Tia Ghose of LiveScience writes:
If a new theory turns out to be true, the universe was never a singularity or an infinitely small and infinitely dense point of matter. In fact, the universe may have no beginning at all.
At issue is that the two most dominant theories of physics, quantum mechanics and general relativity, can't be reconciled.
The new equations are just one way to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. For instance, a part of string theory known as string gas cosmology predicts that the universe once had a long-lasting static phase, while other theories predict there was once a cosmic "bounce," where the universe first contracted until it reached a very small size, then began expanding, Brandenberg said.
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Study: Universe May Have No Beginning After All
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(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @06:05AM
Before I had ever smoked a joint I had figured this one out. There is no beginning and no end, the universe is infinite. That takes care of the question of a God who created the universe - if there is no beginning there is no creator. The Hindus and Buddhists had it right with the eternal cycle of samsara.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Sunday March 01 2015, @06:49AM
You didn't figure anything out. You made a guess. Maybe a right one, maybe a wrong one, but that guess is totally worthless unless it provides a framework for testing its falsifiability. In fact, the guess that the earth rested on the back of an elephant was a better guess, because a test can be suggested that would falsify it (sail around the world and map the whole thing, don't find the earth/elephant joint; fly up high enough and fly around world -- don't find that joint, obviously a wrong guess).
I'm not a physicist and I don't hang with any, but I doubt they're sitting around getting (or not getting) high and saying: "fuck -- I should never have gone to school, what a fucking waste when the hindus/christians/muslims/celts/shintos/whothefuckever, knew everything a thousand years ago and didn't even have to learn HS level calculus. God damn I fucked up."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @07:12AM
> You didn't figure anything out. You made a guess.
Lol. Try reading the first sentence of my post. Lighten up dude. Or maybe light up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:32PM
that guess is totally worthless unless it provides a framework for testing its falsifiability
Do you think this theory is falsifiable in any meaningful way? Your argument comes down to the equivalent of disqualifying a jepoardy player for not stating his answer in the form of a question.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by marcello_dl on Sunday March 01 2015, @08:10AM
Except that "no god" does not necessarily follow from "universe had no beginning". In fact it is not a reasonable assumption, it's a new religion masked as logical thought. I had several post on the fuck beta site about the subject, so I am not shifting the goal post.
Because the time of the universe is an attribute of the universe. The time in a conway's game of life is the succession of generations, no matter how long they take to compute. The time in a isolated VM is completely distinct from the time of the host, in other words the host might take one year to calculate one clock pulse of the VM, the VM has no way to know it without outside help.
It is also trivial for a finite being to create a two way infinite abstraction, for example imagine f(t)=t for t in Z. Somebody experiencing f(t) sequentially can go on in either direction forever, but you who defined it know in advance every value of it instantly since the moment you defined it.
Of course if you *WANT TO BELIEVE* that there is only one time axis and it affects the creator then a universe with no beginning would be parallel to the creator. But it's a pretty strong assertion to make.
And you have a more general problem too, no logic implications can be necessarily true outside our universe: you can build up an abstraction where basic logic principles do not hold, for example try to formulate the principle of no contradiction in the domain of the null set. Therefore there is no guarantee that logic exists with the same rules in the hypothetical domain where the universe was formalized.
In other words, the only way for a "no beginning" universe to displace god is to attach itself to new assertions made in the domain of god, which we commonly define as "religion".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @03:59PM
I lack a reason to believe that logic somehow doesn't exist as we know it 'outside' our universe, just like I lack a reason to believe in a god.
Therefore there is no guarantee that logic exists with the same rules in the hypothetical domain where the universe was formalized.
Neither is there any guarantee that the flying spaghetti monster doesn't exist. It's just unreasonable to believe in such a thing.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by marcello_dl on Sunday March 01 2015, @06:50PM
> I lack a reason to believe that logic somehow doesn't exist as we know it 'outside' our universe.
