Mystical physics

[Starcrow]

Eternal return or eternal recurrence is one of the most extravagant concepts in Western philosophy. Pythagoras invented it, or it was revealed to him, according to one's convictions, and then Stoicism developed it. Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor, was a Stoic, but he never mentions the matter in his "Meditations".

In that sense, modern physics is Pythagorean. See what someone says in a certain online discussion forum.

"Proton decay in trillions of years eventually resets everything (...). When everything is uniform and dead and cold, that is perfect entropy, there is no order or clumps of order, just a uniform nothingness, perfect entropy at the lowest value, and then, poof, out of quantum nothingness, we rise again to be in The Lounge [name of the forum] discussing whether one cuts crusts off sandwiches (and the answer is the same, yes (...) ).

" (...) on a side note, I don't see how entropy always increases if eventually we end up with perfectly distributed evenness, i.e., at that point there is no disorder, just ordered, perfect, even nothingness."

That's not the only case of physics stealing wild ideas from the mystics. It also decided that the Belgian priest's bold Primordial Egg
was a fact, but others, like Sir Fred Hoyle, laughed and called it "the Big Bang" ( even though it was supposed to be more like the Big Stretch or Big Expansion, not a detonation, a bomb exploding).

Then there's the Seth books, by the medium (now the New Age crowd says "channeler") Jane Roberts, which describe "possible worlds", identical to the "parallel worlds" of the Multiverse. Some 25 years ago Seth inspired the creators of the TV series "Sliders".

The B.B. theory, which says that time and space appeared suddenly, is such a delirious notion that one had to be a priest to be able to imagine it. That's why down-to-earth, hard-core Marxism rejects it. In The Treasures of the Heavens (a thorough description of the constellations) F. Ziguel, the best-known Soviet astronomer, says:

"All experience (...), and particularly all the history of astronomy, confirms evidently the dialectic materialism doctrine about the infinitude of the Universe in time and space." ... yet infinitude, too, but also the opposite, is an irrational idea that the mind is unable to grasp, except in the imaginary world of mathematics.

The conclusion is that eventually physicists will also find out that there is a "luminiferous ether" pervading all of space, in spite of Michelson and Morley, and that matter is nothing, since the true indivisible atom, the only truly elementary particle, devoid of all structure, and even lacking any substance whatsoever, is merely a disturbance, a vortex in the Sea of Ether, as the seers of the Theosophical Society claim, and Tewari seems to be hinting at with his Space Vortex Theory.

 

[Absolute zero]

Science and religion have more in common than some will admit. Each have core beliefs, heretics, priests, ceremonies, can be used to control of the masses and a capacity to be abused.

 

[Starcrow]

Science and religion have more in common than some will admit.

Yes, and to make that clear I should've quoted the following passage written by another Stoic, Nemesius (De nat. hom., 38), because it shows the utter similarity to the said comment seen in a forum:

"When the heavenly bodies, in their movement, have gone back to the same [supposedly astrological, I guess] sign and the [celestial] latitude and longitude in which each one happened to be at the beginning, there comes about an absolute conflagration and destruction. Then it all goes back to the beginning of the same cosmic order, and again, as the heavenly bodies move in the same way, every event that occurred in the previous cycle repeats itself with there being no difference whatever. Once again Socrates and Plato will appear, and again with the same friends and fellow citizens, the same beliefs and the same reasonings in the arguments. This universal return will happen, not only once, but many times, to infinity."

[redacted]

 

[Catastrophe]

Probably the best example relevant to this forum is the extremely tiny gap between the big bang, with all its current justification, and the physical unreality of an 'infinite' state, brought about by the mathematical fiction of division by zero. The singularity.

The laws of physics break down in that last 10^-30 seconds after the mystical beginning but the big bang theory is then very successful in describing the development of the Universe.

One might argue that Einstein’s General Relativity is not complete if it requires the singularity, brought about (mathematically) by division by zero, resulting in infinite density. In other words, the origin of the Universe may be an irrelevant prequel to the development of the Universe as successfully described by the big bang theory.

