The Big Bang Theory

[bloodline]

@X-ray

I think your problem is not with what is on the scales, but the scales themselves...

I like to think of the universe as an equation, it doesn't matter what that equation is, all that matters is that it is more or less ballanced.

Now the question you ask is: Why is there an equation?

The Weak anthroplogical theory satifies that question for me.

[X-ray]

@ Karlos

Good point, I should have said "where x mustn't equal zero" (I know, I prefer English and layman's logic, and I use that equation only to describe a verbal argument more concisely, not trying to find x).

I think you nailed down the problem in the tall building thread where you said I don't know anything about your C++ and you don't know about my raytracing. I'm sure the two of them can be used to produce the same image, but it is not possible for both of us to understand how. This communication gap is compounded by the fact that even those who are proficient in either field cannot produce the desired 'image' with 100% satisfaction.

It's a mini Tower of Babel

(actually, that works on a few levels too  :-) )

bloodline wrote:
@X-ray

I think your problem is not with what is on the scales, but the scales themselves...

I like to think of the universe as an equation, it doesn't matter what that equation is, all that matters is that it is more or less ballanced.

Now the question you ask is: Why is there an equation?

The Weak anthroplogical theory satifies that question for me.

I say to you all, Creationists and scientific types:-

DOES IT REALLY MATTER HOW AND WHY, WE AND THE UNIVERSE CAME TO EXISTS?

It's good to debate these things but at the end of the day it comes down to this:- WE WILL NEVER KNOW WHO IS CORRECT.

At least until we die, and then it's too bloody late anyhow, ;-)

[blobrana]

Hum,
Perhaps I didn’t explain it properly,

You have a table.
The table seems real, and equivalent to your `X `.

However, you can’t see where the negative `X` is…

You just think there is only a table.

But look closer – you see the gravity field that it sits in?

That is the negative-table.

[ negative table + table = zero ]

[X-ray]

@ Blobzie

Yup, I have no problem accepting negatives and positives, but that is just splitting up a question. Because I am still left asking where the table came from and where the gravity came from, and why one should overtake the other in magnitude.

[Cymric]

mdma wrote:
I say to you all, Creationists and scientific types:-

DOES IT REALLY MATTER HOW AND WHY, WE AND THE UNIVERSE CAME TO EXISTS?

It's good to debate these things but at the end of the day it comes down to this:- WE WILL NEVER KNOW WHO IS CORRECT.

At least until we die, and then it's too bloody late anyhow, ;-)

Precisely. It's a matter of life after death ;-).

Cymric wrote:

mdma wrote:
I say to you all, Creationists and scientific types:-

DOES IT REALLY MATTER HOW AND WHY, WE AND THE UNIVERSE CAME TO EXISTS?

It's good to debate these things but at the end of the day it comes down to this:- WE WILL NEVER KNOW WHO IS CORRECT.

At least until we die, and then it's too bloody late anyhow, ;-)

Precisely. It's a matter of life after death ;-).

Thats the thing with religous types, they think there MUST be a reason we are here, whereas non-believers think "Why MUST there be a reason we are here?".

Scientific know-it-all's are just as bad as bible thumpers.  They harp on about Big Bangs and String Theories and whatever else to explain HOW we came to be here, but when it comes down to it, it's just the same as any religious doctrine. THEORY, nothing else.  It can NEVER be proved or disproved and neither can any religion.
It is just as arrogant to say all religious doctrine is rubbish and scientific theory is truth, as it is to say scientific theory is rubbish and a particular religious doctrine is the truth.

Just my tuppence worth.

[Wilse]

@X-Ray:

specifying that all the constituents of our universe were happily packaged in a little 'handgrenade' is just as difficult to explain as a massive factory made out of liquorice sticks, churning out stars and planets at will. My question is unchanged if someone asserts that an almighty being created the universe, in that I want to know where that being came from.

I knew we'd have something in common, other than the radiography thang. :-D

I couldn't agree more. I watched a programme, 'The things we don't know,' that I stupidly thought was going to address this question.

Did it fu.......

