Alex Filippenko and colleagues have caused a stir by observing that the law of physics can now explain the Big Bang without one common element: God. The University of California (Berkeley) professor observed that . “With the laws of physics, you can get universes.” Before we replace the statement on our money to read “In the Law of Physics, We Trust” there is a fallback. If the law of physics can explain the Big Bang, God may have still invented the law of physics.
Filippenko was speaking at the SETICon 2 Conference at a panel called “Did the Big Bang Require a Divine Spark?” The answer, he insisted is no: “The Big Bang could’ve occurred as a result of just the laws of physics being there. With the laws of physics, you can get universes.”
Under quantum mechanics, random fluctuations can produce matter and energy out of nothingness. Panelist Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the non-profit Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute also agreed that “Quantum mechanical fluctuations can produce the cosmos.” Shostak seemed to offer an ray of hope for a super being substitute in the form of a giant kid from another universe:
“If you would just, in this room, just twist time and space the right way, you might create an entirely new universe. It’s not clear you could get into that universe, but you would create it . . . So it could be that this universe is merely the science fair project of a kid in another universe. . . I don’t know how that affects your theological leanings, but it is something to consider.”
I am not sure religious scholars will be quick to embrace Bobby The Giant Kid With The Science Kit as a substitute for God. It totally messed up the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Filippenko and Shostak could be looking at the same reaction as the Science Guy — only greater. Bill Nye, the Science Guy, was virtually stoned when he suggested in Texas that the Moon does not generate its own light despite what the Bible says. Filippenko makes Ney look like a heretical piker. First he affirms a theory that our universe came into existence 13.7 billion years ago when we all know that the Earth can be no more than a few thousand years old. Then he posits a theory that seems markedly different from the following:
First God made heaven & earth 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
Correct me if I am wrong but I could not find a single reference to Quantum Mechanical Fluctuations.
Legend has it that Galileo was convicted by the Vatican for merely stating Eppur si muove (“and yet it moves”). He was found “vehemently suspect of heresy.”
It is unclear when Filipenko and Shostak will be called upon to “abjure, curse, and detest” those opinions.
Regardless of the outcome, I for one am not about to buy all of those Bobby, The Giant Kid With the Science Kit, decorations and gifts. I find that Quantumas has already become totally commercial.
Source: MSNBC
@Gene: I wasn’t defending myself against you (about whether I understand it or not), I was pre-emptively defending against a common attack, “maybe you don’t understand it,” offered by people that think it is too complex and esoteric a topic for anybody to understand.
I agree, Einstein wasn’t a dummy, with actual evidence (like the experiments that proved there could not be hidden values) I think he would have accepted some version of QM, just probably not the Copenhagen interpretation (which some physicists still reject, they think the role of ‘observer’ is still too metaphysical. In fact Roger Penrose has proposed experiments that could potentially disprove the Copenhagen interpretation; he subscribes to a model in which wavefunctions collapse spontaneously based on an energy (==mass) threshold; i.e. that we can find a new fundamental constant of physics which is that only systems of a certain mass X can be in a superposition of quantum states.
As for Einstein, supposedly when the data came in from the eclipse experiment (showing starlight bent by the gravity of the sun), his response was (in German) “What? You mean it is really true?”
Which suggests he was, in the true scientific spirit, maintaining skepticism for his OWN system without verification. In the same vein, I would expect him to question QM, but fold in the face of compelling experiments. That is what distinguishes science from faith, after all. We do not try to convince the wind it is not blowing.
Mike, yes, lots of f words. Too much for me.
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lottakatz 1, June 26, 2012 at 11:05 pm
Woosty,
To paraphrase a really old SNL skit that’s why doG also put the majority of naughty bits on women, to keep ‘em all in one place so they’d be easy to find. 😉
———————
My bits aren’t naughty.
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MIB. Never saw the movie but the final scene shows what I’ve wondered. Ants and bees have structured societies. We see them as tiny. Do they see us as big? Or are we natural disasters that sometimes displace them and they have to start over? When the physicists finally figure out all the f… stuff, maybe that’s what they’ll find – we are the ants of some other “bigger” society that causes our natural disasters. Maybe we are just another locker in a long line of lockers. And we are part of whatever fractals make up, what? the earth? the solar system? the universe? and what is that?
