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Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

#21

Post by onion2k »

quotemstr wrote: post #18

Cosmology is deeply disturbing if you think about it too long. Why should the universe exist? What is a causeless cause? How can something come from nothing? Regardless of the precise mechanisms involved, at some scale, some kind of steady-state cyclic model seems unavoidable --- the whole idea of existence not existing is bizarre and puzzling. The only way out of the causeless effect problem is to nop out of the eff…

That's only disturbing if you believe everything is simple enough that humans could comprehend it straight away. If you accept that some stuff is beyond our understanding, and will be for quite a while yet, everything is much less bothersome. Accept that you are fallible and the universe is fine.

I'm not saying this is easy though.

Re: Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

#22

Post by kowdermeister »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #15
sp332 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still have causality.

Can you expand on this? How can you have causality - cause and effect - that's divorced from some sort of flow of time?

If I turn on a very simple computer, then the clock starts at zero. From the computers perspective that's all there is, it doesn't know the cause. From my point of view there absolutely is a case, me pushing a button.

This is not a god argument, there might be natural processes that can trigger such events.

Re: Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

#24

Post by umvi »

quotemstr wrote: post #18

Cosmology is deeply disturbing if you think about it too long. Why should the universe exist? What is a causeless cause? How can something come from nothing? Regardless of the precise mechanisms involved, at some scale, some kind of steady-state cyclic model seems unavoidable --- the whole idea of existence not existing is bizarre and puzzling. The only way out of the causeless effect problem is to nop out of the eff…

> the whole idea of existence not existing is bizarre and puzzling

The alternative is that matter has always existed, which is equally bizarre and puzzling, though things make more sense that way.

Re: Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

#25

Post by pavel_lishin »

kowdermeister wrote: post #22
pavel_lishin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on this? How can you have causality - cause and effect - that's divorced from some sort of flow of time?

If I turn on a very simple computer, then the clock starts at zero. From the computers perspective that's all there is, it doesn't know the cause. From my point of view there absolutely is a case, me pushing a button. This is not a god argument, there might be natural processes that can trigger such events.

The computer, and the external universe of which it is unaware, still have time.

Re: Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

#26

Post by almost_usual »

onion2k wrote: post #21
quotemstr wrote: post #18

Cosmology is deeply disturbing if you think about it too long. Why should the universe exist? What is a causeless cause? How can something come from nothing? Regardless of the precise mechanisms involved, at some scale, some kind of steady-state cyclic model seems unavoidable --- the whole idea of existence not existing is bizarre and puzzling. The only way out of the causeless effect problem is to nop out of the eff…

That's only disturbing if you believe everything is simple enough that humans could comprehend it straight away. If you accept that some stuff is beyond our understanding, and will be for quite a while yet, everything is much less bothersome. Accept that you are fallible and the universe is fine. I'm not saying this is easy though.

This is how I view the universe. We make attempts to interpret it and probably never will fully comprehend it. The perceived boundaries of our universe is the edge of our consciousness and what we understand as humans. As we evolve so will our understanding and interpretations.

For me it is more of a humbling feeling than disturbing.

Re: Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

#27

Post by Cyph0n »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #25
kowdermeister wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I turn on a very simple computer, then the clock starts at zero. From the computers perspective that's all there is, it doesn't know the cause. From my point of view there absolutely is a case, me pushing a button. This is not a god argument, there might be natural processes that can trigger such events.

The computer, and the external universe of which it is unaware, still have time.

Total amateur here: how do we know that time did not exist before the beginning of the universe?

Re: Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

#29

Post by Retric »

djsumdog wrote: post #10

This seems different than the concept of infinite time, where prior to the big band there was something the collapsed into a ball of energy and maybe someday our universe will collapse back again (which has lost merit since we've seen matter in the universe isn't slowing down in spreading apart, but accelerating .. meaning in a few trillion years, atoms may be so far apart that light can't reach anything .. the event…

In terms of expansion we have little data to extrapolate thousands of times the current age of the universe. The reasons behind said expansion are unknown making extrapolation have meaningless error bars.

Current estimates for heat death are vastly beyond a few trillion years. With another universe possibly randomly showing, though the odds of that depend on the unknowable size of this universe.

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