This is not to say that the origin of the Universe is irrelevant, of course, but that it is a separate issue to the subsequent development well described by the big bang theory. It means that the origin itself is open to alternatives to a singularity, where it might be possible to avoid the 'division by zero' paradox. One suggestion has been the cyclic Universe.

Cat

 

[IG2007]

This is an interesting thread.

First, let me talk about the original post. The idea that the Universe was a singularity at the time of the big bang is merely a theory, or rather say, a hypothesis, because we can never scientifically observe or prove it, because no matter what, the Math always breaks down at t=0. My personal opinion/theory (/hypothesis?) is that t=0 was the moment where matter and antimatter popped out of an abyss of nothingness. And the term "before the big bang" doesn't even make sense, because, theoretically again, there was nothing before the big bang, complete zero. And, the total mass-energy of the Universe is still zero, so we can still make sense of it. And the total entropy of the Universe can never reach infinity (or zero), because, it would take an infinite amount of time to reach infinity or zero, and thus, it would never reach infinity or zero. So, the heat death and the cyclic universe theory where the Universe ends with zero/infinity entropy and restarts does not make sense.

Secondly, Cat, General Relativity doesn't require an infinity to make it complete. Rather, it breaks down at infinity.

 

[nodrog]

Hello all, as a non-scientist but with a fascination for cosmology, (it’s why I’ve started to follow these threads), I’ve been trying to develop a ‘mind-model’ of the origin of the universe which makes some sort of sense to me, and addresses the more obvious objections to the BBT and what flows from it. I’ve arrived at something like it – full disclosure, I’m using it as the lead in to the storyline for a novel I’m working on – and I’d very much appreciate your more expert comments on how it holds together. It goes like this:

The initial idea is that the ‘Nothingness’ the universe originated from has ‘components’, in the way that plus one and minus one comprise nothing.
The universe was created when these components were ripped apart, a Big Rip rather than a big bang. The ‘plus one’ is the universe: the ‘minus one’ is another component, some sort of ‘anti-verse’.
The rip had an origin, but was not a singular event; it is a continuing process. It’s happening at the edge of the expanding universe, where time and space, along with all the other properties and characteristics of the universe, are being originated. So when we look back in time, we are not looking inwards, as it were, to when the universe was younger, but outwards in time to where the universe is younger. T always equals 0 at the edge of the universe.
The cosmic background microwave radiation is not the echo of the one-off big bang, but the direct signature from the edge of the universe of the continuing big rip.
We can’t devise a theory of everything because he laws of physics aren’t addressing everything; they are rooted in the universe, so are missing the other component, the ‘anti-verse’, as well as the totality of the components, the ‘nothingness’ they combine to make up.
These missing dimensions are almost imperceptible to us. Almost, but not quite. Where should we look for traces of them? We could start by looking where the laws of physics break down.
Quantum effects is one such. No half-baked theory is complete without its quantum factor, so here’s mine. What if the quantum world is a window into the anti-verse? What could we learn about the anti-verse from the way we interpret its manifestations, as we perceive them? Take entanglement, spooky action at a distance, as Einstein termed it. What is the action? The exchange of data, or the sharing of a data state.
And distance? Well, that exchange takes place instantaneously irrespective of distance. So some properties or characteristics of this anti-verse may be that it's a data-verse in which time and space do not exist; thus the complete data model of the universe is registered in a ‘universal now’. With such an explanation, it’s no longer ‘spooky’. Perhaps a data-verse which is the sum of information about the universe, and one if its essential complementary properties or forces, and mathematics is our attempt to express, interpret, and understand that force?
Where else? Black holes, perhaps. We observe that in black holes the universe disappears, and no data comes out, so could black holes be where the universe and anti-verse recombine, and black holes are sites where the universe ends? The big zip? Or lots of (relatively) little zips.
Hawking radiation suggests that some data does escape, and we see antiparticles popping into existence out in space, and being apparently annihilated – in this model recombined - when they meet ‘universal’ particles, so the Big Rip might have a few loose threads.
For the sake of (my) simplicity, I’ve kept the ‘components’ binary, a plus and a minus. But, of course, the components of this nothingness, this totality, could, in fact, be any number, and any permutation, of characteristics and properties which could, when combined, be self-negating. So 'nothingness' is itself a multiverse, or Omniverse, with other realms, other dimensions, of whose existence we can detect no sign.
Black holes in turn could themselves be the spawning grounds of other universes, where components of the omniverse split into myriad plus/minus permutations; new universes.
This model seems to me to have a pleasing symmetry, as well as making some sort of sense, if only to me. It provides an origin story, closes the universe’s birth-life-death loop, addresses some of the necessary, but unsupported, assumptions about the BBT, such as inflation, and combines the principles of a unique origin with those of a cyclic process; the cycle is internal.
Naturally I would say that, but, as I don’t have the knowledge or intellectual capacity to examine it critically, I hopefully throw it in the ring to those who might.

