"Turtles all the way down" in physics
I suppose everybody knows the tale of "turtles all the way down" but here it is for the record:
A believer in the idea that the world rests on the back of a turtle, is asked:
- What does the turtle rest on?
- Another turtle.
- What does the second turtle rest on?
- A third turtle.
- And the third turle rests on?
- It's turtles all the way down.
Often, the tale is used to illustrate the falacy of the "first cause" argument for the existence of God. I want to apply it to a different topic: to modern physics and the infinitely small.
We know, or think we know, that atoms can be broken in smaller pieces, called particles (protons, neutrons, electrons) and that these particles can be further broken down into quarks.
The question is: could quarks be broken down in smaller pieces too? And those pieces of quarks, could they be further broken down, etc. etc. ad infinitum?
Could there be no "bottom" to that stuff we call matter? Could it be "particles all the way down"?
A believer in the idea that the world rests on the back of a turtle, is asked:
- What does the turtle rest on?
- Another turtle.
- What does the second turtle rest on?
- A third turtle.
- And the third turle rests on?
- It's turtles all the way down.
Often, the tale is used to illustrate the falacy of the "first cause" argument for the existence of God. I want to apply it to a different topic: to modern physics and the infinitely small.
We know, or think we know, that atoms can be broken in smaller pieces, called particles (protons, neutrons, electrons) and that these particles can be further broken down into quarks.
The question is: could quarks be broken down in smaller pieces too? And those pieces of quarks, could they be further broken down, etc. etc. ad infinitum?
Could there be no "bottom" to that stuff we call matter? Could it be "particles all the way down"?
Comments (65)
-https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Chelonaut
Okay but until they do, do you think "particles all the way down" is possible?
https://home.cern
There's your problem, right there.
(that's good - but then a lack of certainty ceases to be a meaningful objection)
Let's agree that a lack of certainty is not a problem.
The experiments at CERN and other particle accelerators seem to show that the size of the pieces one can get (or observe) is a function of the amount of energy one can summon in ever larger accelerators.
Conceptually, anything can be broken down into smaller pieces.
So i guess it's perfectly possible that it's particles all the way down.
Physics has shown that material particles only "break down" as far as their simplest possible symmetry states. So quarks exist as a mathematical limit on material symmetry breaking - the SU3 symmetry in their case. Electrons and neutrinos are the result of there being an even simpler accessible symmetry state - the U1 of electromagneticism (although the mechanism to get there is a little messy as you need this other things of the Higgs mechanism to break the intermediate step of the SU2 electroweak symmetry).
So putting aside the technicalities, physics has flipped the whole issue. The mathematics of symmetry tell us what is the simplest possible ground state of material being. The nearest to a vanilla nothingness. A cosmic sea of U1 photons. The problem becomes more about how any complexity in the forms of higher level crud, such as quarks, or Higgs fields, manages to survive, and thus give us a materiality that needs describing in the fashion of turtles stacked high.
At this point, the conversation has to shift from a classical metaphysics to a quantum one. And here the floor of reality becomes the very possibility of being able to break a symmetry with a question.
You want to know the simplest formally complementary pair of facts about the nature of something that might exist - like its location AND its momentum. Well sorry. Those are the logical opposites as measurements, so that is certainly the ground floor when it comes to asking something concrete and definite. You can't logically get simpler, or more binary. But because they are opposites, not both can be measured with precision simultaneously. Exactness in one direction becomes complete uncertainty in the other.
So again, we know in a mathematical way what constitutes the "smallest possible fragment of reality". A countable quantum degree of freedom.
The mystery is more about how nature would begin the business of smashing its way down through a whole series of higher symmetry states - like SU10 or whatever else counts as the grand unified theory describing the Big Bang state - to arrive at its simplest achievable arrangement.
That is the practical task before particle physics now. Recovering the story of when things were messy and complicated before they got reduced towards an idealised simplicity.
Quoting Olivier5
CERN is all about recreating those earlier times when things were hot and messy. The everyday world around us has evolved to be about as primitive as it gets. Electrons can't decay because there is no simpler state they could achieve. But go back and higher symmetry states of matter can fragment in a vast variety of short-lived ways - short-lived as they too will want to reduce towards the simplest achievable state of being, like a U1 photon.