Too bad.
First reason, logic is not a system which the universe obeys. Logic is a system that turns out useful because it is able to model the universe. There are infinite alternative logic systems, they simply don't model the universe. The existence of those is a problem for your idea of one logic system. Because I can think up a different logic system, so I generated an abstraction (in my mind, using a simulation on a pc, it does not matter) with a different logic system. So if there meta-exists something for which this universe is an abstraction, in the same way that this universe containing me generated the abstraction with a different logic system, the same mismatch of logic systems might occur.
Second, more fundamental reason, nothing in the universe has necessarily any meaning outside of it, just as using a variable outside the scope where it's defined is a fundamental mistake. Classic example, the concept of "creator". A creator causes the creation. But cause is a concept that requires an unidirectional time arrow, with a bidirectional time arrow cause and effect are equivalent correlations. And you can't stop here, "There is/isn't a creator" should generate the following warnings 1. there where? 2. "is", "isn't" are not defined*, nor are the only possibilities. 3. "a" is not defined outside space dimensions, without space there is no separation, nor numbers make necessarily sense 4. creator is not defined outside unidirectional time.
* existing is defined as belonging to the universe. nothing exists outside the universe, by definition. That doesn't prevent the universe itself being an abstraction for something meta, and something meta using "I am" as a metaphor for this situation. People mistake this for "the universe is a simulation" argument which is instead ridiculous because simulations are made by us, inspired by the universe mechanisms, so it's quite natural that something resembles... itself.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday March 01 2015, @09:16PM
Which logic? The logic commonly used in programming cannot be proven to be non-contradictory except in finite systems (so it works fine in computers).
Check out ... O ... Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter for a readable introduction. (It's been too long since I studied that so I don't want to try to explain.)
Anyway, if time has no beginning, that would seem to mean that our currently used logic wouldn't be dependable. (Note that isn't the same problem as the Quantum Logic limitation problem. [Quantum Logic reconciles quantum theory with classical theory by prohibiting certain logical operations. That doesn't solve the problems of dealing with infinity.])
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday March 02 2015, @12:55AM
>> Therefore there is no guarantee that logic exists with the same rules in the hypothetical domain where the universe was formalized.
> Neither is there any guarantee that the flying spaghetti monster doesn't exist. It's just unreasonable to believe in such a thing.
Assuming for the sake of simplicity that no god exists, it's unreasonable that people 4000 years ago correctly made up a fictional god who creates everything, visible and invisible, time included, which is a workable theoretical framework for a universe with no beginning nor end, while modern day people think that god conflicts with a no beginning universe because his act would have to take place somewhere in the same time axis, but there is no room left... which is a trainwreck that basically builds up a meta-meta-world to disprove things about a meta-world, without even succeeding.
Besides, what is the problem about? Agnosticism is possible for the following argument: all gods require faith to be recognized as such because any sufficiently powerful entity can pass for one, faith in A implies the possibility of faith in not(A) by definition. Pick one, the end.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @11:26AM
The reason is that logic is not about the world. Not at all. Logic is about statements. This of course includes statements about the world. But the point is that the structure of logic is intimately bound to the structure of statements, that is, to language.
Another species inside our very same universe that uses a very different language (possibly different enough that we cannot even comprehend it) will also need a very different logic. While the world they'll describe using their language and logic will certainly be essentially the same, the statements they use (or whatever their language uses instead of statements to describe facts) will be fundamentally different, and therefore also their logic will be.
Note that all human languages, despite their differences, have some commonality that is based on the structure of the human brain. Extraterrestrial intelligences don't need to have identical structures, and thus need not share those commonalities of human languages (and human thinking).
(Score: 3, Funny) by Magic Oddball on Sunday March 01 2015, @03:37PM
Before I had ever smoked a joint I had figured this one out. There is no beginning and no end, the universe is infinite.
