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Existence: an expanding Universe w/a big bang?

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jbw

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(Disclaimer, I'm not a physisit by trade, I simply read every physics text I can get my hands on)

A couple of points about the assertions made throughout:

1. Simple relativity is not difficult to derrive and is demanded by simple Newtonian physics that every grade 12 student knows. Thus to say that relativity cannot be true is irrational, because the language of the universe demands that it is true. General relativity, while vastly more complex is not that difficult math, and follow directly from Simple relativity and Einstien simply took those mathematical equations and ran with them. There really isn't something to be disproven in Einstien's theories unless you can disprove the math, which no one has ever been able to do. So if you're going to kick around anything, kick around the assumptions in Quantum mechanics that have been made simply to explain observations without regard for actual proof. Oh, and then there is the whole irrational number thing I don't want to get into :)

2. The only logical position is that the unvierse is infinate. Does that mean that it's bounds are infinate? No, it simply means that the energy that the universe is made up of is and that it has no beginning in history and no end. It is constantly changing, and as time goes by, the universe gets bigger much like men get a beer gut, but it's just changing. Now the only question left is if there is new matter being "recycled" out of the waste energy of the universe as postulated above.

3. Any "creation" position is someone that is religious trying to bring a God into the equation to make themselves feel better through rationalizing. It's not science and the logic is circular. You can always trap a religious person by asking who created God. They're only rational answer is that God always was, for which you ask, "why would you make up a god when it's far more likely based on Occam's Razor that the universe just always was in some form or other" (and then they'll shut down, and the conversation if it continues will get really stupid, and then tomorrow they will think that they were drunk or something and feel like they have a hang over and will dismiss the whole traumatic event as some freakish acid trip and be done with it, and go back to believing in the irrational. (i.e. don't bother with the conversation)

4. The some form or other was energy. The big bang was simply the culmination of energy in one location causing matter to be formed from the super-dense energy.

5. Space is not nothing. There is dark matter, where ther is no energy or matter. In fact it is the dark matter that is causing the universe to continually expand. We don't understand dark matter enough yet to speculate whether energy or matter can come from it beyond the opposing force that pushes matter away from it (causing the expansion).

6. Curved space is one of those "magic" theories. No proof, no evidence no nothing other than it happens to explain something and there is no apparent contradiction. That isn't proof of anything, it's junk science much like most of what is going on in Quantum mechanics right now. It's scary how far everyone has progressed down a path that starts with assumptions that are held to be true, simply because they happen to explain away several problems, and btw, there are other explainations that also solve those problems AND make Newtonian physics work consistantly with quantum mechanics. (and they haven't been proven either)

Please correct me if I'm talking out of my ass on any of this. While I understand physics pretty well, I don't possess what Rand would call "accademic" knowledge so I could be one of those dangerous people that have a little bit of knowledge... any enlightenment would be greatly appreciated.

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And the standard model has another nice feature that your model doesn't have. If it takes 7 billion years on average for Seyfert galaxies to sweep up enough intergalactic matter to emit quasars, then assuming that the universe was fairly homogeneous when the first galaxies started forming, the emission of quasars by Seyfert galaxies would be correlated throughout the universe--they'd occur at pretty much the same time no matter in which direction you look. (In an eternal and infinite universe there would be no reason for such correlation in time.) And because the further away you look the further back in time you look, you should find quasars to be emitted only in narrow bands or shells of space centered on the Earth (and thus of time before the present) that are roughly periodic (every seven billion light years or so, according to what you now say), and uniform in all directions. And lo and behold! when I search on Arp, Seyfert, and quasars to check pro-Arp sites run by creationists and other windmill-tilters, I find the appearance of precisely this set of facts to be offered as proof of the falsity of the standard model: "The very existence of this quantization alone, is sufficient proof of the failure of the idea that redshift is only an indicator of recessional speed (and therefore distance). This quantization means (under the redshift equals distance interpretation) that quasars all must lie in a series of concentric shells with Earth at the center of the entire arrangement. Copernicus found out a long time ago that Earth isn't at the center of anything!" In other words, this creationist is a benighted ignoramus, but then what else is new? (In the standard model every point in the universe would appear to be the center of the universe if the universe is uniform over sufficiently large distances, so the appearance of concentric shells indicates that something happened throughout the universe at the time the light was emitted by the matter in that shell. The full triplet of equivalents is, of course, "redshift equals distance equals time." We know the redshift indicates distance because of the apparent luminosity of Cepheid variable stars, and we know there's a constant speed of light, so it's an uncontrovertible set of equivalences unless you throw out 20th century physics.)

