Data Suggests Early Universe was Superfluid

Ted writes "Experiments at the worlds largest nuclear collider, RHIC, at Brookhaven National Laboratory reveal striking new features of the state of the early Universe. With RHICs enormous collision energy, the researchers can create matter that is composed of the fundamental building blocks of nature, quarks and gluons, in a state with temperatures of more than 1000 billion degrees. The Universe is believed to have been in this state in the first microsecond after the Big Bang. Later the quarks and gluons were trapped in the nuclear particles that the visible universe is composed of today. Until recently, researchers have thought that the quarks and gluons formed a gas. The latest results from RHIC, however, indicate that under the extreme conditions just around the phase transition from quarks and gluons to ordinary matter, the quarks and gluons behaved as a liquid - in fact an almost perfect liquid."

Comments

i had suspected this for years

[peculiarmethod]

indicate that under the extreme conditions just around the phase transition from quarks and gluons to ordinary matter, the quarks and gluons behaved as a liquid - in fact an almost perfect liquid."

This sfinally proves what I have been trying to explain for years.. the universe was born from a pool of beer!

Re:i had suspected this for years

[Peldor]

This sfinally proves what I have been trying to explain for years.. the universe was born from a pool of beer!

That would certainly explain why so few things in this universe make any sense at all unless you're drunk.

Cosmic Egg Not Cooked Solid ...

[rewinn]

... resulting in Big Splat.

Re:Cosmic Egg Not Cooked Solid ...

[Rude Turnip]

Sometimes I think our species is the cosmic equivalent of Salmonella.

Obligatory Trek

[codesurfer]

Fluidic Space? I knew I saw species 8472 around here the other day!

Re:Obligatory Trek

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Data is the one saying it......

That's one interpretation

[jd]

The scientists themselves suggest that the liquid state is one of a number of states that quark/gluon soups can take, but that the early Universe was still most likely a gas.

Of course, all their software is in CVS, so it shouldn't be too hard to check their calculations. :)

Re:That's one interpretation

[Quasar1999]

check their calculations??? Until 5 minutes ago I didn't even know what a gluon was... (I have heard of a quark... and no, not the one from Star Trek)...

I couldn't check their spelling at this point... forget their calculations...

Re:That's one interpretation

[MyLongNickName]

I thought a gluon was a derogatory term for a toupee.

Re:That's one interpretation

[SensitiveMale]

The scientists themselves suggest that the liquid state is one of a number of states that quark/gluon soups can take, but that the early Universe was still most likely a gas.

That's what Mick Jagger said.

Re:That's one interpretation

[Vombatus]

Quark... Adam Quark

Re:That's one interpretation

[Raindance]

Right. To clarify,

Matter can be in a "superfluid" state when in solid, liquid, gas, and plasma form (this is a fairly new discovery).

The term "superfluid" has more to do with whether various properties obtain than being an actual fluid.

Re:That's one interpretation

[jericho4.0]

Superfluidity is the complete absence of viscosity, something kind of hard to visualize in a solid.

Re:That's one interpretation

[Tablizer]

a number of states that quark/gluon soups can take

I for one welcome our new Cambells overlords

Re:That's one interpretation

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not a new discovery at all. Glass is a fluid and this has been known for years. All matter of any state can be a fluid. By state I mean solid,liquid or gas. So solids/gases/liquids can be a fluid. I think your confusing the word fluid with liquid/gas in your last sentence.

States of matter and fluid poperties are totaly different things and are often confused. Hope that clarifies it alittle better.

Re:That's one interpretation

[Raindance]

Yes, technically, my last line should have read,

The term "superfluid" has more to do with whether various properties obtain than being an actual liquid.

Re:That's one interpretation

[Anonymous Coward]

My physics instructor used to work there on the STAR project. He recently gave a presentation on this and he said he is not entirely convinced they have enough data to speculate that far.

Re:That's one interpretation

[pipingguy]

Doesn't liquid helium come close to this state? Maybe I'm misremembering.

Re:That's one interpretation

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, liquid helium becomes superfluid at sufficiently low temperatures.

Re:That's one interpretation

[midav]

I am not sure that you understand what you are talking about.

Glass is a fluid (a liquid,) it has never ever been a solid. The difference between glass and water is superficial and it is only due to difference in viscosity. Glass only looks to us solid because of specifics of our time perception. If we could percieve microseconds as we do years, water would have looked like a solid to us, if, for example, you tried to break it.

I hope you will not insist that the state of matter depends on our subjective perception of time.

Solids are crystals, molecules of which keep order on distances much greater then distance between the neighboring molecules.

Order distance in liquids (fluids) is comparable with the distance between the molecules. And, finally, gases do not have order at all.

I am not aware that there is any other definition of solids, liquids and gases. OTOH, if you tell me how to tell a liquid from a fluid, perhaps, I'll learn something new.

Re:That's one interpretation

[perspicaciously]

The idea that glass is a liquid is something of an urban myth derived in all likelihood from the method in which glass used to be blown.

In fact, glass is an amorphous solid. If you heat it up enough, it becomes a supercooled liquid.

The example generally used to explain how glass is a liquid is that in old houses the glass has "flowed" down over time and is thicker at the bottom of the pane than it is at the top. This isn't necessarily true, but when it is it's generally because of the very old Venetian method of glass blowing, before it became common to float molten glass on mercury to get panes with even thicknesses. If glass actually flowed at rates that were visually perceptible even after centuries, then optical telescopes that rely on massive lenses and mirrors to maintain accuracy to fractions of a second wouldn't last very long at all. This isn't the case.

In short, mythbusted.

Re:That's one interpretation

[bloodredsun]

>>it became common to float molten glass on mercury Surely you mean "float glass on molten tin" as I've never heard the phrase "mad as a glazier" (although it would provide many answers reagarding the suspicious behaviour or double-glazing salespeople!)

Re:That's one interpretation

[AviLazar]

No no no it was a typo, not "gluon" but "glu on" Space was a decal and it had to have "glu on" it so it would stick. Sheesh - you people never rtfa's.

Re:That's one interpretation

[Anonymous Coward]

"If glass actually flowed at rates that were visually perceptible even after centuries, then optical telescopes that rely on massive lenses and mirrors to maintain accuracy to fractions of a second wouldn't last very long at all. This isn't the case."
Exactly, because noone is so dumb as to use a non-crystalized form of silica in those lenses. The parent is completely correct. Please move along.

Re:That's one interpretation

[geckoFeet]

Right - furthermore, old glass pane are thicker at the bottom because they were installed that way for stability.

Re:That's one interpretation

[Xilman]

OTOH, if you tell me how to tell a liquid from a fluid, perhaps, I'll learn something new.

A fluid flows, by definition. A liquid is a fluid which is relatively incompressible.

Paul

Re:That's one interpretation

[CProgrammer98]

wtf is the link in ur sig ranting on about???

biggest load of bull I ever read!

Re:That's one interpretation

[jaoswald]

No, cold glass is solid, and molten glass is liquid.

The term "glass" refers to the amorphous nature of the atomic order; the atoms are not arranged into a regular periodic crystalline array, but have only short-range order. That is, each atom has a fixed relationship to its neighbors, but you cannot predict where the neighbors' neighbors will be.

Room temperature SiO2 is quite solid, and has negligible flow.

Perfect Liquid?

[roman_mir]

in fact an almost perfect liquid - I knew it! The universe was created from a shot of vodka!

Re:Perfect Liquid?

[roman_mir]

Vodka...? Pfrrrrt!!! They were talking about BEER, you insensitive clod!!! - nah, everyone knows that beer can only produce parallel universes. The originals always start from vodka!

Re:Perfect Liquid?

[Neurotoxic666]

perfect liquid [...] a shot of vodka

Whew. Perfect liquid? I'd rather say it was a cask strenght single malt.

Re:Perfect Liquid?

[sharkey]

They were talking about BEER, you insensitive clod!!!

Probably Bud or Fosters. It certainly would explain mullets, Michael Jackson and certain foliages in office.

Re:Perfect Liquid?

[Herr_Nightingale]

The universe was created from a shot of vodka!

Sir Adams posits it was the mighty Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster(TM)

So Douglas "Hitchhiker's" Adams was right again

[michaeldot]

The Great Green Arkleseizure Theory

"According to that most famous of sages, Douglas Adams, the Jartravartids believe that the entire Universe was, in fact, sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure. They live in perpetual fear of the time they call the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief..."

You mean...

[jhurani]

... Astroglide?

Re:You mean...

[Prometheus Bob]

I dont know what's more ironic, that someone on slashdot considers astroglide the perfect liquid or that he got modded Offtopic when suggesting that it is. (or someone joking about it in response...)

Re:You mean...

[NanoGator]

Unfortunately for us, this raises questions about why you had that bookmarked in the first place.

Not much of a surprise

[onyxruby]

cosmic microwave background radiation pretty much dictated this three years ago. Rest of comment is a rip off an article I did for K5 a few years ago that dealt CMB.

The big bang theory gained more credibility today with some news released by the National Science Foundation and collaborated by a United States team called Maxima with astronomers from the University of Minnesota and the University of California, Berkeley.

The soundwaves that were found are an impression of quantum scale energy fluctuations carried to earth by cosmic microwave background radiation. Scientists were able to measure the waves by looking at cosmic microwave background (CMB). These early soundwaves are thought to have created super and giant clusters of galaxies with their travel. The soundwaves are actually contained in primordial plasma. They are effectively overtones or harmonics of the big bang explosion that is said to have created the universe.

