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

quantamagazine.org

291–299 of 299 posts

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

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, all that is decidely out of my realm of expertise. Is there a TL;DR on why BBs are not possible?

Essentially in that paper Carroll argues that the dilution away of the matter means that incoming radiation at a point p in the far future when there are billlllions of light-years of empty space around p is so redshifted that it makes no difference to the massive particle at p, even if by random chance a whole mess of incoming radiation arrives all at once. The counter-concern is that in a truly infinite universe, e…

This doesn't make sense to me. Maybe I'm misunderstanding. The Universe a BB appears in doesn't have to follow the same rules as the Universe that brain is hallucinating. I don't see how the properties of our Universe give any information on whether Boltzman Brains are possible.

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

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially in that paper Carroll argues that the dilution away of the matter means that incoming radiation at a point p in the far future when there are billlllions of light-years of empty space around p is so redshifted that it makes no difference to the massive particle at p, even if by random chance a whole mess of incoming radiation arrives all at once. The counter-concern is that in a truly infinite universe, e…

This doesn't make sense to me. Maybe I'm misunderstanding. The Universe a BB appears in doesn't have to follow the same rules as the Universe that brain is hallucinating. I don't see how the properties of our Universe give any information on whether Boltzman Brains are possible.

I think you're probably agreeing with Carroll's argument about cognitive instability.

Our universe, assuming we aren't hallucinating or falsely remembering our experiences in it, likely allows for Boltzmann brains that hallucinate or falsely remember a universe like ours, and also those that hallucinate or have false memories about universes very different from ours. I can't even guess at the probability distribution of false experiences of one type complex universe versus another type of complex universe, but hallucinating any universe well is a lot less probable than a lump of Boltzmann grey matter that does not have any memories of experiences (false or otherwise) at all, because a thinking, remembering brain (Boltzmann or not) has a much lower Boltzmann entropy than a non-thinking, non-remembering brain.

> I don't see how the properties of our Universe give any information on whether Boltzman Brains are possible

It's just fluctuation theory combined with two things: a cold and nearly uniform photon "gas" in the far far future assuming expansion continues, and the ability of overdensities of even IR photons to combine into more complicated bound states of matter. The cosmic microwave background exists, and there will also be an even sparser gas of ions that can capture any charged leptons produced if enough CMB photons localize and interact. If forming dense collections of molecules this way seems highly improbable to you, you are on the right track. :-)

The idea is to try to develop a no-go theorem about the early universe being in a high-entropy condition. Fluctuation theory does very well with structure formation, but if it's just fluctuations in an effectively uniform hot gas of matter (in the most general sense) then why do we have a dust of galaxies (at least one of which has real brains) rather a dust of Boltzmann brains? The latter are much much more likely than the former to fluctuate out of a higher-entropy state.

Our past being much lower entropy even at the hottest densest phase of the universe solves some arrow-of-time / manifold-orientability problems as well.

Among other things this motivates attempts to observe the "dark ages" after the CMB formed but before the first starlight, and detailed studies of the fine-grained structure of the relic fields (of which the CMB is one) produced in the early universe. The "noise" in the CMB is expected to be (and frankly appears) at lower entropy than the "noise" in the distribution of matter. But the "noise" in the latter does not appear to produce signs of Boltzmann brains in (or nearby) high-redshift galaxies. (Intriguingly there appears to be quite a lot of singly ionized carbon generating 158 micron fine-structure lines -- ALMA also sees a fair amount of water, HCN, HCO+, SiO and a few other molecular lines at high redshift, and practically everyone thinks it's more reasonable to blame this on the earliest stars being enormous and dying young and very violently, rather than heavier-than-lithium nuclei fluctuating into existence far from what became (proto-)stars. The "Boltzmann brain" argument applies to much simpler things too, including carbon atoms and organic molecules).

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

#293
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have no proof that it's simply nothingness when you die Do you mean to imply that you have proof to the contrary? Why is there any reason to assume anything else?

Conservation of matter and energy states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. So what makes some annihilationist version of reality palatable to a true scientist?

By this logic, a building can't be created or destroyed.

I suppose you argue that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of nature, independent of all other things, rather than some emergent property of matter and energy.

If so, it is an extraordinary belief requiring extraordinary evidence.

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

#294
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no "before" as time itself was created with the universe.

How was time created, time means changing state, without time there is no change. So in order for a change to happen in the existence of time you'd need a further time dimension; then you're just shifting the problem up the stack. Creation of time requires a meta-universe of some sort. Though perhaps there's some other way to conceive time not existing further back than a given point that works around creation being…

It is no different from the question how any other dimension suddenly existed. Time and space are connected.

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

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related question: how fast does time go in a “pure entropy” situation? Or, maybe more useful, what happens to time as you asymptotically approach pure entropy? Does it speed up? If so, it would make a Boltzmann brain inevitable. Or... not an inevitable brain, but an inevitable random low entropy state, right?

