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Hmm. If the process that allows new universes to be formed continues for all eternity, then in a certain light, humanity can never really go extinct.
It depends how you define humanity. If you mean the continuation of our own DNA, then yes, we will go extinct as the Universe cools down at the latest. But if you mean similar DNA, then yes, it's inevitable that it must be created again somewhere sometime.
Most of my work has been particle physics. Most other fields dont have as much exciting research happening in them. If I was from a different generation, the previous one, I would probably have chosen astrophysics instead.
SUSY (aka Supersymmetry) for those not in the know is essentially the partner for fermions and bosons that we already have. On a math basis, they work very well in theory. You are right, we havent detected any at the LHC as of yet. And it is puzzling. But the puzzling part is fascinating because it means we still have a few hurdles to cross over before figuring this one out. We already have physical limitations of what we can search for at our accelerators. Our testing conditions limit this by our hardware designs (roughly, anyhow). If I was a betting man, and I am, I'd bet we'll find them but just at higher ranges than that of which we are searching now. At the LHC (although susy is being hunted in a dozen other experiments across the globe) you dont exactly search for ranges any time you wish, you have to have the time scheduled for specific ranges and the hardware configured to do so. So often times experiments are running while many others are in the queue. This is a time limitation of ours for sure.
On quantizing gravity, boy that's always asking for a mess. Everyone has a different answer and nobody is right. :-) I dont care if you like emergentism or reductionism as long as the answers turn out right. Its the answer that I care most about, not how you get to the answer. I think that Weinberg/Witten pretty much disproved the possibility of emergent gravity, although not completely.
In general, I think in order to experimentally prove many theories out there in the cloud right now we simply need more time to test and more sensitive instruments.
1.) Nothing
2.) Same as #1. :-) Space and time were created at the "Big Bang" and are a physical process. Before the BB atoms didnt exist, light didnt exist, and space didnt exist. It was all a result of inflation.
I'm a subscriber to the holographic principle, if you've never heard about it check on Youtube for a few videos on it, it will open your eyes. That's what I currently think the Universe is.
That's a common argument, however a terrible one, I'm sad to say for you. :-) Think of this. If you have a pencil in a box, and you shake it, will it look like a Picasso after a few days? Probably not. But, what happens if you are allowed to keep shaking it and restarting for an infinite amount of time? One of those times, it will be an exact Picasso! It has to be, because you can shake it for infinity and beyond! There's most likely other "Universes" that started similar to ours but not with the exact same conditions, and therefore didnt end up like "our" Universe. The reason we know ours works is because we're here in it, and computer models of the initial conditions without our set constants dont turn out the same way at all. So is that randomness, or just the fact that we are able to discuss this possibility because we happen to be part of this randomness? It's a bit of a circular question, and one I dont think anyone can answer.
But still, I thought that science would have more insight into why and how the universe began -- something more complete than a Big Bang. What if there is a Creator? Why don't physicists even entertain such a possibility? And what are the consequences if they are wrong? Seems to me it takes a quantum leap to believe your theories just as much it is to have faith in an omnipotent creator, no?
But still, I thought that science would have more insight into why and how the universe began -- something more complete than a Big Bang. What if there is a Creator? Why don't physicists even entertain such a possibility? And what are the consequences if they are wrong? Seems to me it takes a quantum leap to believe your theories just as much it is to have faith in an omnipotent creator, no?
This is a very common question. There's nothing science can say about religion. We dont care about religion. We simply want to understand how things work and why they work in the physical world.
Did a "God" create the Universe? Sure could have! But so could a leprechaun. Or My Little Pony. Did God create the Universe? If there's a way to test for that experimentally, then I'll have an answer for you! But until then it is guessing. Physicists dont guess, we make educated guesses based on experimental data and what we know. And then we test to see if we're right.
To ask WHY the Big Bang happened, is a philosophical question. The question itself makes it sound like there's a human reasoning to wanting or desiring something and making it exist. Nature doesnt work like that! We understand HOW things happened.
Pet Peeve Time! Please, dont use the "Quantum Leap" to talk about incredibly large steps forward. A Quantum Leap is the absolute tiniest possible step forward. Remember Quantum means SMALL! Which means your saying it takes literally the smallest amount of effort to understand theories. If you said a "Cosmic Leap" then that would mean a big step, but a Quantum Leap is the absolute opposite.
For continued reading, find a copy of "Chariots of the Gods: Was God An Astronaut? by Erich Von Daniken". You can download the book for free from any torrent site.
It depends how you define humanity. If you mean the continuation of our own DNA, then yes, we will go extinct as the Universe cools down at the latest. But if you mean similar DNA, then yes, it's inevitable that it must be created again somewhere sometime.
