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From: gregjohn
Subject: Re: Something from Nothing?
Date: 28 Jul 2009 08:30:00
Message: <web.4a6eee65a9205ca034d207310@news.povray.org>
Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>
>   (Of course this question becomes very complicated even in the physics
> sense, as the concept of time "before" the Big Bang becomes a bit complex.
> It's impossible for us to tell what, if anything, was before the Big Bang,
> including time itself. It's one of those impassable horizons in the universe.
> If time didn't "exist" before the Big Bang, then exactly what is it that
> happened?)
>

But don't we know that matter as we know it didn't exist. Isn't it the case that
we even know that matter as we know it wasn't even there at 10^-42 seconds?


Off-topic rant: notice how none of you said pow(10,-43)?


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Something from Nothing?
Date: 28 Jul 2009 09:06:17
Message: <4a6ef7c9@news.povray.org>
gregjohn <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> But don't we know that matter as we know it didn't exist. Isn't it the case that
> we even know that matter as we know it wasn't even there at 10^-42 seconds?

  That's irrelevant. Matter is only a form of energy and can change form
(from and to other forms of energy).

  The relevant question is whether all the *energy* existing in the current
universe has always existed, or whether it appeared from nothing by an
unknown phenomenon.

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Something from Nothing?
Date: 28 Jul 2009 11:44:28
Message: <4a6f1cdc$1@news.povray.org>
clipka wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Altho, thinking on it more, I'm pretty sure you're going the wrong way. If
>> time slows down near the black hole, and *you* are near the black hole,
>> everything else will seem to speed up. :-)
> 
> Yeah, but for "everything else" 

Yep. But if you're talking about the Big Bang, there *is* no "everything 
else". ;-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Something from Nothing?
Date: 28 Jul 2009 11:46:45
Message: <4a6f1d65$1@news.povray.org>
gregjohn wrote:
> But don't we know that matter as we know it didn't exist. 

If by "matter" you mean atoms and stuff, yea, AFAIK, we're pretty sure. If 
you mean "matter" how physicists talk about it, as in the thing that's 
equivalent to energy and has inertial mass, I'm not so sure. I don't know 
that anyone thinks there wasn't enough "energy" type stuff around to form 
all the matter we see now.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: Something from Nothing?
Date: 28 Jul 2009 12:30:00
Message: <web.4a6f26b5a9205ca0dcf616650@news.povray.org>
"gregjohn" <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> But don't we know that matter as we know it didn't exist. Isn't it the case that
> we even know that matter as we know it wasn't even there at 10^-42 seconds?
>
>
> Off-topic rant: notice how none of you said pow(10,-43)?

That would be off-topic you know :P


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From: Patrick Elliott
Subject: Re: Something from Nothing?
Date: 28 Jul 2009 20:47:53
Message: <4a6f9c39@news.povray.org>
Darren New wrote:
> gregjohn wrote:
>> Whoa.  I've listened to a whole year of Astronomy Cast, and I thought 
>> that the
>> Big Bang *was* about the creation of matter. 
> 
> The big bang is postulated because everything is moving apart. If you 
> reverse time, everything is moving back together again. Much like people 
> knew what temperature was "absolute zero" long before they could get 
> anywhere close to making it in the lab.
> 
>  > It is precisely not, as once
>> described by Cal Thomas, a scenario you seem to agree with, "the 
>> explosion of
>> an eternally existent cosmic egg."
> 
> You can have an explosion of an eternally existent cosmic egg without 
> creating matter. Indeed, if it's eternally existent, that's precisely 
> the point I'm making.
> 
>> Big Bang = Gen 1:1 
> 
> Well, no. That's exactly my point. In the beginning was *everything*.
> 
Everything within the bounds of what we can test, based on a "time 
based" theory of events. Problems is, we have no way to be sure if the 
properties of this universe are "derivative" of earlier conditions, or 
what exactly. And... trying to shoehorn any part of Genesis onto the 
mess is absurd. Even more so since I am "pretty sure" his version of 1:1 
bears no resemblance to the original wording, and even if it did, the 
rest of it is all ***wrong*** from the standpoint of every damn thing 
that happened after.

Its like someone saying:

"A well, first I starting by breaking some eggs." - Ok, sure.

then following with:

"Then I pored the batter into a pan, followed by mixing in the flower, 
and then I put it in the oven. Oh, and after that, I added flavorings 
and baking powder, took it out to cool, and finally, turned the oven on."

The first line is *maybe* an OK starting point, but the rest just shows 
that the moron writing it neither knows anything about baking 
"anything", but didn't even bother to go about thinking to hard as to if 
any of the entire process even made any damn sense in the first place. 
But, this is what Bible believers think "correctly" describes the 
process, even if they are still arguing over if days are days, and if 
not, how many years, centuries, millennium or billions of years it 
happened in?

