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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Here's something that's LIKE what you ask for...

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Yang-Mills theory is an extension of Maxwell theory that describes interactions in two other forces called the weak and strong nuclear forces. However, ground state fluctuations have a much more serious effect in a quantum theory of gravity. Again, each wavelength would have a ground state energy. Since there is no limit to how short the wavelengths of the Maxwell field can be, there are an infinite number of different wavelengths in any region of spacetime and an infinite amount of ground state energy. Because energy density is, like matter, a source of gravity, this infinite energy density ought to mean there is enough gravitational attraction in the universe to curl spacetime into a single point, which obviously hasn’t happened.
~The Universe in a Nutshell, page 46.

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I'll have to keep looking for other (better) examples.

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The trans-Planckian problem is the observation that Hawking's original calculation requires talking about quantum particles in which the wavelength becomes shorter than the Planck length near the black hole horizon. It is due to the peculiar behavior near a gravitational horizon where time stops as measured from far away. A particle emitted from a black hole with a finite frequency, if traced back to the horizon, must have had an infinite frequency there and a trans-Planckian wavelength.

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The Hartle-Hawking no-boundary condition, in which the whole of space-time is finite; the Big Bang does represent the limit of time, but without the need for a singularity.

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Originally posted by citizen:
I'd be surprised if he did say such a thing. Hawking once lost a bet that Singularities 'exist' only within Black Holes (his position), when computer models showed naked singularities were theoretically possible. Hell, it was Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose who came up with the Big Bang from a singularity theory. So in fact it would be Hawking saying his entire life's work is bullshit. I suspect such a statement would be big news.

Anyway, I don't see any reason why QM effects, even if they had the effect you say would negate a singularity. In fact the singularity of a rotating black hole is already known to not be a single point but a 'disc'.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Amazingly enough, that's EXACTLY what I'm saying. He refuted his own work that he did in the 1960s on the Big Bang model, because he thought a no singularity big bang model better explained his observations.

Now THERE'S an example of a non-biased scientist! I love that he was willing and able to say he was wrong in the quest for greater understanding.

And prior to reading his work on the subject, I would have said anyone who argued against a singularity based big bang was a total nutjob. But he makes very convincing, easy to follow arguments all based in quantum mechanics, so, like I said, I like the idea. I think it has potential. He even proposed ways in which it could be proved or disproved, that I believe the LHC is going to be looking into... If they ever get it online, that is. ._.

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Originally posted by citizen:
Anyway, I don't see any reason why QM effects, even if they had the effect you say would negate a singularity. In fact the singularity of a rotating black hole is already known to not be a single point but a 'disc'.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
And I think that the idea of a two dimensional disk violates the concept of a singularity all by itself, without quantum effects.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
The only thing we seem to disagree on is whether that smearing does in fact happen, even though you appear to acknowledge wavelengths of particles in a singularity, and Hawking radiation.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Looks like I'm going to be doing a refresher in quantum gravity right now, since your argument seems to be that the gravity well at a black hole singularity locks particles into place and renders their probability cloud non-existent.

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Originally posted by citizen:
There's a lot of hopeful's, but it's still very much the holy grail.

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For potentials V(x) that are bounded below and are not infinite in such a way that will divide space into regions which are inaccessible by quantum tunneling, there is a ground state which minimizes the integral above. The lowest energy wavefunction is real and nondegenerate and has the same sign everywhere.

To prove this, let the ground state wavefunction be ψ. The real and imaginary parts are separately ground states, so it is no loss of generality to assume the ψ is real. Suppose now, for contradiction, that ψ changes sign. Define η(x) to be the absolute value of ψ.

η = | ψ |

The potential and kinetic energy integral for η is equal to psi, except that η has a kink wherever ψ changes sign. The integrated-by-parts expression for the kinetic energy is the sum of the squared magnitude of the gradient, and it is always possible to round out the kink in such a way that the gradient gets smaller at every point, so that the kinetic energy is reduced.

This also proves that the ground state is nondegenerate. If there were two ground states ψ1(x) and ψ2(x) not proportional to each other and both everywhere nonnegative then a linear combination of the two is still a ground state, but it can be made to have a sign change.

For one-dimensional potentials, every eigenstate is nondegenerate, because the number of sign changes is equal to the level number.