> what happens to time as you asymptotically approach pure entropy Uh, maybe nothing? Depends on how you approach the pure entropy condition, and where the observer is and how it's moving compared to a clock. Let's consider the measure of entropy in Boltzmann's relation : S = k log W or essentially that the quantity of entropy is the log relationship between the macrostate and the number of possible microstates that…

Thank you for writing this up! It’s a little above my head, but it helped me see some signposts on the question.

Your point that the random low entropy Big Bang is a super unlikely event interests me.

I think the original thought came to me from Roger Penrose’s Big Bang theory that posits physics is scale free, and in that uniform gas state, something... happens, to allow a Big Bang.

In my (simple) mind it is akin to electron orbital collapse? Like quantum information collapse... the entropy at a certain scale becomes high enough that it Works Like low entropy at the next scale above, and that causes a Big Bang at a larger scale than we have physics for, which also basically erases this universe.

So, there are repeated big bangs but each one at a different scale.

I probably misunderstood him as much as I misunderstood you, but those are the points I am pondering. In practicality I am trying to figure out if these ideas could be used to make a video game engine.

In my current thinking, This would require some “rebalancing of registers” so maybe an as yet unknown quantum field which shifts all the registers so meters become centimeters, information is destroyed, and entropy miraculously drops?

Not sure. :)

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

#296
post #98

Say we could break any physical rules of our current universe, is there a good theory that would explain how something might have been created out of nothing? i.e. imagine for a second that we're in a simulation and that the current laws of physic are just arbitrary created by a "host". This "host" could have very different physical laws. Could we think of any theory that would explain the creation of something out o…

I don't know about why anything exists, but it stands to reason for me at least that if there is a non-zero net energy, without any boundary conditions, then it has to expand. That it expanded and cooled down into its current form is coincidental.

Why there is non-zero energy in the first place is, I'll agree, odd. Your idea of it balancing out some negative energy elsewhere is interesting.. Maybe we're just the positive side of a temporary virtual particle in a higher universe-particle "foam" like the quantum foam.

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

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the more i think about this the more wrong i think you are. You're assuming that "nothingness" isn't an impediment to creation of something... it may very well be the ultimate barrier to something being created. We'll probably never know, but at the end of the day until we can devise a way to define and measure "nothingness" we cant setup any experiments (thought or otherwise) to develop theories from/about it.

but nothingness in fact isn't an impediment to creation because nothingness just isn't. it's not an impediment nor a boon nor anything at all. and how can you concieve of a way to measure "nothingness" when by definition you would be trying to measure that which isn't there to be measured? have you ever seen zero of anything? how would you measure that?

I agree that conceiving of nothingness is hard and as yet unsolved.

but I fail to see how this is related to your first statement. >but nothingness in fact isn't an impediment to creation because nothingness just isn't.

Again the statement that nothingness isn't an impediment, literally can not be proven. Because of that, you must leave open the potential that pure nothingness might be not only an impediment to creation but it might also be the ultimate impediment to creation of something.

We dont know what the properties of nothingness holds in our universe or how our universe of stuff behaves around nothingness.

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

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but nothingness in fact isn't an impediment to creation because nothingness just isn't. it's not an impediment nor a boon nor anything at all. and how can you concieve of a way to measure "nothingness" when by definition you would be trying to measure that which isn't there to be measured? have you ever seen zero of anything? how would you measure that?

I agree that conceiving of nothingness is hard and as yet unsolved. but I fail to see how this is related to your first statement. >but nothingness in fact isn't an impediment to creation because nothingness just isn't. Again the statement that nothingness isn't an impediment, literally can not be proven. Because of that, you must leave open the potential that pure nothingness might be not only an impediment to creat…

> We dont know what the properties of nothingness holds in our universe or how our universe of stuff behaves around nothingness.

nothingness holds no properties.

I think it's more useful to ponder how can we even talk about it to discuss its precise nature. which it doesn't have, so is it kind of recursive? i.e its nature is its 'own' non-self? ugh..

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

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is God a necessary thing?

First, God is not a thing, so let's rephrase that as God is logically and metaphysically necessary. Consider a person poking a stone around with a staff. The stone moves only insofar as the staff moves it and the staff moves only insofar as the person moves the staff. Thus, the stone moves only insofar as the person moves it. Analogously, the existence of things, here and now and at any moment, must have a cause that…

You can call it "God", meaning the above is your definition of "God". But I think that is highly misleading because the word "God" is used in the Bible and it speaks about a very specific type of thing, not defined like you define it but as something which created everything in 7 days, spoke to Moses etc.

Using the same term "God" as Bible, Book of Mormon, Koran and other books do but with a different "definition" is highly confusing and misleading. You should call the "cause of existence" simply "Cause of Existence". If you need a shorter way to refer to it a good one would be "CoE", not "God".

Why use the same name as Bible unless you are saying you are talking about the same thing that Bible is, the thing that spoke to Moses?

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