# The Universe Is As Finely Tuned As A Symphony Orchestra



## american music

The Universe Is As Finely Tuned As A Symphony Orchestra
By Ronald H. Brady
Frank Sinatra, according to his biographers, seldom played his own recordings while entertaining at his home. Instead he more often played his favorite classical recordings. Actually many of the arrangements for Sinatra's music prominently featured the string section: the mainstay of the symphony orchestra.

What does all of this have to do with a finely tuned Universe? Many cosmologists believe that if any of the, 26 or so, fundamental physical constants had been only slightly different from their actual values then the formation of the Universe as we know it would have been virtually impossible.

Therefore, in the opinion of many astrophysicists, the original fine tuning of the fundamental physical constants made it likely that the Universe as we know it would eventually form and lead to the evolution of life on earth. And ultimately this fine tuning would make it possible for mankind, among many other things, to fine tune the instruments of symphony orchestras so that they would be able to perform the finely crafted symphonies of Brahms, Beethoven, Mahler and others.

I once accidentally witnessed the consequences of the fine tuning of the laws of mathematical physics in connection with music (arguably the noblest of all of the art forms). It was a wintry day in the early sixties when most radios still had electron tubes. After a long day at high school I lay across the bed and turned on the radio. It was an old radio and the back cover had been removed and for some reason I turned it around so that I could watch the movement of the tuning condenser as I searched the radio dial for something interesting. The warmth of the radio in my hands brought a measure of relief from the cold that I had experienced outside.

The 60 Hertz AC hum was prominent and reminded me of the math of alternating current theory. And I contemplated on how fortunate we were that the governing equations of electromagnetism, Maxwell's field equations, made it possible for the radio waves to be transmitted from the radio station antenna to the receiving antenna of my radio.

It was about this time, as I watched the glow of the filaments of the electron tubes, that I smelled the faint odor of the warming plastic of the radio casing. Then something utterly magical happed. The string section of an orchestra, following the musical dictation of a Nelson Riddle arrangement, majestically leaped toward the stratosphere as they provided part of the accompaniment for the silky smooth vocals of Frank Sinatra (in fine tune as always). The song was "Talk to me", by E. Snyder, S. Kahan and R. Vallee,

"Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me
Your magical kiss can take me just so far
Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me Don't leave me like this dangling from a star"

For me, at that time and place, the juxtaposition of pleasant stimuli for all five of the senses in addition to my intellectual appreciation of the cleverness of the lyrics of the song was something that was very special. The lyrics were great, the music magnificent, the singing wondrous, the glow of the electrons in the tubes was fascinating, the heat of the radio helped to warm winter chilled hands and the faint smell of the plastic all combined to create a singular moment of awareness of the beauty and mystery of creation.

But this was just one episode of the virtually infinite space - time continuum that was made possible by a Universal Governing Equation. Many theoretical physicists imply the existence of such an equation by their search for the mathematical formulation of a THORY OF EVERYTHING.

So who do we thank for the wonders of an apparently very fined tuned Universe: the coincidence of the Big Bang or the Infinite Power and Intellect from which it evidently sprang?


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## violadude

Uh, is this a music thread or a theological debate? I'm confused.


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## Gilberto

Yes, we have no plantains.


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## KenOC

A less romantic view: the weak anthropic principle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle


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## american music

Please excuse the typo: "THORY OF EVERYTHING" should be replaced by "THEORY OF EVERYTHING"


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## american music

The dynamics of the Universe, in the view of many who are versed in music and sci/math, is considered to be the performance of a cosmic abstract symphony.


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## violadude

The REAL Jupiter Symphony.


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## american music

Yes, in the view of those who support the anthropic principle the fine tuning, and all of the consequences that follow from it, is unremarkable! But then what is remarkable?


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## aleazk

american music said:


> But this was just one episode of the virtually infinite space - time continuum that was made possible by a Universal Governing Equation. Many theoretical physicists imply the existence of such an equation by their search for the mathematical formulation of a THORY OF EVERYTHING.


But we already have an Universal Governing Equation for the space - time continuum... it's called Einstein's equation. Here you have it:










Possibly, the space - time continuum will not play any role in a theory of everything, since it's believed it's some kind of emergent thing from more fundamental concepts.


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## KenOC

american music said:


> Yes, in the view of those who support the anthropic principle the fine tuning, and all of the consequences that follow from it, is unremarkable! But then what is remarkable?


What indeed? Don't commit the inverse gambler's fallacy:
------------------------------------------------------
Suppose a man walked into a room and saw someone rolling a pair of dice. Furthermore, imagine that the result of this dice roll is a double-six. The man entering the room would commit the Inverse Gambler's Fallacy if he said, "You've probably been rolling the dice for quite a while, since it's unlikely you would get a double-six on your first attempt."
------------------------------------------------------
But of course, the double-six is just as likely (or unlikely) on the first throw as on any other.


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## aleazk

american music said:


> The dynamics of the Universe, in the view of many who are versed in music and sci/math, is considered to be the performance of a cosmic abstract symphony.


Er... no. The dynamics of the Universe looks like this. A symphony looks like this.

Both are wonderful human creations. END OF THE ANALOGY...


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## KenOC

Aleazk, you seem like the person to ask. I saw a news story the other day that said recent background radiation measurements had pretty well proven that there was an inflationary period shortly (very shortly!) after the big bang. Any idea about this?


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## PetrB

KenOC said:


> Aleazk, you seem like the person to ask. I saw a news story the other day that said recent background radiation measurements has pretty well proven that there was an inflationary period shortly (very shortly!) after the big bang. Any idea about this?


My layman's non-Aleazk / non-physicists take on it?

Inflation and poverty have both been with us from the first dawn


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## KenOC

PetrB said:


> Inflation and poverty have goth been with us from the first dawn


Not inflation but deflation in classical music. Not many years ago a dollar would buy you a fifteenth of a CD. Today it'll buy the complete solo piano music of Mozart.

http://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Comple...8&qid=1397450455&sr=1-1&keywords=mozart+klien


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## violadude

KenOC said:


> Not inflation but deflation in classical music. Not many years ago a dollar would buy you a fifteenth of a CD. Today it'll buy the complete solo piano music of Mozart.
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Comple...8&qid=1397450455&sr=1-1&keywords=mozart+klien


One of the benefits of having unpopular music tastes?


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## science

violadude said:


> One of the benefits of having unpopular music tastes?


Thank the weak anthropic principle for information and communications technology!


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## PetrB

*Notions of Cosmic Symphony Defenestrated ~ Film at Eleven*



violadude said:


> The REAL Jupiter Symphony.


zOMG, You mean Bach is _not_ the sound of the music of the spheres, that 18th century north European counterpoint is _not_ the perfect mirror reflection of how the universe works? I am in tears and just shocked. _What is there then left to believe in?_








Lol. Yeah -- kinda blows all the romantic notions and concepts of our scale, harmonic series as a law to obey for 'good harmony,' and sense of form and order right out the window, huh?


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## aleazk

KenOC said:


> Aleazk, you seem like the person to ask. I saw a news story the other day that said recent background radiation measurements had pretty well proven that there was an inflationary period shortly (very shortly!) after the big bang. Any idea about this?


Apparently, they detected some things in the polarization of the cosmic microwave radiation background that according to inflation theory were caused by the emission of gravitational radiation during this inflationary period. As far as I know, the results have been accepted and more experiments for corroboration are on the way. But I couldn't tell, because the papers are still being analyzed. In any case, it's all quite mainstream physics.

If it's finally 100% corroborated by all of these planned experiments it will be a quite remarkable thing, basically because you shot two birds at once: inflation and gravitational waves. Both of these concepts started as very obscure theoretical predictions and they seem to be gaining more and more experimental weight with the years. So far, the only evidence we have of gravitational waves is via the orbital decay of binary pulsar systems, like the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar. Some quite big experiments are being developed for a direct detection. According to a guy at my uni that has been in LIGO last year, some results are expected in 2016. It's expected that the direct detection of gravitational waves will open a new field, Gravitational-wave astronomy.


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## KenOC

PetrB said:


> Lol. Yeah -- kinda blows all the romantic notions and concepts of our scale, harmonic series as a law to obey for 'good harmony,' and sense of form and order right out the window, huh?


Most certainly. Of course wise minds have long realized that our perception of music and preference for tonality has nothing to do with universal physical laws. It is simply genetic. Right? :lol:


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## PetrB

KenOC said:


> Most certainly. Of course wise minds have long realized that our perception of music and preference for tonality has nothing to do with universal physical laws. It is simply genetic. Right? :lol:


As in _what our physical hearing perceives best as a mechanism,_ i.e. without really relating that to the fact the input via those mechanisms goes to _our brain?_ :tiphat:

But of course!


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## EdwardBast

KenOC said:


> Aleazk, you seem like the person to ask. I saw a news story the other day that said recent background radiation measurements had pretty well proven that there was an inflationary period shortly (very shortly!) after the big bang. Any idea about this?


Several teams of scientists using sophisticated telescopes in Antarctica were looking for minute temperature fluctuations in the background radiation of the universe, which is somewhere a little below 3° Kelvin. One of the astrophysicists involved (but not on the team that got there first) is a neighbor of mine and he tried to explain it to me. What I understood is that they were looking for evidence of polarization in this background radiation, which would indicate the influence of gravity waves in the first microseconds after the bang. I believe the recent findings were the first direct evidence of such gravity waves and that their presence at this time supports or explains the inflationary theory. But, of course, I am a musician ;-)

Edit: Oh! Aleazk was explaining this more eloquently already.


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## Guest

violadude said:


> The REAL Jupiter Symphony.


But ViolaDude, I was told that "in space, nobody can hear you scream" !!!


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## rrudolph

The Universe is clearly more finely tuned than the orchestra I played with this past weekend...


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## PetrB

TalkingHead said:


> But ViolaDude, I was told that "in space, nobody can hear you scream" !!!


Yup, no bang whoosh kzooom-blatting with that dog-fight between the rebel army and the imperial fighters; "space is really really really big," and it is a vacuum, _no atmosphere of any sort to move = no sound._

But if -- The Universe Is As Finely Tuned As A Symphony Orchestra -- it sings in infinitely fine increments of microtones, i.e. it more sorta buzzes and hums, and knows nothing at all of evenly pulsed earthbound musical metric time ~ but it ain't talkin' or tellin' us anything so far


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## brianvds

TalkingHead said:


> But ViolaDude, I was told that "in space, nobody can hear you scream" !!!


They can, as long as you scream in radio waves and they have suitable equipment with which to pick it up.


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## PetrB

brianvds said:


> They can, as long as you scream in radio waves and they have suitable equipment with which to pick it up.


Wouldn't that more than likely make it a 'bit late' to bother with taking that call?


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## violadude

TalkingHead said:


> But ViolaDude, I was told that "in space, nobody can hear you scream" !!!


Ya, as I understand, even if you went right up next to Jupiter you still wouldn't be able to hear what is in the video. They are recording the electro-magnetic soundwaves (or whatever they're called...) an reproducing what it WOULD sound like if Jupiter could somehow be brought to Earth where soundwaves carry.


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## Guest

*In space no one can hear you scream*

In space no one can hear you scream


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## american music

rrudolph said:


> The Universe is clearly more finely tuned than the orchestra I played with this past weekend...


Just persevere and make the decision to graduate to an orchestra with more precision and with much study and a little luck you can be the one who will conduct!


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## rrudolph

american music said:


> Just persevere and make the decision to graduate to an orchestra with more precision and with much study and a little luck you can be the one who will conduct!


I usually do play with much better orchestras. This was done as a favor to the conductor.


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## SixFootScowl

Should have made this a poll:

1. Big Bang
2. Infinite Power and Intellect 
3. I don't know


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## american music

aleazk said:


> But we already have an Universal Governing Equation for the space - time continuum... it's called Einstein's equation. Here you have it:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Possibly, the space - time continuum will not play any role in a theory of everything, since it's believed it's some kind of emergent thing from more fundamental concepts.


General Relativity (represented mathematically by a system of ten independent non-linear, second order partial differential equations) is not the Theory of Everything that is being sought. Einstein realized this in his life time and sought to unify electromagnetism and gravity (which for a long time were thought to be the only fundamental interactions in nature). Most theoreticians believe that Einstein failed in his quest to unify gravity and electromagnetism.

