Thread: If matter cant be created or destroyed, where did all this stuff come from?

@ A Roxxor

Hypothetical situation:
1) You do not believe the universe was created by any thing or event.
2) You do not believe the universe existed forever.

Out of what did the universe come from?

Spoiler for Answer:

Nothing.

It's a popular belief.


That's not the point of the irony, anyways. >_>
I hope you can at least find some humor in what it was about, unless the
meaning is lost on you.

Also, your explanation of the big bang.. Are you implying my ignorance of the
phenomenon? I only ask because of the lack of relevance it has to 'what' the
universe came from, and because my irony did not warrant it's explanation.



@ PhilosopherStoned

My confusion stems mostly from:
"So it could have found itself where the mass-energy was diffuse enough for some effect to cause further expansion."I'm still bugged out about how anything can be 'diffuse' or even really exist 'inside'
a dimensionless point at all. Or, perhaps my confusion is about the nature of
singularities. That they're dimensionless is only what I've been taught. Everything
that happened immediately after the big bang (within the fraction of a second) is
merely imagined via thought experiments, right? Or have we proved anything about
the nature of a singularity?

I am however familiar with the seamingly random appearance of virtual particles in
empty space, though I do not equate a total vacuum with 'nothing'. When you said
that quantum fluctuations happen in nothing, I was assuming you meant that they
happened independantly of 3dimensional space and time (before the existence of
space came about). I'm not really sure it does make sense to talk about a 'before
the big bang', unless time extended before that, but there's no way to know right
now. A bullet for my mind.

The Big Bang is an observation. How many times...

Unless you'd like to offer another possible initial state of a universe in which all of the matter in the universe is flying apart.

Why is it that people can't grasp this most fundamental fact about science. We don't believe crazy things because we want to, we believe them because of empirical evidence and logic. A creator is supported by neither of these.

Except for the fact that the universe "flying apart" is only a theory...

Originally Posted by Hercuflea

Except for the fact that the universe "flying apart" is only a theory...

NO it's an OBSERVATION and the ENTIRE REASON WE HAVE THE BIG BANG THEORY IN THE FIRST PLACE, AHHHHRARGH.

...please read about red shift.

Originally Posted by Invader

My confusion stems mostly from:
"So it could have found itself where the mass-energy was diffuse enough for some effect to cause further expansion."I'm still bugged out about how anything can be 'diffuse' or even really exist 'inside'
a dimensionless point at all. Or, perhaps my confusion is about the nature of
singularities. That they're dimensionless is only what I've been taught. Everything
that happened immediately after the big bang (within the fraction of a second) is
merely imagined via thought experiments, right? Or have we proved anything about
the nature of a singularity?

We don't know much about singularities because, by definition, a singularity is where math breaks down. Where a curve intersects itself is called a singularity if you are doing algebraic geometry. Where a coordinate transformation has all partial derivatives equal to zero is a singularity if you're doing differential geometry. Where something goes to infinity is a singularity pretty much no matter what you're doing.

On the whole, I think that we can confidently say that a singularity being a zero dimensional point is a bunch of bullocks that will be done away with by a theory of quantum gravity. Very small? yes. Infinitely small? not possible. The reason that we need quantum gravity is that gravity normally plays no role in quantum physics because the masses involved are small enough for the gravitational charge to be negligible. Gravity is weak. Just pick something up with a magnet to demonstrate this. The tiny little magnet is more powerful than the gravitational attraction of the entire earth.

From the other side, where gravity is dominant, things are usually too large for quantum effects to come into play. From the perspective of quantum mechanics, you are a wave and the wave length is your momentum divided by your mass. So it's a very small wave length and completely negligible. The wave length essentially determines the uncertainty. Gravitational physics describes you just fine.

In what is now a singularity according to our mathematical models, both influences are too large to be ignored and nobody knows how to really take them both into account at the same time. If/When we get there though, I'm almost positive that the whole singularity thing will disappear.

EDIT:

As far as the whole thought experiments thing goes, it's more like after the fact fiddling of the equations. For example, somewhere around 10^-32 seconds after the BB, there needs to have been very rapid "inflationary period" or the math says that the universe comes out completely differently than it actually does. So physicists insert a new field to make it happen or try to get the vacuum energy to be accountable for it. If you actually get into it and look at a lot of sources, there is more of that going on than is often covered in 'popular' accounts. This is one of the reason that I don't consider the big bang to be a fact in the same sense that evolution is. At this point one believes in the big bang and accepts evolution. Quantum gravity could change the game entirely. That being said, it is the best theory that we have right now and if you don't want to believe in it and still be educated, you have quite an uphill battle.

The presently accepted theory of gravity is mistaken. All attraction, including gravity, is caused by the absorption of emission via the emission field of an object. An emission field and an gravitational field are one and the same thing. To talk about gravity as only operating on the large scale is wrong.