 

[Catastrophe]

Wheeeee . . . . . . . . . there is a lot there,

Why don't I read this whilst you read:

Ask Me Anything - Ask Dr. Joe - Now WEEKLY! | Page 4 | Space.com Forums

and then we can talk?

Cat

 

[nodrog]

Wheeeee . . . . . . . . . there is a lot there,

Why don't I read this whilst you read:

Ask Me Anything - Ask Dr. Joe - Now WEEKLY! | Page 4 | Space.com Forums

and then we can talk?

Cat

Thank you, yes. It will be a day or 2 - late here
Cheers, Nodrog

 

[Catastrophe]

Thank you, yes. It will be a day or 2 - late here
Cheers, Nodrog

Late here too. I am in NW Leics, UK.

Cat

 

[Catastrophe]

nodrog, before we get any further, I want to be clear where the Big Rip fits in. This is rather critical. Humans would be ripped apart (if they were srtill around) together with everything else.

See
Big Rip - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Big_Rip

Next:
I am not very happy with:
"T always equals 0 at the edge of the universe."
This is metaphysics, so we don't know.
See: Ask Me Anything - Ask Dr. Joe - Now WEEKLY! | Page 4 | Space.com Forums
One interpretation, if you believe in the singularity (which I don't) is that the t = 0 singularity is spread over the entire 'edge' of the Universe. The point of the singularity would be spread over the entire envelope. It would be reverse entropy in my opinion. If the entropy increases with the expansion, then going to t = 0, would be going from higher entropy to lower, which introduces problems. Do you really need this?

I am also having problems with:
"The cosmic background microwave radiation is not the echo of the one-off big bang, but the direct signature from the edge of the universe of the continuing big rip."
Can you explain what you mean by this?
If you are saying t = 0 coincides with the edge of the universe (I shudder at this), meaning that t = 0 coincides with the 'envelope', then time (in spacetime) emanates from the outsides and expansion happens in the centre. Time would originate and proceed towards the middle. But the Universe has no centre and no outside rim, consisting of an envelope.

I really cannot understand what you are driving at. If you want to tell me what you want from an opening scenario, I will try to invent an appropriate universe for you. You can do this in confidence. One procedure is to deposit a copy of the written disclosure with a bank, or solicitor (attorney). This is standard procedure. I am a consultant - but in a totally different area (chemical engineering).


Cat

 

[nodrog]

