On 18/12/2012 11:21 AM, dlzc wrote:
Dear Yousuf Khan:

On Monday, December 17, 2012 6:07:45 PM UTC-7, Yousuf Khan wrote:
...
Hmm, these replies just recently appeared on my
news server, even though they were posted a month ago.


On 19/11/2012 3:09 PM, dlzc wrote:
OK, but this is not required, is not detectable
in the laboratory, and violates the laws of
physics not changing over time.

I doubt that this law has been absolutely proven.

Nothing is Science can be.

It may hold true within our current era, but
that's just a localized phenomenon.

Fine structure constant does not change as much as 1 part in 10^8 over the displayed history of the Universe, and the observations you have drawn your conclusions on *assume* no change in physics over that time.

It's hard to tell what the laws of physics were like during the
Inflationary Big Bang period. We can only see as far back as the CMBR,
i.e. 300k years after the BB, which would already be too late after the
Inflationary period. By the time of the CMBR, the Universe had already
settled into its current stable state. The Fine Structure Constant was
pretty much already at the current level, give or take a few parts per
whatever. However, during Inflation that FSC might have been quite
wildly different.

Gravity is often thought of as negative energy.

Incorrectly so, since it is energy-neutral.

No idea where you get that.

In the Inflationary period, a large amount of
positive push energy pushed the universe out
very quickly, and then that positive energy got
converted into matter

If it was not already matter, no push was required.

The matter would've had to come later, after
Inflation ended. That which is being "pushed",
is space itself.

Which arises from matter / energy, and cannot exist without it. Which is why it plays such a strong role in the curvature of spacetime.

Or more likely matter-energy requires space-time, and cannot exist
without it. I don't even think this is just another classic chicken/egg
problem, I think it's quite plainly obvious that energy condenses out of
spacetime, and that matter condenses out of energy. I think spacetime is
the basic building block, and energy and then matter come out of that.

Yousuf Khan