"Breaking things down into smaller pieces" is not a good way of describing fundamental physics research. Simple mereology works decently well with everyday objects and materials: if you know that something is made of wood, for example, then you know a lot of things about it, such as its hardness, heat capacity, conductivity, etc. So when we want to know more about a thing, we naturally tend to ask: "What is it made of?" If object O is made of A, B and C, and we know some properties of A, B and C, then we will add A, B and C properties together (perhaps accounting for some minimal interaction) and have O properties as a result.
This doesn't work perfectly even with everyday objects, because isolated objects often behave very differently than when they are part of some whole. And when physics goes beyond everyday size and energy scales, the very notion of an "object" with a boundary and and a set of properties that are all its own begins to break down. Subatomic particles behave like "particles" only in a very limited sense. By the time you get to quarks, saying that something is "made of" quarks means very little.
There was a famous Roman prose-poem, Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, which expressed this idea, and it's taught to this day. Lucretius underwent something of a revival in the French Enlightenment and was a favourite of the French materialists, such as D'Holbach ('all I see is bodies in motion'). And also Galilleo's science, and Descartes' philosophy, strongly suggested something like atomism, as 'atoms' could plausibly be interpreted as the ultimate bearers of Galileo's 'primary qualities' (hence, you could argue, the naming of atomic physics as 'quantum mechanics'.)
That was where the appeal of atomism lay - the idea that these were the ultimate constituents of everything. And I think a lot of people, maybe even the majority, would still believe this to be the case.
But it's worth bearing in mind that atomism was only one of many competing theories of matter. Plato and Aristotle didn't accept it, for different reasons, although whether one believes it or not, the atomic theory of matter has been extraordinarily fruitful from a scientific perspective.
Quoting apokrisis
CERN physicists recently declared that according to their best estimates, the Universe ought not to exist at all, as the matter and antimatter really should have cancelled each other out.
Don't know what conclusion to draw from that, other than, perhaps, there might be a problem with the theory.
Yep. Almost all the matter and anti-matter - as mirror image states - did cancel each other away to leave the blazing sizzle of a cooling and expanding bath of photon radiation, the simplest possible form of being. But if you google CP violation, you will see that theory can predict a symmetry-breaking source of an underlying asymmetry that preserves a small fraction of matter. It has been observed with quarks. It just isn’t enough as yet. Other particles, like neutrinos, would have to contribute too.
Early results have given physicists confidence skewed neutrinos can supply the missing amount of asymmetry. They just need more public money and a next generation detector to demonstrate that, natch. :wink:
//ps// although something tells me, if there's an even bigger accelerator, there will be even bigger questions more than answers.//
In the story of the infinite stack of turtles, it's as you say, turtles all the way down and the issue with this kind of infinite regress is that the same explanation repeats infinitely.
In physics, the particles aren't the same particles: it's not protons/neutrons/electrons all the way down, different kinds of particles appear as we make our way from the small to the very small. In other words, it isn't turtles all the way down in physics.
The error is in thinking the particles are the same particles. They're not. I wonder what CERN scientists would think if, for instance, they smash quarks and get quarks and nothing else. Would they think quarks are made of quarks and that these quarks are made of more quarks a al turtles all the way down OR would they hold a press conference and announce to the world they've finally discovered the fundamental particle of matter? :chin:
Though scientists and platonists have their own Interpretations of my Fact.
Sure! There also could exist multiple universes. In multiverse theory, there could be universes that use entirely different laws of physics. Cosmologically, whether it turtles or multiverse theories, perhaps the one common theme to all of them is that it they all require some form of belief, or leap of faith. Really not much different than scientific beliefs about causation.
Something I wrote some time ago...
One of the most intractable questions in philosophy is Why is there something rather than nothing? Very little progress has been made in answering this question. But we know there is something; 'I think therefore I am'. So, at least Descartes exists, or at the very least, 'there is thought' (Bertrand Russell). At any rate, we can begin with the assumption that there is something rather than nothing.
The something that is, is existence. Existence is not a verb, it is a noun. It is the substance that is and always has been. Existence is God and is not contingent upon any previous state. Existence is not a property of anything, rather, existence has properties. To show that existence is not a property assume X has the property 'existence'. In this respect we consider X and existence to be distinct entities (otherwise X is equivalent to existence and there is nothing to prove). We now ask the question; Does X exist (as a distinct entity)? There are two answers;
1. X exists.
If this is the case existence, as a property of X, is superfluous since X exists anyhow. Therefore X is equivalent to existence.
