Energy, matter, time and existence

[Twilight Hue]

Energy and matter can't be created or destroyed. They just change forms.

So either energy, matter and time always existed or it all magically came from somewhere. (I included time because you can't have the first two without time)

For the big bang to come from anything....that anything already existed.

I'd go with the latter that there is a fundamental and timeless aspect to the universe that is eternal and has a dynamic quality for which Alan Watts puts it as "wiggly".

Hence a continuum spanning micro and macro dimensions endlessly in addition to linear space and time.

 

[Twilight Hue]

So many think space is nothing, but in actuality, it is everything.

Yes. Also we have limitations on how deep we can see into the rabbit hole.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Something doesn't come from nothing.

Which is why nothing will always have something in the mix.

 

[PureX]

Matter and energy are interchangeable. Space and time are conceptual. They all began at the beginning. How and why is a mystery.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Energy and matter can't be created or destroyed. They just change forms. So either energy, matter and time always existed or it all magically came from somewhere. (I included time because you can't have the first two without time). For the big bang to come from anything....that anything already existed.

Agreed. The universe is here. We can assemble all of the logically possible explanations for that, although we will need to consider possibilities never observed WITHIN the universe. The universe might me all that exists. It may have always existed, perhaps eternally banging and crunching or as a singularity that one day began to expand like an evaporating black hole, or else it may have come into being uncaused from nothing.

Or, the universe is just part of a bigger reality, some of which served as its source, and which also may have always existed or come into being uncaused. This bigger reality might include an intelligent designer of our universe (a deity), or that source might be an unconscious substance (multiverse).

If there are more possible scenarios, I can't think of what they might be.

One thing that stands out here is that everyone of these ideas requires that something very counterintuitive be the case: Something has either existed infinitely back in time, or something came into existence from nothing uncaused. That means that no argument that says, "Something coming from nothing is impossible," for example, is complete, since infinite existence back into the past is just as "impossible," and if my analysis above is correct and complete, one of two things that seem impossible must be the case.

My thoughts.... Everything always existed or everything magically appeared.

Yes. That's a recap of the above, although I would replace the word everything with the word something.

To me time is existence. Without time, there is no existence.

Agree there as well, and not many other people will. They disagree with me when I make the case that existence implies persistence through a series of consecutive instants. We hear some tell us that God exists outside of time (and space), where He thinks and acts, which is an incoherent concept. Thought and action require before and after states.

Not occupying any part of time is a quality of the nonexistent, as it occupying no place, and not being affected by or able to affect things that do exist (undetectable).

Something doesn't come from nothing.

Then something must have existed without beginning. And to the guy who says that passing through an infinite number of instants to reach this moment is impossible, I say that then something must have come from nothing. And to both of them I say, you picked something seemingly impossible because the only alternative seemed impossible to you, and neither of you has a good argument.

"Except that a god implies purpose" Your claim. Support it and why.

It's my position as well. Recall that if we say that our universe is part of a larger reality that served as its source, some say that that reality includes a conscious, intelligent designer. That's my definition of a god - a sentient agent capable of creating universes. If one doesn't want to assign purpose to this prior substance, then it need not be conscious and can be called a multiverse (or brane, or any other language suggesting an unconscious prior existent source of our universe). If one wants to use the word god, purpose is implied.

Did you want to disagree with any of this? If so, please say which part and why if you wish to be persuasive.

 

[Jimmy]

Energy and matter can't be created or destroyed. They just change forms.

So either energy, matter and time always existed or it all magically came from somewhere. (I included time because you can't have the first two without time)

For the big bang to come from anything....that anything already existed.

not if its cyclic and what comes came from a previous end.

 

[Polymath257]

Energy and matter can't be created or destroyed. They just change forms.

So either energy, matter and time always existed or it all magically came from somewhere. (I included time because you can't have the first two without time)

For the big bang to come from anything....that anything already existed.

The actual statement of the conservation laws is that the total at one time is the same as the total at any other time.

In other words, energy and matter have existed for all time.

But, if time itself is finite into the past (as it is in the basic Big Bang scenario), then there literally is no 'before' and the BB did not 'come from' anything.

 

[Polymath257]

My thoughts.... Everything always existed or everything magically appeared.

This nonsense of there was no "pre" is BS. We may not understand it but the big bang happened from something that either already existed or magically appeared.

You are assuming there was time before the Big Bang. That might not be the case.

 

[Nakosis]

Energy and matter can't be created or destroyed. They just change forms.

So either energy, matter and time always existed or it all magically came from somewhere. (I included time because you can't have the first two without time)

For the big bang to come from anything....that anything already existed.

Time, I just see as the observation of change in matter and energy. We arbitrarily pick one cycle of change, like the rotation of the earth and use it to measure some other change.

