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I need to respond to this with a simple question for Mr. Hawking.... who created gravity?
It isn't a "thing", it's a reaction. Simple, huh? That's why I understand it but Albert didn't. He was looking for too ethereal an explanation, and that stumped him; the fact that while light can only travel at a finite speed, gravity seemed to be instantaneous, even between two distant objects. Which, of course, it is. Simple, really. (Right, Mystic?)
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Originally Posted by EuroTrashed
So how does Mr Smartypants Hawking explain the tides then. They come in and out. Never a miscommunication
Surely you jest. You gotta be joking. Right?
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Originally Posted by Booya
Exactly. Well expressed. And even those people who don't believe in a creator have a belief system.
They believe in the big bang theory.
No no Booya; it's the Big Band theory! For heavens' sake, get it right, OK? Benny Hinn Goodman on the brass charlatan; Jimmy The Tears Swaggerist on the Harp; Tammy Faye and Little Jimmy Baker dancing The Tangled Web..... you get the picture, right?
One minute the whole stage is dark, and then "all hell breaks loose"... Let there be light!
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Originally Posted by mwruckman
Hawking has what I would call intellectual guts. Much like a obscure patent clerk who had no college degree and even better was a poor mathematician who through out his life needed help to check his calculations and derivations. The scientist was Albert Einstein and it was he who changed our idea of space and time into space-time and as made space-time a complex quantity, space dimensions being the reality component and the time component the imaginary component. This was in 1905 and Albert gave us things like time dilation and the fact that nothing with mass can travel at or faster than the speed of light . Also this theory gives us a bomb that destroys a amount of material the size of a dime but also incinerates a city of several million people at the same time. In 1912 he brought in the powerful tools of descriptive geometry in 4 dimensions to describe the cosmos and created the General Theory of Relativity which provided a new explanation of gravity and why clocks orbiting the Earth slow down, Einsteins cosmos has no beginning and no end and in solid geometry their is a simple object that also has no begining and no end. This object is a perfect sphere. Now the sphere is also finite it has a volume and an area. Shrink a sphere and these finite quanities go to zero. Hawking observes that every measurable thing has positive and negative components and when added up they all go to zero just like the sphere. Hawking has the guts to say that when you run the cosmos back to that point some 13.6 billion years ago at the moment of the Big Bang the cosmos is zero, zilch, nada, butkus what ever you wnt to call it there is nothingness. No space no time, no energy and no mass. Then the smallest conceivable time later their is everything that will ever be.
Wow! I love it when a smart fellow can summarize this all so well in one paragraph, while others just can't seem to get it... I'm sooooo jealous! Well done, m-dub-yah!
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Originally Posted by cruxan
ever think of it this way,,??anything that you can conjure in your imagination is almost certain in an infinite amount of space and time.. so yes gods exist and so does evolution.. i'm almost certain that a big intelligent species of ant in a demension a trillion googolplex miles from earth is contemplating the very same thing at the very same time.. but don't take me word for it
You know crux; perhaps that's exactly why I always have this feeling that something... (hmmmmm... I'm pretty sure it's a Big Blue Turtle) is looking over my shoulder all the time, but he's just slightly out of phase with my reality, on the edge of a nearly parallel universe.
Why not, as I often ask Mystic here. Just... Why Not?
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Starting with a euphemism for our ignorance (spontaneous) . . . he builds a tautology of that ignorance into a pseudo-scientific edifice of non-explanations of our ignorance that satisfy his preference for no God. Spontaneous simply means "we have no idea how it happens . . . it just happens all on its own." The same is true for life as a "self-organizing" "emergent" "randomly mutating" phenomenon, etc. The unbridled arrogance and egotism of humans never ceases to amaze me.
Oh no he doesn't, no no NO! Wrong. Spontaneous pseudo-edificial tautologies be damned! Au contraire, mon amie; his determinations reflect, I'm telling yah man (), a lot more work and intellectual steam than you have ever applied to the subject, else it'd be you sitting in his vaunted position over there! and we'd be reading your books, not his. Credibility and all that, ey whaht?
As to some Greater Causality at work, it's pretty apparent that a set of pre-existing [but very simple] interactivity boundaries and rules can and indeed have operated to produce the end results, obviously, because hey; here we are!
But: why are they so well organized? Well, because the unorganized ones just sort of fell or will fall apart, like a cake badly mixed or baked. Natch, only the best would survive, and guess what we're left to witness, that which was originally assumed to be God's Great and Holy Bake Sale? A naturally occurring (I know how much you distinctly dislike the "naturally occurring" element, but it is the obvious answer...) Lego™ reality construction set, en-route as we write to it's eventual final predicament, its collapse, a hasty return back into it's original shipping tube, and then "Bang", re-opened again, all to be chaotically re-assembled AGAIN into the next iteration.
..."world eternal, without beginning or end", didn't someone important once say? Maybe it was me...
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Originally Posted by tgnostic
If God created the universe, we still can conclude for a shadow of a doubt then at last God did not create the the U.N. revolutionary resolution of last night. Why would I hang on this subject of a preference of rejecting any required personal Responsibility for the common changes a government can have in the modern world. Does God forsake other Nations because they are not, or are not interested in being part of the American sphere of influence? The United Nations took over the Responsibility and the desire TO BE like God for moral Christians becomes available to an alternate Uncreated Universe.