2. X does not exist.
It is incoherent to say a non existent X has properties, let alone the property existence.
This means that if existence is not a property, it is not contingent. That is, not dependent on any previous state. All other realities are properties of existence. The universe is a set of properties of existence. Properties of existence 'inherit' their existence. We can say 'This milk bottle exists'. By this we mean that the milk bottle is a property of existence and the substance of it is existence, because existence is the only substance that is.
In principle we can deconstruct the bottle into glass crystals and we can deconstruct the crystals into molecules, atoms and so on until even the atoms are deconstructed into energy because energy is the substance of matter. It may even be possible to deconstruct energy into a deeper form of energy but this deconstruction cannot go on indefinitely; it cannot be 'turtles all the way down'. We must come to some ultimate substance that supports the properties 'atom', 'molecule', 'crystal' 'bottle'. This substance is that which is from the beginning, existence.
Even though philosophy cannot say why existence is or what it is, there are a number of things we can say about it;
1. Existence is.
2. Existence has vast creative potential because it has emerged into a universe and everything in that universe.
3. It has the potential to become life, because life is found in the universe.
The way in which existence made manifest a physical and mental/spiritual universe is very special. It did not just spew out an amorphous blob of matter. It created the universe in a way that optimized the creative potential of matter. Matter, because of the precise way it is made, is capable of great creative transformations. It can become a planet, a crow, a city, an oak tree. If matter had been just a primitive blob it would not have the immense combinatorial possibilities it has. It is the precise balance within matter and energy that gives the universe its vast creative potential. This is the Fine Tuning Argument.
Arguably, the highest point in the creative evolution of matter is the physical image of life and being; physical creatures. But the physical image is just that, an image. Life and being are of the mind which is non physical.
Existence simply is. Being is concerned with life and consciousness; a milk bottle exists, a creature is alive and conscious. Life is plurality and unity. A single mind in isolation is hardly alive. Life is a discourse between minds, between self and not self. When existence becomes manifest as a myriad of minds it emerges into life and being. Life is the union of God and creation. Through creation existence/God emerge into being and God becomes the living God. Egoism is the severance of unity. The mind's consciousness turns inward and the bonds of life are broken. Egoism is counterfeit being and ultimately, spiritual death.
***
It has been suggested that reality can be nothing more than a circular chain of properties or contingencies supporting each other in a never ending circle with no supporting substance. This is an absurdity as it tries to dispose of any real substance in reality.
A property or contingency is perfectly identified with its supporting substance and cannot be divorced from it. Take for example a bronze sphere. Bronze is the supporting substance, and its sphericity is its property which is contingent upon the existence of the bronze. It is also perfectly identified with the bronze.
Now, suppose you try to separate the bronze substance from its property, its contingent sphericity. You could try melting the bronze in the hope that you would end up with pure, abstract sphericity. But all that would happen is the bronze would turn into a molten puddle and the property, sphericity, would vanish. This shows how the property is perfectly identified with its substance; the property sphericity, in terms of substance, is the bronze.
The idea that there can be a circle of mutually supporting contingencies or properties without substance is suspect.
Let P1, P2,...Pn be a circle of properties. It is asserted that P1 is effectively the supporting 'substance' of P2 and P2 supports P3 and so on until we get to Pn which is the supporting substance of P1, completing the circle. So it goes round in a self supporting circle without any central supporting substance.
But Pn is perfectly identified with Pn-1 in terms of 'substance' (although the substance in this case is not supposed to be actual, it is still assumed to play the part of the supporting substance). Pn-1 is perfectly identified with Pn-2 and so on until we get to-
P2 is perfectly identified with P1.
What this means is that any separation between P1 and P2 is purely conceptual and there is no separation in actuality. Likewise with P2 and P3 etc. In short, P1, P2...Pn all telescope into a single complex property. That is, there can only be primary, not secondary, properties in actuality. That there seems to be secondary properties is only an effect of the abstract conceptual model we make in our minds.
Here is a simple illustration.
Energy is the substance of atoms. P1 = a set of atoms.
