MarkE

Thanks for the article, I'll get into that. It's a boson, so it's a SM particle, made of "stuff". (So to rewrite my sentence: Mass/attraction isn't necessarily inherently connected with matter SM particles.) Well, only particles can have charge, but not only particles can have mass. This is the reason why I support the quantum fluctuation theory (which preceded the Big Bang), and the zero-energy Universe. Matter doesn't even need other matter to be created. Quantum foam describes pair production in the vacuum (false vacuum) of space. We actually observe some annihilation in some locations, but only around hyper-energetic sources that produce matter and antimatter in equal amounts, like around massive black holes. When the antimatter runs into matter in the Universe, it produces gamma rays of very specific frequencies, which we can then detect. This century, advances in precision electroweak testing, collider technology, and experiments probing particle physics beyond the Standard Model may reveal exactly how it happened. This means that, to go from mass to energy is allowed by E=mc2, is like saying to go from nothing to something, which is basically what the quantum fluctuations hypothesis states (Edward Tryon proposed the zero-energy universe hypothesis: that the Universe may be a large-scale quantum-mechanical vacuum fluctuation where positive mass-energy is balanced by negative gravitational potential energy), and also what we observe during BH entropy, gamma ray bursts, quantum foam. There's also a non-scientific, but still interesting problem with mental causation, if you consider where a thought, or an idea, comes from, and that it actually violates the law of conservation of energy (see point 2.3 Conservation Laws of this article). If it's not covered by the Standard Model, it's not a particle. We need dark matter to describe the way in which celestial bodies are orbiting the BH in our Milky Way, but if we don't understand what a BH is in the first place, we might not need this dark "matter".

This is another reason to add to my list why black holes can't possibly be made of Standard Model matter. Would this particle be a particle on the SM, or a different/new kind of particle that doesn't exist today (as mentioned by Strange in another topic): Not really. Just that in the grand unification epoch, the particles that existed would have behaved differently than they do now. This is not something I now much about but if the forces were unified, then perhaps the distinct particles we see now were not distinguished. But it probably needs someone like Mordred to comment further Mass/attraction isn't necessarily inherently connected with matter. On the list of unsolved problems in physics can be read: Dark matter: What is the identity of dark matter?[17] Is it a particle? Are you sure that black holes preserve charge? That would mean they have to be made of SM matter, but as far as I know charged black holes only exist in theory. Keep in mind that Hawking radiation is describing the vicinity of a BH, the event horizon (where matter resides), not the center of it. The same accounts for jet plumes. In artistic drawings you often see a jet plume coming from the center of a BH, but in reality the jet plume is formed only in the vicinity of a black hole, near the event horizon, it isn't ejected from the center. Black body radiation therefore doesn’t necessarily mean that an actual body/object (made of SM matter) is emitting radiation, since mass and energy are interchangeable, and mass doesn't necessarily have to be made of SM particles. I'm still not convinced that BHs, mass, dark matter, and attraction in general are characteristics of SM matter exclusively, are you?

Thanks for your contribution anyway swansont, you’re saying credible things to ponder, and I really think I have to take your viewpoint on the matter seriously, and I will, so thanks for sharing your thoughts on the subject!

I’m already working on it, you’re all actually a great help in the process! I was referring to the surplus of mass that has been measured in the Milky Way, which has to be accounted for (in order to explain the trajectory of all celestial bodies orbiting the BH). We have coined this additional mass the term “dark matter” because it can’t be caused by the mass of the total amount of matter objects in the Milky Way (since all celestial bodies are made up of SM particles). If this can't be explained by normal matter, we're forced to divert to other explanations. It looks like the densest form of SM matter can’t be at the center of a BH (but I haven’t considered Fermi gas yet, as pointed out by @Mordred). However, so far SM particles have been ruled out as an explanation for all the mass we measure. This means that if “something” ("stuff", SM particles) can’t be the cause of mass, it must be “nothing” (whatever that means, I don’t claim to understand the physics of “nothing”), but the point is that there’s no option c, it’s either “stuff” or “not stuff”, so if it can't be A, it has to be B. There’s a difference between “nothing”, meaning a gap/hole in spacetime, and the vacuum in between celestial bodies. The vacuum itself has some kind of neutrality, whereas an actual hole has an attractive force, because of its negative characteristic. Once again, what is mass anyway? The Higgs, the graviton, dark matter, aren’t they all just different forms of attraction? Why would anybody argue that mass must be caused by a SM particle?