Adrian:

I quote Arp on only two points, his findings that Quasars are pairs of objects ejected from Seyfert's, and his calculations that such ejections occur about once every 7 billion years. Note that the 2 billion Seyfert's in the Observable Universe are scattered at random throughout that Universe, and that presumably adjacent Universe's would have a similar random scattering of Seyfert's, as would similar spaces throughout the infinity of existence.

The fact that my calculations indicate that the number of Quasars (proto-galaxies) created (small c) in our small universe per year is approximately equal to the galactic mass burned up by that small universe in that same year should be cause for wonder, not for criticism because the numbers don't match exactly.

To continue:

The Collision of Science and Philosophy. Part 4. Oct. 17, 2005

If we (conditionally) accept the hypothesis that Existence is infinite and eternal, and also accept the need for multiple recycling of material mass and energy mass into new galaxies to prevent entropic death, then it would seem that energy must be more than merely electro-magnetic waves. A concurrent need is the need for a medium to support electro-magnetic waves in the (so-called) vacuum of space, and a means of generating the Cosmological Redshift in that space. An energy medium is required, a medium that is as real as any other entity, one that might be called (at the threat of being be-headed) the aether. Such a medium would be expected to fill all of inter-galactic space, as well as the space that surrounds and penetrates the Earth. It is here, among the Sun’s satellites that additional data is sought.

When I was in high school (eon’s ago) there were only 90 elements, 85 and 87 not having been discovered, and we were told that the earth’s magnetic field was caused by the circulation of a molten iron core, this same activity being cited as the cause of the magnetic fields of all the planets. Being a born again skeptic, I asked the question: “What if these magnetic fields were electro-magnetic in origin, caused by the planetary rotation and an electrical charge on the planet?” By collecting the sizes of the planets, and their rotational rates and directions of rotation, and also the sizes of the planets magnetic fields and the positions of their north-south poles, a charge (in coulombs) was determined for each. Surprisingly, the charges were all positive and very large, and (not necessarily relevant) were related to the surface area of the planet.

The next step was to calculate the capacity of each planet as an isolated spherical capacitor in space, and then, using the Q = CE formula, solve for E. A very large positive voltage was determined for each, and, surprisingly again, the voltages were nominally all of the same magnitude. The conclusion was that the Solar Winds were conveying the positive charges from the Sun, but then the question rose as to why the Sun should have such a high positive charge in the first place. Could it be that the energy leaving the Sun was carrying the negative charge, perhaps as an intrinsic characteristic of that energy along with its mass? This would provide a self-repulsive characteristic to this medium, suggesting that it would expand to fill the space in which it was found, and, that it was compressible. So, how would this intrinsically negative aethereal medium respond to electrons surging back and forth in an antenna?

How this aethereal medium could cause the Cosmological Redshift, precisely as recorded, in a non-expanding Universe will be taken up in Part 5.

Jim Wright S Objectivist Forum 4

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Jim Wright writes:

I quote Arp on only two points, his findings that Quasars are pairs of objects ejected from Seyfert's, and his calculations that such ejections occur about once every 7 billion years. Note that the 2 billion Seyfert's in the Observable Universe are scattered at random throughout that Universe, and that presumably adjacent Universe's would have a similar random scattering of Seyfert's, as would similar spaces throughout the infinity of existence.
Yes, and if they were scattered randomly throughout an infinite universe, then there would be no reason for the ones actually emitting quasars to be at a small number of distinct differences from us, as Arp claims (or is claimed to have claimed).

The fact that my calculations indicate that the number of Quasars (proto-galaxies) created (small c) in our small universe per year is approximately equal to the galactic mass burned up by that small universe in that same year should be cause for wonder, not for criticism because the numbers don't match exactly.