These soundwaves are important because they show two things that are important for understanding our universe in addition to solidifying the big bang AKA inflationary thoery.

# First of note is that the study indicates that the universe is geometrically flat, not curved. # This study also gives credence to the thoery that most of the universe is composed of dark matter.

The discoveries were made by microwave detectors in Antartica, using baloons. The study involved only about 3 percent of the sky, and looked at temperature fluctuations of only 100-millionths of a degree celcius in the CMB.

Re:Not much of a surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, stop pretending like you understand what the article is discussing. The CMBR observations did not dictate what the RHIC collaboration is claiming, namely that the early universe was a superfluid -- and, in fact, the linked article isn't claiming that either, merely that it is has essentially zero viscosity.

(The rest of what you say is correct, but has little to do with the RHIC results, so while it may be Interesting or Informative, it is also Off-Topic.)

Re:Not much of a surprise

[onyxruby]

Hardly offtopic. For the waves to propogate as they have been recorded in CMB would require a medium in which to have traveled. The logical conclusion is that medium was a gas of fluid. Before the universe expanded enough to allow a gas, it had to be something, this would logically have been a fluidic substance since a gas can only occur under a certain pressure. The CMBR results did not dictate the RHIC results, but certainly would have lended credence to their theory they used to do the research in the first place.

Ergo, when the fluid was there it carried the shockwaves we see today, ergo these waves relate to both the sound that was captured and the state of the early universe. My comment is not offtopic.

Re:Not much of a surprise

[jericho4.0]

No, it was not 'dictated' by CMB, you're talking out your ass.

Re:Not much of a surprise

[VStrider]

First of note is that the study indicates that the universe is geometrically flat, not curved. I had a hard time understanding and convincing myself that string theory and M-theory is (more?) correct and the universe is curved. As far as i understand it, all dimensions are curved; even the four expanded ones, the ones we live in. we just don't feel it, for the same reason we don't feel the earth as a sphere. So, now the universe is flat? Could this be just a mathematical anomaly, because we perceive the beggining of the universe as a point, using classical physics? And if the universe is flat, what happens to M-theory? I'm convinced it's the right way to go about it...it just makes sense...i think :)

Re:Not much of a surprise

[bcrowell]

You don't know what you're talking about. The material in your post was all known several years ago. The fact that nuclear matter at high temperatures can be a superfluid (not just a normal fluid) is entirely new and unsuspected, and has nothing to do with what you're talking about in your post.

For anyone who wants to know something about this, from a source that actually knows something, you might want to start with the wikipedia article on the liquid drop model of the nucleus, and then this one on superfluids in ordinary matter (as opposed to nuclear matter). Nuclear matter in its normal cold state (as found in the nuclei in your body) is a fluid (known since ca. 1930), and is also a superfluid. The mechanism that causes superfluidity in the atomic nucleus is in some ways analogous to the mechanism that causes superfluidity in some types of ordinary (very cold) matter. It's also been known for a long time that if you heated nuclear matter up to high temperatures (on the order of MeV's per nucleon), the superfluidity would vanish. This is exactly analogous to what happens if you heat a superfluid like helium-3 beyond a certain point: it undergoes a phase transition and is no longer a superfluid.

This new discovery is completely unexpected: if you heat nuclear matter even hotter (to on the order of GeV's per nucleon) it may somehow become a superfluid again (maybe depending on other variables, like pressure). This is the regime where everything is moving at relativistic speeds, and the quarks may actually be free to move around the whole fluid, rather than being bound in sets of three within individual nucleons.

Re:Not much of a surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you know what you're talking about, either. The RHIC results being discussed are not referring to a superfluid state of matter; read the papers yourself. No mention of superfluidity, just of a low-viscosity, rapidly thermalizing liquid -- what they refer to as a "color glass condensate". (This is not to say that superfluidity can't occur in QCD; it's just not what the article is talking about.)

Re:Not much of a surprise

[VStrider]

IANAC, but what i understood about string/M-theory is that it requires all dimensions to be curved. Yes, the 3 macroscopic ones are very close to being flat cause of their large radious, but there is a difference between being close to flat but curved and actually being flat, isn't there?

Actually it doesn't matter whether the radious is too large and close to flat or too small, because there are two properties of a string defining the radious of a dimension. The "vibration" and the "winding". If either one of them increases to R, the other one decreases to 1/R so that the total energy remains the same. And we can only "feel" the large radious of one of these properties.

general relativity doesn't require this, but general relativity breaks down when you examine the beginning of the universe because of it.

Re:Not much of a surprise

[cheekyboy]

Like any 'explosion' fom a centre point, it goes outwards, so where is the centre of the universe, that is, a rough center like the center of a supernova. Or did it suck it self senseless in a wizzy dizzy of chaotic mess? Even then you can find the edges and compute the center. So where is this center.

As skeptics are skeptic on aliens and crop circles, everyone should still be skeptical of a universe thats so young, can you really disproove 100% that the universe isnt infinite in size, but we can only see 15b LY because of all photos dragging themselves lower into the spectrum past IR? In that case an infinite universe is impossible to see, because eventually the photos will redshift so far, they will reach zero or at least get so low as to be absorbed eventually.

What if our local 30billion wide universe is really a local trillion gallaxy cluster, and there is 100BLY gap until the next 30BLY wide cluster.

Re:Not much of a surprise

[MightyMartian]

You really need to grasp what is meant by Big Bang. Unfortunately the term tends to make people think of firecrackers or propane tank explosions. It is an expansion of space. The universe was once very dense and hot, and began inflating and cooling. There is no center to the universe, or rather, every point is as much the center as any other.

I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[millennial]

But is there really a point to this?
I'm serious. What is the scientific benefit that we can gain from understanding what the universe was like for a microsecond? I'm honestly curious: is there a practical application to this sort of study?

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[Rude Turnip]

Keep in mind that there have been mathematical formulas hanging around for over 500 years that were utterly useless until technology caught up and we found something practical to do with them. Science isn't about what you can use today...you take what you get when you make discoveries.

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[Harish Rallapali]

Obviously nobody profits from the fact that at one time, for a very brief period, the universe acted a little funny.

However, this has important ramifications in terms of physics. We now know the "what" and "when" - now we need to learn the "why" and "how." Knowledge is never wasted. This may very well be the first baby-step towards warp drive and gravity guns :-)

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[rewinn]

Perhaps if we could figure out where the initial universe got all that energy that eventually turned into little ol' us and a whole lot more of not-us, then we could copy the procedure to generate just a little more energy in a convenient format (subject to a lot of unpleasant scenarios, of course.)

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[Wordsmith]

Seeking knowledge for knowledge's sake is a worthwhile endeavor. Every new piece of information leads to a greater understanding of the big picture.

Besides, "useless" knowledge often proves key to unintendend, unsought, useful advances.

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[MC68000]

Because space and time themselves formed during this epoch. The questions involving what space and time intrinsically are remain mysterious. The first microsecond is the most important one in the whole universe.

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[millennial]

Who knows, maybe the Time Cube blinked into and out of exist during this period...
/i keed.

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[VStrider]

time and space were not as they are today. space expanded after the big bang, and so did time. if we look back at the big bang, alot of things happened in what we perceive today as a microsecond although if you were there it would feel like eons.

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[niteice]

Someone mod this insightful. A good chunk of my science class (i'm in 9th grade) seems to think that all this chemistry stuff we just learned is completely useless because they're never going to need chemistry.

Fucking idiots.

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[millennial]

What's even more interesting is the concept that Stephen Hawking and others refer to as 'imaginary time.' Since, as you point out, time expanded alongside space, we can't really measure how old the universe is, since it may be infinitely old from any vantage point within it. (If space was ever infinitely small, then real time is infinite.)

The 'microsecond' referred to here would be imaginary time. Not imaginary as in 'imaginary numbers' (which don't technically exist but are still useful), but imaginary as in non-relativistic. In other words, the entire process could occur in a microsecond if we reproduced it today, but in relativistic time, it may have, as you said, taken eons.

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're very confused.

First, different observers will measure different ages for the universe. But there is a preferred class of observers, comoving with the cosmological fluid (or equivalently, who view the CMBR as isotropic), which we can use to define an absolute "cosmological time" and measure the age that way. The Earth is very close to being in such a frame, so the age we perceive for the universe can be treated as a canonical age.

The canonical age is also the longest possible time that can be measured; observers moving with respect to such a frame may think that the universe is younger than we do, but none of them will think that it's older (let alone infinitely old).

I have no idea what you mean by "non-relativistic" and "relativistic" time; there is just time, measured by some observer, in a general-relativistic context. And this doesn't have anything to do with Hawking's imaginary time, which is something else altogether.

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[niteice]

That wasn't troll feeding, he had a very valid point.

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[jericho4.0]

Just because something can be done, and has 'cool' factor, does not mean it should be done. Should India, for example, launch a massive colinization effort on Mars? Probably not.

Big science costs big money, and that money comes out of the same money that pays for education, roads, defence, etc.

(I'm not arguing this project is a waste of money)

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[millennial]

The concept of 'frames of observation' is what relativity is all about.
For example, how relativity relates to the speed of light:
For reasons not entirely understood, the speed of light is a universal constant. It is not so much a speed as it is a relative velocity. No matter how fast you go (v), the perceived speed of light will always be C+v. The same beam of light can be seen at two entirely different speeds by two people at different speeds. I seem to recall other stories about watches running slightly faster temporarily while in flight, but I doubt their veracity.
Similarly, if the universe is really, really small, an immense amount of real time would pass during a very brief duration of imaginary time. In the first 'microsecond' of the universe's existence, billions of years may have passed for whatever could observe the universe.