It doesn’t have to be something (“something” meaning “stuff”), this would only be the case if you assume that a particle by itself can “have” mass. I don't think that this has to be the only possibility. A black hole may quite literally be a black hole, a gap, which exerts an attractive force onto energy and matter because of this counter-nature, even though it’s not a body, it's not stuff, nothing at all, an empty hole in space. If you assume that only SM particles are able to have mass, how then would you explain the existence of dark matter? How would you explain the additional mass if you can't include any more additional matter? Dark matter isn’t showing any signs of a normal SM particle nature, so why would you assume it must have one, only because the SM is the only model we are allowed to use? What is "mass" anyway? Perhaps the term "dark matter" should be "dark attraction". If there are only two possibilities, and one of them is ruled out, then the second possibility must be the answer. In other words: if it can't be something, it must be nothing, according to the proof by contradiction. But I don't claim to understand the nature of "nothing", and perhaps I'm totally wrong, so yes, you could argue of course that a BH must be a body, an object, made of SM particles, indeed, because it seems to be the most probable and logical candidate, and you can wrap your brains around that more easily. But then the question remains: what kind of matter? And in what composition? What dense form of matter did you have in mind?

? What particles? Where did I mention that a particle is responsible for mass? You're absolutely right, that someone can't prove me wrong does not mean that I am right, but I'm merely applying Occam's razor whenever there are two mutually exclusive arguments. I always tend to support the most plausible explanation. I've tried to explain to you why there are more reasons (supported by observations and the laws of physics) in advantage of BHs not existing of SM particles than against it, and you've tried to explain to me why BHs do exist of SM particles. We both lack irrefutable evidence, so I guess we both see no reason to change or adjust any of our personal opinions. So let's just agree to disagree. Just to be clear, to suggest that BHs are made of SM particles (described above in detail) is in my opinion not wrong, only less plausible.

Are you’re referring to MACHOs and WIMPs? These hypothetical particles have never been proven to exist. There’s a term in astrophysics called ‘degeneracy pressure’, which sets a limit to which matter particles can be clumped together inside of a body. The addition of one single neutron would make a neutron star collapse into a black hole (link - link - link). I'd like to see physics which shows that dark matter must be SM matter.

1: There is evidence that not only matter can have mass (called: dark matter). 2: A neutron star (max 1-3 Solar masses) is the densest possible form of matter. SMBHs have much more mass than that. It seems to me it's more far-fetched to suggest that a black hole is made of SM particles, rather than to suggest that they can't be made of SM particles. So what is the nature of mass anyway? I for one haven’t still been able to wrap my head around the idea that a particle, the Higgs boson, as an excitation of the Higgs field, which “gives mass to all other particles”, but this particle itself also has mass!? (Multiple masses even). Who claims to understand that? Planck area is the area by which the surface of a black hole increases when a black hole swallows one bit of information (as was proven by Jacob Berkenstein). E=mc2. Conversely, Hawking radiation is the decrease of a black hole's EH in size, by evaporating mass into virtual particles (which then can turn into real particles). mc2=E.

Mainstream physics? There's no established physics regarding this subject, since the scientific community doesn't quite know what dark matter is. But if I understand you correctly, you don't want to discuss that subject outside of the borders of mainstream physics that you do understand. I'll respect that, so I won't mingle anymore in this topic with my viewpoints.

Made of particles that are on the Standard Model.

In GR, massless photons are attracted by a black hole. How would that be possible if only objects would be able exert gravitational attraction to (massive) objects? There's no evidence which shows that black holes are actual objects. So therefore: is not evident. I'm not supporting it. On what grounds? Because not only SM objects are able to have mass (called "dark matter").

The zero-energy Universe states that there's just as much gravitational potential energy as "normal" energy (the Standard Model particles). In other words, the "not stuff" is equal to "stuff". Not only objects (made of energetic particles) can exert mass. Massless photons for instance are attracted to black holes as well, and black holes can't be made of matter. How do we know this? Because a neutron star is the densest form of matter known, with a mass between 1,4 and 3 Solar masses (though before this state a neutron star was a normal star, with about 10 – 30 Solar masses), in which the electrons have been driven into the nuclei by reverse beta decay. Black holes of course can have a much more mass than 3 Solar masses, so a black hole therefore can't be an object (made of Standard Model "stuff") which exerts attraction to its surroundings. We've created the concept "dark matter" for the same reason, because our "normal" Standard Model matter can't explain all the mass we measure.