Or it could be a coincidence. Much much more impressive, for example, is that the respective distances and radii of the Sun and the Moon are such that they have almost exactly the same apparent size when viewed from the Earth. That's a much greater cause for wonder, yet it's just a coincidence.

When I was in high school (eon’s ago) there were only 90 elements, 85 and 87 not having been discovered, and we were told that the earth’s magnetic field was caused by the circulation of a molten iron core, this same activity being cited as the cause of the magnetic fields of all the planets.
Your memory's faulty. That means you were in high school between 1925 (when rhenium and neodymium were discovered) and 1939 (the year francium was discovered)--but promethium, element 61, wasn't discovered until it was artifically created in 1945 (after neptunium and plutonium). In which case (indeed, in any case) we have to wonder whether you could have even done what you claim below, since the magnetic fields of the planets weren't accurately measured until space probes passed them.

Being a born again skeptic, I asked the question: “What if these magnetic fields were electro-magnetic in origin, caused by the planetary rotation and an electrical charge on the planet?” By collecting the sizes of the planets, and their rotational rates and directions of rotation, and also the sizes of the planets magnetic fields and the positions of their north-south poles, a charge (in coulombs) was determined for each. Surprisingly, the charges were all positive and very large, and (not necessarily relevant) were related to the surface area of the planet.

Then you haven't thought to be very critical about what you did since then. If the Earth's magnetic field were due to an electric charge on the surface of the Earth inducing a magnetic field because of the Earth's rotation, then the north pole and the north magnetic pole would have to be identical. They're not (nor is the magnetic pole even fixed), and the magnetic and rotational axes of all the other planets except Saturn do not coincide. The magnetic axes of Uranus and Neptune are inclined around 58 and 50 degrees to their axes of rotation, in fact (and Uranus's magnetic axis doesn't pass closer than 30% of the planetary radius to the center of the planet), and the magnetic field of Jupiter is reversed compared to that of the earth at present even though it rotates in the same direction--which you could only explain by its having the opposite charge to the Earth. Moreover, you can't explain the fact that the Earth's magnetic field has reversed 170 times in the past 100 million years.

Nor does it look like you can fit the actual figures to a simple model. The magnetic field of a charged rotating sphere is proportional to the charge density on the surface, the angular velocity, and the fourth power of the radius. For Mars, the radius is 0.53 that of Earth and the period of rotation is almost identical, so if the surface charge densities were similar, you'd expect the magnetic field to be about 6% that of Earth's, whereas it's actually 5 thousand times weaker than Earth's. So perhaps the charge densities decrease as you move away from the Sun, which would make sense if the charges were due to emissions from the Sun. But then you have Venus, with a radius almost that of Earth's and a period of rotation 240 times that of Earth. If the charge density were the same as the Earth's, then the magnetic field would also be about 240 times weaker than the Earth's, but in fact it's 25,000 times weaker, implying a surface charge density 100 times less than that of Earth's. Why such a concentration of charge on the Earth compared to Mars and Venus? It can't be due to distance from the Sun. And one wonders if you even thought to compare the repulsive electrostatic forces between any of the planets relative to their gravitational attraction; quite likely (though I won't bother to work through it) the electrostatic force would be enough to introduce detectable perturbations in planetary orbits, which would provide an independent test of this model of yours.

The conclusion was that the Solar Winds were conveying the positive charges from the Sun, but then the question rose as to why the Sun should have such a high positive charge in the first place. Could it be that the energy leaving the Sun was carrying the negative charge, perhaps as an intrinsic characteristic of that energy along with its mass? This would provide a self-repulsive characteristic to this medium, suggesting that it would expand to fill the space in which it was found, and, that it was compressible. So, how would this intrinsically negative aethereal medium respond to electrons surging back and forth in an antenna?

