The Big Bang as evidence for God

[ThePainefulTruth]

A photon or electron or whatever quanta you want to use is dilating space and time which explains very nicely spooky actions at a distance. Experiments show that time is dilated too not just distance. Quantum objects "know" the future. How does QM explain this? Special relativity already explained it.

How does anything dilate space so that it can communicate from one side of the universe to the other (if it has sides) in zero time? And how can space expansion accelerate to superluminal speed carrying matter and energy with it when they reach 13 billion lights years apart, while nothing that's closer that 13 billion years to anything else can exceed the speed of light relative to each other?

 

[Milton Platt]

Here's a question....big bang theory says that in every direction you look, you are looking back to the center where the big bang emerged from nothingness....yet while the universe continues to expand into nothingness, there is no direction in which to look to see the edge where the universe meets nothingness....so what shape is the universe?

The 'edge'' would be in all directions. We are not in the center of the universe, referenced by the point at which the big bang occurred. We cannot see the actual edge, we could only see as far as light has traveled thus far. All this presupposes the big bang model. Seems the best theory (or hypothesis) so far.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

The 'edge'' would be in all directions. We are not in the center of the universe, referenced by the point at which the big bang occurred. We cannot see the actual edge, we could only see as far as light has traveled thus far. All this presupposes the big bang model. Seems the best theory (or hypothesis) so far.

Ok...what now exists in the space that was created 13.7 billion years ago...say from time = 0 to 300,000 years post start of expansion?

And what is a description of the 'edge'?

And this still does not provide a shape of the universe....let's break it down...what was the shape after Planck Era, shape after 300,000 years, after 5 billion, and after13.7 billion?

 

[ThePainefulTruth]

The 'edge'' would be in all directions. We are not in the center of the universe, referenced by the point at which the big bang occurred. We cannot see the actual edge, we could only see as far as light has traveled thus far. All this presupposes the big bang model. Seems the best theory (or hypothesis) so far.

If the universe is infinite, it would have no center. The Big Bang is only the beginning of time, and space would still be expanding whether it's infinite or not, from the beginning. We can't see the "edge", if there is one, because we can't see beyond where the expansion of space goes superluminal 13 billion light years away.

Now for the paradoxical kicker. Gravity travels at the speed of light. Does that mean it's red-shifted in some way as light is, the further away it's source--and does that mean gravity is diminished with distance? I certainly don't claim to have the answer, even the experts haven't been able to integrate gravity into a GUT. But maybe they could if they finally came around to accepting the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (TIQM), the only interpretation that explains all quantum weirdness.

 

[McBell]

If the universe is infinite, it would have no center.

You keep making this claim without ever supporting it.

 

[ThePainefulTruth]

You keep making this claim without ever supporting it.

Saying everything is the center if there is no center, is irrational.

Center: Geometry. the middle point, as the point within a circle or sphere equally distant from all points of the circumference or surface, or the point within a regular polygon equally distant from the vertices.

If there is no circumference, surface or vertices, there is no center, there is no middle.

 

[McBell]

Saying everything is the center if there is no center, is irrational.

No idea who made that claim.
I most certainly didn't/

Even so, you have claimed that if the universe is infinite it cannot have a center.
I am asking that you support that claim.
You have not done so.

If there is no circumference, surface or vertices, there is no center, there is no middle.

Yet we are in the universe and we have middles and centers.
So how can the universe, which has with in it middles and centers, not have a middle or center?

Not knowing where the center is is not equal to there being no center.
Not knowing how to find the center does not equal no center.
The center changing due to uneven expansion does not equal no center.

Thus far you have not shown that infinity equates no center.

 

[ThePainefulTruth]

No idea who made that claim.
I most certainly didn't/

Even so, you have claimed that if the universe is infinite it cannot have a center.
I am asking that you support that claim.
You have not done so.


Yet we are in the universe and we have middles and centers.
So how can the universe, which has with in it middles and centers, not have a middle or center?

