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What Happened Before the Big Bang?
The Bad Astronomer writes to tell us that a recent advance in Loop Quantum Gravity theory appears to allow the mathematics of cosmology to be extended to the time before the Universe underwent the Big Bang. Bad Astronomer also attempts to simplify things a bit with his own explanation of the new discovery.
So there's no before and after, right?
The big foreplay.
Come on, what do you think, the universe is a whore?
As Bad Astronomer noted, this isn't the first time something like this has been proposed. I think the first time I read about it was in a book by George Gamov and then subsequent work/proposed theories done by Roger Penrose & the well known Stephen Hawking.
Considering past results of my comments on matters I have little formal education on, I'll won't bother to remark on this work.
My work here is dung.
I've always held that asking what came before the Big Bang is like asking what is North of the North Pole? It's a grammatically correct question but we can't expect it to mean anything.
While we don't have a working theory of quantum gravitation, we do have some strong hints that time and and space themselves were forged in the Big Bang. If you look at a Universe a Planck Length is size, the error in the time of any event observed would be longer than the time the Universe has existed for, to this point, and any error is position would be large than the current Universe at that size.
In short, time and space are useless measurements of a Universe this small.
In a very real sense, the Universe has always existed but has a finite age. I think once I came to understand what this really meant, it's very a beautiful truth about the world. I am sceptical of any theory that talks about a "before" the Big Bang - I think it misses one of the most important truths there is to know!
Simon
"Hey guys, watch this"
consult the niblonians. they were 16 years old when this all went down.
oh marmalade.
That certainly explains his lack of presence while we generally screw things up on him.
Who's going to notify the coroner that the our Diety is lying crumpled in a ditch along the Celestial Highway?
so he could light the fuse on his latest science project
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Unfortunately for this analogy, there is something North of the North Pole, if you think "outside the sphere".
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I decided I would think about this a billion years from now, in the year 1,000,000,2007. No hurry, right?
Everyone knows that just before the big bang, chuck norris was launching a roundhouse kick....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
These theories may seem like mumbo-jumbo or magic, but they have that very basic property of science: they're testable.
As a science-loving person, I almost fell in ecstasy by just reading this sentence. It really gets things straight regarding religious fanboyism. So "eat that, Intelligent Design".
Ahh... saying that felt so good.
"What Happened 6001 Years Ago?"
Fixed that for you.
Trolling is a art,
I posted first
:P
I thought Greedo posted first! You know, maybe it's the Big Bang special edition
There was the BSOD?
Something can come from nothing, our definition of nothing will have to be revised.
... perhaps?
Nothing, plus a little bit more
So now that we know what came before the big bang.
What came before that which came before the big bang?
the picture on the last link, I expect it was a virgin before hand...
super-temporal pre-bang overlords!
-WtC
Creator of RPerl, Scouter, Juggler, Mormon, Perl Monger, Serial Entrepreneur, Aspiring Astrophysicist, Community Organiz
I guess they redefined the value of "billion" somewhere between now and then.
I was hoping that the article was going to propose an experiment that would confirm or deny loop quantum gravity, but it doesn't. AFAIK, LQG and string theory are not experimentally falsifiable theories, that has been one of the principle controversies. A lot of scientists (Philip Anderson for instance) don't think these its real science.
There is no "before".
There has to be a big bang to have a "before big bang".
Now, 6000 years ago, roughly, God spoke and the Universe lept into being.
All you techno-geeks need to accept that. Put away your computers. I have. I stopped using computers because they are the "Beast" (Beast is a Trademark of the RMS Corporation, a wholly, and holy, owned subsidary of FOSS, owners of the GNUniverse).
God will smite you computer using disbelievers for not accepting the 6000 year Universe. Your only salvation is to face Kentucky and believe.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
This is going to sound -1 Troll to most here, and I don't have much factual evidence behind any of it, but I think that there are many ways to look at time as a whole. In recent years we've all gotten accustomed to the concept of linear time - time that has a definitive beginning and end. It doesn't seem to make much sense beyond a few religious faiths, thus the whole BC/AD deal after "the son of God" was born. That's how much we've thought about it, yep. I've read before (can't site it) that in previous ages, time wasn't thought of as linear but as recycling seasons (Pagan?), such as the "circle of life" and nothing more. It would go in circles (as the year concept), but such emphasis on linear progression wasn't universally accepted until world economics and money came into play, with accruing interest on loans, etc.
I think if we explored other concepts and theories of "time" we would get a much broader perspective on where we might have come from, what happened "before" the big bang, etc...maybe that's what quantum theory is exploring..I have to get more into that to be able to argue any points. What I do know is that when I'm in meditation, there are many so-called "universal truths" that I realize, which cause me to question our current definitive concept of time.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Dinner, a movie, and a whole lotta wine. Giggity-giggity-goo!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
.gnola evom esaelP
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
The multiverse substrate of the universe is like a whole bunch of registers holding entangled qubits.
The universe is a subset of the states of those things that exhibits some kind of consistency that
allows one subregion of it to observe and affect another subregion of that statespace.
Spacetime is the bounds of the phenomenologically self-consistent subspace of the statespace.
Quantum observations are observations of the interface between the self-consistent subspace
and surrouunding not-necessarily-consistent states. The present moment is by analogy the
massively parallel "program counter" that is somehow, from the point of view of denizens
of the subspace, the boundary of self-consistent states and states whose consistency with
the subspace has not been evaluated yet. Energy is the key mystery. It is how "adjacent"
states observe and influence each other, and its flow is what is constrained by the phenomenological
consistency.
Pass me another mushroom.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Always comes the screeching tires (unless you have ABS, but there was no ABS back then)
globaltics.net - Political discussion for a new world
A load of turtles had a big argument about which one was going at the bottonm of the pile?
