Physical Inquiries

Originally posted by beebs
reply to post by Bobathon

 

Well, constants in themselves aren't very nice.

Because it still begs the question of where is that energy coming from?

Sorry if you think the constants aren't nice. That's unfortunate.

Where is it coming from? I can't explain that in terms of normal energy. All I know is that something is conserved in the theory, and we call that energy. In everyday life (where GR doesn't matter) it's just energy as we know it. In the cosmos, there's a bit more to it. 'Energy as we know it' isn't conserved in GR cosmology.

If something's not conserved, it can come and go as it wishes, given the right circumstances. Like photons of light. Where do they come from? Where do they go when you turn the light out? They just go. Photon number isn't a conserved quantity in quantum field theory, so they just appear and disappear depending on the circumstances.

I could try and explain better, but I'd need to stick my head in my books because I can't remember the weirdnesses. Maybe some other time.

What do you think of the wikipedia article reg. the CC?

I think I'll pass on reviewing an entire Wiki page!

reply to post by Arbitrageur

Liking your explanations – you got the knack of brevity that I don't :-)

reply to post by Bobathon


I like your explanations too. There's always a trade-off between brevity and thoroughness so one is not necessarily better than the other, it depends on the audience/situation.

I thought that one minute video you referenced by Feynman discussing the key to science was especially brief and poignant! Beebs liked it too! Now if only Haramein would follow that third step!

Regarding the expectation of the cosmological constant, we're on the same page, and your 1973 book did a pretty good job of guesstimating something that wouldn't be discovered for 25 years! I'll stop short of saying it's confirmed, but the shoe seems to fit so far.

reply to post by Bobathon

Only if you think it should be there!
Anomalous expectations, I say!

Well, I would say it is anomalous for such a thing as a 'particle' to not have such a thing as a 'position'. To me, it contradicts the inherent definition of a 'particle'.

So yes, it is only anomalous expectations, because our(my) definition of a particle is contradicted by observation.

Therefore, I hardly think calling it a 'particle' is any good at all. A problem of language, rather than theory.

These are interesting to read through:
define: particle

It behaves as a particle when we attempt to measure its particle properties, and a wave when we attempt to measure its wave properties. The underlying state is neither.

But, in the case of the WPD, we attempted to measure its 'particle properties' through the double slit experiment, and we got wave properties. Right?

The underlying state is something.

Measuring 'particle properties' is still subject to wave definitions. Just because it was measured under the classification of 'particle properties', does not entail that it was a particle at all. It is still retroactively subject to the equally relevant category of 'wave properties' -- simply viewed with the tools we use for observing the 'particle properties'.

It's not just that the particle you measure to be at position X then collapses to a state consistent with position X, it's more symmetrical. The measuring device and the particle evolve quantum mechanically together after the measurement... and the person looking at the measurement joins in, and everyone they communicate the result to... and they all evolve consistently with each other in a big entangled web.

Like contamination..

This sounds a lot like a dialectic method of discussion

When a property is discussed, it transcends its anti-property to become synthesized or entangled.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Well I see fractal structures in nature as emergent. I think if more than one level of magnitude in nature is fractal, it is symptomatic of the system as a whole -- a closed system feeding back upon itself.

I think the structure of the vacuum could very well have geometrical properties itself(as has been mentioned by others than Haramein) which are themselves in a fractal loop, giving rise to macro level fractals.
Loop Quantum Mechanics and the Fractal Structure of Quantum Spacetime

Then, if the above over all picture is correct, spacetime fuzziness acquires a well defined meaning. Far from being a smooth, four–dimensional manifold assigned “ab initio”, spacetime is, rather, a “process in the making”, showing an ever changing fractal structure which responds dynamically to the resolving power of the detecting apparatus.

The last page has a great chart, showing the historic dialectic of physics.

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Why does he say the big bang happened for no reason? Just because we don't know what the reason is, doesn't mean there wasn't a very good reason. Like bobathon said, no matter what you choose to believe about the deepest questions, the concepts are not something our evolution-designed brain are designed to handle. We can't handle the concept of a beginning because then we must know what was before the beginning. We can't handle the concept of not having a beginning (eternity) either.

