wrong (like they always are) they either A) bring out another stupid half-fact, or B) Retreat to the corner with crys of "Well thats what I belive, and you can't change it."

3) They are right, you can't change it, and that how its supposed to be.  Its called faith for a reason.  You are supposed to belive it without proof, if there was proof, whats the point? Everyone would be good for fear of god, everyone would be good, but then thats just too easy.

GOD WOULD NOT MAKE MATH PROBLEM TO PROVE HE EXSISTED.  It would defeat the point.

If you want real sceince (thats acctually understandable by non-rocket scientists) visit:
http://www.talkorigins.org
« Last Edit: May 29, 2003, 03:15:58 pm by Paxtez » Logged

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Re: How was the real universe created?
« Reply #44 on: May 29, 2003, 08:43:46 pm »

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Ok this is all silly..


you are quite right.

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1) The universe is not infinite:  ...
If something is expanding, how can it be infinte?  Every single nanosecond that the universe gets a little bit bigger the word 'infinite' is re-defined to be this new size?  The universe is NOT infinite, its just really really big (299,792,458.2 Meters per/sec X 16,500,000,000 years).
(Bored did the math: 15 x 10^23 km  How big is that? I have no idea, like most humans my brain cannot even begin to think about it.)


You do not seem to know how weird infinity is. I will point out two things:
1) Space is, among other things, a relationship between things. The way you expand the universe is to make the distances between objects within it greater. That's all. If space redefines our galaxy cluster to be a little bit further from the next one over, it will seem to us that the universe is expanding. This is so whether or not there is infinite space or not.
2)Infinite hotel paradox redux: you have a hotel with infinite rooms, and they are all full. An infinite number of guests shows up and demand rooms.
The hotel manager profusely apologizes to his guests, and instructs them to go to the room numbered twice their current number (the guest in room 5 goes to room 10,  the one in 12 goes to 24, and so on). Then the hotel manager gives the new guests all of the odd-numbered rooms.

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... the Earth gets its entropy to bend the rules from the sun, the sun then loses entropy, becomes more orderly.  In the long run (read: billions of years) the universe will becomely completly orderly (big crunch??)


you have it backward. Entropy isn't order, that's enthalpy. The universe tends toward higher multiplicity states (i.e. higher entropy). If you simply reverse the meaning of those concepts, though, your argument is correct, and it achieves the end you meant it to.

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3) Multiple Dementions: First of all its complety silly to argue, yeah there could be a 4D demontion right on top of us, or parralle dementions around us, but in all liklyhood we will never see it nor any evidence of this.  A 2 demontional being could do nothing to prove nor disprove a 3rd demontion, arguing it is just mental masturbation.


Parallel realities and additional dimensions are totally different things. Just a heads-up.
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