At the bottom of the
The theory that is proposed in the article is that our universe came from a former "crunched" universe. But the current observations of our universe indicate accelerating expansion which in turn implies that our universe will end in a cold death rather than a big crunch. That seems to be an unresolved contradiction. Does these mean that loop quantum gravity is incompatible with observation (which would conclude that LQG is not correct)? Or did the previous universe have such different laws of physics that it's fate was different than the fate of our universe?
someone get me a dictionary.
or rather, if there was one, that it was a localized event. we talk about all of these dead ends in cosmology: black holes, from which nothing escapes, the heat death of the universe, where simple entropy reduces everything to luke warm death, the hubble constant, which describes everything as slowly expanding away from everything else. and we even talk about this birth of the universe. birth and death: doesn't that strike you as anthropomorphic?
i don't know. our current understanding of cosmology seems open-ended to me. i think it would be very arrogant for us if we believe we have seen all of the dynamics of the universe in play, that our model of the universe is anywhere near complete. i think there is phenomena about the functioning of the universe we are not aware of yet
the hubble constant: why does this have to describe the ENTIRE universe? why is it not merely a local expansion/ contraction? (when i say local, i'm referring to a location that is trillions of light years in diameter)
black holes: perhaps a black hole of massive enough size reaches some sort of physical constraint we can't even begin to understand, resulting in a "big bang", thereby renewing the universe... locally (where local, again, is extremely huge)
second law of thermodynamics: i think a localized "big bang" would put a new twist on this law
my disbelief in the big bang as describing the birth fo the ENTIRE universe stems from an instinct i have about the history of science:
1. at one time, people believed the world was flat
2. at one time, people believed the sun revolved aorund the earth
3. at one time, people believe humans were created in the image of god, above the other beasts
can you see where we are going? extrapoloate out from the various anthropomorphic and human-centric beliefs we have held in the past. and now look at our current understanding of what the big bang means about how the universe is supposed to resemble our birth/ death, and supposed to resemble our abrahamic religions and myths about creation
so the big bang seems very creationist to me, a vestige of the myths about a god creating us from dust and void. and yet these abrahamic beliefs are so ingrained in our collective culture, we still labor under that mentality when we make our scientific hypotheses. the whole idea of birth is so very anthropomorphic. the whole idea of death is so very anthropomorphic. yes, us humans need to be born, and to die. why does the universe?
in other words, projecting out from what the history of science has taught us about mankind being wrong about being the center of things, the obvious humbling projection of what we have learned about being wrong when we describe our world in human terms is that the universe is:
1. timeless. without ending and without beginning
2. infinite, in all directions
the irony of course, is that this belief of mine that hedges its bet against future cosmological discoveries not only puts me in some sort of futuristic vanguard, it also puts me in the middle of one of the central beliefs of one of the most ancient religions (i am not a jain, i just find it ironic and funny that one of the world's ancient religions might actually be way ahead of all of us in one of its tenets)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Even if the math can be extended to a time before the Big Bang, is there any way to test the predictions? My understanding is that, if there even was anything before the Big Bang, any information (in the Claude Shannon, Information Theory sense) about it wouldn't have passed through that event to this here and now. It's much like there is debate about whether any information that passes the event horizon of a black hole can ever be recovered. The information may well be there, but can we get at it?
You can go north of the north pole, by entering the sphere. Standing on the north pole with a horizontal compass makes it spin, a vertical or dip compass would point straight down. Going in a straight line down into the earth would be moving north of the pole.
But now I'm just splitting hairs.
Psalm 2:6-8
I will proclaim the decree of the LORD
He said to me, "You are my Son
today I have become your Father.
Then in a universe assembled by forces way way way beyond our control, perhaps both grand champions and stuffs on a rock can combine, collate, and codepend knowing that we're all lucky to have even existed at all.
It was created when God and his roomate, Chugs, were arm wrestling. God farted and waved it towards Chugs to gain an advantage. Then God asked to borrow Chugs' lighter and lit his next far on fire, thus creating the Big Bang.
Is it just me, or do you hate it when people say "Is it just me..."?
WTF is up with the first link - the one that points to "http://.moc.liamg..ta..remonortsadabeht./"??
Is this some kind of new URL hashing mechanism? Should I try and decrypt this with the 0x09 key? Does the link predate the universe (thereby making it inscrutable to those within the universe)?
Or is my connection/machine/browser just horribly, horribly FUBARed?
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
I hope the pre-bang universe would have let the beans uneaten...
"It's been thought for sometime that there may have been some previous Universe that existed "before" ours. This is a difficult idea, because in the Big Bang model, space and time were created in that initial moment."
From the time I was a 5th grader (~1982), I had always assumed that the Big Bang represented a point where a universe prior to our current one collapsed on itself and violently exploded setting everything into motion to create this universe. In my head, I likened it to a star collapsing on itself and exploding as a supernova, but on a far larger scale. If something like that can happen to a star, surely an entire universe could collapse on itself as well. Didn't need an equation to tell me that this was possible, it just seems logical.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
no your not. indeed you will be "heading" south along the pole. Take out a bar magent and picture yourself standing on top of it. the only place to go is south of you.
if you "walk along the pole" your still heading south.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The universe DOES recreate itself, each time stranger than before...
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Ah, thank you. I had forgotten it entirely, and people do ask.
accept no limits but time
I think that the problem we have is forming a mental image of time not as some quantity (5 minutes, for example) but as a scalar (the difference between 5 minutes ago and now, in the positive future direction).
We just don't talk or think about time having some of the same properties as physical space since we only experience it in one direction. Our lives are a filmstrip that doesn't roll backwards. What happened before the beginning of the tape? That's like asking if there was a universe before I was born?
I think we'd do a lot better to rename it something less associated with it's common useage, such as the Temporal axis. Then you can start to discuss what the properties of that axis are, without running into issues with metaphorical associations.
(see also: Free Software, Free as in Libre, not as in Gratis)
"What's THIS button do?"
