I am a fan of science, but the Big Bang doesn't seem realitstic to me.

originally posted by: SirKonstantin

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: SirKonstantin
a reply to: droid56


I believe i found this on IFLScince. The new theory is a super nova of sorts in the 4th dimension collapsed and exploded in our 3rd Dimension and poof! Big Bang.

So something else existed before the universe, from which our universe came.

Damn...good point. I wouldn't know much about dimensional existence.

Nothing existed before the universe.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

In other words: if 150 million kilometres is not accurate enough but 180 million would be more accurate, do you believe that would constitute a significant enough reason to change the general consensus from approx. 150 to approx. 180?

It wouldn't make a difference for most mundane purposes. But if you were trying to find the distance of a star by triangulation, or measure the deflection of light by gravity by observing a transit of Mercury, or trying to navigate a space probe from Earth to Saturn, greater accuracy would be helpful.

Even if it were possible to get an exact measurement of distance between Sun-Earth...

You can, and with great accuracy. Though since Earth's orbit is an ellipse and not a circle, the distance varies with the time of year.

...do you think the official scientific consensus would still be a whole, non-decimal number?

It depends on the unit of measurement. An error of one mile in 93 million, or one kilometre in 149 million, is pretty insignificant; we readily accept far wider tolerances in precision manufacturing. So yes, a measurement in miles or kilometres could comfortably be a ‘whole, non-decimal number’ (the word is integer, btw) and no harm done.

If you measure in astronomical units or AU, (the average distance between Earth and Sun), the actual distance between the two at any given time would be a decimal figure, such as 1.0013 or 0.907, with the decimal carried to as many places as needed.

It all depends on how much accuracy you’re looking for. An AU is normally defined as 149,600,000km. That’s a pretty round figure, but notice that it’s not 150,000km. This shows us that an error of 10,000km is acceptable for most purposes, but not an error of 100,000km. But in fact, we can do a lot better than that: by the most accurate reckoning, 1AU equals 149,597,870,700m. That’s an error of only 1km!

In other words: if 150 million kilometres is not accurate enough but 180 million would be more accurate, do you believe that would constitute a significant enough reason to change the general consensus from approx. 150 to approx. 180?

I should say so. An error of 30m kilometres (about twenty million miles) looks pretty significant when we can measure the distance to within a kilometre, as shown above.

A difference of 5 million km (1/6 the distance) does not appear, to me personally, to be a big enough deal to officially change the current approx. consensus of 150.

Is anyone proposing to change it? I hadn’t heard so. But yes, five million kilometres is a pretty big deal. Imagine if you were sending a probe into orbit around the Sun, and you missed by 5m km? Your probe might get fried.

I am almost ready to go on the offensive

Don’t. Let’s just discuss it politely, like a couple of gentlemen.

a reply to: 0zzymand0s

Thank you, I will bookmark them now and read them later today when I am free and won't be interrupted. I look forward to taking part in the discussion once I am better equipped with scientific knowledge.

originally posted by: Boss413

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: chr0naut

Its does not change the basic premise of mathematics but it may facilitate people being able to interact with computers at the machine level directly because the machine code functions using binary or hexadecimal instructions.

I'm thinking more along the lines of when Man and machine choose to merge or interface directly.

We do indeed require a paradigm shift the likes of which humanity has yet to experience but it will never happen while we choose to fight over our religious indifference and diminishing resources.

Personally i imagine humanity requires more than just technological advancement to bring about that kind of change.

Have a look at this blog post which may indicate the birth of one of these paradigm shifts: Adrinkas - The n-Category Café, A group blog on math, physics and philosophy.

Absolutely! Clearly it's a spiritual shift that's not happening anytime soon, man and machine will merge but it's a scary thought given where mankind is today: at odds philosophically and culturally around the world, dropping bombs on one another, stabbings on the streets, school shootings. It's a sad state of affairs. Peace is ultimately the safest and the wisest thing, imagine a non violent global community ... why is there so much strife, it's not only diminishing resources, or different religions. While those things exist they are both easily solvable problems; resources are a matter of logistics and we have existing technology to solve that nightmare, and the religions are not based primarily on the same concepts and the same zealots pushing wars would believe in peace and justice if it spewed from the pulpits of the world.

The problem is not the religion ... but rather the administration and the system with which we live. Our leaders have failed us, and the current system of working all day to sustain and to entertain ourselves and our families until we die must go away. People are being led to the slaughter of the healthcare and pharmaceutical companies and anything left is drained by governments and entertainment. Any suggestions on how to change a few things around here??