Now it is known that the weak and the strong nuclear forces are also fundamental interactions. The study of these forces fall within the domain of Quantum Mechanics: which relies heavily on statistics and probability. Einstein famously rejected quantum mechanics by stating that "God does not play dice". Nevertheless, Richard Feynman (Nobel Laureate) and others expanded quantum mechanics into the first quantum field theory: Quantum Electrodynamics. It should be noted that the accuracy of the theoretical predictions of QED have since been experimentally verified to a higher level of precision than the predictions of any other theory including those of General Relativity.

The Standard Model has been very successful in unifying three of the fundamental interactions: electromagnetism, the weak and the strong forces. It has also had a high level of theoretical predictive success. General Relativity is the odd man out. String Theory is a potential theoretical umbrella that could cover all of the four known physical interactions but the math involved is exceedingly difficult.

One of the entries on the proverbial bottom line is that GR or the Standard Model (or both) has to be modified or be incorporated as part of an even more general theory in order for theoreticians to arrive at the unification of all of the four known forces. In consideration of the fact that the Standard Model has a much greater experimentally verified predictive power, GR might be the logical candidate for revision.

It must be remembered that the Law of Universal Gravitation formulated by Isaac Newton (who made seminal discoveries in both math and physics) stood at the top of the theoretical heap for 200 years or so until it was succeeded by GR. Science must not let institutional inertia prevent it from moving on to theoretical models that are even more sophisticated than that of GR, if experimental evidence provides a need to so. And it must be remembered that experimental technology has significantly advanced since the time of Einstein. He, or any other human being, could not possibly formulate a theory that would adequately predict the behavior of a natural physical interaction that is unknown to him.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/192787738/Strings-in-Dimensions-Numbering-Ten-and-the-Strings-of-a-Violin


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## aleazk

Yes, I know all that. I was pointing out some imprecisions in the wording of your OP.



american music said:


> But this was just one episode of the virtually infinite space - time continuum that was made possible by a Universal Governing Equation. Many theoretical physicists imply the existence of such an equation by their search for the mathematical formulation of a THORY OF EVERYTHING.


You talk about an Universal Governing Equation of the space - time continuum. I took that as an equation for the space - time continuum. And in that case, we already have one, general relativity and its equations.

I see now that you are talking about some Universal Governing Equation in a hypothetical theory of everything, not just space - time. But even in that case, I also have my doubts, since the differentiable manifold model for spacetime (the "continuum") is very likely just a macroscopic approximation, as you even notice in your comment. I don't think there will be any spacetime continuum in a theory of everything. I wouldn't have used the term spacetime continuum in the context of a theory of everything, since the term immediately implies classical conception about spacetime and the asociated classical theories (i.e., general relativity). Unless, of course, you think that the spacetime continuum is a fundamental concept even in a (quantum) theory of everything.


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## Blake

How can you not love that face? And 6 - 3 = 6… I'll take it.









But really, a brilliant chap. Always have been a fan.


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## KenOC

Einstein's views on music: https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/albert-einstein-on-music


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## Blake

KenOC said:


> Einstein's views on music: https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/albert-einstein-on-music


I see he wasn't a fan of modern music. That's a surprise, actually.


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## aleazk

Vesuvius said:


> How can you not love that face? And 6 - 3 = 6… I'll take it.
> 
> View attachment 39482
> 
> 
> But really, a brilliant chap. Always have been a fan.


Einstein was my scientific hero until I discovered John von Neumann and his formulation of quantum mechanics via quantum logic. Most people would say Dirac was the man in relation to the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics. He was an intuitive genius, but I think the title should go to von Neumann.


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## aleazk

KenOC said:


> Einstein's views on music: https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/albert-einstein-on-music


"I like Mozart, everything else lacks of structure and I do not understand why it was necessary to write it"


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## Morimur

Einstein may have been a genius in his own field but his views on music were narrow minded. I don't understand his criticism of Debussy's work.


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## Blake

Hey, it's Einstein. He's allowed to be a bit shallow in some places. He's like the Mozart of science.


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## KenOC

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Einstein may have been a genius in his own field but his views on music were narrow minded. I don't understand his criticism of Debussy's work.


Please remember that these are views from 75 years ago...actually I can see the "lacking structure" comment -- Ravel had him all beat in that department. Einstein criticizes Schubert on the same grounds...


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## Blake

KenOC said:


> Please remember that these are views from 75 years ago...actually I can see the "lacking structure" comment -- Ravel had him all beat in that department.


I don't think the time really matters. They had plenty of Avant-Garde, Futurist high-intellectuals at this time.


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## brianvds

Florestan said:


> Should have made this a poll:
> 
> 1. Big Bang
> 2. Infinite Power and Intellect
> 3. I don't know


The first two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.


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## aleazk

EdwardBast said:


> Several teams of scientists using sophisticated telescopes in Antarctica were looking for minute temperature fluctuations in the background radiation of the universe, which is somewhere a little below 3° Kelvin. One of the astrophysicists involved (but not on the team that got there first) is a neighbor of mine and he tried to explain it to me. What I understood is that they were looking for evidence of polarization in this background radiation, which would indicate the influence of gravity waves in the first microseconds after the bang. I believe the recent findings were the first direct evidence of such gravity waves and that their presence at this time supports or explains the inflationary theory. But, of course, I am a musician ;-)
> 
> Edit: Oh! Aleazk was explaining this more eloquently already.


Very good for a layman 

Just two details.

"supports or explains the inflationary theory".

Inflation is a concept that "lives" in our current theoretical models of the universe. These models are based on general relativity and quantum field theory (our two current "big theories"), which are physico-mathematical theories, i.e., a bunch of mathematical formulas and concepts and axioms about how to interpret all these things in the physical reality. The gravitational waves-polarization thingy is a _prediction_ of these models, i.e., they say that this should happen in the actual reality and also _explain_ why and how. The people in the BICEP team found that this effect is indeed present in the physical reality. So, they found experimental _supports_ for the models. If the prediction is not found to be true in the actual physical reality, then one says that the model has been _falsified_ and it's discarded. This is basically how science works. Of course, it's only a very simplified picture.

"I believe the recent findings were the first direct evidence of such gravity waves"

Most physicists would say that this and the orbital decay of binary pulsars are indirect evidence.

The theory says that if you have a ring of particles and then a gravitational wave crosses this ring in the perpendicular direction to the plane in which the ring lives, then the particles should move like this.

Experimental physicists want to detect precisely that, and that's what they call a "direct" detection. Unfortunately, these displacements are incredibly small actually, they are very difficult to measure. The most promising candidate is the LIGO experiment.


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## american music

science said:


> Thank the weak anthropic principle for information and communications technology!


Information is basically symbols "in formation" and their various permutations and commutations do indeed facilitate communications.


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## regressivetransphobe

Sometimes the universe feels a bit more like this


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## american music

american music said:


> For me, at that time and place, the juxtaposition of pleasant stimuli for all five of the senses in addition to my intellectual appreciation of the cleverness of the lyrics of the song was something that was very special.


It looks like I omitted one of the 5 senses by leaving out taste. But with tongue firmly in cheek I suppose that I can say that I was referring to taste in music (Sinatra, classical, semi-classical, etc.) as opposed to ordinary taste.


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## techniquest

Thus Spake Dr Sheldon Cooper...


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## PetrB

techniquest said:


> Thus Spake Dr Sheldon Cooper...










_*..........Ahhhhhhhh.*_


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## Matsps

aleazk said:


> But we already have an Universal Governing Equation for the space - time continuum... it's called Einstein's equation. Here you have it:


Einstein's field equations for general relativity equation are known to be incomplete. It fails completely to describe quantum gravity and black holes. We know it to be correct in all situations in which it is proper to apply however, so part of any theory of everything must cancel down to give rise to Einstein's field equations at some point (in the same way you can cancel things from the equation you quoted if velocity is very low to get Newton's gravitational equation). In other words, this theory is not governing the space-time continuum, but only describing part of it.

Also, I've been following a lot of L. Susskind's lectures recently and his theory of a fractal flow universe is wonderful. There is no fine tuning, we simply exist in a current state in which the properties of the universe give raise to the conditions we see, while other universes exist with conditions that may be similar or dissimilar. We are not listening to a symphony because the universe was fine-tuned for it, but because there are so many universes that some of them will have symphonies.


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## PetrB

aleazk said:


> But we already have an Universal Governing Equation for the space - time continuum... it's called Einstein's equation. Here you have it:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Possibly, the space - time continuum will not play any role in a theory of everything, since it's believed it's some kind of emergent thing from more fundamental concepts.










........................................


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## Blake

Matsps said:


> Einstein's field equations for general relativity equation are known to be incomplete. It fails completely to describe quantum gravity and black holes. We know it to be correct in all situations in which it is proper to apply however, so part of any theory of everything must cancel down to give rise to Einstein's field equations at some point (in the same way you can cancel things from the equation you quoted if velocity is very low to get Newton's gravitational equation). In other words, this theory is not governing the space-time continuum, but only describing part of it.
> 
> Also, I've been following a lot of L. Susskind's lectures recently and his theory of a fractal flow universe is wonderful. There is no fine tuning, we simply exist in a current state in which the properties of the universe give raise to the conditions we see, while other universes exist with conditions that may be similar or dissimilar. *We are not listening to a symphony because the universe was fine-tuned for it, but because there are so many universes that some of them will have symphonies.*


I just find this kind of logic to be lazy and nearly negligent. We have enough problems understanding this Universe that we're pretty sure exist, so let's not fantasize about others quite yet, or you might as well just be a religion in that case. Since nothing can exist without some type of initial potential for it, how was the potential for a symphony even there to begin with? Some scientist do all they can to quantify the cosmos that they become utterly dry in their obsession with their own personal intellect. It turns a beautiful adventure into a bore.


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## aleazk

Matsps said:


> Einstein's field equations for general relativity equation are known to be incomplete. It fails completely to describe quantum gravity


Correct.



Matsps said:


> and black holes


mmm, no. Black holes are a prediction of general relativity. Maybe you are thinking in a quantum description of black holes, in that case, yes.



Matsps said:


> We know it to be correct in all situations in which it is proper to apply however, so part of any theory of everything must cancel down to give rise to Einstein's field equations at some point (in the same way you can cancel things from the equation you quoted if velocity is very low to get Newton's gravitational equation). In other words, this theory is not governing the space-time continuum, but only describing part of it.


General relativity is not only Einstein's equations. General relativity proposes a mathematical model for spacetime, it uses a thing called differentiable manifold. In that manifold is where you define Einstein's equations. That differentiable manifold model is intrinsically related to the classical ideas about spacetime being a "continuum". As I said, most scientists believe that spacetime at quantum scales is nothing resembling a continuum. That's why I'm saying it's a mistake to think that in a theory of everything the concept of spacetime continuum is of fundamental significance. The continuum is a macroscopic and classical approximation. So, when you are talking about a spacetime continuum, it really doesn't go more far than Einstein's equations (or some modifications). In a theory of everything, yes, you discard Einstein's equations, but also the continuum model. To give you an example, the singularity theorems of classical general relativity predict the occurrence of space time singularities in a wide variety of situations. But you don't use the explicit form of Einstein's equations to prove them!, just some very generic properties, which can be also fulfilled by a lot of other modifications of Einstein equations. The prediction of a singularity is a catastrophic failure of a theory. But in this case, what's failing is the continuum model for spacetime that these theories use. Nobody believes the continuum to be fundamental. In a theory of everything, _both_ the continuum and Einstein's equation will be recovered as limits. And in that case, yes, things in the spacetime continuum, you could say that are consequence of a theory of everything, but I find the mixing of concepts a little awkward. If you are going to use a theory of everything, use the concepts that are fundamental in that theory.


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## violadude

This thread has gone way over my head.


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## Matsps

Vesuvius said:


> I just find this kind of logic to be lazy and nearly negligent. We have enough problems understanding this Universe that we're pretty sure exist, so let's not fantasize about others quite yet


It may well be that the problems in explaining what we currently would call the universe are only solved by considering that to think this is the only universe may not be correct. A good scientist will make assumptions, without bias (like assuming there is only one universe just because we assumed that for so long), explore the hypothesis and try to come up with some sound mathematical and logical arguments to back it up. I'm not particularly keen on the idea of multiple universes either, but it has to be sad, the more you look into it, the more the possibility appears logical and a lot of people, through the application of logic, are coming to the same kind of conclusions. 
Now until this is tested experimentally (and yes that's going to be difficult but aren't the frontiers of science always), it is only a hypothesis, but I don't think a comparison with religion is a fair one. These ideas are coming out of application of application of maths and thinking rather than blind faith or as you said, laziness.