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
if expansion continues to accelerate, then the observable universe one day becomes smaller than any structure. 20 billion years from now, according to the Big Rip theorists, nothing can communicate with anything else so no force interactions. So the Universe goes from Big Bang to Big Rip, and we're screwed. And nothing to cause a Big Crunch, everything is just a lucky one-time event.
"I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return." Ecclesiastes 3:18-20 (English Standard Version)
it's just a hunch:
1. time and time again, anthropomorphization has informed our theories about how our surroundings work, and time and time again, anthropomorphization has turned out to be wrong
2. talking about the universe as having a birth, and a death, seems very anthropomorphic to me
therefore, our current understanding of the cosmos, ie: the big bang, and various theories of its "death" is probably wrong too, because it is so anthropomorphic
that's all i'm operating on, that's the sum total of my hunch. not one shred of solid proof
but i'm not trying to say i have anything substantative, but i am saying we should beware of arrogantly thinking we have seen everything there is to see to adequately describe a functional theory of the cosmos at this point in our efforts to understand the universe
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect. But actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly... timey-wimey... stuff.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
A scientific theory first of all has to offer a test to be scientific. I can postulate that at T=-1 the universe was a big, pink pineapple. I'm pretty sure that someone with a firmer background in astrophysics than me can come up with a model that would describe that credibly. Is it scientific? In no way. It offers no chance to test this theory, no way to verify or falsify it.
So, why bother speculating? Yes, mathematically it's possible. Mathematically it's possible to reverse time.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
and print out 10,000 copies
then we will hire a crop duster to spread the fliers all over various southern baptist strongholds in the usa, and the vatican
thanks for that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There are 3 'north' poles.
Only in the context of magnetic navigation does your comment relate to the magnetic north pole.
The magnetic pole is not fixed and is based upon the iron core of our planet. It has a deviation and changes over time and location.
There is the political north pole which cartography is based upon. This is where we get nautical measurements from. It is 5400 nautical miles from the North Pole to the equator.
90 degree right angle from pole to equator; 60 minutes each degree, 1 nautical mile per degree : 90*60 = 5400 nautical miles.
Then there is the axial or celestial 'North' pole which is where our 23 degree tilt comes from. That measurement is not a constant either as our planet has a `wobble`.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
So, you're saying it IS turtles all the way down.
Although it's matter compressed in a tiny point in space, a black hole is differentiated from your dick in that it has mass.
when we walk in the woods at nigthh we see faces in tree bark, we see faces in clouds
ship captains refer to their boats as "she"
we think like this because so much of our intellect is devoted to our relationships with our fellow humans, so much so that it infects nearly every way in think. not that i think we should or could ever think anthropomorphically and become emotionless robots, just that we should be aware of this subtle bias we have in all of our thoughts and perceptions
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Motherfucker, it's = it is, and YOU ARE is YOU'RE not YOUR.
Here is a "truth" that I find beautiful:
Our best efforts at investigation have so far revealed that the principles that give rise to the world-as-we-know-it are so unlike the world-as-we-know-it that our brains have a very hard time grasping them.
There is a common-sense notion of time which is firmly rooted in our common experience of it. Our brains evolved to experience it and understand it in a way that is useful to us. This understanding includes a level of absolutism: one second for me is one second for you, no matter where you are or how fast you are going. However, we have already experimentally verified that this notion is incorrect...one second for me can actually be two seconds for you, based on our relative velocities. While we can state this, and even make mathematical models describing it, we have a very hard time conceptualizing it.
Our inability to "get our heads around" our observations makes some types of hypothesizing very dubious. Was there time before the big bang? Until we can really mentally grasp how we think time works we will not be able to determine whether or not this question is meaningful. Even when we think we have abandoned the common-sense understanding of time and are discussing it strictly within the context of our observation-based model, we will still make the mistakes of allowing our common-sense understanding to "infect" the statement of our hypothesis and lead us into very peculiar paradoxes.
Aside from that, we will never really know if the principles we have observed are as accurate as we think they are. Some day we may discover new evidence that demonstrates that time operates even more strangely than we currently believe, and this new evidence will change the meaningfulness of the question about time before the big bang.
We may swim ever-deeper, but we will never really know whether we have touched the bottom of the sea, or just another underwater plateau.
"Scientists have made false statements in the past. Scientists are making statements. Therefore, scientists are making false statements."
should be
"People have made false anthropocentric statements in the past. People are making anthropocentric statements about the Universe now. Therefore, people are possibly making false statements."
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
my observation is anti-anthropomorphic. yes, it is based on a hunch, which i freely admit. there's no gotcha there. furthermore, if i have a hunch, that does not mean the hunch is automatically anthropomorphic
you should tone down your eagerness to shout hypocrisy when you fail at some pretty simple observations of the subject matter
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
1. i think this bias towards anthropomorphization is more deeply rooted than just our visual perception. i think it's in every facet of our brains' operation, from the lowest to the highest faculties
2. therefore, our ability to transcend anthropomorphization in our development of science is a great credit to us all, so strong is our mental bias towards anthropomorphization
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Where's the math ? :)
Link
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Last I checked, right before the Big Bang, God said "I'm gonna make a universe", then *bang* it happened...
Quite a bit of foreplay I would imagine!
You and this gentleman must be kindred spirits:s trophe_abusers.html
http://www.wgz.org/chromatic/projects/emperor/apo
42!
As if everyone here didn't already know that!
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
set off a mini big bang that removed the plague that was killing the Ancient in the milky way.
and that set off a big bang and we will soon see what that is like in stargate universe
No, there are 4 north poles. You forgot to count Peter.
***Posted anonymously
>One implication of this "cosmic forgetfulness," as Bojowald calls it, is that history does not repeat itself-the fundamental properties of the current era of the universe are different from the last, Bojowald explained. "It's as if the universe forgot some of its properties and acquired new properties independent of what it had before," he told SPACE.com.
So not only does God play dice, but He re-rolls to get a better attribute set.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
while myths explaining the worlds origin are set in stone, and have no need to change.
