Cont: Why James Webb Telescope rewrites/doesn't the laws of Physics/Redshifts (2)

[Mike Helland]

Mike Helland has yet to notice that four of those Christoffel symbols blow up at r=0.

So what? That's the tip of a cone. It has singularities.

It's special because it's the only point on the manifold that represents the present.

 

[Mike Helland]

Mike Helland has not yet calculated the Ricci scalar at r=0. In his defense, it takes some knowledge of calculus to calculate the Ricci scalar at r=0, because naive symbol-pushing leads to subtracting infinity from infinity. If Mike Helland were able to compute limits, however, he'd find that the Ricci scalar converges toward minus infinity at r=0.

That's all true for vanilla radial coordinates.

 

[Mike Helland]

That's all true for vanilla radial coordinates.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_76218654d8ab240e0f.png[/qimg]

I messed up.

I had theta and phi switched somewhere.

The vanilla should be completely empty. So I managed to fix that.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

So what? That's the tip of a cone. It has singularities.

It's special because it's the only point on the manifold that represents the present.

Yes, the Helland universe (as defined by the metric form of 2 November, one week ago) has a curvature singularity at r=0.

With my highlighting:

Mike Helland has not yet calculated the Ricci scalar at r=0. In his defense, it takes some knowledge of calculus to calculate the Ricci scalar at r=0, because naive symbol-pushing leads to subtracting infinity from infinity. If Mike Helland were able to compute limits, however, he'd find that the Ricci scalar converges toward minus infinity at r=0.

That's all true for vanilla radial coordinates.

The words I highlighted are false. I got the sign of the Ricci scalar wrong. The Ricci scalar actually converges toward positive infinity as r approaches zero.

As became clear in his subsequent posts, when Mike Helland wrote "vanilla radial coordinates", he was talking about using spherical spatial coordinates to express the Minkowski metric. So Mike Helland was saying the Minkowski metric has infinite curvature at r=0.

That is not true.

Mike Helland corrected himself here:

I messed up.

I had theta and phi switched somewhere.

The vanilla should be completely empty. So I managed to fix that.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_76218654d9ce696c22.png[/qimg]

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_76218654d9d4278be8.png[/qimg]

As seen in the second of those screenshots, the Ricci scalar of the Helland universe is

R = −4H / ((Hr − c) r)​

which is more usefully written as

R = 4H / ((c − Hr) r)​

(From that, readers can probably guess how I got the sign wrong.)

It doesn't describe a "universe". That's called a strawman.

It describes observed reality, which is in the shape of a past light cone.

What Mike Helland wrote there is called ignorance.

One week ago, Mike Helland posted his most recent wild guess at a metric form that he hoped would be compatible with his ever-changing conception of Helland physics. The whole point of a metric form is to express the metric tensor field of a differentiable manifold.

As I explained at some length one week ago:

The pseudo-Riemannian metric of a spacetime manifold doesn't tell us everything we might want to know about the manifold, but it does tell us enough to derive several important facts about the manifold.​

It is the metric tensor field of a spacetime manifold that determines a light cone for every event of the manifold.

There is no such thing as a light cone without a manifold.

Mike Helland is trying to convince us his metric form describes a light cone but does not describe a manifold. That's just stupid.

 

[Mike Helland]

Mike Helland is trying to convince us his metric form describes a light cone but does not describe a manifold. That's just stupid.

It does describe a manifold.

It has two horizons.

One at r=c/H.

That's the farthest back we can see.

In my model, an observer will see the same general universe, whether they look today, or 50 billions years ago, or 50 billion years from now.

They see out to ~14 billion light years in space. At that distance, z=infinity so what's happening there is time dilated by infinity. Light from there never reaches us.

The second horizon is the farthest forward we can see. The future isn't part of this manifold.

Given its horizons, it seems pretty clear this metric is describing an observer's past light cone. The light cone can be described as a manifold in it's own right, can't it?

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Mike Helland is trying to convince us his metric form describes a light cone but does not describe a manifold. That's just stupid.

It does describe a manifold.

The spacetime manifold it describes is what I refer to as the Helland universe (as of 2 November 2023, because the Helland universe changes every time Mike Helland makes yet another wild guess at a metric form for the Helland universe).

