Here are my citations again. I had a third one which was given at Fermilab for the workshop involved in design of the Planck satellite, a satellite which is scheduled to go up shortly. But it was pulled from the net a week or so ago. Sad. It was a most enjoyable talk.
This is great discussion of how we know there was a Big Bang. This discussion was not phrased in terms of string theoretical concepts so the Big Bang is viewed as a one of event that was associated with the start of time.
This is a presentation by Neil Turok again of the Big Bang but in this string theoretical ideas are explored. Also discussed is how the Planck satellite is hoped to show polarization of the microwave background caused by gravitational waves created in the Big Bang. Now the microwave background itself allows us to see only up to a time about 100,000 years after the event because the very early universe contained plasmas opaque to light. Gravitational waves, will however, allow us to look all the way back to the event itself. You can imagine the excitement everyone has for this.
Turock also discusses Brane theory which posits that the Big Bang was not an isolated incident but was only one node in a series of explosions coming at intervals of a few trillion years. So Werner will be particularly interested in that discussion.
A first rate presentation!
When I began climbing half the people from MIT I was climbing with were working in cosmology. This was the time when important data supporting the Big Bang was worked out. Mid to late 60's. Watch these presentations and you will get an idea of just how exciting the Gunks were.
MikeL, you dismiss mathematics but there are some truly beautiful ideas there, and there it is that you can glimpse almost trivially at infinity.
Yet it is not your aesthetic, too bad to, for beauty is something we should wish to witness where ever it is.
Even as a school boy you knew, you grasped the idea of infinity, just by adding the number 1 to another, building it up one operation at a time, like stepping up a mountain, one step at a time until you reach the ultimate height, yet that is finite. But the numbers are not, and in analogy one could imagine stepping on forever unbounded. The numbers though actually do march on endlessly...
...so then you could start to play some fun tricks, just thinking about that... simple school kid questions like "are there more odd or more even whole numbers?" and realizing that there are the same, but then what about all those numbers between one whole number and another, the infinity that exists between two integers, is it larger than the infinity of the whole numbers?
you can actually make progress with this and come up with some startling beautiful conclusions... maybe you tire of logic quickly, or you don't feel that such things can be beautiful
If anything I would say science is the opposition to the Bible, since it's been around for all of mankind. Since science has only been around with the advent of America.
Recent evidence suggests fire began to be employed well before modern humans( homo sapiens) evolved. And the ancient Greeks had an understanding of the solar system that was equalled and regained only when the church stopped automatically killing anyone who did not obey church dictates. And data indicates some of the earliest forays into iron technology took place in sub-saharan Africa during the bronze age. And much that we know of our early history came to us only because the people in Alexandria valued knowledge and kept a great library.
People alive three and four thousand years ago knew more than many of the people alive today. Since they knew they lived in a real world, they knew knowledge of the real world was critical to their survival.
In New York city Far Rockaway a haunt of Richard Feynman's, suffered great damage from Sandy. There may be no point in rebuilding it. The changing sea may just keep taking it out.
Matthew 25:31 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats.
Luke 16:9 “There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. 20 But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, 21 desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
24 “Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. 26 And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’
27 “Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, 28 for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’ 29 Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ 30 And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’”
Revelation 20:11 Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them. 12 And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. 13 The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. 14 Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. 15 And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.
Yes one day all of us will be before God, and we can go thankfully, joyfully, and gratefully, through our redeemer Jesus Christ!
No, Splitter, I'm with you. I think you're exactly right.
Our more science-oriented friends will want more justification / reason / evidence than that, though. They'll want empirical predictability and replicability through the senses, or they'll want a compelling concept to analyze. Things that can't be trapped conceptually, empirically, and experienced through consciousness will not be available to them.
Ed, I think I appreciate such beauty as you point to.
I was very attracted to symmetry and the systematic unfoldings I found in my formal educational studies. The universe seemed to be neatly patterned as I read through studies in my field.
