The universe

[ChristineM]

Time is eternal, while space is only so big, and living things are capacitated.

But it is not known if time was created by the BB or if it is eternal

Again it us unknown is space has a finite size, is the universe expanding into space or is the universe creating space to expand into
By space i mean the entirety, and not a given volume.

Living things are made of mass, and what happens to that mass is governed by the 1st law of thermodynamics

 

[MonkeyFire]

But it is not known if time was created by the BB or if it is eternal

Again it us unknown is space has a finite size, is the universe expanding into space or is the universe creating space to expand into
By space i mean the entirety, and not a given volume.

Living things are made of mass, and what happens to that mass is governed by the 1st law of thermodynamics

Nothing is neither light nor dark, neither space nor density.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Scale that kettle and its contents up to a 93 billion light year(ish) diameter volume and the space between atoms becomes light years?

Not really. You're coarse graining either way, it's just a matter of feature selection and atomicity. But more relevantly, my point was that the only reason we don't experience things like the "chaos" of celestial bodies smashing into one another on earth is because, well...it's earth. There's only one celestial body here, and that's earth.
But if you're looking at cosmic catastrophes, asteroid collisions, and so forth as indicative of a type of chaos we don't find on earth, then you can find far more in you're average boiling kettle. Far more collisions with many times the number of bodies. A gram of O2 gas contains something like 2 followed by 22 zeros (~20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) of molecules. So when boiling water you're talking about many trillion trillion trillion of high speed collisions every second.

Even at universe speeds very few of those (now correspondingly large) atoms would collide in a human timescale

That's sort of the point. The collisions referred to (asteroids) only seem chaotic because they are big and because the truly chaotic behavior of systems occurs at smaller (human) scales. You can of course look inside stellar structures and so forth and talk about the many-body problem for solids in general or the subatomic constituents of asteroids and again find that you need trillions upon trillions of equations, but that's unnecessary. We can obtain great accuracy when it comes to celestial bodies if we treat them as point particles (often simply by using the center of mass as the "point"). Doing the same with liquids or gases fails completely and thus we can only ever hope to approximate the behavior of such systems using statistical mechanics.
But truly chaotic systems require a combination of different kinds of interacting components or subsystems, such as in biology or climate. We don't generally find much comparable in astrophysics. Actually, when we can use physics at all, then often the system is relatively simple.

There are thousands of solutions to the n body problem, 3,4,5... n. Every new body added requires a new solution.

There are in general infinitely many solutions to most systems of equations that have a solution (a golden rule in linear algebra, if you recall, is that if there is a solution then either there is only one or there are infinitely many; things mostly stay the same with differential equations except that the nature of the solution spaces changes dramatically as do the characteristics of the systems). In general, none of the n-body problems have solutions when n is greater than 2. However, this is because the equations don't have closed for analytical solutions in that you can't simply take antiderivatives (indefinite integrals) and solve for arbitrary constants- you need initial conditions and a picture of the system in order to determine how to solve it (or to approximate a solution) by e.g., exploiting symmetries. The three-body problem is special because it is easy to visualize and because there aren't really any mathematical difficulties encountered in e.g., 60-body problems or 100-body problems that aren't already present in the three-body problem. The difference as N increases is that the complexity becomes so great that the approximation schemes (numerical solutions) which work in the three-body case begin to fail and better methods are required. Also, celestial mechanics present special cases precisely because the interactions among bodies are all related to the gravitational force when more generally you have to take into account e.g., electromagnetic forces and in particular collisions. Orbits are relatively easy. Sand, dust, water, gas, cells, etc., are hard or impossible on an entirely different level.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

And the first law of thermodynamics says energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system, only changed [into mass and vice versa]
So space (which is not empty) and the atoms that form population (if not life) stay as long as the universe is a closed system

You can't apply laws which are intended for idealized isolated systems to the universe, which is neither closed nor isolated in the sense used in thermodynamics and physics more generally (no matter what popular science/pseudoscience sources say on the matter). Also, note that these conservation laws are actually used more like principles. They are violated constantly in particle physics (and thus for every system) but in ways that we allow for because we speak of such violations in terms of virtual particles and relate them inversely to the time periods over which mass or energy conservation is violated. When this doesn't work either, we infer the existence of particles we can't detect but that should be there because mass or energy conservation was violated. Finally, even well-informed writers will often make claims about what must be true about e.g., consciousness or the mind or the universe as a whole based upon conservation of energy when in fact this is incorrect. Energy conservation is a consequence of Noether's theorem and certain symmetries and thus is conserved in any system in which it is well-defined and (correspondingly) cannot be used in principle where it is not well-defined.