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[pipingguy]

What's even more interesting is the concept that Stephen Hawking and others refer to as 'imaginary time.' Since, as you point out, time expanded alongside space, we can't really measure how old the universe is, since it may be infinitely old from any vantage point within it. (If space was ever infinitely small, then real time is infinite.)

I've been wanting to get paid for this imaginary time for decades, but somehow various employers haven't approved the timesheets. And they've not bought into the idea that I've been solving their problems on the existential plane and working while sleeping (or travelling to work). Then again, I don't have a Ph.D.

Fucking ungrateful bastards.

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[Jamu]

I'm honestly curious: is there a practical application to this sort of study?

Good question. But one that'll only have an answer when there's a practical application.

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[Barlo_Mung_42]

For now it's more of a philosophical curiosity than anything else. The search for the answer to the question of where this all came from.
Look how many people in this thread posted some reference to Genesis. It's the same search in a way. But instead of just making it up or believing in the made up, this method tries to find some data to back the answer up with.

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[xPsi]

The question is a fair one. First, I claim that understanding the universe is probably itself a pretty reasonable pursuit. But philosophy aside, the goal of the RHIC experiments is not primarily to study the early universe (although that is a natural consequence of what they are doing). The main goal is to study bulk nuclear matter under extreme conditions. "Bulk" in this context meaning "whole nuclei" as opposed to just a couple protons or quarks. "Extreme" meaning ultrarelativistic (v~c) collisions. That is, in effect, to study the phase diagram of nuclear matter (as opposed to "atomic matter", the usual stuff we do chemistry with) by heating it with violent collisions (the temperature of this fluid is estimated to be about a trillion degrees C).

In principle, understanding the fundamental nature of nuclear matter could have tremendous technological consequences -- in principle. Direct technology from perfect partonic fluids will probably not happen in five years but perhaps in twenty, fifty, or one hundred years. In the mid-to-late 19th century, people asked the same sorts of question the parent is asking about electricity and magnetism: "what's it all good for anyway." I think we all know where that went. The Department of Energy in the US, the main benefactor of the RHIC project, generally supports this sort of basic research precisely because it often leads to huge technological breakthroughs.

But it isn't just a pipe dream of future technology that drives the DOE. They know that in the process of simply trying to do something as crazy as finding a quark-gluon plasma or a perfect partonic fluid involves learning a lot of new stuff about existing technology and pushing it to its limits. You have to build massive detectors, huge computing facilities, and have ultra-fast electronics to handle the data rates. You also need to educate, train, and employ thousands of Ph.D.'s -- a sure way to ensure some fraction of the population are trained scientists. All of this drives technology in big ways the private sector just can't afford to do -- precisely because there is no profit involved in this kind of dabbling. But in the end everybody wins because even if perfect partonic fluids never become useful, the technology needed to figure that out trickles down perhaps contributing to vastly to future technology.

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[VanillaCoke420]

Why must there be immediate practical applications for everything?

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[JohnFluxx]

Going offtopic, but:

> 'imaginary numbers' (which don't technically exist but are still useful),

This is a bit of a misnomer.. 'real numbers' don't exist either. We can give meaning to real numbers (This number means the height of person in meters) but we can also give meaning to complex numbers (the real bit means kinetic energy, imaginary bit means potential energy - as used in oscillations, which is a huge part, if not majority, of physics)

Re:I hate to sound like I'm trolling...

[Mant]

How it was at the very begging directly effects how it is now. The scientific benefit of understanding anything is pretty much understanding it. It may or may not help in other areas of science, but the purpose of science is to understand things.

As for practical knowledge, who knows? Maybe one day knowledge gained here will help with something practical. If we limited scientific research based on that, we wouldn't have a lot less research.

Good read on Quantum Gravity

[Quirk]

I read Lee Smolin's book Three Roads to Quantum Gravity over Xmas and thought it was a good read. It provides a good overview to string theory and the inherent problems and proposed solutions.

Re:Question?

[millennial]

I'd guess that it had to do with the out surface of early space-time being curved... as objects formed in expanding space-time, the warps caused their three-dimensional distributions to become uneven. But I wouldn't take anything I say without a chunk of salt.

For the scientific atheists...

[Anonymous Coward]

Genesis 1
-------------
3: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light
...boom...
6: And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
"the quarks and gluons behaved as a liquid - in fact an almost perfect liquid."
"The Universe is believed to have been in this state in the first microsecond after the Big Bang"
9: And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
"Later the quarks and gluons were trapped in the nuclear particles that the visible universe is composed of today"

Almost enough to make one a scientific believer. Finally, science is coming close to the Truth!

(Please mod +5 troll lol)

Re:For the scientific atheists...

[changcho]

"Almost enough to make one a scientific believer. Finally, science is coming close to the Truth!" You are, of course, joking...but it's not very funny.

"Data Suggests Early Universe was Superfluid"

[TCM]

Splendid, Mr. Data. Continue with your research. Dismissed.

Re:"Data Suggests Early Universe was Superfluid"

[momerath2003]

Well done.

Bible reference

[beaver1024]

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.Genesis 1:1-2.

Re:Bible reference

[rewinn]

>the Spirit of God was hovering over the face

God's Chosen Spirit is, IIRC, aqua vit. But whose was the face?

Re:Bible reference

[Anonymous Coward]

Well done. You've managed to find a sentence in Genesis that contains the phrase "waters". Obviously God was alluding to the superfluid state of the early universe. How could we have been so stupid not to see it before now? That's it, I'm converting to Christianity. Obviously a religion whose holy book contains information about quantum particles is The Truth[tm].

Re:Bible reference

[shipwreckedkenny]

wow.... i agree

Re:Bible reference

[CrazyJim1]

I was thinking the same thing when I read it. *shrugs* God spoke with me, so I know he's real. I can't say I can figure all the details though.

Re:Bible reference

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Ok. But it was only fluid for a microsecond. Not some number of days let alone solid AND inhabited by the end of 7. So honestly, what does Genesis have to do with this at all?

Re:Bible reference

[Muttley]

if you can't write, it doesn't matter how good you are in 'math and science' because you are still an idiot.

communication is more important than solving assigned problems with assigned answers. learn to write well while you can and then you will be a better scientist, communicator and educator for it.

Re:Bible reference

[moz25]

Well, that is certainly easier to read than all that science mumbo-jumbo with gluons and what not ;-)

Re:Bible reference

[VanillaCoke420]

I suppose you have a point, that you will reveal at a later time?

Re:Bible reference

[Foolomon]

Perhaps, but someone needs to tell Him that Mary's been hanging around underneath the overpass near the truck stop again.

Re:Bible reference

[teknickle]

Get off of the '7 days' issue. Before you can chew solid food, you must first be weened from your mother's tit. (to paraphrase the words of Paul)

I have a photograph on my desk of myself and a loved one. If someone asks me 'how tall are you' I say '6 foot'. But then they pull out a ruler and measure that I am a mere 3" tall. Now I can argue until I am blue in the face that I am indeed 6'0" tall, but they (and they would be correct in their minds) that I am only 3" tall.

The same holds true for the first 7 days of creation. They are NOT LITERAL 24 hour days (as was TERRIBLY argued in the Scopes Trial).

It is a reference point for how things fell into place along that stretch of time. Those days might not have even been equal according to our current methods of measuring 'time'.

Re:Bible reference

[sydres]

hey the only maries I have seen under overpass most definately weren't of the virgin type

Re:Bible reference

[teknickle]

LOL. And thanks for saying 'weener' as opposed to being a wiener.

Re:Bible reference

[shipwreckedkenny]

i belive you are correct

Re:Bible reference

[jaoswald]

How about this: that the creation of the universe has basically nothing in common with the description in Genesis? In fact, there are *two* incompatible descriptions *within* Genesis, derived from different sources.

Do you also believe that the sky is a hard dome, with little holes in it? And there is water above the holes, which sometimes comes down as rain, and when it is night, light is shining through the holes to make stars? Because that's what is separating the waters in the Genesis story.

Re:Bible reference

[teknickle]

The only thing more combatant than secular humanism to Christianity is a mutant Christian (aka nutjob or zealot) that strays from the true meaning in the Bible.

There are NOT 2 incompatible descriptions.
What you are referring to is the misinterpretation of the Hebrew word raqiya'.

You didn't attend some lecture down in Florida by Paul H. Seely, did you? He steps to the beat of his own drum and is out of step with the Christian community.

Read some commentary here:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v13/i2/f irmamen t.asp

There really is a lot of Truth in the Bible.
And don't get caught up in other peoples interpretations (study Hebrew root words --and Greek for New Testament to get a better understanding).

It reminds me of when I lived overseas and watched American movies like 'Ace Ventura: Pet Detective'. No one (except myself) was laughing in the theater for Ace Ventura.
I began reading the subtitles while listening to the dialogue. While the translation could be considered accurate, every punchline and sarcastic statement was diffused with literal translations.

Our expression are much different than our friends overseas, and not a single idea got communicated as the director would have intended.

Bible is very similar when language was used in translation to make it easier for us to relate to, but at the same time understand the differences.
(like the fact that English only has one word for father and translate Abba kind of loses its powerful context).

I am sure you can find more people that come out of the woodwork that will turn and twist phrases and meanings to their liking and they all lack a true relationship with God. Organized religion does make people lukewarm and seek out answers they want to hear and not to discover TRUTH.

Re:Bible reference

[jaoswald]

I'm talking about two separate issues.

