*YAWN*

I've already explained to you why your forced reading of the word theory into this does absolutely nothing for your position. Take it up with NASA.

Edit - Try this: Make your argument without inserting the word "theory" into the statement in response. Take the words as they have been presented to you and stop adding extra words into it.

This is ridiculous. You don't even know or understand what a "theory" is or how the term is usually employed, and yet you continue to argue with arrogance. There is nothing forced here, and "theory" is generally a word of praise in physics.

You have to hold the bare minimum of understanding of an issue to carry out a debate. You don't. Move on.

Notice how you failed the challenge. You're continuing to demonstrate that your position is EXACTLY what I claimed it was:

Besides, if your position was correct, then it would be incorrect to posit that "the big bang" could potentially be a "big bounce."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...or-big-bounce/

Or are you going to deny the Scientific American out of hand in the exact same way you've done to NASA and Stephen Hawking?

Edit: Here's another one:

http://science.psu.edu/news-and-even...ald6-2007.htm/

...

It causes great amusement that in order for you to make sense of your position that you have to first declare yourself to be an "empiricist" (regardless of whether you're using the term correctly or not) with a specific definition of "theory" (that's not uniformly agreed upon), and that you have to reject and ignore statements from actual scientists out of hand. Strong stuff, there.

If you really think you're so strong, take it to SMP. Argue on SMP that the statement "our universe started from the big bang" is so grossly wrong so as not even be worthy of consideration as a meaningful sentence. Go for it.

Yeah... the funny thing about equations is that they don't magically give the answers you want. Still, physicists should be interested in you having resolved the big bang singularity as proposed by general relativity.

So go on. There is a nobel prize waiting for you.

LOL - You really can't stand how wrong you are about the language, so you're going to keep on going on the thing that's not even relevant to the conversation. It's hilarious. I wish we would do this more often.

You know you're wrong because you're hiding in RGT with this. It's obvious you're afraid of the truth.

The claim is absolutely meaningful and is a common usage of the terminology. Whether it's absolutely correct is not the issue. But you think it is. It's soooooooo funny because you're sooooooo wrong.

Well, congratulations on the laureate is on order I guess.

Anyways, I'm out. Good luck with high school physics, you will need it, it seems.

It's only wikipedia, but still.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrono...f_the_universe

Limitations don't need to be acknowledged every single time an explanation or theory is presented, mentioned or discussed. To expect otherwise, or to take the explanation at face-value every single time, is thus: unreasonable.

OK, I wondered what you were asking but I'll agree with one point if it is what I think you say it is.

In relation to your second sentence to assume that the light contains the colors within is easy, facile , non insightful thinking . Fits in with the modern age for many who don't want to sweat and would rather have the "easy livin'". Don't get me wrong, I suffer this same "easy" street approach but nature asks for a certain strength which calls for disassociating one's desires from the scientific findings.

I'll repeat, the cone of light hits the "edges" of the prism and this is where one finds the advent of "color". Color presents at the intersection of "brightness" and "darkness", which of course, are the edges. We are taught that the entire rainbow of color only shows up on the screen but this only happens if the orifice which the light passes through is small. Click onto the following and this is what Goethe saw and therefore he lost faith in the conventional Newtonian perspective.



http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA3...es/light2c.gif

Looking at the downloaded picture the entire rainbow of colors will fill the space when the orifice is made smaller and smaller and thereby bringing the blues/violets and red/yellows together. The colors are the consequence of the interaction of light and darkness or specifically the intersection at the "edge' of the prism.

Goethe wasn't the only scientist who rejected the Newtonian approach and I seem to remember the Huygens was another. Life goes on and its given as dogma the "dogma of experience", our present science in action.

I always find this interesting and via the Goethean approach one looks at the sky in daytime and what is seen is "darkness seen through the light", or blue. In the am when clouds hang in the air and one sees "red" it is " light seen through the darkness", the darkness being the turbidity of the clouds.

This is easily duplicated in the lab by passing light through liquids or looking at the light through the liquid. this is the same phenomenon noted by Goethe when he studied the prism experiment .

Basic is that "darkness" is not the absence of color but an entity in and of itself. There are gradations of "darkness" and strictly speaking we do not see "light" but observe "brightness".

