Critical Thinking: Big Bang Theory

[Skroe]

Im honestly a believer of intelligent design. I can't imagine everything around us just coming spontaneously. Sadly, I will be dust before this subject is ever within reach of the expanding human capacity.

I actually want to directly challenge this point... that you'll be dust before the subject is ever withing reach of expanding human capacity. Chances are, it'll be well within your life time that it is.

Since the moratium on Nuclear Weapons testing in 1992, the United States Department of Energy has spend hundreds of millions of dollars, every few years, developing and deploying increasingly powerful supercomputers. These computers have been used to, with greater accuracy as computers improve, simulate the geometry of a nuclear explosion to ensure "reliability" of our stockpile as they age. These computers have over the years, also been used to simulate climate patterns, phyiscs phenomenon, protien folding, and everything else that requires large numbers of simulated data points.

So why do we keep building them? Why aren't the computers from 1998 satisfactory? Why did the DoE open Titan, the most powerful supercomputer in the world, just the year? It's because of resolution. As computers increase in power, new techniques are developed to simulate phenomenon at increasing levels of resolution (smaller and smaller scales), in a hope of increasing the accuracy of their predictive models. Going with this is the development of new techniques to ensure the model is a valid one.

Today, when scientists simulate galaxies or galactic collisions, their resolution is typically stellar level. 15 years ago, it was groups of stars. Ten years from now, it may be of sufficient resolution to simulate resolution far lower than that. I'm sure you can see where this is going.... So the day comes, in the future, where the resolution of the universal simulation is so small that it is simulating information about state inherent to all sub-atomic particles that is a fundamental building block of any universe (and why a 10^500 universe is information dead, because it never gets transmitted). You've successful modeled an actual universe to the point you've created one.

It's a theory, provable actually, but so-far unproven, that our universe is in fact, a two dimensional computer simulation. And the theory is valid to the point that there is no reason that a future human, in possession of advanced technology, couldn't build a computer that does the exact same thing. It's mostly a matter of scale - the larger the simulated universe, the larger the energy requirement and so forth.

Does the chance we're living in a computer simulation infer intelligent design? Absolutely not. Even if our universe were a subset of a greater universe, and that upon a greater-greater universe (yes, this is essentially turtles all the way down), there exists a universe where all laws are natural. And even within any existing program, there are natural behaviors that are emergent with the properties of the system... no intelligent design required. The same is exactly true of the universe. If this sounds like a chicken-and-the-egg paradox, it is in part.

The point is though is that just like building a Solar System sized particle accelerator, or building a 3 foot wide wormhole to Alpha Centauri by annihilating Jupiter and capturing all it's mass-energy, simulating universes in a computer is a problem of scale and resolution, and both, if you're only ambitious to a point, are extremely within the realm of possibility. After all, if the Copernican Principle holds true (and there is no reason to think it doesn't), there is no need to simulate a universe , and the sextillion galaxies within, unless you're interest in the change over time of the large scale structure of the universe. If you're interested in almost anything else, a medium sized metal rich galaxies will do, and thus you've already cut the problem's complexity (and energy requirement) down countless orders of magnitude.

Simulating how the the universe works at extremely fine resolutions is not something even close to being beyond our capacity. At issue is mostly a matter of application. Right now scientists are still figuring out the nature of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, so the need to do the mega-simulation hasn't yet arrived, unlike say, Climate Change, which is very much interested at the present in seeing how global climate change effects climate at smaller scales than the entire planet.

[spinner981]

The argument usually boils down to semantics. What is a natural origin and what is a supernatural origin? To say "Another universe with different laws might have spawned our own." is technically the same as saying that the universe has a supernatural creator. Suggesting alternate universes that are outside of our understanding is the same as claiming a creator, as they both classify as a supernatural origin, and while both can have evidences neither can be proven via scientific method.

A natural origin however is both impossible and when explained is continually paradoxical.

Natural origin is impossible. It requires something to come from nothing, but our natural laws state that something can not come from nothing.

[haxartus]

Natural origin is impossible. It requires something to come from nothing, but our natural laws state that something can not come from nothing.

Actually Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says it can, via quantum vacuum fluctuations. Which perfectly explains how a quantum sized Universe can appear from nowhere. Hawking seems to think that gravity is the negative part of the equation and it cancels out the positive part, meaning that the total energy of the Universe is exactly 0 and it's creation and existence doesn't violate the conservation of energy.
The so called "big question" has been answered for decades but the internet community prefers to ignore that because it's more fun to invent ideas and fantasize about stuff rather than to look at actual science.

[Garnier Fructis]

Actually Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says it can, via quantum vacuum fluctuations. Which perfectly explains how a quantum sized Universe can appear from nowhere. Hawking seems to think that gravity is the negative part of the equation and it cancels out the positive part, meaning that the total energy of the Universe is exactly 0 and it's creation and existence doesn't violate the conservation of energy.
The so called "big question" has been answered for decades but the internet community prefers to ignore that because it's more fun to invent ideas and fantasize about stuff rather than to look at actual science.

