An Idea

[Profpat]

Or this image where the artist has it looking like a goblet. Perhaps the chalice? A magic chalice that will never spill a drop and can never runneth over, always filled right to the brim.

[SteveA]

Or this image where the artist has it looking like a goblet. Perhaps the chalice? A magic chalice that will never spill a drop and can never runneth over, always filled right to the brim.

Or perhaps a crystallization of knowledge expanding into an unknown.

[JAK]

...
What is interesting is that the nametags can contain organization. But we need to be careful not to get stuck in the nametag organizations when looking for a ToE. Nametags are tools, and should help us, not confuse us. Unfortunately, people start using words and then forget about the fact that the nametags come from us, and not from the actual entities.
...

I agree. And the crux of the issue, to me, is found in phrases such as "at the mouth of the river". Where is the river's mouth? At which water droplet? During which tide? Similarly, other boundaries we mark firmly are actually "fuzzy". It is the point you make about our categorizations are strictly for our benefit and are not likely a true description of nature.

And it this "fuzziness" which draws me to my suggestion that the void is not truly "void" of anything and everything. If it were, I do not believe it could interact and accept "matter" expansion. The receiving "void" must be accepting of the exact "time" and "spatial" requirements of the expansion and ensure that all laws of expansion are upheld.

It would seem to me, that a true void would not by synchronized with our universe, and any matter expansion would either be blocked by a lack of common laws, or worse, the matter would not retain its characteristics and disintegrate into nothingness. Why should the void be turned into matter? Why not the other way around? Which is more powerful: the laws of the known universe or the lack of laws of the void. What enables a law to persist?

If the void accepts expansion according to the known laws of our universe, then we have the "chicken and the egg" situation. Does matter carry "our" laws on its back as it enters the void? Or do the laws preexist in the void since it is part of a common universal field - existing in our time using our laws - and allowing matter to freely expand into the void?

[labelwench]

Or this image where the artist has it looking like a goblet. Perhaps the chalice? A magic chalice that will never spill a drop and can never runneth over, always filled right to the brim.

Just wanted to thank Profpat and all of you who post images on this thread.

In dealing with the concepts that may be simple 'mind exercises' for many of you, it is exceedingly helpful to have images and diagrams to assist when following the course of your debates.

Nightshift. Now there is a 'dark matter' on which I may be able to enlighten you, lol....

Seriously, though. Research has shown that people have various means by which they best learn. Words work respectably for me, yet an image just pulls the pieces together that much better.

[SteveA]

...

Seriously, though. Research has shown that people have various means by which they best learn. Words work respectably for me, yet an image just pulls the pieces together that much better.

As they say a picture is worth a thousand words and I do agree. The text can be useful to add some precision to what's being referenced, but in order to quickly communicate about general features images or physical analogies can work well.

[Profpat]

"If the void accepts expansion according to the known laws of our universe, then we have the "chicken and the egg" situation. Does matter carry "our" laws on its back as it enters the void? Or do the laws preexist in the void since it is part of a common universal field - existing in our time using our laws - and allowing matter to freely expand into the void?"

Hi JAK;

You have the chicken and the egg only in our universe. There is no chicken or egg in the Void. Nothing, the Void has always been there and always will be there, it is eternal no beginning no ending no first. The something, strings, may also be eternal.

The Void by definition has no laws, it is VOID.
Particles from protons to electrons to photons and even done to a fundamental string carries it's own set of rules and limitations, which make up the field of space.

Best,

Pat

[austintorn@aol.com]

Paradoxes resolved:


The Void

The void has never been there and never will be, for a Nothing has no existence, nor does it means an empty place, for the 'place' has no existence. It's just not there; it has no 'thereness' property nor any other.


A certain amount of energy present

Doesn't matter, literally, for the negative gravitational potential energy cancels out the positive kinetic energy of stuff… but for the quantum fluctuation/tunneling capability that makes the proceeding possible.


So, no Nothing, but for a tiny near 'nothing' capability. Thus, the Cosmos, including before any particular universe, is all there ever was and all there will ever be. (Carl Sagan might have said this.)

Since causes beneath causes can't go back forever and since nothing can become of Nothing, there was no creation of the ultimate ground-state of the Cosmos.

The capability, or the 'something' of the ground-state, was the normal state of affairs, not Nothing, since something is.

[Profpat]

And so what does space expand into Austin if not into nothing as NASA suggests. And could you show me a picture or image of that as I did for you?

P.S. From NASA "if the universe includes, by definition, everything -- all of space, time, matter, energy -- than there can be nothing outside of it (and hence no edge), nothing for it to expand into"

[Profpat]

In fact we may have a void in our universe, so much for nonexistent, though it is nothing.


Scientists puzzle over enormous void



By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Published: 11:10AM BST 24 Aug 2007




Astronomers are scratching their heads over a puzzling non-discovery, an enormous hole in the universe measuring nearly a billion light-years across.
There really is nothing to the void, which is empty of both normal matter such as stars, galaxies, and gas, and the mysterious, unseen "dark matter" that astronomers detect by its gravitational pull.



When the next revolution rocks physics, chances are it will be about nothing—the vacuum, that endless infinite void. In a discipline where the stretching of time and the warping of space are routine working assumptions, the vacuum remains a sort of cosmic koan. And as in the rest of physics, its nature has turned out to be mind-bendingly weird: Empty space is not really empty because nothing contains something, seething with energy and particles that flit into and out of existence. Physicists have known that much for decades, ever since the birth of quantum mechanics. But only in the last 10 years has the vacuum taken center stage as a font of confounding mysteries like the nature of dark energy and matter; only recently has the void turned into a tantalizing beacon for cranks. As one blond celebrity heiress and embodiment of emptiness might say, nothing is hot.

From Discover Magazine

P.S. I really like this from the article "nothing contains something,"

[Profpat]

"By convention there is sweet, by convention there is bitter, by convention hot and cold, by convention color; but in reality there are only atoms and the void." Democritus