> Some scientist do all they can to quantify the cosmos that they become utterly dry in their obsession with their own personal intellect. It turns a beautiful adventure into a bore.


Yeah maybe they do, but I would argue that any great scientist does not (example: 



). In fact, they turn things that many people consider dull and uninteresting into something magical and full of wonder. They see the great symphony of the cosmos.



aleazk said:


> mmm, no. Black holes are a prediction of general relativity. Maybe you are thinking in a quantum description of black holes, in that case, yes.


Yes, that's what I meant. You can't have a complete and correct description of black holes while considering only general relativity.



aleazk said:


> lots of stuff about general relativity


Wow you're really on the ball with physics! However, as you said, it's only a belief what space-time really is at quantum scales. Until we find out basic things, like erm, what the hell gravity actually is, can you actually mathematically disprove all continuum models? My understanding was at this moment, no-one has found an acceptable non-continuum model?


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## Blake

Matsps said:


> It may well be that the problems in explaining what we currently would call the universe are only solved by considering that to think this is the only universe may not be correct. A good scientist will make assumptions, without bias (like assuming there is only one universe just because we assumed that for so long), explore the hypothesis and try to come up with some sound mathematical and logical arguments to back it up. I'm not particularly keen on the idea of multiple universes either, but it has to be sad, the more you look into it, the more the possibility appears logical and a lot of people, through the application of logic, are coming to the same kind of conclusions.
> Now until this is tested experimentally (and yes that's going to be difficult but aren't the frontiers of science always), it is only a hypothesis, but I don't think a comparison with religion is a fair one. These ideas are coming out of application of application of maths and thinking rather than blind faith or as you said, laziness.
> 
> Yeah maybe they do, but I would argue that any great scientist does not (example:
> 
> 
> 
> ). In fact, they turn things that many people consider dull and uninteresting into something magical and full of wonder. They see the great symphony of the cosmos.


I guess I just don't see the value in the hypotheses to begin with, as we're only stepping further away from an origin when we can just keep diving deeper into this Universe that we know exist for now. There very well may be many universes, I wouldn't be surprised, but so what? We still don't know our own.

As for the second response - Of course I don't think all scientist are dry-intellectuals, as I'm very fond of science. But the ones that are tend to stick out like a sore thumb. But I agree that a great scientist sees the symphony of the cosmos as a beautiful wonder, and not something to simply write a book about so you can be labeled a "scientist."


----------



## PetrB

Andrea Di Paolo ~ Das Universum













Rued Langgaard ~ Music of the Spheres


----------



## hpowders

Perhaps in another universe, atonal music is the norm and on their internet threads, pioneering tonal music advocates are subject to revulsion and ridicule.


----------



## aleazk

Matsps said:


> Wow you're really on the ball with physics! However, as you said, it's only a belief what space-time really is at quantum scales. Until we find out basic things, like erm, what the hell gravity actually is, can you actually mathematically disprove all continuum models? My understanding was at this moment, no-one has found an acceptable non-continuum model?


The main problem with gravity is that, unlike any other "force", it seems to be related to the spacetime structure. Now, the dynamics of forces is dictated by quantum mechanics. So, it's believed that a quantum mechanical description of gravity will imply a quantum mechanical description of spacetime as well (possibly with discrete areas and volumes). There's currently a theory of this sort, Loop Quantum Gravity. In that theory, gravity is canonically quantized and a discrete picture of spacetime emerges. But it's in embrionary state right now.

The thing is that the spacetime metric, which is the object that allows you to define volumes, areas, time intervals, etc., is also the dynamical variable in gravity!. So, quantization of this variable is likely to produce quantization of geometry.

Unfortunately, Loop Quantum Gravity only deals with gravity, i.e., is not a theory of everything. String theory is a more promising candidate for that (also provides its own insights into quantum gravity). But as far as gravity goes, I like more LQG. I hope the two things can be merged in the future.


----------



## Blake

Are you a physicist, aleazk? You really seem to know your stuff. I'm impressed.


----------



## KenOC

hpowders said:


> Perhaps in another universe, atonal music is the norm and on their internet threads, pioneering tonal music advocates are subject to revulsion and ridicule.


According to some multiverse theories, the are an infinite number of universes where only Webern and Boulez are played in concerts, and fans of tonal music are lynched in the streets.


----------



## PetrB

violadude said:


> This thread has gone *way over my head*.


that's the universe for you....


----------



## Morimur

KenOC said:


> According to some multiverse theories, the are an infinite number of universes where only Webern and Boulez are played in concerts, and fans of tonal music are lynched in the streets.


I'd like to move there.


----------



## hpowders

KenOC said:


> According to some multiverse theories, the are an infinite number of universes where only Webern and Boulez are played in concerts, and fans of tonal music are lynched in the streets.


My kind of universe. I've always wanted to take atonal accordion lessons. Now I know where to go.


----------



## KenOC

hpowders said:


> My kind of universe. I've always wanted to take atonal accordion lessons. Now I know where to go.


As of this date, there is no scheduled service to any of those universes, sorry.


----------



## brianvds

hpowders said:


> My kind of universe. I've always wanted to take atonal accordion lessons. Now I know where to go.


Me, I remain enamoured of the octaventral heebiephone.


----------



## american music

KenOC said:


> According to some multiverse theories, the are an infinite number of universes where only Webern and Boulez are played in concerts, and fans of tonal music are lynched in the streets.


A popular paraphrase of Shakespeare is that: the whole world is a stage and everybody is playing a part. This may conceivably be updated to "the whole universe is a symphonic aggregation" engaged in an act of spontaneous improvisation. The multifaceted "band leader" would be the application of the micro scale and macro scale laws of nature expressed in terms of an infinite set of partial differential equations of infinite order, dimension and degree. This would constitute the ultimate theory of everything but it would be comprehensible only by the Ultimate Infinitely Powerful Intelligence.

As for the concept of infinity: it is an important tool in practical math and science. Think about convergent infinite series in math and infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces in quantum mechanics.

And those who consider the possibility of the existence of an infinite number of universes can ponder the possibility of a "multi stage symphonic aggregation".


----------



## PetrB

american music said:


> A popular paraphrase of Shakespeare is that: the whole world is a stage and everybody is playing a part. This may conceivably be updated to "the whole universe is a symphonic aggregation" engaged in an act of spontaneous improvisation. The multifaceted "band leader" would be the application of the micro scale and macro scale laws of nature expressed in terms of an infinite set of partial differential equations of infinite order, dimension and degree. This would constitute the ultimate theory of everything but it would be comprehensible only by the Ultimate Infinitely Powerful Intelligence.
> 
> As for the concept of infinity: it is an important tool in practical math and science. Think about convergent infinite series in math and infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces in quantum mechanics.
> 
> And those who consider the possibility of the existence of an infinite number of universes can ponder the possibility of a "multi stage symphonic aggregation".


Of course, none of that will in any way help anyone write a better or more profound piece of music, in any particular scale or style


----------



## american music

PetrB said:


> Of course, none of that will in any way help anyone write a better or more profound piece of music, in any particular scale or style


I humbly beg to differ, but the imagination and thought processes, necessary for any human creative effort, are made possible by the existence of a host of complex and minute electrical currents and electromagnetic field activity in the brain. A theory of everything certainly would include the laws of electromagnetism and bio-chemistry which, from a strictly scientific view point, governs the neural-electrical currents of the brain: and by implication, the creative process.

Consequently, a theory of everything (of sufficiently high order of approximation) in the hands of a genius of the caliber of "a mega Richard Feynman" might enable him to outline a series of instructions, which if carefully followed, would allow a composer to bring the state of his creative neural electromagnetic current activity to a level that is necessary to produce the equivalent of a Beethoven symphony.

Incidentally most of the laws of nature, that are describable by differential equations that currently have known solutions, are accurate only to the first or second order of approximation.


----------



## PetrB

american music said:


> I humbly beg to differ, but the imagination and thought processes, necessary for any human creative effort, are made possible by the existence of a host of complex and minute electrical currents and electromagnetic field activity in the brain. A theory of everything certainly would include the laws of electromagnetism and bio-chemistry which, from a strictly scientific view point, governs the neural-electrical currents of the brain: and by implication, the creative process.
> 
> Consequently, a theory of everything (of sufficiently high order of approximation) in the hands of a genius of the caliber of "a mega Richard Feynman" might enable him to outline a series of instructions, which if carefully followed, would allow a composer to bring the state of his creative neural electromagnetic current activity to a level that is necessary to produce the equivalent of a Beethoven symphony.
> 
> Incidentally most of the laws of nature, that are describable by differential equations that currently have known solutions, are accurate only to the first or second order of approximation.


None of that will help the novice who writes music filled with audible weaknesses in each and every measure (a professional estimation of 'where you are' with your writing) to improve their actual craft. Once you have the craft, so much of what comes into play cannot in any way be verbalized or even attributed to pseudo-intellectual philosophic gobbledy-****.

Abstract ideas of any sort, _as analogy_, can be and are a trigger for many a good musical idea -- if you want to romanticize that as _inspiration,_ lol, you're permitted.

BUT...
All that in the body of your text + a well-written finished piece in legible form on paper + the fare = gets you on the bus, kiddo.


----------



## Matsps

aleazk said:


> So, quantization of this variable is likely to produce quantization of geometry.


As I understand it, quantizing this variable *must* quantize geometry? But I don't see the reason why 1) Gravity should be quantizable at all. 2) If it is quantized, why a fundamental structure >= planck length is necessary, in which case, it cannot be differentiated from a continuum anyway.



> Consequently, a theory of everything (of sufficiently high order of approximation) in the hands of a genius of the caliber of "a mega Richard Feynman" might enable him to outline a series of instructions, which if carefully followed, would allow a composer to bring the state of his creative neural electromagnetic current activity to a level that is necessary to produce the equivalent of a Beethoven symphony.


Sounds like a job for biologists, psychologists or engineers rather than the fundamental physicist. I could see a future in which with gene manipulation, a more thorough understanding of the brain and perhaps cyborg enhancement, everyone could be as skilled (or more skilled) as Beethoven.


----------



## aleazk

Matsps said:


> As I understand it, quantizing this variable *must* quantize geometry?


Yes, because this variable actually *is* geometry!. According to GR, gravity *is* the geometry of spacetime.

In LQG, they directly quantize gravity and they arrive to a quantum spacetime, in which areas and volumes are discrete variables.



Matsps said:


> But I don't see the reason why 1) Gravity should be quantizable at all.


Gravity needs to be quantized because of many reasons. First, quantum mechanics is believed to be the only "true" fundamental theory, classical theories are believed to be macroscopic approximations. GR is a completely classical theory. All fundamental forces are currently described by quantum mechanical theories (quantum field theories). In these quantum field theories, the forces and matter are represented by fields that are quantized. Quantized fields give rise to particles (for example, the electromagnetic field gives you the photon; the Dirac field gives you the electron/positron; etc.) In the case of gravity, the fundamental dynamical field is the metric, which, unlike any other force, also represents the geometry. So, these are general reasons.

More immediate reasons: i) if you stick to classical gravity, you also stick to all the nasty singularities this theory has; ii) matter is coupled to gravity via Einstein's equations, since matter is treated using quantum mechanics, gravity also needs to be treated using quantum mechanics in order to avoid inconsistencies.



Matsps said:


> 2) If it is quantized, why a fundamental structure >= planck length is necessary,


The planck length arises when you combine the fundamental constants of GR (G and c, the gravitational constant and the speed of light) with the fundamental constant of QM (h, planck's constant). A theory of quantum gravity will combine naturally all of these constants, so that's why it's believed that the planck length is a relevant magnitude when talking about quantum gravity.

In fact, in LQG, the resulting eigenvalues of the area and volume operators (the eigenvalues are the possible values that these magnitudes can have) are related to the planck length l:










The A is the area operator, the W is the spin network eigenstate and the rest is the eigenvalue. So, the possibile values of the area are multiples of some kind of planck area l^2.



Matsps said:


> in which case, it cannot be differentiated from a continuum anyway.


