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

a reply to: Words

Could that be down to the nature of how we perceive time?

From our perspective cause generally precedes effect, at least at the macro level. At the quantum level through cause and effect can be a whole new ballgame.

Observation seems to be rather a more definitive factor at that scale.

I believe in the big bang, or some other starting point (I think the big bang evidence is pretty good though) because otherwise, the logical alternative is that everything has been around, for ever.

Everything has to have a start

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: Krazysh0t

I agree math is pretty much science and vice versa, if there is any true universal language that is where we will find it.

Math is the language we assign to reality for descriptive purposes.

I do sometimes ponder odd thoughts, like what if we messed with our system of counting? 10,100,1000 etc.

Why base 10?

Mayans had base 20 for everyday math and Base 18 for calendar and time math.

Babylonian was base 60...60 seconds in an hour, 60 minutes, 24 hours..360 degrees in a circle..


Or maybe we could embed Pi into our counting system somehow, so it was foundational to counting rather than 3.14159265359.... etc? It seems to me an advanced system of math shouldn't produce irrational numbers that droll on forever...especially with numbers as important as Pi. I don't think a math system with base Pi would work as no calculations could be exact apart form Pi itself?

Haven't fully thought it out, and am sure there are faults in my thinking and just spit-balling, but always has been an intellectual itch of mine. Is there a way to alter our foundation of math to better solve the mysteries of the universe as we know them today.

Math is the language of science and science is the examination of reality...And math does an exceptional job, but it would seem hubris to assume it does a perfect job of abstracting and examining reality.

originally posted by: neo96
I don't see how the big bang isn't plausible.

If a black hole can suck energy/light/matter in to point nothing can escape it.

The the big bang is the beginning of the cycle.

Cause/effect.

Birth to death.

The Big Bang and Black holes do seem very related - And in a Multiverse scenario, every black hole could give birth to a new Universe.

Hard to tell - Scientists and TV personalities (often one and the same) have a tendency to present every theory as TRUTH - in essence making Science into a new Religion.

a reply to: Indigo5

Math is certainly something i wish i had a better handle and understanding of.

Probably we utilize a base 10 number system down to our fingers really.

a reply to: Indigo5

Pi and Phi are embedded into the very nature of our reality and chaos theory that seems to underpin said reality.

The golden ratio is displayed everywhere in nature from the formation of galaxies to the leaves on the trees.

I don't think we do anything perfect really but we have to work with the tools we have at our disposal.

a reply to: andy06shake

Yes, of course you are right...we use base 10 because we have 10 "digits"...thanks for that, I forget the obvious sometimes.

Googling it up, it is interesting that animals having 5 "fingers" evolved roughly 360 million years ago and before that..

Prior to this split, there is evidence of tetrapods from about 360 million years ago having limbs bearing arrays of six, seven and eight digits.

www.scientificamerican.com...

Still not sure the number of fingers and toes we have is a rational way to base a mathematical system to describe the universe. Not to say it isn't doing very well, but still interested in alternative systems of math...

Without a doubt...If an advanced alien civilization exists, we would have mathematical theories as a pseudo-common language, but it would be fascinating to speculate how their "language" of science differs and how that has either advanced or hobbled their understanding of the universe compared to us.

a reply to: Phage

Not sure if you're a fan of wikipedia, but seems to have what I'm referring to -

Another formulation, based on M-theory and observations of the cosmic microwave background, states that the Universe is but one of many in a multiverse, and has budded off from another universe as a result of quantum fluctuations, as opposed to our Universe being all that exists

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: droid56


One thing to ponder, if you play the expansion of the universe backwards, ie if you extrapolate backwards in time, at some point all the matter in the universe was at the same point and would as a result have to have had almost infinite density, a singularity. I think that's one of the main tenets of the big bang theory, if you run everything backwards this is what we would have. Unless of course the universe came into being 5 minutes ago exactly as it is (someone switched on their playstation 30000000). The problem I have is the tendency for researchers to fill in the blanks with things like "dark matter" because observation doesn't match the theoretical physics. Also there are some anomalies out there, like stars that are seemingly older than the universe, or the acceleration of the expansion. The theory does require some degree of faith. We really, really don't know enough about existance or reality for that matter to ever make concrete conclusions, at least in the present. I think we are like a fly resting on the Sistine Chapel, trying to figure out what the whole picture is from a tiny fragment of it. The real truth and reality of our existence may truly be forever beyond our understanding.

a reply to: chr0naut

Will the quality of the replacement universe be affected by anything we can do?

a reply to: Raggedyman

It's common knowledge in philosophy, two basic positions, Spiritual and secular, it's philosophy after all.

Or rather -- if we're talking philosophy -- metaphysical and physical. But there are plenty of philosophies that transcend this division; Nietzsche, for instance, with his cycles of eternal recurrence, or Buddhism, or Spinoza's pantheism. Even Epicureanism.

a reply to: Indigo5

Our base number system is not the most rational by today's standard but back when we were counting apples from trees or how many fish we managed to spear we probobly never really envisaged things like calculus, differentiation, or complex numbers.

Fact of the matter is a hexadecimal system (base 16) would be far more compatible with the binary based logic systems utilized by modern day computer.

I agree it would indeed be fascinating never mind illuminating if indeed we received a meaningful response.

originally posted by: Bedlam

originally posted by: chr0naut

Yes, virtual particles are strongly attested through observation. Not denying that.