Over time, however, I found nagging and bothersome chinks, holes, and paradoxes in data and theories. So I to went to philosophy of science to ground and direct my thinking. A few revolutionaries said, "what if the emperor isn't wearing any clothes?" What if patterns are not being found but are constructed by the mind? That notion struck a chord with me; it resonated and connected many loose ends that were bothering me. I found myself reading deeply about socialization, institutionalization, social construction, and cognition. I found some teachers (you'd call them spiritual) who told me to trust my own abilities to be careful and observant. They told me, "look for yourself."
What I seem to be seeing in reality is not beauty but mystery. Everything that's beautiful is mysterious at its depths.
I can no longer say with certainty what is really real and what isn't any more. (There is One thing.) As Werner notes, I can't be sure. I live in significant uncertainty and ambiguity, and I feel more comfortable in that state every passing day. My world is becoming groundless.
I don't mean to dismiss anything. I mean to accept everything. I am finding that acceptance of everything comes from personal surrender. I can imagine that most folks would think that personal surrender constitutes a form of slavery.
You surely know all that so your quote above is just random stuff . Just came to your pen.
Not so. Not remotely so.
What you are saying John is that string theory and all the rest are having problems or challenges in acquiring accurate measurements or any measurements of some basically untestable (so far) theories. The implication is not that measuring itself is inherently limited, but rather acquiring accurate empirical numbers or any numbers is in some cases problematic.
What I'm saying is that there is an entire realm out there where measuring is simply not useful or indicated. You and others try and rope that realm into quantifiable terms so measuring can once more be applied or at any rate considered, and when this fails to pan out we have the Craigs of the world screaming how "wrong" we are for the lack of (numbers) what we've all along said is not there. At all. Scientism as I described it is, "Only my rules apply, all others being null and void for the lack of evidence proscribed by my rules."
This is the closed, cognitive loop I mentioned and the "trance" is the unfortunate consequence of living inside of it, while steadfastly believing in the virtue of the trance itself." Meaning the evaluating/rational mind is the limit of human experience and understanding. That's like saying that Pecomia is the limit of California.
Void and infinity are really the most interesting concepts here and i hope to fiddle with these soon.
Unfortunately western material science has not yet done any real serious scientific inquiry into the "Science of the Soul".
That is because they are deathly afraid of the truth that they will find...
Void and infinity are really the most interesting concepts here...
The reality of it truly existing disallows science from controlling it. Acceptance of such is not nor will it ever be tolerated in science's vocabulary.
Jstan
"Or the struggle underway to detect the gravitational waves left over from the Big Bang?"
"IF" there were a BB. Can you not reason they're being prescribed laws and energies,
That formed Suns and planets and caused them to orbit around each other? what caused planets to be round? Astroids aren't round without any friction in space what could wear them round? If you shot a bullet in space it would go straight for ever. Without gravity already in place why would a projecting planet want to stop and pull into an orbit?
And what Christians are you talking about that went around killing everyone I would like to look this up.
Unfortunately western material science has not yet done any real serious scientific inquiry into the "Science of the Soul".
That is because they are deathly afraid of the truth that they will find...
Scientist don't fear anything other than religious zealots killing them just because there is disagreement.
Lots of scientists have done science on things of a religious nature. Some have tried to determine if the soul has weight. Some have done statistical research into the effectiveness of praying.
The only problem with scientific inquiry into the supernatural is that superstitious people will always reject any scientific results and get back to there being a magic component to what doesn't meet their mindset.
Recall that Uri Geller would say to the scientists that his telekenetic power would not work when non-believers were in the room. It was very convenient that this made any measurement of his ability impossible even though any scientists trying to measure his ability was there because they had an open mind.
The same goes for recent statistical studies of praying where any result can be nullified by the principal that supernatural stuff just won't work if you try to measure it. Another convenience for the believer in such things.
So to say that a scientist is afraid of what they will find contradicts the nature of science which is to explain things. Lots of scientists who go to church would probably be very happy to find proof of God. IN fact, most people on their death bed would probably be very happy to know that there really is heaven and that it's not just a wide spread rumor.
This is the closed, cognitive loop I mentioned and the "trance" is the unfortunate consequence of living inside of it, while steadfastly believing in the virtue of the trance itself."
JL
We are in a trance???
WTF??
Are you insane?
