What's a universe?

[Kuznetzova]

Thinking about universes just brought up this thought that a universe has to have an outer rim.
It has an outer shell that can be recognized by his outer materia rims
which were the first and fastest particles that escaped the big bang situation.

But if this is the given model: big bang - expansion - entropy,
then universe itself is an entity that grows by sending the message
"WE ARE ONE" which would be the smallest existent common denominator
an entity can provide when reaching out for other entities to overcome
the absolute loneliness of the "I EXIST" sensed within the total singularity moment
which instantly canges into an "I EXPAND" when realized that beyond the "I"
there is always a possibility of a "SOMETHING ELSE BUT ME" which usually is
translated by universe entities as a "NOTEXISTENCE" because NOTEXISTENCE
is the only thing an existing universe cannot achieve.

I normally don't like those who engage in thread hijacking, but what I have said about this topic before was crucial, in that I could not repeat the succinctness with which I stated in the first time. So what follows next is actually a copy-paste from another thread on this forum. Here goes:

Scientists are forced to invent a boundless, infinite, configuration space of universes to explain particular details about the universe we inhabit. So when confronted with the question as to how or why particulars would work themselves into reality, they de-commission science and engage in flights of multiverse fantasy. In other words, they are still holding fast to the claim that particulars never ever happen in reality -- ever. That the universe is merely a random point in a FROZEN CONFIGURATION SPACE of all possible quantum fields. There is something deep in the philosophy of science that denies particularity from ever manifesting itself in reality. And any particular affair you point out to professional Quantum Cosmologist, he will explain away as a singular point plucked randomly from a "set of all possible points."

This is philosophically dubious. It's a mental parlor trick. And if you are a philosopher, you should see why.

[Hjarloprillar]

Mathematicians brought physics where there is: singularity, infinity, determinism, empty space or fractal quantum foam, desperate quantization of gravity, constantly increasing number of dimensions, dark matter, breaking of symmetry ... From physics faded logic, physical sense, "healthy" sense and at the end the prestige. Nobody knows what the universe is.

I think you are on the right track. Rumor has it that the absolute temperature of the universe is the one, deciding factor in breaking symmetry. So at the very highest temperature/energy, all the four fundamental forces are all a single unified force. When temperature drops, gravity "breaks off" from the other three. At even lower temperatures, electroweak force breaks with the Strong Force, and they start to look like different forces. Going lower still, the electromagnetic force splits with the weak force. The academics call this Electroweak symmetry breaking.

In summary, when the temperature goes down, symmetry breaks.

After so much discussion of general laws of the universe, a person can forget that you have a name and you live in a city. But how did that happen? How do you have a name and why do you live in that city? Reading this thread, you would think we are all a bunch of particles zipping around in an endless quantum vacuum. See my thread on general laws versus particular facts: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=9904

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SF writers were writing about absolute zero when you were 3.
some excellent ideas came to be from that.
However
"When temperature drops, gravity "breaks off" from the other three. "
is total rubbish.
Most of the post is imagination. and a good one.

[Kuznetzova]

SF writers were writing about absolute zero when you were 3.
some excellent ideas came to be from that.
However
"When temperature drops, gravity "breaks off" from the other three. "
is total rubbish.
Most of the post is imagination. and a good one.

Right.
But I saved myself the humiliation by marking it off as "rumor". Check the post again.

[tillingborn]

Our situation in this universe is more mysterious than your story of these "knots".

It's not really my story, I pinched it from Lord Kelvin, but you are right, it is just a story. It is based on the philosophical belief (more a suspicion if I am honest), that the most likely source of the phenomena that give the impression that there is a universe made of stuff, is stuff that makes a universe. It's arguably the oldest idea in philosophy, being the core idea that unified the Milesian school. We have the advantage of hindsight and we know that the elemental substance is not water, air, earth, fire or some apeiron, and while Berkeley may be right and everything is ideas in the mind of god, the idea that there is, in fact, some 'stuff' that things are made of is, to me, more aesthetically pleasing.
Like Kant says though, we cannot know the thing-in-itself, but as Hipparchus, Newton, Bohr and instrumentalists of all stripes have noted, as far a science is concerned, who cares? It doesn't matter what you think the cause of any given phenomenon is, what happens happens and if you can demonstrate it to others, you have the basis of science. The funny thing is that the belief in 'stuff', matter, is metaphysical, ontological to be precise. It is also unscientific from a Popperian point of view in that it is unfalsifiable, if someone tells me that there is such and such a phenomenon that my account doesn't account for, I'll hold up my hands and admit that my model doesn't work, but it would take spectacular evidence to convince me that the universe isn't made of something.
To be honest, I suspect the world is not as mysterious as General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics suggest. You cannot argue with the extraordinary accuracy of the description of actual events, or the predictive power, but the conflicting physical models generated just aren't very good.

I take your point about my 'use of the squirrelly phrase "...the particle feels a force towards the matter...". ', it is unduly mathematical, I'll stick with 'waves and particles passing matter are refracted'.

[Kuznetzova]

I take your point about my 'use of the squirrelly phrase "...the particle feels a force towards the matter...". ', it is unduly mathematical, I'll stick with 'waves and particles passing matter are refracted'.

When people first encounter Quantum Field Theory, they realize that particles are not little solid bullets, but only ever waves wriggling in a field. At some point, everyone goes through a process where they feel that nothing is "real" because they cannot imagine how waves in a field would ever give rise to what we experience as solidity. How solidity could arise from nothing more than interacting wave packets, is not obvious. However, QFT does provide a way to visualize this geometrically.