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Relativity is incompatible with a single particle picture. A relativistic particle cannot be localized to a small region without the particle number becoming indefinite. When a particle is localized in a box of length L, the momentum is uncertain by an amount roughly proportional to h/L by the uncertainty principle. This leads to an energy uncertainty of hc/L, when |p| is large enough so that the mass of the particle can be neglected. This uncertainty in energy is equal to the mass-energy of the particle when

L = {\hbar \over mc} \,

and this is called the Compton wavelength. Below this length, it is impossible to localize a particle and be sure that it stays a single particle, since the energy uncertainty is large enough to produce more particles from the vacuum by the same mechanism that localizes the original particle.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:

I'm kind of amazed Chris hasn't made any quip yet about

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Yeah... I guess the "hairy" part of that equation is kind of a turn off.

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
This thread has gone from the stratosphere to the landfill quite abruptly.

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I get the distinct impression that every now and then the FSM will catch guys oggling his meatballs and he has to say, "HEY! My eyes are up here, pal."

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Originally posted by RIPWash:
Ya know . . . with Byte and Cit ramblin' on and on, I kinda feel like Jayne. "If I'd wanted schoolin' I woulda gone to school!"

Too high falutin' for me, guys.

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"It's okay! I'm a leaf on the wind!!!"
"What does that mean?!?!?!"

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What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. ~Der Speigel

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When I gave a lecture in Japan, I was asked not to mention the possible re-collapse of the universe, because it might affect the stock market. However, I can re-assure anyone who is nervous about their investments that it is a bit early to sell: even if the universe does come to an end, it won't be for at least twenty billion years. By that time, maybe the GATT trade agreement will have come into effect. ~The Beginning of Time

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We are used to the idea that events are caused by earlier events. There is a chain of causality stretching back into the past. But suppose this chain has a beginning. Suppose there was was a first event. What caused it? This was not a question that many scientists wanted to address. They tried to avoid it, either by claiming, like the Russians, that the universe didn't have a beginning or by maintaining that the origin of the universe did not lie within the realm of science but belonged to metaphysics or religion. In my opinion, this is not a position any true scientist should take. If the laws of science are suspended at the beginning of the universe, might not they fail at other times also? A law is not a law if it only holds sometimes. We must try to understand the beginning of the universe on the basis of science. It may be a task beyond our powers, but we should at least make the attempt. ~Nutshell, page 79

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As Chapters 1 and 2 point out, the reason general relativity broke down near the big bang is that it did not incorporate the uncertainty principle, the random element of quantum theory that Einstein objected to on the grounds that God does not play dice. However, all the evidence is that God is quite a gambler. ~Nutshell, page 79

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The Unified theory will not in itself tell us how the universe began or what it's initial state was. For that, we need what are called boundary conditions, rules that tell us what happens... a colleague named Jim Hartle and I realized there was a third possibility. Maybe the universe has no boundary in space and time. At first glance, this seems to be in direct contradiction with the theorems that Penrose and I proved, which showed that the universe must have a beginning, a boundary in time. However, as explained in Chapter 2, there is another kind of time, imaginary time, that is at right angles to the ordinary real time that we feel going by. ~Nutshell, page 80-82

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If they [stars ~Byte] are more than about twice the mass of the Sun, the pressure will never be sufficient to stop the contraction. They will collapse to zero size and infinite density to form what is called a singularity. ~Nutshell, page 114

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The difficulty with determinism arose when I discovered that black holes aren't completely black. As we saw in Chapter 2, quantum theory means that fields can't be exactly zero even in what is called a vaccuum. If they were zero, they would have both an exact value or position at zero and an exact rate of change or velocity that was also zero. This would be a violation of the uncertainty principle, which says that the position and the velocity can't both be well defined. All fields must instead have a certain amount of what are called vacuum fluctuations... In this case it is helpful to think of vacuum fluctuations as pairs of virtual particles that appear together at some point of spacetime, move apart, and come back together and annihilate each other. ~Nutshell, page 118

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I remember going to Paris to give a seminar on my discovery that quantum theory means that "black holes aren't completely black." [meaning they emit particles, like a white hole, which may be one and the same feature. ~Byte] My seminar fell flat because at that time no one in Paris believed in black holes. The French also felt that the name as they translated it, trou noir, had dubious sexual connotations. ~Nutshell page 113

A black hole does not depend on the nature of the body that collapsed to form it. John Wheeler called this result "a black hole has no hair." For the French, this just confirmed their suspicions. ~Nutshell, Page 118

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Sorry guys... Just going to post what I can from a universe from a nutshell, see what Citizen makes of the quotes, then we can go back to worshiping the greatest food conceived by man.