Of even greater interest is the fact that nuclear binding (the nuclear force) is not simply an internal process. The nuclear force is actially the nuclear fusion process of construction which occurs within the context of the increasing density of impacting emission and the motion derived from the absorption of that emission.

The stability of atomic structure is relative to the density of the impacting emission. This was demonstrated with the Hafele-Keating atomic clocks experiment of 1971.

paradigm

Why does this guy's name sound familiar?

Originally Posted by Mario92

Why does this guy's name sound familiar?

I have no idea.

paradigm

So much talk about this thing called energy. Is it really anything more than matter is motion, and something that can be measured with an instrument?

When matter is destroyed is it not de-constructed into its parts, which includes the de-construction of its particles and sub-atomic particles, etc.

Do we really need the concept of energy to explain the Universe, if energy is de-constructing matter?

How can something exist and not be made of matter. Surely, the idea of anti-matter was taken from Star Trek.

The so called evidence for the existence of anti-matter is evidence for the impacting emission acting as pressure and causing particles to de-construct (explode).

Its not "energy" which binds matter into the elements and other higher forms of construction, but the attraction between the particles and sub-atomic particles which involves the absorption of emission which is made of matter.

Matter can be destroyed only in the sense that it;s reduced to its constitutent parts which are made of matter.

Matter is not one thing, because everything is made of matter.


paradigm

Originally Posted by paradigm

Its not "energy" which binds matter into the elements and other higher forms of construction, but the attraction between the particles and sub-atomic particles which involves the absorption of emission which is made of matter.

To be honest, what I see here is a bunch of linguistic obstacles standing in a way of common understanding of this things.

Originally Posted by paradigm

I have no idea.

paradigm

ParadigmShift! That's it!

I agree, your posts are unusually vague...also, matter is essentially trapped energy, and the concept of antimatter isn't entirely science fiction. When two particles of opposite spin interact, they cancel each other out and release pure energy. They aren't "broken down into their constituents" necessarily. Atomic weaponry converts a very small portion of matter to pure energy. For sure, splitting an atom releases energy, and so does smashing them. But, it is totally possible to convert matter to energy, and visa versa.

You also seem to be confused about energy, and what exactly it is. Allow me to remedy this:
Definition: Energy is the capacity of a physical system to perform work.
Forms of energy:
Kinetic
Thermal
Potential
Chemical
Electrical
Electrochemical
Electromagnetic
Sound
Nuclear

Kosher?

You seem to be confused about matter.

My point is that all the types of "energy" can be seen as types and states of matter so that energy is made of matter.

The idea that matter is made of energy and that energy is, therefore, not made of matter is to propose that energy does not have a substantive basis.

The destruction of two particles is not a result of matter meeting anti-matter. It is a product of the emission of the each particle causing the other particle to explode.

As two particles can only approach each other if they have an inequivalence of emission, one of the particles must explode before the other.

If the particles had an equivalence of emission then they would repel each other.

paradigm

Originally Posted by Invader

@ A Roxxor

Hypothetical situation:
1) You do not believe the universe was created by any thing or event.
2) You do not believe the universe existed forever.

Out of what did the universe come from?

Spoiler for Answer:

Nothing.

It's a popular belief.


That's not the point of the irony, anyways. >_>
I hope you can at least find some humor in what it was about, unless the
meaning is lost on you.

The universe has a cause. What that is is uncertain. We do know the events that immediately followed, however. Saying the universe came from nothing is just as unsupported as saying that the universe came from a greater being.

Also, your explanation of the big bang.. Are you implying my ignorance of the
phenomenon? I only ask because of the lack of relevance it has to 'what' the
universe came from, and because my irony did not warrant it's explanation.

We don't know where the universe came from, the big bang does not attempt to answer this, and physics is not advanced to that point yet. There is no supported answer to this question.

Originally Posted by A Roxxor

The universe has a cause.

Actually, we don't know that. Infinite causes that go backwards in time is just as illogical as having no cause at all.

A cause is an explanation of how a state at a prior time led to a different state at a later time. As there was no time before the Big Bang, there can't have been a 'cause' in that sense.

A cause does not have to be an event in a time sequence. It can just be a reason. Everything there is has a reason behind it. Nothing is uncaused. If things could happen without cause/reason, the universe would be too chaotic to exist. The requirement of cause is what allows order in the universe.

A cause is, specifically, a reason with regards to time, as far as I can tell.

If you're going to disprove me, please do it properly (by counterexample).

Originally Posted by Xei

A cause is, specifically, a reason with regards to time, as far as I can tell.

If you're going to disprove me, please do it properly (by counterexample).

Properly? I told you I disagree with your definition but added that we could use the word "reason" if you like. The semantic argument you want to have does not get past the fact that there is a reason the big bang happened.

Here are your examples any way. The congruence of all sides of a square causes it to be a rhombus. The requirement of infinite energy causes the speed of light to be unattainable. The fact that I am on the internet causes me to not be not on the internet.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cause