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Topic: How was the real universe created? (Read 23206 times)
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Culture20
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Thraddash Flower Child
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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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ErekLich
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One Ring to rule them all, eh you know the rest.
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Of course, the problem with the entropy arguement is that it ignores that earth is not a closed system. Â The law of thermodynamics dealing with entropy is meant to be applied only to closed systems. Â Huge quanitities of energy are constantly coming into the earth from the sun, as well as quantities of matter from space. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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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Oh God, please don't let me die today! Tomorrow would be SO much better!
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AnonomouSpathi
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Spathi? What spathi? You're imagining, hunam.
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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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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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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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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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You do not seem to understand entropy. Â There is only one way the overall entropy of a system can decrease -- an outside force. Â The decrease in entropy required to create life is humoungous, and where would the energy go in your theory? Â 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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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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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 --
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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« Last Edit: May 29, 2003, 02:45:50 am by Death_999 »
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Paxtez
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Ok this is all silly..
1) The universe is not infinite: Â The universe is expanding. Â 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']). Â If something is expanding, how can it be infinte? Â Every single nanosecond that the universe gets a little bit bigger the word 'infinite' is re-defined to be this new size? Â 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. Â 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. Â 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. Â Its called faith for a reason. Â 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. Â It would defeat the point.
If you want real sceince (thats acctually understandable by non-rocket scientists) visit:
http://www.talkorigins.org
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« Last Edit: May 29, 2003, 03:15:58 pm by Paxtez »
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....Paxtez....
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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Ok this is all silly..
you are quite right.
1) The universe is not infinite: Â ...
If something is expanding, how can it be infinte? Â Every single nanosecond that the universe gets a little bit bigger the word 'infinite' is re-defined to be this new size? Â 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.
... the Earth gets its entropy to bend the rules from the sun, the sun then loses entropy, becomes more orderly. Â 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.
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. Â 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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. Besides, faith is overrated.