Have you taken leave of every trace of your critical faculties? Solar radiation carrying negative charge? Physicists have actually tested repeatedly for whether photons are charged; the latest result I know of (from a couple of years ago) is that the charge must be less than 10^(-21)e. And if they have a negative charge, then charge conservation pretty much requires that they have an antiparticle, yet no trace of a distinct antiphoton has been found. More than that, radiation is constantly being absorbed and emitted by matter, and the charge would have to end up on the matter in being absorbed. Therefore, one should be able to observe fractional charges, yet assiduous search for them has come up negative. The trouble with people who brag about being "natural born skeptics" is that they're only skeptical of other people's ideas; their own ideas so often tend to be held together with spit and kleenex.

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The trouble with people who brag about being "natural born skeptics" is that they're only skeptical of other people's ideas; their own ideas so often tend to be held together with spit and kleenex.

Adrian:

You’re rejecting my hypothesis in re the magnetic fields of our planets too quickly. First of all, a moving charge is necessary to produce a magnetic field and, whether the location of the charge is in the iron core or on the surface of the planet, such a charge must exist. Secondly, my basic premise is true, i.e., that “if the planets were charged they would, as a result of their rotation, produce a magnetic field“.

It is also true that a simple electro-magnetic field would coincide with the rotational axis of the planet, but suppose that there were a primordial magnetic field impressed on the Earth when it was cooling down and remaining in place since then as a permanent magnet with it’s poles about 16 degrees beyond our present magnetic field and 32 degrees from our rotational axis? Would not this (semi?) permanent magnetic field and the present electro-magnet field add together to produce the magnetic field to which our compasses point?

The advent of asteroids could easily have shifted the Earth’s rotational axis a number of times, ending up with the 32 degree difference. With Mar’s, the story is the same, except the rotational axis would have been shifted by a net of about 180 degrees causing near total cancellation of fields, leaving no good way of calculating it‘s field strength. With Venus, there is no problem except that it’s rotational rate is 243 Earth days and it’s field should be expected to be about that much smaller than Earth’s.

If the energy leaving the Stars is to be recycled, it obviously must be more substantial than simple photons. Can you not conceive of an energy medium in which the electro-magnetic waves move and which, being negative, generates the transverse movement that we see?

Why would not the rotating Earth be a effectively a single-turn solenoid subject to the H = 0.2 x pi x I/R formula? We already have H and R.

Crawl out of your box, Adrian. You might find it to be exciting, and not at all Kleenex and spit.

Jim Wright S Objectivist Forum 4-1

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You’re rejecting my hypothesis in re the magnetic fields of our planets too quickly. First of all, a moving charge is necessary to produce a magnetic field and, whether the location of the charge is in the iron core or on the surface of the planet, such a charge must exist. Secondly, my basic premise is true, i.e., that “if the planets were charged they would, as a result of their rotation, produce a magnetic field“.

But the source of the charge would be entirely different. You're positing a positive charge due to emissions from the Sun. You have no evidence for this charge even existing, whereas it's clear that the interior of the Earth is molten, from which fact the theory of planetary magnetism you're tilting against immediately follows.

It is also true that a simple electro-magnetic field would coincide with the rotational axis of the planet, but suppose that there were a primordial magnetic field impressed on the Earth when it was cooling down and remaining in place since then as a permanent magnet with it’s poles about 16 degrees beyond our present magnetic field and 32 degrees from our rotational axis?

So are you now claiming in addition that the interior of the Earth is not molten?

The advent of asteroids could easily have shifted the Earth’s rotational axis a number of times, ending up with the 32 degree difference.

Perhaps you should bone up on the basics of gyroscopic motion. An impulse applied to a rotating rigid body causes changes in the orientation of the axis of rotation (precession, etc.) relative to an inertial field, not relative to the body itself. In short, the axis of the permanent magnet you've posited would move along with the axis of rotation.

If the energy leaving the Stars is to be recycled, it obviously must be more substantial than simple photons. Can you not conceive of an energy medium in which the electro-magnetic waves move and which, being negative, generates the transverse movement that we see?

Why should I bother? You haven't shown the need to assume its existence.

Why would not the rotating Earth be a effectively a single-turn solenoid subject to the H = 0.2 x pi x I/R formula? We already have H and R.

Why use oversimplified models like that when you have the actual equation for the magnetic field of a rotating charged sphere?

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Crawl out of your box, Adrian.

