Question from a Layman

Is there any rational explanation as to how matter came to be in the first
place? I seem to remember reading that matter can be created from nothing
more than energy. But likewise input of energy has to come from somewhere
doesn't it?

Also is there an explanation of what happens to space at the beginning of
each incarnation of the universe? Does it wrap in on itself due to the
immense gravity?

This is where I cross the line into science fantasy I guess.. Is there
anyway sentient life can exist, if sufficiently evolved as the universe
converges? Or must everything be consigned to oblivion at the end of the
universe?

I am a Property Developer and have no scientific background so anyone who
favours me with a response please bear this in mind and speak slowly and use
small words!!

Regards

Gary Rutherford

Gary wrote:
Is there any rational explanation as to how matter came to be in the first
place?

Not really. Current scientific theories can not go back to the
ultimate origin, only to a time of, say, 0.000000001 seconds after it
(I don't remember the exact number - but you'll get the point). And at
that time, matter already existed.

Well, depends on what you mean with "matter". Atoms and molecules?
These came into being only after some hundreds of thousands of years,
by combination of the then existent atomic nuclei and electrons.
Or atomic nuclei? These came into being after about three minutes,
by combination of the then existent protons and neutrons. Protons
and neutrons? These came into being after some seconds (?), by
combination of the then existent quark-gluon plasma.


I seem to remember reading that matter can be created from nothing
more than energy.

That's indeed right.


But likewise input of energy has to come from somewhere doesn't it?

The short answer is: no, not necessarily.

For a longer answer, you could try reading this:
http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/~dkoks/Faq/Relativity/GR/energy_gr.html


Also is there an explanation of what happens to space at the beginning of
each incarnation of the universe?

No. But so far, it doesn't even look like as if there had been (and
will be) more than one incarnation.

In order to address such questions, we would need a physical theory
which combines General Relativity (the current theory for gravity)
with Quantum Theory; a so-called "theory of quantum gravity".
Physicists have been trying to find such a theory for several decades
now - so far, without any definitive results. There are some promising
ideas like String Theory, but no one can say so far if that will turn
out to be right.


Does it wrap in on itself due to the immense gravity?

Gravity (in the mean) isn't more immense at the beginning than it is
today.


This is where I cross the line into science fantasy I guess.. Is there
anyway sentient life can exist, if sufficiently evolved as the universe
converges?

Sorry, I don't understand the question...?


Or must everything be consigned to oblivion at the end of the
universe?

So far, it doesn't look like as if the universe will ever end...



I am a Property Developer and have no scientific background so anyone who
favours me with a response please bear this in mind and speak slowly and use
small words!!

Hope I could help a bit.


Bye,
Bjoern

RCPT
DATA
DATA
Message-ID:
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 06:04:52 +0100
From: Charles Francis
Newsgroups: sci.astro.research
Subject: Question from a Layman
Path: clef.demon.co.uk!charles
References:
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To:

In message , Gary
writes
Is there any rational explanation as to how matter came to be in the first
place? I seem to remember reading that matter can be created from nothing
more than energy. But likewise input of energy has to come from somewhere
doesn't it?

Energy is conserved in measurement, but this means you need two
measurements, an initial one and a final one. You can't do a measurement
before the beginning of the universe, so the question doesn't make
sense. Effectively, it seems, the energy does come from nowhere.

Also is there an explanation of what happens to space at the beginning of
each incarnation of the universe? Does it wrap in on itself due to the
immense gravity?

No. We cannot take theory down to what happens here, or even make
scientific sense of phrases like "each incarceration of the universe".
We can only study the behaviour of our universe.

This is where I cross the line into science fantasy I guess.. Is there
anyway sentient life can exist, if sufficiently evolved as the universe
converges? Or must everything be consigned to oblivion at the end of the
universe?

Personally I don't think sentient life can evolve at all if the laws of
physics are all there is to it. With only physical laws we can describe
robots and machines, but not make them sentient. And there is no
mechanism according to which we can become sentient either. But that
mystery takes us well off topic for this ng.

[Mod. note: yes, Charles is correct -- although this question is
fascinating, let's try to concentrate on the cosmology here. -- mjh]

Regards

--
Charles Francis

Appreciated, I shall follow the links supplied .

One thing I am a little confused about, however, is how it can be stated
that as far as you know there will not be further, and have not been further
occurences of the universe. If science can explain everything up to the
point of the creation of the universe, but nothing before, what premise is
being applied to state that this is, as far as we know, the only time there
has been such an occurence. Would it be more correct to say that we have no
physical laws that could explain other occurences?

As regards Energy. That confuses me greatly. Doesn't something physically
have to happen to cause a change in energy, some kind of external influence?
IF that is correct, does that not imply that energy cannot come from
nothing?