Oh, no, no, the discretization at the fundamental scale changes everything!. It's true that at the macroscopic level we will perceive something resembling a continuum, but all the fundamental things happen at the microscopic level, where the spacetime is discrete. And this has important consequences: divergences that plague quantum field theories are eliminated; the singularities of GR are eliminated; the discrete values of the area are used to give a fundamental calculation of the Hawking entropy formula of black holes (Hawking's original calculation is not fundamental, is semi-classical, he used quantum field theory in curved classical spacetimes; LQG gives you a fundamental calculation and with some extra correction terms)

(btw, I'm not implying that LQG is the final word, I'm just using it as a useful example in order to answer your questions)



Vesuvius said:


> Are you a physicist, aleazk? You really seem to know your stuff. I'm impressed.


My secret identity revealed!  . Yes, I told you I was a physicist in the other thread.


----------



## Blake

aleazk said:


> My secret identity revealed!  . Yes, I told you I was a physicist in the other thread.


Well, you simply said scientist. You could've been studying tadpoles for all I knew, and was inquiring about the cosmos on the side.


----------



## hpowders

KenOC said:


> As of this date, there is no scheduled service to any of those universes, sorry.


If it's money you want, name your price.


----------



## hpowders

brianvds said:


> Me, I remain enamoured of the octaventral heebiephone.


That would have been my second choice. Still waiting for someone to transcribe the Berg violin concerto for atonal accordion.


----------



## american music

violadude said:


> Uh, is this a music thread or a theological debate? I'm confused.


There are many potential theoretical grounds for considering music as a mediator for the unification of science/math and theology. Music and theology have a deep connection if only through the vast quantity of liturgical music. And music and science have a rich relationship via the science of acoustics. Accordingly, the theoretical unification of all three (music, science and theology) is not an impossibility: and in fact may have a significant quantity philosophical utility.


----------



## Petwhac

american music said:


> There are many potential theoretical grounds for considering music as a mediator for the unification of science/math and theology. Music and theology have a deep connection if only through the vast quantity of liturgical music. And music and science have a rich relationship via the science of acoustics. Accordingly, the theoretical unification of all three (music, science and theology) is not an impossibility: and in fact may have a significant quantity philosophical utility.


You could say there are grounds for considering music as a mediator for the unification of science/math(s) and romantic love.
Religious feelings and love are just two human preoccupations which have served as an inspiration to the creative impulse. To try to put religious convictions on the same footing as science and music seems to me to be quite wrong.


----------



## millionrainbows

Western classical music, as it developed this "harmonic function in time" aspect, became less centered, less "droney," and more varied and moving. In contrast to Hildegard von Bingen's exquisite drone-chants, notice how Beethoven is quite the opposite, always having a "thrust" or forward-momentum in his music. Bach, too: his sequences of V-I-V-Is fly by so fast, always in constant harmonic motion.

Yet, something had been lost: Bach is religious music, but where had the spiritual centeredness of Gregorian chant gone? What happened to make this music go from static roots, with no movement, to a restless, constantly shifting progression of chords away from, and returning to, a key center? It was "developing," becoming more elaborate, but to what end? _What did this development and elaboration of music reflect, if not a change in Man and his outlook?
_
The Baroque, and the Age of Enlightenment are perhaps the answer. As science developed, and we learned that our Earth was not the center of the universe, and thinking developed, a new emphasis on the "nobility of Man" emerged, leading to the gradual loss of power by The Church, then Kings and nobility, then finally, Democracy, and the Rise of the Common Man.

Man was more conscious now, more cerebral. He did not need to submit to the drone's power like he used to; he wanted to actually do God's work, and dominate and conquer his world, in the name of God.

Besides that, the "drone" had always been associated with "primitive" Eastern and foreign musics. Western Man was an active, moving, conscious man, and his developed harmonically restless and moving music reflected this. There was no need to sit in front of a candle, sing droney chants, and "lose one's ego in submission to God." We had bigger fish to fry, and our new harmonic juggernaut would aid us in spreading the glory. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Onward, Christian soldiers!

The drone was now seen as what it always was: a dark, sombre vision bordering on nothingness: the cessation of will, stillness, quiet, meditative, lacking movement. Perhaps a little too close to the heretical, forbidden "nothingness" of Eastern religions and rogue, uncontrolled "spirituality." Too close to the Devil!

Now, Western music had become elaborate, full of detail, magnificent in form. Quite a bit of conscious cerebral effort was needed to follow these long developments; not a task for the zoned-out monks who chanted their way to ecstacy.

So here we are in the 21st century. What has happened since Gregorian chant appeared? A lot of harmonic development, that's what, finally culminating in the late-Romantic chromatic wanderings of Schoenberg, Strauss, and Mahler.

So, as in my other blog about the "universes" of music, we see that Man's attitude toward his world, himself, and his God, have shaped his expressions of it, through his art.

All of this still holds true today. The same listeners who complain bitterly about *Serial *music, almost always reject Minimalism as well, even though Minimalism is _very _harmonically rooted, almost simplistic. Perhaps it is too much a return to the old "drone" of chant; not enough movement, too "boring" for today's developed Western man. Also, too repetitious, too "primitive," too likely to induce trance-states (in the case of early Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley), and_ too closely associated with Eastern thought, and its associated drone, evoking ego-death, leaving a black void in the center of its listeners' being, leaving room for *The Devil* to jump in! 
_
_*Heresy!*_


----------



## Guest

I'm not sure I have the stomach to read through the story so far. Suffice to say that whatever purpose man (or woman) has put it to, it's still nothing more than, "These sounds in this order."


----------



## millionrainbows

Petwhac said:


> Religious feelings and love are just two human preoccupations which have served as an inspiration to the creative impulse. To try to put religious convictions on the same footing as science and music seems to me to be quite wrong.


I've got just two words for you: sympathetic resonance.


----------



## Petwhac

millionrainbows said:


> I've got just two words for you: sympathetic resonance.


Not really my cup of tea I'm afraid


----------



## american music

KenOC said:


> Aleazk, you seem like the person to ask. I saw a news story the other day that said recent background radiation measurements had pretty well proven that there was an inflationary period shortly (very shortly!) after the big bang. Any idea about this?


The following quote from The Guardian provides a good explanation, for the layman, of what the recent astrophysics discovery announcement was all about.
+++
"Primordial gravitational waves are seen as the smoking gun for a theory called cosmic inflation. Conceived in its original form more than 30 years ago by Alan Guth at MIT, inflation says that the early universe experienced a terrific burst of expansion. The growth spurt lasted a mere fraction of second, but smoothed out irregularities in space, and made the cosmos look almost the same in every direction.
The violent expansion had another effect too. It amplified primordial gravitational waves, making them large enough for researchers to detect. Without inflation, the effects of these ripples in space-time would be too minuscule for today's technology to spot."

"Telescopes cannot see gravity, but they can see the effects of gravity. What the Harvard team spotted was the telltale signature that primordial gravitational waves imprinted on the faint light left over from the big bang. This ancient afterglow fills the universe, and is known as the cosmic microwave background.

"Because gravitational waves squeeze space as they propagate, they make some patches slightly warmer than others. These warm spots polarise light waves that pass through, meaning the light waves vibrate in one direction more than others. In this case, the vibrations of light waves from the big bang are twisted, producing the distinctive pattern detected by Harvard's Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarisation telescope (Bicep2)."

See the link for the full story.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/...ional-waves-tantalising-cosmic-birth-big-bang

+++

So the discovery appears to lend support to both Guth's theory of Cosmic Inflation and to the existence of the Gravitational Waves predicted by General Relativity. But the results must be confirmed by other experimentalists. But before we talk about how much verification is necessary perhaps we should review the following facts. The sun, the center of the solar system, is only one of 300 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way galaxy is only one of 300 billion galaxies in the whole Universe: which supposedly began with the Big Bang.

We are talking about theories that are supposed to describe precisely what happened in a mere trillionth of one trillionth of a second after the beginning of the Universe! So are we going to base our confirmation on the analysis of data collected from only one planet within the solar system? What would the analysis of data collected from data centers located in the vicinity of several of the hundreds of trillions of the other stars in the Universe reveal? The nearest star system to the sun is Alpha Centauri which is 4.37 light years away. Would the data collected from observation posts on the nearest exoplanet to the sun be consistent with what would be theoretically expected from that location?

But, as is well known in the scientific community, travel to even the nearest of the stars or exoplanets, using the technology of today, would take tens of thousands of years in addition to being prohibitively expensive. So there is presently no hope collecting and analyzing such data.

Well fortunately we don't have to worry about what an analysis of such data would reveal because the simplifying assumption of homogeneity and isotropy (among others) makes such data unnecessary! But suffice it to say that these simplifying assumptions, pertaining to the fundamental physical properties of the universe are substantially unverified. However, by what may only be described as being a huge leap of Faith, some astro-physicists are confident that these simplifying assumptions do universally hold true. There is at least one thing wrong with that belief. Science is supposed to be based upon observations associated with repeatable experiments and verifiable facts. It is religion that is supposed to be based upon Faith and Beliefs.

So who do we give thanks to for music and the other wonders of art and for the inventions of engineers who are scientifically smart? To the coincidence of the Big Bang or to the Infinite Power and Intellect from which it evidently sprang?


----------



## Petwhac

american music said:


> So who do we give thanks to for music and the other wonders of art and for the inventions of engineers who are scientifically smart? To the coincidence of the Big Bang or to the Infinite Power and Intellect from which it evidently sprang?


**ERROR**ERROR**

1. Why the need to give thanks? Just be happy about it.

2. Problems of reasoning: 'First Cause', 'Infinite Regress', 'Special Pleading'


----------



## Matsps

> We are talking about theories that are supposed to describe precisely what happened in a mere trillionth of one trillionth of a second after the beginning of the Universe! So are we going to base our confirmation on the analysis of data collected from only one planet within the solar system? What would the analysis of data collected from data centers located in the vicinity of several of the hundreds of trillions of the other stars in the Universe reveal? The nearest star system to the sun is Alpha Centauri which is 4.37 light years away.


During this survey, the area of the universe that was studied was enormous. Simply going to the next star is not going to make any difference. You would really have to travel a significant cosmological distance (space between galaxy scale distances) to get any new data what-so-ever.

However, if you could go to another galaxy far away and get a totally different measurement, this would go completely against the fact that the universe looks extraordinarily similar in every direction over vast vast distances. I mean, you would be saying that the laws of physics are different and yet producing exactly the same structures. Given how much change even a tiny change in the laws of physics makes the makeup of the universe, this seems almost impossible to achieve (it may well be impossible in fact). The isotropic principle is on very good foundation.


----------



## Guest

Are we seriously expected to believe that micro-timings such as "a mere trillionth of one trillionth of a second" are of any practical significance?

Such terms, which you can find on any number of websites, seem to be used to either increase the level of Everyman wonder, or, alternatively, sceptical incredulity at the findings of scientists.

Man's use of science and technology helps us in many ways, and I don't doubt that it will continue to do so, including helping us to understand how our Universe works and how it came into existence. What I don't expect it to do, nor even need it to do, is to present a complete and coherent explanation of the existence or non-existence of the kind of "Infinite Power and Intellect" to whom we owe _our _existence and should offer Eternal Gratitude.

Let's just enjoy the music, and our science and, if we are so inclined, our faith and beliefs.


----------



## Matsps

> Are we seriously expected to believe that micro-timings such as "a mere trillionth of one trillionth of a second" are of any practical significance?


Would someone 150 years ago not say now could timings of one billionth of a second affect anything? Now in the age of superfast computer processors, it really can e.g. My current computer has two processors that run 2 * 10 ^ 9 hertz or 2 cycles per billionth of a second. This was only made possible through seemingly practically useless work on quantum mechanics, which, while many people think is very far removed from everyday reality, lies at the heart of the discovery of much of the technology we are used to in the modern age (including the transistor).

So, who is to say such times or research can be of any practical use? Even if the science itself produces no fruit, the techniques used to do it may lead to some interesting discoveries. Cloud computing and the internet both came out of CERN...


----------



## Guest

I appreciate that in the rarefied atmosphere of the laboratory, such considerations are of very real importance. But for Everyman, such a level of detail does not demystify science. I worry that its effect is to add to the sense of mumbo-jumbo which does science a disservice.


----------



## Arsakes

It's off-topic but...

FOR THE GOD EMPEROR OF MANKIND!