It is convenient and traditional to refer to metrics and spacetime manifolds that model the universe by attaching the name of the person who proposed the model: de Sitter universe, Einstein universe, Gödel universe, etc.

Mike Helland objects to that well-established convention, calling it a "strawman".

It doesn't describe a "universe". That's called a strawman.

As Mike Helland admitted a few hours ago, the Helland metric (of 2 November 2023) describes a spacetime manifold. That spacetime manifold is a mathematical model of a universe, so the Helland metric describes a Helland universe.

To describe Mike Helland's objections to the word "universe" as sophomoric would be an insult to sophomores tripping on psychedelics.

Within the next few hours, I will state and prove several bizarre properties of the Helland universe (early November version).

 

[Ziggurat]

Actual distance would be how many rigid meter sticks it takes to get from one place to another, at a moment frozen in time.

That's proper distance.

Still not unique. "A moment" requires a choice of reference frame, and that's not unique, not even in special relativity. How many rigid rulers you could fit between two places (technically, two world lines) is likewise going to depend on the rest frames of those rulers, which is also not unique.

After all this time, you still don't understand any of this, even the basics.

So what's the rest of the story? What are the other ways of measuring actual distance?

The distance measured along the path of the light is one obvious alternative measurement of distance.

My point isn't that it's wrong to use proper distance. Proper distance is a really useful measure. My point is that you keep revealing that at the most basic levels, you don't actually understand any of what you're working with. You've never taken the time to actually learn this stuff. You're doing cargo cult science, replicating superficial forms without any of the understanding required to make it work.

 

[Roboramma]

Actual distance would be how many rigid meter sticks it takes to get from one place to another, at a moment frozen in time.

That's proper distance.

I think you know better than this. Different observers will disagree about which moment of time at point A is synchronous with which moment at point B.

If you want to define an invariant distance between events, you can do that, but that's a different issue.

Alice is on a train and wants to measure the length of the platform. She stands at the front of the train. When the train comes to the end of the platform, she checks her watch. She then goes back down the train and asks her friends which of them was passing the other end of the platform at exactly that time. Since she's got a rigid set of meter sticks extending down the train, from the front to the back, she can see exactly how far it was from where she was at one end of the platform to her friend who was, at that moment, at the other end.

There is another set of meter sticks on that platform.

The length measured on the platform is longer than the length that Alice measures.

Yet both sets of meter sticks are measuring the same length using the same procedure you've outlined. If they are both measuring the "actual" distance, how is it that they disagree?

(Again, if we were talking about measuring a distance between spacetime events, which is what I originally assumed you meant, then we can get an invariant that both people on the platform and people on the train would agree about, but that's not what you defined)

 

[Mike Helland]

Still not unique. "A moment" requires a choice of reference frame, and that's not unique, not even in special relativity. How many rigid rulers you could fit between two places (technically, two world lines) is likewise going to depend on the rest frames of those rulers, which is also not unique.

After all this time, you still don't understand any of this, even the basics.

The distance measured along the path of the light is one obvious alternative measurement of distance.

My point isn't that it's wrong to use proper distance. Proper distance is a really useful measure. My point is that you keep revealing that at the most basic levels, you don't actually understand any of what you're working with. You've never taken the time to actually learn this stuff. You're doing cargo cult science, replicating superficial forms without any of the understanding required to make it work.

Are you talking about length contraction in special relativity?

In FLRW, the universe is represented as a perfect fluid, perfectly homogeneous everywhere. The only motion possible is a result of the pressure and density of the fluid, which is uniform at all points.

When you start slicing time the way FLRW wants you to, the proper distance in one frame of reference is the same in all frames of reference.

 

[Mike Helland]

I think you know better than this. Different observers will disagree about which moment of time at point A is synchronous with which moment at point B.

If you want to define an invariant distance between events, you can do that, but that's a different issue.

Alice is on a train and wants to measure the length of the platform. She stands at the front of the train. When the train comes to the end of the platform, she checks her watch. She then goes back down the train and asks her friends which of them was passing the other end of the platform at exactly that time. Since she's got a rigid set of meter sticks extending down the train, from the front to the back, she can see exactly how far it was from where she was at one end of the platform to her friend who was, at that moment, at the other end.