You will often hear that force underlies solidity, and that force happens when fermions exchange force-mediating bosons. But why does the exchange of bosons give rise to a "force"? To visualize why this happens, place two marbles on a blanket that is stretched taught against a bed. Imagine that a boson passing between them is a small twist in the blanket. When you pinch the blanket and make a twist, the marbles on the blanket will move closer to each other. The pinch you are making is a boson. The marbles are the fermions. In the jargon of QFT, you will hear that fermions/marbles are "coupled to the field" within which they propagate. The exchanged boson/pinch will perturb the field because it is "borrowing energy from the field" as a whole. Bosons do not magically pop into existence from nowhere. Their momentum (and mass) must come from something, in order that total energy is conserved. They get their energy from the field itself. After the boson has leaped across the gap between them, the fermions are closer together than they were before. Presto, we have a force.

In the orthodox Schrodinger Equation, the potential energy term is sort of sitting there looking stupid as a function of distance. You will usually just plug in whatever potential energy function and go. But if you want to find out how to derive the potential between two particles, you must get into these details above about bosons and fields. A few pages below from a textbook show this derivation. Skim through and watch for the part where he talks about lumps sitting on a mattress. Watch for also for particles being coupled to a field.

http://i.imgur.com/ohaqILu.png

If you were capable of following the mathematical derivation in this textbook and you understand what they are doing, then your knowledge of Quantum Physics places you around 1939. Those calculations were hot-off-the-press in that year, and Nobel Prizes were flying left and right. It is amazing how quickly QFT developed as a science from its beginnings with de Broglie. Mere decades, really.

[Cerveny]

... The cause of gravity or the structure of quantum entities is irrelevant to some physicists what matters is what happens...

As regards the gravity and quantum mechanics, there is no reason to panic: the force of gravity is caused by tension in the physical space / vacuum / aether that is caused by its inhomogeneities - by matter. The probability of particle position retains during the interaction ("measurement") in quantum mechanics, instead of retaining simple position of particle in the classical mechanics (simply put) – the problem of point particle is blurred into probability of occurrence of particle :)

Let me to repeat some reply from another thread:
What is concerned the quantization: Every sufficiently long evolution of consistent system gradually converges at a constant or periodic state. (Let us recall an incredibly overwhelming number of elementary events that may happen during one second - the Planck time / event is about 10 ^ -44 s in this context). Spectral analysis of periodic phenomena produces discrete values, so the lasting systems have a quantization encoded in its essence. Each real periodic plot is somehow maintained / supported from the "outside". Similarly, the evolution / being of the Universe (which is full of periodical phenomena – el.mag. waving, motion of electrons in atoms … or even quantum waving *) must be (as a real process) somehow subsidized / supported from the outside, from the "future". Let us return now to the quantization. Consider for example flute (analogy to quantum system): The manufacturer certainly does not need to solve the Stokes – Navier or Bernouli equations or air composition - he is only interesting in the stable (discrete) states generated by the constant flow of air. QM similarly mostly tries to find stationary states generated by certain medium flowing from the "future", without any particular interest about mentioned medium. Some necessary properties (analogical to air press and density - in case of flute) are given by physical constants (h, c...).

* By the way, I can see a strong analogy between electromagnetic waving - "photons" and the inertial motion. So I believe that inertial motion (and el.mag. waving) is a result of certain “support”, of a permanent addition (replication), “snowing” of matter at the Universe surface (the presence) from the "future".

[tillingborn]

When people first encounter Quantum Field Theory, they realize that particles are not little solid bullets, but only ever waves wriggling in a field.

Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but the Big Bang theory was enough to convince me that matter was probably not atomos, uncuttable, as Democritus suggested, it simply wouldn’t fit into the sort of volume mooted. So when I first encountered QFT, it was no surprise. What was a surprise was what seemed to me to be the failure of mathematicians to put two and two together. It looked as though the field described in QFT is static, whereas BB implies a much more dynamic field. If the Big Bang is the source of the universe, then if the quantum field (or inflaton or spacetime continuum) is real, then it presumably has the same properties as the thing it is made of; in other words it grows like billy-o. I don’t know whether the more accurate analogy is a tightly wound spring that will eventually flatten out in heat death in a few trillion years or the magic porridge pot, that will keep producing more forever. Just to be clear; I am not making any scientific claims, this is only an ontological guess, but I suspect that, in contrast to your blanket description, fermions are ‘twists’ and bosons are waves (possibly 'twisted') in what could be treated as a mechanical medium.

[Kuznetzova]

Actually all particles are waves. That was the first discovery in Quantum Mechanics (Louis de Broglie)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIGI-eXK0tg

[tillingborn]

Actually all particles are waves. That was the first discovery in Quantum Mechanics (Louis de Broglie)

Actually all particles can be described as waves, according to the brilliant, most successful theory ever. It doesn't follow that they are.

[Hjarloprillar]

"When people first encounter Quantum Field Theory, they realize that particles are not little solid bullets, but only ever waves wriggling in a field. At some point, everyone goes through a process where they feel that nothing is "real" because they cannot imagine how waves in a field would ever give rise to what we experience as solidity."

I knew in gut from1st. That matter is but structured energy. [from age 10 up]
So qtheory was no leap of faith. but affirmation.
I was a hell of a lot smarter at that age than i am now. What happenned?

"Why does matter act like a particle and a wave. Because the particles are waves."
though again this is theory. I have heard some convincing ideas regarding q state indeterminacy.

As a military historian/technologist such is a secondary interest. and i'm woefully remiss in keeping up with new ideas.
Only as much as needed to comprehend basis for plasma weap design and theory.
To be honest the intricacies of Roman combat tactics.
Of naval war in 1800 to n0w. Aircraft tech. Machine Intelligence applied post 2001.

As a coonceptualist and pretty much 'math stupid'. Interest comes 1st. then abillity.

Nikos of Sparta