I have an actual cosmology question related to one of my previous posts ("whatever it is that begets a universe"). I've read a bunch of different hypotheses concerning this but I'd like input from actual physicists. Just what is it (or what do we think it could be) that even allows for the possibility of things like big bangs and universes. Why do things like vacuums and quantum fluctuations exist at all? Could there ever have been a 'time' when there was nothing? (By "nothing" I mean NOTHING, no matter, no space, no time, no forces or fields of any kind, no virtual particles or quantum fluctuations, not even a bare vacuum. Nothing.)
Would it be correct to say that there is some fundamental, ultimate level of reality that underlies this or maybe even all universes, something that by its very nature is timeless and has no 'lower level' so to speak?
Last edited by Lunar Delta; 11-07-2013 at 01:03 PM..
I have an actual cosmology question related to one of my previous posts ("whatever it is that begets a universe"). I've read a bunch of different hypotheses concerning this but I'd like input from actual physicists. Just what is it (or what do we think it could be) that even allows for the possibility of things like big bangs and universes. Why do things like vacuums and quantum fluctuations exist at all? Could there ever have been a 'time' when there was nothing? (By "nothing" I mean NOTHING, no matter, no space, no time, no forces or fields of any kind, no virtual particles or quantum fluctuations, not even a bare vacuum. Nothing.)
Why does something exist is the ultimate question! Answer that and you sir, get to be as famous as Einstein and win the Nobel prize as well.
Time is exclusive to our Universe. Before it, time didnt exist. There is probably time in other Universes if they exist (which *I* believe they probably do).
All we know is the data at this point surmises that it *does* exist. Why, who the hell knows!
There's no place in our Universe where Quantum fluctuations dont exist. Not to mention radiation from the initial inflation (CMB) everywhere, photons, etc...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lunar Delta
Would it be correct to say that there is some fundamental, ultimate level of reality that underlies this or maybe even all universes, something that by its very nature is timeless and has no 'lower level' so to speak?
I have an actual cosmology question related to one of my previous posts ("whatever it is that begets a universe"). I've read a bunch of different hypotheses concerning this but I'd like input from actual physicists. Just what is it (or what do we think it could be) that even allows for the possibility of things like big bangs and universes. Why do things like vacuums and quantum fluctuations exist at all? Could there ever have been a 'time' when there was nothing? (By "nothing" I mean NOTHING, no matter, no space, no time, no forces or fields of any kind, no virtual particles or quantum fluctuations, not even a bare vacuum. Nothing.)
Would it be correct to say that there is some fundamental, ultimate level of reality that underlies this or maybe even all universes, something that by its very nature is timeless and has no 'lower level' so to speak?
There are no physicists that can tell you with any kind of certainty what happened before Planck Time (~5.39106E−44 seconds) in the early universe because it would require a detailed understanding of quantum gravity. Physicists also do not know why inflation occurred, or why it suddenly stopped (or rather almost stopped - space/time continued to expand, just not at a speed faster than the speed of light). The inflationary period of the universe was concocted to explain why the cosmic background radiation is such an evenly distributed temperature throughout the universe. The inflationary period of the universe is a "gimmick" physicists created in an attempt to explain observations, nothing more.
The universe becomes much less speculative, from a physics perspective, at around 1.0E-33 seconds after the "Big Bang", which is the end of the inflationary period during the Electroweak Epoch.
Anyone who attempts to tell you what happened within the first ~5.39106E−44 seconds after the Big Bang is speculating wildly. We simply do not know ... yet.
But still, I thought that science would have more insight into why and how the universe began -- something more complete than a Big Bang. What if there is a Creator? Why don't physicists even entertain such a possibility? And what are the consequences if they are wrong? Seems to me it takes a quantum leap to believe your theories just as much it is to have faith in an omnipotent creator, no?
The term "Big Bang" is actually a derisive term used by English astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle in 1949 during a radio broadcast. Hoyle championed the "Steady State" theory, that the universe was static and unchanging. It was also Hoyle who came up with the idea of nucleosynthesis, that stars are responsible for all the elements beyond hydrogen and helium.
It was actually Monseigneur Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic Priest, astronomer and professor of physics, who used Einstein's equations to demonstrate that the universe must have had a beginning. The term he used was the "Primeval Atom", what we now call the singularity.
Science attempts to describe the process based upon evidence and observations. When our limited understanding of the universe cannot be rationally explained science does not invent something out of thin air in an irrational attempt to explain the unexplainable. We merely accept the reality that we do not know ... yet. A good example of this is "Dark Matter" and "Dark Energy." Our observations tell us that both exist, yet we do not know what either substance might be ... yet. So science has given them temporary labels until the day when we finally do come up with an answer. In this context "Dark" refers to the "unknown," not the absence of light.
