Axiom of Choice

Jesse,

Just wanted to say that I'm sorry I can't contribute a response to this discussion, as school work seems to have crept up and beaten me over the head. Sorry to post and run.

Jesse

Axiom of Choice:
Just wanted to say that I'm sorry I can't contribute a response to this discussion, as school work seems to have crept up and beaten me over the head. Sorry to post and run.

No problem, wouldn't want you to neglect your studies.

luvluv

Question for K and others:

Couldn't a body avoid all the quantum mechanical problems with the cosmological/First Cause argument by stating it thusly:

1) All extremely massive objects which begin to exist have a cause.

2) The universe is extremely massive.

3) The universe began to exist.

4) Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Am I correct in thinking we have no knowledge of extremely massive entities being subject to the laws of quantum mechanics? In that case, wouldn't the above argument be sound?

[ October 08, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

Shadowy Man

luvluv:

No. If you follow the expansion of the universe back far enough you will encounter a point at which densities and energies are high enough that you can no longer ignore quantum mechanical effects. In fact, our ability to even understand what the "early" universe was like is limited by our current understanding of physics at extremely high energies.

K

luvluv:

What Shadow said.

Rusting Car Bumper

The universe is not a thing. It is a collection of things. It is defined as the collection of ALL things.

There is no reason to suppose that the Universe as a whole is a thing in the same way that the Sun is a thing.

DC

Shadowy Man

DigitalChicken:

But in a way it is. You are just splitting hairs here at what you decide to call a "thing". For example what would you say the Sun is? Where does it end? At the visible photosphere? The corona? Does the solar wind count as being part of the thing that is the Sun? Then you should at least go out to the heliopause - the interface between the solar wind and the local instellar medium.

What you really have is a system within a system within a system, etc.

But I agree with you concerning luvluv's post. Luvluv's premises 1 and 3 are unproven, so worrying about result 4 is premature.

Rusting Car Bumper

In way yes but only if you make a lot of unfounded presumptions.

Part of the original argument is a trick of grammar. The universe appears to operate with "causation." That's much different than saying things are "caused."

The proposition gives a sense of something that is unjustified. Groups of things do not have identical causes or even discrenable causes.

Let's take this group of things: The pencil here on my desk and the star in the Andromeda galaxy that is closest to our planet. Then I ask, "Whats the cause of this group of things?"

The difficulty in answering points out (and is an example of) the same problem that happens when we try to assign our notion of causation of single things to groups of things. There is no reason to assume that the universe is "a thing" of itself in the same way the Sun is a thing.

DC

luvluv

All I meant to say was that we have no evidence that anything more massive than an elementary particle can disobey the laws of causality.

Shadowy, it is equally true to say that at the begining the universe was so massive that we cannot ignore the effects of general relativity. Thus we have to account for causality.

For my own highly uninformed two cents, I think that general relativity and the need for causality has a stronger claim on the begining than quantum mechanics. From what I gather from reading a few physics books for the masses, quantum fluctuations work by energy within a given field "borrowing" enough energy to form very tiny bits of matter, which then have to "give back" this energy by annihilating with an opposite particle. Now, given the whole e=mc^2 thing, we can see it takes an enormous amount of energy to even produce a product with very little mass. To produce matter with the mass of the universe would take an unheard of amount of energy, equivalent to the mass of the entire universe times the speed of light squared! That such an enormous amount of energy could come from nothing and nowhere is a bit of a stretch for me. The sheer mass of the universe at it's early stage is the compelling fact to me, and not it's size, because it is it's mass which would require such an absurd amount of energy to "create".

Also, if I understand correctly, if the universe were the result of a quantum fluctuation it disobeys several traits of classical quantum fluctuations. It has yet to annhiliate itself with an equal and opposite universe (and from what I read the more massive the particle created from a QF, the faster it must annhiliate, which means that this universe should have annhiliated in a few trillionths of trillionths of a second). We also have to ask why other extraordinarly massive entities do not quantum tunnel into existence all the time? Why was the first quantum fluctuation so different than all of those we have seen to date?

These are the reasons I find the notion of no causality to be very unconvincing as regards the origin of the universe.

I guess here we have to wait for a final theory of quantum gravity, but at this point at least I don't think any of the premises in the argument I outlined above are unsound. I'll rewrite it here (shaped up a bit), and perhaps you can tell me which of my premises are unwarranted.

1) Entities above the mass of an elementary particle do not begin to exist without a cause.

2) The universe has a mass greater than an elementary particle.

3) The universe began to exist.

4) Therefore, the universe has a cause.

luvluv

But where did this extremely high energy come from? You might say it is eternal, but leads to a few questions. Can energy exist without dimensionality? I believe it is correct to state that before the big bang there were no dimensions. How can energy exist without a "place" to exist in? Is energy independant of space? (I thought I remember reading somewhere that energy actually comes from the excessive curving of space? Is that correct?)

And while I know that in a sense energy is eternal, I know useful energy is not. One day the universe will be plum out of energy to do anything useful. So what kept this pre-existent energy around in that "pre-time" until it was finally able to explode into a universe?

(If you haven't guessed, this may be more about educating myself than presenting an apologetic.)