Once again sincere thanks for taking the time to respond.

Regards

Gary Rutherford

"Gary" wrote in message
...
Is there any rational explanation as to how matter came to be in the first
place? I seem to remember reading that matter can be created from nothing
more than energy. But likewise input of energy has to come from somewhere
doesn't it?

Also is there an explanation of what happens to space at the beginning of
each incarnation of the universe? Does it wrap in on itself due to the
immense gravity?

This is where I cross the line into science fantasy I guess.. Is there
anyway sentient life can exist, if sufficiently evolved as the universe
converges? Or must everything be consigned to oblivion at the end of the
universe?

I am a Property Developer and have no scientific background so anyone who
favours me with a response please bear this in mind and speak slowly and
use
small words!!

Regards

Gary Rutherford

writes

Energy is conserved in measurement, but this means you need two
measurements, an initial one and a final one. You can't do a measurement
before the beginning of the universe, so the question doesn't make
sense. Effectively, it seems, the energy does come from nowhere.

Hmm....

There seems to be a basic general relativity argument that 'the energy
of the universe' is undefined. There also seems to be an argument that
the total energy is zero if one includes the gravitational field. If
this is (roughly) true then it may be that the energy of the universe is
zero, and always has been.

Personally I don't think sentient life can evolve at all if the laws of
physics are all there is to it.

I would disagree. The simplest 'alive' organisms have remarkably few
genes and are describable as what amounts to chemistry. From there to
humans (which we will consider sentient) there are mere fine graduations
of increasing complexity so there is no a-priori reason, and
considerable logical argument, that 'sentience' is simply a possible
consequence of a sufficiently complex chemistry in an appropriate
environment.

This seems to me to be a perfectly logical conclusion based on the
available evidence.

With only physical laws we can describe
robots and machines, but not make them sentient.

Yet.

And there is no
mechanism according to which we can become sentient either.

We do not know the mechanism, that is true.
Is a dog sentient? A mouse? A snake? A fish? A jellyfish?
To an extent they all show characteristics that we would consider part
of being sentient.

But that
mystery takes us well off topic for this ng.

Yup. Physics at top ....

[Mod. note: yes, Charles is correct -- although this question is
fascinating, let's try to concentrate on the cosmology here. -- mjh]

The thing that I find most fascinating is the apparent near-certainty of
organisms that reached our level of engineering and scientific expertise
some tens, more likely 100's and not implausibly 1000's of MILLIONS of
years ago. Given that our real advancement dates back probably little
more than 20,000 years, that should be the cause of some humility.

--
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.

Use functions].
BTOPENWORLD address has ceased. DEMON address has ceased.

Gary wrote:
Appreciated, I shall follow the links supplied .

One thing I am a little confused about, however, is how it can be stated
that as far as you know there will not be further, and have not been further
occurences of the universe. If science can explain everything up to the
point of the creation of the universe, but nothing before, what premise is
being applied to state that this is, as far as we know, the only time there
has been such an occurence. Would it be more correct to say that we have no
physical laws that could explain other occurences?

From what we can measure about the universe, it will expand forever
and never "end" in the future. So there can't be other "occurences" in
the future.

There could have been ones in the past. But nothing from these other
universes could have ever reached us, nothing about them is
measurable, they have no effect whatsoever on us.


As regards Energy. That confuses me greatly. Doesn't something physically
have to happen to cause a change in energy, some kind of external influence?

Influence, yes. External, no.


IF that is correct, does that not imply that energy cannot come from
nothing?

No.


[snip]

Bye,
Bjoern

"Bjoern Feuerbacher" wrote in
message ...
From what we can measure about the universe, it will expand forever
and never "end" in the future. So there can't be other "occurences" in
the future.

Now here I have a problem.. You are saying that the Universe will expand
forever, and is being thrown further apart by the energy released in the
initial moments that created the universe. From that very first second
surely gravitational influence must have been exerting a braking effect.
The rate of acceleration must have been greatest at the very first
instant. Surely there will come a point when this reverses the process.
I am right in thinking that nowhere in the universe there is a true
absence of matter, but every cubic metre of space contains a few quarks
all attracting their neighbours.

[Mod. note: MIME damage removed. Please, please, please, post only
in plain text, not HTML, not multipart, just good old-fashioned 7-bit
ASCII. -- mjh]

Gary wrote:

Now here I have a problem.. You are saying that the Universe will expand
forever, and is being thrown further apart by the energy released in the
initial moments that created the universe. From that very first second
surely gravitational influence must have been exerting a braking effect.
The rate of acceleration must have been greatest at the very first
instant. Surely there will come a point when this reverses the process.
I am right in thinking that nowhere in the universe there is a true
absence of matter, but every cubic metre of space contains a few quarks
all attracting their neighbours.