I'd definitely start by making sure people are aware of the truth..

Oh wait, that means a lot of different things to different people. 7B people on earth and we each have a different perspective on TRUTH. A fundamental concept that escapes us every single day, we each have a different POV from the other.

Adrinkas are symbols of a type that allow us to symbologically juxtapose with each other to gain new insights about the interactions of the complex objects or concepts that underlie the symbols.

Current mathematical language doesn't really express concepts in that way. Spatial relationships between symbols are limited to precedence in the writing of the symbols. In our current mathematics It would be invalid to infer something from the superposition of two symbols because our symbols do not symbolise in that way. With adrinkas, they can be superimposed upon each other or intersected with each other to give new insights.

This has very little to do with 'the spiritual' in their modern usage but relates to mathematical representations of systems and scenarios in physics.

By the way, I think that generally, pacifism is preached from pulpits. War and conflict are more the realm of the military.

a reply to: Astyanax

Thank you for going in detail to explain your answers to my questions.

Just to be clear: when I said "go on the offensive" in my previous reply, I didn't mean I would start being rude and direct and stop treating you with respect, I meant I would soon get to the reason for why I was continually asking you to establish your position and then be more offensive with my arguments so we could get to the bottom of why I felt the need to directly ask you a question on the topic of Science itself.

a reply to: Ruiner1978

What you've explained is basically what chr0naut was saying.

Certainly not. If you think that, you have failed to understand one or the other of us; possibly both.

Someone said in an earlier post "science is the new religion". This is an observation I've made too.

Doesn’t mean it’s true. Science may be the new religion for someone, but it certainly isn’t for scientists, or for anyone else who actually understands how science works.

All this talk of FACTS and IT'S BEEN PROVEN.
How do you know these facts as facts?
Because you've read them in a text book and taken them as gospel.

You seem to assume that I only have a high school education, and that I am incapable of analyzing and judging the veracity of what I am told. Why is that?

Look what happens when the Scientific Creation Myth comes under question. People start thumping their text books, reciting their own dogma more zealously than the religious.

You think somebody just made up the Big Bang, the way the Egyptians made up the myth of Isis and Osiris, or the Hebrews made up the myth of Jehovah?

a reply to: chr0naut

Adrinkas

A proposal to make use of the word Adrinkas for a new kind of mathematical symbol that somebody thinks is needed in a very exotic area of physics.

A suggestion by somebody else, evidently an expert in the philosophical discipline known as logic, that ‘adrinkas’ aren’t really very new at all.

A load of bloomin’ mumbo jumbo

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: chr0naut

Adrinkas

A proposal to make use of the word Adrinkas for a new kind of mathematical symbol that somebody thinks is needed in a very exotic area of physics.

A suggestion by somebody else, evidently an expert in the philosophical discipline known as logic, that ‘adrinkas’ aren’t really very new at all.

A load of bloomin’ mumbo jumbo

Possibly.

What do you have to offer as a paradigm shift leading to some new mathematical trick that, like calculus, will lead to new insights in mathematics and science?

I think the idea of a simulation does not necessitate an external programmer or computer. A naturally occurring simulation can exist, merely the existence of the states in some manner atemporally would basically entail the existence of the entire simulation run.

The block time universe view views each moment as eternal as if part of an atemporal crystal.

If we look at qualia, conscious sensation, it emerges from the processing of the incoming action potentials, which are very near, very close, very similar, to simple binary digital signals. That information might be the foundation not just of consciousness but of reality itself, and that it being truth needs no justification for existence and always was, is a possibility.

That does not mean that an apparent beginning to a sequence might not exist, just like an apparent beginning to the positive integers exist, but integers do not begin to exist with man. What man classifies as positive integers is an eternal set of truth.

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: chr0naut

What, precisely, is the process of 'removing failed hypotheses'? Does each one receive a rating from the Scientific Committee of Debunking Ideas (SCDI) and the results get posted to an online database of failed hypotheses?

No. You just publish your data disproving the hypothesis. Qualified others will judge your work on its merits. If it holds up, bang goes the hypothesis.

In the case of the 'big bang from quantum fluctuation' vs 'the first postulate of thermodynamics', which one has failed? I would posit that the big bang from quantum fluctuation is on weaker footing but Bedlam may disagree.

So would I. Energy can be regarded as having a sign convention. Gravity is negative in this convention; the total energy of the universe is zero. More

Pascual Jordan first suggested that since the positive energy of a star’s mass and the negative energy of its gravitational field together may have zero total energy, conservation of energy would not prevent a star being created by a quantum transition of the vacuum. George Gamow recounted putting this idea to Albert Einstein: “Einstein stopped in his tracks and, since we were crossing a street, several cars had to stop to avoid running us down”.