 

[ChristineM]

Nothing is neither light nor dark, neither space nor density.

I do t know what you are talking about, absence of light is dark, absence of dark is light.

 

[ChristineM]

Not really. You're coarse graining either way, it's just a matter of feature selection and atomicity. But more relevantly, my point was that the only reason we don't experience things like the "chaos" of celestial bodies smashing into one another on earth is because, well...it's earth. There's only one celestial body here, and that's earth.
But if you're looking at cosmic catastrophes, asteroid collisions, and so forth as indicative of a type of chaos we don't find on earth, then you can find far more in you're average boiling kettle. Far more collisions with many times the number of bodies. A gram of O2 gas contains something like 2 followed by 22 zeros (~20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) of molecules. So when boiling water you're talking about many trillion trillion trillion of high speed collisions every second.

That's sort of the point. The collisions referred to (asteroids) only seem chaotic because they are big and because the truly chaotic behavior of systems occurs at smaller (human) scales. You can of course look inside stellar structures and so forth and talk about the many-body problem for solids in general or the subatomic constituents of asteroids and again find that you need trillions upon trillions of equations, but that's unnecessary. We can obtain great accuracy when it comes to celestial bodies if we treat them as point particles (often simply by using the center of mass as the "point"). Doing the same with liquids or gases fails completely and thus we can only ever hope to approximate the behavior of such systems using statistical mechanics.
But truly chaotic systems require a combination of different kinds of interacting components or subsystems, such as in biology or climate. We don't generally find much comparable in astrophysics. Actually, when we can use physics at all, then often the system is relatively simple.

There are in general infinitely many solutions to most systems of equations that have a solution (a golden rule in linear algebra, if you recall, is that if there is a solution then either there is only one or there are infinitely many; things mostly stay the same with differential equations except that the nature of the solution spaces changes dramatically as do the characteristics of the systems). In general, none of the n-body problems have solutions when n is greater than 2. However, this is because the equations don't have closed for analytical solutions in that you can't simply take antiderivatives (indefinite integrals) and solve for arbitrary constants- you need initial conditions and a picture of the system in order to determine how to solve it (or to approximate a solution) by e.g., exploiting symmetries. The three-body problem is special because it is easy to visualize and because there aren't really any mathematical difficulties encountered in e.g., 60-body problems or 100-body problems that aren't already present in the three-body problem. The difference as N increases is that the complexity becomes so great that the approximation schemes (numerical solutions) which work in the three-body case begin to fail and better methods are required. Also, celestial mechanics present special cases precisely because the interactions among bodies are all related to the gravitational force when more generally you have to take into account e.g., electromagnetic forces and in particular collisions. Orbits are relatively easy. Sand, dust, water, gas, cells, etc., are hard or impossible on an entirely different level.

If the liquid [water] is heated a little over 100 °C, the transition from liquid to gas will occur not only at the surface, but throughout the liquid volume: the water boils. ... Collisions between water molecules in the atmosphere allows some to condense and some to remain in vapor.
Phase Equilbrium | Boundless Physics

The universe isnt boiling. If it were, to shift those giant molecules would require a corresponding increase in energy

Earth is subject to the chaos of space all the time
New Map Shows Frequency of Small Asteroid Impacts, Provides Clues on Larger Asteroid Population
It is hit by approximately 17 small meteors each day. Bigger ones less often. Meteor crater and Chicxulub come to mind. It is understood that at least one celestial body has collided with earth, a Mars sized body collided with earth creating the moon. From asteroids to planets, all are under the influence of gravity, which on occasion does cause them to collide, change direction, effect other bodies etc

You can obtain accuracy to a point, no scientist or mathematician will commit themselves to predict earths, or any orbit in ten billion years or more in the future. And that is my point, i im not talking human scale but universal scale.