Molecules are made of atoms. P2 = a set of molecules.
The cell is made of molecules. P3 = the cell.
Energy is the substance of the whole system because it is the substance of Property 1, a set of atoms. Conceptually we have three levels of properties but working backwards we can see that the cell is a set of molecules. Molecules are a set of atoms. Atoms are energy.
So P1, P2, and P3 can be collapsed into a single complex property, P3, the cell. In real terms P3 is a primary property of energy because the substance of the cell is energy, just as it is the substance of the atom. So, all the in between properties, as such, are just conceptual categories, not actualities. The error in the concept of a circle of a self supporting set of contingencies, without any supporting substance, is that there can be a property without any supporting substance. In other words, the universe is an abstraction, a property, of nothing. But even an abstraction needs a mind to conceive it and keep it in existence.
Until it proves otherwise, of course.
Quoting apokrisis
Okay, I get it. But what are the pathways and "steps" from a cosmic sea of U1 photons to, say, a quark, a proton, or an atom (or several)? Do we have all the "steps" plotted? Or does it look more like an infinite series of intermediary states between the U1 photon sea and an atom?
I'm not saying something is "made of quarks". Only that something can be broken down into quarks. There's a difference.
The story of the turtles ( ) is to expose the inadequacy of an explanation because it sets off an infinite regress consisting of the same explanation being repeated over and over again. As far as I can tell, the atomic theory of matter isn't like that. In the atomic theory there's an heirarchy of different particles each level forming the substratum of the next higher one and, most importantly, there's a sense of a limit where this will go - I suppose an ultimate final level of particulate matter is expected beyond which it doesn't make sense to ask what that particle is made up of?
Most quantum physicists have reluctantly abandoned the ancient theory of Atomism : self-existent particles at the bottom --- the rest is all Void. Instead they have devised a Field Theory to describe fundamental Reality. But a "field" is essentially an empty space (void) where statistically possible Virtual particles could suddenly-and-without-warning become Actual particles. In that case, you could say that reality is Ghost particles all the way down. But I prefer a less spooky theory. :joke:
Field Theory : "QFT treats particles as excited states (also called quanta) of their underlying fields, which are more fundamental than the particles."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_field_theory
That's exactly the point of the thread: is there a limit to how fine we can "grind" matter?
I think we need to draw a distinction between theoretical and practical limits. In the former case, any non-zero size is divisible but in the latter case we may not be able to actually subdivide particles of extremely small size.
Given our current technology we can only go so far, but technology can and does evolve.
As others have pointed out, I’m talking about atomism, and how it served us well to assume that matter was « made of » some basic elements called « atoms ». The word means « unbreakable » and yet once we discovered what we now call “atoms », we also discovered they could be broken down in « sub-atomic particules » which themselves can be broken down (or up) into quarks... So the basic premisse of atomism is false: matter is not technically made of some basic elements. Instead, some forms of matter are stable in certain conditions, and break down in other conditions.
Matter has no “bottom”, no “foundation”. It’s turtles all the way down.
Ok. There's a sense in which there's no end in sight to splitting particles - there always is a smaller particle to be cleaved off of a larger one - but, a partlcle can't have zero size i.e. there's a limiting boundary to particle size. Of course you could go Zeno on me and say there are an infinite number of possible fractional sizes for a particle and then, yes, it's turtles all the way down.
TMF!
Simple question (well maybe not so simple), could an interminable amount of regressive turtle power suggest infinity and/or eternity of time exists?
I don't think time is real in the sense it exists outside of our minds. Assume time has a beginning, call it point X. We can always ask for any point like X the question, "what time was it before X?", implying time extends to infinity in the past. Yet, if the past is infinite, how on earth did we reach this point in time? Since the paradox arises because we assume time to be something as real as space, we must discard the idea of time being real. :confused:
Hey Buddy, you are my first follow(based on this initial question).
Personal non-answer answer:
I find very little interest in knowing: anything about the turtles I cannot see beyond with the tools my body can provide me with, but I know that I am limited in that respect. In addition, and partially based on that perceived shortcoming. I subscribe to the belief that micro/macro infinity is the only position to take within the realm of the scientific process without presupposing conclusion. Also, my vision may improve in my search for distant turtles.
