tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post114735949967137210..comments2024-03-27T17:15:37.606-04:00Comments on Triablogue: Dim bulb of the month awardRyanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17809283662428917799noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-1147702785413457752006-05-15T10:19:00.000-04:002006-05-15T10:19:00.000-04:00Excuse me, I should make it clear:"naked singulari...Excuse me, I should make it clear:<BR/>"naked singularities" do <I>NOT</I> have an event horizon, thus the term "naked"<BR/><BR/>Sorry about that. The logic applies to generalized gravitational singularities, though whether they produce an event horizon or not, and <A HREF="http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week207.html" REL="nofollow">Hawking</A> quite recently talked about much of the uncertainty regarding whether or not information inside a black hole was "lost forever" (if B could still communicate with A via radiation):<BR/><B>" My work with Hartle showed the radiation could be thought of as tunnelling out from inside the black hole. It was therefore not unreasonable to suppose that it could carry information out of the black hole. This explains how a black hole can form, and then give out the information about what is inside it, while remaining topologically trivial. There is no baby universe branching off, as I once thought. The information remains firmly in our universe. I'm sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved, there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes. If you jump into a black hole, your mass-energy will be returned to our universe, but in a mangled form, which contains the information about what you were like, but in an unrecognisable state.<BR/><BR/>There is a problem describing what happens, because strictly speaking the only observables in quantum gravity are the values of the field at infinity. One cannot define the field at some point in the middle, because there is quantum uncertainty in where the measurement is done."</B><BR/><BR/>Keep in mind, though, that Hawking only recently solved this problem, and it is by no means a settled issue, particularly the idea that B will either exist eternally as a classical black hole or whether it is a "baby universe", as he said.<BR/><BR/>Sci-fi, almost, indeed. But the holes are real, we can observe their effects, and current quantum gravity work will probably do a complete overhaul of everything people have done thus far (modifying it for the better, of course). Maybe your God will pop out of the new GR equations ;) Maybe God <I>is</I> quantum uncertainty...If so, I'll be a reconvert when we break through the Planck lenght :)nsflhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04129382545589470620noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-1147701401348303222006-05-15T09:56:00.000-04:002006-05-15T09:56:00.000-04:00But there are even more problems. He says that “th...<B>But there are even more problems. He says that “that time itself is a feature of the Big Bang,” but he goes on to say “that the energy/mass/matter of the Big Bang existed prior to the expansion.”<BR/><BR/>But if time began with the big bang, then there’s no timeline which he can retroject into the singularity; hence, his appeal to temporal priority is nonsense.<BR/><BR/>So much for his oscillating universe, which assumes a relative timeframe of expansion and contraction.</B><BR/><BR/>If only you could get off so easily:<BR/>just published article on calculating a "bounce" rather than a singularity from the GR equations --<BR/><A HREF="http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v96/e141301" REL="nofollow">Quantum Nature of the Big Bang</A><BR/><BR/>Perhaps I should clarify my point with a simple reference -- the <A HREF="http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/NakedSingularity.html" REL="nofollow">Naked Singularity</A> provides a way to give people an understanding of how event A can be causal to effect B without being prior <B>temporally</B> within B's spatio-temporal framework. If indeed every black hole is a naked singularity, we cannot deny that the space-time fabric no longer applies there. Let our universe be A and the new singularity B.<BR/>-The events that gave rise to B happened within the spatio-temporal framework of A.<BR/>-The fate of B is sealed: nothing within A can "undo" the singularity<BR/>-What occurs within B is completely unknown and unknowable from outside the event horizon, but there is no reason to suppose that B cannot undergo a transformation (independent of further causation from A) in which B expands again and produces its own, A-independent space-time.<BR/>-If anything happens within B, observers in B cannot "see" A, and can only go back to their own origin : the singularity itself. Is it proper, though, for an observer inside of B to deny the existence of a causal A? Yes and no. They cannot "see" A, yet it is clear that something did not come from nothing.