1) There are at least two *sequences* of creation, coming from the two different sources. One in which man is created before the plants and animals, and one in which man is created after.

2) The issue of a raqiya', which I had heard about long before 1991, and I've never heard of Seely. The article you link to is a whole lot of argument to avoid the simplest possible interpretation: the firmament separating the waters is the same picture that the article admits was a common cosmology. The argument you link to is largely based on the supposition that an ancient Hebrew word is referring to modern concepts such as "atmosphere" and "interstellar space."

The fact is that the ancient Hebrew people were nomads without any significant scientific knowledge. The most likely scenario is that unsophisticated people would have an unsophisticated cosmology. Instead, you literalists twist and contort yourselves to "prove" that Genesis is compatible with modern scientific knowledge.

That makes sense only to people who make the initial assumption that Genesis is literally true. Why? What do you gain from that? Just some kind of comfort that because you can "prove" it 100% accurate, it must be straight from God. But that is only what you assumed in the first place.

The point is not that there are passages in Genesis that are 100% incompatible with modern cosmology; the language is too poetic and figurative for that kind of proof. The point is that since the language *is* poetic and figurative, that you should probably consider it *as* poetic and figurative, and the idea that it is 100% scientifically accurate is bizzare.

When you read Genesis, about 90% of modern cosmological knowledge requires some special pleading about the inadequacy of ancient Hebrew to be scientifically precise. Yet you literalists insist it is still 100% accurate. That just isn't persuasive. I prefer the interpretation that the writers of Genesis just didn't have good information on the topic, and if God was involved, being 100% scientifically accurate was not the point. Otherwise, He would have put the scientific terms in ancient Hebrew, and we would be celebrating all the amazing Hebrew astronomers who even knew the Hubble constant.

Re:Universe

[MyLongNickName]

Only if you stretch the definition of 'liquid' to the point where it loses any meaning at all. By the commonly accepted definition, no, the entire universe is NOT liquid.

Liquid (defined by Education Outreach): One of the basic three phases of matter; characterized by free movement of the constituent molecules among themselves but without the tendency to separate.

This definition precludes most of the real estate in the known Universe.

Liquids and Gasses are Fluids

[theblacksun]

The term fluid applies to both states of matter. I'm thinking the proper term for the universe would be superliquid.

Re:Liquids and Gasses are Fluids

[RaffiRai]

Indeed, the definition of fluid also includes Plasmas and some plastic solids.

The simple high-school chemistry definition is matter with no definite shape.

Wikipedia article here.

Re:Liquids and Gasses are Fluids

[Anonymous Coward]

When in the article did it say that the Quarks acted as a liquid or were in the state of a liquid?

The part where they say, "The truly stunning finding at RHIC that the new state of matter created in the collisions of gold ions is more like a liquid than a gas gives us a profound insight into the earliest moments of the universe", for instance.

Qaurks can't make a liquid but they can form a gas. This gas happens to act like a superfluid.

This is wrong. Quark-gluon plasma doesn't behave like a superfluid. However, it does behave like a low-viscosity liquid, in some states, according to RHIC.

The correct term for this phenomenon is a superfluid. I'm not going to go find definitions for you because you can type them up on google yourself.

A superfluid state occurs when you have condensation of a finite fraction of bosons (true particles or quasiparticles) into the ground state (Bose-Einstein condensation) in a way that leads to non-classical rotational inertia. The article is not talking about a superfluid state.

Re:Liquids and Gasses are Fluids

[pipingguy]

Yes, but one is compressible and the other is (largely) not. Solids also flow, if the particles are small enough, but that is not at the molecular level.

I'm thinking the proper term for the universe would be "superconfusing" for most non-PhD reseachers without funding. With funding dollars, it all becomes clearer.

Re:Black holes also being created at RHIC?

[Surt]

Just so you know, current theory suggests that such tiny black holes aren't self sustaining, and just evaporate before they have any chance to become earth devouring.

This ain't superfluid, dammit.

[caffeinated_bunsen]

First the nanotube article, which made the mistake of thinking "really good conductor == superconductor" and now "really low-viscosity fluid == superfluid."

Superfluid means more than low viscosity. Specifically, it indicates that the fluid is a degenarate Bose system, which the quark-gluon whateverthefuckitis is not. But the article submitter probably reads science articles in Wired and the NYT, and thinks he can throw the cool-sounding jargon around without anybody noticing that it's bullshit.

Re:This ain't superfluid, dammit.

[caffeinated_bunsen]

And holy shit, I can't spell degenerate. I even previewed that...

Re:This ain't superfluid, dammit.

[Art Tatum]

I had a degenerate Bose system. It wasn't always that way, but I knocked it over by accident one night.

Re:This ain't superfluid, dammit.

[bcrowell]

Specifically, it indicates that the fluid is a degenarate Bose system, which the quark-gluon whateverthefuckitis is not.
Some superfluids are degenerate Bose systems, e.g., helium-4. But some are fermionic, e.g., helium-3, or nuclear matter in its ordinary (cold) state.

Re:This ain't superfluid, dammit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but even in He-3, you're still effectively talking about a degenerate Bose system, because the fermions pair up into boson quasiparticles a la Cooper pair in BCS superconductivity. You need Bose-Einstein condensation -- whether exact or effective -- to get superfluidity to work.

Re:This ain't superfluid, dammit.

[Quantum Fizz]

The slashdot writeup uses the wrong terminology, but it's a similar concept. So whoever put the title as 'superfluid' was mistaken and should have written 'perfect fluid'.

A superfluid refers to a viscosity-less fluid. The most common being He4, which is easy to produce, just cool liquid helium down to about 2.2K. This has to do with the quantum interactions between the helium atoms, and is similar but different to a Bose-Einstein Condensate. The He4 atoms have an even number of fermions (two protons, two neutrons, 2 electrons) and act like Bosons. Ie, they aren't restricted to Pauli Exclusion principle, and can all be in the same state.

Another superfluid can come from He3, a rarer isotope of helium. The He3 atoms themselves, now having an odd number of fermions, act like fermions, and obey Pauli Exclusion. However, at cold enough temperatures (a few mK) they can pair together, thereby acting like a Boson, and can also form a superfluid. This is a process fairly similar to the Cooper pairing of two electrons in a superconductor (in the superconductor the normally repulsive electrons are paired through a phonon interchange mediated through the material's lattice).

Now regarding the quark-gluon soup, the physicists are talking about a perfect fluid. I just saw a physics colloquium by one of these researchers a few weeks ago, and unfortunately I don't remember the details. But basically if you take a ratio or some other mathematical function of the viscosity and another hydrodynamic parameter I can't remember, like surface tension or something, in a perfect fluid these approach some standard value such as unity or zero or some such. (this confuses me now because the ratio in question is either zero or infinity if a helium superfluid viscosity is exactly zero, so this is why i am hesitant to say anything definitively about which mathematical function or quantities are measured).

No such perfect fluid is known to exist, and of all known fluids the closest one can come to it is a cryogenic superfluid, which has a value like 4 or 4pi or something like that. All other known fluids have this value substantially larger.

Regarding the quark-plasma soup, I believe the speaker said this wouldn' necessarily display the same properties of a quantum superfluid, maybe not perfect viscosity, I really don't remember exactly. I was trying to talk to him a bit afterwards, but I didn't know enough about the physics of superfluidity to really get into the details.

Re:This ain't superfluid, dammit.

[myowntrueself]

"or nuclear matter in its ordinary (cold) state"

So glass really is a superfluid then?

Re:This ain't superfluid, dammit.

[xPsi]

As the parent suggests, the system created at RHIC not a superfluid. But I don't think this was ever the claim.

The article submitter uses the term "perfect fluid." Indeed the language that is actually used in both the article and the STAR white paper (a technical summary from one of the four RHIC experiments) is, in fact, "perfect fluid" (see p.42 in the link below). In the white paper, the term is also used in quotes and is qualified by the clarification that this means, in this context, a fluid free of of viscosity.

STAR white paper

Re:Question?

[MyLongNickName]

Considering that this is one of the largest unanswered questions to cosmologists, and the biggest stumbling block to all generally accepted theories of the birth of the universe, I'd say your idea is as good as any other.

And as bad as any other :)

Mmm...

[Fjornir]

Why you whippersnappers! I remember before we had Data suggesting superfluid universes we had Spock. Spock was always solid and reliable. Spock taught us how to be people none of this gibberish about the beginnign of universes... Why at Amok Time he said, ""It is undignified for a woman to play servant to a man who is not hers." -- and that's as true now as it was then.

Re:light travel problem

[rewinn]

By waiting about 33.2 Billion years

Re:light travel problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll bite.

The universe is not 6.8 billion years old. It's far older and the proof is our sun. Sol is a third generation star, its makeup is proof in that it's a meager yellow dwarf which will grow large then collapse into a white dwarf. Its parent and grandparent detonated in an amazing supernova which led to the ignition of Sol.

The fact that our solar system is full of heavier elements is proof of our sun's age and lineage. Each atom of lithium, carbon and iron was created in the heat of a supernova.

Wow, a 1000 billion!

[MeatEntity]

..more than 1000 billion degrees.

Aw, damn. I always thought it was a hundred gazillion bazillion degrees. Isn't that just 1 trillion to us laymen?

Wait a gosh darned minute

[Craig_P92669]

I thought it was SuperFly.

We call it a Trillion

[Overzeetop]

Yes, thousands of Billions, because people are too stupid to know that the word Trillion exists?