I agree. Particularly in context of the BB; something outside of time presumably created the energy necessary for time itself. But if time always existed in some way, shape or form sort-a-speak, then we are back to regressive (infinitely regressive) turtle power! Perhaps no less absurd than multiverse theories.
I'm surprised. Optimism is yet to be vanquished.
:grin: :up:
Ah, good point: there is a mathematical limit in terms of mass to infinite spliting, a limit that is equal to 0 mass, just as there is a solution in the form if a mathematical limit in Zeno's paradox.
This limit may be what apokrisis called a "sea of U1 photons", though i'm unclear about the U1 part.
U(1) is just the simplest possible symmetry group. It is the symmetry of a rotating circle. And nothing is more symmetric than a circular object.
If you have a sphere, it always looks the same no matter how you rotate it. That is why the Greek Atomists imagined atoms as little spheres - the simplest material form.
A triangle (or tetrahedron) would have a more complex symmetry. The smallest turn of a triangle makes a visible difference. You can see right away something has moved. It is only after a 120 degree rotation that the triangle maps back on to itself as if nothing in fact changed.
Compare that to spinning a circular disc - one that has no marks to give the game away. Nothing visible ever changes no matter how furiously it is turned. The disc could be standing still for all you can tell.
Photons - as avatars of electromagneticism - have this simplest rotational symmetry. A sine wave is the trace carved out by letting a disc roll for a length by a mark on the circumference. So a photon - understood as a ray with a frequency - is just the simplest way to break the simplest state of symmetry.
It makes use of the two irreducible freedoms of nature under Noether's Theorem - rotational and translational symmetry. A photon rotates once and rolls one length - as the minimal definition of its existence.
At the Planck scale, such an electromagnetic event - a U(1)-expressing rotation + roll that marks a single wave-like beat of "hot action", something energetic happening - clearly happens in an unusual place.
Being confined to a spin and roll limited to a single Planck distance, it would also be the shortest, hence hottest, frequency event to ever exist. And energy being matter, it would also be the most gravitationally massive possible material event - so would curve the spacetime around it to a black hole extreme.
So it all becomes self defining. To break the simplest symmetry takes the simplest asymmetry - the combination of a spin and a roll that creates the mark, the trace, that is a spacetime-filling and energetic event. A single hot beat. The heat of that event defines the size of that spacetime (due to gravitational closure). And the size of that available spacetime in turn defines the heat that that even must have (due to the severest shortening of its frequency).
Quoting Olivier5
So what I have just described is different in that instead the zero is about the zero sum game by which we can get "something from nothing" due to a symmetry-breaking that is based on a reciprocal balancing act.
A photon expresses the world of the circle. We can't tell if a circle is rotating. So that means that if reality is constrained by a generalised demand for maximum symmetry, then the ultimate best solution to that demand is to arrive at the shape of a circle. It is most stable shape in that it always must look the same.
A circle has translational symmetry as well because - without the help of outside reference marks - we can't tell if it is rolling along. This is the standard relativity. Motion is only detectable if the symmetry of the reference frame is broken in some way.
And as I say, putting a dot on the edge of a circle free to rotate + roll then counts as the most minimal mark, the simplest symmetry-breaking. The result is the "energetic event" of a spacetime frame that now contains a single sine wave.
We thus have a toy world described in reciprocal limits. There is both near perfect symmetry (U(1)) and near perfect symmetry-breaking - the dot on the circumference that reveals the still unconstrained "Noether" freedoms of the ability to spin, the ability to roll. The ability to thus mark an empty space constrained to perfect circularity with a sine wave event that the constraints can't in fact eliminate. And what can't be eliminated, must happen.
Real physics is more complex as the real Big Bang could not access the great simplicity of a U(1) world so directly. It actually had to constrain all the other possible symmetries - the many higher or more complex symmetries of group theory - and remove them from the fray first.
That created the shower of other particles with more complex rotational actions – the particles of SU(3) and SU(2) symmetries, according to the Standard Model. And even to get to U(1) perfection involves the Higgs kluge that cracks SU(2).
But the basic picture of what reality is seeking to achieve is to arrive at its greatest state of simplicity - as defined by the complementary limits of a perfect U(1) symmetry broken by a matchingly-perfect least form of asymmetry. The slightest blemish on the Cosmic cheek. :grin:
The Heat Death tells us that this perfection is where we will arrive in the future.