DEATH TO THE CHAOS GODS!


----------



## Petwhac

MacLeod said:


> I appreciate that in the rarefied atmosphere of the laboratory, such considerations are of very real importance.* But for Everyman, such a level of detail does not demystify science*. I worry that its effect is to add to the sense of mumbo-jumbo which does science a disservice.


Such a level of detail IS science. Far from adding to the sense of "mumbo-jumbo", I think it adds to a sense of wonder and awe.


----------



## Petwhac

--------duplicate--------


----------



## Guest

Petwhac said:


> Such a level of detail IS science. Far from adding to the sense of "mumbo-jumbo", I think it adds to a sense of wonder and awe.


Isn't that the same thing?


----------



## Petwhac

MacLeod said:


> Isn't that the same thing?


I'm not sure what you mean?


----------



## Piwikiwi

MacLeod said:


> Are we seriously expected to believe that micro-timings such as "a mere trillionth of one trillionth of a second" are of any practical significance?


Well if you are talking about the big bang, then yes.


----------



## Guest

Petwhac said:


> Such a level of detail IS science. Far from adding to the sense of "mumbo-jumbo", I think it adds to a sense of wonder and awe.


Isn't that the same thing?


----------



## Arsakes

My Physics hero:










His physics actually matters in our lives. Relativity or Quantum schools I can careless. They're just confusing and impractical.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Arsakes said:


> My Physics hero:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> His physics actually matters in our lives. Relativity or Quantum schools I can careless. They're just confusing and impractical.


Have ever you ever used a GPS? That only works if you take time dilation in mind which is explained by Einstein theory of special relativity.

from wikipedia:
"A great deal of modern technological inventions operate at a scale where quantum effects are significant. Examples include the laser, the transistor (and thus the microchip), the electron microscope, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)."


----------



## aleazk

Arsakes said:


> My Physics hero:
> 
> His physics actually matters in our lives. Relativity or Quantum schools I can careless. They're just confusing and impractical.


lol, they are confusing because reality _is_ confusing!...

And if you don't like that, you can follow Dick Feynman's advice.


----------



## Arsakes

Well, after I read about how several scientific theories (some considered as fact) and warnings are fraud I actually lost my hope for science (it was happening during last 15 years). I suppose pre 1970s science should be true (not all theories though).


----------



## Piwikiwi

Arsakes said:


> Well, after I read about how several scientific theories (some considered as fact) and warnings are fraud I actually lost my hope for science (it was happening during last 15 years). I suppose pre 1970s science should be true (not all theories though).


Quantum Physics and the theory of relativity are both pre 1970.


----------



## Guest

Arsakes said:


> Well, after I read about how several scientific theories (some considered as fact) and warnings are fraud I actually lost my hope for science (it was happening during last 15 years). I suppose pre 1970s science should be true (not all theories though).


Are scientists not to be allowed a degree of fallibility - like the rest of us mere mortals? Just because some scientists get things wrong, doesn't mean the scientific method or all the science is wrong.


----------



## aleazk

Arsakes said:


> Well, after I read about how several scientific theories (some considered as fact) and warnings are fraud I actually lost my hope for science (it was happening during last 15 years). I suppose pre 1970s science should be true (not all theories though).


Then your beloved Newton is a "fraud", because all of his theories were replaced by more accurate ones (the relativity theories and quantum mechanics) 100 years ago... do you even know what are you talking about?. Do you know how science works?, do you know how's the evolution line of physics and the place of newtonian theories, the relativity theories and quantum mechanics in that line?


----------



## mmsbls

Arsakes said:


> His physics actually matters in our lives. Relativity or Quantum schools I can careless. They're just confusing and impractical.


Confusing, yes even to scientists, but not impractical. Almost all electronics (computers, cell phones, medical technology, etc.) are based on quantum principles.



Arsakes said:


> Well, after I read about how several scientific theories (some considered as fact) and warnings are fraud I actually lost my hope for science (it was happening during last 15 years). I suppose pre 1970s science should be true (not all theories though).


Do you mean that the theories were fraudulent or that they were later found to be wrong? Which theories?


----------



## Blake

Science has been around since man first started to investigate things with his intellect instead of relying solely on belief; it's simply a logical method used to push back the horizon of ignorance. Mistakes happen, discoveries happen - Life.


----------



## Blancrocher

mmsbls said:


> Confusing, yes even to scientists, but not impractical. Almost all electronics (computers, cell phones, medical technology, etc.) are based on quantum principles.


The practical advantages of scientific investigation are often a long time coming, though, as these examples illustrate. It's one of the disadvantages scientists/mathematicians working on speculative questions without an obvious payoff face when competing for funding for their research.


----------



## Morimur

All the modern scientific advances are utterly worthless if we can't even co-exist in relative peace. Man's corrupt nature is something science has no answer for (along with countless other issues). We have our heads up our arses with regards to human ingenuity while more than half of humanity starves to death. And we, in the first world, have all the material possessions a spoiled society could ever want and we are empty inside. Our kids are killing each other in schools and their teachers are using them as sex toys. Science is mighty indeed.


----------



## Blancrocher

*Original post has been deleted*


----------



## Piwikiwi

Lope de Aguirre said:


> All the modern scientific advances are utterly worthless if we can't even co-exist in relative peace. Man's corrupt nature is something science has no answer for (along with countless other issues). We have our heads up our arses with regards to human ingenuity while more than half of humanity starves to death. And we, in the first world, have all the material possessions a spoiled society could ever want and we are empty inside. Our kids are killing each other in schools and their teachers are using them as sex toys. Science is mighty indeed.


World poverty is decreasing. Crime, at least in the west, has been decreasing for ages.


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## Morimur

Piwikiwi said:


> World poverty is decreasing. Crime, at least in the west, has been decreasing for ages.


The world is much larger than the 'west'. As for decreasing poverty, I am not so sure about that. Can science also measure spiritual poverty or unhappiness, by the way? I suppose it doesn't matter so long as they can extend our lifespans indefinitely, while those who don't live in the first world rot and we continue mining their countries for resources.


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## Blancrocher

*Original post has been deleted*


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## Morimur

Blancrocher said:


> The major decreases in the worst forms of poverty in recent decades have been in places like China and India, where there has been major economic expansion that has "trickled down" (as they say) to the neediest among their vast populations. The places that still suffer from deep poverty tend to be relatively inaccessible (for political reasons, usually: war zones, oppressive governments, etc.). The proposals for bringing food to starving people in warzones are grim reading, though scientists are collaborating with political groups to figure out how. On a less distressing subject, genetic engineers are developing crops that can survive currently--and increasingly--difficult climates.


The future always seems 'brighter', doesn't it? How long has humanity been envisioning this better future? It never comes and you know why? It's because our nature doesn't allow it. We ultimately sabotage ourselves. All societies reach and apex and then begin a painful decline. Look to human history for proof. Anyway, believe what you want. Truth doesn't care what we believe.


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## Matsps

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Man's corrupt nature is something science has no answer for (along with countless other issues).


We are really not all that far away from modifying our own DNA... It's a long hard road, but customized humans are coming and probably before the turn of the century. It's perfectly reasonable to think that in future gene sequences that increase the odds of immoral behavior could be extinguished before you are even born. 
And before that perfect solution, I'd say advances like DNA evidence and CCTV (for just two examples) have significantly improved safety and justice.



> How long has humanity been envisioning this better future? It never comes and you know why?


Do you think life was as good or better 200 years ago...?


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## Marschallin Blair

> Matsps: We are really not all that far away from modifying our own DNA... It's a long hard road, but customized humans are coming and probably before the turn of the century. It's perfectly reasonable to think that in future gene sequences that increase the odds of immoral behavior could be extinguished before you are even born. And before that perfect solution, I'd say advances like DNA evidence and CCTV (for just two examples) have significantly improved safety and justice.


Neither eugenics nor the police state has significantly improved anything; quite the stark contrary in fact.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Against-W...r=1-9&keywords=race+of+masters+to+master+race

http://www.amazon.com/Race-Masters-...1398274251&sr=1-1&keywords=samaan+master+race

http://www.amazon.com/Defending-Mas...r=1-3&keywords=race+of+masters+to+master+race

http://www.amazon.com/NATOs-Secret-...ration+gladio+and+terrorism+in+western+europe


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## Blake

Matsps said:


> Do you think life was as good or better 200 years ago...?


Our collective misery is pretty dense right now. Our technology is great, though. Plenty of material, but no one is really happy. It's almost fashionable to have a problem.


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## Guest

Lope de Aguirre said:


> All the modern scientific advances are utterly worthless if we can't even co-exist in relative peace. Man's corrupt nature is something science has no answer for (along with countless other issues).


Has someone here (or anywhere else for that matter) claimed that "science" has an answer for everything?


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## Morimur

MacLeod said:


> Has someone here (or anywhere else for that matter) claimed that "science" has an answer for everything?


Elsewhere? Most definitely. Here? I don't know.


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## Guest

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Elsewhere? Most definitely.


Go on...who...where? Are you regretting the failures of science to do what you wish it could do? Or are you simply rejecting the arguments of others who claim it can do everything? If the latter, I'd be interested to see some evidence that anyone is making any such claims.


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## Petwhac

Science isn't the answer to everything. Nothing is. However, scientificic and rational thinking is certainly better than the alternatives. 
There is no answer to everything because everything isn't a question.


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## Arsakes

I used to be an agnostic evolutionist when I was 10-13. But later I found about philosophies and eastern religions. So my naturalistic-scientific attitude didn't seem perfect anymore and I became interested in alternatives and you know empiricism isn't everything.

But it was lately that I had lost hope in science in practical fields like Medicine and biology. Then I read 'Politically incorrect guide to science' and it was convincing in its most chapters. Go figure it out.


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## Piwikiwi

Arsakes said:


> I used to be an agnostic evolutionist when I was 10-13. But later I found about philosophies and eastern religions. So my naturalistic-scientific attitude didn't seem perfect anymore and I became interested in alternatives and you know empiricism isn't everything.
> 
> But it was lately that I had lost hope in science in practical fields like Medicine and biology. Then I read 'Politically incorrect guide to science' and it was convincing in its most chapters. Go figure it out.


So you won't go to a doctor when you're seriously ill?


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## Piwikiwi

Lope de Aguirre said:


> The future always seems 'brighter', doesn't it? How long has humanity been envisioning this better future? It never comes and you know why? It's because our nature doesn't allow it. We ultimately sabotage ourselves. All societies reach and apex and then begin a painful decline. Look to human history for proof. Anyway, believe what you want. Truth doesn't care what we believe.


It is brighter now, I no longer have to be afraid of dying because of an infection when I get a scratch because of antibiotics, infant mortality is way lower than in the 19th century, my life expectancy is way longer.

I doubt that you seriously appreciate how short and harsh life was pre 1900.


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## Morimur

Piwikiwi said:


> It is brighter now, I no longer have to be afraid of dying because of an infection when I get a scratch because of antibiotics, infant mortality is way lower than in the 19th century, my life expectancy is way longer.
> 
> I doubt that you seriously appreciate how short and harsh life was pre 1900.


I was born in a third world country. That's close enough.


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## Morimur

MacLeod said:


> Go on...who...where? Are you regretting the failures of science to do what you wish it could do? Or are you simply rejecting the arguments of others who claim it can do everything? If the latter, I'd be interested to see some evidence that anyone is making any such claims.


Where!? The world _clearly_ places scientific progress above spiritual development. What does that tell you? No one with half a brain is going to come out (at least in public) and actually say that 'science is the answer to all problems' so your argument is NA. Actions speak louder than words, though, don't they?


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## aleazk

Lope, what do you call spiritual development and why do you think science is incompatible with it?


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## Morimur

aleazk said:


> Lope, what do you call spiritual development and why do you think science is incompatible with it?


Spiritual development: The acknowledgment and acceptance of a higher power as _the_ ruling, guiding principle in one's life. A continuous, daily denial of the self. Science isn't incompatible with a anything but one cannot honestly contest that it has taken precedence over human spiritual development. One _could_ argue that Science has never claimed to be the answer to the world's ills but we, as a society, sure act as if that was the case. I don't expect anyone here to agree with me, after all, 'GOD' as represented in the Christian faith, is a bad word nowadays. It's become very fashionable to be anti-God. I hope we're all as fashionable when we're lying in utter ruin.