There is another set of meter sticks on that platform.

The length measured on the platform is longer than the length that Alice measures.

Yet both sets of meter sticks are measuring the same length using the same procedure you've outlined. If they are both measuring the "actual" distance, how is it that they disagree?

(Again, if we were talking about measuring a distance between spacetime events, which is what I originally assumed you meant, then we can get an invariant that both people on the platform and people on the train would agree about, but that's not what you defined)

I understand the point but worldlines in the expanding universe look like this:

Here the observer is the line in the middle. If you instead rewind time for any other worldline, let's say 5 to the left were at the origin, the result would be the same. All distances become 0 at the big bang, and every distance at a given time t will be identical in both frames of reference.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

the Helland universe (as of 2 November 2023)

[size=+1]Abstract.[/size]

The Helland universe analyzed herein is defined by the metric tensor field Mike Helland proposed on 2 November 2023, which replaced his previous best guess of 26 October. Using the same techniques I used to analyze that 26 October version of the Helland universe, this note derives the following consequences of the 2 November version of the Helland metric:

• The Helland universe is static in these three senses:
  1. Its metric tensor field does not change over time.
  2. Its curvature tensor field does not change over time.
  3. Its distributions of mass-energy and pressure do not change over time.
  The second and third of those are of course immediate consequences of the first.
  
  
• The Helland universe is geocentric in the following sense: Its spatial slices are spherically symmetric around a central point whose physical properties distinguish it from all other points of space.
  
  
• The Helland universe has a curvature singularity at that central point.
  
  
• If the cosmological constant is zero, then the mass-energy density is zero throughout the Helland universe.
  
  
• If the cosmological constant is positive, then the mass-energy density is negative throughout the Helland universe. That density is most negative at the center of the Helland universe, dropping to zero as Hr approaches c.
  
  
• If the cosmological constant is negative, then the mass-energy density is positive throughout the Helland universe. That density is greatest at the center of the Helland universe, dropping to zero as Hr approaches c.
  
  
• At the center of the Helland universe, the pressure is negative infinity, regardless of the cosmological constant. That means the center of the Helland universe, where Mike Helland imagines us to be, is uninhabitable.
  
  
• If the cosmological constant is zero or negative, then the pressure is negative throughout the Helland universe.
  
  
• If the cosmological constant is positive, then the pressure is negative throughout a region centered on the Helland universe's center, but becomes positive as Hr approaches c.
  
  
• The infinitely negative pressure at the center of the Helland universe means the center of the Helland universe is undergoing unimaginably rapid inflation/expansion, contradicting the static universe asserted by the Helland metric form.
  
  
• The static universe implied by the Helland metric is not consistent with Einstein's general theory of relativity, because a universe with the Helland universe's distribution of pressure would not be static.

[size=+1]Outline.[/size]

• Abstract.
• Outline.
• The Helland universe in spherical coordinates.
  • The Helland metric form
  • Ricci curvature tensor
  • Ricci scalar
  • Mass-energy density
  • Pressure
• The Helland universe in Cartesian coordinates.
• Summary of conclusions.

[size=+1]The Helland universe in Cartesian coordinates.[/size]

The Helland metric form

On 2 November, Mike Helland stated this new guess at a metric form for the Helland universe.

Working on this a little more with some other people, and it seems to be the right line element is:

http://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex? ds^2 = -(1-\frac{rH}{c})^{2} c^2 dt^2 + dr^2 + r^2 d\theta^2 + r^2\sin^2 (\theta) d\psi^2​

That makes sense intuitively that a tiny change in time multiplied 1/(1+z) equals the tiny change in space. The tiny change in space times (1+z) equals the tiny change in time.

Which is nice because that simplifies:

http://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?g_{tt} = -(1-\frac{rH}{c})^{2} c^2

http://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?g_{tt} = -\left(\frac{c- rH}{c}\right)^{2} c^2

http://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?g_{tt} = -(c- rH)^2

That metric form implicitly restricts the radial coordinate r to the range 0 ≤ r < c/H.