And yes, scare quotes.

Take it easy. You needn't worry: God is not debunkable.

Let's see...

Einstein was told of the concept that gravitational energy was inversely related to the matter and other energy in the universe and was blown away. Then, of course, he would have championed the hypothesis, especially involved as he was in the issues and uncertainties of the cosmological constant at the time. Oh wait a minute, he didn't champion the theory. I wonder why?

Perhaps the issue that, firstly, gravitational potential energy is positive like all the other energies known of at the time may have been a reason?

Oh and if you try and back track to the big bang singularity, the equations all go to infinity. The only way out is a classic divide by zero, so that doesn't really work either.

Subsequent to Einstein, we have the discovery of dark energy (70% of the theoretical total energy of the universe) which doesn't produce attractive gravity, but rather a repulsive and therefore negative gravity. This further drives the energy sum away from zero.

An ideal zero energy universe is also a closed universe and therefore must be finite. In such a closed and finite universe, the negative pressure of the cosmological constant subtracts from total energy. Again, non-zero.

Also, quantum fluctuations occur in in conventional spacetime which contradicts a spacetime birthed in the big bang. As previously pointed out, you can't get conditions that can prevent annihilation of vparticles unless matter, energy and time already exist. So the quantum fluctuations don't birth the universe, you don't get to even start, unless the universe already exists.

Of course, the hypothesis can never be entirely debunked (like every other hypothesis) because somewhere out there may be data that we haven't come across that supports it despite contraindications. That is why the idea that disproven hypotheses are 'removed' from the body of hypotheses is a practical nonsense. Rationally, no such process occurs or can occur.

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: Ruiner1978

What you've explained is basically what chr0naut was saying.

Certainly not. If you think that, you have failed to understand one or the other of us; possibly both.

Someone said in an earlier post "science is the new religion". This is an observation I've made too.

Doesn’t mean it’s true. Science may be the new religion for someone, but it certainly isn’t for scientists, or for anyone else who actually understands how science works.

All this talk of FACTS and IT'S BEEN PROVEN.
How do you know these facts as facts?
Because you've read them in a text book and taken them as gospel.

You seem to assume that I only have a high school education, and that I am incapable of analyzing and judging the veracity of what I am told. Why is that?

Look what happens when the Scientific Creation Myth comes under question. People start thumping their text books, reciting their own dogma more zealously than the religious.

You think somebody just made up the Big Bang, the way the Egyptians made up the myth of Isis and Osiris, or the Hebrews made up the myth of Jehovah?

Your assumption that you understand and that I don't doesn't automatically make it untrue.

Everyone is capable of analysis and judgment, even the uneducated, even the religious (complete arrogance to think otherwise). The difference is you make your judgements based almost purely on what you are fed rather than on direct experience.

You think any myth is just "made up"???
Yes, it's certainly not you who is lacking in understanding, not at all...

I used to be a fan of science (don't get me wrong, science can be beneficial and it is). But when it comes to the origin of the universe and life itself, science itself will tell you, God did it. For insistence, take the simple living cell. There are hundreds of chemical combination, all relying upon one another, involving hundreds of certain specific required molecules to function. It has been calculated that the chances of any living cell to spontaneously happen in nature (without the reproductive mechanisms of a cell) is about 1:1x10^40,000. That chance is why below possible considering the estimated number of sub atomic particles in the universe is about 1x10^256. And that is even not taking into consideration that the chemistry of molecules is already in place to do such a thing, that is no even part of that tiny chance and if it were, that chance would be even smaller. And common sense should tell, explosions (the big bang) do not decrease entropy, they increase it. As a matter of fact all closed systems increase in entropy without an external force. God is that force.

Remember, any absolute scientific proof is nearly always altered or disproved in its entirety later on with someone elses "absolute scientific proof". What we think we know of the universe is almost guaranteed to be false. We simply haven't studied it long enough. What we think we see and what we think reveals scientific proof concerning the universe can often be simple misinterpretations. Example, if i'm a bacteria on a basketball, to all my scientific readings the ball is flat and extends on forever. But if I'm around long enough to develop my science, suddenly that ball starts to become smaller and rounder and what I thought sky above was also begins to change.

Science is great, but don't put too much faith on the "absolute truths" fallible scientists offer. Understand that cigarettes are bad for you now but they were healthy and even recommended only a few years back.

a reply to: Ruiner1978

You think any myth is just "made up"???

