Something from Nothing

[Graybeard]

I think I can legitimately use uncertainty predictions and be on firm ground.

I just realised that this is one of the stupidest things I have ever said on this forum. .... lolol

But the intent remains ....

greg

[Graybeard]

Hi greg my old buddy.

So what yer saying, you want to discuss a ''material' nothing?

Hello sweetpea ... Yes

And what do you mean by vacuum or-empty field in relation to the above statement...
bearing in mind that the concept ''nothing'' can have different meanings or interpretations.

I'm well aware that the 'concept/s' of 'nothing ' are as diverse as the individuals on this Planet ... lol.

A Material definition: A region of 'space' that contains 'nothing' is a vacuum. Pre-Quantum thinking would declare that a region of space that contains no particles, and therefore the value of every field is zero, is a vacuum. I'm leaving out fields, which at their 'emptiest, have a non-zero value, just for the moment.

Some might say that the region of space could only be declared empty (or a vacuum, or a void) if there are no particles and all fields are absent. But once a field has been established, and fields have been established for all the forces, then that field exists everywhere. It is not possible to remove the field, only to set its value and rate-of-change of that value to zero.

This also applies to fields with non-zero values.

Does this help ?

greg

CLICK ... for Stephen Hawkings comment as posted by Austin

[austintorn@aol.com]

'Nothing' is extremely unstable and thus needs professional help [of God] to have any regular, normal existence.

[Graybeard]

'Nothing' is extremely unstable and thus needs professional help [of God] to have any regular, normal existence.

Unstable, and perhaps needing professional help. But that help comes in the form of the inflaton field, which like a set of shock absorbers, irons out, and slows down, the surging. (I think)

greg

[austintorn@aol.com]

Yes, something has to come out of 'nothing', for 'nothing' gets all jittery and itchy without a God to maintain its very beyond-rare and totally unfavorable state.

'Nothing' could not only make a mountain out of a molehill, via inflation, but makes a galaxy out of the tiniest planck of an itsy-bitsy jitterbug.

[austintorn@aol.com]

I saved this from somewhere on the internet:

By means of a random quantum fluctuation the universe "tunneled" from pure vacuum ("nothing") to what is called a false vacuum, a region of space that contains no matter or radiation but is not quite nothing. The space inside a bubble of false vacuum is curved, or warped, and a small amount of energy is stored in that curvature, like the potential energy of a strung bow. This ostensible violation of energy conservation is allowed by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for sufficiently small time intervals.

The bubble then inflated exponentially and the universe grew by many orders of magnitude in a tiny fraction of a second. As the bubble expanded, its curvature energy transformed (naturally) into matter and radiation. Inflation stopped, and the more linear big bang expansion we now experience commenced. As the universe cooled, its structure spontaneously froze out--just as formless water vapor freezes into snowflakes whose unique and complex patterns arise from a combination of symmetry and randomness.


So, even taking the snowflake into space from Earth to even freeze it 'colder', or just using the example above, aren't some of its unique and random patterns born of the quantum realm of fluctuations?

[melanie]

'Nothing' is extremely unstable and thus needs professional help [of God] to have any regular, normal existence.

Do you mean that nothing pretends to be something for it is better to be something rather than nothing.

Even though it's all one and the same something and nothing really?

[melanie]

Greg, thanks for taking the time out to reply.

I'm still trying to digest your reply, will have to think it over and get back to you.


My definition of a 'material' nothing is Consciousness.

[SB_UK]

a guitar string at rest is nothing -
when plucked is something.

All we need is a matrix (at rest) and to define the need for delta -

delta
- for anything to 'exist' to our senses it *need* move.

How'd this work ?
Align a series of waves 'head on' to us such that we cannot make them out (actually even regardless of motion) -
and then watch as 'something' appears from nothing as energy is input into this orthogonal set -

- energy which causes the set to twist.

more simply
-----------

Stare head on at a straight stick shooting like an arrow towards you -
and one cannot derive a delta -
cannot tell it's rate of approach -

it'll always look pretty much like a dot in the sky.

Next -
- imagine that increasing the energy to the arrow allows us to twist our perspective from first person head on to third person
side-on -

whereafter we'll be able to define a delta
- > -
--- > -
--- --- > -

and so will have in effect generated something from nothing.

The trick is simply in noting that our senses are flawed and that our mind is incapable of making observations on all aspects of reality.

By virtue of being products of nature -
we must subscribe to the rules of structure from unstructure -

- we're ~actually~ prevented from deriving delta from first person 'head on' prespective -
and a large part of the problems of mankind will dissipate when we realise this.

Why?

Because we'll have defined God -

too much time spent around Richard Dawkins -
God misspelt as 'Gid' with the d pronounced as a 't'

all of which reminds me of
'a beautiful place in the country'
Boards of Canada

which I somehow misheard earlier on today as
'a beautiful plaice in the country'

- bizarre misinterpretation which has somehow tainted my fondness for this great work of art .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrnYccMJmF8

Enjoy !

(the fish)

[analog]

Tim .... before we go any further ... and there are things in your last post that we will need to discuss further, I need to understand what your saying.