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## aleazk

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Spiritual development: The acknowledgment and acceptance of a higher power as _the_ ruling, guiding principle in one's life. A continuous, daily denial of the self. Science isn't incompatible with a anything but one cannot honestly deny that it has taken precedence over human spiritual development. One _could_ argue that Science has never claimed to be the answer to the world's ills but we, as a society, sure act as if that was the case. I don't expect anyone here to agree with me, after all, 'GOD' as represented in the Christian faith, is a bad word nowadays. It's become very fashionable to be anti-God. I hope we're all as fashionable when we're lying in utter ruin.


Well, I think we will never agree on that, since I'm myself an agnostic. In any case, I can try to give you an idea of why I'm an agnostic.

In my personal case, reality, existence, who we are, etc., are really big mysteries. And I simply want to know the answer to these mysteries. I don't know why. I could simply go and "live life" without worrying. But no, I prefer to spend the little time I have in this existence alone, reading physics/philosophy books. Maybe I'm just crazy. But I can't start to explain to you the thrill I experienced when I understood that what you measure with a clock is actually some kind of "distance" in a four dimensional space and that in the same way in which different paths connecting the same two points in space can have different lenghts, different observers with differents paths in spacetime can measure different times even when they connect the same two events (the "points" in this spacetime). I have found that these things are the only things capable of alleviate the metaphysical anguish I have everytime I think in the mysterious nature of reality.

But, of course, that's just me. I have no interest in telling others what to think with respect to this. I can only tell you why I believe what I believe. I don't know if I'm really understanding reality with all this, I don't know if I'm going to obtain a definite answer someday, etc.

I have been studying physics for a long time now, and I have more or less a general idea of the main physical theories we have, with some detailed knowledge in more specific topics. And what I found is that some things in this reality are completely bizarre when compared to our daily life experience. And also this gives me more confidence about my "understanding" of reality, but at the same time it adds even more to its mysterious quality. I simply want to know if reality can be understood using reason. Maybe yes, maybe no. But I prefer to try. And we certainly learned a lot of new things in the couple of centuries in which we have been trying. And that's basically what gives me a moderate hope.

Society is in a metaphysical crisis. They want to believe in something, but they don't know in what to believe. Some go to religion, some go to science, some go to "exotic", to them, cultures, etc. And of course, some of them understand the principles of the things in which they decided to believe, and some others completely misunderstand them.

In my case, I wanted a rational explanation since I have memory. And that's why I ultimately decanted to science.


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## Blake

Many eastern religions - specifically Advaita - have a very scientific approach - not just singing mantras and believing in gods (although that can be lovely too). It's not an outward science, but a discovery of the inner world, which really shapes our experience of the outer. 

It's becoming aware of the subtle layers of energies that move this creature, and finding out where your true position of perception is. Is it in the brain or somewhere in the body - where are 'you' located exactly? And if there is a location, then what's aware of that location?


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## american music

Matsps said:


> Would someone 150 years ago not say now could timings of one billionth of a second affect anything? Now in the age of superfast computer processors, it really can e.g. My current computer has two processors that run 2 * 10 ^ 9 hertz or 2 cycles per billionth of a second. This was only made possible through seemingly practically useless work on quantum mechanics, which, while many people think is very far removed from everyday reality, lies at the heart of the discovery of much of the technology we are used to in the modern age (including the transistor).
> 
> So, who is to say such times or research can be of any practical use? Even if the science itself produces no fruit, the techniques used to do it may lead to some interesting discoveries. Cloud computing and the internet both came out of CERN...


Yes indeed! High technology and the science/math that supports it have produced many wonders and conveniences for our world. But those are only local achievements. They took place on a tiny micro cosmological scale. So what makes some astrophysicists think that man has the necessary intellect and has gathered enough data, from widely separated points in the universe, to even begin to speculate on what happened during the first trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the beginning of the universe: an event that occurred 13.7 billion years ago.

Yes the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation has been observed for 50 years but what is that out of 13.7 billion years? And the observations took place from points within the solar system. But what is the ratio of the spatial volume of the solar system to that of the whole universe?


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## aleazk

american music said:


> Yes indeed! High technology and the science/math that supports it have produced many wonders and conveniences for our world. But those are only local achievements. They took place on a tiny micro cosmological scale. So what makes some astrophysicists think that man has the necessary intellect and has gathered enough data, from widely separated points in the universe, to even begin to speculate on what happened during the first trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the beginning of the universe: an event that occurred 13.7 billion years ago.
> 
> Yes the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation has been observed for 50 years but what is that out of 13.7 billion years? And the observations took place from points within the solar system. But what is the ratio of the spatial volume of the solar system to that of the whole universe?


Of course it's a big extrapolation. But as everything in science, the only way to know if the hypotheses are correct is to check if the predictions that these hypotheses make are observed in the universe.

In the case of the Big Bang, predictions like the expansion of space, the Cosmic microwave background radiation, the abundance of certain elements like helium, the distribution of galaxies, all have been confirmed.

Also, all the theory of stellar evolution uses theories no more old than 100 years and which have been verified in Earth laboratories, like quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, when we observe very distant stars, we see that they evolve according to the theories we have. But the key point here is that this evolution actually happened millions of years ago, it's the light emitted by the star the thing we see today, but this light was emited long time ago. Probably, the star no longer exists right now, it exploded millions of years ago. This makes compelling evidence that the laws of physics don't change.


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## Blake

aleazk said:


> Of course it's a big extrapolation. But as everything in science, the only way to know if the hypotheses are correct is to check if the predictions that these hypotheses make are observed in the universe.
> 
> In the case of the Big Bang, predictions like the expansion of space, the Cosmic microwave background radiation, the abundance of certain elements like helium, the distribution of galaxies, all have been confirmed.
> 
> Also, all the theory of stellar evolution uses theories no more old than 100 years and which have been verified in Earth laboratories, like quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, when we observe very distant stars, we see that they evolve according to the theories we have. But the key point here is that this evolution actually happened millions of years ago, it's the light emited by the star the thing we see today, but this light was emited long time ago. Probably, the star no longer exists right now, it exploded millions of years ago. This makes compelling evidence that the laws of physics don't change.


It's really amazing the amount of information that travels in light for millions-billions of years.


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## aleazk

Vesuvius said:


> It's really amazing the amount of information that travels in light for millions-billions of years.


Yeah. Actually, we observe a big portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with radio telescopes, not only visible light. Also, we observe a type of particles called neutrinos that travel at the speed of light (or almost at the speed of light, since it seems they have a small mass). According to the theory, when a supernova explodes, a burst of neutrinos should be observed. That was the case of SN 1987A.


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## Blake

aleazk said:


> Yeah. Actually, we observe a big portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with radio telescopes, not only visible light. Also, we observe a type of particles called neutrinos that travel at the speed of light (or almost at the speed of light, since it seems they have a small mass). According to the theory, when a supernova explodes, a burst of neutrinos should be observed. That was the case of SN 1987A.


Yea, I was referring to light in a broader sense - not just visible. It wouldn't be wrong to say the whole Universe is made of light, eh?


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## SixFootScowl

My physics hero:


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## Guest

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Where!? The world _clearly_ places scientific progress above spiritual development. What does that tell you? No one with half a brain is going to come out (at least in public) and actually say that 'science is the answer to all problems' so your argument is NA. Actions speak louder than words, though, don't they?


Oh, the world! The world is a crazy mixed up place, and far too big and complicated to put in the dock and accuse it of being dedicated to "scientific progress above spiritual development". I don't think it's clear at all.

In any case, it could be argued that improving the health and well-being of the world's inhabitants (through the application of science and technology) is a moral duty which is one part of spiritual development.


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## Arsakes

Piwikiwi said:


> So you won't go to a doctor when you're seriously ill?


How does it feel to have a body that looks athletic but has weak joints and problematic spine? Still Hardly a few people may undestand that and others think I'm a lazy good for nothing. 

Considering I have to invest lots of money (that I or my father don't have) in a Surgery to place some imperfect implants in my body so I can live just better for another 20 years (before they need to be replaced) I don't call that a proper medicine. My joins and knees aren't really strong. I want real skeletons and joints created by genetical methods.

And in general Cancer really cannot be cured by Genetical treatment, maybe by radioactivity some can be cured now.

Well, I can say that Mechanics is the only field that has satisfied me so far. We have many great and useful technologies and innovations in this field.


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## Piwikiwi

Arsakes said:


> How does it feel to have a body that looks athletic but has weak joints and problematic spine? Still Hardly a few people may undestand that and others think I'm a lazy good for nothing.
> 
> Considering I have to invest lots of money (that I or my father don't have) in a Surgery to place some imperfect implants in my body so I can live just better for another 20 years (before they need to be replaced) I don't call that a proper medicine. My joins and knees aren't really strong. I want real skeletons and joints created by genetical methods.
> 
> And in general Cancer really cannot be cured by Genetical treatment, maybe by radioactivity some can be cured now.
> 
> Well, I can say that Mechanics is the only field that has satisfied me so far. We have many great and useful technologies and innovations in this field.


Thanks for clarifying that actually makes a lot of sense.


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## american music

aleazk said:


> Of course it's a big extrapolation. But as everything in science, the only way to know if the hypotheses are correct is to check if the predictions that these hypotheses make are observed in the universe.
> 
> In the case of the Big Bang, predictions like the expansion of space, the Cosmic microwave background radiation, the abundance of certain elements like helium, the distribution of galaxies, all have been confirmed.
> 
> Also, all the theory of stellar evolution uses theories no more old than 100 years and which have been verified in Earth laboratories, like quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, when we observe very distant stars, we see that they evolve according to the theories we have. But the key point here is that this evolution actually happened millions of years ago, it's the light emitted by the star the thing we see today, but this light was emited long time ago. Probably, the star no longer exists right now, it exploded millions of years ago. This makes compelling evidence that the laws of physics don't change.


You are quite correct in the use of the words extrapolation and hypothesis. In a first order analysis it would appear to be real incredible that some astrophysicists would put so much FAITH in the validity of the simplifying assumptions of isotropy and homogeneity when the universe is full of such poorly or incompletely understood objects or entities as black holes, quasars, pulsars, neutron stars, dark matter and dark energy, etc. Dark matter cannot be seen and so cannot be assumed to have a homogeneous distribution throughout the whole universe. But dark matter can produce a gravitational lensing effect and thereby may potentially alter the path of incoming light and consequently negates the assumption of isotropy.

It is true that the non-linear (but only to the second degree) second order partial differential equations of General Relativity are much easier to solve when the above noted simplifying assumptions are made. But that is somewhat similar to the problem of trying to measure the length of a complex curve using a straight edge. Short distances along the curve may be approximately measured using the straight edge. But that process will not work for long stretches of the curve (provided you are only allowed to place the straight edge in contact with the curve just once).

So when the Harvard (Bicep2) team made their recent announcement pertaining to the confirmation of the existence of Cosmic Inflation and Gravitational Waves, they should have found a prominent place in their press release for the words hypothesis, theory and simplifying assumptions. Why not something like this?

[Although our data was collected only from this location on earth, we have FAITH that the simplifying assumptions of isotropy and homogeneity are valid throughout the vastness of the entire universe. Therefore we have FAITH that data collected at any other point in the universe (for example, a billion light years away) would also be consistent with what would be theoretically expected at that point (and time) and therefore would also support the confirmation of Cosmic Inflation and Gravitational waves.]

++++
Oh thou sands upon the beach, thousands of you are within my reach.
But for the billions of stars that fill the night sky, I cannot reach up that high.
But as the tides of the ocean roll to and fro
they coincide with the micro wave afterglow.

And they provide the poet with words to write
and the composer with melodic delight.
And a poet once wrote about the purple dust on a starry night
putting words to a melody that fit just right

And although the list of singers who performed it, is quite long.
it was Nat King Cole who sang the song!
And as the galactic cloud of stardust 
oscillates upon the ripples of the gravitational waves
it is the poets and composers who surely must
write of their visions of how the universe behaves.

RHB






++++
Just to get an idea of the extreme difference in the spatial volume of the Solar System and that of the observable universe as a whole, we will quickly calculate each of these volumes. The solar system may be approximated in shape by a cylinder whose height is the diameter of the sun and whose radius is the radius of the (approximately circular) orbit of the most distant planet or dwarf planet that revolves around the sun.