Whenever I start thinking of the potential shape of the universe, I end up arguing with myself on whether infinity is a logical possibility or just an artifact of our limited human comprehension (in which case I end up wondering what's outside the seeming 'infinity' and why we can't really count *that* as part of the universe). Ultimately I end up wishing I was the sort of person that smoked joints, as then either it'd all make perfect sense or I would be too focused on obtaining food to care either way. ;-)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @05:51PM
Instead, or besides smoking joints, you can try to join a drumming group.
If you and the group are good, and you play together well, then you may, very rarely, attain a brief trance state.
It's a wonderful experience. Time ceases to exist. Afterwards you're very exhausted but happy. It makes it much easier to believe in a universe unbounded in time, the perpetual djembé rhythm of the Creator.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @02:41PM
I'd counter that by claiming that Finity is an artifact of our way of thinking. Every finite space is enclosed, and there is always something on the other side of the boundary.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday March 01 2015, @06:19AM
I saw this story float by when we were discussing a couple of dark matter stories, and might have just posted a link to in there instead.
I really don't know enough about this subject to argue a point one way or the other, But while some here were posting convincing sounding pronouncements about dark matter, it didn't seem fair to throw this out there and spoil all the fun.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Fauxlosopher on Sunday March 01 2015, @06:43AM
How could such a theory possibly be tested? The suggestion is made in the article that this new claim is based on "new equations", which sounds like nothing more than producing a "functional" solution in known-incomplete math [wikipedia.org], then trying to use it as an explaination without any basis in observation whatsoever.
Isn't this nothing more than a cute math gimmick?
(Score: 5, Funny) by c0lo on Sunday March 01 2015, @07:49AM
By reproducing it. If you can't, just close the bug [xkcd.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Interesting) by aristarchus on Sunday March 01 2015, @07:51AM
How could such a theory possibly be tested?
That is, of course, the point, the proper point.
Parmenides of Elea, years before my time, proposed a logical theory that we may consider a progenitor of all this "string theory" stuff. He said that what is, is; and being that it is, it cannot be what it is not. Change is becoming what something was not. Therefore, change is impossible. Now it was his student, Zeno, who produced several paradoxes from Parmenides' theory, proving that motion (which is after all change) is impossible. This is an early version of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, we can measure location or velocity. But if something has a location, it has no velocity, and if it has velocity, well it is not where it is! Achilles and the Tortoise is one of the better known paradoxes. So now for the question of proof. If we have a theory that is logically or mathematically necessary, who are you going to believe? Logic, or your lying eyes?
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Sunday March 01 2015, @03:32PM
Jesus, I love it when you post this stuff.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Sunday March 01 2015, @11:53AM
Indeed the testing is a bit premature.
Anyway, since currently the big bang theory does not match observations of the current state of the universe and introduces expansion of the fabric of space itself (which sounds terribly like a copout), explaining the background radiation or the red shift in other ways is not completely idiotic. Especially since background radiation has some problems (cit. [google.com])
(Score: 1) by inertnet on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:51PM
If our universe is pulsating, it might be possible to observe evidence of it in CMB data. In my mind it would be logical for a contracting universe to explode again before all of the material from the old universe has fallen in. The explosion would annihilate all the inward falling matter, maybe even resulting in an alternating positive-negative mass universe. Could the clumping in the CMB data show evidence of this?
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by VLM on Sunday March 01 2015, @03:00PM
How could such a theory possibly be tested?
Speaking of theories, how about evolution? The big pix might be a challenge but a seemingly infinite supply of small pix from all over the world that always fit the model and no counterexamples other than books written by certain humans living in certain areas all of which disagree with the human written books from everywhere else...
So an interesting side effect would be given this physics observation and that astronomical observation you'd expect to find ... right there at some level, and by golly it always seems to work out without any counterexamples or internal contradictions.