If you wish to believe in a creator, that is fine, but that is also religion, not science. Science is the perpetual hunt for answers in our attempt to understand the universe. Obviously, we are never going to have all the answers, and for every answer we do learn a thousand new questions pop up at the same time.
Religion is not about searching for answers to questions. Religion is the presumption that one already has all the answers, and no questions are necessary (or allowed in some cases). The purpose of religion is not to gain a greater understanding of the universe. That is the realm of science.
Reason is the antithesis of faith. Yet there are many scientists who are guilty of allowing their emotions carry them away and make purely speculative assertions that can only be made based upon faith, and not reason. This is a mistake. To be truly science, it cannot be based upon emotion or speculation. It must be rational and testable inferences based upon the empirical evidence and observations (e.g., testable theories).
Whatever happened before the "Big Bang", science does not care nor even attempts to speculate. As I previously said, the purpose of science is to gain a greater understanding of the universe. Since the universe only came into existence after the "Big Bang," then anything that may have happened before time existed is of no consequence to science.
Some things do exist. After all, we're evidence of that. When we bring in the question as to why, then the question is a philosophical one, not scientific. It's a question that wants to know if there's a reason or purpose as to why the universe exists, why it developed in a way that life could emerge at all. Maybe there is, but we don't really know if there must be a reason or purpose for the universe to exist.
Science, on the other hand, is more about understanding the nature of how things work. Perhaps one way to think about it is to imagine a jumbled mess of hard objects laying around. Each piece may give us a little bit of information, but by discovering how those pieces relate and link together, we can get a better understanding about how things work.
We have enough informaton that we can understand that we're part of a very complex ecosystem of the Earth. We're at a point that we're trying to discover if we can survive and thrive elsewhere, so we're looking at other prospects in the solar system that might be feasible. We can't just take off with no preparation. It's all very easy to think why not? We have astronauts orbiting in the space station. But there's more to it than that. People have to take along a 'protective bubble' of the ecology of the Earth. There has to be air to breath, food to eat, water to drink. The air pressure and temperature has to be just right for us. We have to protect ourselves from intense radiation. We're very much dependent on the conditions of the Earth.
We've sent orbiting probes, landers and rovers to Mars. We're wondering if people could actually manage to survive there. While Mars looks sort of Earth-like in some ways, it's still an extremely dangerous and hostile frigid desert planet. It isn't protective like the Earth is. So we're gradually gathering more information about the planet to know if people can go there, and if so, how? What is needed? We'd still need to take our Earth-like protective bubble along with us. There are a lot of pieces to understand and learn about which need to be put together first.
The process of science can seem kind of slow. The universe itself is far more complex. There are some things we are beginning to understand of why certain things work. But again, that involves the process of learning about what there is and how they relate to other things. Our knowledge and understanding of the universe is pretty much limited to what's within the structure of the universe. At the present time, anything that may have preceded or preexisted the Big Bang is unavaliable and unknowable to us. It could be that we'll never really know the answer to why the universe exists, which in turn would reflect on why we exist. We simply don't know if there's anything more than the universe or not. At a guess, if there is anything else, some deeper kind of reality, I wouldn't be surprised that it could be far stranger than anything we can possibly understand.
Don't get me wrong. There are some ideas about it, but they're all lumped together in the hat. Take your pick. Maybe one of those ideas is right. Or maybe none of them are right. Could something like an entire universe emerge from nothing? Yes, that's possible. Could there be other universe-sized structures separated by some kind of extradimensional Bulk space? Sure, that's a possibility. Could there be some kind of quantum foam stuff where universes can emerge? Sure, that's also possible. The real thing is that we just don't know. A lot of these ideas involve cause and effect because that's a part of how we've evolved as human beings. That's fine and dandy, but we are not the entire universe. We're a small microbial part of it.
If other universes do emerge, I'd guess most of them are probably not like ours, although a small number might be similar, and an even smaller number that identical to ours. The thing about our universe is that the fundamental forces, especially Gravity, are just right for life. For example, if Gravity had been too strong, the universe would've collapsed back in on itself. If too weak, particles would not have been able to combine, meaning stars wouldn't form. We happen to live in a universe that's just right, sort of like winning the lottery. That brings it down to a matter of chance and infinite probabilities. If universes emerge all the time, then at least once, if not more, will emerge just like the one we live in but most would probably be very different.
It's a fascinating subject, but by necessity, it's purely speculative. And then too, there's still much to learn about the universe we live in long into the future.
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