joigus

Good question, but very difficult to answer. Part of the key to that could be related to the observation that Eise has introduced and you so cleverly have caught on to: This sets the stage for the famous question of meta-laws: Were the laws of physics already there before the big bang, or did they appear along with everything else? Answering that or setting the question properly (if we can ever do it) will probably get us closer to trying to answer your question. So far, what we've got is this kind of parametrisation of the problem (the inflationary model). One should also ask what "there" and "then" or "before" really mean, as space-time is supposed to have appeared along with matter. The misleading aspect of the picture that I linked to before is that it seems to suggest an extended background (especially in time). It should be conceived of as something of Planckian dimensions (very, very small). And what about time? I don't know. There are several things about inflation I can't quite wrap my head around. To me, overall, it all looks a little bit contrived to be entirely satisfactory. Another major concern of modern theoretical physics is the emergence of time. The potential energy "down which the vacuum fell" does not live in space-time, but in the inflaton-field configuration space. But physicists that work on inflationary models do use a pre-big-bang time as a background for it. Somehow, you must be able to define a sequence of events. Sorry, my word "sea" was not very fortunate. It would be better described as a Planckian-small bundle of fields, I suppose. Well, there are models, all under the name of "inflationary model" something or other; not to explain, but at least to model what must have happened. Basically you put quantum field theory (this theory of particle-antiparticle formation and annihilation) on the background of a field of potential energy. If you set the curve correctly*, you can model much of what must have happened to give rise to the universe as we know it. Inflationary models seem to be particularly good at explaining the seeds of inhomogeneity that gave rise to clusters and superclusters that today are galaxies and clusters and superclusters of galaxies. I must warn you that some very no-nonsense physicists are not completely happy about inflationary ideas. One notable example is Neil Turok. The best source for learning about these things that I know of is Leonard Susskind's online lectures (Stanford). There's also Lawrence Krauss, that Eise suggested. ------------------------------------ In answer to: It depends a little bit on how familiar you are with differential calculus, vectors, power series, things like that. There are many confusing aspects, I know. I'm leaving many questions unanswered. I'm not sure I've done a good job of making it more understandable. *"Model the curve correctly" means it must look something like this (take a look at the graph): At the bottom down of the curve is where the big bang is supposed to have started. "Previous" to that, there is a very prolonged phase of "slow roll", as it's called.

Hi. Welcome. Very old question, but very difficult to answer nonetheless. So I'm going to get hold of some visual aids found on the web. Nothingness is quite easy to picture in your mind. Maybe we get that picture from our hours of sleeping without dreams. I don't know. But, The picture of the closest thing to nothingness that we can build from physics is not a featureless scenario. It's more like this: Or, more diagramatically, like this: A perpetual struggle of opposites annihilating each other. It just isn't just nothing. What it suggests is that what we call "nothing" is more like this ephemeral tug of war between ephemeral somethingnesses (virtual particle-antiparticle pairs). Nothing (in a poetic picture derived from serious physics) is a struggle between opposites in which nobody wins. At some point in the past, somebody won (why that was so is still an enigma; I don't like the word "mystery".) The status of the theory so far is that something like this sea of opposites annihilating each other must have fell downhill some kind of modulating field (inflaton field) 13 point something billion years ago, generating real particles and filling the universe with structure. That's called inflationary model of the universe. I hope that helps, but it's been a long time since Leibniz set that question to nowadays. So the story has become more involved.

Thousands of hours thinking about a physical problem without taking much input from experts' and known facts normally end up being thousands of hours down the drain. It's actually a very bad symptom. You're trying to re-write hundreds of years of progress in science. Be careful with how much time you spend thinking on your own. The best physicists spend thousand upon thousands of hours studying (or using) physics they can claim no authorship of, and only tens of hours thinking of new ideas. Most physicists spend their lives skillfully using other people's theories. That's how it works. So it's the other way around. Thousands of hours of study culminate in tens of hours of inspiration at best. Something like that. Again, I'm trying to be helpful.

I for one apologise for having been facetious, but you really should write down these things and consider what dimensions they have in terms of mass, length, and time. Then be aware that modern physics has all of them reduced to length, so the questions turns to writing down all your magnitudes in terms of length (or any other in the Plank scale). You can't build all of physics from scratch. It's like ordering the demolition of the Taj Mahal because you've come up with a good idea for a bungalow summer resort there. And believe me, I'm trying to be helpful. You're going to find strong opposition for very good reasons.