Not knowing where the center is is not equal to there being no center.
Not knowing how to find the center does not equal no center.
The center changing due to uneven expansion does not equal no center.

Thus far you have not shown that infinity equates no center.

Your qualifications as Devil's Advocate is in a condition of serious slippage.

 

[McBell]

Your qualifications as Devil's Advocate is in a condition of serious slippage.

Your avoidance of supporting your premise is no surprise.

I wonder if you understand that since your premise is worthless with no support, all that relies on said crumbling premise also falls...

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Now for the paradoxical kicker. Gravity travels at the speed of light.

Gravity doesn't travel in a theory of physic. In Newtonian and quantum mechanics, gravity is a nonlocal force that acts instantaneously over arbitrary distances. In particle physics, gravity is a field (called a graviton) mediating the gravitational force. In our best theory of gravitation, that of general relativity, gravity doesn't exist. Rather, gravitation is spacetime curvature.

Does that mean it's red-shifted in some way as light is

No. Gravity doesn't have visible spectra.

the further away it's source--and does that mean gravity is diminished with distance?

Of course it is. Otherwise, we'd plunge into the sun (as would everything in the solar system) while the whole milky way condensed into a single mass.

I certainly don't claim to have the answer, even the experts haven't been able to integrate gravity into a GUT.

It doesn't take a unified field theory to know that gravitational force must diminish over distance. It takes extremely simple reasoning: when a rocket blasts off of the surface of the earth, it requires a great deal of energy because it must counter the effects of the earth's gravitational pull, but once it is in space (i.e., it is distant from the earth) it is minimally affected by this pull and, if it travels sufficiently far from the earth, will be free from it entirely.

But maybe they could if they finally came around to accepting the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (TIQM), the only interpretation that explains all quantum weirdness.

Interestingly enough, the founder of the TI John Cramer mentions Kastner's more technical book (not the popular one you read) on the transactional interpretation in his book The Quantum Handshake: Entanglement, Nonlocality and Transactions. He states of her account of the transactional interpretation that "despite its title, Kastner’s book introduces the possibilist transactional interpretation, a variant of the Transactional Interpretation presented here that attempts to explain quantum nonlocality in a qualitatively different way." (emphasis added).
The transactional interpretation you encountered in Kastner's poplar book isn't the transactional approach but is, as Cramer states, qualitatively different and it seeks to explain "quantum weirdness" in a fundamentally different way.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

 

[ThePainefulTruth]

Your avoidance of supporting your premise is no surprise.

I wonder if you understand that since your premise is worthless with no support, all that relies on said crumbling premise also falls...

I can't stop you from thinking whatever you want, no matter how irrational.

Gravity doesn't travel in a theory of physic. In Newtonian and quantum mechanics, gravity is a nonlocal force that acts instantaneously over arbitrary distances. In particle physics, gravity is a field (called a graviton) mediating the gravitational force. In our best theory of gravitation, that of general relativity, gravity doesn't exist. Rather, gravitation is spacetime curvature

In December 2012, a research team in China announced that it had produced measurements of the phase lag of Earth tides during full and new moons which seem to prove that the speed of gravity is equal to the speed of light. This means that if the Sun suddenly disappeared, the Earth would keep orbiting it normally for 8 minutes, which is the time light takes to travel that distance.

In February 2016, the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory team announced that they had detected gravitational waves from a black hole collision. On September 14, 2015, LIGO registered gravitational waves for the first time, as a result of the collision of two black holes 1.3 billion light-years from Earth.

I think many of the problems you're having, and how you could dismiss Ruth Kaskner (and TIQM) in such a cavalier manner, is your working with out of date information.

 

[idav]

How does anything dilate space so that it can communicate from one side of the universe to the other (if it has sides) in zero time? And how can space expansion accelerate to superluminal speed carrying matter and energy with it when they reach 13 billion lights years apart, while nothing that's closer that 13 billion years to anything else can exceed the speed of light relative to each other?