Well, now I know why nobody is worried about the US national debt. 7 Trillion is, like, practially nothing. Let me know when we get to 7000 Billion and I'll start getting worried. And don't tell me that millions of millions crap - it just gets confusing. Besides, a million isn't as much as it used to be. Inflation, you know.

Hint: after Trillion, the next is Quadrillion, and then (hold you breath) Quintillion. Gosh it's, like, a pattern!

Re:We call it a Trillion

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to us brits. Our have a different naming scheme, that counts by factors of 6 after a factor of 18, as opposed to by factors of 3 after 3.

109 - millard (billion)
1018 - billion (quintillion)
1024 - trillion (septillion)

And so forth.

You insensitive clod!

Re:We call it a Trillion

[rossdee]

"Hint: if you're not american, after billion comes billiard."

And what comes after Billiards?

Snooker ?

Re:We call it a Trillion

[Anonymous Coward]

Trillion. See Names of large numbers..

Re:We call it a Trillion

[menace3society]

Actually, in most places after billion comes 'billiard.' It's just us damn yanks that always jump the gun on these things and want to start changing the root of the word before we're supposed to.

Re:We call it a Trillion

[strider44]

*sigh* you're american so I suppose I can forgive you for ignorance.
</joke>

For pretty much everyone who speaks English (as opposed to American) until perhaps very recently it goes like this:

10^3: Thousand
10^6: Million
10^9: Millard (not commonly used)
10^12: Billion
10^15: Billard (not commonly used)
10^18: Trillian
and so on.
According to their meanings, Million means one set of 6 zeros. Billion means two sets of 6 zeros. Trillion means three, and then there's quadrillion, quintillion etc.

Officially in science the newer "short scale" (which is the scale you are mentioning) is used. I'm pretty sure it's now officially the scale of Britain and Australia. However, especially when the audience of a specific paper is international, saying "one thousand million" or "one million million" or, much better, "10^9", avoids confusion, since it is not official in all countries. However looking back at the comment I just made, saying "1000 billion" avoids no confusion, since it could read "10^12" or "10^15", perhaps it means "10^15" since he didn't say "trillion". I don't know, I haven't read the article.

Re:We call it a Trillion

[sbryant]

10^9: Millard (not commonly used)

Not in English so much, but very common in German. A billion in Germany is always 10^12, and never 10^9.

Damn those 17th century Frenchies for changing the 200 year old long scale to the short scale, I say! Well, the Germans may not be known for their humour, but they are very good engineers, and they don't like their mathematical standards being changed. Actually, the Americans only changed because they were on better terms with the French than the British after their revolution.

I wasn't aware that the official scale in the UK and Oz had been changed, but when I did physics and maths at school, we never used "million" or "billion" as terms - we always had to specify large numbers like this: 1.234 * 10^12.

Here's a link with more info on the subject.

-- Steve

Re:We call it a Trillion

[hashwolf]

Here is what a value in trillions looks like.

Enjoy.

Re:Universe

[Anonymous Coward]

The Friedmann equations which form the basis for standard cosmology in general relativity, treat the universe as a perfect fluid, a non-interacting medium characterized by only its density and (isotropic) pressure (the Weyl postulate). Basically, it treats whole galaxies as "particles" in a "cosmological fluid".

Re:Black holes also being created at RHIC?

[coopex]

You mean no more dangerous than this http://www.childrenofthemanhattanproject.org/LA/Ph oto-Pages-2/LAP-217.htm

I keed, I keed.

Yeah? Well the white smoke suggests...

[spankey51]

Yeah Ted? Well there is a new Pope in town... And he is pissed! You have, as of late, chosen to acknowledge the existance of: 1- Quarks, 2- Gluons, 3- the scientific method, and worst of all: 4- the "big bang." You are a witch and will be prosecuted as such... just as soon as everyone gets back from the Imax theater.

Re:Yeah? Well the white smoke suggests...

[zuhone]

I love how people who know practically nothing about the church or Christianity seem to think that they know everything about it. Fact of the matter is that the Roman Catholic church has been saying that the big bang model of the universe's origin and Darwinian theory are correct scientific theories for many years now. John Paul II said this much, it is not likely that someone who has been dubbed his "intellectual bedfellow" is going to say any different. It's time for people to do their homework. Oh, I forgot...this is Slashdot.

Superfluid

[Luigi30]

"We've got Subfluid, Fluid, and Superfluid!"
"What's Superfluid?"
"Watch this. HEY YOU! JOIN THE UNIVERSE!"
"Eh, why not!"

Re:Universe

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes your are correct but he was refering to the fact that the word liquid was being used. Liquid and fluid are to completly different things despite common belief. So technically you both are correct in that the univerise is not a liquid but can be explained by fluidics.

Numbers are naughty!!!

[ErikTheRed]

Hint: after Trillion, the next is Quadrillion, and then (hold you breath) Quintillion. Gosh it's, like, a pattern!

You didn't even go to sextillion! If the drier technical definition is hard to grasp, just think of a sextillion as being the amount of pr0n on the 'net.

Supersolids

[Anonymous Coward]

However, it may well be possible for solids to exhibit superfluid flow. How? Imagine the flow of a liquid, except that all the atoms in the liquid have a crystal structure, and that entire structure is flowing in lockstep while maintaining a rigid crystalline structure. When Bose-Einstein condensation comes into play, you can have macroscopic coherence of atoms across the entire bulk of material.

Kim and Chan at Penn State claim to have created a supersolid state of matter in helium (and now, hydrogen). It's arguably the biggest experimental result in condensed matter physics right now; if confirmed, it will probably mean the Nobel Prize. However, theoretical studies have so far failed to unambiguously predict the existence of such as state of matter; there are arguments for and against, and the dust hasn't settled. If other experimental groups can replicate these results, we'll know for sure, regardless of whether theory has caught up with nature.

Re:Supersolids

[Anonym1ty]

Imagine the flow of a liquid, except that all the atoms in the liquid have a crystal structure, and that entire structure is flowing in lockstep while maintaining a rigid crystalline structure.

You mean kinda like a glacier?

Re:Black holes also being created at RHIC?

[Baatezu]

Tiny black holes couldn't be earth devouring. A black hole is a mass that has shrunk to the point to where escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. So a tiny black hole that was, say comprised of 200kg, would have no moure earth devouring ability (gravitationally) than a 200kg person.

if the sun instantly shrunk to a black hole, there would be no change in the earths orbit, or any of the planets, the gravitational pull would be _exactly_ the same as before.

Just some clarification on what a common misconception of blackholes being 'devouring' objects.

Re:Question?

[TheBurrito]

Entropy. Over cosmic scales, clumping together becomes the lower energy state due to gravity's small but extremely wide-ranging effects.

Think logarithmically

[Lapsed Catholic]

I'm serious. What is the scientific benefit that we can gain from understanding what the universe was like for a microsecond? I'm honestly curious: is there a practical application to this sort of study?

To understand this you first need to abandon your familiar linear timescale, and learn to think about time logarithmically. This is also important for understanding particle decay times as well- strange particles were originally called "strange" because they hung around for 10e-10 seconds instead of the usual 10e-15 to 10e-20 seconds for particles based on up/down quarks. If particle physicists were thinking on a linear timescale, they would just say "gee all these particles are gone in a jiffy!" and we wouldn't have strange quarks today- with all their accompanying technological advantages!

Remember, the few billion years that the universe has been around is going to seem like a really short time 10e60 years from now. The slow-moving beings of that era are going to post to their discussion boards asking why anyone would care about what the universe was like for its first 10e10 years.

Re:Already covered this

[FunWithHeadlines]

Yeah, I was surprised this was modded "Troll." I could understand "Off-topic" if the mod didn't want a lame joke in the thread, or "Funny" if they were in a good mood. But "Troll"? I'm not even anonymous! ;)

"in fact an almost perfect liquid."

[Craig_P92669]

Tequila?

Re:Black holes also being created at RHIC?

[bunratty]

A small black hole certainly could devour the earth. Although its gravitational attraction would be weak, it could make direct contact with other matter and draw it into the black hole. This would increase its gravitational pull and draw more matter in. This would continue until there was no more matter to come into contact with.

FURTHER proof, my friends:

[Herr_Nightingale]

The scientists themselves suggest that the liquid state is one of a number of states that quark/gluon soups can take, but that the early Universe was still most likely a gas.

Further proof, should you need it, that hindsight is *not* 20/20. I fscking hate that cliché; here is my public thanks for this story.

A perfect fluid?

[Gilmoure]

You mean 4 parts gin, 1/2 part sweet vermouth and 1/2 part dry?

Hmmm...martini...

And God saw that it was wet.

[fr2asbury]

Then the universe evaporated. Or uh . .. .something like that.

Mod parent down - incorrect.

[dr. loser]

The parent comment is a non-sequitor.

The CMB results have very little to do with the Brookhaven RHIC results. The CMB uniformity tells you nothing about the hydrodynamic properties of the quark-gluon plasma. The CMB does tell you about the electron-nucleon plasma that happened later.

And yes, I am a physicist.

Get the papers here

[Anonymous Coward]

The papers from the RHIC collaborations. The "liquid" state of quark-gluon plasma being discussed is called a color glass condensate.

Dang this fast-moving thing called science!

[mbrother]

Stuff like this, for an observer like me, is hard to keep on top of. That wouldn't be a big deal, but I have to teach cosmology at the grad level. There go my class notes again. Dang it!

at first I thought that read...

[mr_burns]

"Data Suggests Early Universe was Superfly"

Data Suggests Early Universe was Superfluid...

[pithraul]

...and Geordie agrees.