So, energy CAN be created or destroyed in an isolated system?

It can be rearranged, that's pretty obvious, as you say.

Please remember these branes that banged together (and a universe fell out), have never been observed and cannot be tested. Is that good science?

Still, where did the branes come from? You haven't convinced me that you've gotten to first cause yet.

Are you looking for a live 'person' that did it? "let there be light" et al? I haven't seen Him yet. A lot of 'take it on faith'. But no bothering to show up and explain anything.

The topic of my posts wasn't really about God, rather it is that there are things in the 'scientific' world view that are unscientific. The gaps in our framework of knowledge have been 'filled in with crayon' and are accepted uncritically as valid, even by "scientists".

Filling the gaps in our knowledge with wild supposition and myth isn't a new thing. It has always occurred and is one of the arguments against theism. But we have, in Aristotle's natural philosophies, a prime example of non-theistic application of this 'gap filling'.

Adjacent to the gaps are good pieces of scientifically supportable data, but that doesn't somehow justify belief in the fantastic.

A good case in point is that you were ready to throw out the highly evidenced first postulate of thermodynamics in favour of a poorly evidenced 'big bang from quantum fluctuation'. Let me assure you that if energy can be created or destroyed and that this happens randomly, it breaks causality, making all sorts of impossibilities possible (without even invoking a multi-world hypothesis) and invalidates a whole lot of observed physics which shows that there is system and order to the universe.

a reply to: andy06shake

Now I am going to go a little off the reservation

Math as language of science...Base 10 vs. other systems and how our "language" employed effects perception and reality..

Humans did not see the color blue until we had a word for it..

www.sciencealert.com...

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: Bedlam

originally posted by: chr0naut

Yes, virtual particles are strongly attested through observation. Not denying that.

So, energy CAN be created or destroyed in an isolated system?

It can be rearranged, that's pretty obvious, as you say.

Please remember these branes that banged together (and a universe fell out), have never been observed and cannot be tested. Is that good science?

Still, where did the branes come from? You haven't convinced me that you've gotten to first cause yet.

Are you looking for a live 'person' that did it? "let there be light" et al? I haven't seen Him yet. A lot of 'take it on faith'. But no bothering to show up and explain anything.

The topic of my posts wasn't really about God, rather it is that there are things in the 'scientific' world view that are unscientific. The gaps in our framework of knowledge have been 'filled in with crayon' and are accepted uncritically as valid, even by "scientists".

By bad scientists perhaps...the good ones...and I would argue the majority a "good"...relish in the possibility of overturning old assumptions...that is Nobel Prize territory for them.

Scientists live with open questions and question science that is considered to be established by non-scientists..It is what they love to do.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: JoshuaCox

Heck. Thanks to the Cosmic Neutrino Background, we can see all the way back to a few seconds after it started. We could only get to within hundreds of years of it with the Cosmic Microwave Background.

Who observed the CNB and since neutrino's are weakly interacting, how?

a reply to: chr0naut

It's tough to even detect them and I believe it requires these GIANT contained rooms that shoot particles around hoping to catch one.

But I'm terrible at explaining this science, here are resources you can read up about them:
Wikipedia
Article from 1998 about the precision of the CNB
Can one measure the Cosmic Neutrino Background?

And here is Fobes on it:
Co smic Neutrinos Detected, Confirming The Big Bang's Last Great Prediction

a reply to: Krazysh0t


Better yet...Create a near perfect void and what happens?

Particles spontaneously appear and disappear..

God hates a vacuum.

Physicists Say They've Manipulated 'pure Nothingness' and Observed the Fallout
www.sciencealert.com...

or here for a slightly different angle

Scientists at Chalmers University of Technology have succeeded in creating light from vacuum – observing an effect first predicted over 40 years ago. The results will be published tomorrow (Wednesday) in the journal Nature. In an innovative experiment, the scientists have managed to capture some of the photons that are constantly appearing and disappearing in the vacuum.

The experiment is based on one of the most counterintuitive, yet, one of the most important principles in quantum mechanics: that vacuum is by no means empty nothingness.

Read more at: phys.org...

a reply to: Indigo5

Yeah. I had heard there was an idea that the big bang was a result of one of these appearances of nothingness inside of a vacuum.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: Raggedyman

Do you have any evidence to suggest that the speed of light is variable? Because if you don't, then you have no reason to doubt the claim that the speed of light is constant. I trust Einstein over you. They clocked the speed of light back in Ancient Greece, by the way.

There is statistical evidence that measurements of light speed, minus experimental error introduced by the various methods, has been slowing slightly over the last 400 years. Barry Setterfield and Trevor Norman published a paper on this in 1987 by Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. While the conclusions drawn in this paper have been challenged, the historic data it presents is accurate.

Here's a link to Variable speed of light From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here's an article about Slow Light on the Physics Central website. This does not disagree with a 'c' constant but does indicate that light itself propagates differently under different conditions. With different dilations of time (for example, produced by gravitation), the constancy of 'c' becomes inexact. If a singularity that produced the universe had the mass of the universe, the gravitational field would be phenomenal and hence the flow of time would be vastly different than it is now.

... and, more recently: Critical geometry of a thermal big bang (and how it exactly matches CMB with no fine-tuning)