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
[

Sorry - ignoring uncomfortable truths that don't easily fit into a category isn't in my nature. I'm neither religious or Republican.

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What is it about the platypus that has you confused? Is it the egg laying? Aren't there reptiles who give birth to live young, and others that lay eggs?

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Ditto amphibians and fish.

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did each category have a common ancestor?

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
Granted, the platypus is an odd critter, but I don't find any one particular thing about it that points to any kind of creator or designer, unless you're talking about a very, very, VERY stoned one.

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Originally posted by antimason:

arent you clever.. thats right, youre an atheist liberal

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reptiles are cold blooded, and mammals are warm blooded. show me a reptile that gives a live birth.. and has mammary glands to nurse their young? did the warm blooded bird species come from reptiles as well? thats quite a "genetic mutation".. given that mutations have never been proven to result in new genetic material

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that you would believe it arose through its own mechanisms, by by chance and time, is absurd to the highest degree. its incomprehensible that some could be so arrogant to assume such things

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Originally posted by citizen:
Most of it doesn't seem to be particularly relevant to the question of the existence of singularities. Imaginary Time is something I'll pick up on, it's the theory that there is an extra dimension of time, so that time is two dimensional. It's not strictly a string theory, but it fits into the overall extra dimensionality of string theory, especially since no string theory requires any extra dimension to be a spatial rather than temporal one.

It takes away the question of time beginning or ending at a singularity, because time becomes a closed surface rather than a straight line. To illustrate take a ball, draw a line from one point on the ball to another. If you looked at just the line, you'd have a beginning and an end, yes? But each point that forms the beginning and end of your line is just another point on the ball. The line would be normal time, the balls surface is two dimensional time, normal time + imaginary time, and although the points have different connotations in two dimensional time, it doesn't invalidate their existence.

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Originally posted by Hero:

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
Granted, the platypus is an odd critter, but I don't find any one particular thing about it that points to any kind of creator or designer, unless you're talking about a very, very, VERY stoned one.

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The platypus is PROOF. If ever there was a creature that was the "last" to be designed its this one.

I've eaten enough left overs in my time to recognize somebody trying not to let something go to waste. This, the flying squirrel, and the red-assed monkeys...by then he had to be telling himself "I need a day off."

H


"Hero. I have come to respect you"- Chrisisall, 2009.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
I know. I included some of those because they are just some good quotes. I'm trying to get you to read the book, you know. :)

There's places where he talks more exactly about quantum effects and how because of it, any previous collapse was more like a smudged singularity, and the variance is why the microwave background isn't homogenous every where we look, and why there's expansion and collapse in the first place.

It's in a chapter where he shows some computer models of various universe possibilities, and their irregularities, but in my look through I didn't get to that chapter. I had to transcribe all those quotes, and I ran out of time last night. I suspect everyone would prefer it if I didn't continue, seeing as how our conversation has gotten a few complaints.

The quotes I do give, particularly the second quote and the last three (before the just for fun bit) talk about the revival of the expand-collapse theory, about a no boundary no beginning of time no singularity universe that seems to contradict his earlier work, and fluctuations within a blackhole singularity.

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Originally posted by bluesuncompanyman:
C, Could it actually be that you and I have something in common?

Until now I had been firm in my belief that we'd never agree on...anything.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
The quotes I do give, particularly the second quote and the last three (before the just for fun bit) talk about the revival of the expand-collapse theory, about a no boundary no beginning of time no singularity universe that seems to contradict his earlier work, and fluctuations within a blackhole singularity.