Am I the only one who read that as:

[gotr00t]

Data suggests early universe was stupified?

Re:Nope

[the_2nd_coming]

yeah.. umm.. see.. we have, as a society, moved beyond meta-physics and into real physics. thanks for playing though.

Superfluid or Not a Superfluid?

[Phroon]

The problem I see is, something is either a superfluid or it isn't.

From the article, it appears that the quark-gluon plasma behaves close to a low viscosity fluid, not a superfluid.

The difference is with a low viscosity fluid you can usually estimate it as having no viscosity and have your calculations come out close. However, a superfluid actually has no viscosity due to a quantum mechanical effect, but also has other interesting properties.

So is it a Superfulid? I'll have to read the paper when it is published.

Oh, the BNL source article (with links) is here.

Re:Nope

[Icephreak1]

yeah.. umm.. see.. we have, as a society, moved beyond meta-physics and into real physics. thanks for playing though.

The universe driven by your physics is eliminated the moment you close your eyes and go to sleep. Time, space and matter -- destroyed. All phenomena, including those your limited physics strive to explain, are created, driven by and dependent upon your awareness.

Consciousness and the universe are not mutually exclusive; they're one in the same. So once you've understood the nature of conciousness, something no science in all of eternity could ever explain, only then you'll fully understand the basis of all the universe's phenomenae.

- IP

Re:Black holes also being created at RHIC?

[ColaMan]

Hmmm. I'm pretty sure that there's a (theoretical) limit - once your black hole is smaller than an atom, well, it doesn't really bump into too much.

Of course, I have no idea of how much matter you need to make a non-subatomic-sized black hole.

Re:Black holes also being created at RHIC?

[Surt]

Well, while I believe the current theory about small black holes being too small to devour the earth, it's not for the reason you describe. A 200kg black hole might well be large enough to devour the earth. The problem comes not from the gravitational attraction of 200 kg, but from the growth of that mass. As the black hole is drawn towards the center of mass of the earth, it comes into contact with matter. For instance, it might fall from you experimental apparatus to the floor. Suddenly a small part of the floor joins the mass, and now it masses more than 200kg. Every bit of matter that it comes into contact with on its way to the center of the earth adds to the mass. Soon it reaches the center of the earth, where it resides inside a small vacuum shell that is generated by local mass falling into the hole. Since the center of the earth is presumed fluid, more and more matter continues to fall into the hole, and the hole grows. Eventually, the center of the earth is hollow, and the crust cracks, and the remainder of the earth falls into the hole.

Bottom line, a sufficiently massive black hole falling into the center of the earth is a scenario which ends badly for us all.

1 trillion

[doppe1]

From trillion

We are all agreed that 1 million = 1x10^6.

In the world (Britain, France, and Germany) where 1 billion = 1 million million (1x10^12), then 1 trillion = 1 million billion (1x10^18) or another way 1 trillion = 1 million million million (tri-million), or million cubed, to the power of three, as in tri.

In the parts of the wolrd (US & Canada) where 1 billion = 1000 million (1x10^9), then 1 trillion = 1 million million (1x10^12) so 1 trillion = 1000 billion.

As it is an American lab, it will be 1x10^12.
Personally, i feel the Americans just like their numbers sounding bigger.

Re:1 trillion

[leehwtsohg]

To make things more interesting, german also has "milliarde", "billiarde", "trilliarde"
milliarde = 1000 million (UK) = 1 billion (US) = 10^9
billiarde = 1000 billion (UK) = 1 quadrillion (US)= 10^15
trilliarde = 1000 trillion (UK) = 1 sextillion= 10^21

(It seems that this is also sometimes used in english - milliard, billiard, triliard(?))

Re:1 trillion

[Velox_SwiftFox]

That could make a german game of billiard balls interesting, if logistically difficult.

Re:1 trillion

[mdwh2]

Although to add to that, here in the UK the "US" version of a billion (ie, 10^9) seems to be common, and possibly more common than the older "English" version. Certainly the UK media always use billion to mean 10^9.

Given how often terms like "billion" are used in the media, yet people still refer to an english billion being 10^12, I do sometimes wonder how many people misinterpret the number..

Re:1 trillion

[nuttzy]

Personally, i feel the Americans just like their numbers sounding bigger.

Well the most frequent time we use "trillion" is to describe our federal deficit, and trust me, it's large enough without adding more zero's ;-) -Nuttzy

Re:Nope

[Tony Hoyle]

Did you make that up or did your guru tell it to you?

Newsflash. We are a part of the universe. A small part. A tiny, insignificant part. It doesn't depend on us for *anything*.

Perfect liquid?

[Pedrito]

...the quarks and gluons behaved as a liquid - in fact an almost perfect liquid.

So what are you saying? It got them drunk? I mean, it's like beer or something, but no hangover? Cool.

I wonder

[c0bw3b]

I wonder if in our efforts to understand how our universe came into being, whether we are creating little universes of our own in the laboratory. And if in those universes there are beings trying to figure out where they came from, how their universe was created and why is the sky green? And where do baby tentacle beasts come from? What is God, and why is his representative on earth a ferocious three legged razor weasel?

And I haven't even smoked pot today.

Re:Universe

[c0bw3b]

You may be thinking of the term fluid. Or I could be wrong...

Re:Irish people have always known

[Hao Wu]

"the universe was formed from Guinness,"

This is NOT a joke. It is extremely true and accurate.

Every molecule was created, including your Guiness Drink. Every atom of those molecule as well.

Every subatom of those atoms too. It is astounding, but true.

Re:Nope

[Icephreak1]

[The universe] doesn't depend on us for *anything*.

The universe is a conscious entity. It ain't there if consciousness ain't there, regardless of what you think.

- IP

The Bible says so

[terminal.dk]

Isn't that what The Holy Bible say ? First that was nothing, then there was water, then land.

Guess the aliens that left the bible on earth was more advanced than we are

Re:The Bible says so

[Moraelin]

Even then, I doubt that the big bang is what the bible referred to.

See, the Big Bang was more like, first there was liquid, then there was GAS (a step utterly missing in the bible), then there was liquid again as gravity collapsed clouds of hydrogen, then there was plasma as the star ignited, then it went bang and it was gas again... and only after a few more such cycles you had enough of the heavier elements to have land as we know it.

Besides, the last time I've read the bible it was more about Earth than about the universe as a whole.

Don't get me wrong, you can fit the Genesys is a lot of funny ways into the history of Earth. (My own pet theory is that God was a student, seein' as he did it all in the last 7 days.) But fitting the Big Bang in it is just not supported by _anything_ in the bible.

Re:The Bible says so

[Gilmoure]

Fuck, I'm starting to hate slashbot more and more each day.

In Soviet Russia, Slashdot hates you less and less each night, Fuck!

Re:The Bible says so

[CFTM]

*boos*
Get over the Soviet Russia Jokes, it's like Paris Hilton's cooch ... too many people go there and it's getting old and boring.

I always wonder about this

[Anonymous Cowdog]

I always read about how (insert foo event here) happened N microseconds after the big bang. What I wonder is how can N microseconds even have any meaning, when time is relative. I mean, did time even mean the same thing back then? What is a post-big-bang microsecond, anyway? Is there some cosmic constant this is measured against? Color me clueless.

Shhhh!

[The-Perl-CD-Bookshel]

If you cause too much of a stir about this *so called* "big bang" thing, President Bush might just pull the plug on the funding for this pagan science!

Jokes aside, this goes a long way to galvanize the theories of hydrodynamics (see: fluid dynamics for wikipedia).

Re: The Distribution of Galaxies in the Universe

[some guy I know]

Considering you have billions if not more dots spread out all over the place you would get the appeareance of a uniform universe.

Actually, my understanding is that, on a very large scale, the galaxies in the universe are distributed in a way that resembles the surfaces of bubbles in foam.
That is, the universe contains huge roughly spherical voids, and most galaxies are located where these voids meet.

Re:Nope

[forlornhope]

Stop being so concieted. The universe exists with or without you. The universe was here before you were born and it will continue to be here after you are dead and gone. Deal with it.

Re:Black holes also being created at RHIC?

[evanbd]

Hmmm. I'm pretty sure that there's a (theoretical) limit - once your black hole is smaller than an atom, well, it doesn't really bump into too much.

You're halfway there, but for the wrong reason. A tiny black hole just bumps into atomic nuclei less frequently, since it is sitting in a big pool of them (the Earth, since it fell out of whatever created it).

The problem with all this, however, is that tiny black holes evaporate, and therefore won't stick around very long. Physics collider ones don't stick around long enough to leave the vacuum chamber, let alone fall through the floor. See also Micro black holes.

Re:Nope

[Icephreak1]

Your 'consciousness' is a system of matter and energy just like everything else contained in the the universe.

Even more basic than that, the above observation manifested out of your awareness. You are conscious first, and you make these observations second. If you weren't aware of the phenomenae taking place, you'd have nothing to say about it; you couldn't possibly say anything about it.

The universe doesn't give a damn about you.

Have you conclusively figured out what 'you' are that allows you to make such a definite statement?

- IP

Re:Nope

[Icephreak1]

The universe exists with or without you.

Prove it, and do so without vicariously thinking you're someone else. Do it within the context of you, not what you believe others experience in your absence. That's exactly what you're doing.

- IP

Re:In The Beginning

[Barlo_Mung_42]

So all scientific achievement can be reduced down to "Some magical all powerful being did it. And if you cock your head just right and squint while reading this book it will prove it."
Cool!

Re:In The Beginning

[jonhuang]

Please lighten up. I'm saying that it's a nice, poetic coincidence; I thought some might be interested. Thanks.

