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We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

backreaction.blogspot.com

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Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#41

Post by Amezarak »

speedbird wrote: post #11
erlend_sh wrote: post #7

What we do know is that the universe didn’t begin from nothing . It’s impossible for something to arise out of nothing, so there has always been something . Nothingness is the space that holds everything. From there it can be argued that the universe began with the adjacent possible of nothing.

Do we? Please enlighten …

I think most statements like this have an underlying conceptual problem in that they assume the existence of causality.

Since the Big Bang is the beginning of space and time, it doesn’t make sense to say it “came from” anything - not nothing, anything. Nothing could have “caused” it because causality depends on there being a before in which the cause could take place. Causality breaks down with the beginning of time and that causes us a lot of conceptual confusion.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#42

Post by hprotagonist »

jahnu wrote: post #38
ThinkBeat wrote: post #25

I dont think we can get there. First, we would need to solve time. I am not sure if we are able to grasp it. Then we must figure out what happened at T-1 or T-2, which I think will be simple once we understand time. The theory creates a start and then explains the progress from there. but not what caused it. In theory of the cylinder than the universe travels to that is good but it does not explain how everything cam…

> We have a simple to state problem. There was nothing, then there was something. Natural language is woefully inadequate to express these issues, but believe it is a mistake to state the problem like this. There can be no concept of “before” if there is a T0. Perhaps the “why is there something rather than nothing?” version comes closer to what we are asking.

to which the current best though unsatisfactory answer is “because!”

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#43

Post by TaupeRanger »

734129837261 wrote: post #23

"We don't know how fire comes to life, and we will never know." "We don't know how to defend ourselves against beasts, and we'll never know." "We don't know how disease spreads, let's just hug it out, we'll never know." "We don't know how to fly like a bird, we'll never know." "We don't know how to land the booster of a rocket, we'll never know." "We don't know how to cure that form of cancer, and we'll never know."…

None of those things are impossible based on known physics. Traveling backwards in time to observe the beginning of the universe, and/or somehow existing outside the universe in order to do the observation, is impossible. Could we learn new physics that make it possible? Yes, but it is still a totally different class of problems than the ones you listed. Those were ONLY a question of knowledge. The problem at hand is a question of both knowledge AND the laws of physics actually allowing for that knowledge to be had. There was never any reason to assume that we would be unable to cure a certain type of cancer with the right knowledge alone.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#44

Post by Ygg2 »

jacquesm wrote: post #2

"The issue is that physicists can’t accept the scientifically honest answer: We don’t know, and leave it at that." This sentence jumped out for me. Is there some kind of crusade going on that I have missed the beginning of? This feels like a strange sentence in this piece and feels like a (misguided) attack.

It's the honest answer.

Our best cosmological theory applied backwards results in singularity. That's bad. See her droplet example.

According to maximally projected Penrose diagrams in singularity time and space evert into the multiverse. You move in time and space flows around you. https://youtu.be/4v9A9hQUcBQ

And according to our other most successful theory, space-time is divided into chunks. And boiling. Opposite of infinitely divisible, smooth relativistic space-time.

Not to mention if we go with current astronomy theory, we end up with unexplained dark matter and dark energy, that give different answers depending on the methodology.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#45

Post by jahnu »

XorNot wrote: post #20
Victerius wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's fantastic. She doesn't hesitate to call out the physics community on its idiosyncrasies. She is a necessary check and balance on the mainstream body of researchers.

I'm increasingly sceptical. She's not in research anymore but has found success running an "I know what I'm talking about" contrarian blog. If she was a software developer we'd rightly start to wonder about grand pronouncements coming from someone no longer practicing in the field. When your market doesn't exist if you actually agree with anyone, the incentives start to be questionable.

> She's not in research anymore

What are you talking about?

She is still publishing proper research papers as recently as this month!

https://arxiv.org/search/?searchtype=author&query=Hossenfeld...

Some people pick up weird ideas about her and I really wonder why.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#46

Post by gwd »

Ninjinka wrote: post #10

God

The conclusion of her article:

"So if you read yet another headline about some physicist who thinks our universe could have begun this way or that way, you should really read this as a creation myth written in the language of mathematics. It’s not wrong, but it isn’t scientific either. The Big Bang is the simplest explanation we know, and that is probably wrong, and that’s it. That’s all that science can tell us."

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#47

Post by CoastalCoder »

conviencefee999 wrote: post #34
ThinkBeat wrote: post #25

I dont think we can get there. First, we would need to solve time. I am not sure if we are able to grasp it. Then we must figure out what happened at T-1 or T-2, which I think will be simple once we understand time. The theory creates a start and then explains the progress from there. but not what caused it. In theory of the cylinder than the universe travels to that is good but it does not explain how everything cam…

Please stop construing your religious beliefs with sciences. Sometimes the answer is simply we do not know.

The story's title isn't explicit about the means by which the knowledge is gained, nor exactly which details are being sought.

I think it's a mistake to treat the scientific method as the only plausible source of knowledge. My opinion is obviously based on a particular worldview, but so is a claim that the only useful source of knowledge is the scientific method.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#48

Post by vouaobrasil »

I think one thing that humans have not come to terms with is the possibility that some fundamental fields are essentially dead in terms of possible new discoveries that most people will care about. That doesn't mean that there's nothing left to do. There are minor details in some fields but they are more like engineering problems. Physics may be one of those fields and I certainly think math is as well. However, it's sometimes hard to recognize because there is a core group of people that keep it going because it's their nest egg.
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