Creation ex nihilo

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Larry Burford</i>
<br />In Meta Model, and more generally in deep reality physics, the word universe refers to everything that exists. Not everything that we know exists, but everything. So the universe includes both the known component (commonly called the Known Universe) and any unknown componentss (sometimes called the Unknown Universe) that may exist.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Larry, I agree (see previous message). I guess I sort of jumped in without thinking that part through, but I stand by the rest of my argument that the big bang could have happened without being a miracle. That was really my main point.

rd

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by rderosa</i>
<br />I stand by the rest of my argument that the big bang could have happened without being a miracle.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">An explosion of something somewhere in space at some time could have happened. But the Big Bang is a theory about an explosion OF time and space, not an explosion INTO pre-existing time and space. That could not have happened without a miracle because it came from a singularity (i.e., nothing). -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">As I argued in my book "Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets", discrete space and discrete time both lead to unsolvable paradoxes of the Zeno type.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I haven't read your book but this statement sounds absurd to me. Zenos paradoxes are not paradoxes if you assume time and space are discrete, whereas they can't be resolved if you assume time and space are continuous.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">The most damning of these, IMO, is that discrete time units means that the entire universe must be created ex nihilo in state #1, then be entirely de-created back into nothingness, then (after an unknown interval that might approach infinity) get recreated again in state #2, etc.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Once again, why does it have to be created at all? State #1 is the first state there is. There is no state #0. There is no nothingness.

The second part doesn't really make sense to me at all. Why does it have to be de-created? What interval are you talking about? There is no interval between state #1 and state #2. State #2 follows state #1. There is nothing in between. That's why it's called state #2. There are no middle-states.

It seems that our disagreement boils down to the way we think about the concept of nothingness. You seem to think of it as a state of some kind, whereas I try to not to think of it at all. It's simply non-existent.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Concepts exist too. Integers are no more or less a concept than time, so the existence of both is on equal footing.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
They are on equal footing in so far as they are both only potential infinities, not actual ones. I don't see how this undermines my argument.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">We can't write down all the integers because our existence is too short.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
It doesn't matter if I granted you eternal life. You would still never be able to write all the integers down.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">But there is no integer we cannot write or get to. So I don't agree that there is a difference (potential vs. actual) between the set of all integers and the ticks on my gedanken clock.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
There is no integer we can't write and there is no future point in time we can't get to, but we can't write all the integers down and we will never have reached all points in time. That is, we will still never reach an actual infinity. It's simply impossible. Since an eternal (in past time) universe requires an actual infinity, an eternal universe is not possible. There must be an (uncreated) beginning.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">The one-to-one correspondence I mentioned proves the equality of these two sets in the standard way for proving properties of infinities.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I can create a one-to-one correspondence (the standard way of dealing with infinities) between the integers and the ticks of a gedanken clock measuring the passage of time all through an eternal past and completely through an eternal future.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
No, you can't do such a thing!

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by tvanflandern</i>
<br />But the Big Bang is a theory about an explosion OF time and space, ..... That could not have happened without a miracle because it came from a singularity (i.e., nothing). -|Tom|-<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">That's where I disagree with you. That's the part I'm saying we don't know, although I can see that you think we do. The fact that it appears by all known laws to be a "singularity" doesn't mean it's not possible that something is still unknown that could change the picture. It happens all the time.

rd

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by tvanflandern</i>
There are lots of science fiction concepts in science. Time travel, singularities such as "black holes" and string theory, and the Copenhagen interpretation in QM are among them.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I agree
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
"Vacuum fluctuations" do not mean "something from nothing". They mean something from the unknown, unobservable vacuum ...
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I disagree, at least if you mean the zero point electromagnetic field (ZPF). The particularity of ZPF is that it is defined as the EM field in a 0K oven; the usual electromagnetic field becomes the ZPF if it is in an oven cooled down to 0K.

We must pay attention to the classical definition of the absorption of a field which is the addition of an opposite field. This definition implies that it is physically impossible to absorb the field emitted by an atom using the emission of other atoms because the field emitted by a source much smaller than the distance of the sources is much larger close to the source than the fields provided by other sources.
Einstein theory of emission and absorption (1917) must be patched because what he names "spontaneous emission" is an amplification of the part of the field which is neglected supposing that isolated electromagnetic systems exist.
The fundamental rule is: matter may amplify or attenuate EM field down to the ZPF (which is stochastic, so that this sentence must be used with care).
The supporters of QED subtract the ZPF from the EM field (an absurd subtraction) to apply classical theory, so that they "demonstrate" that the classical theory is wrong in experiments where low intensity light is detected. But they do not notice that while the classical theory explains quantitatively the start up of the lasers, they are obliged to introduce an "ad hoc", strange "radiation reaction field" to get the right result.
A lot of people make a big error, supposing (implicitely) that the EM energy is ruled by a linear equation. Thus, for instance, they think that the electron of Bohr's atom radiates energy and falls to the proton. This is wrong because the computation of the interference of the field radiated by the electron with the ZPF shows that the flood of energy is extremely low, and zero if Bohr's orbits are corrected to take Lamb's shift into account.


The classical theory rejects all possibilities of paradoxes. In particular, the EPR paradox does not exist: when an atom emits an energy h&nu;, the mean value of the energy of the EM field is increased all around, so that it may be fluctuations which produce the emission of fields whose interference with the ZPF corresponds to an absorption of energy h&nu;. Thus, the emission of a "photon", i. e. h&nu; may produce the absorption of 0, 1, 2, ... photons. The ZPF is a sort of thermodynamical bath.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by rderosa</i>
<br /><blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by tvanflandern</i>
<br />But the Big Bang is a theory about an explosion OF time and space, ..... That could not have happened without a miracle because it came from a singularity (i.e., nothing). -|Tom|-<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">That's where I disagree with you. That's the part I'm saying we don't know, although I can see that you think we do. The fact that it appears by all known laws to be a "singularity" doesn't mean it's not possible that something is still unknown that could change the picture. It happens all the time.

rd
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
In classical mechanics, there are singularities, for instance a point of unstable equilibrium with several paths to leave the equilibrium; is it physics ?

For you both:
Is it a difference between "singularity" and "sex of the angels?".

I have a third point of view: The BB is founded on the ignorance of elementary spectroscopy which shows that sets of light beams may increase their entropy when they are refracteed in 2S hydrogen atoms (and other compounds).