[Wilse]

blobrana wrote:
Hum,
If  only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
 Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.

 I watched c-beams ...
glitter in the dark near Tanhauser Gate.
All those ...
 moments will be lost ...
in time, like tears
... in rain.
 Time ...
to have a deep fried mars bar

:lol:
Our national delicacy.

Old Rutger ad-libbed that whole sequence.

[Karlos]

Wilse wrote:

blobrana wrote:
Hum,
If  only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
 Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.

 I watched c-beams ...
glitter in the dark near Tanhauser Gate.
All those ...
 moments will be lost ...
in time, like tears
... in rain.
 Time ...
to have a deep fried mars bar

:lol:
Our national delicacy.

And not bad too. Although one dreads to think what a regular intake of it would do to you.

Old Rutger ad-libbed that whole sequence.

Explains the appropriately befuddled look on Harrison's face then :-)

[X-ray]

@ Wilse

"Did it fu..."

 :lol:

@ Karlos

I must again display my ignorance publicly: who is Old Rutger and who is Harrison (with regards to the Mars Bar?)

[Cymric]

They are quips from an in my opinion exceedingly bad cult movie called Blade Runner. (Look up the entry in the Internet Movie Data Base here.) Of course that doesn't stop many critics from praising it to Heaven and back; perhaps I've had to many deep fried Mars bars to appreciate its absolute lack of a story line and difficult, complex character portraits. Perhaps that's why people think it is so great: they don't understand one iota of it, so it must be good.

[PMC]

bloodline wrote:
@X-ray

I think your problem is not with what is on the scales, but the scales themselves...

Am being dense again today.  My brain is stretched to the limit by a combination of payroll calculations x 350 odd people and my g/f having a neurotic moment par excellence.

Great point Bloodline, it's the scales themselves...  As Blob has stated here before, the laws of the universe haven't remained constant during it's entire existence.  Also, anything outside the universe (or indeed existing before/after by our perception) isn't bound by the laws we take for granted.  One of which is time.  Effectively there is no before, or is no after.  Timescales become as meaningless as the notion of Santa Claus.

Anyway, an easier concept for me is understanding Blob's quote (and once again I'm damn glad to see you back on form Blob):

It was from Bladerunner, just as the character played by Rutgar Hauer dies and releases the dove.  Legend has it that Hauer actually delivered those lines off the cuff as they weren't in the script, taking Harrison Ford by surprise.

However, I should point out that Blob took poetic license with the deep fried Mars bar bit.

[mdwh2]

Karlos wrote:
As for (1), well particles pop into existance and wink out of it all the time at the smallest scale of the universe (IIRC, that is). However, these particles appear in matched pairs, the net energy of which is zero.

That last bit isn't quite correct - particles appear in matter and antimatter pairs, but antimatter still has positive mass, and positive energy. The total sum of the energy of the particles is in fact non-zero. This happens because of the uncertainty principle, where there can be an uncertainty in the amount of energy over small periods of time (or something like that). So yes, it's possible that the Universe itself is just a quantum fluctuation.

[mdwh2]

X-ray wrote:
But by your explanation we still have a problem (I hate to use mathematics here, because I think a mathematical zero doesn't equal what 'nothing' is, but it is an equation  that best describes my logic to you):

I think I see what you mean - it isn't so much a case of starting with the number zero, but with the empty set which is a different thing entirely.

It's one thing explaining how the energy for the Universe came about when initially there was zero energy, but this doesn't fully explain how the Universe came to be - why and how things like energy exist at all.

[blobrana]

Hum,
Well there a person, Rodger Penrose, who proposes that everything is topology (spinars etc).
He thinks that there is only multi dimensions; and how they wrap up together, dictates/creates the particles, forces, particle families and forces.

I suppose applied to string theory, the string or membrane is everything, you don’t need anything else.
The original 5 dimensional membrane, (that may have always `existed`),  is sill here but it has been transformed into `energies` and `matter` and `space` and `time` (etc).

And may revert in the future to being pure dimensions again.
 
Perhaps we should be asking what a dimension is?