In this science of phenomenon the archetypical phenomena is this interaction of brightness and darkness and there is no need to theorize , abstract or generalize, either in space or time. Goethe denied "theorizing" and specifically approached science within the facts and gleaned from this the "archetypical phenomena" .

Yes, this. I would urge anyone with an interest in the big bang theory to read the wikipedia articles instead of looking to this thread, and also the articles on the plank epoch. This isn't controversial stuff, so the articles are solid as a basis for understanding.

It isn't very complicated stuff to read, and can be understood easily enough. Even the maths (if anyone wants to look at that) for the "core model" is very easy, general relativity being (after all) a very simple and elegant theory in that regard. The theoretical physics relevant to cosmogony can be a bit tougher, but even quantum mechanics isn't really that complex (to learn!) and can be grasped fairly well from a pop-science view.

The distinction between some base terms as they are often used in physics are important though, hypothesis (proposed explanation), theory (evidenced explanation), law (theory generally accepted by all peers) and model (idealized and/or simplified scenario explained with one of the former three). These terms aren't always strictly used and can sometimes be interchangeable, but I don't think many would bat an eyelid at the simplified explanations I offered here.

That's what aaron is all about, he wants to be the special snowflake who is soooooo proficient in physics and math while constantly demonstrating layman education at best. And like all the other loonies, he thinks posting some links without context will make him look educated. May the non existing god have mercy on his poor soul.

From what I can tell, almost everyone in this subforum thinks they're a special snowflake... How else would every single ridiculous forum topic manage to get a trillion pages of replies? This is where people who love to argue gravitate because virtually every debatable subject which appears here can't be proven one way or the other, so the rage never has to end. It makes me sick yet I can't look away, can't stop reading, and feel compelled to lash out at some of them even though there's absolutely no chance of getting any of these people off their self-made high horses. Damn. That can only mean that I like arguing too

Okay.

Huh? Traditional Christian conceptions of God would not consider rocks a part of God just because God created them.
This shows little. Lots of meaningful concepts have no antonym. For instance, what is the opposite of horse? Or five? Or a hamburger? Words which can be used as adjectives (all the examples above) often have antonyms. "God" is not a such word.

Okay. I guess I'll wait to defend the meaningfulness of "God" when I know on what grounds you think it has no meaning.

If you want to defend your understanding of Wittgenstein, go ahead and do so using the text or respectable interpreters of his philosophy. You made a claim about what Wittgenstein said. I claimed this misinterpreted what he was saying and appealed to SEP as evidence (fwiw I've also read both the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations). Then, when you were unable to defend your reading I stated that you had misunderstood Wittgenstein on this subject. Claiming that I'm projecting is just a way for you to avoid admitting that you are wrong here. But you should do so. It is a cognitive error to avoid facing your false beliefs.

This particular choice of examples wasn't a good one. Opposites of real numbers are defined objects.

http://www.coolmath.com/prealgebra/0...rs-opposite-01

Firstly, traditional Christian conceptions of God conveniently ignore all of Eastern-thought. Secondly, if God created the universe, it is a part of his imagination, no?
If scientists decided tomorrow, that 'horses' are instead to be labelled 'monkeys' and that 'monkeys' were to be re-labelled 'tree-huggers' nothing would change.

We'd be using different labels to denote particular sets of observed behaviours and aesthetics (e.g., the way a horse runs, eats, looks, etc.). As a concept however, these sets of behaviours and aesthetics only derive meaning when they're contrasted to opposing sets of behaviours and aesthetics (e.g., the way a monkey runs, eats, looks, etc.).

Without an opposing state of some sort (set of behaviour/aesthetics), 'a horse' means nothing. Evidently, there are many opposing states to a horse's set of behaviours and aesthetics; some more strongly opposing than others.

Now, you may try to argue the same of 'God', but first you'll need to explain how 'God' does not contrast with 'everything'. For example, let's consider the most basic trait attributed to the concept of 'God' - creation.

God = something that created all this.
Contrasts with: 'something that did not create all of this'.
What is 'something that did not create all of this'?
Everything.

A horse = something with a set of x behaviours and aesthetics.
Contrasts with: something with a set of y behaviours and aesthetics.
What is 'something with a set of y behaviours and aesthetics'?
A monkey (for example).

A horse, in the broader set (in which we're talking about), does not contrast with another horse. Hence we don't label them individually.

