#11
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Cosmology insanity
On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 02:48:21 -0400, bwhiting wrote:
look at it this way, and I realize I am trying to be practical but not necessarily scientific. We know that the vaccuum has an awful lot of 'potential' energy; in science class, have you ever seen the two iron hemi-spheres placed together, then the air removed from them with an air pump? 4 sets of horses on each end cannot pull the two hemispheres apart with a vacuum inside them. Kind of proving here that a perfect vaccuum must have a lot of potential energy. No, it doesn't. This is just a measure of air pressure. The "vacuum" referred to in cosmology really has nothing to do with our usage of the word, meaning basically an absence of matter. In the cosmological sense, vacuum is referring to the structure of space-time itself. It is not the absence of particles: at a small scale, we are surrounded by this vacuum, and it matters not in the least that we are in an atmosphere. _________________________________________________ Chris L Peterson Cloudbait Observatory http://www.cloudbait.com |
#13
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Cosmology insanity
But there is such a thing as vacuum energy, because of
the constant creation and annihilation of virtual particle-antiparticle pairs. Quantum mechanics predicts this, and it has been observed experimentally. |
#14
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Cosmology insanity
wrote in message ... bwhiting wrote: hey Toast, look at it this way, and I realize I am trying to be practical but not necessarily scientific. We know that the vaccuum has an awful lot of 'potential' energy; in science class, have you ever seen the two iron hemi-spheres placed together, then the air removed from them with an air pump? 4 sets of horses on each end cannot pull the two hemispheres apart with a vacuum inside them. Kind of proving here that a perfect vaccuum must have a lot of potential energy. Sorry, but the vacuum itself has no potential energy. It's potential is zero, it is the air pressure outside (i.e. at a higher potential) that produces the potential energy. The PE level is [Patm-Pvac(=0)]*volume. The force capacity is only one element of the potential energy. One could generate the same force with almost zero potenital energy (e.g. two nearly flat disks with a good edge seal). Take your vacuum sphere into space and it couldn't stop a fly (assuming a fly could fly in space) ;-) Bryan I think he is talking about 'zero point energy', which _is_ 'potentially' there in a vacuum. There is talk of including a device to see if the energy can be extracted on a future space flight. Have a look at: http://sis.bris.ac.uk/~ot8234/casimi...mir_effect.htm Best Wishes So, picture a Perfect Void which existed prior to the Big Bang, loaded with lots of potential energy....this Void was not the normal space-time continuum that we live in today....it was a Perfect Vacuum. (Our normal space today is not a perfect vaccuum...radio waves, neutrino's flitting about, x-rays, gamma rays, hydrogen atoms, dust, etc) And in my mind, it was an unstable Perfect Vaccuum, needing only the slightest quantum fluctuation on the sub-microscopic level, to unleash all that potential energy. We have no idea what the 'structure' of this Perfect Void was, but somehow, evidently, a major quantum fluctuation occurred that released all that pent up energy from the Perfect Void, and that quantum fluctuation, or the results of it, we call the Big Bang. So in this humble layman's view, you are not really getting something from nothing, you are simply converting potential energy to kinetic energy. Lots of it. Clear Skies, Tom Whiting Powdered Toast Man wrote: What gives the Universe all the room to have enormous (or infinite) space? It had to come from somewhere! What is the origin of all the matter/energy in the universe? It had to come from somewhere! If the universe has infinite size, does it also have infinite energy? What created that? Good grief, I know these are fundamental problems of cosmology but it still drives me absolutely insane. I have a few cosmology books here in the house, but they seem to tiptoe around a lot of these issues and delve into other stuff, such as redshift and different rehashes of what happened in the first second of the Big Bang. I guess it wouldn't be proper for these books to speculate, which is understandable, but I'd at least like to read an inkling of speculation. The idea of ANYTHING growing out of an absolute vacuum, no matter what the circumstances are, is so counterintuitive it is insane. The Universe shouldn't even exist! Aghh!! More fodder to contemplate during my next observing night. PTM |
#15
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Cosmology insanity
Yes, well, call it what you want, Roger.