For energy/matter, I just accept it has always existed. I know that is hard to fathom but it seems as likely as any other scenario. Can't really fathom something from nothing either so.
Some what to say God did it but then where did God come from?

I don't worry too much about it since I figure it is something I'll never have the answer for so why waste time on it.

 

[Polymath257]

Ok. If energy, matter and time existed, space is a given.

IOW, without space there is no energy, matter or time.

So for energy, matter and time to exist, space is a given. Meaning it had to exist.

So in my opinion for the big bang to even happen,,, energy, matter, time and space already existed.

So, yes, space, time, matter, and energy are all co-existent. None of them exist without the others.

Nothing about this says that any existed infinite into the past. if there was a beginning, there was a beginning for all of them.

 

[Polymath257]

This is a kind of bumper sticker version or popular version of the modernized notion "matter can be neither created nor destroyed". And it is fairly commonly stated as well as taught. It is, however, grossly oversimplified if not outright incorrect.
First, conservation laws, such as the conservation of energy or mass or momentum or what have you, strictly speaking only hold for systems in isolation. In fact, as a rule one of the primary operational methods for determining whether or not a system is in isolation is the assumption of conservation laws such that a supposed violation is interpreted to be the result of insufficiently isolating the system.
True, it may be said that the universe is an "isolated" system in some sense, but since any empirical support for conservation laws comes from assuming that we can sufficiently isolate systems within the universe, these cannot be extrapolated to hold for the universe.
Second, both energy and matter can be created an destroyed. They can even be created and destroyed in ways that violate fundamental conservation laws, so long as the duration of the violation is is small enough (loosely speaking). The creation and destruction of matter/energy is the principle form of interactions in QFTs including those underlying the standard model.
Finally, after a long history of having to modify the metaphysical, philosophical, and physical understanding of this notion that matter/energy can be neither created nor destroyed, modern physics expresses our best understanding via the links between conservations and symmetries in the equations of particular theories or frameworks.
The relevant part of this is that energy, for example, is strictly speaking only conserved when it is well defined (which is not the case on cosmological scales), and then only by definition. There cannot be violations of energy conservation in physics for reasons that are mathematical (and, again, whether one interprets actual, observed violations as being evidence for "particles" without charge in HEP experiments or whether one understands violations of conservation laws in QFTs as being somehow acceptable because these entities and associated quantities are necessarily somehow "virtual" and can be ignored, we nonetheless allow for various violations of fundamental conservation laws in modern physical theories provided they either have a phenomenological interpretation as in the case of neutral particles that can only be detected this way or through fluctuations on very small scales that we require based on even more fundamental principles from quantum theory).

One aspect that is often overlooked is that energy conservation in a curved space time is problematic. Even defining the 'total amount of energy' in a region is tricky to impossible.

There is a real sense in which conservation of energy is violated in an expanding universe. The total energy associated with matter is constant, but the energy associated with radiation (light, for example), decreases under expansion.

And, yes, violations of conservation of energy on short time scales is part of the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics and is one of the reasons the observed mass of, say, the Higgs particle has a width to it associated with its half-life.

 

[PureX]

But, if time itself is finite into the past (as it is in the basic Big Bang scenario), then there literally is no 'before' and the BB did not 'come from' anything.

But there is something "before time" as evidenced by the fact that space-time is part of an organized event taking place. Those organizing factors, whatever they were, precede the expression of space-time. "Zero" on the timeline is not abject nothingness or abject randomness. It contains the conditions of possibility and impossibility that then govern everything that happens from "zero-time" onward.

 

[wellwisher]

Energy and matter can't be created or destroyed. They just change forms.

So either energy, matter and time always existed or it all magically came from somewhere. (I included time because you can't have the first two without time)

For the big bang to come from anything....that anything already existed.

Science connects time and space into the concept of space-time. Space and time are assumed to be connected and act as a team. A photon of energy has wavelength and frequency that is always connected. The wavelength is connected to space and the frequency is connected to time and both space and time are connected. This is called a photon of energy.

If we had time, but no space, then we would not have space-time. Without space-time energy could not exist. Again, energy has connected frequency and wavelength. If we only had time, but no space, we would have just frequency, but without wavelength. This is not a photon of energy, but something better described as time potential. To become energy we need space for wavelength.

Time potential could exist before energy and matter, as a spinning singularity and lingering in zero space. It would have plenty of time to linger, but only a point of space, spinning with a perpetual spin. This is not energy, since it would have no or zero wavelength. We will first need to increase the space; expand the point, to make room for wavelength, and then connect that extra space to time to form space-time, so the first energy can appear from this point of time; Let there be light!

 

[Aupmanyav]

I don't worry too much about it since I figure it is something I'll never have the answer for so why waste time on it.

That is true. No answer at the moment. The answer may come a 100 or 200 years later. We would not be there. It will be for our future generations.