In conclusion: a horse does not contrast with everything, while God does.
Now, this next part is just as important as everything leading up to here: a concept that contrasts with everything, contrasts with nothing. In the same way that some people define 'God' as 'everything' making the concept meaningless.
I don't believe in the highlighted. I wonder if Einstein would've been considered a 'respectable interpreter' of Riemannian geometry, before he used it to develop the theory of general relativity.
We've gone over this, and I already conceded to not knowing about him changing his position. And we moved on from here (I thought). Wittgenstein is not the first to wrongly go back on his word.
Wittgenstein can change his mind on all sorts of issues. It doesn't take away from their truth. If it does for you, then we're not going to be able to get any further on this subject.
I largely trust what you're telling me about Wittgenstein's change-of-mind. That trust is not mutually returned. Fine. But it does lend itself to the conclusion of: projecting.

Stephen Hawking now claiming that he knows what happened before the big bang. Sigh.


Stephen Hawking says he knows what happened before the dawn of time
By Jamie Seidel | news.com.au


It's the biggest question in the universe. What happened before the Big Bang? Now world-famous physicist Steven Hawking says he has an answer.

“The boundary condition of the universe ... is that it has no boundary,” Hawking tells the National Geographic’s Star Talk show this weekend.

In other words, there is no time before time began as time was always there.

It was just different.

He tells physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson that amid the almost infinitely small quantum foam of the singularity before the Big Bang, time existed in a ‘bent’” state.

It was distorted along another dimension — always getting fractionally closer to, but never becoming, nothing.

So there never was a Big Bang that created something from nothing.



It’s just looks that way from our point of perspective.

“All the evidence seems to indicate, that the universe has not existed forever, but that it had a beginning, about 15 billion years ago,” Hawking says in one of his lectures.

“There must have been a beginning. Otherwise, the universe would be in a state of complete disorder by now, and everything would be at the same temperature. In an infinite and everlasting universe, every line of sight would end on the surface of a star. This would mean that the night sky would have been as bright as the surface of the Sun. The only way of avoiding this problem would be if, for some reason, the stars did not shine before a certain time.”

But things were different at the Big Bang.

“The density would have been infinite,” Hawking says.
“It would have been what is called, a singularity. At a singularity, all the laws of physics would have broken down. This means that the state of the universe, after the Big Bang, will not depend on anything that may have happened before, because the deterministic laws that govern the universe will break down in the Big Bang.”

This has long posed a serious problem for physics, he says.

“Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang. Events before the Big Bang, are simply not defined, because there’s no way one could measure what happened at them.”

But there are ways to figure out what came before, he says.

“Quantum theory introduces a new idea, that of imaginary time. Imaginary time may sound like science fiction, and it has been brought into Doctor Who. But nevertheless, it is a genuine scientific concept. One can picture it in the following way. One can think of ordinary, real, time as a horizontal line. On the left, one has the past, and on the right, the future. But there’s another kind of time in the vertical direction. This is called imaginary time, because it is not the kind of time we normally experience. But in a sense, it is just as real as what we call real time.”

This has enormous implications when it comes to the Big Bang.

“James Hartle of the University of California Santa Barbara, and I have proposed that space and imaginary time together, are indeed finite in extent, but without boundary. They would be like the surface of the Earth, but with two more dimensions. The surface of the Earth is finite in extent, but it doesn’t have any boundaries or edges. I have been around the world, and I didn’t fall off. “

There’s no raw physics that supports his idea. Yet.

But Hawking’s insight has proven right before.

What we do know is that when it comes to the Big Bang — and black holes — our understanding of physics breaks down.

The only certainty about the infinitesimally small quantum building blocks of our universe is that they are uncertain. Simply observing them can cause them to change. They can be in two places — or two states — at once.

They seem to be a physical embodiment of probability and potential: elements of reality that haven’t quite yet decided what they’re going to do.

While it dictates our lives, we still don’t know what time is. Or exactly where it comes from.

We know how it works. We know its effects.

It’s like gravity.

It doesn’t entirely seem to fit in the ‘big’ world of the physics we experience, nor the ‘weird’ world of the subatomic.

But, like the strange behavior of quantum physics, perhaps time has a lot more left to tell.

Well, if you read the article instead of the headline you'd see that he is pretty clear about this being conjecture.