..
.. I only care because my life seems to be affected by those who have no
:)
the intellect would like to grasp its own origin, but unfortunatly for it it did not come from a place of intellect.
we might figure out where we came from, and at that time I'm sure that it will sound a whole lot like the 'crazy' myths that
have been being generated since time came into fashion. a few hundred years of science, several thousand years of myth
lets compare them.
myth has credence to those who have experienced and generated it. unfortunatly most of the media is of the non-spiritual type,
and seeks other explanations - which must come - while power mongers use the word God in various ways to further their own power.
anyway when this 12th Imam comes we'll all know what the deal is . . . religion isn't myth, and the world is not going to be
rationalized, ever, because it is ever-changing
experience with what is beyond the concrete reality that we create.
no longer concerned where the earth came from, where the earth is going is more important. the age of kali cannot continue; this
is certain. we will eventually run out of resources, in my lifetime, my childrens lifetime, or perhaps their childrens lifetimes.
anyway kudos to those still searching for the truth. we all search for truth instinctivly. however some of us are given better
instincts; one reading of the wikipedia page on Eschatology makes it clear that all myth systems predict an end to civilization.
until then lets meditate.
If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
Now we're talking, sounds well cool, can someone give me a mushroom.
Pretty please!
Unless you're not a native English speaker you can hardly call yourself a nerd if you are only semiliterate in English. Using the wrong homonym ("their goes there ball over they're"), misusing the apostrophe, or using the verb "loose" when you really mean "lose" ("You will loose your money". Gee, you will set your money free on purpose?)
It's fucking illiterates that spoil slashdot for me. When I'm logged on and have mod points and I see one of the above egregous errors that no true natively English speaking nerd could ever commit, I mod as flamebait, simply because IT PISSES ME OFF. After all, that's what flamebait is - a post that incites you to flame.
So semiliterates, you're welcome to try and enrich your mind with the fine nerdy slashdot articles. But if you can barely read, please refrain from posting your grammatical flamebait. If you're too fucking stupid to spell "lose" with only one "o" you're too fucking stupid to have anything worthwhile to say at a nerd site.
This result is interesting within the context of loop quantum gravity, because it offers an approximation within which the Big Bang can be modeled directly. However, it's worth not losing sight of the fact that the LQG theory upon which it is based has serious issues with consistency. It is based on a non-standard quantization technique with no experimentally supported basis, its Hamiltonian constraint has never been solved (which renders any approximation based on that constraint suspect), and it suffers from potentially infinitely many quantization ambiguities (again, with no known and maybe no possible experimental method for singling out the correct quantization. Some of these concerns are summarized here. (Yes, it's written by string theorists, and yes, string theory has its own set of problems with experimentally selecting the "correct" solution. But the correctness of string theory aside, the objections raised in that article against LQG are valid.) It's very premature to suggest that LQG's picture of the Big Bang may be correct when the fundamental theory itself has serious unresolved problems.
Yup. It's the U.S. billion.
Yeah, considering that I am a woman, that actually makes sense. Touche, douche!
Thanks for proofreading your rant. Nothing is more embarrassing than to correct someone on grammar, while making an equivalent error in your correction.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
So you and his mom had a big bang last night? H-O-T!
OpenBSD was created when Chuck Norris ripped the BSD kernel apart
/proc/uptime overflowed on Chucks 128 bit machine.
Chuck Norris runs UNICOS on his wristwatch
The FIN bit in an IP packet is used to indicate that Chuck is coming over the Ethernet to get you
The first terabit switch blew up when Chuck connected his computer to it
Chuck Norris measures the speed of his CPU in BogoTips, not BogoMips
82.4% of the liquid helium produced on earth is used to cool Chuck's superconductive CPUs
The IPV6 Address space was exhausted when Chuck assigned an address to each of the CPU's in his Beowulf cluster
Chuck Norris won the Turing award 4 times. Last time was for an algorithm to factor primes
Chuck Norris scans his own PC for Mail Viruses by smell. And God bless you if you spam him
Chuck Norris uses cat and echo instead of UPDATE and SELECT
Chuck Norris's LISP machine does not use a Garbage collector. It does not need one.
Half-life 2 was based on Chucks day off last week
For Chucks computer P=NP is irrelevant. Everything runs in one clock cycle.
Chuck Norris does not have CD Burner. He has a CD Blaster. And all CD's are rewritable on his machine.
Oracle is named after Chucks CPU branch prediction unit
Each of the CPUs in Chucks Beowulf cluster can crack any AES block in a picosecond
The PowerPC chip was pulled from the market when IBM realized that no processor is as powerful as Chucks brain
When Chucks computer crashes the lights dim all over town
Choogle Earth can zoom down to the level of quarks and leptons and is updated every femtosecond
Chuck Norris' chains down his mouse with Kevlar ropes ever since it ate his pet tiger
Chucks's house is wired with Cat100 quantum optical cable that carries terabit ethernet with ease
Steve Jobs's reality distortion field is generated by Chuck
The last time Chuck Norris had a core dump 15 people died
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
So then if I were standing at the north pole and stepped up onto on a little pile of snow I'd be going further north?
You mean 10 billion. Recheck where you put your commas.
That's what she said.
So, a Mythbusters episode?
In my time of studying things since I was little, I undertook the study of physics when I was eleven. When I was in college getting my BS in it I came to the conclusion that at the level where I was in my studies, physics turned to philosophy, for what do things like time mean anyway?
And then after studying philosphy on my own for a few years, I arrived at the conclusion that philosophy turns to religion because if we can never know these things for sure, we still have to make a decision how we are going to live our lives, and that is religion. In my opinion, real religion is when we consciously decide what to believe on our own (although it can be from reading about religions), fake religion is when someone makes the decision for us.