It does not matter how you interpret uncertainty. If, like Heisenberg, you interpret it as 'matrice mechanics' or like Schrodinger, as a wave function, which he meant only as a construct, not literally. Or whether you interpret the wave function as literal, or even if you accept Bohm's 'hidden variable' theory.Or even the sum of waves.

They are all just interpretations. They are all templates created by observations in order to explain the end results.

But none of them, not one, changes the fact that particles/waves display uncertainty. This is the only fact we know. As an armchair scientist you know as well as I that this is our only empirical evidence that matches experiment, and therefore the only conclusion we are allowed to draw.

It has been tested times beyond count. You say you don't interpret it so literally ? Maybe so, but you cannot deny it's results ? It has never been observed to behave in any other way ?

I think I can legitimately use uncertainty predictions and be on firm ground. I'm saying nothing about its ultimate underlying, (if their is any .. lol) causes.

If you don't agree with this, then you don't agree with QM, and you would need to provide an alternative to account for its spectacular alignment with results. Otherwise, I have no theory to discuss.

Interpretations are subjective, observation is objective.

Greg

Greg,

Well, I definitely agree with the last part, and that's part of the problem which I'm trying to address.

I'm not arguing that the events during a measurement aren't as Heisenberg suggests, as I'm not arguing with any currently accepted theories or observations. My argument is with the interpretations often taken from such theories, calculations, observations, etc.

This entire subject is basically the same scenario which we were discussing in the time and relativity thread. Accelerate a clock and ruler and they behave differently depending on their velocity relative to the speed of light. Such a scenario paints a spacetime portrait which agrees with every observable and testable scenario concerning the existence of such a spacetime topology. However, the mechanics of the physical existence of the clock and ruler can be understood to have the same effect. So, is a clock and ruler actually measuring intervals of spacetime, curvatures and warpages, as one clicks away while the other one merely exhibits symmetrical spacings which establish distance, or is there physical mechanics behind the operation and structure of both instruments which establish objective reality as they merely exhibit motion?

Here's a link to a site discussing the uncertainty of measure. This establishes that in terms of conventional measure, the universe is very indeterminate to us and our instruments, we seemingly can't know everything about a system; thus we can't make exact predictions of its behavior. Does this disclude the universe from having simple rules by which it operates whereby it is determinate in nature relative to itself, whether we know or not (here we are at our old paradox once again my friend...lol). The objective portrait seemingly painted by QM is an indeterminate topology similar to how we arrived at spacetime. QM is ultimately the science of the interaction of matter and energy at micro scales, thus it rightfully limits us to a manifold where particles pop in and out of existence, transition from one quantum state to another during interaction, evade any attempt at determinism on our part, etc, i.e. a universe where at the most fundamental scale probability becomes an extension of our instruments and reigns king in our ability to explore.

Some of us are simply of the opinion, that when not focusing on one strict discipline, but rather taking into account all of the current accepted theories and methodologies, a fundamental paradigm is suggested whereby seemingly, and currently considered to be, conflicting concepts such as QM and Relativity can find common ground by merely establishing the physical mechanics of the wave nature of matter and its ability to form structures and fields and interact by means of those structures and fields. What are all of our objective instruments, observations, measurements and calculations telling us as a whole, not independently? As Dave used to suggest, the written part of the ToE is done, in terms of exploration such as the gauge theories we developed. What's left is our ability to interpret what's now in front of us, which as you said, can become a subjective process; thus my emphasis above on the word opinion.

I have no methodology of my own, but I prefer Dave's method of establishing a material paradigm, whereby matter exhibits a real wave nature. I'm of the opinion that such a manifold can be quantized not in terms of energy, but rather in terms of the fundamental underlying source of all energy, i.e. motion. Establishing systems within such a volume of fundamental substance and applying a value to the absolute motion of those systems whereby exploring the nature of 'energy' transfer between such systems in terms of the objective motions of wave dynamics, interference, and such allows for a fundamental resolution which has no need for us to observe it for it to merely interact and be. Within such a paradigm is room for such accepted concepts as: the conservation of energy and momentum; Newton's classical mechanics; Einstien's clocks, rulers, scales, spacetime and elevators; QM's wave/particle duality, uncertainty and Bohr's atom; QED's Feynman diagrams, etc, etc, etc.

Within such a paradigm, determinism also takes on its fundamental resolution, whereby a system can operate in an algorithmic manner whether we know the rules or not, and certainly whether we can predict it's direction and final state or not. After all, we're ultimately just part of the calculation also, and though we may not be able to provide proof by predicting every aspect of an interacting system due to the limitations of our instruments, which is some people's concept of determinism, IMHO we have turned enough of those instruments on enough aspects of our physical interacting world from corner to corner, and measured from the smallest of scales to the largest to establish a paradigm which predicts how our instruments behave, along with the portraits they paint and the philosophies they conjure within our minds.

These are only my subjective opinions, and at the least I think they offer an alternative view. And as always, this is the platform from which I mostly make my posts; especially the confusing ones....lol. In the tradition of QM, I'm probably entirely wrong.

later,

Tim