You are right in almost everything here, except that in general
relativity the source of the gravitational field is not the
energy density, say rho, but rather rho + 3 p, where p is the
pressure. Now, it is conceivable that one can have an energy
field such that p 0, though rho should always be positive.
If p -rho/3, then rho + 3p is negative and the gravitational
field becomes repelling. Furthermore it is possible to show
that such an energy field, which people sometimes call
quintessence or dark energy, is not diluted in the same way as the
energy of ordinary matter as the universe expands. That means
that even if the universe was dominated by ordinary matter from
the beginning, over time the relative importance of the ordinary
matter would decrease compared to that of the quintessence, and
eventually the quintessence would come to dominate, and then
the expansion would change from slowing down to gaining
momentum.

Ulf Torkelsson

In article ,
Gary wrote:
Now here I have a problem.. You are saying that the Universe will expand
forever, and is being thrown further apart by the energy released in the
initial moments that created the universe. From that very first second
surely gravitational influence must have been exerting a braking effect.
The rate of acceleration must have been greatest at the very first
instant. Surely there will come a point when this reverses the process.

Ulf's reply to this is correct as regards dark energy, but there is
one more point that's worth making. You're right that (in the absence
of dark energy, i.e. in a matter-dominated universe) gravity will
cause the expansion to slow at all time. You're *not* necessarily
right that there would always be a time when the universe started to
recollapse. It turns out that there is a critical matter density (at
any given time) for the universe to recollapse, and that there is not
enough matter in the universe we inhabit for this to happen. So even
if there weren't evidence for dark energy we would not be expecting a
Big Crunch on observational grounds. This is a shame from a
philosophical point of view, because it would be nice to think of a
universe continually expanding and collapsing (and indeed this idea
permeates a lot of science fiction from about the time when cosmology
became popular).

An analogy that may help goes like this. If I stand on the surface of
the earth and throw a ball upwards, you might say `surely there will
come a point when it will start falling back to earth'. Well, that's
true, so long as a certain inequality relating the mass of the earth,
the mass of the ball, and the energy I put in in throwing it, holds
true. If the earth had a low enough mass, or if I were good enough at
throwing balls, the ball would not fall to earth -- it would go off to
infinity, receding more and more slowly because of earth's
gravitational pull, but never quite ceasing to recede and starting to
fall back.

Martin
--
Martin Hardcastle
School of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, University of Hertfordshire, UK
Please replace the xxx.xxx.xxx in the header with star.herts.ac.uk to mail me

Taking what you say to its logical conclusion, if dark matter does become
dominant, then the universe would expand at an ever faster rate without any
form of limitation ? Now if that is the case, then eventually the universe
will be so widely dispersed that it will be eventually an infinite distance
from its origin.

This is leading somewhere.. I promise!

Are you saying that both matter and dark matter would carry on this
expansion? Now was it not also stated that matter/ dark matter can actually
be created from nothing, so is it not feasable rather than a continually
expanding and contracting universe that I fully appreciate is a work of
fiction that perhaps there could be reoccurences of the big bang forming
concentric universes from a central point of origin? I mean if it happened
once, and then the matter and dark matter thrown off are an infinite
distance away travelling at infinite speed from their origin, or some kind
of theoretical maximum speed, what is to say it will just not keep happening
again and again?? We would never know would we, as there would be know way
of viewing an earlier universe.

(Apologies to Moderator for previous rich text post)
"Ulf Torkelsson" wrote in message
...
Gary wrote:

Now here I have a problem.. You are saying that the Universe will expand
forever, and is being thrown further apart by the energy released in the
initial moments that created the universe. From that very first second
surely gravitational influence must have been exerting a braking effect.
The rate of acceleration must have been greatest at the very first
instant. Surely there will come a point when this reverses the process.
I am right in thinking that nowhere in the universe there is a true
absence of matter, but every cubic metre of space contains a few quarks
all attracting their neighbours.

You are right in almost everything here, except that in general
relativity the source of the gravitational field is not the
energy density, say rho, but rather rho + 3 p, where p is the
pressure. Now, it is conceivable that one can have an energy
field such that p 0, though rho should always be positive.
If p -rho/3, then rho + 3p is negative and the gravitational
field becomes repelling. Furthermore it is possible to show
that such an energy field, which people sometimes call
quintessence or dark energy, is not diluted in the same way as the
energy of ordinary matter as the universe expands. That means
that even if the universe was dominated by ordinary matter from
the beginning, over time the relative importance of the ordinary
matter would decrease compared to that of the quintessence, and
eventually the quintessence would come to dominate, and then
the expansion would change from slowing down to gaining
momentum.

Ulf Torkelsson