Cat, thank you. I see where some misunderstanding occurs: I've used the term 'Big Rip' when a completely different concept using the term already exists. please put that aside, and let me try again with, say, 'component separation' CS'.
In my model, the CS replaces the Big Bang with an initialisation and an ongoing process; it's both the origin, and the continued engine of expansion, of the universe, so not a 'singularity' in which the whole of the universe was created. I imagine time and space having had a starting point, but thereafter being continuously created -originated - at the expanding periphery as the components of 'nothingness/totality' are being separated into universe and antiverse. Hence the 'looking outwards at where the universe is being created' comment.
Let me try to explain one of the BB issues which has me scratching my head. The BBT assumes that time had a single origin at the singularity. We were there, at that origin, though in a slightly different form! To get from that form to our present constituents, we've had to undergo billions of years of cosmic evolution, repeated fusions and explosions. The signature of that singularity has been 'radiated outwards', as it were, at the speed of light, just as the current state of, say, a 1k light year distant planet, is radiated to us but received 1k years later. So the BBT assumes that somehow we are now 14Bn light years from our origin in time but are able to look back at it. That's the 'inwards' I meant.
I can't make it work for me.
What I can make work is the thought that we are looking back through a time which had a different origin, a horizon over which more of the universe is being originated (T=0 at the point of component separation) and the signs of that origination are being received by us now. It would look much like the 'back in time' looks towards a singularity, but might have more explanatory potential (the excess of light elements?).
Perhaps you could reread my post in that light?
Thank you also for the offer of an invented universe. My primary interest, though, is having one that I can ponder about in. Having a rough idea of one, albeit one that I have some difficulty describing to others, I'll keep working on it and massaging in more expert aspects such as yours.
Cheers
Nodrog

 

[Catastrophe]

nodrog, "My primary interest, though, is having one that I can ponder about in."

Sorry for the misunderstanding.
The idea of a steady state Universe was put forward by Fred Hoyle, but has now been discredited in favour of the BB.

Continuous creation Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
https://www.dictionary.com › browse › continuous-crea...

the theory that matter is being created continuously in the universeSee steady-state theory. the theory that animate matter is being continuously created ...


"steady-state theory, in cosmology, a view that the universe is always expanding but maintaining a constant average density, with matter being continuously created to form new stars and galaxies at the same rate that old ones become unobservable as a consequence of their increasing distance and velocity of recession."

steady-state theory | Definition & Facts - Encyclopedia Britannica

I would have thought that 'our' Universe was big enough to "ponder about in"

Frankly, I don't like your bit about the BB. I think it fair to say that the official view (I am open to correction) is that very very very shortly after the "beginning" (t = 0), the current BBT takes over and is well substantiated. But there is a breakdown in the laws of physics (or, if you like, the application of Physics) where division by zero is involved to create the singularity. Science cannot say what (t = 0) was, but it is separated from BBT. t = 0 has other options, other than the singularity, one possibility being some form of cyclic system. For example, one phase of the Universe ending down a super black hole and re-emerging from (t = 0) and BB. I, personally, find this more palatable than everything suddenly arriving out of nothing. But you are writing the book, you can choose which universe you want. Is the beginning really important to the plot?

Cat

 

[Catastrophe]

"What I can make work is the thought that we are looking back through a time which had a different origin, a horizon over which more of the universe is being originated (T=0 at the point of component separation) and the signs of that origination are being received by us now. It would look much like the 'back in time' looks towards a singularity, but might have more explanatory potential (the excess of light elements?)."

"a horizon over which more of the universe is being originated" would fit very well, as I see it, with a cyclic system. Look back through the nexus (instead of dead singularity). You couldn't really 'look' through it, of course, but who cares if it makes a good novel?

BTW, I can identify CS with t = 0 in a way, but maybe not as you see it.

Cat

 

[Starcrow]

Both IG2007 and nodrog mention the "nothingness" from which the Universe sprang, a matter that's been discussed for two millennia by philosophers, who say that "ex nihilo nihil (fit)" , or "nothing can emerge from nothing", since emergence of something from nothing is a logical impossibility.

<<Content removed by moderator>>

No one has mentioned physicist Lyndon Ashmore's Tired Light Theory yet, a big omission since he gives an explanation for the illusion of an expanding Universe that is actually entirely static, unlike the Hoyle hybrid concept. See Ashmore's recent research paper "Calculating the redshifts of distant galaxies from first principles by the new tired light theory" in the "Journal of Physics" (2019).

 

[Absolute zero]

The initial idea is that the ‘Nothingness’ the universe originated from has ‘components’, in the way that plus one and minus one comprise nothing

An idea I have played with for a while is similar.