The most distant dwarf planet (whose orbit lies beyond that of Pluto) is Eris which was only discovered in 2005. Eris (according to Wikipedia) is 96.4 astronomical units or about 8.97 billion miles from the sun. The formula for the volume of a cylinder is

V = (Pi)*(r^2)*h

where Pi = 3.1416, h = height (diameter of the sun in this case) and r = radius of the orbit of Eris in this case. From Wikipedia we find that 
h = 865,374 miles and r = 8.97 billion miles.

Since we will be dealing with cosmological distances we will express all distances in terms of light years. A light year = 5.88 trillion miles (per Wikipedia). A little elementary math will show that (in the present case)

h = 1.472*10^(-7) light years and r = 0.0015 light years.

Plugging these values into the cylindrical volume formula will give us

V = (3.1416)*((0.0015)^2)*(1.472*10^(-7)) cubic light years

V = 1.0405*10^(-12) cubic light years.

So notwithstanding the fact that man has directly explored only a very tiny portion of the solar system, the solar system itself is very small in terms of cubic light years. From the above calculation it is seen that approximately a trillion solar systems could be fitted into just one cubic light year! But it must be noted that all the edges of the 3D figure of a cubic light year are 5.88 trillion miles in length. Now let's estimate how many cubic light years are in the whole observable universe which is approximately spherical in shape.

The estimated diameter of the observable universe is 93 billion light-years according to Wikipedia. That would give it a radius of 46.5 billion light years. The formula for the volume of a sphere is

V = (4/3)*(Pi)*r^3

Plugging in r = 46.5 billion light years and Pi = 3.1416, we obtain

V = (1.3333)*(3.1416)*(46.5*10^9)^3 cubic light years

V = 4.2116*10^32 cubic light years.

The ratio of the volume of the solar system to that of the observable universe is given by

Ratio = 1.0405*10^(-12) / (4.2116*10^32)

Ratio = 2.471*10^(-45)

Amazingly this is 10 orders of magnitude less than the Planck constant expressed in Joule*Seconds (6.626*10^(-34)

One would tend to wonder about what prompted David to ask "what is man, that thou art mindful of him?..." Psalms 8:3-5 KJV. Also when one thinks about the fact that the universe contains about 300 billion galaxies each of which contains 300 billion stars one also wonders what inspired David to speak about "heavens of heavens" Psalms 68:33 KJV


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## Matsps

> Dark matter cannot be seen and so cannot be assumed to have a homogeneous distribution throughout the whole universe.


Just because you can't see it doesn't mean you can't measure it. Of course, we know about it because we detect its gravity. We have even mapped the distribution of dark matter...



> real incredible that some astrophysicists would put so much FAITH in the validity of the simplifying assumptions of isotropy and homogeneity


It is not just a matter of faith. The universe looks isotropic in the entirety of the EM spectrum at all distances (and therefore a huge time range) and in the gravitational view.

If you do not believe that the universe is isotropic, you introduce a model where the laws of physics are different everywhere, but all observations are similar. In such a universe, not only would things be horrifically complex, but would it even matter if our physics was incorrect in another part of the universe? The consequences are are the same, so the physics, although *somehow* different, would have to be equivalent in their end results.

OR you could just say it's all a massive trick, but that seems at best a little paranoid.


----------



## american music

Matsps said:


> Just because you can't see it doesn't mean you can't measure it. Of course, we know about it because we detect its gravity. We have even mapped the distribution of dark matter...
> 
> It is not just a matter of faith. The universe looks isotropic in the entirety of the EM spectrum at all distances (and therefore a huge time range) and in the gravitational view.
> 
> If you do not believe that the universe is isotropic, you introduce a model where the laws of physics are different everywhere, but all observations are similar. In such a universe, not only would things be horrifically complex, but would it even matter if our physics was incorrect in another part of the universe? The consequences are are the same, so the physics, although *somehow* different, would have to be equivalent in their end results.
> 
> OR you could just say it's all a massive trick, but that seems at best a little paranoid.


True, but all of the measurements of data associated with incoming light signals, including the cosmic micro wave background radiation, were taken from points within the solar system and over a time span of no more than a few hundred years. But as I tried to indicate in the previous post, the size of the solar system is infinitesimally small when compared to the size of the universe and the time span, over which these measurements were made, is insignificant in comparison with the age of the universe.

The laws of physics are usually expressed via partial differential equations. For example if the solution of a given PDE is U, then U would be a function of the spatial coordinates and time. This is indicated by U = U(x,y,z,t). So this quantity would naturally vary with space and time. If an experimental measurement of U is made on earth at the point (x,y,z,t) and it agrees with the theoretical value 
U(x,y,z,t) then that would tend to be a local confirmation of the proposed physical law.

Now suppose that the coordinates of a distant point, say a billion light years away, are (x1,y1,z1,t1), then the theoretical value of that physical variable quantity U would be U(x1,y1,z1,t1). But we, here on earth, cannot confirm that that would be the actual physical measure of the value of the variable because we would be vastly separated in space and time. But of course we could take a huge leap of faith and assume that the theoretical and the actual measured values of the physical variable U, at the point, (x1,y1,z1,t1) would agree.

By the way, all of the true laws of physics are (extremely) complex. We can only write and solve equations for approximate models of them. These models often give good results but only over very limited regions of space and time.


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## SixFootScowl

A quote from comments on this article sums it up pretty well:


> Talking about Dark matter and Dark energy as if they definitely exist is misleading. What exists is a conflict between established theories and observation. This is exciting as it means there is new physics waiting to be discovered.


----------



## american music

Florestan said:


> A quote from comments on this article sums it up pretty well:


The assumptions about the existence of dark matter and dark energy are now considered to be speculative and controversial. But at one time the assumption of homogeneity and isotropy were also considered to be unfounded.

http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw/LOCH.HTM


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## Blake

All 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' really mean is - "I don't know what the hell this is, but we're investigating."


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## SixFootScowl

Richard Feynmann in "Feynmann Lectures on Gravitation" (as quoted in another book):


> ...I suspect that the assumption of uniformity of the universe reflects a prejudice born of a sequence of overthrows of geocentric ideas... . It would be embarrassing to find, after stating that we live in an ordinary planet about an ordinary star in an ordinary galaxy, that our place in the universe is extraordinary... .To avoid embarrassment we cling to the hypothesis of uniformity.


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## science

american music said:


> Although our data was collected only from this location on earth, we have FAITH that the simplifying assumptions of isotropy and homogeneity are valid throughout the vastness of the entire universe. Therefore we have FAITH that data collected at any other point in the universe (for example, a billion light years away) would also be consistent with what would be theoretically expected at that point (and time) and therefore would also support the confirmation of Cosmic Inflation and Gravitational waves.


Is there any reason to think these "assumptions" are not valid throughout the entire universe?

If there were some reason to think otherwise but they persisted with these assumptions anyway, then I think "faith" would be an appropriate term for their methods. But "faith" doesn't describe a case of "this makes sense and we know of no reason to doubt it."


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## SixFootScowl

american music said:


> The assumptions about the existence of dark matter and dark energy are now considered to be speculative and controversial. But at one time the assumption of homogeneity and isotropy were also considered to be unfounded.
> 
> http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw/LOCH.HTM


Excellent article!


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## Majed Al Shamsi

The universe isn't finely tuned.
With all its massiveness, planet Earth is the only planet we know of that could support life for humans, and that's only a small portion of it, excluding oceans and areas where it's too hot to live.
The Andromeda Galaxy is well on its way to collide with our galaxy, in about 4 billion years.
99.9% of all species that have ever existed on planet Earth are now extinct.
No. The universe is more like a third grader scratching a black board with their nails.


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## american music

science said:


> Is there any reason to think these "assumptions" are not valid throughout the entire universe?
> 
> If there were some reason to think otherwise but they persisted with these assumptions anyway, then I think "faith" would be an appropriate term for their methods. But "faith" doesn't describe a case of "this makes sense and we know of no reason to doubt it."


The local wonders of science and technology are to be highly applauded. But the beginning of the universe is not a local matter. It happened a long time ago. One of the local wonders of science and technology are the computers that we are using to post our opinions. To assure the quality and the reliability of computers, computers are randomly selected at different times and at different places in the warehouse or the finished goods store room. These are then thoroughly tested for defects. Probability and statistics theory are then used to determine if the samples tested are representative of the whole lot of product produced. A sample space of 5% of the whole lot is not uncommon. The Quality Assurance manager does not just take a single unit of product and proclaim, via faith, that it is representative of all of the product produced: just because it may look like all of the others. But he randomly selects and test several units.

What is the size of the sample space that is needed for testing, the assumptions of homogeneity and isotropy for the whole vast universe, so that we can be highly assured about the accuracy of our descriptions of what happened in the first trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the beginning of time?


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## science

american music said:


> The local wonders of science and technology are to be highly applauded. But the beginning of the universe is not a local matter. It happened a long time ago. One of the local wonders of science and technology are the computers that we are using to post our opinions. To assure the quality and the reliability of computers, computers are randomly selected at different times and at different places in the warehouse or the finished goods store room. These are then thoroughly tested for defects. Probability and statistics theory are then used to determine if the samples tested are representative of the whole lot of product produced. A sample space of 5% of the whole lot is not uncommon. The Quality Assurance manager does not just take a single unit of product and proclaim, via faith, that it is representative of all of the product produced: just because it may look like all of the others. But he randomly selects and test several units.
> 
> What is the size of the sample space that is needed for testing, the assumptions of homogeneity and isotropy for the whole vast universe, so that we can be highly assured about the accuracy of our descriptions of what happened in the first trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the beginning of time?


It's an interesting analogy I suppose, but it doesn't vindicate the use of "faith" in your hypothetical announcement, because it still doesn't give any reason to doubt their assumptions. It's the Copernican principle. You have to have a reason NOT to assume it.

But we are at an interesting place in intellectual history, though, when the theistic argument says essentially, "Well, it looks this way here but from other places in the universe...."


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## Guest

This has long since stopped being a discussion about classical music, and credit to violadude for observing that this was not going to be about music in only the second post!

(PS. I'm only complaining because the science is too hard for me, and there seems little point pursuing the minor debate about whether 'faith' is being used or misused!)


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## science

MacLeod said:


> This has long since stopped being a discussion about classical music, and credit to violadude for observing that this was not going to be about music in only the second post!
> 
> (PS. I'm only complaining because the science is too hard for me, and there seems little point pursuing the minor debate about whether 'faith' is being used or misused!)


I've been wondering how this avoided getting moved or locked for so long.


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## american music

science said:


> It's an interesting analogy I suppose, but it doesn't vindicate the use of "faith" in your hypothetical announcement, because it still doesn't give any reason to doubt their assumptions. It's the Copernican principle. You have to have a reason NOT to assume it.
> 
> But we are at an interesting place in intellectual history, though, when the theistic argument says essentially, "Well, it looks this way here but from other places in the universe...."


It is interesting that you mentioned the Copernican principle. Before Copernicus, if I recall correctly, it was believed that the sun revolved around the earth because it looked that way and there was no reason to doubt it. And furthermore, in the view of some, the earth was special and it was appropriate that it be at the center of the universe. Now it appears that science is also proclaiming that the earth (and the solar system in which it resides) is a special place and that whatever appears to be scientific fact on earth is automatically scientific fact all over the universe. And since the earth is special, there is no need to test the validity of such principles, as cosmological homogeneity and isotropy, from any other observation posts because if these principles appear to hold true on earth then they must hold true all over the universe.

In the view of the faithful including myself, the earth and the solar system are indeed very special places because the Creator made them that way. This is a matter not to be proved but is accepted on an axiomatic basis via faith. But is faith and untested cosmological assumptions now a part of science?


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## american music

MacLeod said:


> This has long since stopped being a discussion about classical music, and credit to violadude for observing that this was not going to be about music in only the second post!
> 
> (PS. I'm only complaining because the science is too hard for me, and there seems little point pursuing the minor debate about whether 'faith' is being used or misused!)


The Universe is a united verse that is set to a cosmic tune
and let me be the first to proclaim that the Cubbies will win real soon!
In mid October the Cubs will crank it up a notch
in the minds of those who are not sober from drinking too much scotch!


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## Guest

american music said:


> The Universe is a united verse that is set to a cosmic tune
> and let me be the first to proclaim that the Cubbies will win real soon!
> In mid October the Cubs will crank it up a notch
> in the minds of those who are not sober from drinking too much scotch!