Note well that the H of Mike Helland's metric form has absolutely nothing to do with the Hubble parameter or Hubble constant of mainstream cosmology, in which H expresses the rate at which the universe is expanding. The Helland metric describes a universe that is not expanding, which implies H=0 if the meaning of H is taken to be either the Hubble parameter or the Hubble constant.

In the Helland metric, H is an arbitrary positive constant. The author and sole proponent of Helland physics wants the value of H to be about 14 billion years, so he can pretend the Helland universe might have something to do with the Hubble radius, but the analysis and conclusions of this note are totally indifferent to the value of H.

Components of the metric tensor are coordinate-dependent. With the spherical spatial coordinates of the Helland metric form, the off-diagonal components are zero and the diagonal components are

g_tt = − (c − Hr)²g_rr = 1
g_θθ = r²g_φφ = r² sin² θ​

Ricci curvature tensor

Components of the Ricci curvature tensor are coordinate-dependent. Mike Helland has used the EinsteinPy software to calculate those components for the spherical coordinate system he used in his metric form. In that coordinate system, all off-diagonal components of the Ricci tensor are zero. The diagonal components are

R_tt = − 2 H (c − Hr) / r
R_rr = 0
R_θθ = H r / (c − Hr)
R_φφ = (H r sin² θ) / (c − Hr)​

Note that R_tt converges to negative infinity as r approaches zero, while all other components of the Ricci tensor remain finite.

That implies a curvature singularity at r=0.

That singularity is not just a coordinate singularity, as can be confirmed by converting the Helland metric form to use Cartesian coordinates.


Ricci scalar

The Ricci curvature scalar does not depend on the coordinate system. For the Helland universe, the Ricci scalar is

R = gⁱⁱR_ii = 4 H / ((c − Hr) r)​

The Ricci scalar is positive throughout the Helland universe, and converges to positive infinity (i.e. increases without bound) as r approaches zero.

In other words, the curvature blows up at r=0. That is a curvature singularity.

That curvature singularity at r=0 says an observer situated at the center of the Helland universe is experiencing unimaginably extreme physical forces. The next two subsections analyze the nature of those forces.

Already, however, we can see that the center of the Helland universe is uninhabitable.


Mass-energy density

Einstein's field equations say

R_μν − ½ R g_μν + Λ g_μν = κ T_μν​

where κ = 8πG/c⁴ is Einstein's gravitational constant, with a numerical value of about κ = 2.077 × 10⁻⁴³ s²/(kg m).

Taking both μ and ν to be t, we get the equation for the mass-energy density T_tt:

R_tt − ½ R g_tt + Λ g_tt = κ T_tt​

Using the values of R_tt and R computed from the g_μν components by the EinsteinPy software, we find that

R_tt = ½ R g_tt​

so the first two terms cancel. The mass-energy density of the Helland universe is therefore proportional to

Λ g_tt = − (c − Hr)² Λ​

If the cosmological constant Λ is zero, then the Helland universe contains no matter or energy.

That surprised me. Yesterday I claimed the Helland "metric form says he and we reside at the singularity of a black hole." I was mistaken.

As seen in the next subsection, the center of the Helland universe is even more bizarre than a black hole.


Pressure

Einstein's field equations give us this equation for the pressure T_rr:

R_rr − ½ R g_rr + Λ g_rr = κ T_rr​

Plugging in the values of R_rr, R, and g_rr tells us the pressure at a distance r from the center of the Helland universe is proportional to

− 2 H / ((c − Hr) r) + Λ​

The center of the Helland universe is experiencing infinitely negative pressure, regardless of the value of the cosmological constant.

Gravitationally, positive pressure acts a lot like mass-energy and would work against expansion of the universe. Negative pressure acts like negative gravity, and therefore contributes to expansion of the universe.

The infinitely negative pressure at the center of the Helland universe acts like a repulsive gravitational field of infinite strength.

The center of the Helland universe is therefore uninhabitable.

Because of that unimaginably negative pressure, the central portions of the Helland universe should be expanding at an unimaginably rapid rate.

But the Helland metric form says the Helland universe is static. That means the Helland metric form is not consistent with general relativity.


[size=+1]The Helland universe in Cartesian coordinates.[/size]

As I explained 8 days ago, all spherical coordinate systems have coordinate singularities. One of those coordinate singularities occurs at r=0.

