Time, space-time and eternity
Offline There have been some speculations as to what happened before the Planck Era. I will now go over two models and point out that they raise some interesting questions about time.
Model one: Our universe created ex nihlo
Basically the theory that 'nothing' is unstable and hence quantum tunneled into space-time/physics laws. If this caused the Big Bang, it happened about 13.7 billion years ago. Yet, what was before that? How do we define time? If space is required for time, why would it take a perhaps infinite amount of time to quantum tunnel? I say infinite, since there is no way to measure time before this state. (since there was no space-time)
Model two: Multiverse budding
This assumes the multiverse is eternal, basically quantum events led to the 'budding' off of our universe from some mother universe. This would explain time, since the space-time is from the mother universe, but what about our time? Did an infinite amount of time (since the mother universe is eternal) pass before our creation? How is that possible?
I have no idea why, but I thought of these questions while walking around campus and just couldn't figure them out.
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The proper term to use is indefinite. And what is the difference between space-time and time?
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
Perhaps that is a better word.
Nothing really.
The reason I included time in there is for what happened before ex nihlo. (Since there was no space)
Wouldn't it be easier to simply say before space? Also, something happened before nothing happened?
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
I guess I'm asking 'How long was there nothing?'
I'm just trying to get my finite brain around eternaty.
Is this a theological question, a scientific question, or a philosophical question?
I would think you need to be able to grasp what infinite is before you can grasp eternality. Of course, the reason why our brains are finite is beucase they aren't infinite. So it would seem that you have an unattainable goal.
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
On what grounds do you posit an ex nihilo event?
There are no theists on operating tables.
I little of all three. But let's leave out the theological for now and focus on the philosophical/scientific.
Perhaps, but I can't stand not wondering.
Quantum flucuations.
"How long" and "nothing" seem to be incompatible concepts. Time requires a referent. It requires change else you can't say that time has passed. "Nothing" has no structure in which to manifest change. I would go so far as to suggest that that this "nothing" has the same status as "supernatural". You can't tell me what it is, only what it isn't. And if the "nothing" out of which quantum fluctuations occur has structure, then it is no longer "nothing".
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This is what I'm talking about. The seemingly paradoxal thinking of infinitiy and eternaty.
But how long was it no longer 'nothing' and how long did it take to no longer be 'nothing'?
I am saying that it was never nothing. There was always something. Time may or may not be a part of that in any sense that we can conceive, but there was always something.
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That runs into the problem #2 in my OP. How could an infinite amount of time pass before right now?
I guess this doesn't trouble me. I don't have trouble with the idea of an infinite number of natural numbers. Adding the negative numbers so there is a positive and negative infinity isn't troubling either. I just except it as a property of the numbers. An infinite past and future seems like a fundamental property of existence.
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Quite easily actually. Before we can pass a second through time we must first past a half a second. Before we can pass that we need to pass a quarter second etc. etc. Essentially, you can break down a second into an infinite amount of segments, thus, whenever we pass a second in time we also pass through an infinite amount of second segments. So, there is an infinite amount of time in every second that we pass every second of everyday. Kinda freaky isn't it?
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
Then how could I walk across a room if there is an infinite amount of space between the two walls?
(look up the zeno paradox)
How could you put walls around an infinite amount of space? WOuldn't the walls make it an enclosed space, thuis not infinite?
What do you think my example was based off of?
And Xeno never talked about space but measurements. Like if I only half my my previous distance when walking to my door I will never reach the door (yet I must cross all these distances to reach the door, therefore, the fact I reach the door is paradoxical).
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
How about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menger_sponge (A three dimensional object with a volume of zero)
or this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_snowflake (a finite area with an infinite perimeter
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Again, these are mathematical, not neccesarrily physical. Cpt. Pineapple was talking about putting walls around an infinite amount of space. The mere fact of putting walls around it makes it an enclosed space. With these two examples of the square and snowflake, you start off with an enclosed space, but then add or take away from it at infinitum leading to a mathimatical paradox of an infinite perimeter around an enclosed space or an object with zero volume, due to the object having an infinite amount of empty space, yet still taking up space since you are removing a ninth from a ninth from a ninth from a ninth, thus, never removing the whole.
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
Well, I'm no physicist, but it seems to me that if space and time are so closely related such that it's justifiable to refer to them as a single concept, space-time, then it would likely be impossible for time to exist before space. Furthermore, wavefreak touches on an excellent point here:
If time really existed before space, then something other than both space and time would have to exist before space as well... something which involved state changes. If there was no state change between any 2 points in time, there would be no progress towards the beginning of space.
Of course, this argument assumes that no outside force were to act on this hypothetical spaceless timeline to initiate the addition of space to time that you seem to be positing. Of course, if there were such an outside force involved, why wouldn't it create time in conjunction of space, i.e. wouldn't it be a more straightforward model if space-time were created instead of adding space to some inexplicably preexistent and empty time?
Okay, you lost me here. Every definition of "quantum" activity in physics that I've ever heard involves matter-energy inside the medium of space-time. How could anything like that demonstrate a point at which the medium, and therefore the contents, didn't exist?
Well, not quite. The minimum amount of time that can pass in a frame of reference is a Plank second. The minimum amount of space you can move through in a Plank second is a Plank length. That solves a lot of what follows after that post, since it mostly revolves around Zeno's paradoxes.
As for everything else, there is no infinity before time. Just like there is no time in this coordinate model (x,y,z) unless we arbitrarily choose a coordinate to use as time - except it wouldn't be time unless we followed certain rules.
A better question would be "What is not part of the universe?"
Inspector you're a gifted man, this is so right.
Now, what is the universe...?
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Heh, that depends on how we define it, but certainly if we answer one of those questions then the answer to the other will follow.
Someone discovered or proved that there is a shortest distance or that there is point where something can no longer be halfed?
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
yeah, you could say that. The planck length is the smallest meaningful distance in the material universe. A 'something' within the planck length equally spans it, you could say it's location is smeared over a whole planck space. To have a precise measurement of, say, 1/4 of a planck length could not happen in the universe we know, the energy is too high and it just devolves into basically nonsense and nothingness, infinitesimal calculus does not carry beyond the planck length, you can basically say that the classical description of the world and the quantum description are not one continuous function insofar as we know.
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Coolness.
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
But this is still theoretical, of course. No one has "proven" that there are in fact no greater divisions.
Math will always fail to know it all , but I like the effort and walking on the moon
Atheism Books.
Well, there are greater divisions - they just don't mean anything beyond that point because matter (in whatever form) doesn't fit in there. If it did then the world wouldn't work the way we know it does.