Causality Violated?

[ronians1]

Does the existence of Energy both within and without the Universe violate causality?

 

Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. It can only be transferred hence it represents an "effect" without a cause does it not?

[ajb]

Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. It can only be transferred hence it represents an "effect" without a cause does it not?

Energy is a property of a physical system. The reason it is conserved is deeply tied to the fact that "physics does not change with time".

[altergnostic]

Does the existence of Energy both within and without the Universe violate causality?

 

Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. It can only be transferred hence it represents an "effect" without a cause does it not?

What do you mean by within and without?

Without a universe (existence=0) there is no energy because there is nothing. Outside the universe... well, if there's something beyond the limits of the universe, then the limits were set in the wrong place.

Where did you get the notion of energy within and without the universe? Could you elaborate?

 

Also, the fact that we don't know the cause of an effect doesn't mean it doesn't have a cause, but I am not sure what effect you are talking about. Energy (or it's existence) is not an effect, just like matter is not an effect. Energy transfer is an effect.

Edited January 5, 2013 by altergnostic

[ronians1]

What do you mean by within and without?

Before the Big Bang and After

 

Without a universe (existence=0) there is no energy because there is nothing.

Are you sure?

 

Outside the universe... well, if there's something beyond the limits of the universe, then the limits were set in the wrong place

Why is that? How does one arrive at an explosion without energy?

.

Where did you get the notion of energy within and without the universe? Could you elaborate?

I presumed that since e=mc2 nothing could exist or happen without energy

 

 

 

Also, the fact that we don't know the cause of an effect doesn't mean it doesn't have a cause, but I am not sure what effect you are talking about.

Surely we must presume thus as we can only go by what scientific evidence we have.

 

 

 

. Energy (or it's existence) is not an effect, just like matter is not an effect. Energy transfer is an effect

The word is used metaphorically for something that " is and always has been".

 

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Edited January 5, 2013 by ronians1

[altergnostic]

I was not aware you were talking about the big bang. When you said "outside" I implied "off limits".

The Big Bang is just a theory, and before the bang the theory has no way to account for anything. The model limits itself to the big bang, anything else is speculative. Since causality was never falsified, I rather keep it.

You can't arrive at explosion without energy (or any other hypothetical cause). But the Big Bang model has no way to account for anything prior to the bang. I personally don't care much for the theory.

 

Now, if there's something before the bang (presuming it happened at all) it is part of existence, so existence=0 does not apply. The reasoning you are pursuing can only yield two conclusions: infinite regression in time (no beginning, no first cause) or a violation of causality.

 

I'd bet on the first option, but there's just no way to verify any of this, so it ends up being a purely philisophical discussion. We could apply Occham's razor here, where a "beginning" of the universe has to be explained with a multitude of assumptions while the "eternal" universe gets around them completely, and the only assumption would be causality - which is still unfalsified.

[MigL]

I've said this before, and AJB has alluded to it in his prvious post. Conservation of mass-energy is directly attributable to time symmetry, as per Noether.

If we consider time=0, obviously there is no symmetry because there is no negative time, mass-energy then, need not be conserved.

In effect at time=0, energy can be created or destroyed, according to our current understanding.

[altergnostic]

I've said this before, and AJB has alluded to it in his prvious post. Conservation of mass-energy is directly attributable to time symmetry, as per Noether.If we consider time=0, obviously there is no symmetry because there is no negative time, mass-energy then, need not be conserved.In effect at time=0, energy can be created or destroyed, according to our current understanding.

Of course there's the idea that the big bang is only apparently our time zero, but that the universe expands and contracts cyclicaly. But if there is really a zero time, causality must surely be violated, and I don't see how this is possible, not even with a godlike act of creation, because if god exists before the big bang, then the big bang is not the time zero and we can still ask what caused the existence of god and in that time zero we would need another act of creation.

 

Maybe we might use a more practical notion of time to think about this. The way we have been talking about it, it might seem that time is an intrinsic property of the universe, but operationally, we only measure time by comparing subsequent states of matter or energy, just like a pendulum clock. We must compare the state of something in space with a following state of the same thing in space to determine any time interval and define what is a unit of time. In that way, time IS causality. Not only that, it is not a

[MigL]

I would rather assume that as time>>0, all our notions and science must be abandoned, as there is a discontinuity at the boundary. At Planck lengths very close to t=0, we would run into Wheeler's quantum foam, where space and time are 'blended' and interchanged. Even a quantum gravity theory, while it may get us much closer to t=0, will probably still fail at t=0.