A typical rhetorical ploy among cranks and hacks. What box? I've paid you the respect of taking your ideas seriously and trying to figure out how they hang together and what evidence you could provide for them, and, alas, they came up lacking. They fly in the face of pretty basic physics and well-known astronomical knowledge and have illogical implications, and I pointed these out to you in detail. So now what am I supposed to do, scrap my critical faculties and put my reason on hold--and why, because it might be exciting? That's your best answer to reasoned criticism, don't be so details-oriented, scientific, and rational? Don't focus on the details and just go with the flow while it all hangs out? "Crawl out of your box" is a confession of intellectual bankruptcy and a sneering insult at my intelligence and integrity. Perhaps instead you should crawl back in your hole.

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A typical rhetorical ploy among cranks and hacks. What box? I've paid you the respect of taking your ideas seriously and trying to figure out how they hang together and what evidence you could provide for them, and, alas, they came up lacking. They fly in the face of pretty basic physics and well-known astronomical knowledge and have illogical implications, and I pointed these out to you in detail. So now what am I supposed to do, scrap my critical faculties and put my reason on hold--and why, because it might be exciting? That's your best answer to reasoned criticism, don't be so details-oriented, scientific, and rational? Don't focus on the details and just go with the flow while it all hangs out? "Crawl out of your box" is a confession of intellectual bankruptcy and a sneering insult at my intelligence and integrity. Perhaps instead you should crawl back in your hole.

Adrian: I meant no insult by my "Crawl out of yor box." comment, and I do fully appreciate your intelligence and integrity. When I talk with Muslim's or devout Christians I discover that they can't conceive of a world without a God. The same seems true when I talk with many scientists--they seemingly can't (or won't) bother think "outside the box" in which their learning has put them. "Conventional Wisdom", I think it's called---not to be challenged. Halton Arp has been ostracized by acedemia for daring to challenge the status quo. It seems that most of his contemporaries are literally afraid of being linked to him! Objectivism has it's own version. If you dare to question Piekoll, et al, you are no longer welcome

What I am doing (or trying to do) is to identify the problems that I see all around me and to look for answers that are plausible, at least more plausible than those given. Interestingly, the tentative solutions devised always seemto present new problems.

It started when I rejected The Expanding Universe (substituting an infinite and eternal Existence, with these terms meant literally) and was faced with the question of how the Cosmological Redshift was formed. This called for a medium in space which supported the transmission of electro-magnetic waves and which was effectively increasing in density at a constant rate. This raised two questions, what could such a medium possibly be made of, and if it were constantly increasing in density, given an eternity of activity, why had it not become a solid an eternity ago? Etc., etc., etc.

Some fifty years ago I read a report by a scientist who had been involved in the atomic tests at Los Alamos who spoke of a strange and massive assymetrical inrush of negative charge concurrent with the blasts. This was generally dismissed as part of the EMP and apparently not investigated further. My attempts to find any references to such an "inrush", or to it's part in the EMP, have been futile (seemingly much that was learned was later classified). In thinking about it I surmised that the blast, in some way, consumed negative charge and carried it away.

This possibility led to the realization that the Sun, being an atomic furnace that converted mass into energy, might also be consuming negative charge and, if so, would drive itself positive. This would cause the solar winds to be positive (not just a neutral ionized mixture of protons and electrons) and that, in turn, they would draw electrons off the planets, leaving them all positively charged. If so, the direction of the planet's rotation would determine where it's North/South would (should) be. The fact that few of the planet's magnetic fields are precisely aligned with their rotational axis is annoying but if one realizes that the size of the magnetic field, if not too far from alignment, can still be used to roughly calculate its electrical charge and its polarity, and to compare this result with the "should be" charge of the earlier hypothesis. It is important to look at the whole picture, not just the Earth, and to realize that, in this study, all the planets are immersed in a solar wind atmosphere that has the same potential as the planets, and that a Faraday Cage effect should be expected. If a planet did not rotate it would have neither an electro-magnetic nor electro-static field.

Returning to the energy leaving the Sun, we have already accepted that it has a mass component, and now add (for argument sake) that it carries a negative charge, not as a charge, per se, but as an intrinsic negativeness. If this energy (this aether) is adding to vast amounts of such aether already in space, we have a medium which is constantly growing in density, and one which will support electro-magnetic wave propagation, giving such waves their transverse characteristic.