Well, I disagree. I think we have evolved just fine to comprehend the deepest questions. I think this video is incredibly relevant, especially when you pin yourself down to evolution in such a profound way.


Two alternatives to the 'big bang' as currently discussed, which are more plausible IMO:
1. Mckenna's idea of being born from something else
2. No beginning, only becoming and 'nowness'.

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Regarding Hawking radiation, I believe it contains information from inside the black hole. Whether that means you can 'observe the inside' is an interesting discussion.

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Of course we don't know where dark energy force comes from. I still don't fully understand gravity. I know it results from the presence of mass which warps space-time around it, but I still don't understand exactly how or why. So even though gravity doesn't come from nowhere its exact nature still seems mysterious to me.

A particularly interesting take on gravity, is this one:
Entropic Gravity

reply to post by Bobathon


Well constants are like duct tape IMO.

'Energy as we know it' isn't conserved in GR cosmology.

Because we are getting 'more'?

Like photons of light. Where do they come from? Where do they go when you turn the light out?

Perhaps this is a bad example? I would suppose that they go into the carpet/walls/etc.

They come from the electricity we use to power the light bulb, as well as heat.

I think I'll pass on reviewing an entire Wiki page!

Aww come on!

Its not that bad...

Originally posted by beebs
reply to post by Bobathon

 

I think I'll pass on reviewing an entire Wiki page!

Aww come on!

Its not that bad...

Beebs, I hate to tell you this, but the CC is what bobathon was writing about in his previous post and that fact seems to have gone straight past you when you asked him to look at the CC page. The CC is exactly what Bob was writing about! I don't think he needs to review the wiki page, he already knows about cc. You apparently didn't make the connection?

reply to post by Arbitrageur


My apologies, I wasn't trying to say that he doesn't know what it is...

I was rather trying to get his opinion on how accurate the Wiki article is, and the problems/issues raised in it.

We all know wiki is not an academic source, but usually they are pretty accurate.

For some of the physics articles, I think they are written by genuine scientists... but nonetheless they deserve a type of peer review of their own.

Originally posted by beebs
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

Well I see fractal structures in nature as emergent. I think if more than one level of magnitude in nature is fractal, it is symptomatic of the system as a whole -- a closed system feeding back upon itself.

I mentioned in an earlier post that you may want reconsider your avoidance of the math side of physics. In this statement I see an example of where math would come in handy. I know the definition of every word in that sentence. But I don't understand how it might relate to the real world in a mathematical or measurable sense that could be measured.

If it's just a religious statement not related to science, then there's no need to measure it, as religion is about things that can't be measured.

But if it's supposed to be about science, then in order for me to understand and apply that concept I would have to understand how to measure it and confirm it with observations. And even if we do that, I'm not sure how it helps our understanding of the universe.
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Well, I disagree. I think we have evolved just fine to comprehend the deepest questions.

I did mention the questions but I should have been more clear. We can ask the questions, it's the answers we can't get our minds around, whatever the answers are, whether there was an eternal existence, in which case I think eternity is too long a time for us to comprehend, or a beginning, in which case we want to know what was before the beginning...you asked that question about what was before the big bang and it's a natural question.

I think this video is incredibly relevant, especially when you pin yourself down to evolution in such a profound way.

I have a hard time with his snake story. He says you can't say the head of the snake "caused" the tail of the snake just because you watched a snake slither by a slit in a fence and saw the head first. But then he goes on to say ""So in exactly the same way, all events are really one event." That is not the logical conclusion one comes to as a result of his snake story. Viewing the head was one event, viewing the tail was another event. Sure it's two parts of the same snake but they are two different events. But I suppose one reason I was drawn to physics instead of philosophy is that physicists tend to state things more logically, at least to me. Perhaps this is because they have to prove what they say is true with measurements, while philosophers don't.

alternatives to the 'big bang' as currently discussed, which are more plausible IMO:
1. Mckenna's idea of being born from something else

So does McKenna say the big bang didn't happen? Does he explain away the WMAP data, hubble constant redshift, etc? He has better evidence than that which you find more convincing?