You see, if I get much beyond my bits I have only questions.
And another one, question that is. The story of creation is old. It’s a metaphor. What mind or being created the original metaphor?
Source : http://theartinscience.blogspot.com/2010/09/michelangelo-secret-scientist.html
Besides, that sistine chapel painting isnt god at all. Its a human brain. Seems michelangelo liked to hang out with a dude named realdo colombo and they both had a thing for vivisectioning dead bodies.
So even if there is no god, its still cool.
“All perception is gamble” – Edmund Husserl
Fluctuations…Fluctuants…Fluctions…Fluids…Flatulence..
.They’re all F-Words to an old Fart like me.
Tony,
“Brane theory would not fix the regression problem: Where did the branes come from?”
I submit that the infinite regression problem is irrelevant if you consider it a manifestation of the the Incompleteness Theorems writ very, very large. Also, I didn’t say you didn’t understand it, I said you didn’t subscribe to it.
“For theologians, where did God come from? If you believe He always existed, WTF was he doing for a trillion quadrillion ages of the universe before he decided to create it?”
Playing with other toys is a probable and plausible answer. If every combination is possible, the set size of a God’s toybox approaches the infinite. As to “where he came from”? Another manifestation of the Incompleteness Theorem. Any God is an unprovable assumption, hence he/she/its existence is a postulate of faith.
“I do not think I can comprehend an infinite past, or a finite past, and I read a lot about physics, and I have never read anything that can help me with that, and many things (like the Big Bang theory, inflation, religion, brane theory, etc) that are ultimately just predicated upon something else existing “forever” first, or on some kind of magic.”
I submit that of all the aspects of physics, one of the ones we understand the least is the true nature of time. Is time infinite? As humans we tend to think of time in intervals based on the cycles in nature around us. We perceive time as flowing, but physics tells us that is not how time actually works. It is relative to frames of reference according to Einstein. However, on a cosmological scale, it is neither a contradiction nor an impossibility to state that the interval between “now” and “begin” could be infinite. The problem is rooted in being constrained within universe from a materialist perspective. We are constrained by the rules of our initial state and net energy of this brane we call the universe. The fundamental forces and the zoo of particles that constitute mulitverses could very well be infinite in every sense of the word including time. Does sting theory and M-theory sometimes venture into metaphysics? Certainly. It certainly doesn’t mean that exploring the ideas is innately a waste of time. You of all people I shouldn’t have to remind that what is now science started out as metaphysics.
“I am okay with “I don’t know” and sticking to what can be tested by experiment and observation. I do not begrudge others having their fun with theories, it may even lead to testable hypothesis and credible predictions, but until then I do not believe in what cannot be tested, and I am always leery of “middle man” theories that attempt to answer one mystery by proposing an equally large or larger mystery.”
Fair enough. Also an example of why I said had Einstein lived long enough to see valid experiments created from the theories of Bohr and Heisenberg, he may have changed his mind about quantum mechanics. The bottom line is we’ll never get to the experimental stages without working on the theories. Einstein’s work proper was merely untested theory at one point – theoretical physics. As was Newton’s and Galileo et al before him. The only measure of whether it is a waste of manpower? Is if no experiments ever arise. The proof, as they say, is in the eating of the pudding.
For my part, do I think string theory and M-theory are “perfect” answers? Absolutely not. I think they pose interesting answers if proved correct in part or in whole though and while messy, the currently provide answers for some questions heretofore considered unexplained. I’m perfectly content with theory that provides partial explanations over no explanation until experiments can disprove or set the propositions as law – at which time I will adjust my views accordingly. “Theoretical” is a critical part of the definition of “theoretical physics”.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62i9Sodwp5o&version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0%5D
“Only love is all maroon …”
Tony C. 1, June 27, 2012 at 12:16 pm
…
It is a waste of physicists, in my view, a waste of what I think are truly the best minds on the planet for logic, mathematics, abstractions and complexity, working on a pointless puzzle.