In Part 3 of my postings I calculated an equality of equivalent galaxies burned up per year in our Observable Universe vs the number of new galaxies ejected into that same universe per year by the mechanism determined by Arp. Such an equality of galaxies constitutes a cycle wherein material mass and energy mass is constantly being recycled and, so, provides for an eternity of existence.

Adrian, I would like to invite you, and/or others who may be following this exchange, to look at the problems that I identify and, if they are real, propose your own solutions to them, or follow my lead and tell me where I am wrong.

Jim Wright

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From the previous Post:

In Part 3 of my postings I calculated an equality of equivalent galaxies burned up per year in our Observable Universe vs the number of new galaxies ejected into that same universe per year by the mechanism determined by Arp. Such an equality of galaxies constitutes a cycle wherein material mass and energy mass is constantly being recycled and, so, provides for an eternity of existence.

Continuation:

Note that the birth of the new galaxy takes place in a very brief period of time, whereas the ejection of a galaxy-equivalent by the burning of stars requires many billions of years. It is believed that within the asymmetry of these activities lies the mechanism that makes possible the (effective) constant increase in aetheal (energy) density that generates the cosmological redshaift without runing into problems. Recall that the redshift is the result of a compounding over distance, e.g.,:

Observed Freq. = Source Freq. (1+R)^t, with R bing the rate of change and t being the distance of travel, in 1 sec. increments.

Effects of such an energy on Earth.

IF the energy has the properties as proposed earlier, there should be corresponding and observable effects in electronics. The property of particular interest is its negativeness, to which I add self-repulsiveness and compressibility (characteristics implicit it its increasing density in space). Consider a two-plate capacitor with plate separation of two inches and plate area of 100 inches, which we charge to 10,000 volts, all in a vacuum jar. A negative aether-energy will be attracted to the positive plate and repelled by the negative plate, forming a volume of increased density aether around the positive plate and of decreased density aether around the negative plate. Between the two plate there will be an aethereal density gradient which becomes a part of the capacitor's charge. The two plates will be attracted towards each other, of course. On the outside of the negative plate there will be repulsion between the outlying aether and the negative plate. On the outside of the positive plate there will be an attraction between the outlying aether and that plate. The net force on the capacitor, as a whole, will tend to push it in the direction that the positive plate is facing. Some will recognize this as the Biefeld-Brown Effect.

My tests of this Effect, using a ~45 Sq. In. capacitor made of balsa wood and aluminum foil did give me deflection in the direction that the positive plate was facing (with a force porportional to the voltage use) but I could not be sure that the movement was not due to ion winds. One test result that was totally unexpected was: By keeping the voltage constant at about 10kv and gradually separating the plates the deflection force increased! ???? The actual charge on the capacitor declined, of course. (The capacitor was suspended with two long threads, and the wires used to apply the voltage were very fine and arranged so as not to affect the movement.)

A second capacitor analysis has to do with the permeability and permittivity of the aether. The above 100 sq. in. capacitor will have a certain capacity when placed in a vacuum. If we add air the capacity goes up by about 1.0005, and when we realize that the aether is still there (99.999%) it appears that the air contributes only the 0.0005 and the aether still contributes the 1.000. Do the same with Teflon, which has a relative dielectric constant of about 2.0. Again the aether is still present within and between the atoms of Teflon, so the Teflon's contribution is only 1.0 and the aether the second 1.0. The dielectric's are not taking the place of the aether, which is seemingly as real as the dielectrics.

Consider an antenna, a dipole with electrons surging from end to end. How will a negative aether react to this oscillation of charge?

And, finally, consider the electron flow through the coils of an electro-magnet. Again, how will a negative aether react?

Jim Wright

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  • 4 months later...