Re:In The Beginning

[Anonymous Coward]

Different question, really. Science hasn't offered an answer to the question of a First Cause. (i.e. If the universe had a beginning, then what caused it to come into being.)

A supreme being as a first cause isn't a completely unreasonable theory, and scientific observation hasn't eliminated the possibility or proven the theory. Occams razor has two edges on this one, too. You can say "Is it likely that a magical being created the universe?" But you can also say "If the universe came into existence is it likely that it just magically appeared for no reason, or is it more likely that something caused it?"

You have a theory? Legitimately curious.

Re:A Quick Question

[nimblebrain]

Hear, hear.

I've been quite surprised at the influx of "odd" observations over the past few years; I certainly wasn't expecting local pancake structures.

You raise a pretty good point, though, on the structure of disks, large and small, in the first place.

Plasma physicists jump up and down that the in-vogue theories treat large-scale magnetic fields and currents as non-existent, as though charge must cancel out on the large scale, therefore it has no effect. Sometimes, they make a good point - some of the disk systems do resemble dynamos.

Some of the papers I've read in passing on "push" gravity theories estimate that the force of gravity is proportional to 1/d**2 locally, but trends to 1/d on the outsides of the galaxy. Otherwise, there's a lot of unseen matter there (and we haven't seen anything resembling the high-velocity clouds gathering on the edges of the galaxy)... or, alternately, we're ignoring a dynamo effect.

Or... etc. (Assuming we stop before postulating that angels sit on the edge fanning galaxies with their wings ;)

It's the bank of poorly-explained pieces that will lead us to our next big theoretical breakthrough (or revolution) - but it takes some special vigilance to keep track of what hasn't actually been explained properly, and what's been merely papered over.

Too many tweaks. They should have realized something was wrong sometime between inflation theory, and dark-energy-requiring ever-increasing-acceleration theory. Plenty of duct tape on things already :)

By the way, speaking of aether... ;)

I can understand the establishment position somewhat... it's either duct tape or anarchy. There's got to be a standard to measure against, but if the explanations start stretching thin, they need an exit strategy.

If that day comes, they will need to exit to something, though. What's out there that can explain the pancakes at multiple scales of the universe and other phenomena as well?

Perhaps they need to take a page out of other research and development, and apportion some funds to "blue sky" research.

The biggest dividends will come from research that's reviewed for logic, self-consistency and explanation of phenomena without regard to how well it fits into prior patterns. Pro-Ams and people in fields with more easily measureable results (applied sciences, for one) realize these benefits, but being in a field where so many assumptions have to be made to interpret the results in the first place make this next to impossible for the theoreticians to condone dissent.

Everybody's MMV :)

-- Ritchie

Well he actually was ignorant

[Nicolas MONNET]

He was ignorant of everything science taught us since then.

And that's quite a lot.

Re:Well he actually was ignorant

[jaoswald]

Um, these guys named "Galileo," "Newton," "Laplace," "Mach," "Maxwell," "Einstein," "Heisenberg" made a great deal of contributions to the theory of "cause" and "effect."

The whole concept of "cause" has been revolutionized by physical science. The very idea that we can write down differential equations which accurately describe the things like planetary motion, molecular chemistry, optics, behavior of atoms, microchips, and diode lasers, among countless other things, means that we have developed a much more precise notion of what a causal mechanism could be.

Thomas Aquinas would be absolutely baffled by the mathematical analysis of initial conditions. Yet Netwon's equations are second-order differential equations, the evolution of which are *completely* determined by the positions and velocities of particles at an instant in time, and requires no change in the equations to fully capture the dynamics. Similar boundary conditions suffice to specify the behavior of quantum systems.

Given that kind of precision with which we can analyze physical problems, the vague idea of a "Prime Mover" seems rather primitive, no?

There is No First Cause

[Nicolas MONNET]

Different question, really. Science hasn't offered an answer to the question of a First Cause

There is no "first cause"; there needs not be. The desire to find a 'cause' or a 'meaning' in natural events is just a continuation, a perversion of humans' social nature. In a social context, it is important, well actually it is absolutely necessary to be able to infer the intent of others' that caused the current state of social things.

We have evolved into being able to do this; and we need to do this all the time, lest we live alone and recluse.

Religious people fail to grasp that natural events do not need have a cause. Didn't ancients use to believe that earthquakes, volcanoes, plagues, storms and patterns on grilled cheese sandwiches were the manifestation of a divine purpose? And don't you laugh at them?

Re:Nobel price? What's it for?

[Oligonicella]

"Most in the field of physics, especially theoretical physics (and basically science in general), ..."

That would be the small group of people he mentioned. While discovering that the NA woods frog goes into extreme hibernation is interesting, it's not NP worthy. Some might see the super fluid aspect in much the same light.

Here's an equation for you: improve esoteric knowledge slightly != "benefit the human kind".

LHC in CERN is bigger

[chibitoku]

I used to work at the RHIC. The LHC at CERN in Geneva Switzerland is a bit larger. It also has more power.

Re:LHC in CERN is bigger

[xfmr_expert]

"My nuclear collider is bigger than yours!"

Re:LHC in CERN is bigger

[jaoswald]

Except LHC only collides protons ("H" for "hadron") with antiprotons, while RHIC collides heavy ions ("HI" for "heavy ion")

Which means there is a whole lot more quark matter concentrated into a small volume.

Re:Hm.. was this already written in the Quran?

[VanillaCoke420]

That's the beauty of religious texts. They were written way before humankind was even close to have this sort of knowledge, and yet educated adult people today honestly believe there is some sort of wisdom to gather from these texts - but only in hindsight of course. Before this new state of matter was discovered, water was probably interpreted as water. It's like Nostradamus' predictions that are confirmed only after something happened that someone think fits the prediction.

Re:In The Beginning

[VanillaCoke420]

Who says that a universe needs a first cause? And to add a magical mythioal god is just to say "ok, we give up, let's make something up and call it a day". Why would anyone do that? Isn't it better to just say "we don't know, but maybe one day we will, and not thanks to religion anyway".

Cosmic Foam

[HomerJayS]

As this link proves, the perfect liquid of the early universe was most definately beer, not vodka.

Last time I checked, my vodka was not bubbly.

Re:Nope

[AlexV]

If you are unconcious, or asleep, and the universe ceases to exist, where does all the information to recreate it when you awaken go? It can't be contained within you, as the universe is defined as everything that exists, which means that it cannot be a contained within anything, as it's defenition has to include the container.

Why bother mentioning the age of the universe?

[mindflow]

Funny how people can round the age of the unviverse up/down to the thousands of billions of years, as if not important. ("Just give or take a few thousand million years and it's close enuogh"). And at the same time be extremly spesific about that mikrosecond after time began. That mikrosecond seems very lonely in a timespan of "a few thousand million years".

Re:Why bother mentioning the age of the universe?

[jaoswald]

Well, we use completely different methods to compute these quantities.

"Age of the universe" are based on astronomical measurements. The distance to astronomical objects is generally impossible to determine directly; things are dim for two reasons: being not very bright, or being far away, and you can't tell just by looking which one it is. Instead, we must almost always make some assumptions about the behavior and intrinsic brightness of "standard candles" such as supernovas of various types. There is a lower bound on the age of the universe from "age of a rock" and "age of meteorites" determined pretty accurately by radioactive dating.

"Seconds after the big bang" are determined by calculations involving fundamental particles at high energies. These can be confirmed to some extent by laboratory experiment at facilities like particle colliders.

A simpler description is that our universe was evolving very rapidly at the early stages, so that a 3 minute old universe looks much different from a 10,000 year old universe. While a 15 billion and 16 billion year-old universe looks about the same.

Ever notice how quickly an infant develops, and how gradually adults change appearance? Same idea.

Re:In The Beginning

[bigdave42]

The thing that no-one seems to answer is, if there is a supreme being who created the universe etc., etc., then who created the supreme being? Where did he/she/it come from? What laws of physics does the supreme being obey? If none, why not?

Just because there might be a big white beard in the sky, it doesn't answer the questions about the origin, it just moves them.

Re:Imaginary Numbers

[millennial]

Numbers ARE quantity. To say "Show me a number without a quantity" is meaningless.
You can have 1 apple. You cannot have i apples.

No need for a first cause...

[JohnnyCannuk]

Michio Kaku and other M\String theorists along with some qunatum theorists have come up with a fairly reasonable set of "many worlds" theories that may explain it.

"Our" universe is just one of a possibly infinite number of universes poping in and out of existance all the time. "Ours" may be only 12 to 14 Billion years old, but it was part of another similar universe before that, which itself was part of a similar universe before that etc etc ad infinitum. the "Metaverse" itself is infinite - no beginning and no end.

So, this is one hypothosis that does not require a first cause or a creator. No need for a God. No begining and no end.

Check out a very good radio programme from last Saturday on this very subject: Multiple Worlds, Parallel Universes on CBC's Quirks and Quarks.

Besides, just because we can't yet explain the "First Cause" doesn't mean that it must therefore be "God". A God of the gaps always grows smaller in the face of scientific discovery.

Oh, and if you are claiming that there is a supreme being, the onus is on you to prove the existance of this God, not on science to prove that it doesn't exist. The evidence for the non-existance of God is simply a logical byproduct of scientific discovery of the nature around us.

Re:No need for a first cause...

[JohnnyCannuk]

Pretty much....

glass not a liquid urban legend

[cinnamon colbert]

Wow - u qualify as a slashdot uber expert

I was taught this in sunday school

[ylikone]

I was taught that when God created the earth, it was just a big blob of water.