The uncreated universe is full of the element of surprise in the Courage to be "Part" and parcel of the New Moral Order. Is this scary?
You know, tg: sometimes you start off with a potentially interesting premise, but then, "Poof", it's all gone, like a sort of reverse Big Bang...
Let's hope Moammar Kadafi understands your mind, huh? He seems to have a unique perspective on reality these days....
You're kidding - right? The tides come in and out because of the gravitational interaction between the Earth and the Moon. I believe I learned about that in science class in grade school. There is no miscommunication because of the Moon's constant orbit around the Earth. It's really quite simple.
update....things just move so quickly don't they....by golly !
Fundamental physics: Gravity's weight on unification
Giovanni Amelino-Camelia
Nature 468, 40–41 (04 November 2010) doi:10.1038/468040a
Much research in theoretical physics is inspired at least in part by the idea of unifying all of the fundamental forces of nature. An analysis of how gravity affects other forces at subnuclear scales has major implications for that idea.
One of the main goals of modern theoretical physics is to find a common framework that explains all of the fundamental forces of nature: gravity; the strong force that binds quarks into protons and neutrons; and the forces of the electroweak theory (which encompasses electromagnetism on macroscopic scales, and the 'weak' and hypercharge forces on subnuclear scales). Onpage 56 of this issue, Toms1 reports results that could be significant for finding such a framework. The author describes a mathematical analysis of the behaviour of gravity at ultrashort distances and of how this most familiar of forces affects 'Abelian gauge' theories, which, notably, include the theory of electromagnetism and that of the hypercharge force.
Relevant to Toms's study1 is the fact that coupling constants — parameters that are used to characterize the strength of forces — are actually not constant but vary with the distance scale of the physical process in which they are measured. This phenomenon is both well established experimentally and predicted by current theories, and is known as 'running coupling constants'.
The author's results have implications for what might be the next revolution in fundamental physics, a hint of which is found by extrapolating the experimentally established 'running' of the coupling constants down to distance scales much shorter than can be accessed experimentally. Within the successful standard model of particle physics, we can make such an extrapolation for the running of the coupling constant of the hypercharge force (αY) — which is described by an Abelian gauge theory of the type studied by Toms1 — and for that of the strong (αS) and weak (αW) forces, which are described by non-Abelian gauge theories. The results are shown semi-quantitatively in Figure 1, together with a cruder estimate of the effective coupling constant of gravity (αG).
Meeting at ultrashort distance scales?
Extrapolation of experimental values, measured at relatively large distances (not shown), for the strength of the strong force (αS), weak force (αW) and hypercharge force (αY) indicates that these forces might merge with gravity for processes characterized by distance scales that are at least 13 orders of magnitude smaller than those currently being explored with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The strength of gravity is characterized byαG, and the strength of the electromagnetic force is not shown because at the distance scales displayed this force is replaced by the combination of the weak and hypercharge forces. Toms's analysis1 investigates a piece of the puzzle that theorists must resolve to correctly describe this unification: the behaviour of gravity in the range between 10−32 and 10−35 metres.
Gravity is the only force for which we currently do not have a reliable 'fundamental description', which would be applicable at subnuclear distances2, 3. But several indirect arguments invite us to give a preliminary description of its effective strength in terms of the ratio of Newton's constant to the square of the characteristic distance scale of the gravitational processes of interest.
It is striking that the coupling constants of the three non-gravitational forces converge with distance. And, perhaps even more remarkably, the effective coupling constant of gravity, which at currently accessible distance scales is much smaller than the others, also approaches the region where the other coupling constants converge. Within our current theoretical framework, this behaviour can only be described as an extremely fine-tuned numerical accident, but it clearly hints that some unknown law of nature is driving the convergence.
All of the most-studied proposals of modern theoretical physics are inspired, at least in part, by this possibility of unification. In particular, one of the motivations for conjecturing the existence of 'superpartners' of known particles4, which will be looked for with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Europe's premier high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva in Switzerland, is the role of these extra particles in the derivation of the running of the non-gravitational coupling constants. Including the roles of superpartners in the calculations leads to a particularly accurate convergence of the three non-gravitational coupling constants at a scale of about 10−32 metres.
Achieving unification of the non-gravitational forces at 10−32 metres has some intrinsic appeal, especially where the running of αY is concerned, as this would otherwise keep growing, possibly reaching values too high for the computational techniques of modern theoretical physics to manage. However, according to some theorists, by assuming such a stage of partial unification, with gravity left out because at 10−32 m it should still be too weak to matter, we fail to profit fully from the evidence summarized in Figure 1 — a single stage of unification of all forces, plausibly at distance scales a couple of orders of magnitude smaller than 10−32 m.