Hey Rich Rahl or anyone reading,

When it comes to all theories of creation and the origin of the universe, I am pretty open minded. I am in the position where I want to get as many FACTS as possible. I would judge myself to be rational person in most all of my desicion making. I've heard about the big bang theory, how maybe the universe at one time or many times throughout history would have just imploded on itself and later the "bang" happened. A theory could be that this has actually happened a limitless number of times, starting the life essence of the universe over and over again. I could buy that. I have decided to to take nothing as my desicion of truth, since any theory, to this date, is completely and utterly improvable. Another may be that there was just one initial "bang". Similiar to the previous. I could buy that too. Anyway, there are many theories out there. I myself do infact believe in god. However, that doesn't mean I have a certain closed mind, as many religious people would have the stereo-type of having. I infact do believe in evolution. Maybe not in the exact ways that some believe. But of any question I have had none can answer this one. It doesn't matter which way you go about it. Something cannot come from absolute nothingness. Something being anything that indeed exists. i.e.- If I took a box, say a magic box, void of anything, even on the atomic level. That had absolutely nothing inside of it. It wouldn't matter if I waited a year or 100 billion years, there would never ever be anything in that box. Not even some kind of sub-atomic particle would form. It just wouldn't happen. So no matter what the universe started out as or no matter how simply constructed it has ever been, it has indeed been something or composed of something. So where did this something come from. In this sense I believe God or some superbeing comes into play. and if you ask the question well where did god come from then? I could only say this. Something can indeed not come from nothing, so the only way anything could be there is if it was not bound by laws in our sense. This something would have to work outside of the physical laws in our universe. In a sense, being all-powerful. In our existence, everything is governed by laws. Hence why something just can't appear from nothing. The only thing that could trully disprove the existence of the superbeing is if there were actually no existence anywhere. However, we are indeed here with the rest of our universe. Therefore, something above our working laws of physics must be or has been at work.

thank you for reading I would appreciate any comments.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have a question about religion in a sense. From the objectivst viewpoint, or anyones individual opinions, where does the universe originate from. Not just the universe, but all matter in any sense of the word. Whether it be the smallest speck in the beginning er I don't know. I would appreciate some posts on perspectives.

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Here is a reply to Dmoneys question that was originally part of another post in a different thread:

Objectivism, drawing on its Aristotelian roots, denies that the universe originated at all. It is eternal, and to even ask the question, "Where did it come from?" posits the existence of a non-existence prior to the origination. It's a meaningless question, since it smuggles a contradiction into any act of contemplating it.

The idea of the universe having been created is a uniquely Judaeo-Christian thing. Prior to Judaism, it had never occured to any (western) thinker that the universe was anything other than eternal. In fact, as early as Parmenides, the Greeks rejected the question on the grounds I stated above.

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Plato argued that the universe was created, and I doubt it was due to Jewish influence. I think the Mespotamians and Sumerians believed in the creation of the physical universe (which is the same as the Christians, since they believe God/heaven pre-existed the physical spatio-temporal universe created in Genesis - its technically wrong to say that Christians think the world came out of nothing). Most cultures have their own cosmogonies; to claim that its a purely Jewish notion is strange. Edited by Hal
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Plato did not claim that the universe was created, even according to the wikipedia link you gave. Plato's Demiurge did not create the universe, but organized something which already existed.

The wikipedia entry has a sub-heading, "Why the Universe Was Created," but here is a direct quote from that: "It is important to note that for Plato, the demiurge lacked the supernatural ability to create 'ex nihilo' or out of nothing. The demiurge was able to only organize the 'anake.'"

Most cultures do have their cosmologies, but in western culture, no thinker (that there is record of, anyway) ever held to the idea that the universe was created until Juedaeo-Christian philosophy. As far as whatever the primitive religions of Mesoptamia and Sumeria believed in, I can't say. The context of my comments was the history of Western philosophy.

Whether or not, in Christianity, the heavens existed prior to creation is irrelevant, unless the dogma states that the universe was created by rearranging elements of the heavens. That isn't my understanding of what they say though. As I understand it, God was supposed to have said, "Let there be such-and-such," and then there was such-and-such.

Edited to add the last paragraph.

Edited by dondigitalia
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Dmoney: That's not a meaningful question because you are essentially asking "Where did reality come from?" Since the universe is everything that exists, it could not have come from somehere else. It has always existed and always will.