Given the discovery of Dark Energy (a new unexplained ingredient in the story), we at least know that the Universe is coasting towards a destiny where spacetime will be best described by a reciprocal U(1) structure of holographic event horizons and their "as cold as possible" black body radiation. That is, a de Sitter cosmology.
Spacetime will be devoid of matter. Blackholes will have gobbled up all remaining gravitating matter and spat it out as electromagnetic radiation. So spacetime will be empty with an average temperature of zero degrees K. But it will also be filled with the even radiance of a cosmic bath of photons produced by the quantum holographic mechanism - the Unruh effect.
These would be photons that - in effect - span the width of the visible universe in just a single wavelength. Their frequency would be measured in multi-billions of lightyears. A single rotation + roll that spans the gap that the speed of light can transverse.
So spot the connection. The beginning of spacetime - the Big Bang - and the Heat Death are mirror images.
Both are defined by that single U(1) based rotation + roll deal. Except at the Big Bang, the spacetime extent is the smallest possible, making the energy of the frequency as hot as possible. And at the Heat Death, it all has unwound to arrive at the complementary state of the largest possible spacetime extent and thus the coldest possible photon, the lowest possible energy wavelength.
Simplicity is always the goal. But because complexity has to be constrained first - all the other available higher symmetry states have to be got rid of along the way - it is only by the end of time that U(1) perfection (in terms of a simple circle and its irreducible symmetry breakings) is achieve.
That is why it isn't turtles all the way down. Existence is a push towards the limiting extreme that is simplicity. And that push is self-terminating in that the constraints (an insistence on arriving at maximal symmetry) contains within it the terminating thing which are those irreducible symmetry breakings.
Every kind of difference can be eliminated by U(1) circular symmetry, except a rotation and a roll. So already, the necessary blemish is built in to break that symmetry (in the simplest way).
Reality can go no further as there is no further splintering of the system arrived at. The constraining towards a symmetrical nothingness gets hung up on an irreducible grain of being. Things can go that far and no further - leaving reality as the coldest-possible fizzle of holographic event horizon radiation. Photons with the physical wavelength of the visible universe - that sea I speak of.
Charlie Lineweaver at ANU has written a bunch of decent papers about all this.
And as a caveat, Dark Energy remains a fly in the ointment. It is necessary to explain why spacetime expansion will get truncated by the de Sitter event horizon mechanism. But we need some further bit of machinery - another Higgs-like field or irreducible entanglement - to fold that into the final theory of everything.
As someone once said, explanations ought to be as simple as possible. But not too simple.
U(1) is the simplest possible story. But getting there was not a simple process as all other symmetries had the possibility of being the case. And the way they would then interact and entangle with each other becomes part of the story of where things actually wound hung up in practice.
The world of quark/SU(3) symmetry and lepton/SU(2) symmetry, plus the Higgs mechanism, is how we are all still hung up at that more complex level of things at the moment. The Universe is still breaking its way down through all those entanglements along the ultimate path.
The more complex symmetries have more complex spin states - chiral spin. And they thus have their own equivalent irreducible rotational symmetries. Higher level Noether freedoms that can't be eliminated directly.
By rights, in a symmetric world, matter ought to be annihilated by anti-matter leaving only radiation. But these complex spins produce uneven outcomes. So some matter survives. Quarks can then protect themselves by forming triplet structures like protons and neutrons.
And so that complexity could last forever. Proton and neutron crud messing up the empty perfection of a cooling and expanding void. A flood of ghostly neutrinos as well, messing up reality with their pointless SU(2) weak force interactions.
So long as black holes perform as advertised - hoovering up the crud and evaporating it into photons - the universe can get there in the end. SU(3) and SU(2) will be rendered relic memories. Maybe surprisingly, the Cosmos will arrive at the mathematically ultimate state of simplicity in terms of its symmetry - and the symmetry-breaking events, the holographic U(1) photons, needed to reveal that that symmetry in fact "exists".
The edge of the disc has to be marked to reveal the world within which it can rotate + roll. The blemish is needed to complete the deal that conjures "something from nothing".