The closest Genesis 1:1 comes to getting the Big Bang is that they had 
to start with something, and some stoned sheep herder looked around at 
night, saw a huge, vast, something, with a bunch of dots on it, and 
went, "Hell, lets say that was the first bit. I mean, its just a big 
sheet with holes, or something, and god had to start with the real 
'simple' stuff first, just like people do, right?" Sadly.. Its the most 
frakking complicated thing that happened first, and everything else is 
matter trying to make **simple** order out of the resulting near 
infinite chaos.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>


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From: Patrick Elliott
Subject: Re: Something from Nothing?
Date: 28 Jul 2009 20:59:28
Message: <4a6f9ef0@news.povray.org>
Darren New wrote:
> clipka wrote:
>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>> Altho, thinking on it more, I'm pretty sure you're going the wrong 
>>> way. If
>>> time slows down near the black hole, and *you* are near the black hole,
>>> everything else will seem to speed up. :-)
>>
>> Yeah, but for "everything else" 
> 
> Yep. But if you're talking about the Big Bang, there *is* no "everything 
> else". ;-)
> 
Only from our perspective. It doesn't preclude other universes, one big 
one that fragmented, or even a mass of energy that reached *its* version 
of singularity, but lacking the far more limited constraints of our 
dimensionality, produced pocket universes, instead of black holes. Its 
one of the major problems that string theory has. How do you prove the 
math, when the math allows for trillions of possible configurations, but 
you are only interested in testing it against your *specific* one. 
Basically... You can't expect math that deals with "general" probability 
of any random game of chance, to *correctly* predict only the behavior 
of games using 3 dice. Why not? Because the equations are talking about 
everything from roulette wheels to games with 10,000 dice. All you can 
say with certainty is a) when you found the parameters that match *your 
game* well enough that you can use it to make solid predictions, and b) 
what the limits and constraints on those statistics are, such that some 
configuration cannot exist "outside" those bounds. For example, you 
might find that, in a chance game, for some odd reason, the math doesn't 
allow for 10,000 dice **and** a Roulette Wheel *at the same time*, or 
something to that effect.

This doesn't help you at all though to know the *correct* parameters for 
your game, automatically, nor to know what the result of every game that 
has 1 dice and wheel, or 3 wheels and 5,000 dice, or 1 wheel and 9,999 
dice. In other words, confusing as hell, unless you already know enough 
to figure out what variables *must* be plugged in to get the result, at 
which point, only then, can you start figuring out, "Why?".

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>


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From: Chris B
Subject: Re: Something from Nothing?
Date: 29 Jul 2009 15:39:30
Message: <4a70a572@news.povray.org>
Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
> And... trying to shoehorn any part of Genesis onto the
> mess is absurd. Even more so since I am "pretty sure" his version of 1:1 
> bears no resemblance to the original wording, and even if it did, the 
> rest of it is all ***wrong*** from the standpoint of every damn thing 
> that happened after.
> 

I appologize in advance, but I just can't resist the overwhelming 
temptation to post a quick link to my favourite Bible reading where 
Ricky Gervais reads from Genesis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_EXqdJ4L7I&feature=related


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Something from Nothing?
Date: 29 Jul 2009 17:05:44
Message: <4a70b9a7@news.povray.org>
Chris B <nom### [at] nomailcom> wrote:
> I appologize in advance, but I just can't resist the overwhelming 
> temptation to post a quick link to my favourite Bible reading where 
> Ricky Gervais reads from Genesis:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_EXqdJ4L7I&feature=related

  I honestly didn't understand what was supposed to be so funny. I suppose
I just didn't get the jokes.

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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From: Chris B
Subject: Re: Something from Nothing?
Date: 29 Jul 2009 18:24:29
Message: <4a70cc1d@news.povray.org>
Warp wrote:
> Chris B <nom### [at] nomailcom> wrote:
>> I appologize in advance, but I just can't resist the overwhelming 
>> temptation to post a quick link to my favourite Bible reading where 
>> Ricky Gervais reads from Genesis:
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_EXqdJ4L7I&feature=related
> 
>   I honestly didn't understand what was supposed to be so funny. I suppose
> I just didn't get the jokes.
> 

Well it's not really joke-based humour. It's largely based on an ironic 
counterpoint to the sort of upbringing that was common here at one time; 
with the gospel being taught as if it were the gospel truth (beyond 
question) and with people being left in relative isolation to work out 
that there might be something about it that doesn't quite ring true. I 
suppose the humour does therefore derive from quite a particular set of 
experiences.

(Not that it ever really works to analyze or to try to explain humour)


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