So, yes, space, time, matter, and energy are all co-existent. None of them exist without the others.
Nothing about this says that any existed infinite into the past. if there was a beginning, there was a beginning for all of them.

I just read that Stephen Hawkings had a view different from this. He said space remains, not time. You will know better. (Hawking-Hurtle or something)

 

[Polymath257]

But there is something "before time" as evidenced by the fact that space-time is part of an organized event taking place.

I'm not even sure what is meant by that.

Those organizing factors, whatever they were, precede the expression of space-time.

Why would there need to be separate 'organizing factors' and why would they need to be 'before', especially when time cannot be defined 'before'?

To even talk about 'before' requires time, it seems.

"Zero" on the timeline is not abject nothingness or abject randomness. It contains the conditions of possibility and impossibility that then govern everything that happens from "zero-time" onward.

It isn't clear that t=0 on the time line even exists. Perhaps all we get is t>0.

 

[Polymath257]

Science connects time and space into the concept of space-time. Space and time are assumed to be connected and act as a team. A photon of energy has wavelength and frequency that is always connected. The wavelength is connected to space and the frequency is connected to time and both space and time are connected. This is called a photon of energy.

If we had time, but no space, then we would not have space-time. Without space-time energy could not exist. Again, energy has connected frequency and wavelength. If we only had time, but no space, we would have just frequency, but without wavelength. This is not a photon of energy, but something better described as time potential. To become energy we need space for wavelength.

Time potential could exist before energy and matter, as a spinning singularity and lingering in zero space. It would have plenty of time to linger, but only a point of space, spinning with a perpetual spin. This is not energy, since it would have no or zero wavelength. We will first need to increase the space; expand the point, to make room for wavelength, and then connect that extra space to time to form space-time, so the first energy can appear from this point of time; Let there be light!

It's more than that. In modern physics, space and time are like x and y coordinates for a plane. The plane requires both x and y coordinates to define any point, but where you set your x and y axes is somewhat arbitrary.

Spacetime is like the plane. Space and time individually are like the axes. The specific choice of axes is somewhat arbitrary, but both are required to describe points in spacetime.

Furthermore, just like with the plane, if we choose a different set of axes, the way we describe things in the plane might well be different even if the geometry is the same (think rotated coordinates), the same happens for spacetime. A different observer, especially one in motion with respect to the first (analogous to rotated) will give a different description of what happens, but the two descriptions describe the same basic geometry.

Spacetime is the geometry. Space and time individually are our particular ways of demarcating spacetime.

 

[Polymath257]

That is true. No answer at the moment. The answer may come a 100 or 200 years later. We would not be there. It will be for our future generations.
I just read that Stephen Hawkings had a view different from this. He said space remains, not time. You will know better. (Hawking-Hurtle or something)

Hawking was using a common trick that notices that 'imaginary time' and ordinary space have common features in the geometry. Then he found a way to 'rotate' dynamically to go from 'real space' to 'imaginary space', which is time.

 

[PureX]

I'm not even sure what is meant by that.


Why would there need to be separate 'organizing factors' and why would they need to be 'before', especially when time cannot be defined 'before'?

To even talk about 'before' requires time, it seems.



It isn't clear that t=0 on the time line even exists. Perhaps all we get is t>0.

Nevertheless. The possibilities were limited, or all that could ever result is abject chaos. For "something" other than abject chaos to happen requires organization. And organization requires that possibility and limitation work together. Possibility and limitation were in force, somehow, prior to anything happening, because what happened was/is organized, as opposed to being abject chaos.

 

[Polymath257]

Nevertheless. The possibilities were limited, or all that could ever result is abject chaos. For "something" other than abject chaos to happen requires organization. And organization requires that possibility and limitation work together. Possibility and limitation were in force, somehow, prior to anything happening, because what happened was/is organized, as opposed to being abject chaos.

Maybe you are simply describing the 'organization' of the physical laws. Initially, it seems that things *were* chaotic; high temperatures, high pressures, very little variation. As things cooled, the natural laws allowed for the formation of nuclei, atoms, stars, and galaxies.

So, yes, things have properties. Those properties are, ultimately, what natural laws describe. And those properties mean that interactions are not purely random: they always have conditions and non-random results.

If the 'organizational aspects' are simply another name for natural laws, there is no reason to think they existed prior to matter, energy, space, and time. In fact, it seems quite the contrary.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

The actual statement of the conservation laws is that the total at one time is the same as the total at any other time.

In other words, energy and matter have existed for all time.

But, if time itself is finite into the past (as it is in the basic Big Bang scenario), then there literally is no 'before' and the BB did not 'come from' anything.

I will ask you the same question I asked We Never Know, when you say energy and matter have existed for all time. what is this time you speak of in this context?

Fwiw, I see time in this context as the continuation of the existence of energy and matter.