Because of that coordinate singularity at the central and most interesting point of the Helland universe, I did not bother to use the spherical coordinates of the Helland metric form to calculate components of the Ricci scalar. My first move was to transform the Helland metric to the Cartesian coordinate system (τ, x, y, z) via

τ = c t
x = r sin θ cos φ
y = r sin θ sin φ
z = r cos θ​

In that coordinate system, the Helland metric is

ds² = − (1 − f(x, y, z))² dτ² + dx² + dy² + dz²​

where f(x, y, z) is the function of spatial coordinates defined by

0 ≤ f(x, y, z) = (H/c) sqrt(x² + y² + z²) < 1​

Because my primary interest in Helland physics is as a source of exercises in first-year calculus, I calculated the 64 coordinate-dependent Christoffel symbols by hand, finding that only 9 of the Christoffel symbols are non-zero: Γ^t_tx = Γ^t_xt, Γ^t_ty = Γ^t_yt, Γ^t_tz = Γ^t_zt, and

Γ^x_tt = (H/c)² ((1 − f(x, y, z)) x) / (f(x, y, z))
Γ^y_tt = (H/c)² ((1 − f(x, y, z)) y) / (f(x, y, z))
Γ^z_tt = (H/c)² ((1 − f(x, y, z)) z) / (f(x, y, z))​

To calculate components of the Ricci tensor, it is necessary to calculate the partial derivatives of those nonzero Christoffel symbols. Upon doing so, I saw that three of those partial derivatives blow up at the center of the Helland universe, signalling a probable curvature singularity.

Instead of boring you (and me as well) by typesetting those partial derivatives, I'm going to offer the intuitive reason for that curvature singularity.

In Cartesian coordinates,

g_ττ = − (1 − f(x, y, z))²​

To focus our attention on what happens in the vicinity of x=0, we can set y=z=0, for which the equation above becomes

g_ττ = − (1 − (H/c) sqrt(x²))²​

It would be easy to make the mistake of thinking sqrt(x²) = x, but that isn't true when x is negative. The correct relationship is sqrt(x²) = |x|, where |x| is the absolute value of x. Thus

g_ττ = − (1 − (H/c) |x|)²​

when y and z are zero.

Although −(1 − (H/c) |x|)² is continuous at x=0, it is not differentiable at x=0. The graph of −(1 − (H/c) |x|)² is thorn-shaped, with a sharp point at x=0. As x approaches x=0 from below (i.e. x < 0), the slope converges toward negative infinity. As x approaches x=0 from above, the slope converges toward positive infinity. The slope at x=0 is therefore undefined, which is to say the derivative with respect to x is undefined at x=0.

The mathematical definition of a differentiable manifold requires the manifold to be sufficiently smooth, where "sufficiently smooth" means all of the derivatives you might need to calculate are well-defined at all points of the manifold.

The Helland universe is not sufficiently smooth at x=y=z=0, which is to say it is not sufficiently smooth at r=0.

Mathematically, that means events with r=0 must be excluded from the manifold.

So the center of the Helland universe, at which Mike Helland believes himself to reside, is not a part of the mathematical model he defined on 2 November by stating his most recent guess at a Helland metric form.


[size=+1]Summary of conclusions.[/size]

• According to the Helland metric form, the Helland universe is static in these three senses:
  1. Its metric tensor field does not change over time.
  2. Its curvature tensor field does not change over time.
  3. Its distributions of mass-energy and pressure do not change over time.
  
  
• Those consequences of the Helland metric form should not be trusted, because the Helland metric form implies other consequences that are not consistent with the general theory of relativity.
  
  
• In particular, a universe with the extreme negative pressure implied by the Helland metric form would not be static.
  
  
• The Helland universe is geocentric in the following sense: Its spatial slices are spherically symmetric around a central point whose physical properties distinguish it from all other points of space.
  
  
• The Helland universe has a curvature singularity at that central point.
  
  
• If the cosmological constant is zero, then the mass-energy density is zero throughout the Helland universe.
  
  
• If the cosmological constant is positive, then the mass-energy density is negative throughout the Helland universe. That density is most negative at the center of the Helland universe, dropping to zero as Hr approaches c.
  