I do not like supernatural explanations, but I do not like this explanation either because it requires a redefinition of "nothing." The nothing in space is permeated by fields and governed by the physical laws. The physical laws don't easily explain their own existence as Hawking would have it.

I've seen other proposals which are interesting though, one of which being that perhaps the laws that govern the universe are the only possible set of self consistent laws.

[Aurabolt]

One thing people on both sides of the Origin of Life Debate (Religious and Non-Religious) seem to either disregard or not take into account is the possability they might both be wrong. I am a firm believer that there are some things that will just always be beyond the scope of human comprehension. The beginning of the universe and the beginning of a human's existence sit at the top of my list of things we can only speculate.

Circumstantial evidence supports both sides like it or not. We don't deny dinosaurs once existed because of the overwhelming evidence that has been found all over the world. We also do not deny the existence of Big Foot or Nessie because proof they don't exist has never been found. In other words: The Absence of evidence isn't necessarily evidence of absence.

500 years ago everyone in Eurasia except the vikings knew The Americas didn't exist. 400 years ago everyone knew the Earth was flat. 202 years ago Francis Scott Key didn't know he was going to write The Star Spangled Banner. 13 years ago we knew Al Qaeda didn't have the capability to hit targets on America Soil. Nine years ago the Red Sox were still in an 86-year World Series drought (LOL). Six months ago I knew Boston would never be the site of an act of terror. 36 hours ago the victims of the shooting in Washington knew they were going to have a routine day at work.

Even though we know scientifically (more or less) the exact moment pregnancy begins there are still more mysteries I doubt will ever be solved such as when a fetus knows when it's time to be born.

I'm sure there are those who disagree with me on this but speaking for myself, I'm a firm believer in the saying let sleeping dogs lie.

[apepi]

Does it matter if the universe came from nothing or has always somehow been here? What real difference would it really make?


This video is somewhat relevant.

[ringpriest]

I recently enrolled in a critical thinking class this semester and one of our first assignments was to discuss creation myths. I got through it just fine but while I was doing some research I stumbled upon this little gem of a video.

<Apparently I still need to post a few more times before I can link videos. I'm hoping someone can do that for me so people can see what I was talking about. If you feel ambitious enough, it's on YouTube /watch?v=uabNtlLfYyU>


What I found to be the most interesting part of the video was right around the 2:45 mark. It stated that space and time are constructs of this universe and don't exist outside of it.

My point in posting this thread is that I'm hoping to engage in, or most likely watch, intelligent discussion regarding the creation of this universe. If anyone has more information on the subject, feel free to point me in the right direction and I'll go searching.

I'm also using this as an experiment to further my own ability to think critically about certain topics. I'm hoping we can do this without any kind of religion bashing as I'm certain religion will crop up in this thread. Keep things civil please and realize that not everyone has as much experience as you may have in this subject. Unless you've got a source for information please keep your opinions stated just as that, opinions.

Thanks,
MB

Try googling Amplituhedron for some more interesting ideas along similar lines.

[zorkuus]

Im honestly a believer of intelligent design. I can't imagine everything around us just coming spontaneously.

Who made the designer?

Circumstantial evidence supports both sides like it or not. We don't deny dinosaurs once existed because of the overwhelming evidence that has been found all over the world. We also do not deny the existence of Big Foot or Nessie because proof they don't exist has never been found.

That's not how this works. We cannot prove a negative, so lack of proof for the negative isn't evidence for the positive.

[s_bushido]

I'm sure there are those who disagree with me on this but speaking for myself, I'm a firm believer in the saying let sleeping dogs lie.

There's no reason to perpetuate ignorance now just because we were ignorant in the past. Just because we don't know yet, doesn't mean we will never know (or should never know).

[Adam Jensen]

The argument usually boils down to semantics. What is a natural origin and what is a supernatural origin? To say "Another universe with different laws might have spawned our own." is technically the same as saying that the universe has a supernatural creator. Suggesting alternate universes that are outside of our understanding is the same as claiming a creator, as they both classify as a supernatural origin, and while both can have evidences neither can be proven via scientific method.

A natural origin however is both impossible and when explained is continually paradoxical.

Natural origin is impossible. It requires something to come from nothing, but our natural laws state that something can not come from nothing.

To say that "another universe with different laws spawned our own" is speculation, perhaps predicted in mathematics, perhaps not, but the point is, it isn't accepted science until we can have empirical evidence we can observe that leads to that conclusion. When (and if) we do have that evidence, it merely becomes a part of nature.

A natural origin is, as of right now, unknown. There are theories, but no real consensus. Vacuum fluctuations might be the answer, and they might not be. Maybe when we unlock the Planck Epoch, we'll find out. Or maybe that'll just lead to more questions.