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And there it is.
One of my pet peeves is that religion tries to be science, and science tries to be religion.
Our law protects both of them, so why fight the law and try to destroy either one?
I am a strong critic of junk science and of junk religion (junk being described as providing no practical remedy for current challenges to all people on our planet).
Oro,
That is indeed her. Thanks!
@LK: It was not the intent of string theory to become so complex. It was a legitimate attempt at simplification, a way of looking at particle physics that started out very compelling and promising, it looked like a route to a grand unified theory.
String theory fell into an emotional trap, pretty much like inflation theory for cosmology. Logical and mathematical analysis is rigorous, and physicists had to keep decorating the theory with more doodads and caveats in order to keep it logically coherent; they had to add “tunable variables” to the theory (variables that could be set to just the right values to make the rest of the math work, but “just the right value” is really an unexplained constant, like the gravitational constant or it is a true property like the electrical charge of one electron).
This is the motivation for the famous claim that String theory is a theory of much MORE than everything! When we tally up the number of tunable variables and how many combinations they might have, each combination would be a “theory of physics” that is independent of every other combination. The total number of these potential “theories of physics” is more than the estimated number of atoms in the entire universe, and we have no way of identifying the “right” one that applies to our one universe.
Adding decorations comes slowly, and the physicists scrutinize each one and agree on its necessity. It takes a while to realize theories are multiplying like wildfire, but that is okay too: Physicists will assume that eventually, with enough work, somebody will find a sword that starts ruling things out, or prove that two tunable parameters are correlated and really just one, and trims the forest down to a testable set of a string theories.
It takes a decade or more to start to think the swordsman isn’t coming; and maybe there IS no sword. By then, you have built a career in fashioning String theory decorations, reviewing the work of others, teaching it, attending conferences, and working with grad students on projects about it. You have tenure or are up for it, and you have resigned yourself to an intellectual and mathematical pursuit instead of the practical, testable science you began in.
It is a waste of physicists, in my view, a waste of what I think are truly the best minds on the planet for logic, mathematics, abstractions and complexity, working on a pointless puzzle.
Tony C., Thanks.
I need to think about it more, there is something buzzing (gnat-like) in my head that is halfway forming another question but I’m thinking it may be because I’m tired and not up to thinking about it.
You and Gene always indulge my questions, I appreciate that.
Oro Lee 1, June 27, 2012 at 10:21 am
“let the plasma divide into 103 or so atomic structures that shall be called elements”
Eventually. The early elements of the universe where a whole lot of hydrogen and a little bit of helium. The other elements were forged within the interior of stars.
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The fluctuant was speaking of ultimate eventuality, using metaphor as well, because time had not been developed yet.
The fluctuants eventually did time because that is the only way to prevent everything from happening at once.
Woosty = ^..^ ,
“The Beginning Is Near”
Your new avatar is a lovely image and bit of commentary at full size. Nicely done.
“let the plasma divide into 103 or so atomic structures that shall be called elements”
Eventually. The early elements of the universe where a whole lot of hydrogen and a little bit of helium. The other elements were forged within the interior of stars.
hahahaha!
lottakatz
1, June 27, 2012 at 2:21 am
–
touche!
In the beginning was/were the Fluctuations.
The first fluctuant said “let there be plasma; let the plasma divide into 103 or so atomic structures that shall be called elements; let the elements become simple molecules, then let the simple molecules become complex molecules that can replicate; then let them become microbes; then let the microbes become multi-cellular organisms; then … let them become so intelligent that they have a big bang followed by nuclear winter”; then the second fluctuant said “let there be microbes …”
Is god or God a fluctuant?
Do we have to suspend the laws of thermodynamics, or energy dynamics for some of the sequence?
Remembering that the “nothingness” which the fluctuants used to make “plasma”, which is “matter and energy”, is an “interesting” concept.
Note:
So that leads to a question “when did the laws of thermodynamics enter the sequence?”
Final questions: “is this hypothesis of the suspension of laws of thermodynamics falsifiable, and if not how can it become a theory?”