Thanks for the doggerel...but who are the 'Cubbies'?


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## science

american music said:


> Now it appears that science is also proclaiming that the earth (and the solar system in which it resides) is a special place and that whatever appears to be scientific fact on earth is automatically scientific fact all over the universe.


The "automatically" part of this is unfair and also wrong.

So, you have faith that our part of the universe is special, and you disagree with the Copernican principle. That's fine, but if you want scientists to share your assumptions, you have to give them reasons.

Until then, they'll go on minimizing assumptions, which means assuming that our neighborhood of the universe is not special except when we have evidence that it is.

BTW, I think that some of your co-religionists would disagree with you about your assumptions about our solar system. At least C. S. Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle were not assuming that our planet was the only one in the Christian drama.


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## american music

MacLeod said:


> Thanks for the doggerel...but who are the 'Cubbies'?


The "Cubbies" refers to the Chicago Cubs a baseball team that has not won a championship since 1908. Their sorry saga could be the basis of a comic opera. What do you think?


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## american music

science said:


> The "automatically" part of this is unfair and also wrong.
> 
> So, you have faith that our part of the universe is special, and you disagree with the Copernican principle. That's fine, but if you want scientists to share your assumptions, you have to give them reasons.
> 
> Until then, they'll go on minimizing assumptions, which means assuming that our neighborhood of the universe is not special except when we have evidence that it is.
> 
> BTW, I think that some of your co-religionists would disagree with you about your assumptions about our solar system. At least C. S. Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle were not assuming that our planet was the only one in the Christian drama.


Perhaps the adverb "automatically" was too strong. But the controversy over cosmological homogeneity is not new. I previously posted this link but you must have overlooked it.

http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw/LOCH.HTM

A manned journey to the planet Mars, for example, is not an unrealistic project. But scientists and mathematicians will have to solve some very complex equations in order for the trip to be feasible. They will not be able to make simplifying assumptions if they want to optimize the safety of the inter planetary travelers. So why don't cosmologists intellectually "man up" and stop trying to make the very complex sets of Partial Differential Equations, involved in the study of origins of Universe, easy by making simplifying assumptions that have not been cosmologically verified (except possibly in the solar system). If they can't solve the complex realistic math models that describe the complex dynamics associated with the fundamental forces of nature, in an environment of extremely high temperature and pressure, then they should just say so.

There is after all no shame in having only a finite intellectual ability. The real shame would more likely be focused upon men on earth, [which regardless of how we may wish otherwise, is (scientifically speaking) only one planet that revolves around one of the many trillions of trillions of other stars], pretending that they can describe, with a very high degree of precision, the origins of the universe.


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## Matsps

> True, but all of the measurements of data associated with incoming light signals, including the cosmic micro wave background radiation, were taken from points within the solar system and over a time span of no more than a few hundred years.


The actual measurement is done here, sure, but the origins of the signals come from a range of times and places that span a great deal of the universe. If one were to go to say, the Andromeda galaxy, are you suggesting that somehow we would make significantly different measurements of these same signals, so different as to have to invoke new or different laws of physics? And if this is the case, why does the Andromeda galaxy look so very similar to ours? Even though it is known to change even a far away decimal place in a single universal constant changes everything completely.

All in all, this principle seems rather well founded, while you give absolutely no foundation for your assumption that the laws of physics should be different.



> there is no need to test the validity of such principles


Any scientist worth their salt would do the test in an instant, but how can we possibly travel across the far reaches of the universe to test our hypothesis in this case? All we can say is what we always say in science - It looks right for now and we haven't yet reason to believe otherwise.


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## Guest

american music said:


> The "Cubbies" refers to the Chicago Cubs a baseball team that has not won a championship since 1908. Their sorry saga could be the basis of a comic opera. What do you think?


What I think about the Cubbies is not really pertinent, is it? In fact, what _anyone _thinks about the Cubbies isn't pertinent to the debate about a finely-tuned universe.


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## aleazk

I will just leave these links here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crackpot_index

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html

:tiphat:

Feel free to establish correlations between the list of questions in Baez's index and the link provided by @american music, as well as other posts in this thread.

I must say I have found indeed a couple of correlations!


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## aleazk

Also, @american music, this is really not the place for this discussion either. If you are interested in physics and cosmology, then you have several places on the internet for that:

-http://www.physicsforums.com/

-http://physics.stackexchange.com/

-http://math.stackexchange.com/

If you are interested in the basics of cosmology and general relativity, then a few standard books (and see the references in those books for more specific topics):

-General Relativity by Robert Wald (my favorite basic relativity book).

-Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity by Sean Carroll (not as sophisticated as Wald, but very useful for a basic introduction; unlike Wald, it's up to date with certain topics in cosmology)

-The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time by Stephen W. Hawking and G. F. R. Ellis (Hawking's masterpiece, contains discussions of advanced topics, like the Cauchy problem and singularities; also has an interesting discussion of the hypotheses of homogeneity and isotropy, though it's not up to date)


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## Blake

aleazk said:


> Also, @american music, this is really not the place for this discussion either. If you are interested in physics and cosmology, then you have several places on the internet for that:
> 
> -http://www.physicsforums.com/
> 
> -http://physics.stackexchange.com/
> 
> -http://math.stackexchange.com/
> 
> If you are interested in the basics of cosmology and general relativity, then a few standard books (and see the references in those books for more specific topics):
> 
> -General Relativity by Robert Wald (my favorite basic relativity book).
> 
> -Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity by Sean Carroll (not as sophisticated as Wald, but very useful for a basic introduction; unlike Wald, it's up to date with certain topics in cosmology)
> 
> -The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time by Stephen W. Hawking and G. F. R. Ellis (Hawking's masterpiece, contains discussions of advanced topics, like the Cauchy problem and singularities; also has an interesting discussion of the hypotheses of homogeneity and isotropy, though it's not up to date)


I was really waiting for you to start unleashing on this thread, hah. Maybe the environment isn't so inspiring….

I might check out that Wald book - my interest is peaked. Thanks.


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## aleazk

Vesuvius said:


> I was really waiting for you to start unleashing on this thread, hah. Maybe the environment isn't so inspiring….
> 
> I might check out that Wald book - my interest is peaked. Thanks.


A complete discussion of the topic (the role and validity of the assumption of homogeneity and isotropy in cosmological models) is a quite technical thing, which is way beyond a forum about classical music. Hawking & Ellis devote a whole chapter of their book to this. I have not the time nor the interest of pursuing such a detailed discussion here (even more if from the other side the only reference is a webpage talking about a crackpot theory of the 'fractal universe'). That's why I referred him to more appropriate forums and bibliography.

Re Wald: I would recommend first his divulgation book: http://www.amazon.com/Space-Time-Gr...CSM_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398612802&sr=1-3

The other one is a postgraduate level exposition to relativity


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## american music

aleazk said:


> Also, @american music, this is really not the place for this discussion either. If you are interested in physics and cosmology, then you have several places on the internet for that:
> 
> -http://www.physicsforums.com/
> 
> -http://physics.stackexchange.com/
> 
> -http://math.stackexchange.com/
> 
> If you are interested in the basics of cosmology and general relativity, then a few standard books (and see the references in those books for more specific topics):
> 
> -General Relativity by Robert Wald (my favorite basic relativity book).
> 
> -Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity by Sean Carroll (not as sophisticated as Wald, but very useful for a basic introduction; unlike Wald, it's up to date with certain topics in cosmology)
> 
> -The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time by Stephen W. Hawking and G. F. R. Ellis (Hawking's masterpiece, contains discussions of advanced topics, like the Cauchy problem and singularities; also has an interesting discussion of the hypotheses of homogeneity and isotropy, though it's not up to date)


Thank you for the info. I have previously visited some of the sites that you listed or sites similar to those. I studies mathematical physics on a graduate basis and I minored in music as an undergraduate. It has been my experience that often (but not always) those who were involved with math also had an interest in music and vice versa. One of the reasons that I started this thread is that I wanted to informally gauge the level of interest that classical music enthusiasts have in mathematical physics.

As you probably know, it is well known that music and physics are closely related. The wave equations that govern the vibrations of the strings of the orchestral string choir, the vibrations of the air columns of wind instruments, the membranes of the timpani and the oscillations of the components of the electromagnetic field all have similar forms. Now I am not suggesting that just because the equations LOOK alike that they can all be easily united into a single grand wave equation. But such things are of interest to me and maybe to others also.

I have always believed that the real objective of science was the quest for the truth. And I think that one can safely state that:

The truth is full of true information and is invariant under a coordinate transformation or a linguistic translation.


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## american music

Matsps said:


> The actual measurement is done here, sure, but the origins of the signals come from a range of times and places that span a great deal of the universe. If one were to go to say, the Andromeda galaxy, are you suggesting that somehow we would make significantly different measurements of these same signals, so different as to have to invoke new or different laws of physics? And if this is the case, why does the Andromeda galaxy look so very similar to ours? Even though it is known to change even a far away decimal place in a single universal constant changes everything completely.
> 
> All in all, this principle seems rather well founded, while you give absolutely no foundation for your assumption that the laws of physics should be different.
> 
> Any scientist worth their salt would do the test in an instant, but how can we possibly travel across the far reaches of the universe to test our hypothesis in this case? All we can say is what we always say in science - It looks right for now and we haven't yet reason to believe otherwise.


The same physical law (based upon a math model) can be used to predict the values of a physical variable at different places and times. A physical variable is a function of the space and time coordinates. Let us consider a continental weather model. The same continental model can make predictions for the temperature at a certain place and time in say NYC and also for a certain place and time in Los Angeles. If the predictions agree with the actual measured temperatures at those and several other locations and times, then we have strong evidence for the validity of the single continental weather model (at least for its ability to predict temperature).

Now let's consider a cosmological law (or math model) for the prediction of the values of a cosmological physical variable. The same cosmological model can make predictions for the value of a given cosmological variable at a point in space and time in the solar system and it can also make predictions for the values of that variable at some point and time in Andromeda, for example. We can easily check if the prediction holds true for several places and times in the solar system but we can't verify that the predictions will hold true in Andromeda. So at best, in accordance with the traditions of science to conduct repeated tests for verification, we can only state that the proposed cosmological law may or may not true on a cosmological scale.

Several physical laws have been verified in the solar system and many scientists believe, based upon subjective views and other non-experimental considerations, that they also hold true all over the entire universe. They may be correct but none of them can prove it by way of traditional scientific protocol.


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## american music

aleazk said:


> I will just leave these links here...
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crackpot_index
> 
> http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
> 
> :tiphat:
> 
> Feel free to establish correlations between the list of questions in Baez's index and the link provided by @american music, as well as other posts in this thread.
> 
> I must say I have found indeed a couple of correlations!


There is a need to strike a balance between the inertia associated with the scientific status quo and the push to open new frontiers: so as to obtain new understandings and utilities of science. Suffice it to say that much of what is considered to be scientific dogma today was once greeted with skepticism and ridicule. Why don't we give appropriate applause to the pioneers whose persistence in the face of inertial resistance led to useful inventions and discoveries?

And just as evolutionary forces provided a path to survival for the physically fittest it will also find an appropriate place for the cranks and crackpots among us. It does not need a crack pot index by John Baez or anyone else. Therefore wry ridicule should be used only sparingly lest we frighten off some individuals who are shy but who also may potentially be great creative forces in the arts and sciences.


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## KenOC

A problem I have. It seems that further explorations of the nature of the universe will require larger and larger allocations of societal wealth. How big will the next particle accelerator have to be? What will it tell us of practical value? Are we simply building scientific pyramids?

Where are our Rutherfords, who uncovered basic laws using string and sealing wax?


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## mmsbls

I have moved this thread to the Community Forum. While there was some slight potential connection to music very early, it's clear that the content of this thread is better suited for this forum.


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## american music

KenOC said:


> A problem I have. It seems that further explorations of the nature of the universe will require larger and larger allocations of societal wealth. How big will the next particle accelerator have to be? What will it tell us of practical value? Are we simply building scientific pyramids?
> 
> Where are our Rutherfords, who uncovered basic laws using string and sealing wax?


The string and sealing wax did not cause a big increment in tax! Maybe we need more independent researchers who do science for the love of it. Einstein, just to name one, was not working for a university when he published his first paper.


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