Also, I was taught that time has been slowing down since creation. This explains why the biblical age of the Earth is about 6000 years. At creation, time was moving almost infinitely fast, then started exponentially slowing down. Also explains why biblical characters in the old testament often lived to be around 800-900 years old. Instead of time moving faster though, I would guess just the earths rotation has slowed down.

I have long since dropped all those crazy theories and am no longer a practicing Christian... but it is interesting to see how the Christians get more fodder for their "proof" of God and all things related.

That should be...

[jotok]

The data suggest that the universe was a superfluid. Not suggests.

If they had one datum, the sentence would have been correct; however, I would then doubt the validity of conclusions drawn from one data point :)

we all started out as fluid

[taanstaafl]

... after all

Not the biggest collider...

[polemon]

The statement "The biggest collider" is not correct, a simmilar installation, but by ways larger is the CERN in Genf (Switzerland). The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) measures about 7 Kilometers, or 4.34 Miles in Circumference. According to the CERN Website, a new gigantic collider is planned, that will measure incomprehensable 49 Kilometers in circumference. Another new hadron collider is the TESLA Installation in Hamburg (Germany). It will be a Tandem linear Collider, with it's origin in the DESY complex, wich is a pretty large Research installation itself, check their Website.

...Not The biggest Collider

[polemon]

The statement "The biggest collider" is not correct, a simmilar installation, but by ways larger is the CERN in Genf (Switzerland). The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) measures about 7 Kilometers, or 4.34 Miles in Circumference. According to the CERN Website, a new gigantic collider is planned, that will measure incomprehensable 49 Kilometers in circumference. Another new hadron collider is the TESLA Installation in Hamburg (Germany). It will be a Tandem linear Collider, with it's origin in the DESY complex, wich is a pretty large Research installation itself, check their Website.

Re:Nope

[Icephreak1]

It has nothing to do with your fantasy that the universe is conscious, a claim with no empirical support.

This is an easy one. Without time, there cannot be matter. Without matter, space loses its context. Time goes out the window the moment I close my eyes to sleep. If the flow of time is dependent on your awareness of it, everything else is too.

- IP

genesis

[magwm]

this shreds new light on the first verses of the bible!! because it says (Genesis 1, 2-3):

.. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

so, must we interpret literally after all? first the waters (fluid) and then the light (big bang)!

personally, i just think like Zaphod Beeblebrox that it's all a Gib Gnab..

Re:genesis

[jaoswald]

A concrete interpretation of the description in Genesis would work equally well for any sequence of events of the form

1) There was stuff
2) Something happened to the stuff

The fact that this stuff was pretty unlike ordinary water in all respects, and that the event of the big bang seems to have pretty little to do with electromagnetic radiation (which couldn't propagate freely until after the plasma of electrons+nuclei condensed into neutral atoms), means that "water" and "light" hardly count as a solid foundation for literal interpretation.

Re:Nope

[Mant]

You are spouting Solipsism

. People who discover it think they are really deep at first and seem to like to show off on web forums because it cannot be disproved.

Yes, you can't disprove solipism, all your information about the universe comes from your interpretation of sensory data by your brain from your body. There is no external source you can go to for verification.

It is a practical and philosophical dead end though. You can babble about how you need to understand your consciousness to understand the universe, but the people doing that actual science will come up with theories that actually explain things and are actually useful.

I'll take thier understanding over your wafling any day.

Re:In The Beginning

[Kehvarl]

Questions about a First Cause or Prime Mover generally break down to the principle of Sufficient Reason, which basically says: if something happens then it didn't happen with no motivating factors.
This is a nicely intuitive concept, but it only comes into play because people dislike the ideas of infinite regression (which all First Cause arguments eventually degenerate into).
Infiite Recursion is only problematic for people because the idea of there being no beginning seems nonsensical and counter-intuitive.

nature of the universe

[vikny]

another good reading is "The Pillar of Celestial Fire" by Robert Cox.
Has anyone read it yet? .. If not .. it's a must read.

Re:In The Beginning

[Yunzil]

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Except that there wasn't any water at all for at least several million years, since oxygen wasn't built yet.

Re:Nope

[Icephreak1]

There is no reason to believe that the flow of time is dependent on your awareness of it, and plenty of reason to believe otherwise.

You fall asleep one moment, have no conscious perception of time passing, and you wake up the next. How much more evidence you do need? Come on, time is supposed to be an unassailable universal property! If it exists independent of our awareness, mind explaining to me why I don't perceive six or seven hours passing while I'm snoring away the way I do while fully awake?

You're 0 for 6 here. Care to keep going? Like I said, both your physics and your philosophy are pathetically naive, and I'd add "your logic" to that list as well.

Keeping score, are ya? Since when have you become the authority you arrogant bastard?

Talk about assumptions. The entire foundation of physics is a complex assumption itself. When it can answer the question of human purpose, the why instead of the how, then it will be fit for that task. As it stands, physics operates within limited parameters that at best cannot verify its own truths. It arrogantly strives to answer questions it's ill-equiped to handle. It's a cheap digital substitute of real inquiry into truth.

Affirm or deny, there's only one purpose for all of science. The acquisition of that holy grail of truth, and they ain't gonna get to that point. Not within multiples of a zillionth of a percentage point.

I challenge any mathematician to put in even a quarter lifetime worth of work without considering even once how the human mind factors into the equation of existence, matter and motion.

Bottom line, your time will come. If you're serious about your physics, you will eventually question the value of it and whether it has any real purpose for assessing the human condition and the universe you live in.

- IP

Re:Nope

[Icephreak1]

..but the people doing that actual science will come up with theories that actually explain things and are actually useful.

Science could attempt to come up with a theory attempting to explain the frequency individual drops fling off a stream of urine headed to the toilet, but that's all it would ever be -- theory. Theories don't explain things to any kind of finality, they're merely meant to satisfy our voracious ego's need to know now, have now, until we get bored of that and begin thinking up a new and improved theory.

- IP

Re:Nope

[Icephreak1]

"Sure, you wicked atheist, you may disbelieve now, but you will eventually see the error of your ways."

Please. If you're an atheist, you're as much as a moron as a theist.

- IP

Glass is a bad example, true,

[jonskerr]

but solids obviously do flow. How about sand? Cat litter? Gravel? I can pour flour out of a jar into a mixing bowl, etc etc. Really anything made of individual bits in a pile can flow, I s'pose..

Re:Glass is a bad example, true,

[jaoswald]

The most-used technical definition of a solid is a phase which can support a shear stress. This can depend on the frequency of the applied stress.

The individual grains of your material are solid, but the individual grains are not getting distorted in the way an element of liquid does when it is poured. Only the grains considered as a group participate in the flow.

What you describe is usually called "granular flow". Not solid, but very different from fluids.

not superfluid, perfect

[percy69]

Superfluid=single quantum state
Perfect fluid=no viscosity Different.

Re:A Quick Question

[nimblebrain]

Spit, spit, spit.

No, worse than that - I made the mistake of not only installing Autoform, but not adding Slashdot to the Autoload URLs ignore list.

Now my comment, which expressed annoyance with the concept of 'consciousness' as a fundamental unit of anything as well as bashing the idea that a conscious observer has to be present to 'collapse the wave function' (measurement operators don't require a human brain behind them), is lost to the four winds, overwritten by the last dang thing I wrote.

At least I have a chance to go back and redo it and apologize for the mess.

Thanks for pointing it out *shakes head* *sigh*.

It wouldn't be for karma - my karma's already excellent :)

Re:Nope

[nimblebrain]

My apologies to all - and remember, kids, don't install Autoform on your Firefox without being aware of the consequences (like having it re-load your last posted comment :)

Now, to try and re-create what I actually wrote...

Nothing is more fundamental than simple awareness, from which all matter originates.

IMO, nothing is more complicated than simple awareness, and especially consciousness. It takes a lot of extra machinery to do the 'introspection' part - the part we would call consciousness. We have an astounding amount of working memory and attention systems to support it. Books like Joseph LeDoux's Synaptic Self and even the more impenetrable Walter Freeman's How Brains Make Up Their Minds are fascinating tomes on what goes on in that wonderful grey pudding in our noggins.

I also take issue with the astounding human-centric idea that it takes "consciousness" to collapse quantum probabilities. Stretching that idea out to the idea that the equipment was in several superpositions of state until a human came along quickly enters the realm of pulp fiction. It's our modern-day "if a tree falls in the forest..." question, and I'll put my hat in the ring on the "yes" side.

Our current-day quantum experiments behave effectively like closed systems; they are not actually closed systems, and when it comes time to measure things, the measurement instruments come to participate in the quantum system. They're expressed mathematically as 'measurement operators' when they get turned into classical information. The entanglement or other quantum states may very well be transferred to and lost in the measurement device - probably any measured quantum state that the No-Cloning Theorem applies to.

*grin* You, of course, are more than welcome to speculate on whether neutrons are composed of 3 units of peace, 4 units of contemplation inside a 4*pi radius of transcendentalism :)

I'm sorry, that was a bit cheeky. You're more than welcome to your Eastern Mysticism - and that I will respect. I would, however, challenge you to come up with any way a scientist could ever usefully include 'consciousness' or 'awareness' in their research :)

-- Ritchie

Re:Nobel price? What's it for?

[Urkki]

• Here's an equation for you: improve esoteric knowledge slightly != "benefit the human kind".

Yes. However, it's also true that:
"never improve esoteric knowledge" == "still live in a cave with an expected life span of 15 years"