Toms's study concerns the weakest link on the road to unification: the behaviour of gravity at ultrashort distances, particularly in the range between 10−32 m and 10−35 m. In this regime, the lack of a fundamental, microscopic theory of gravity not only limits us to describing its strength crudely in terms of Newton's constant, but also prevents us from establishing its influence on the strength of the non-gravitational forces. To circumvent these limitations, Toms adopts a mathematical approach that exploits the fact that inconsistencies in our current description of gravity manifest themselves only at distances smaller than 10−35 m. Therefore, valuable insight should be obtained from computations arranged in such a way that only distances larger than 10−35 m are involved.
The author's analysis1 suggests that the effect of gravity on αY is such that, as soon as the strength of gravity becomes comparable to the strength of the other forces (at some point between 10−33 m and 10−35m), αY quickly becomes vanishingly small, a behaviour known as asymptotic freedom. A mechanism for gravity-induced asymptotic freedom of coupling constants has been advocated5 by Robinson and Wilczek. However, it relies on a more preliminary analysis, which has been received with some scepticism. By providing evidence in favour of the Robinson–Wilczek mechanism, Toms removes one of the perceived advantages of having a stage of partial unification, because the unwanted, uncontrollable growth of αY is avoided. What's more, Toms's study strengthens another preliminary observation reported by Robinson and Wilczek5 — that the effects of gravity on all three non-gravitational coupling constants combine to give a slower convergence of the non-gravitational forces, with the implication that the unification might occur at distances smaller than 10−32 m, at which it is easier to imagine gravity joining in.
Possibly even more important, Toms's findings provide encouragement for the idea that the role of gravity in the unification can be fruitfully investigated. And it might open the way to studies that compare different proposals for the sought-after fundamental description of gravity on the basis of their implications for unification6.
Perhaps we are one step closer to figuring out this amazing unification puzzle, and it is particularly exciting that this might rely on modelling the effect of gravity on distances much smaller than those of planets and galaxies.
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God did not create the universe, world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book that aims to banish a divine creator from physics.
Hawking says in his book "The Grand Design" that, given the existence of gravity, "the universe can and will create itself from nothing," according to an excerpt published Thursday in The Times of London.
"Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," he writes in the excerpt.
I've argued this before... but from the same book, Hawking conceeds there is no way of knowing if the universe exists in "reality" or a "simulation".
If we are indeed lving in a quantum to macro-scale simulated universe, once it began the rules of the program would dictate how grew and played out (i.e. our "laws of nature"). Time would be a non-factor outside the "simulation"; the entire universe could go from birth to death in an instant; any point/place along it's progression could be visited/studied at the will of the viewer. Only those inside the simulation would perceive the passing of time, or be held back by distance (being beholden to it's rules, of course).
And if such a simulation was so complete that it would include the interplay of every last subatomic particle in the universe from beginning to end, it wouldn't even be fair to call it a mere "simulation". It might as well be a "real" universe played out within the confines of a pretty awesome computer.
Finally, if it was a simulation, there would have to be something outside of that simulation, someone (or many) who built it, watch it and would otherwise be interested in what happens with it.
Could that be "god"? It's the only logical place I can figure an entity could be that could realistically be aware of everything that happens and do everything "god" claims to be able to do, yet still work with all we know from scientific study...
Though most, like Christianity and other organized religion can be disregarded as rubbish base upon reason, logic and the evidence at hand.
Actually, they can't be proven wrong. You think that because something doesn't have "evidence" that it can't be real. Logic doesn't come close to explaining away religious belief, neither does reason.
Science, though many believe it has, has not disproved any religion.
Something that cannot be seen, cannot be proven to exist or not to exist. So, then you say that logic would tell us that it doesn't exist. Wrong! All logic would tell us is that it cannot be proven right or wrong at this time.
Actually, they can't be proven wrong. You think that because something doesn't have "evidence" that it can't be real. Logic doesn't come close to explaining away religious belief, neither does reason.
Science, though many believe it has, has not disproved any religion.
Something that cannot be seen, cannot be proven to exist or not to exist. So, then you say that logic would tell us that it doesn't exist. Wrong! All logic would tell us is that it cannot be proven right or wrong at this time.
I agree with what's in bold, however there is a certain way one can prove many reilgions to be false. Many of these religions were developed in a time where people thought that the earth was flat, and that we were the center of the universe. Those assumptions couldn't be any further from the truth, therefore any ideaologies based on that, would be false.
Actually, they can't be proven wrong. You think that because something doesn't have "evidence" that it can't be real. Logic doesn't come close to explaining away religious belief, neither does reason.
Science, though many believe it has, has not disproved any religion.
On the contrary, religions can easily be, and have been proven false. The human origins of the Bible and Christianity have been quite clearly proven through historical and archaeological evidence. There is very little doubt that the Biblical god is no more real than Zeus, Jupiter or any of the earlier Sumerian gods he was based upon. The pagan origins of Christianity are not really debatable, either.
If there is a universal creator it is/they are far less absurd and far more rational and intelligent being than the god(s) of the Bible/Abrahamic religions.
I think this is my favorite snip form that article. It's true.
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"Science provides us with a wonderful narrative as to how [existence] may happen, but theology addresses the meaning of the narrative," said Alexander, director of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.
I have just picked up a copy of his new book and plan to read it when I am done with the five I have lined up before it. So, I will get back to you all in about a month and a half.
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