The begining of time (your X, or t=0) could be another mathematical limit, like what happens when the function 1/x gets close to zero. In this idea, there's no time before X because the universe never actually was at time X. And the reason the universe managed to reach this point in time is because at (almost) "start" everything happened (almost) infinitily fast.
Yeah, I know. The problem is we had to make an adjustment to a simple theory of a normal sequence of events and change it into something involving a more complex structure to time and causation, no?
Ciao Scemo. I'm new here too.
I agree that our collective vision may improve in our search for distant turtles. That's the best we can do.
Isn't that already presupposed in your sentence (regardless of whatever span of time)?
Also, there couldn't have been a time when there wasn't anything, since there would at least have been time (check B Rundle).
Anyway, I'm guessing that whatever spans of time all lead to apparent absurdities because of our intuitive sense of sufficient reason which seems violated. As pointed out by @Banno (I think), J W N Watkins showed that "all-and-some" statements, of which the principle of sufficient reason is one, are both nonfalsifiable and nonverifiable. Might not be unconditionally applicable. In some post somewhere (that I couldn't quickly find), @180 Proof took the consequence of this (without any contradictions).
If eternity is time and time eternity, then yes. But if you add the theory of the BB starting time itself, then that still presupposes something outside of time (eternity itself) creating in-time, temporal time (time as we know it).
If the measurement of time is based on mathematics (the common calendar and clock that basically describes mathematical intervals of time), and mathematics is known to be incomplete (Gödel), then perhaps one could simply analogize to some sort of eternity in time. Time itself, being relative and illusionary/paradoxical, is quite a comprehensive topic... .
From the Newton to Einstein descriptions (not explanations) of the universe, to what happened before the BB (dark energy, expansion/acceleration, inflationary universe, bubble multiverse, etc.) it remains a mystery as to why the BB occurred when it did, creating our existence. But once again, is it no less mysterious than conscious existence and/or self-aware beings who happen to be here wondering about it (?).
Wrong. It's a cycloid. Far more complicated than a simple sine wave, which it resembles superficially. :roll:
Quoting 3017amen
It's really important for you that god shows up somewhere in creation, hence this governs your understanding of physics. But it ain't necessarily so.
Thanks. He already has, I believe. At least St. Augustine is consistent with the current scientific theory of cosmological time, believe it or not. After all, (and otherwise) starting with the basics, what is the essence of causation itself :chin:
Or, think of it another way; doesn't turtles all the way down in itself, suggest an eternity of time, of some sort? It's in itself a regressive theory... .
Your approach is not "where will the science take us?" but "how do we get god out of the science?". So you will impose ad hoc corrections to any objection that is offered, rather than reconsider your theistic assumptions; or you will ignore the objection.
No he can't be rehabilitated because the irony is, his argument is a priori and unchanging.
But of course we're not talking about a priori logic are we? In the meantime, I wonder if causation itself is logically necessary for existence :chin:
...and that question again displays your muddling of grammar and ontology.
It is more complicated. The simplicity is about the Universe being in a state of perfect thermal equilibrium. That means its expansion - or its "cooling by expanding" - is "adiabatic". The system grows, but does so in such a smooth and even way that its internal balance isn't broken or disturbed. It retains its simplest possible state.
At the very moment of the Big Bang - given we are assuming it is represented accurately by the Planck limits - it would have had that thermal balance. But it almost immediately got disrupted by the quick succession of symmetry-breaking steps represented by the Standard Model of particle physics - SU3, SU2, SU1, and Higgs. And so the smooth flow - the development of the Universe as a spreading space containing a cooling material - got disrupted.
This is important for how we even imagine "time". A universe that is just the simplest thing of a spreading bath of radiation is essentially timeless. All action happens at the speed of light - c. And so there just isn't anything different to measure that temporal rate against.
It is only when particles become "massive" - once the Higgs field in particular gets switched on by the messy symmetry-breaking and particles begin to "weigh" something - that time has the kind of meaning it has for us conventionally. Mass makes it possible for particles to go slower than c. They can even be "at rest" from the right inertial frame perspective.
In effect, mass makes particles fall out of the general adiabatic flow - the spreading bath of mass-less radiation. There is some part of the initial heat of the Big Bang now lagging behind as crumbs of matter. A gravitating dust, as cosmology puts it. And that - emergently - gives us a new kind of temporal potential to be unwound.