The idea is two universes separated in whatever universes come from, much like virtual particles in this universe. The greater the separation the more energy available to the universe for work. To a hypothetical observer watching the whole process, our universe would appear to come from nothing, contact to a minimum, and then expand back to nothing. This is just a nice fairytale.

 

[nodrog]

An idea I have played with for a while is similar.

The idea is two universes separated in whatever universes come from, much like virtual particles in this universe. The greater the separation the more energy available to the universe for work. To a hypothetical observer watching the whole process, our universe would appear to come from nothing, contact to a minimum, and then expand back to nothing. This is just a nice fairytale.

The 'nothingness of components' I imagine is more of a totality, or omniverse, with the potential to be any number of universes, each with its antiverse; complementary components which can be split, or recombined back into the omniverse. We perceive this omniverse as nothingness because we are limited to the properties, characteristics, laws etc, of our particular component, our own universe. We can perhaps glimpse our complementary 'anti-component' through eg quantum effects, but no other universes or components. Our glimpse suggests an antiverse in which data about our universe exists in a state without space or time, unlimited by the speed of light; a 'universal now'. The BB was the start of the separation, and black holes are where the components are being recombined back into the omniverse. That's the internal cycle.

 

[iconoclast]

Science and religion have more in common than some will admit. Each have core beliefs, heretics, priests, ceremonies, can be used to control of the masses and a capacity to be abused.

They have NOTHING in common. Religion is just ancient, superstitious cults, used to control the ignorant brainwashed masses of adherents. Science is true, provable, consistent, predictable, logical, self-correcting.

 

[Absolute zero]

They have NOTHING in common. Religion is just ancient, superstitious cults, used to control the ignorant brainwashed masses of adherents. Science is true, provable, consistent, predictable, logical, self-correcting.

Unfortunately both are practiced by imperfect individuals. I did not imply there is no difference between the two. Everything you attribute to religion, science has a history of being at one time or another.

 

[Catastrophe]

" Science is true, provable, consistent, predictable, logical, self-correcting. "

Most practitioners, in my experience, follow the rules, and I have had a lifetime of being a scientist and working with scientists.

Cat

 

[Catastrophe]

Just by way of information, this quote from "Hidden in plain sight No. 3 The Secret of Time", by Andrew Thomas, may be useful:

QUOTE
Einstein was greatly influenced by the philosopher-physicist Ernst Mach who was an advocate of logical positivism. According to logical positivism, physics should only make statements about phenomena which could be directly observed and measured. Using logical positivism as his guide, Einstein simply stated 'Time is what we measure with a clock'. According to Einstein, there was no place in physics for philosophical musings about the nature of time - all that was important was what could be measured.."
QUOTE

Cat

 

[Starcrow]

Science is true, provable, consistent, predictable, logical, self-correcting.

Not according to Betrayers of the Truth -- Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science (W. Broad & N. Wade, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1982). In the back cover, R. H. Ebert, former dean of the Harvard Medical School, is quoted:

"(...) an important book, for it challenges the conventional wisdom of objectivity in science."

... and the publishers say that it "is about how science really works and why scientists are tempted to cheat. (...) fraud (...) can remain undiscovered for months, years, or even centuries." The authors give a long list of well-known examples. Science is NOT self-correcting. The peer review process is "an old-boy network". It doesn't work.

 

[Catastrophe]

"Not according to Betrayers of the Truth -- Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science (W. Broad & N. Wade, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1982). In the back cover, R. H. Ebert, former dean of Betrayers of the Truth -- Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science (W. Broad & N. Wade, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1982)."

• Hardcover
  £259.20
  
  2 Used from £259.20

Check the price before you buy. Not for me, but that's just my personal opinion. You can get a good encyclopaedia for that. Make your own mind up.

Cat

BTW "I don't see how entropy always increases if eventually we end up with perfectly distributed evenness"

. . . . . . . . . and total inability to do any work

Entropy - Wikipedia

Something you might enjoy.

 

[COLGeek]

We are done here, folks. Thank you to those who contributed.