Why don't more people study Eastern religion's cosmologies? I think it's because people in general like information spoon fed to them instead of researching and processing it on their own. Western psychology is now appreciating many Buddhist ideas that can help certain people with psychological problems and many quantum physicists have felt that Buddhism may have good insights to the ultimate nature of reality. In my view any theory that does not take consciousness into account is incomplete and not worth my basing a belief system around.
Because without me observing it, it in fact doesn't exist at all. Even slashdot doesn't exist until I observe it and better yet post on it. Therefore as I didn't observe either our Universe starting, or ending then neither has happenend yet. Meantime I am in the here and now and there is no real "time" as we know it. OK now I am off to the gym, so slashdot will cease to exist for a while and the ymca will suddenly exist, as will all the roads leading to it from where I am now.
Perhaps, a prior universe had a different set of dimensions.
string theory may point to there being about about 10-11 dimensions I think depending on if Time is counted as a dimension. aside from the three(or four) we use often, there are 7 other dimensions that loop back upon themselves in the tiniest of distances.
My thought is, that the smallest 'things' that we can figure exist (bosons, mesons, photons...) are what they are depending upon which combination of those 7 dimensions they are looped around. Perhaps if a particle has Mass, it's looped around dimension 5, if it has Magnetism dimension 6, Strong force 7, Weak force 8... if two particles are looped around the same dimension, they will attact each other because they 'pinch' that dimensional 'tube' (instead of the classic model of a depression in a rubber sheet)
When a Universe collapses, its unbounded dimensions (in our case, up/down, left/right, and forward/back) may collapse into a closed loop, while presently closed loop dimension might break open and expand, each time giving a different combination of dimensions, and therefore forces.
The universe is a spheroid region 705 meters in diameter. What more do you really need to know?
"What Happened 6012 Years Ago?"
(If you're going to jab at religion, at least be up to date with the literature. It's not like it changes much.)
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
Of course, you're perfect, right? That's why you failed to capitalize "Slashdot"? Which is clearly a proper noun in the context of your post?
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
He makes some other valid points (in criticizing "creationists"), but here he seems to be unaware that the "supernatural" in christian thought is not stories about the paranormal, but layers of reality. Until the invention of computers, the classical analogy was "author" and "book". But books are static, and it is hard to imagine characters in books having free will (although many authors of fantasy literature insist that the characters, not the author, make choices).
Virtual reality is the analogy for the computer age. A virtual world is created out of nothing in the sense that it exists as information with no substance of its own. The Biblical texts clearly describe multiple layers, and by no means do they rule out multiple realities at a given level. Christian (and other) fantasy authors often write about characters that somehow migrate between realities. (Given the difficulty of this leap, it is no additional stretch of imagination to have the characters suddenly speak the language, etc.) Time is often described as weakly synchronized between worlds - like the clock on a VmWare guest OS.
One implication of this is that "days" in Genesis are likely not even epochs on our timeline but refer to time in the host reality. This is not a modern idea - the 6 day creation theory was already controversial in the early church, and many church fathers discounted it on the grounds that the days referred to time in the "authors" world rather than our world. For instance, Augustine suggested that the six 'days' refer to stages in the angelic knowledge of creation. In our temporal terms the 'days' reduce to an indivisible instant, so that all the kinds of things mentioned in Genesis were really made simultaneously (i.e. the simulation was started from a precomputed state). I'll have to do some research on whether any church fathers were idiotic enough to make 6 days of our time a dogma like young earth only groups do.
The New Testament also makes a claim with practical implications. This world will not die a thermodynamic "heat death", but will be halted and erased, and souls (living and dead - from tape archives if necessary :-) ) transferred to new bodies in a "new heavens and new earth". This is the doctrine of the resurrection. There are references to it in the Old Testament as well.
In any case, apart from close minded followers of the Greek philosopher Aristotle who caused Galileo so much trouble, Christian and Jewish thought has never had the myopic view imagined by atheists that our earth is the center of reality and "man is the measure of all things". Instead, the Psalmist asks, "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?"
Time Cube!
... as brane colisions without requiring a singularity, therefore showing time before the actual "bang"?
info:
Burt Ovrut M-Theory
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't.
Scientific cosmology is about relating the origin of the universe to, eg, the shape of the galaxies, or the amount of hydrogen in the universe. Religion tries to relate it to, eg, whether the US should have invaded Iraq. The latter is quite a bit more amibitious undertaking. However, science itself seems to have been partly inspired by Western religion and philosophy (I think it is Popper who has a famous quote on this, but I am too lazy to look it up.) Presumably, Eastern religion can also contribute (maybe it already has?) However, I find prefer to see religion and philsoophy as providing imagination and creativity to scientific though. I think that saying they provide insight isn't accurate to the history of how religion has actually influenced science. I wish I knew more about eastern religion actually- but there is only so much time in the day!
As to your link about quantum theory and the mind- I think it is important to note that this is not the orthodox view. The counterargument I have heard to this is: how much mind does it take "make the measurement" (cause the wavefunction to collapes, cause the electron to pick a slit, etc.) Does it take (Schrodinger's!) cat? A human brain? A PhD? Just my 2 cents.
How about this... the universe is collapsing on itself. As we speak. But it's also expanding. It just depends on your frame of reference.
j pg
e rejxd8.jpg
d spherexj8.jpg
:) Graphics whipped up in 3dsmax (yeah, sorry - no Blender experience!)
To explain this in the easiest way I can, I'm going to have to move from the multidimensional to the more easily understood dimensions. Save you have a sphere.
http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/2081/asphereft7.
That sphere has a top, and a bottom. Assume that at the top of that sphere, water is formed. This water will want to flow down that sphere to the very bottom of that sphere. In the case of our simple world - due to gravity, and gravity wants those water droplets to flow ever-faster toward that bottom, etc... ignore this bit about gravity except for the ever-faster.. they accelerate.
Now let's say you slice this sphere into strips going from the top, to the bottom. Like fancy orange peels.