I picture space time dilation like a sphere. When space is dilated, space moves around the object so that any point of movement can get you to any point in space. I picture time the same way. This is what i feel quantum mechanics shows, electrons and photons being in many places at once by violating spacetime.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Speaking of spheres/shapes..

Hubble captures birthday bubble...https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1608/

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I think many of the problems you're having, and how you could dismiss Ruth Kaskner (and TIQM) in such a cavalier manner, is your working with out of date information.

I don't dismiss her. Not that long ago I commented on one of her blog posts (Where did this ‘Wrong’ idea of quantum theory implying consciousness come from? Quantum physicists.). Take a look at point 6 that I made (I've underlined and bolded it) :
legiononomamoi October 25, 2015 at 2:34 am

A few points (of little worth)
1) Von Neumann didn’t say that at about Bohr in 1955, but 1932. The footnote is from 1955, because it was translated into English than.
2) In the same work, von Neumann rather clearly distinguishes, at least in name, his understanding of psychophysical parallelism from any “new age” philosophy/spirituality/etc.: Trotzdem ist es aber eine für die naturwissenschaftliche Weltanschauung fundamentale Forderung, das sog. Prinzip vom psychophysikalischen Parallelismus, daß es möglich sein muß, den in Wahrheit außerphysikalischen Vorgang der subjektiven Apperzeption so zu beschreiben, als ob er in der physikalischen Welt stattfände – d.h. ihren Teilen physikalische Vorgänge in der objektiven Umwelt, im gewohnlichen Raume, zuzuordnen.”
The key part is that the von Neumann describes psycho-physical paralleism as “a fundamental requirement for the scientific worldview.” That and his description don’t sound particularly “new age-y” to me, but rather part of a rejection of dualism that dates back to Spinoza but didn’t arise in this form until c. the mid-19th century. Also note that “[a] widespread misconception pervading pertinent English literature confuses this type of parallelism [psycho-physical] with forms of Cartesian doctrine of two noninteracting substances, such as doctrines of occasionalism or preestablished harmony. Psychophysical parallelism means the exact opposite: It denies the Cartesian division of the world into extended substance (matter) and nonextended substance (mind).” P. 169
Heidelberger, M. (2004). Nature from within: Gustav Theodor Fechner and his psychophysical worldview. University of Pittsburgh Press.

3) Despite their rather fundamentally incompatible views on everything from metaphysics to the nature of science, on this matter Einstein and Bohr were actually in agreement. Also, Bohr’s psychophysical parallelism came from Fechner (via Høffding).
4) Regardless of whether von Neumann or Bohr’s metaphysical perspectives here similar to those found among the new age “quantum holism” and “quantum consciousness” crowd, neither Bohr nor von Neumann really proposed anything like quantum consciousness (Bohr was especially, even notoriously, reluctant to make much of any ontological commitment), although I would agree that they certainly not only left the door open but put out a welcome matt and “come right in!” sign for later thinkers who would make the rather small leap from “observation causes collapse” to CONSCIOUS observation causes collapse or is somehow at least special here. Wigner certainly did made the connection and was quite clear about the importance of consciousness.
5) I absolutely agree that, while I don’t find quantum theories of consciousness to be tenable, many eminent and respected physicists have and continue to support this view.
6) I loved your book and look forward to reading the new one.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I can't stop you from thinking whatever you want, no matter how irrational.

Now that we've covered the fact that I don't dismiss Kastner (in my last post) we can address how you seem to think that misunderstanding Wikipedia is a sound basis for making assertions about the nature of gravitational waves and gravitation itself.

First, I addressed gravitational waves (including a link to the actual research paper touting the long-sought phenomenon itself here:

The gravitational waves discovered were not waves in either the classical or quantum sense, but do have more in common with the latter: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger.