2. No beginning, only becoming and 'nowness'.

I don't know if this is a scientifically measurable and testable idea is it? It sounds kind of "new agey" which usually means to me that it can't be scientifically measured or proven.
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Regarding Hawking radiation, I believe it contains information from inside the black hole.

What leads you to believe that?

Originally posted by beebs
I was rather trying to get his opinion on how accurate the Wiki article is, and the problems/issues raised in it.

We all know wiki is not an academic source, but usually they are pretty accurate.

Thanks for the clarification. I agree completely with Byrd that it would be unthinkable for an academic to cite wiki as a source, since it changes. I think wiki can be useful for someone to get a general feel of a subject or topic, and I don't think it's that bad unless the header has warnings like "this article needs more references /citations" which is always a bad sign that some of the content is unsourced and suspect.

But if you were asking him to review the entire article kind of like a peer review type thing, that's quite an imposing request. I'd have to do some source checking and research myself to do any kind of review like that.

Originally posted by beebs
reply to post by Bobathon

 

What do you think of the wikipedia article reg. the CC?

CC

It's a good article

The only sentence I find a bit misleading is the one that starts "If the universe is described by an effective local quantum field theory down to the Planck scale...", which begs the question why would anyone do that. There isn't actually a reason to do it, other than by saying "the Planck scale is the most obvious one lying around, so I'm going to stick it in this formula"

(Also that gives you a quantum vacuum energy, not a cosmological constant, and there isn't any good reason for quantum vacuum energy to gravitate anyway. If it doesn't gravitate, it won't contribute to the cosmological constant at all.)

This kind of puts into context quote "the worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics!" that follows. Shouldn't really be such a surprise. It was nothing more than a first guess, and... it didn't work. Would have been nice, but it didn't. End of story, no need to pretend it's some massive paradox.

(NB what was the first thing Haramein did in his Schwarzschild Proton paper? Stick the Planck length into the vacuum energy formula! He used the result as the basis for his entire paper. )

Originally posted by Bobathon
(NB what was the first thing Haramein did in his Schwarzschild Proton paper? Stick the Planck length into the vacuum energy formula! He used the result as the basis for his entire paper.

)

So, let me see if I got this straight...

Haramein says:

www.facebook.com...

This is why, for instance, this problem has been nicknamed “The Vacuum Catastrophe” (read carefully) en.wikipedia.org... or one of the worst prediction of any physical theory in history.

So he points out it's the worst prediction of any physical theory in history, but that's precisely the prediction his paper is based on? Have I got that right?

It's not like he doesn't know it's the worst prediction ever, he said so himself! Sometimes it's hard to figure out what Haramein is thinking.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

Yip, nail on the head bro.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I don't know a much better way to explain... Fractals are nature. Nature is in a system of itself, feeding back upon itself - interacting with itself. Resulting/Emerging in Fibonacci/Phi.

Not only here on earth, but within the Universe as a whole natural system(unless you want to speculate that there is another system...).

Whether it is macrocosmic structure, or structures arising from planck scale.

Self-similarity across scales.

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I did mention the questions but I should have been more clear. We can ask the questions, it's the answers we can't get our minds around, whatever the answers are, whether there was an eternal existence, in which case I think eternity is too long a time for us to comprehend, or a beginning, in which case we want to know what was before the beginning...you asked that question about what was before the big bang and it's a natural question.

Well then we better make sure we ask the right questions shouldn't we?

I wholly disagree with your pessimistic attitude. If time is fractal, then eternity is in every moment. It is a very relevant question, which I am sure sounds 'new agey' and 'mystical' to you, and it literally is besides the obvious negative connotations those terms have garnered. That doesn't mean it is wrong. Mystical states, such as those associated with whirling dervishes, regard the collapse of space and time(subjectively) as encountering 'god'(most likely NOT some guy hanging out with lightening bolts in the sky ready to smite mankind).

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Sure it's two parts of the same snake but they are two different events. But I suppose one reason I was drawn to physics instead of philosophy is that physicists tend to state things more logically, at least to me. Perhaps this is because they have to prove what they say is true with measurements, while philosophers don't.