Every scientist, every non-believer, all of us are in some kind of crazy closed loop trance?
No, it's you guys that are in a closed loop trance.
Telling us something is there, but it isn't, you can't sense it or talk about it.
You can only get a glimpse of it if your in a trance or on strong drugs.
You can feel it through your soul (whatever that is), you can read about it in some books.
But it can't be explained, defined, investigated or detailed.
You just have to be in a faith like trance, and then you will say it exists, because it gave you a warm fuzzy feeling.
What was the original ignitor in your "Big Bang" theory?
Good question. And the answer is given in the first youtube I cited. Along with the many pieces of data all pointing to our present overall picture. Cosmology has experienced a revolution during the past thirty years or so. Our picture is unusually well supported. Watch Krauss' presentation.
Neil Turock's presentation uses concepts developed to be a basis for a theory of quantum gravity. (Einstein began work on this question eighty years too early, decades before satellite data came into existence.) Turock describes the answer it advances to your question. Both pictures include the Big Bang though the string theoretical approach implies a Big Bang happens every trillion years or so.
Right now no one has thought of an experimental observation that will show string theoretical predictions are faithfully( errors are so small the theory has a high level of statistical confidence) followed. Measurements of polarization in the microwave background by the Planck satellite can give a suggestive result but one can jigger the other theory to agree without employing strings. Turock was very honest about that. Everyone wants to know whether strings are a good model or not and so want to test the theory. Listen to Krauss. He explains that if strings prove to be a good model we will have to face the possibility of parallel universes and all manner of things that will blow everyone's socks off. He hates the implications but he says, "This could be the way it is."
Immensely exciting times!
Mike:
You are having trouble visualizing orbital mechanics. The answers to your questions are very simply arrived at. Kepler and Newton worked it all out 330 years ago.
Last time I explained the earth is in fact falling toward the sun but that its speed is so high that it keeps missing the sun. And that if the sun were not there the earth would just go in a straight line. This does agree with Einstein. In the absence of a massive body causing curvature in the space time metric a body does travel in a straight line.
I'll try another approach. Let your yo-yo go to the end of its string and spin it around your head in a circle. It can't go in a straight line because of the force applied by the string. Same thing happens to the earth but there mutual gravitational attraction applies the force. Now about how the earth and sun originally got together.
Take a piece of paper, draw a smallish circle representing the sun and use a ruler to draw a straight line going past it.
Case 1: Th earth first encounters the sun going like a bat out of hell. It has so much energy the gravitational attraction to the sun hardly diminishes the earth's speed. Then instead of a straight line the earth's path will be bent a little around the sun. That's all. It won't go into an orbit at all.
Case 2: Just the right speed. Your drawing has some sort of distance between the line and the circle. Just like your yo-yo for the earth to go around the sun in a circle it has to have just the right velocity as it comes in. Just like your yo-yo. (For clarity I am ignoring something here. But bear with me.) If the earth is coming at less than this relative speed it will tend to spiral in and get closer to the sun. The limiting case would be if you had drawn your straight line right through the center of the circle. Boom.
Case 3. A little too fast. Now suppose the earth's initial speed was somewhat higher than that for a circular orbit. In that case the earth would go past the sun quite a ways but might ultimately get pulled back by the sun into an orbit. That orbit would be an ellipse with the sun sitting at one of the ellipse's foci.
When we look out with our telescopes, we see all of these kind of orbits.
Now the thing I ignored. As the earth is coming in along your straight line, gravitational attraction will tend to speed the earth up a little. So the sun is doing work on the earth and increasing its energy. NASA uses this source of energy to make up for our rockets being too weak to escape the sun altogether. NASA sling shots those missions around one of the other planets. The dang rockets go where we want them to even though some are bank shots. Pretty incredible.
Bottom line. It takes some work and some thought to understand this cool stuff. That is a choice you have to make.
Void and infinity are really the most interesting concepts here and i hope to fiddle with these soon
Well, that should be entertaining. Perhaps you can flesh out these concepts in an experiential manner that will add zest to essential singularities, so that working with them I will somehow "feel" their energies. Good luck.
;>)
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