Explain to us how myths are not made up.

a reply to: chr0naut

Oh wait a minute, he didn't champion the theory. I wonder why?

He didn't?

Generically, the gravitational pull exerted by the matter in the universe slows the expansion imparted by the Big Bang. Cosmological constant

a reply to: craterman

science itself will tell you, God did it.

And common sense should tell...

So which is it, science or common sense?

Science can't tell you God did it. For the simple reason that science can't tell you God didn't do it.

See if you can figure that out.

It's the truth btw.

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: Ruiner1978

You think any myth is just "made up"???

Explain to us how myths are not made up.

It's interesting that you're focusing on this small part of my post while letting the rest of it slide. If I was more presumptuous I'd assume that you saw some truth in it, or maybe you just don't know how to counter original abstract thought because they don't cover that in your "Bible".
But no matter...

To answer your (easy way out of where you saw this was going) question:
First we have to be sure of each of our definitions of "made up".
My definition of it, based on the context of which you first used it and the FACT you used it in a bias and suggestive manner is; something that has come from nothing, unreasonably and without cause for the effect (sound familiar? Big Bang anyone?)

The bottom line is, OP is 100% correct in his questioning.
Your big bang myth holds the same amount of water as any other creation myth, no matter how much FAITH (because science relies on just as much faith as religion does) you put on the words you read in your Holy books.

The reason you think the other myths are "made up" is due to your misconception of beliefs that differ from your own. (key point, if you're going pick out snippets to ask me to explain further make sure this is one of them)
You can talk about "education" or "understanding science" all you like, the one true FACT is we're all just fooling ourselves if we think we know anything at all.
We don't even understand our own minds or consciousness (correct me if I'm wrong, maybe you've read something about that in a text book) let alone the world outside of ourselves and it's origins.

But yeah, you KNOW stuff, because you read in a text book that some people have SUPPOSED it's the way it must be, until some other people SUPPOSE it must be something else.

Gotta have faith...

originally posted by: Ruiner1978

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: Ruiner1978

You think any myth is just "made up"???

Explain to us how myths are not made up.

It's interesting that you're focusing on this small part of my post while letting the rest of it slide. If I was more presumptuous I'd assume that you saw some truth in it, or maybe you just don't know how to counter original abstract thought because they don't cover that in your "Bible".
But no matter...

To answer your (easy way out of where you saw this was going) question:
First we have to be sure of each of our definitions of "made up".
My definition of it, based on the context of which you first used it and the FACT you used it in a bias and suggestive manner is; something that has come from nothing, unreasonably and without cause for the effect (sound familiar? Big Bang anyone?)

The bottom line is, OP is 100% correct in his questioning.
Your big bang myth holds the same amount of water as any other creation myth, no matter how much FAITH (because science relies on just as much faith as religion does) you put on the words you read in your Holy books.

The reason you think the other myths are "made up" is due to your misconception of beliefs that differ from your own. (key point, if you're going pick out snippets to ask me to explain further make sure this is one of them)
You can talk about "education" or "understanding science" all you like, the one true FACT is we're all just fooling ourselves if we think we know anything at all.
We don't even understand our own minds or consciousness (correct me if I'm wrong, maybe you've read something about that in a text book) let alone the world outside of ourselves and it's origins.

But yeah, you KNOW stuff, because you read in a text book that some people have SUPPOSED it's the way it must be, until some other people SUPPOSE it must be something else.

Gotta have faith...

Yeah, where did all that water come from, nothing?
There is a lot of water

Problem as ever, is proving assumptions with proof. Science can prove that the big bang happened, you can see the stars as the light takes time to reach your eyes. Those stars may not be present now as you look at them, as it took a long period of time before it hit your eyes. With this notion, the same was achieved using a very powerful telescope to view this...

Photograph of the Big Bang

This notion that the universe is a simulation comes from The Matrix, although a great film is not what is really happening in our world. We use binary as a measurement and to build our machines, it is not part of the phsyical world. It is a replication of the human brain.

There is much science does not know yet but certainly does not give a path to religion to just state its useless good will text books to deem that just because science does not know, therefore it will never know. Right now science has more answers to questions any human will ever wish to ask. Religion does not. Hence science has done a pretty good job at helping human kind.

a reply to: Astyanax

Both is true. The tiny possibility ratio is derived by math and science (not by me, some mathematician) and it is so tiny it is impossible without God. And common sense that an explosion does not create structure. Have ever seen an explosion make more structure??