Nor is this the first time I've had to explain that gravitational waves aren't really "waves" and they don't really "travel"
From my post here:
They don't. They actually don't travel at all, really (like classical waves, they don't exist except as disruptions to the media in which they propagate). Gravity was nonlocal in classical physics in a way far more troubling than nonlocality in quantum physics. However, gravitational "waves" are produced locally via warping of spacetime:
"In the same way, in general relativity, Einstein’s field equations (1915) not only described the gravitational interaction via the spacetime curvature generated by mass-energy, but also contained, through the Bianchi identities, the equations of motion of matter and fields, and on their basis Albert Einstein, in 1916, a few months after the formulation of the theory, predicted the existence of curvature perturbations propagating with speed c on a flat and empty spacetime; the gravitational waves"
Ciufolini, I., & Gorini, V. (2001). Gravitational waves, theory and experiment (an overview). In I. Ciufolini, V. Gorini, U. Moschella, & P. Fre, (Eds.) Gravitational Waves (Series in High Energy Physics, Cosmology and Gravitation) (pp. 1-10). IoP Press.

I also discussed gravitational waves (in passing) in a post on the fine-tuning problem here and there relevance to the big bang and general relativity here.
And here I am addressing it again, because apparently quote-mining Wikipedia shows an understanding of general relativity, gravitation, gravitational waves (much like reading one popular book immediately provides in-depth understanding of quantum physics).
So, what are gravitational waves? Intuitively, they are like "ripples" in spacetime. Gravity, as I already said, doesn't exist in our best model of gravitation but is spacetime curvature. Gravitational waves are propagations of perturbations to the "fabric" of spacetime (to spacetime curvature). They are predicted by general relativity.

Ok, that's a simple description, but what are GWs really? They are products of gravitational action in general relativity, i.e., S= Se +Sm (the Einstein and matter action) where Se=

and the all important energy-momentum tensor of matter is derived from the matter action by

Ok, all this seems irrelevant, but here's where it starts getting interesting. Take the variation of total action with respect to the curved spacetime metric and we get (surprise!) Einstein's equation

By expanding this equation around the flat spacetime metric using the symmetries of the so-called linearized theory and Lorentz transformations we can derive the linearized Riemann tensor, use it to derive the linearization of the Einstein tensor, apply the Hilbert gauge with the constraint

,and we get an equation with d'Alembertian flat space. We apply some function satisfying the constraint so trhat we can use the initial field configuration of the linear flat spacetime metric to give us a solution of the coordinate transformation function as a gauge integral over Green's function of the d'Alembertian operator:

Ok, now we are finally ready (and believe me, this description skipped A LOT of math that I would have included in any kind of realistic derivation). In the above gauge, several terms from the original coordinate transformation function mentioned above vanish and we can solve for

with a (simple) wave equation:

This is equation is the basis for GW computations (albeit in the simplified linearized theory). Things get considerably more complicated if we relax the linearization imposition, but the point is that the wave equation isn't at all akin the classical or quantum wave equations, but it does bear some resemblance to relativistic tensor algebras in electromagnetic field theories. Like classical waves, GWs propagate via a medium (light, the source for red shifts and so for, does not), that medium being spacetime. The above mathematics tells us perhaps the simplest propagation of GWs via the gravitational action on flat spacetime.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Perhaps of interest.....http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Europe_to_launch_satellites_for_Earth_Einstein_999.html

Europe to launch satellites for Earth, Einstein
By Pascale MOLLARD Paris (AFP) April 21, 2016

Also on board the Soyuz will be Microscope, designed to test a key component in the theory of general relativity published by Albert Einstein 100 years ago.

The 130-million-euro satellite will probe -- with 100 times more accuracy than has been possible on Earth -- the so-called "equivalence principle," which says that a feather in a vacuum should fall at the same speed as a lead ball.

The experiment will compare the motion of two different objects "in almost perfect and permanent free fall" aboard the orbiting satellite, according to France's CNES space agency, which financed 90 percent of the project.

If any difference in motion is observed, the equivalence principle would collapse -- "an event that would shake the foundations of physics," it states on its website.