There are reasonable objections to be made (applying geometry and other mathematics to a state where physics aren't a thing seems rather hopeful), but to shrug this off with a "sigh" is dubious.

I mean, an accomplished scientist and physicist should be heard and respected when he talks about the universe and its origins. And no, one shouldn't necessarily automatically agree, but that the man knows his stuff is undoubtedly true.

I sincerely doubt mr. Hawking claims to have some absolute knowledge of the plank epoch, nor do his words in this article make it seem like he claims this.

Why?

I have some doubts.

+1

a) Because their models work.

Have you ever used a GPS? It wouldn't work unless physicists didn't develop general relativity to understand necessary corrections. Ever used a modern computer? Transistors and modern computer chips rely on semi-conductor physics, where quantum physics is a staple ingredient.

b) Because their models can be observed and fulfill predictions
Higgs-boson, background radiation, expanding universe

When a field proves itself again and again in such spectacular manners, anyone who claims to be interested in the nature of our universe would be a fool to ignore it.

Because we can sit here all day discussing objective morality, if god put plants in the ground before or after humans, whether the first cause argument is sound or merely valid and the nature of omnipotence. But at the end of the day, it doesn't do anything, it doesn't describe anything, it doesn't predict what we're going to see and and it offers little application.

Debating the universe without physics is like watching a sport without knowing the rules; quite beautiful, but we shouldn't pretend to understand much.

Wait what's this? Assigning criteria like 'Predictive' and 'Observable' to a model that attempts to explain our reality to supporty that the model is reliable? Pffft.

Next you'll be saying that it also needs to be the other criteria I keep listing. And then, maybe you'll see what those criteria are doing and why the model is totally different to models that do not meet those criteria.

Whatever, I'm totally wrong... right?


Debating the universe using a model that doesn't include god is like watching a sport without knowing the rules; quite beautiful, but we shouldn't pretend to understand much. It's impossible to know when physics is wrong and the answer is actually 'goddidit' and not whatever incomplete explanation physics has provided because it deliberately leaves a possible answer out.

I am an empirical scientist, so that's the view I will typically argue yes.

But I know very well that it isn't the only way to do science and that there are many non-empirical venues of scientific inquiry. They're not used much in physics. It happens though, simulations is an example. A monte-carlo simulation isn't empirical, but it's cheap and effective, which most poker players should know.

I agree that modern science has born much fruit, I have relied for many years on medications that were the fruit of modern medical research. I am grateful for these scientists and their wonderful discoveries.

I see how understanding the nature of the universe might be pertinent to these discoveries, but I am ignorant on why knowing (or not knowing) the origin of the universe would be pertinent. That is, as of right now scientists haven't told us the origin of the universe, yet all of these wonderful inventions like the GPS and computers and medications that I take exist right now.

Am I making any sense?

No, you are making sense. All physics on the origin of the universe is speculative, the standard model for physics break down past the barriers of measurement.

Your question is good, but to answer on my position... I need to clarify the background issue first.

Science is somewhat divided into two camps. Basic and applied science. It's not completely correct, because they intersect - but it's good enough for illustrative purposes.

The creed behind applied science is that that science should have an application, a purpose. Those scientific discoveries should aim to benefit us directly, therefore we should specifically look for things that benefit us. Very often this goes hand in hand with the camp that things science should be funded only (or at least in big part) by commercial interests. Though not always, a lot of applied scientists are idealists who want their ventures to benefit everyone free of commercial charge. Applied science would often oppose cosmology as frivolous, though not always - they also know that sometimes just looking for knowledge can yield enormous benefit (GPS / computers) - but they would at least keep such efforts on the backburner.

Basic science on the other takes the other approach. It holds that science should seek answers and knowledge about, well, anything it can find such things in. You don't look for appliance, you look for knowledge. And besides (which they would often say when pressed), a lot of our big leaps in application of science comes from doing basic science and learning something useful which we would not otherwise have discovered. Basic science proponents almost always hold that science is an obligation and should rely primarily on funding from neutral parties.

I'm in the basic science camp. I think knowledge of the universe should be explored in all venues. Applied science is very useful, but it is blinded by what we already have. Basic science is better at thinking outside the box. We live on a partially molten ball covered in crust in a world of finite resources, floating in hostile space and orbiting what is basically a gigantic nuclear explosion. If we as a species is to make it, we need to understand the universe - not only our next microwave.