  
• If the cosmological constant is negative, then the mass-energy density is positive throughout the Helland universe. That density is greatest at the center of the Helland universe, dropping to zero as Hr approaches c.
  
  
• At the center of the Helland universe, the pressure is negative infinity, regardless of the cosmological constant. That means the center of the Helland universe, where Mike Helland imagines us to reside, is uninhabitable.
  
  
• The infinitely negative pressure at the center of the Helland universe means the center of the Helland universe is undergoing unimaginably rapid inflation/expansion, contradicting the static universe asserted by the Helland metric form.
  
  
• The static universe implied by the Helland metric is not consistent with Einstein's general theory of relativity, because a universe with the Helland universe's distribution of pressure would not be static.

 

[Mike Helland]

The Helland universe is not sufficiently smooth at x=y=z=0, which is to say it is not sufficiently smooth at r=0.

Mathematically, that means events with r=0 must be excluded from the manifold.

r=0 is where the other events are being observed.

r=0 is the end of the null path to other events.

r=0 is the tip of the light cone on which observed reality exists.

To describe Mike Helland's objections to the word "universe" as sophomoric would be an insult to sophomores tripping on psychedelics.

Assuming the universe isn't "open", as in, it's not interacting with some other reality or God, and because the universe has produced arithmetic, it seems the universe would be subject to Gödel's incompleteness theorem.

It's axioms and statements cannot be completely and consistently proven without resorting to some other encompassing system, whose own axioms cannot be proven consistently and completely without sorting to some other encompassing system..

It would seem then that the idea of a metric for the entire universe, much like the idea of grand unification theories, is fundamentally doomed to fail, or destined to invoke the supernatural, like the multiverse.

Maybe not.

But either way that cookie crumbles, it seems a logical step between the reality we observe, and the universe that contains it, would be an accurate characterization of the past light cone.

 

[Ziggurat]

I think you know better than this.

No, he doesn't. That's the whole problem.

 

[Darat]

I have to say this thread is a first for me - I have never come across a universe-denier before.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

r=0 is where the other events are being observed.

r=0 is the end of the null path to other events.

r=0 is the tip of the light cone on which observed reality exists.

r=0 is uninhabitable.

Mike Helland is arguing with mathematical and physical consequences of the metric form he came up with on 2 November.

Arguing with mathematics and physics is pretty silly, but it is a behavior often seen in pseudoscientists who don't really understand those subjects. We've seen a lot of that behavior in the 1452 contributions Mike Helland has made in this thread and its predecessor—that's 46% of all posts in those threads.

Today, Mike Helland has decided to show us his knowledge of logic (e.g. Gödel's incompleteness theorems) is as shallow as his knowledge of physics and mathematics.

To describe Mike Helland's objections to the word "universe" as sophomoric would be an insult to sophomores tripping on psychedelics.

Assuming the universe isn't "open", as in, it's not interacting with some other reality or God, and because the universe has produced arithmetic, it seems the universe would be subject to Gödel's incompleteness theorem.

It's axioms and statements cannot be completely and consistently proven without resorting to some other encompassing system, whose own axioms cannot be proven consistently and completely without sorting to some other encompassing system..

It would seem then that the idea of a metric for the entire universe, much like the idea of grand unification theories, is fundamentally doomed to fail, or destined to invoke the supernatural, like the multiverse.

For over a century, some really smart people have been constructing mathematical models of an idealized universe. Those models generally start by defining a metric for the entire universe.

To think such models are precluded by Gödel's incompleteness theorems signals truly astounding levels of both ignorance and hubris.

Everyone who is remotely familiar with even the most basic areas of mathematics is aware that useful fragments of mathematics have not only been formalized, but have become the foundation of modern science and technology. It is stunningly stupid to think that all of mathematics, science, and technology can be made to disappear by making ignorantly sophomoric allusions to Gödel.

But that is the sort of "thinking" Mike Helland relies upon in what he wrote above.

Maybe not.

But either way that cookie crumbles, it seems a logical step between the reality we observe, and the universe that contains it, would be an accurate characterization of the past light cone.