The mental picture I conceive of the Perfect Void, that undetermined as yet, 'thing' or huge region, that existed prior to the BB, in my mind, HAD to have lots of potential energy in some form...probably not determinable. (So thus this is not 'scientific' because it is not up for data collection, nor is it duplicatable). It may not even be 'scientifically accurate' BUT..... It (my theory) just keeps me from 'going crazy' like Powdered Toast suggested. And I was just trying to 'save' him from the same fate. Clear Skies, Tom W. |
#16
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Cosmology insanity
bwhiting wrote:
hey Toast, look at it this way, and I realize I am trying to be practical but not necessarily scientific. We know that the vaccuum has an awful lot of 'potential' energy; in science class, have you ever seen the two iron hemi-spheres placed together, then the air removed from them with an air pump? That's the pressure of air on the Earth, not vacuum energy! Genz, H. Nothingness: The Science of Empty Space. 1998. Lafferty, J. M. (Ed.). Foundations of Vacuum Science and Technology. New York: Wiley, 1998. Redhead, P. A. (Ed.). Vacuum Science and Technology: Pioneers of the 20th Century. AIP, 1993 |
#17
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Cosmology insanity
Yes, I know Sam....I was simply trying to use an
analogy of a closed system to explain the potential vacuum energy of an open system...the closest analogy I could think of on the spot. And I was referring to the first micro-second Prior to the BB, not the first micro-second after BB.... All very unscientific, of course. But that particular mental picture saves my 'sanity' even IF its scientifically, the wrong picture! (Actually, we really don't know the conditions prior to the BB do we, so no one can claim that I'm wrong)! :-) That alone gets me 'off the hook'. Clear Skies, Tom W. Sam Wormley wrote: bwhiting wrote: hey Toast, look at it this way, and I realize I am trying to be practical but not necessarily scientific. We know that the vaccuum has an awful lot of 'potential' energy; in science class, have you ever seen the two iron hemi-spheres placed together, then the air removed from them with an air pump? That's the pressure of air on the Earth, not vacuum energy! Genz, H. Nothingness: The Science of Empty Space. 1998. Lafferty, J. M. (Ed.). Foundations of Vacuum Science and Technology. New York: Wiley, 1998. Redhead, P. A. (Ed.). Vacuum Science and Technology: Pioneers of the 20th Century. AIP, 1993 |
#18
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Cosmology insanity
Powdered Toast Man wrote:
What gives the Universe all the room to have enormous (or infinite) space? It had to come from somewhere! What is the origin of all the matter/energy in the universe? It had to come from somewhere! If the universe has infinite size, does it also have infinite energy? What created that? Good grief, I know these are fundamental problems of cosmology but it still drives me absolutely insane. I have a few cosmology books here in the house, but they seem to tiptoe around a lot of these issues and delve into other stuff, such as redshift and different rehashes of what happened in the first second of the Big Bang. I guess it wouldn't be proper for these books to speculate, which is understandable, but I'd at least like to read an inkling of speculation. The idea of ANYTHING growing out of an absolute vacuum, no matter what the circumstances are, is so counterintuitive it is insane. The Universe shouldn't even exist! Aghh!! More fodder to contemplate during my next observing night. Here is some of what we do know abouth the ultimate free lunch http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmolog.htm |
#19
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Cosmology insanity
bwhiting wrote in message ...
And that hypothesis also explains why the Universe is accelerating its expansion...for a while, the first 5, 6 billion years ABB, with a smaller Universe, matter (gravity) was able to overcome some of the 'outside' vaccuum sucking, What "outside"? thus we decelerated our expansion...but now, the Universe is so large, and the gravity so weak (stretched out), that we have resumed our acceleration outward. And will continue to do so at an ever increasing rate. (According to my mind's view of it). Your mind might need to revise its view if i read your perception of the universe correctly. The Perfect Void vaccuum is 'sucking' out the known visible Universe Vacuums do not suck. Sucking is the action of outside pressure pushing matter into a place--the vacuum--that has no matter to push back. When you drink through a soda straw, you are witnessing 15lb/sq in. pushing liquid into your mouth. at a faster and faster rate as we are surrounded by it....its also the "what" that we (our Universe) are expanding into. Confirmed--your mind definitely needs to revise its view. Thus, there is no need to invoke a 'dark energy'...anti-gravity stuff, scenerio. Remember Occam's Razor? Occam's Razor only works among explanations that fit the observations. Don't worry--you're not alone in your total misconception of the BB. As someone else explained, it's not intuitive--and i might add, nature is under no obligation to conform to our intuitions. Just ask the people who discovered the universe's acceleration! What may be even more counterintuitive is that a vacuum is *not* nothingness. This leaves the door wide open for mind-bending ideas like "dark energy." But enough headaches for one afternoon. Clear skies! -- ------------------- Richard Callwood III -------------------- ~ U.S. Virgin Islands ~ USDA zone 11 ~ 18.3N, 64.9W ~ ~ eastern Massachusetts ~ USDA zone 6 (1992-95) ~ --------------- http://cac.uvi.edu/staff/rc3/ --------------- |
#20
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Cosmology insanity
On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 18:26:04 -0400, bwhiting wrote:
The 'outside' that I am mentally visualing.... You may as well mentally visualize purple-toed unicorns (a favorite of Brian Tung g) because they have the same possibility of existence. It does seem very likely that if there is an "outside" to the Universe, it has a very different meaning than say, "outside" your house. In fact, current science states that we can never know about these distant regions anyway. It does not state that at all. It states that there are regions of the Universe beyond our ability to see, or ever receive information from. But there is nothing that precludes our developing a deep understanding of the nature and formation of the Universe, and therefore knowing with near complete certainty what parts we can't see are like. And I think Occam's razor is valid for anything, anytime, although it is generally reserved for real scientific questions. Occam's razor falls apart if you don't have the knowledge to determine what constitutes simple, possible solutions. At the small end of things, quantum mechanics is a good example. Someone who doesn't understand the basis of the peculiar, non-intuitive behavior of things at that scale will fail completely if he tries to use Occam's razor. It seems that the same problem exists for the Universe at a large scale. _________________________________________________ Chris L Peterson Cloudbait Observatory http://www.cloudbait.com |
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