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/928/aslicedsph
Now if you uncurl all those strips, and align them all together at the top, you get a sort of radial spokes system of peels. The more strips you made, the cleaner the result, but what it comes down to is this. The top point of the sphere is still a point. But the bottom point of the sphere is now no longer a point - it is part of a large circular shape in a disc.
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/6959/anunfolde
So if we had the same water droplets going from the top of the sphere to the bottom of the sphere, in this new disc-shape projection, then from the frame of reference of the top point - the center of the disc - the drops of water would appear to be continually diverging and accelerating outward. The Big Bang.
But here's the kicker. If you uncurl the strips and align them all together at the bottom and repeat the same thing - then a bunch of scattered around water droplets would appear to be accelerating towards it, and converging. The Big Crunch.
Just a thought - probably not original, but I don't remember reading anything on the subject.. it's not one I'm too interested in
I can understand the notion of needing a place to start from, but do we really know that there was nothing before the big bang, bounce, whateva ya wanna call it?
For all we know, that cosmic background could be the remnants of a Black Whole implosion that crunched everything within a given radius down to a singularity, and then puked it all back up, and the background noise we detect is the backside of the propagating wave front of that event.
If one examines things that go BOOM, one notes that if not constrained by something very solid, that the effects are felt in every direction as the blast wavefront propagates in all directions. If the observer of the remnant energy, was not, in point of fact, at the very center of the event, then they would not see an even background hum in all directions. If the observer were say, halfway across the universe then the observer would expect to see different energy levels ( if measurable ) depending on the direction of examination.
Now lets say for sake of argument that our belief that the known Universe did in fact result from a singularity that occurred someplace in the fabric of OMEGA ( can't think of a better word to use at the moment to describe what we postulate that might have existed before the "big bang" ) and the resulting reaction caused matter to be distributed in a somewhat spherical manner. Let say we are someplace towards the edge of the known universe. Would we not see a marked difference in the energy levels that we describe as the remnant of the Big Bang, depending on where we looked? So for example, when we look toward the center, or at least what we describe as the center, of the Universe would it not be detected at a different energy level then say, if we looked towards the outer edge of the "expanding universe"
It would seem to me that the inverse square rule would apply to this as much as anything else we understand. If that is the case, then we should see a marked difference in energy levels if the big band theory is correct, as we look for this background.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Perhaps in the Western Fathers (of which Augustine is one).
The Eastern Fathers (and perhaps the Western ones -- I don't know) were less concerned with nailing down the scientific fine points of creation than with the original relationship of (hu)mankind with God. This is vital theologically, because of the role of Christ as the new Adam, restoring creation to union with God.
That's a large part of the problem of the whole religion/science antagonism. The Bible wasn't meant as a science primer, just as geneologies in the Bible are not exact historically speaking (often conspicuous omissions related elsewhere, by archeology or even other Bible verses) because being an accurate historical record with all t's crossed and i's dotted was not the intention of geneologies until Western thought hit.
I'm one of those rare breeds who sees the creationism/scientism debate as unnecessarily polarized.. who says, "Why not both?" I agree that creationism shouldn't be taught in classrooms -- theology and science are for the most part orthogonal to each other -- though at times one may inform the other. I have few qualms with evolutionary theory, and whatever Big Bang theory is in vogue this year.
I wonder what would have happened had the (Western) Roman Catholic Church not tried to make specific pronouncements about anything scientifically early on, and had rather been content to say, "I don't know about that one," as the Eastern Church tends to do (we don't even try to nail down the specific points of transubstantiation because we simply don't know as to the details of how it works). Science and Christianity could have been friends rather than enemies had history played out differently, IMHO.
Hm... an additional wondering that may help illustrate my method of reasoning. The whole pro-life vs. pro-choice debate is also artificially polarized, IMHO. Both sides will tend to agree that abortions aren't a good thing to be pursued. In fact, the majority on both sides agree that fewer abortions is better. There was a study I read once that stated that over 80% of women that had abortions would have preferred to have the baby and would have done it had they had someone who would stand by them. The polarization sadly obscures the societal isolation that, IMHO, should be at least a focus, if not the primary one.
We know in our American bipartisan system that extreme polarization results in less getting done. *sigh*
What can I say about this post? First of all you failed to spell refridgerator correctly. Secondly you have some serious dangly bit in that second paragraph. You failed to spell moderate properly. You used explicatives which are certainly not allowed in formal writing. The worst of course is that you are an anonymous coward. While we are on the subject of correction I would like to point out that you CAN gain insight from imperfect communication if you so desire. Ignoring a point simply because it is syntacticly incorrect in a partial way shows that you are unable to communicate on all but the lowest level. If only but for syntax we as a species would be still in the dark ages. It is toleration and your own attempt to understand the speaker that will gain you knowledge. If we could all practice that sort of personal moderation perhaps we could advance at a faster rate as a species.
I have no doubt that there are errors in this post. Feel free to correct them. Perhaps while you are doing so you will see that point which I have made. As a result your quality of life may improve.
for not previewing before submitting
Not releasing products & changing the world.
Don't forget Bob the Angry Flower on loop quantum gravity.
Even if I love that quote, I am still embarrased to recognize it
> because if we can never know these things for sure
That's the only fallacy in your logic.
Beautiful post though.
> real religion is
Actually, "real" religion is putting your beliefs into action by the lifestyle you live. If you never do anything with your beliefs, they are just that, beliefs.
--
Teacher: "Question Authority!"
Student: "Says who!?"
Not only for native English speakers. The biggest accomplishment of the human being is language, which is what differentiates us from animals. And i don't mean language in the mere dictionary definition of the word, but in the sense Lacan treated it: Language is the reflection of our ability to abstract, to use symbols. If you are a nerd, Abstraction and symbols are the more important thing to you. That's why we like so much to code. If you can grasp C or Perl, you should be able to grasp English. I'm not a native English speaker, and I actually learned to speak English on my own, and I may horrible mistakes some times, and there is a lot of vocabulary that i have to learn, that sometimes limits me while explaining certain complex ideas. But there is a very big difference between a mistake in spelling a word, or a word you just don't know, which are just mistakes that can be fixed by using a dictionary. Errors like saying your instead of you're are CONCEPTUAL errors, and that is unforgivable.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
If you were standing at absolute north, and then stepped anywhere you would be traveling both south and East or West depending on the situation.
