More on Infinity

magoo,

I'm fine with "0" is everything. More so than something existed for infinity and therefore was never created.

First of all It cannot have existed for infinity because we are still here, therefore infinity has not been reached and can never be reached otherwise infinity would be finite.<img src=icon_smile_wink.gif border=0 align=middle>

Jeremy,

Do I assume that yu are unfamiliar with the Chiral Condensate and the virtual particle pairs popping into existance from the "Voids or Vacuum" of space? 0 = +1-1.

Or how about electron vanishing from one orbit and appearing in a different orbit without existing inbetween (may not even be the same electron. Probably isn't. Probably became nonexistant and to conserve another came into existance since no time passed between the two events and the electron didn't traverse from one orbit to the other.

So you see you have seen both.

1 - Things go out of existance and become nothing.

2 - Thing come into existance from nothing.

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>[123...]: Things are in existence, that is a fact, I hope we can agree on that. Since things are in existence, it must imply that coming into existence was a possibility because... it happened!<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

No, it did not! Nothing that exists now came into existence, insofar as we know. It simply assembled from smaller bits, or broke off from larger bits. Its future fate is the same. It will either break up into smaller bits or be assimilated by larger ones. There is total and perfect conservation of substance at all times -- past, present and future.

That means that either everything was created from nothing (a miracle), or that everything always existed. Leaving out the hybrid hypothesis (some of both), I don't see another possibility.

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>It is not a logical fallacy to assume things can come into existence but not out of existence since existence has a different set of rules than non-existence.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

The logical flaw was to assume that something existing meant that it had to come into existence (out of nothing).

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>Let's take a bowling ball moving in space for example. Conservation tells us that something must have transferred energy to the ball for it to be moving- the motion must have a cause (or beginning).<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

We're not playing "hide the logic" here. The bowling ball could not acquire momentum from nothing. It had be be transferred to the bowling ball from something else. Ultimately, we could trace the same momentum back atom-by-atom to the supernova that set off collapse of the primeval solar nebula. But it had an infinite history even before that.

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>If we declare in this example that the energy was always there, then this is already an example that an effect has no cause.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

Apparently this either doesn't communicate well or doesn't stick. So here it goes again. The universe is everything that exists. It consists of "substance". Substance assembles into larger substances and decomposes back into smaller substances. The total number of forms is infinite, but all individual forms are finite. Because there is no absolute frame, there is no standard of rest, so all substance has momentum relative to other substance. Always had it, always will have it. Momentum can no more be created or destroyed than substance.

So causes and effects are what substances with momentum do to one another. There is an infinite chain of causes through infinite space, time, and scale. Each event is finite, but there are an infinite number of them in each infinite dimension. Like integers, every single one is finite, but the totality of them is infinite.

Are we having fun yet? -|Tom|-

I find it easier to ask a question in response to a question. What I mean is that when I observe particles "popping" into existence. I ask the question, what mechanism that is to small for me to see is at work? I do not assume creation out of nothingness.

Across this whole thread, folks have bandied words over human philosophy. On this point might I add that we create logical arguments to organize our thoughts, not to dictate the rules to nature. We hit paradoxes when we misadminister information into faulty constructs. The paradox exists to remind us that the whole picture is not in the mind's eye. Imagine trying to work a jigsaw puzzle in a dark room. Then imagine that only a portion of the shape of each piece could be determined. I compare our logical exploits to our real knowledge of nature... we know the shape of some pieces, guess the shape of others, physically manipulate the shapes of some, all the while creating a picture of something we haven't seen.


We have our timescale, it is convenient so that we know when to turn on the sprinkles, give our dad a new tie, and buy our spouse roses. I see the universe as in constant change. I do not think there needs to be so much fuss as to imagining infinity. I perceive things as systems with boundaries defined only by their interactions. As pointed out by TVF in Dark Matter, gravity has a range of ~2.1 kiloparsecs. Yet stars in galaxies influence each other in chains stretching farther and farther until they reach independance from one another beyond that range. We can then choose to see other interactions with other bodies expanding our scope each time. As we approach this infinity we perceive what is logical... that all creation is just doing its thing. We place value on creation and abhor destruction as humans and assign these values to events in the universe. I actually saw someone weep over the idea that stars die (that person was not stable evidently) yet the recycling of matter and energy itself does not care what is happening. When hydrogen loses an electron it doesnt get scared. When a galaxy is formed there is no party. I guess my frustration mounts from the notion that what we think actually matters. Inside the 1200 or so cc's of brain space, we have to abide with limits to scale. It becomes hard to conceive of something so big. In that last statement of mine lies the problem. Infinity is not big, it isnt small, it isnt anything but and idea formed to place boundaries on the unboundable.

Mark Vitrone

Mark,

Overall a good piece.

I for one still find greater comfort and future flexability to fit knew knowledge for "0 = (+1-1)" than "it has existed forever, therefore was never created".

Can't fully explain "0 = (+1-1) but neither can one explain infinity as a reality.

When wanting to travel down the road of math confusion, I try to remember that numbers are place holders that WE assign value to. The number 10 is just a gradation of infinity that we are paying attention to right now. I can make the number 2 as large as the grade of 10 and then I have one half. I can eat a whole pizza, does it matter the number of slices I cut it into? Likewise if I want to eat 2 pizzas, I have to have two pizzas, I cant create two out of the one in front of me. I simply go get more pizza. I can choose to observe the universe, all of it. I can likewise ignore all of it and concentrate on part of it. I am just glad to know that pizza is still around. Whew, I got scared for a minute....