Not everybody agrees about that (read this article). To summarise it, “Energy isn’t conserved; it changes because spacetime does”. But the energy itself is still there. No boson or fermion has disappeared. So therefore, from that point of view energy ("stuff" on the Standard Model) “has been conserved”. But of course, something has changed, due to this dark energy (not "stuff" on the Standard Model), so the Universe is not the same any more as it was before, something has definitely been added, so from that point of view energy “has not been conserved”. It’s a matter of terminology, if you also include "gravitational energy" when you're referring to “energy”, then energy is indeed not conserved. But energy from the Standard Model is different from gravitational "energy". A photon's energy is decreasing. Where does it go? It gets attenuated. Think of the universe as analogous to an ideal gas in a closed vessel. The temperature will change in inverse proportion to the volume change. i.e. increase the volume, and the temperature drops, though no energy has left the system. A photon has no charge/mass, but both the matter/antimatter particles do have charge/mass, but together still cancel out to 0. The electron and positron pair still have that same dualistic nature. Maxwell's 2nd law of electromagnetism clearly shows the symmetry in the wave function of the photon, whereas the Schrödinger equation shows symmetry in the wave function of the electron. In other words: it doesn’t matter how often you divide an electromagnetic particle, it will always conserve a north and a south pole, because there is no such thing as a monopole. Therefore, I’m still a supporter of the zero-energy Universe, and the quantum mechanical vacuum fluctuation to explain the mechanism of the Big Bang, because I’m not aware of any other, more plausible, explanation for the Universe we live in today. It has been proposed by Edward P. Tryon that the Universe may be a large scale quantum mechanical vacuum fluctuation where positive mass-energy is balanced by negative gravitational potential energy, as a consequence of the early inflationary launch of the expansion of the Universe, in which these quantum fluctuations particles got amplified, which would explain how our Universe could have inflated from these particles. But what particle(s) exactly? What initial particle is being referred to here? I still don't fully grasp this. It’s not quite clear to me how to get from an photon to an electron/positron pair to, well, more than an electron/positron pair, because they can’t divide any further, but I guess they can, since a gamma-ray photon can be converted to millions of visible and infrared photons (stars do this all the time): Energy has changed, yes, but there wasn't any energy added or removed that wasn't already there.

Accepted! In future communication I will choose my words more carefully. I gave these values in order for them to cancel each other out, as the zero-energy Universe hypothesis is suggesting as well. I could have chosen other values instead, for example 430 and -430 which also would cancel out each other into a zero sum, the same way in which a proton doesn’t actually have +1 charge. We could have given it a +3 charge (the up quark would be +2, and the down quark -1), but this would only entail that the charge of the electron should change from -1 into -3. Once again, numbers aren’t real, proportions are. Or what about D glucose and L amino acid, (the ones our body uses, instead of their enantiomers) to indicate handedness. There's no L-ness about L amino acids, we could have named them both D glucose and D amino acid, or L glucose and L amino acid, it's just that we have to make the distinction between two different mirror images of a chiral molecule. I thought I’ve already pointed this out by arguing: Since Noether’s theorem states that there is a conservation of charge, which is also related principle to Maxwell’s equations on electromagnetism, I’m supporting the zero-energy Universe. What about you? If I’m understanding you correctly, you're not supporting this hypothesis. Could you share your main criticism against this hypothesis, and/or present a better one? Because I don’t want to support an hypothesis if there’s a more plausible alternative.

Indeed, but the space between -1 and 0 has the exact same value as the space between +1 and 0. That's what I meant (but failed to convey clearly). In the zero-energy Universe, energy has the value of +1, and gravity has the value of -1. Therefore, they both have the exact same value, when compared to 0.

A value of 1 doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a positive integer. Between -4 and -3 lies the value of 1 as well. I don’t see why I’ve deserved your tone of voice. I’m trying to understand the physical world (just like you, I presume), and I’m doing the best I can to explain how I'm interpreting certain scientific laws and observations, in order to compare them with members on this forum, and possibly adjust my interpretations. If however disagreeing with you generates negative emotions, rather than generating a scientific discussion about these contrasting arguments, and why they are different, in which at least one of us obtains a different perspective on the matter, it might be better to not have those discussions anymore (which would be unfortunate, because I can remember higher quality discussions we’ve had in the past, and we really should have more of those, don't you think?). You're right that I wasn't very clear about this value of 1, and what I meant by it, so please excuse me for that, but I really don't think I deserve to be compared to poison and cyanide sugar because of that.

If this is the easy bit, could you tell a bit more about the first two or three chronological steps that sequentially occurred after this hot dense state? Are you implying that, during this hot dense state, there must have been a non-Standard Model particle which wasn’t involved with any of these three forces of nature whatsoever? I know, that's what I've been trying to explain @Silvestru. The only difference between matter and antimatter is charge. The fact that we live in a matter Universe doesn’t mean that there is more plus (+) charge than minus (-) charge around. So in terms of electromagnetism there's no C symmetry violation. Are you suggesting that it's more probable that the Big Bang started out with already a multitude of energy particles being present, rather than to be preceded by the least possible amount of energy to start out with (which is 1)?