Fairly easy on the human scale

 

[ChristineM]

You can't apply laws which are intended for idealized isolated systems to the universe, which is neither closed nor isolated in the sense used in thermodynamics and physics more generally (no matter what popular science/pseudoscience sources say on the matter). Also, note that these conservation laws are actually used more like principles. They are violated constantly in particle physics (and thus for every system) but in ways that we allow for because we speak of such violations in terms of virtual particles and relate them inversely to the time periods over which mass or energy conservation is violated. When this doesn't work either, we infer the existence of particles we can't detect but that should be there because mass or energy conservation was violated. Finally, even well-informed writers will often make claims about what must be true about e.g., consciousness or the mind or the universe as a whole based upon conservation of energy when in fact this is incorrect. Energy conservation is a consequence of Noether's theorem and certain symmetries and thus is conserved in any system in which it is well-defined and (correspondingly) cannot be used in principle where it is not well-defined.

.
The observable universe is open,

The entire universe, according to several definitions (not pseudo definitions) os closed

And if the universe is infinite is closed, there is no outside so the point is moot.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

The universe isnt boiling. If it were, to shift those giant molecules would require a corresponding increase in energy

I was addressing the claim that the universe is some how chaotic because of things like asteroid collisions and so forth and thus somehow also chaotic in a manner that we don't find on human scales. We do. We're enveloped by massive numbers of higher energy collisions in the most complex, chaotic systems we've ever found. They just don't look as impressive to you.

And that is my point, i im not talking human scale but universal scale.

Fairly easy on the human scale

I AM talking on a human scale, and having worked on modeling chaotic systems for most of my career it isn't easy in the slightest. A memorable quote from the first text I used devoted to the kind of complexities found in ordinary sand and similar materials:
"Sand in stasis or in motion – the image these words conjure up is one of lifelong familiarity and intuitive simplicity. Despite appearances, however, matter in the granular state combines some of the most complex aspects of known physical systems; to date, a detailed understanding of its behaviour remains elusive." (emphases added)
Mehta, A. (2007). Granular Physics. Cambridge University Press.
Work on complexity in astrophysics borrowed heavily from work done in condensed matter physics and granular physics. This is all, of course, ignoring living systems which are of course so vastly more complex than anything else we're unlikely even to obtain something like an approximation to reductionism that works in n-body dynamics or nonlinear physical systems such as planetary motion or windblown sand or hydrodynamics.
The introduction to chaos in astrophysics found below is quite standard:
"The physics is only simple for one- or two-component systems, say under the influence of one gravitational or electric force (classical two-body descriptions), while the physical and mathematical treatment becomes immensely complex for n-body problems (for n ≥ 3). In fluids, turbulence can already occur in a single fluid, and many instabilities can occur in two-fluid systems."
MJ Aschwanden (2011). Self-Organized Criticality in Astrophysics: The Statistics of Nonlinear Processes in the Universe. Springer.
The author goes on to mention the pioneering work done in SOC (the subject of the book) on sandpiles. Such systems are simplified in order to apply them to galaxies, celestial bodies, the solar system, etc., because sandpiles generally exhibit significantly more "chaos" than we find when we model planetary bodies in motion on the level of something like a galaxy or more.
Again, the point is that cosmic collisions and planetary trajectories may seem impressive and more chaotic than anything found on the human scale, but that is because they are big and we don't experience them everyday. We do experience living systems all around us, the climate and weather, and other massively complicated systems that are far, far more chaotic than anything found in space. But it usually doesn't appear to be so to most until you have to actually apply the equations of state or physical laws or even numerical methods to model/simulate such dynamics.

 

[ChristineM]

I was addressing the claim that the universe is some how chaotic because of things like asteroid collisions and so forth and thus somehow also chaotic in a manner that we don't find on human scales. We do. We're enveloped by massive numbers of higher energy collisions in the most complex, chaotic systems we've ever found. They just don't look as impressive to you.