The mass is moving about slowly as lumps of energy density. It is taking a variable time to do things - have interactions like lumps crashing into each other - while, making the constant backdrop, radiation continues to move at its single rate of c.
Ultimately - to erase this particular complexity and return to the maximal simplicity of a bath of adiabatically expanding radiation - all the lagging mass particles need to be swept up and boiled away into radiation by black holes. Time as we know it - a spectrum of possible rates between "rest" and c - will then disappear. There will be only a simpler kind of time that is the universal rate of an unchanging thermal equilibrium - a world of event horizons formed by light cones.
Now we get into the really head-spinning topic of de Sitter models. So I won't start that.
But the point is that "time" is defined by change. Or the ability for change to happen at a variety of different rates within the one world. And time as we know it only exists from soon after the Big Bang until about the Heat Death - that being the period of Cosmic history during which particles could be massive and so go relatively slower or relatively faster within the gradient of rates defined by the opposing limits or "rest" and c.
At the Heat Death, this kind of gradient will have been erased. Only a continuing c-rate flow will continue. But that is a kind of frozen state of no effective change. A vanilla and featureless state. So a state that is both eternal and timeless - at least viewed relative to our current "timeful" view of things where differences in rate are a thing that can matter.
Yet when viewed overall - as a trajectory from a point-like Big Bang to a de Sitter light cone Heat Death space that "freezes out" at a scale of 36 billion light years in diameter - there is clearly some other notion of "time as a global change in state" to be had here.
Something did happen. One view of it is that a lot of "hot stuff" - the initial Big Bang energy density - got exchanged for a matching amount of "cold stuff", all the vast empty space that could act as a sink in which that heat content could be "wasted".
But even that is a rather too simple description of the actual deeper simplicity in which the two things of spacetime and energy density would be unified under the description of a theory of quantum gravity or "theory of everything".
Time, as we conventionally imagine it - a Cartesian axis marked by divisions, an unbounded sequence of instants - gets radically rewritten as we go along here. Time becomes merely an effective "dimension", an emergent distinction. Time is only another way of talking about the possibility of change. And change is always relative to the possibility of stasis.
The simpler the state of the Universe, the less meaningful difference there is between change and stasis. The definition of an equilibrium is a state where differences don't make a difference. In an ideal gas, every particle changes place freely. But overall, the temperature and pressure stay the same. The gas is effectively in a timeless state.
So our very notion of time has concealed complexity. It is not a physically simplest state as we normally conceive it - living in a world that has lumpy mass blundering about at any old speed between rest and c.
At least with space, we accept it has the complexity of three dimensions. Maybe many more with the higher symmetry states modelled by String Theory.
But with time, we brush all its complexity under the carpet by just modelling it as a single extra "dimension" against which everything can be measured in some abstracted fashion.
This is why time is the issue to unpick in arriving at a final theory. And thermodynamics - as the probabilistic view of nature, the laws that deal with emergent statistics - would be the key to that.
I feel your pain, hence there are many languages about existence that are mysteriously metaphysical... LOL
Thanks, that's useful. It confirms my interpretation that when you evoke "a sea of U1 photons", you are talking about the unreachable limits between which time and the universe happen.
I wrote above that "we must think of time as a complex function of something else rather than a straight line from -inf. to +inf." What you are saying is that time is a function of different things moving at different speed. Otherwise there isn't any meaning to the notion of time, if all there is is photons/electromagnetic waves moving at a uniform speed C.
Makes a lot of sense to me. In fact I find it quite deep.
The disc rotates around, and rolls along, its origin. Check the gif I linked to.
The dot on the circumference traces a curve called a prolate trochoid, ie something like this:
As the gif illustrates, the plane of rotation is orthogonal to the plane of translation. The sine wave is then observed as a trace on the plane of translation. So it is a helical path mapped on to a side view using complex numbers. A combination of the two kinds of motion taking place and the projection of that onto a plane of observation.
I’m not sure what you mean there. For what I have in mind, refer to figure 6.2 in this excellent paper - https://www.mso.anu.edu.au/~charley/papers/LineweaverChap_6.pdf
Interesting, though quite speculative of course. We know little, still. E.g. i suspect panspermia theories would throw a wrench in those math.