by prologos 9 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
At CERN, scientists are creating PURE ENERGY by colliding Protons at near light speed.
That pure energy is akin to what preceded the forming of matter, the Quarks, the Bosons, the plasma.
That pure energy confined in the beginning singularity, that preceded matter,
in your mind, your words,
where did it come from, did it always exist, latent as a potential?
I am not really qualified to give an answer, having not studied this sufficently, or thought it through sufficiently. But perhaps I may be allowed to make an observation or two.
One difficulty with this whole area for me is getting my head around the concepts. For example, you ask what preceded Matter.
Surely "before" our Space-Time continuum, our physical Universe, their was no "before" ? and yet we know that the Universe had a "beginning", 13.8 Billion years ago, or thereabouts. ???
I do feel that we may have proved to us that Energy has always "existed", existence being another word hard to define in this context.
Oh boy, would someone with more brain cells not damaged by alcohol like mine, please help us out here ?
According to quantum theory, the energy that is being released by the proton collisions would not be the energy from "the beginning." Energy at the so-called "planck level" would, in theory, be unified, infinite, and everywhere at the same time. ("Everywhere" being the infinitely small quantum singularity that supposedly existed at the "beginning.") The energy released by the collisions at CERN is distilled down (for lack of a better word), finite, a product of the phased transitions that the universe went through as it cooled down after its initial expansion. It would be energy that holds the proton's constituant parts together, but itself could be further 'sub-divided.'
At least that is how I've understood matters. The saying is, 'anyone who claims to understand quantum mechanics doesn't quite understand it yet.'
The CERN machine is still being fine tuned to get more velocity and energ, mass into the counterrotating proton streams.
The more energy the collisions produce the closer to the time of matter's emergence and the kind proto particles that should have existed then are studied. but
In the process it becomes clear as Phizzy pointed out) that there had to be a pre-condition to focus that energy and everyones model would be an interesting contribution.
In the "God Delusion" R. Dawkins advances the idea (that I can identify with) that time is stationary and we live in the area of a moving spotlight that moves along the ruler of length.
Thecrollary of that is the idea that that spotlight started to move in the beginning with the energy singularity giving rise to mater and the rest is (our) history.
Phizzys observation rings true to me, if there is a pre-condition, the availability of energy? what do we get from that.?
Rather tha answers from specialists, the simplest might be most enlightening. for us the learners.
My favorite talk about the nature of the universe is from a specialist, an Italian physicist. I appreciate how he breaks down the most recent theories and their implications...for laymen like me.
http://www.ted.com/talks/gian_giudice_why_our_universe_might_exist_on_a_knife_edge.html
Energy is neither created nor destroyed.
I've no reason to have any problem with that.
How energy coalesces, integrates, interacts, and transforms is a matter of cataloging for those whose curiousity carries them to those ends.
Know or not knowing doesn't change my daily life in even the tiniest way.
I'm such an infinitesimal part of the whole universe. I'm the blink of an un-noticed instant. What I learn or forget, what I get wrong or right, what
I do or fail to do is not a whiff or a plop or an echo in the grand scheme.
When I was younger I teased my own imagination to the point I had ideas about a World View of Beginnings. It meant and means nothing.
It is a game for science, alas.
I'm not indifferent--simply profoundly ignorant. I've been trying to cut back on hubris before I end up in some Governing Body pretending
I know things I really don't. :)
To be firmly set in ones own intellectual honesty one has to accept human ignorance as it is past, present and future.
While it is true, that our contemplating the very distant Past does not add an iota to the overall universal scheme, making the HOW it happened, when and where id it come from are axiom questions, good to develop (not know).
such advanced thoughts do not preclude that you enjoy your marriage, children, your plane, sailboats (as Einstein did) good coocking, I mean eating,
your carving on your surf/longboard, the soul-stirring music.
Part of our matter, our energy was present in the big bang singularity, so we should be interested in that earliest part of our ancestry.
but how far does it really go back?
in your model of the world?