The riddle is how to evolve from the Big Bang to this Universe, so that’s what I’m trying to find out. Not by discussing philosophy, but by taking scientific facts and laws in consideration when discussing already existing hypotheses, posed by scientists. The Big Bang itself asserts that it got from something to, well, more than something. This adding of energy is by definition not allowed by the law of conservation of energy, so either this conservation law turns out to be wrong (which I wouldn’t dare to suggest), or this initial form of energy has divided into more and more parts. I can’t see a third option here. If there is an option c, please let me know. Let’s consider this possible division hypothesis. In the case of an initial photon, that would generate an electron/positron pair. But then what? If then nothing could have happened for that point on (from those two points on, that is), because it would mean that if these particles would annihilate each other, they could, at most, only have lead to the same unchanged initial photon energy, then this hypothesis can’t be the right one. That's what I'm trying to find out. But if after annihilation the photon radiation energy could somehow have increased, if there is scientific support for that, then this might be related to the inflation process Edward P. Tryon was referring to, which then gave rise to much more pair productions and pair annihilations, and eventually evolved to the plasma of quarks and gluons, and next to the Universe we have today. If however all of this is impossible on scientific grounds, and the process I’m describing could only have been a back-and-forth event, without gaining more radiation energy in the process, and you all agree on that, then I would really like to know what the explanation behind that conclusion would be, because then the answer to the initial question about the Big Bang, the question of how to get from a single point in space to this vast Universe, must lie in acknowledging the possibility that the addition of “stuff” to that initial point must have played a role in how the Universe has changed over time. Once again, as far as I can see (but I could be wrong of course), there no option c here, because if you can't divide the energy that you possess (because it won't increase radiation energy), and you also can't add any energy (according to the law of conservation of energy), then we shouldn't be alive right now. So if there is a third option I haven't yet considered, please en"lighten" me.

Your question was "1 what?". The answer is "1 photon". (With an energy that makes pair production possible.) Thanks for pointing out the correct decimal point.

The Big Bang started out from 1 point, quite literally. Light preceded matter (the first atoms formed 400,000 years after the Big Bang), so the most probable candidate seems to be the photon itself, since the quantum fluctuations hypothesis is referring to pair particles, which is a characteristic of the photon (from 511 MeV a photon can pair produce). But, as I’ve already pointed out, if this hypothesis is indeed correct, then what could have happened after that event? Photons are able to divide (pair produce), but electrons/positrons can't. Edited 9 hours ago by MarkE If anybody has an idea what could have happened next, how to get from two charged particles, e+ and e-, to more than two charged particles, please share your thoughts. If we could conclude that this hypothesis can't be the right one, then that would also be interesting to know, so either way, share your thoughts . Indeed, 1 does not equal 0, but if energy ("stuff") has the value of 1, then gravity (not "stuff") has the value of -1. Together they make up 0. Just to be clear about this value of "1": numbers don't actually exist, humans made those up because they come in handy in abstract thinking, and making calculations. Proportions do exist, but numbers aren't created by nature, just like the concept of a "field" can be helpful in setting up equations, but there is no proof that all particles have their own actual existing field. And lastly, about this zero-energy Universe, which you don't seem to support, there's more evidence that our Universe can be considered a spatially flat Euclidean space, which means that the angles of a triangle in space would add up to exactly 180 degrees. What hypothesis do you consider to be more probable?

I'm not saying it has the value 1, I'm only saying the Big Bang, a single point in space, must have started with the least possible value, which I'm giving the value of 1. I'm doing that. Scientists are doing that, because measurements indicate that the gravitational energy is also 1. This energy value of 1 could not have increased, because energy can't be created nor destroyed. Therefore all particles are indeed particles, because all energy/charge is conserved. This is supported by the inflation theory.

This is not explained in that article, because this is due to the law of conservation of energy.

I'm still waiting on your reaction to the evidence/sources/laws I've provided, as a reaction to this remark: Do you still not support the zero-gravity Universe, and if so, what's the counter-argument?

Without energy there wouldn't be any gravity. What would it attract?

It’s an hypothesis indeed, just like the heat death of the Universe, but in the absence of a more probable theory, Occam’s razor requires that the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. I’ve provided evidence and measurements that support this hypothesis. If you have information for me I didn't take in account yet, please share, and I will reconsider, but so far, this is the most probable explanation. Furthermore, it would make sense on other fields as well, since conservation of charge is a related principle to Maxwell’s equations, and even a requisite according to Noether’s theorem. Take also in account that the concept of general relativity doesn't view gravity as a force, rather as a curvature of spacetime, created by light (which is massless, but still attracted to it), just the way a field could be viewed as an excitation generated by a particle. The combined energy must be 1, and can’t become more or less than 1, because otherwise the law of conservation of energy would be violated. It could only become 2 if they would both represent 1/2 and 1/2.