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In order to predict how the universe should have started off, one needs laws that hold at the beginning of time. If classical theory of general relativity was correct, the singularity theorems that Roger Penrose and I proved show that the beginning of time would have been a point of infinite density and infinite curvature of space-time. All the known laws of science would break down at such a point. One might suppose that there were new laws that held at singularities, but it would be very difficult even to formulate such laws at such badly behaved points, and we would have no guide from observations as to what those laws might be. However, what the singularity theorems really indicate is that the gravitational field becomes so strong that quantum gravitational effects become important: classical theory is no longer a good description of the universe. So one has to use quantum theory of gravity to discuss the very early stages of the universe. As we shall see, it is possible in the quantum theory for the ordinary laws of science to hold everywhere, including at the beginning of time: it is not necessary to postulate new laws for singularities, because there need not be any singularities in the quantum theory. ~A Brief History of Time, page 172.

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
That's like saying the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean is PROOF that there's no god, because surely no loving and merciful god would allow such a thing to happen to his people.

There - I've proved it! Discussion over! [waves hands...]

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Originally posted by citizen:
That's because of imaginary time, and I don't see how that invalidates the existence of Singularities

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
It's because of imaginary time that Stephen Hawking first started looking into a no boundary no beginning universe, but his hypothesis on how this could've happened with our universe involves expansion/collapse, which involves quantum effects and smudged singularities.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
You're going to make me go look back at that other chapter, aren't you? *grumble*

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Oh, hey, it was actually in A Brief History of Time. No wonder I was having trouble finding the exact reference in Nutshell.
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Originally posted by Hero:
Huh...all this talk of singularities and God...kinda makes me want to put it all together in a musical dance number:

One SINGULARITY sensation
Every little step HE takes.
One thrilling combination
Every move that HE makes.
One smile and suddenly nobody else will do;
You know you'll never be lonely with you know who.
One moment in HIS presence
And you can forget the rest.
For the GUY is second best
To none,
Son.
Ooooh! Sigh! Give HIM your attention.
Do...I...really have to mention?
HE's the ONE?

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All you've proved is a lack of imagination.

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Originally posted by Hero:

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Originally posted by citizen:
That's because of imaginary time, and I don't see how that invalidates the existence of Singularities

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Huh...all this talk of singularities and God...kinda makes me want to put it all together in a musical dance number:

One SINGULARITY sensation
Every little step HE takes.
One thrilling combination
Every move that HE makes.
One smile and suddenly nobody else will do;
You know you'll never be lonely with you know who.
One moment in HIS presence
And you can forget the rest.
For the GUY is second best
To none,
Son.
Ooooh! Sigh! Give HIM your attention.
Do...I...really have to mention?
HE's the ONE?

H


"Hero. I have come to respect you"- Chrisisall, 2009.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
For another, I haven't heard anyone try to predict any new kinds of exotic quantum particles with string theory, nor how many types there are.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
However, I do agree with the ten to eleven dimension hypotheses that string and M theory suggest, because those have mathematically been proven.

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String theory, it's been a while. Are the strings parts of the subatomic particles or are they all the same particle, overlapped and combined different ways?

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Ooh! I worked with Maxwell's equations for calculations a few times. ...Wouldn't really mind seeing them simplified somewhat, no. Just integration, really, but for some reason I had the most trouble with them and electrical currents out of all the fields of physics we covered.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garter_snake#Reproduction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovoviviparous

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobe-finned_fish

A mutation by definition IS new genetic material. Unless you mean a phenotype?

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster

Strange... known genetic mutations producing immediate and drastically different observable phenotypes. Strange indeed.

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What might happen if phenotypes were separated geographically? If they stop interbreeding? Eventual inability to interbreed? In other words, formation of a new species?

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancelet

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KWICKO - Last I heard, there was quite a bit of consensus that at least some dinosaurs were warm-blooded. Yet they were still reptiles. Odd, huh? And yes, birds came from reptiles. And yes, it WAS quite a genetic mutation. It was also an evolutionary leap.

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As arrogant as ASSUMING there's a giant sky bully watching over you? As arrogant as ASSUMING that you were "designed" in the most minute detail by a creator who was also busy designing and creating an entire universe, and that said creator actually had the spare time to design every tiniest detail of your brain (he did shoddy work on yours, by the way - I'd demand a refund), but then decided to just let you wander off and do whatever you want? THAT is arrogance, both on your part and on the part of your silly "creator". Sorry, but I'm not buying; you'll have to go sell crazy somewhere else.

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Originally posted by Kwicko:

You mean in the same way you can't IMAGINE a platypus evolving naturally?

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Originally posted by antimason:
if thats the best you can do, i feel sufficiently vindicated

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