We perceive them as two different events... but in actuality they are parts of a whole. Two different events perceived, does not mean two different events in actuality. They are both one snake. It is our limited sense perceptions which told us they were two 'events'.

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So does McKenna say the big bang didn't happen? Does he explain away the WMAP data, hubble constant redshift, etc? He has better evidence than that which you find more convincing?

Not that I was aware of, he said that it 'coming from nothing in no time' is less probable than alternatives.

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I don't know if this is a scientifically measurable and testable idea is it? It sounds kind of "new agey" which usually means to me that it can't be scientifically measured or proven.

It is a very old idea. Why shouldn't it be testable? Surely it is more direct than supposing there was 'a beginning' 13 billion years ago - or at least just as viable. It is through 'the now' which we perform every single experiment and measurement. This was the point of the video with Alan Watts, I recommend the section before and after the one I posted. The 'big bang' ties us down into the past, we define ourselves through that. Yet, it is only ever through the mechanism and means of 'the now' which we hinge ourselves causally from the intangible 'past'.

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Hawking radiation information:

It is debatable, like many things. I think that if radiation comes from/off of a black hole, or the quantum events on the horizon, it is information.

Wiki:

A slightly more precise, but still much simplified, view of the process is that vacuum fluctuations cause a particle-antiparticle pair to appear close to the event horizon of a black hole. One of the pair falls into the black hole whilst the other escapes. In order to preserve total energy, the particle that fell into the black hole must have had a negative energy (with respect to an observer far away from the black hole). By this process, the black hole loses mass, and, to an outside observer, it would appear that the black hole has just emitted a particle. In another model, the process is a quantum tunneling effect, whereby particle-antiparticle pairs will form from the vacuum, and one will tunnel outside the event horizon.

An important difference between the black hole radiation as computed by Hawking and thermal radiation emitted from a black body is that the latter is statistical in nature, and only its average satisfies what is known as Planck's law of black body radiation, while the former fits the data better. Thus thermal radiation contains information about the body that emitted it, while Hawking radiation seems to contain no such information, and depends only on the mass, angular momentum, and charge of the black hole (the no-hair theorem). This leads to the black hole information paradox.

Mass, angular momentum, and charge are information, aren't they? Its a paradox.

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On a side note...

Do you think J.A. Wheeler was full of crap?
Does the Universe Exist if We're Not Looking?

We are inside the system, inside the feedback loop, giving feedback.

Think about it.

Originally posted by beebs
It is a very old idea. Why shouldn't it be testable? Surely it is more direct than supposing there was 'a beginning' 13 billion years ago - or at least just as viable. It is through 'the now' which we perform every single experiment and measurement. This was the point of the video with Alan Watts, I recommend the section before and after the one I posted.

Well if you know how to test it I guess you can test it, but I don't know how to translate those words into an experiment that can be tested because the meaning seems so ambiguous. Funny how I watched the part you posted and not the parts you didn't post. I wonder how that happened?

Hawking radiation information:

It is debatable, like many things. I think that if radiation comes from/off of a black hole, or the quantum events on the horizon, it is information.

Wiki:

An important difference between the black hole radiation as computed by Hawking and thermal radiation emitted from a black body is that the latter is statistical in nature, and only its average satisfies what is known as Planck's law of black body radiation, while the former fits the data better. Thus thermal radiation contains information about the body that emitted it, while Hawking radiation seems to contain no such information, and depends only on the mass, angular momentum, and charge of the black hole (the no-hair theorem). This leads to the black hole information paradox.

Mass, angular momentum, and charge are information, aren't they? Its a paradox.

But it doesn't tell me whether the black hole just had one sun or 333,000 earths enter the event horizon, if the mass, angular momentum, and charge of either option is similar. So yes we know *something* is inside the black hole or it wouldn't have mass. But we don't know what.

On a side note...

Do you think J.A. Wheeler was full of crap?
Does the Universe Exist if We're Not Looking?

Well if you use his own words, it's not really a theory:

Wheeler is the first to admit that this is a mind-stretching idea. It's not even really a theory but more of an intuition about what a final theory of everything might be like. It's a tenuous lead, a clue that the mystery of creation may lie not in the distant past but in the living present. "This point of view is what gives me hope that the question— How come existence?— can be answered," he says.