<BR/><BR/>This is at the heart of the <I>new</I> oscillating universe modeling, and is quite mathematically and philosophically robust, compared to erstwhile models: check out the layman's guide to the new cyclic universe via <A HREF="http://www.physics.princeton.edu/~steinh/" REL="nofollow">Steinhardt</A><BR/><BR/>He even has an FAQ page over on the right. It's a rather exciting field in its philosophical consequences, although the math is painful and quantum gravity may still be a decade or more away. THey just put up the space instrument a couple of years ago to detect gravitons, 40 years after its initial planning began. We'll wait and see, but I'll put my money on science to produce a GUT before the end of my life. The uncertainty of science doesn't bother me. Unlike yourself, I need no [quasi] claims to absolutism to sustain me. I love data, and interpretations of data change, and new data comes in all the time.<BR/><BR/><B>How does Danny happen to know what the laws of physics were before the big bang? Wouldn’t’ the big bang erase any trace evidence of the “preexisting” universe?</B><BR/>We don't know. In fact, that is why it is called a "singularity". The better question to ask is -- can the laws of physics we have now have originated in an event which itself canno be described by the laws of physics? If the answer is "yes", then we're done with science if the singularity is factual and historically correct. We can't go back any further. However, most people have no reason to suppose the answer is "yes", and, using mathematics and findings unavailable in Einstein's day, have seen the distinct possibility that the "singularity" may be an artefact of inadequate modeling. GR equations are insufficient, IOW. We have to have quantum gravity.<BR/><BR/>Until then, we have to use the known physics from this universe to extrapolate to how the universe arose. From there, speculating about the physics of other universes is indeed abstract and unscientific, which leads to your next point:<BR/><BR/><B>vii) Likewise, why assume an alternative universe must be governed by the same laws and constants of nature?</B><BR/>Great question! In fact, there is <I>no reason to suppose that at all</I>! Which, nicely, slices the Anthropic principle to pieces. If one single configuration of the constants gives rise to a universe which itself harbors life, and there are a huge number of other universes produced which do not harbor life, some of which capable of producing more black holes and singularities and "seeded universes", or not, the AP is defeated. <BR/><BR/>Of course, erstwhile models supposed a huge number of cycles of <B>this one universe</B>, something still unable to be scientifically disproven for the very reason you bring up -- the 2LoT, often invoked to falsify "steady state" universes, is "reset" with each singularity -- we cannot know what happens to "state functions" like the laws of thermodynamics through a singularity, and there is no reason to suppose they carry their net value through, versus becoming "0" again on the other side. The other observation intended to quash the steady-state is that our universe is expanding. A question is -- are the distant galaxies accelerating towards black holes which are, themselves, the seeds of new universes?<BR/><BR/>Either way, multiverse or single universe, with a cycle, with constants that do or do not change, then the whole anthropic principle is defeated.<BR/><BR/>This field is quite interesting on a variety of levels. Some are scientific, some "just" philosophical, but all give us pause for thought to consider the nearly endless possibilities of the origin and fate of our universe (and others). That's why I have wonder and awe of nature, while refusing to inject "God" into my own ignorance of what happened, as "God" explains nothing and gives me no more understanding or knowledge. "Poof" doesn't tell me a darn thing.nsflhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04129382545589470620noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-1147377879948531252006-05-11T16:04:00.000-04:002006-05-11T16:04:00.000-04:00Speaking of dim bulbs, anybody at Triablogue want ...Speaking of dim bulbs, anybody at Triablogue want to write a note regarding this post?<BR/><BR/>http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2006/05/biblical-evidence-for-priests.htmlAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-1147367758238683552006-05-11T13:15:00.000-04:002006-05-11T13:15:00.000-04:00The dim bulb replied to the tune of casting more p...The dim bulb <A HREF="http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/05/swine-and-science.html" REL="nofollow">replied to the tune of casting more pearls here</A>.nsflhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04129382545589470620noreply@blogger.com