I don't know whether this is lateral, collateral or perpendicular to what's being discussed, but I've noticed that in modern democracies, it's become increasingly irrelevant what comes out of the mouths of people in Government or, in this case, the First Lady. This suggests to me that, to a high degree, decisions are taken by Gov. officials and technocrats, and high-profile politicians are there just to not lose face, and respond to people's pet peeves, manias and prejudices (mainly in press conference before a camera or mic), so they (the people) get the feel that their whining is being responded to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preon Is it? Though yours are "braided." Preons, in a nutshell, are sub-quark/lepton structures. The L's are the characteristic dimensions of the braids, if I understood Vitaly correctly. At GUT unification scale the braids' dimensions become comparable Lx,Ly,Lz. This unification scale is given by the mass of the GUT monopole. Another question: If you're disposing of SS, how do you deal with vacuum energy? And scalar-field renormalisation? In a nutshell, please.

It is defined in Principia Mathematica, by Russell & Whitehead, if I'm not mistaken (see footnote on mentioned page.) But it seems to refer to an abstract recursion or rule, not necessarily numerical.

And we don't know anything about many more things than those we know something about. And then there are things we don't know if we don't know. And things we don't know if we could know. And maybe things we think we know, but we don't. Makes you wonder.

Well, the identity is not considered to be an interesting symmetry transformation, because everything is symmetric under it. It does play a role in the theories that involve symmetry (mostly in group theory as far as I know). Example: Consider three numbers, i, j, k. And a function alpha: \[\alpha\left(i,j,k\right)=ij+jk+ki\] And the transformation, \[\pi\left(i\right)=j\] \[\pi\left(j\right)=k\] \[\pi\left(k\right)=i\] Then we say alpha is symmetric under pi.

The only thing I can tell you is that I was never able to understand much at class. All the lights came later. And some people are nodding because they're falling asleep. When one doesn't understand something one always assumes everybody else does. Don't give up.

I'll run the gauntlet of trying to answer that question. My idea is that not necessarily. But the more words with different nuances you have, the more qualified you're going to be to add to wisdom and understanding. But how you combine those words is very important, I think. Language offers you a combinatoric, almost limitless horizon of possibilities. In poetry, you probably look for beauty and evocative power. In philosophy, you look for logical consistency. In science it's the same, but adding experimental verification. Consider the sentence: "The tortoise initiated an unabated discourse in terms of lettuce and gravy." Probably no one has said that before. You can build a sentence that "kind of" makes sense and the chances of it having been used in the history of mankind are pretty slim. Part of the challenge of successfully creating something new and interesting is finding a combination of words/concepts/mathematical formulas that no one has thought of before and yet immediately resonate with other people's feelings or manage to complete sought-after meaning.

Long live coffee|

I care not how you define me. Nor would I waste a second's thought in defining you. Nothing you can say about me can move me one way or the other. Although I suspect you will appeal to insult rather easily. I do care about ideas, theories, consistency, rebuttals, compelling arguments, experimental checks, different levels of cross checks, certainty, hidden assumptions... If this site is dead, what are you doing trying to find a place among the dead? There are plenty of places out there where you can find people far more unconcerned about assumptions and logical consistency, and totally obsessed about defining each other and themselves rather than examining their mutual assumptions. You would feel far more at ease.

Now you have You're careening off topic towards discussing your favourite toys at alarming speed.

Please, do give up on me. And stop hijacking other people's posts with your pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo. Nothing you've said so far has been substantiated.

May the entanglement be with you.

Absolutely science-spectacular. Thank you. +1 Thank you, Studiot. +1 Somewhere I had an answer written for you, but I must have lost it. A bookish answer, as always.

Thanks a lot. +1 I will adjoin the wikipedia link here, for completeness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Prismatic_Spring And a brief explanation of the most outstanding feature:

Mmmm. Yeah, sounds like you guys totally agree. You cut and paste some of your sentences and you can mock up a bitter debate.

OK. Next to total ignorant here, but... How can vitamins get genetically mutated? They contain no nucleic acids. They would be degraded by temperature, ionizing radiation and such. And it would have nothing to do with the source.

It's always the same story. Narrative is pretty boring. It's all "I was there, I met some people; things happened". That's always the same story, after you peel the layers. It's the tidbits of wisdom that make it interesting, the universal lessons. Like in Gilgamesh:

I was thinking more of Homer and whoever wrote The Epic of Gilgamesh, and not at all of Jesus. Come on. Shelley and Donne are not that old!

+1. You're particularly brilliant today. Meaning is the most important part. The only catch is that, in the last analysis, original meaning is unreachable, you must assume there is one and build it in your brain. Brains make it up.