I AM talking on a human scale, and having worked on modeling chaotic systems for most of my career it isn't easy in the slightest. A memorable quote from the first text I used devoted to the kind of complexities found in ordinary sand and similar materials:
"Sand in stasis or in motion – the image these words conjure up is one of lifelong familiarity and intuitive simplicity. Despite appearances, however, matter in the granular state combines some of the most complex aspects of known physical systems; to date, a detailed understanding of its behaviour remains elusive." (emphases added)
Mehta, A. (2007). Granular Physics. Cambridge University Press.
Work on complexity in astrophysics borrowed heavily from work done in condensed matter physics and granular physics. This is all, of course, ignoring living systems which are of course so vastly more complex than anything else we're unlikely even to obtain something like an approximation to reductionism that works in n-body dynamics or nonlinear physical systems such as planetary motion or windblown sand or hydrodynamics.
The introduction to chaos in astrophysics found below is quite standard:
"The physics is only simple for one- or two-component systems, say under the influence of one gravitational or electric force (classical two-body descriptions), while the physical and mathematical treatment becomes immensely complex for n-body problems (for n ≥ 3). In fluids, turbulence can already occur in a single fluid, and many instabilities can occur in two-fluid systems."
MJ Aschwanden (2011). Self-Organized Criticality in Astrophysics: The Statistics of Nonlinear Processes in the Universe. Springer.
The author goes on to mention the pioneering work done in SOC (the subject of the book) on sandpiles. Such systems are simplified in order to apply them to galaxies, celestial bodies, the solar system, etc., because sandpiles generally exhibit significantly more "chaos" than we find when we model planetary bodies in motion on the level of something like a galaxy or more.
Again, the point is that cosmic collisions and planetary trajectories may seem impressive and more chaotic than anything found on the human scale, but that is because they are big and we don't experience them everyday. We do experience living systems all around us, the climate and weather, and other massively complicated systems that are far, far more chaotic than anything found in space. But it usually doesn't appear to be so to most until you have to actually apply the equations of state or physical laws or even numerical methods to model/simulate such dynamics.

I never made the claim astroid collisions make the universe chaotic,i said in universal terms it is chaotic. However asteroid collisions to cause local chaos

On human terms its hardly noticeable.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I never made the claim astroid collisions make the universe chaotic,i said in universal terms it is chaotic. However asteroid collisions to cause local chaos

On human terms its hardly noticeable.

We have to simplify models of sandpiles and similar media under the influence of wind and/or water in order to make them simple enough for the "complexities" of systems of celestial bodies. We can't simplify most of the phenomena we experience daily enough to make them simple enough to apply to the simplicities of planetary trajectories, asteroids, and whatnot. If you mean we don't experience the "chaos" of asteroids other celestial bodies because they are too big, then naturally they are not noticeable on a human scale without telescopes and other technology. If you mean, however, that such things are complex and/or chaotic compared to what we do experience on a human scale, then again there isn't really anything to bear this out. We haven't encountered anything in astrophysics that would compare to the complexities and chaos of systems you experience daily.

 

[sayak83]

Is the universe chaotic or orderly?

.....


My own answer: The universe is chaos in an orderly system, perhaps. The universe is mathematical and somewhat precise, but allows for some randomness and variety. I don't truly believe it allows for religious miracles which completely alter the laws of the universe, like walking on water without any technological help, but upon careful understanding of miracles, they can still happen within the laws of the universe - the tricky part is that what is a miracle, and what's not, is open to human interpretation.

The universe in early times had a high degree of order and is currently moving towards a more chaotic state.

 

[ChristineM]

We have to simplify models of sandpiles and similar media under the influence of wind and/or water in order to make them simple enough for the "complexities" of systems of celestial bodies. We can't simplify most of the phenomena we experience daily enough to make them simple enough to apply to the simplicities of planetary trajectories, asteroids, and whatnot. If you mean we don't experience the "chaos" of asteroids other celestial bodies because they are too big, then naturally they are not noticeable on a human scale without telescopes and other technology. If you mean, however, that such things are complex and/or chaotic compared to what we do experience on a human scale, then again there isn't really anything to bear this out. We haven't encountered anything in astrophysics that would compare to the complexities and chaos of systems you experience daily.

The aftermath of the BB, fairly chaotic, the collision of particle and anti particle, fairly chaotic. Correct we haven't experienced them but they can be extrapolated from current conditions.

Gravity acting on bodies we experience all the time on the human scale, the earth orbits the sun, the moon orbits the earth.

On a bigger time scale the earth is moving away from the sun. The moon is moving away from earth. Other planets or on the move from their orbits, those planets effect the orbit of other planets etc. Which is why i said no scientist will predict an orbit in for the far future. Same applies fotr galaxies and galactic clusters.

What i mean was clear, on a universal scale of timr the universe is chaotic. On a solar system scale of time a solar system is chaotic
On a human scale very little of that chaos imparts itself on life. Just because we dont (often) see the interaction of galaxy on galaxy does not mean they don't collide