If you were to pull a ladder out of your pocket and climb that ladder straight up, you would be leaving the sphere, so you still would not be traveling north, you would be traveling up.
The directions North, South, East, West are all 2 dimensional. Latitude, longitude and altitude. In relation to the sphere, if you lose the sphere then you would need another constant.
Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
God said, "Here goes nothing!"
What can I say about this post? First of all you failed to spell refridgerator correctly.
Pot calling the kettle black!
From the dictionary:
No results found for refridgerator.
Did you mean refrigerator
That information is not available.
But if it's supposed to be a contraction, then it's I-T-apostrophe-S...
Scalawag!
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
from Star Trek TNG? the episode where Beverly Crusher gets trapped in a static warp bubble created by the ever so annoying Wesley Crusher?
o O (good thing there aren't any girls here)
Timecube? Is that you?
By this logic, you can never head north along the surface of the sphere. True north is always a direction that points inside the sphere. The most you can do along the surface of the sphere is head in a direction that, while not true north (because you're not burrowing into the earth), at least does not have an east-west component.
The problem is that it's perfectly ordinary to refer to such motions along the surface of the sphere as going "north," and that it is just as ordinary to mathematically represent such motions as two-dimensional vectors over a spherical surface. The alternative representation that you have in mind, where there's a three-dimensional vector, is the unconventional one. You can come up with an odd interpretation to claim that you can "move north" when you're at the pole, but that tells us more about your imagination and your resourcefulness than about the meaning the term "north" has in use.
There's another issue: you're identifying "north" with the magnetic north pole, and using the compass as the instrument that determines which direction is north. However, that model simply can't explain how it makes sense to talk of the geographic north pole as being a pole, since we do not have an instrument that points down when placed at the geographic north pole.
Are you adequate?
If Einstein's theory of relativity can be implemented practically, it is possible to manipulate time. I am not an expert but as much as I know, there is a little time delay in what happens and what we see. This delay is governed by the speed of light in the medium. If two mediums are having different refracting-index, the speed if light will be different in these two mediums and hence, the delay will also be different. This delay is one of the basic points where theory of relativity starts with. It is this delay which allows us to insert an 11 meter long rod in a 10 meter room if we travel with a speed comparable to light.
Now, if the light can be bent without changing medium, it can actually destroy our perception of space (similar to what we see in daily life when the bottom of a bucket filled with water seems to be a little elevated up, but here, two mediums are involved, namely, water and air).
If speed and path of the light can be manipulated successfully, we can actually distort this space-time continuum and creation of a time-machine may become a reality. Some expert in this field can put more light on this issue.
It means that the life is not going to be smooth for these guys. Unlike those easy-going super-string theorists...they have made existence of billions of universes possible...and if their predictions doesn't come true, they say that this is happening in one of those billions of universes (minus one).....and as far as I know, they are yet to predicted anything "new" in "our" universe.
Point me to a Buddhist document that predicts the outcome of collisions in particle accelerators, or predicts the properties of a compound. If none exist then what does Buddhism have to do with quantum physics? How did Buddhists unravel the mysteries of quantum physics before they had any experimental data to work with? How did they know, in a scientifically compelling way, that quanta existed without studying the photoelectric effect? Where are the 4th century BC Tibetan semiconductors, atomic bombs, and LCDs?
Buddhism may work well as a moral code or lifestyle, but keep it the hell away from science and philosophy. (Which are two separate fields themselves; science doesn't "turn into" philosophy any more than astrology "turns into" botany.)
I have to say I am totally at a loss to understand what thoughts could lead anyone to believe that a 2500 year old moral code could have something to say about modern physics..
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
It was only a joke, talking about a Slashdot story that could wait until tomorrow, or until 1,000,002,007.
But I believe we're just infinitesimal beings living for nanoseconds in an Universe created in a soap bubble in a larger Universe. Once the bubble pops, all our vanity and questions will be gone forever. But the bubble maker may end in a similar fate...
I don't feel like it...
There certainly was time and space before the big bang, just as there were circles before our knowledge of pi, and the earth went around the sun while Oog and Og argued about whether the valley was flat or round. The fact that we can't mathamatically describe something yet doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
This theory really doesn't answer the question of 'where did it all begin'. All it has done (if it is true) is push the 'begin' back further into an earlier universe. Either there have been an infinite number of big bounces (meaning infinite time in the past) or a finite number. If a finite number then there had to be a first universe. The question still remains: how did this universe begin to start off the whole series. I find theory's scenario (if it is true) to be a setback for discovering what happened at the moment of creation (or even finding out if there was one or not) as a lot of the information would have been lost during the bounce.
So, basically scientists have made an advancement in the Loop Quantum Gravity theory that may give scientists the mathematical code to look beyond the time of the Big Bang.
It's funny, I can't stop viewing this as false hope to those who want to believe that the Universe started with a Big Bang.
Until we have irrefutable evidence of every aspect of Evolution, I refuse to accept it as a plausible theory and beg the scientific community to be more open-minded to new and alternative ideas about the Universe's origins.
Yes, I could have done a better job of it.
You know that's probably one of the most insightful things I've read in comparing science, religion and philosophy. I never really studied science past high school. But do have a BA in religion and philosophy. The more I studied the more I came to the realisation that all three are on the same side of the coin.
Once quote I remember from a systematic theology paper is 'God gave us the gifts of reason and wonder. Would he/she have given them to us if he/she didn't want us to explore and investigate our universe?'
On the flip side of the aforementioned coin are apathy, ignorance and blind faith.
ACK NAK RST
It made milk come out of my nose...