But there is no such current scientific dogma. The idea of creating something from nothing is not part of the scientific theory of a "Big Bang".

Unfortunately the idea that "Big Bang" = "creation of something from nothing" seems to be a very common misconception among Objectivists, perhaps due to people not trained in physics learning about cosmology from misleading "pop sci" books.

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Unfortunately the idea that "Big Bang" = "creation of something from nothing" seems to be a very common misconception among Objectivists, perhaps due to people not trained in physics learning about cosmology from misleading "pop sci" books.

Every quote from every actual scientist that *I* have ever read or heard indicates that the (philosophically absurd) idea of the "Big Bang" is exactly creation ex-nihilo. Who, and what theory, says otherwise? References please.

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Every quote from every actual scientist that *I* have ever read or heard indicates that the (philosophically absurd) idea of the "Big Bang" is exactly creation ex-nihilo. Who, and what theory, says otherwise? References please.
Needless to say, the logic of that request needs a bit of fleshing out. For example, if the idea is so absurd that it has never been addressed by any responsible cosmologist, then you won't find any declarations otherwise. Do you have a reference for a credible cosmologist / physicist saying that the Big Bang theory entails creation ex nihilo? Page numbers?
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Needless to say, the logic of that request needs a bit of fleshing out. For example, if the idea is so absurd that it has never been addressed by any responsible cosmologist, then you won't find any declarations otherwise. Do you have a reference for a credible cosmologist / physicist saying that the Big Bang theory entails creation ex nihilo? Page numbers?

No - simply almost every single thing I've ever heard/read about it. :pirate: (There are a few exceptions, such as the notion that our universe is one among an infinitude and just a bubble embedded in some larger super-universe, but this is equally arbitrary.)

Consideration of the idea as absurd is from an Objectivist standpoint, which is not exactly common among cosmologists. There are good arguments that black holes, as currently presented as an outgrowth of Einstein's General Relativity, are also absurd because of the central singularity idea which implies a zero volume of the black hole - but you will not find many physicists disputing black holes. (The Big Bang notion also relies on the idea of the entire universe starting from a singularity, i.e. zero volume, and if that isn't "ex nihilo" what is??)

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Here is one explanation, admittedly more carefully worded than most:

"The Big Bang Model is a broadly accepted theory for the origin and evolution of our universe. It postulates that 12 to 14 billion years ago, the portion of the universe we can see today was only a few millimeters across. It has since expanded from this hot dense state into the vast and much cooler cosmos we currently inhabit. We can see remnants of this hot dense matter as the now very cold cosmic microwave background radiation which still pervades the universe and is visible to microwave detectors as a uniform glow across the entire sky."

(http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101bb1.html)

Properly described, the Big Bang theory does not say that the Universe began with the Big Bang (just its current form) or that it was ever infinitely small.

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If anybody really wants to defend the patent absurdity of the entire universe - not just matter, but space itself - "expanding" from a singularity (no, not just "a few millimeters", which is silly enough, but a literal zero volume), feel free. If you want some excellent context and commentary from an Objectivist scientist (Stephen Speicher) however, I commend you to this thread: http://forums.4aynrandfans.com/index.php?s...indpost&p=15699

But regardless, the essential idea of an "expanding universe" necessarily implies creation ex-nihilo. From, and into, *what*, is the universe expanding?

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From, and into, *what*, is the universe expanding?

The expansion of the universe simply means that the distances between clusters of galaxies are increasing. It is meaningless to ask from where or into what the expansion is moving. What is happening is that the gravitational field, which is the existent which causes distance and duration to exist, is changing itself in accordance with the General Theory of Relativity.

Edit: Actually, I should say that the gravitational field *IS* distance and duration. The gravitational force is just a side-effect.

Edited by jrs
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There is a big difference between "a few millimeters" and "a literal zero volume." The latter is impossible, the former isn't.

The idea that the universe must have expanded into some already existing space (like a grenade exploding in a room) is another very common misconception. Space is within the universe, not the other way around. Note that rejecting the Big Bang theory, by the way, doesn't solve this "problem." If the universe was static, you could still have the misconception that the universe had some sort of boundary and that there was something ouside it.

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