According to relativity, it is not possible to characterize the past light cone of some spacetime event without characterizing the metric of the spacetime manifold that contains that light cone.

All of Mike Helland's many attempts to describe such a metric are cookies that have crumbled.

That is why he is trying to deny the very concept of a universe by advertising his ignorance of logic and mathematics.

I have to say this thread is a first for me - I have never come across a universe-denier before.

 

[Mike Helland]

It is stunningly stupid to think that all of mathematics, science, and technology can be made to disappear by making ignorantly sophomoric allusions to Gödel.

Good to know. I'll be on the lookout for anyone that actually suggests that.

 

[Mike Helland]

I have to say this thread is a first for me - I have never come across a universe-denier before.

Saw this yesterday:

Contrary to the habitual claims of a universe, its beginnings, and its constituents revealing themselves to physicists as the result of increasingly precise empirical observations, I suggest that physical cosmology’s history is better understood as a steady unravelling, the disassembling of a total unity first achieved in the abstract with the first mathematical description of the universe in the early twentieth century. Rather than a picture of the universe slowly coming together, I contend that in physical cosmology we have a picture of a universe that is steadily falling apart while physicists struggle to hold on to the totality originally achieved. In this description, the momentum is not one of ever upward progress in physics, but one of decline. It is a universe that, I argue, always seems just about to run away from cosmologists who risk the inclusion of increasingly speculative and possibly chimeral beings in their efforts to keep the totalising unity of the universe together.

From the Nov 28 section on this page:

https://www.uu.nl/en/research/utrecht-philosophy-of-astronomy-cosmology/events/upac-colloquium

The idea isn't that I'm actually denying the universe. I'm just skeptical of most of the stuff you that's been attached to it. An age, a size, and shape.

If you overheard a Catholic and Protestant arguing about whose God is right, what would you think? Something like, "it's the same made-up God you're arguing about."

How about a Muslim and Christian arguing about Allah and God? Same thing, right? It's just a language difference. They're the same God.

Now let's same I'm an alien and I came here and saw you talking about the universe. And arguing against God.

I might suggest that doesn't make much sense. That's just a different word for the same thing.

You'd say, that's impossible. God is about like cloud guy, and people think they have a personal relationship with it. And I would say, well, there's plenty of human books that talk about being one with the universe, and having a relationship with it.

And you would say, no. That's the New Age universe stuff. That's all wrong. The universe we believe in is actually the right one.

The only difference between that attitude, and for example, sectarian arguments between Sunni and Shiite, is the words used as the "Big" concept, the omnipresent thing that everything else is based on.

This might sound utterly ridiculous to you. The difference is huge. You are actually right. But that's what they believe too. You have more in common than you don't. 13.8 billion years is closer than 3000 years than it is with most other numbers.

I'm sure you find this 100% impossible to accept. So wrongly mad on so many levels.

Perhaps you're familiar with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? They call you insane when you leave the mythos.

I have no problem engaging with and in the mythos of the universe. But that's really all it is. And if its not expanding, and it doesn't have an age, what good is whole concept anyway?

Let's say, we did manage to figure out the laws of the universe. With them we could describe everything that has happened, is happening, or will happen in the universe.

That means the universe would have a complete copy of itself within itself. That'd be a "neat trick" to say the least.

Consider the universe to be a cardboard box. Can we put a complete and consistent description of the box within the box? Maybe.

It seems much more reasonable that a complete and consistent description of the box could be conceptualized by thinking just a little bit outside the box. That doesn't seem too bad. We do it in quantum mechanics. There's the wavefunction. And, either through collapse, or MWI, or something like that, we find observed reality "in" there somewhere. The wavefunction exists outside of observed reality. By definition.

Like MWI, cosmic inflation basically posits the existence of a box factory that prints out every conceivable box, and ours is one of those.

That's definitely thinking outside the box.

Maybe a bit too far?

 

[hecd2]

Pretentious claptrap.

ETA: This doesn’t belong in the science forum. Religion and philosophy?

 

[Mike Helland]

Pretentious claptrap.

ETA: This doesn’t belong in the science forum. Religion and philosophy?

If the origins and fate of existence as we know it sounds like pure fantasy, that's cuz it is.