"The sum of all knowledge does not imply the knowledge of all sums" Kurt Gödel (paraphrased)
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
Mod points, please.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
When the Universe finishes it's expand and then shrinks 'again', you do realize that it will then big bang again, ad infinitum. In fact, personally I think that it is almost certain that the exact same universe will be created again (when it finally contracts to the point of 'flip' rather than bang in my opinion). And we will all eventually exist again, and I will write this 'again', and you will read this again. Although you and I may seem to have the ability to be quite random, with our our thoughts and our decisions. Every moment/action/change is born from the moment/action/change that preceded it. It just makes sense yeah :)
There is always something where science does not have the immediate answers for, to abandon science at that point seems a bit ludicrous to me to be frank.
What should be done is finding new ways to study the subject until a more satisfactory conclusion is reached.
In any case science can't answer the whats and whys of this world, but it can answer the hows. Physics (how?) did not become philosophy (what?), and philosophy did not become religion (why?), you just began to ask different questions.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I have to say I am totally at a loss to understand what thoughts could lead anyone to believe that a 2500 year old moral code could have something to say about modern physics..
Yeah, you've made that pretty clear.
which is totally what she said
According to my "Theory of Everything", what happened before the "Big Bang" was the "Big Foreplay"
Thank you thank you. I'm here all week.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
before the big bang.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Foreplay!!!
A lot depends on what kinds of questions you ask yourself. Do you ask yourself, "What am I?" Some interpretations of quantum physics say that the observer is intimately connected to the observed and lo and behold when we look down at the various subatomic particles we see that they are mostly space and come in and out of existence all the time. So Buddha taught that "Space is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form." Buddha also taught that the universe is an indivisible totality. There have even been experiments that say that perhaps information can be transferred "instantaneously", which in my opinion, would give credence to this hypothesis of the Buddha. (I couldn't find a link, but I found this, more connected with theory than experiment.)
If you honestly ask yourself "What am I?" Then you must see that we are more than a physical body, we also have thoughts, feelings, emotions, hopes, fears, expectations, and creativity (among other things). Well, at this point we can't say that these are not just random events caused by our physical bodies but we should continue asking and studying. Physics and most of Western science have almost nothing to say about these. What are we to do? How about study with an open mind what anybody else has said about this problem, of what we really are - otherwise what kind of scientists are we?
I was amused one time asking myself who knew more about the laws of (trajectory) physics, an NFL quarterback or Albert Einstein. The answer is that we have here two different kinds of knowing, one intellectual, the other intuitive, learned by direct observation and experience and not so theoretical. If our question is still "What am I?" then Buddhism says that we can see for ourselves what we are by observing ourselves, our thoughts and our emotions especially - AND it shows us many excellent methods in order to do so.
Buddhism says that our brains are not producers of thought but more like antennaas for what is going on in pure space. Space is information it says. Do the following: hold your mind still for five minutes. Do random thoughts pop out? I don't think we have to ask ourselves where did the Big Bank come from, because we can get the same answer if we ask ourselves where do thoughts come from. Dude, Buddhism is Science of the Mind, and if you say otherwise, you don't know enough.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
Once quote I remember from a systematic theology paper is 'God gave us the gifts of reason and wonder. Would he/she have given them to us if he/she didn't want us to explore and investigate our universe?
I've been known to say: "If there is a God, I know he loves me because he gave me Buddhism!"
Good questions, I'll be busy for a few days... (Will be watching TOOL in concert!!!!! and lots of other partying to be done!) I'll try to answer when I get back and have time.
Just one thing though... Buddhism is the only "religion" I've heard that is completely willing to change its tenets if they ever get proven wrong by science.
There was the Fantastic Fuse.
* If Buddhism is the science of the mind then what does it have to do with
physics?
-like physics isn't the science of everything ?
* If Buddhism is the science of the mind then why do psychiatrists and brain
surgeons treat problems with your mind, and not Buddhists?
lol, different classification, that's as bad as asking 'why do psychiatrists
and brain surgeons treat problems with your mind, and not humans?'
* If your brain is an "antenna" to thoughts in space why haven't neurologists,
who have a very good understanding of how the brain works on a low level,
noticed any mechanism for this?
maybe 'the brain' in its entirety is the mechanism!?!
* Why do animals with brains just as large as ours not seem to have thoughts
like ours?
why do you need a different aerial for your tv than you need for your wifi ?
* Where do these thoughts that permeate space come from? well, everything
vibrates (for lack of a better word), all at different frequencies (natural
frequency http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-406158/natural
could be that we are picking that up, elephants might pick up different things,
just like your tv picks up 'different things' from that of your wifi card
* Why do people with brain injuries in certain parts exhibit similar symptoms?
maybe because the injuries are in similar places?
like if i remove the battery from my tv remote, and you do the same both the
remotes will appear 'broken'
* Why do MRI scans associate neuron activity in different parts of the brain to
different things that the brain does?
cos thats what they are looking for...
* Why are different parts of the brain that are used more or less in certain
animals (e.g. optical processing in bats and hawks) proportionally different
sizes?
see tv antennae and wifi antennae above...
* Why does electro-shock therapy work?
cos we are made from water and its a good conductor -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_conduct
* Why do drugs have an effect?
chemistry - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Metabolism
* Can you demonstrate the existence of these thoughts that float around through
space?
yes - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_bac
Dude, you're making Buddhism look bad. Don't stretch out something to fit something else.
If our brains do not produce thoughs but merely pick them up from that background radiation, then I guess we could stop someone from having thoughts by blocking the radiation out? How about we scream harder than the universe, by constructing a device that emits lots and lots of radiation at the same frequency as the cosmic background radiation? Or we could create an environment that blocks out that radiation (fill me in here, would a 10 ft. thick wall of lead work?).
A lovely experiment, this would be.
I don't know, after studying physics for fourteen years and Buddhism for another fourteen, I think I know what I'm talking about.