Entirely possible made the better reply... i will try anyway.
May you all have peace! I can absolutely accept and admit that I don't know enough about QFT to say there are or aren't "virtual particles." I never said there weren't. I believe there are, based on what I've been told and shown. ALL I asked, however, was, if the theory is that they instantaneously come and go...
but the professor dont stand up near the blackboard and flap his arms and say: "The theory is these guys come and go". instead he explain how virtual particles are a consequence of our most exact description of certain experimental observations made from the 30s onwards, and how experiments has later validated those predictions.
HOW do we know they aren't coming "from" or going "to" somewhere else?
the arm-flapping professor might have continued his narritive by speculating along those lines because it sound good. it make a good sentence, and it conform to our intuitions about eg. elephants which do indeed come and go that way.
But continuing from above, does the idea of them popping in and out of a universe follows? is there a mechanism for the popping? is there a prediction (why one and not many universes?) where in the other universe do they pop in and out? why only some particles? what determine when the pop in and out? how would we figure it out experimentally? what pop in and out hypothesis inform us about our world?
Let me make an illustration: In newtonian mechanics things which move have momentum and things that stand still do not. Suppose i ask: "HOW do we know the momentum does not travel into another universe and move something else when a particles in THIS universe loose its momentum?". Well strictly speaking we dont, but does the idea make sence? is it mathematically well-defined? is there any reason to believe it is so?
more importantly, i think you recognize such a speculation is mainly based in not really understanding how momentum is defined in newtonian physics. its not something which "come" and "go" even though some of the words (an object can gain and loose momentum) make it sound that way.
The answer to that was, because in THIS universe that isn't possible.
I strongly doubt that.
My question to that was: if you can't actually measure THEM... but only know they're there because certain math calculations SAY they are... how can you "measure" so as to say they're NOT actually existence somewhere ELSE... prior to and after their appearance HERE?
well it seem you got an untestable hypothesis which is not very well defined...
Which leads to the question: is this truly the ONLY [uni]verse?
good question. so what does the evidence show?
NOWHERE, though, have I compared science and religion.. other than my comparisons of the PRESENTATION... of science...to the layman... with religion's PRESENTATION of religion... to the layman.
if you want to do that then take a presentation by a scientist rather than what happends when a film-crew cut what scientists say into a tv-show. for instance take the writings of Feymann, Hawkins or weinberg.
But what is the point? it really escape me. So the voice you hear is nicer to you in the way he says thing than the parody you have of religion and the parody you have of science, therefore the voice you head is more likely to be real? it makes no sence...
Not that i for a moment think popular science is as bad as you make it out in your parody (oh the generalisations!), ofcourse its simplistic, inexact and brush over a ton of subtle details -- but if it didnt, it would become equivalent to what is allready being published, which would defeat the purpose.
Finally, if you are going to make a remark about the way science is presented in a tv-show, then make it clear: "The way this tv-show describe certain dumbed down scientific ideas remind me of how religion present certain other ideas". I think you delibrately confuse what you want to say because the implication that science and religion are equivalently questionably and untrustworthy is a point you either like, or simply think is fun to make to get people pissed off, have a good laugh, and claim you were not really intending to say what you wrote.
ps.
I must quote this:
Which is TRULY confusing to me, because that is what such ones say we're SUPPOSED to do, that knowledge STARTS with skepticism... which leads to questions.
It is confusing because you are missing the basic idea that, to be skeptical of an idea, you need to understand it, which you readily admit you don't while at the same time claiming to know what is and isn't possible in this universe. I can be skeptical all day long that squiggly lines on a page REALLY can be translated into music, but until I put forth the effort to understand music, reading music and sheet music I really am being skeptical in a void.
Perhaps the problem is the same one you have with science, just presentation. Or maybe it's not. I am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here, but it seems like you have this idea that simply being skeptical in and of itself is a good thing. Being skepitical of things CAN be good, but it isn't a virtue in and of itself. Being skeptical of something without truly understanding it, in this case, you understanding QFT or the scientific method in general, is amusing at best and foolosh at worst.
And add this: You wrote previously you did not apply the scientific method to your own visions/halucinations. I will advice you, before you take issues with the finer points of quantum field theory, that you read up on the scientific method to the point where you can apply it to this more basic case and see what kind of results you get. After that you can blow holes in more ambitious targets like Hawkins.
