Our Place in the Universe

Pretty cool.

 

Yes indeed...

 

Amazing how it just appeared from nothing...

 

incredible, thanks!

 

Well Java helped!

 

Lots of apparently.

 

Science is indeed so much more fascinating and amazing than fairy tales. Of course, I can understand the reluctance of unimaginative people to give up the old superstitions that make humans the most important things in the universe. But we are mere bugs on a speck of dust in a galaxy that is itself less than an atom in the ocean of the universe. And when we are gone, probably because our own greed and stupidity have led us to turn this green Earth into a cesspool in which we can no longer survive, the universe will continue as before and will not even have noticed us.

 

If you are referring to the vast diversity and complexity of what the universe contains, none of it "just appeared from nothing". All of it emerged by evolutionary forces from what started as a simple structure immediately following the big bang, the majority of what we observe having come into existence only after billions of years of continuously changing interactions.

But if you are referring only to the fact that "something from "nothing" seems irreducibly oxymoronic, you beg the question. Saying that "something can only come from something" totally sidesteps the question of ultimate origin. Any "something" posited as preceder to something else has structure and thus must have its own origin; one can't just wave one's hands and say "god" is the ultimate origin because then what is that "god's" origin? It must have one; it has structure, definable characteristics and behavior. If it exists.

In any case, the big bang did not erupt from "nothing"; it erupted from a something we aren't able to describe, called a singularity, to give it a name, but beyond just that name the only thing we know is what its eruption gave rise to. But no one postulates the big bang as erupting from "nothing".

 

Well now don't bring God into the discussion.

 

What? No Higgs Boson at the end of the journey?

 

Be careful with that statement. It's a big discussion point in Physics. It revolves around the definition of "nothing" (or "perfect vacuum" in some circles).

Specifically, your statement is based on a intuitive logic that "something" cannot come from "nothing". But for that to have any possible meaning you have to define "nothing". Try defining it. Love to hear what you come up with. You can thank Dirac for starting this confusion.

 

That would be the start of the journey, no?

 

Reminds me of the physicist doing a public lecture about the universe. After the lecture, an old native woman approached him and said: "Very interesting, but we know that the Earth rides on the back of a big turtle."

He replied: "But what supports the turtle?"

She said: "Why, another turtle, of course."

To which he said: "And what supports that?"

Her final reply: "Very clever, young man, but it's turtles all the way down."

And there you have it.

Tom

 

I won't if you don't.

The Higgs boson sometimes gets called "the god particle," but that's a misleading name. It is posited by those who believe in the Higgs boson that it carries the force that gives particles mass. It is not, however, considered to be the creator of those particles, as the term "god" is used in religious discussion. And so far, it has not been found, and the possible mass of the Higgs boson has been narrowed so far that they may be on the verge of ruling out its existence altogether. It's a fascinating story and the conclusion is yet to come.

BTW, the big bang arising out of the quantum vacuum does not violate any principles of quantum mechanics. So a purely naturalistic origin of the universe is very plausible, even though we don't yet know how it actually happened.

It is generally true that in quantum mechanics, human language is inadequate to accurately describe what is actually going on. Only mathematics can do that, and any verbal description will be inaccurate. It is possible that the very question "What's the origin of the universe?" is meaningless. This would leave a hypothetical creator with nothing to do.

It's not so much that there is no origin, but rather that our concept of origin may have no relation to what actually happens at the quantum scale.

 

Yeah right.

 

Please elaborate.

 

Well... for one thing... time doesn't exist.

 

You mean it is not a good time for a beer?