Such a result would suggest that Einstein's relativity theory may be flawed. This would be a great relief to physicists who have long struggled to explain why the theory cannot be reconciled with quantum physics, the other pillar of modern physics.

"We shall then know that Einstein's theory of general relativity is not the whole story of gravity -- that there are other forces contributing to it," French physicist Thibault Damour told reporters in Paris last week.

"It will not mean that Einstein's theory is completely wrong -- just incomplete," he added.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

How does anything dilate space

It doesn't. There's no such thing as spacetime dilation, there's a phenomenon called "time dilation" that refers to the differences in measurements of time intervals among different (inertial) reference frames.

so that it can communicate from one side of the universe to the other (if it has sides) in zero time?

The general consensus is that special relativity forbids any superluminal communication (specifically, no signal can travel faster than light). There is some ambivalence here, as nonlocal phenomena clearly involve SOME superluminal interactions and arguably superluminal a proper interpretation of "signal" can make superluminal signaling compatible with special relativity (see attached).

And how can space expansion accelerate to superluminal speed

It doesn't and didn't. It started expanding faster-than-light.

I picture space time dilation like a sphere.

Why? The geometry of the standard examples of time dilation is based upon the Pythagorean theorem and triangles. Simply put, the distance traversed by light that travels up and down in a moving reference frame will trace out a triangle according to an observer stationary with respect to that reference frame.
Time dilation concerns the agreement or disagreement among observers in various reference frames. It isn't intrinsic to time, space, or spacetime (i.e., there isn't any effect, phenomenon, or process in physics that describes the general dilation of time; it results from the constancy of light, the assumption that the laws of physics are the same in every (inertial) reference frame, and the resulting differences in the distance traversed by light as measured by different observers).

When space is dilated

What theory in physics are you using to assert there is any such thing? Space is never dilated. This isn't even a misunderstanding of an actual concept from special relativity the way you are misunderstanding time dilation, it's just a fiction (completely made-up). There's no such thing as "space dilation". I'm no even sure where you are getting the terminology, let alone the notion.

This is what i feel quantum mechanics shows, electrons and photons being in many places at once by violating spacetime.

In spacetime, everything is always in many places at once. This isn't a violation of spacetime, it's a fundamental implication of 4D geometry in which one dimension is time. Every particle, object, system, etc., is located at every point it will ever be at all at once. This is because "at once" means "at a single moment in time", but there are no moments in time in spacetime. Every point describes a unique spatial and temporal set of coordinate values. So, for example, you can pick an arbitrary value for "time" and depending upon how you "slice up" spacetime the same particle will be in infinitely many different points.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I can't stop you from thinking whatever you want, no matter how irrational.

Nor, apparently, are you capable of demonstrating your knowledge of physics extends beyond Wikipedia and a single popular physics book. You completely lack the knowledge and ability to describe basic quantum mechanics and simple classical physics. All you can do is quote-mine Wikipedia and dogmatically insist that your limited understanding of a single popular physics text somehow makes your uninformed claims based on your utter lack of understanding of physics somehow more than nonsense.

 

[ThePainefulTruth]

Now that we've covered the fact that I don't dismiss Kastner (in my last post) we can address how you seem to think that misunderstanding Wikipedia is a sound basis for making assertions about the nature of gravitational waves and gravitation itself.

It's not misunderstanding Wikipedia, it's ignoring the sources used in Wikipedia. That's its strength which most people ignore.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

It's not misunderstanding Wikipedia, it's ignoring the sources used in Wikipedia. That's its strength which most people ignore.

You can't understand such sources. I've already asked you to demonstrate that you can understand sources beyond Wikipedia. You can't even formulate any entangled system, you can't describe how Cramer disagrees with the single popular source you rely on to fake some semblance of understanding of physics, you can't use terminology correctly, you can't demonstrate you can even understand any description of basic physics because you don't understand the mathematics necessary even for Newtonian mechanics (let alone modern physics), and you have demonstrated you can't understand or speak to the actual theories you inaccurately describe.