 

[Myriad]

Saw this yesterday:



From the Nov 28 section on this page:

https://www.uu.nl/en/research/utrecht-philosophy-of-astronomy-cosmology/events/upac-colloquium

The idea isn't that I'm actually denying the universe. I'm just skeptical of most of the stuff you that's been attached to it. An age, a size, and shape.

If you overheard a Catholic and Protestant arguing about whose God is right, what would you think? Something like, "it's the same made-up God you're arguing about."

How about a Muslim and Christian arguing about Allah and God? Same thing, right? It's just a language difference. They're the same God.

Now let's same I'm an alien and I came here and saw you talking about the universe. And arguing against God.

I might suggest that doesn't make much sense. That's just a different word for the same thing.

You'd say, that's impossible. God is about like cloud guy, and people think they have a personal relationship with it. And I would say, well, there's plenty of human books that talk about being one with the universe, and having a relationship with it.

And you would say, no. That's the New Age universe stuff. That's all wrong. The universe we believe in is actually the right one.

The only difference between that attitude, and for example, sectarian arguments between Sunni and Shiite, is the words used as the "Big" concept, the omnipresent thing that everything else is based on.

This might sound utterly ridiculous to you. The difference is huge. You are actually right. But that's what they believe too. You have more in common than you don't. 13.8 billion years is closer than 3000 years than it is with most other numbers.

I'm sure you find this 100% impossible to accept. So wrongly mad on so many levels.

Perhaps you're familiar with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? They call you insane when you leave the mythos.

I have no problem engaging with and in the mythos of the universe. But that's really all it is. And if its not expanding, and it doesn't have an age, what good is whole concept anyway?

Let's say, we did manage to figure out the laws of the universe. With them we could describe everything that has happened, is happening, or will happen in the universe.

That means the universe would have a complete copy of itself within itself. That'd be a "neat trick" to say the least.

Consider the universe to be a cardboard box. Can we put a complete and consistent description of the box within the box? Maybe.

It seems much more reasonable that a complete and consistent description of the box could be conceptualized by thinking just a little bit outside the box. That doesn't seem too bad. We do it in quantum mechanics. There's the wavefunction. And, either through collapse, or MWI, or something like that, we find observed reality "in" there somewhere. The wavefunction exists outside of observed reality. By definition.

Like MWI, cosmic inflation basically posits the existence of a box factory that prints out every conceivable box, and ours is one of those.

That's definitely thinking outside the box.

Maybe a bit too far?

At this link is a video of a zoom into the Mandelbrot Set. It's three hours long, and zooms continuously (except for brief pauses at the beginning and end). The zoom doubles the linear scale of the image about every two seconds, so the duration covers about 5,400 doublings. After three minutes of zoom, the entire original image at the zoomed scale would be the width (according to conventional cosmological models) of the observable universe. Then that same degree of expansion happens again 59 more times. At the final frame you're looking at a portion of the complex plane that's been magnified, relative to the initial frame, not (note) to a mere 59 times the scale of the universe, but the scale of the universe raised to the power of 59.

Yet the algorithm for the Mandelbrot Set can be rigorously described in a mere few characters, the code that actually generates the images is less than a megabyte, and the actual computations that created the video, while vast in number, fit comfortably within the framework of some small number of small-pizza-box-size computers operating for a period of months. That's the small box that this realization of the big universe of the zoomed-to-10^2656-scale Mandelbrot Set somehow mysteriously fit into.

But of course it's not mysterious at all, is it? We all understand how it works. The algorithm (model) isn't the set (universe) itself; the former can reveal certain information about certain portions of the latter via a finite amount of computation. The algorithm is finite, and the details of the set are infinite (as proven by rigorous mathematics), but that doesn't mean the algorithm is in any way incomplete. Is it possible for a model with finite information to accurately model something with vastly greater, or even infinite, detail? Clearly, yes. Analogously, a finite complete model of the universe may or may not be possible, but if it is, the existence of said model within a tiny portion of said universe would cause no paradox.

We have no conclusive case that a complete finite model of our universe is possible, or could be found if it was. But Big Bang cosmologies are far more likely to be consistent with that possibility. Is that why this question seems to have such religious import for you?