Corona688

And rightly so. The fact is, it is NOT understood. We don't precisely know what caused the big bang, although the evidence for the big bang itself is quite substantial - cosmic microwave background, redshifted receding galaxies, etc, etc, etc. There are theories, but at this point we can't confirm them beyond speculation... Essentially, we don't know WHY the big bang occured, just that it did.

But there's nothing wrong with that.

'I don't know' is a VALID answer. We don't want to reason beyond the information we have, which is the problem with 'goddidit'. How can one say that, when you don't know how god works in the first place? In any case, many things have been attributed to god that have since been found to be natural processes; lightning, weather, volcanic activity, stuff like that. Saying 'goddidit' doesn't make it so.

We CAN look at something and say 'I do not know'. We CAN reserve judgement until a point in the future when we have more information to judge WITH. Simply because we don't know everything, doesn't mean we know nothing; so far, science has shown itself a much better tool for understanding the universe than any religious holy book.

Wounded King

This is not the right forum and possibly completely irrelevant, but does anyone know if the Casimir effect allows for light to reach higher speeds than in a vacuum? Or at least whether this is theoretically possible.

Tabula_rasa

Without space, time does not 'exist' and so there is no 'before.' Difficult to conceptualize. Even so, it doesn't require a god to be in existence to make it happen.

Maybe one of the kind people here could answer a question I often get from my wife (perhaps this is best asked in a different forum, but it is a creationist question as well):

Out of nothing, the universe came into being, via vacuum fluctuation. Through available data, we know that the universe is expanding. Question: What is the universe expanding into? Of course, the answer is nothing, but how does one go about pictorializing something like that?

Also, what is on the envelope between the universe and nothing? Is it a high-energy plasma membrane? Is the membrane jagged or smooth? Book recommendations?

Thanks,
Tabula_rasa

Oolon Colluphid

This side of looking up this ‘Casimir effect’, I was under the impression that it was axiomatic of general relativity that the speed of light in a vacuum was a natural constant. It’s the ‘c’ in e = mc^2, innit? And that’s a pretty well verified equation...

Will report back once I’ve found out what a casimir effect is!

Is it like the dopeler effect, where silly ideas seem more reasonable if they come at you quickly?

Cheers, DT

Oolon Colluphid

Ah, right.

From here:

“The Casimir effect is a small attractive force which acts between two close parallel uncharged conducting plates, It is due to quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field.”
The attractive Casimir force between two plates of area A separated by a distance L can be calculated to be

F = pi h c / 480 L^4 A

(if I’ve translated this into text properly )

where h is Planck's constant and c is the speed of light.

So I’m not sure how the Casimir effect might make any difference to the speed of light, since it’s taken as a constant in working out the force of the effect!

But doubtless our physics folks can (will) correct me if I’m wrong...

Bugger, why don’t I stick to biology...

Cheers, DT

Wounded King

The quantum vacuum fluctations, as I understand it, are such that various possible wave lengths the vacuum might assume are cancelled out making an effective region of negative energy. Does this therefore make the Vacuum in the Casimir field between the plates more vacuous than a normal quantum vacuum?

Here is a slightly better, not to mention scientific, description of the effect http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw43.html .

mike_decock

Excellent article!

Thanks!

-Mike...

Oolon Colluphid

Does this mean that creationist arguments produce a Casimir field?

DT