He had a near death experience (I guess, he had a heart attack so it was at least life threatening) and I see it as almost a religious belief. But even if it is a religious belief without even a theory to back it up, that doesn't mean it's not true.

The bottom line is there is a shred of truth to the arguments, which is then sometimes overamplified about a million times to exaggerate the claim that we control the universe with our observations. But as that article points out,

Does this mean humans are necessary to the existence of the universe? While conscious observers certainly partake in the creation of the participatory universe envisioned by Wheeler, they are not the only, or even primary, way by which quantum potentials become real. Ordinary matter and radiation play the dominant roles.

When you add the qualification that conscious observers "are not the only, or even primary, way by which quantum potentials become real", the claims and his "intuition" are a lot easier to swallow. So that's not too unreasonable and he's certainly making a less outrageous claim than some new agers about conscious observers controlling the universe.

I think the way we are controlling the universe is much less esoteric: that it is primarily through our actions, rather than our observations (though I'm not denying the dual slit experiment), that we alter the universe, primarily the "pale blue dot" in the universe we call Earth. Humans are definitely making changes to this planet, and it's through actions more than observations.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


My bad. I thought the second video could get the point across sufficiently, but I had seen it in the context of the first and third ones. Here they are:





I agree regarding the new age extrapolation of the power of observations. They use the most extreme interpretations to justify an extremely skeptical epistemological position.

However, I think they do bring up some genuinely good points(some of the more reasonable stances) with which science will have to reconcile for itself.

I think Wheeler is one among many who 'intuitionally' came to that particular conclusion.

reply to post by beebs

I think Alan Watts is great. Clear, inspired, logical expositions, grounded in reality, and far more relevant to a person trying to figure out the meaning of his/her life than any piece of theoretical physics. I don't think I'd argue with very much that he says at all.

I don't think any of his ideas are incompatible with any aspect of mainstream modern physics.

(They're definitely incompatible with the misinformed simplistic ideas that some non-scientists choose to have about modern physics, but that's another matter entirely)

reply to post by beebs

His idea of how stars originate (in part 5) is a bit silly though. If you take it literally – which is probably not the intention.

(If he were talking now, he'd love Smolin's fecund universe theory – he'd use that to illustrate exactly the point he's trying to make.)

He also seems to think he knows what it feels like to be an animal, which is going a bit too far.

But I wouldn't argue with most of what he says.

Good vids, Beebs.

reply to post by Bobathon


I actually haven't watched past the third video...

I have a very haphazard way of looping around several different things i am interested in... sometimes I will pause a video to come back later... and it will inevitably get lost until I come back when time permits later on.

But since you have recommended them, I will step it up on my priority list.

Originally posted by Bobathon
His idea of how stars originate (in part 5) is a bit silly though. If you take it literally – which is probably not the intention.

He also seems to think he knows what it feels like to be an animal, which is going a bit too far.

He says animals feel like they are at the center of the universe. You're right, that's going too far. I don't think bees think a whole lot, but if they did, their behavior would seem to suggest they think the queen is more important than they are because they'll give their lives defending the queen.

It's not just the bit about stars we can't take too literally, but that's an example.

The snake observation example is another one. He gives an excellent illustration of a problem, looking at a snake crawl by a slit and not seeing the whole thing. But instead of coming to the conclusion I do, which is these are separate observations which we must assemble to form a picture of what we are looking at, he comes to the opposite conclusion: that they are NOT separate observations. What he means to say is we are looking at the same snake, I think, but it seems like he confuses it being the same snake with being the same observation, they are not the same observation but different observations of the same thing which is totally different to me. But he's speaking as a philosopher, and not as a scientist, so I have to give him some latitude and try to figure out what he means, and stop focusing on what he actually says, which doesn't always make good sense to me. When I focus on his meaning and intent instead, it's easier to listen to.

I'd rather read some good books by Carl Sagan.

But I did listen to all 5 parts to try to understand another's viewpoint. The main thing that kept his inaccuracies from grating like fingernails on a chalkboard to me was the fact that he has a soothing voice!