A problem comes up when there are no observables. "Well, when we smoke a lot of weed and contemplate some cool math, the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin seems to be ... but there's no way to test or observe or predict, so ..." and that seems to include most of string theory, the multiverse theories (can you call a model a theory when it predicts nothing that can be observed?)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @02:36PM
Huh?
The problem with testing The Big Bang Theory is that it's something that happened billions of years ago. It's not testable in real life except by inventing a time machine. So it's all based on "calculating backwards from now".
Evolution, on the other hand, is happening everywhere even as we speak. It's observable. It's proven. Did it also happen 6000 years ago? Well, unless you can point to something indicating that this has changed (no, a book does not indicate anything), the default answer is "of course".
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday March 02 2015, @05:32PM
How could such a theory possibly be tested?
Very, fucking, carefully.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @07:58AM
My ex always likes to use the phrase "since the begging of time". Now I can tell her she's wrong about that, too. And it's not me claiming she's wrong, it's science. I love science!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @08:30AM
"I love science!"
I love the scent of an unwashed butt!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:34PM
> My ex always likes to use the phrase "since the begging of time".
What kind of fool would break-up with Sofia Vergara?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:56PM
I thought I read our entire universe was part of some guy's science experiment or amusement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:12PM
You just outlive them.
Fred Hoyle never believed in "big bang" (pejorative term he had coined up). He was the last great scientist that supported the "steady state" theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_State_theory [wikipedia.org]
After his death the "big bang" won the debate, because there were no one left support the alternative.
There were reasons for this. Evidence for the "big bang" was steadily building up, and was really difficult to explain in "steady state" theory. Poor Fred had to use more and more hocus pocus to fix his theory to fit all those details. Do you know that matter is created at an increasing speed, and because the density has to remain the same the expansion of space has to increase -- until it reaches the speed of light. That was what the latest version of "quantum steady state" predicted, so the "state" was no longer really so "steady"...
Still, Fred did not believe in "big bang", and then he died.
That was the moment when "steady state" lost the debate.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday March 01 2015, @05:34PM
That was the moment when "steady state" lost the debate.
The "debate" (it's not a debate) never ends.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 4, Interesting) by kebes on Sunday March 01 2015, @03:12PM
In particular, many (most) modern cosmology theories already suggest that there is no singularity. The 'old' (original) Big Bang model, where one naively extrapolates from the current expansion backwards in time, indeed predicts a singularity: a moment in time where the universe had zero volume and thus infinite density. Of course, it was always known that this prediction probably signalled that something else was happening (breakdown of physics as we know it, a.k.a some new, unknown physics).
Since then, physicists have developed models known as inflation [wikipedia.org], which explain many of the curious features we observe in the real universe. There are multiple versions of this theory (which work still ongoing to experimentally distinguish which one is right), but overall we have rather strong evidence that inflation is correct. This theory predicts that, at the very high energy densities of the early universe, spacetime was 'inflating' (expanding exponentially). This generically side-steps this notion of a 'singularity', and gives a clear description of what it was that setup conditions for the subsequent "hot Big-Bang [medium.com]". So, again, it's important to understand that inflation already predicts a universe with no singularity as a starting point [scienceblogs.com]. It simply stretches infinitely into the past.
Of course, there is much we do not know about this early stage of the universe; plenty of room for new theories to teach us something. It's quite possible that some other stage/behaviour predates inflation. But, our best theories right now do not predict a singularity in any case. So saying "new theory does away with singularity" isn't useful, since most modern theories (including those best matching the available data) already make this prediction.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Sunday March 01 2015, @03:40PM
But they really always avoid the thing about which they can either say nothing of meaning, or can never have data.
Everything exists. Everything came out of nothing. Non-existence became existence.
Explain detailed models all you like. Fiddle with ideas about "gravity" - which has never been located - all you like.
You know nothing. And everything is impossible. But nonetheless, here we all are among this practically limitless cosmos.
Yet your small mind refuses to be blown away, nearly every moment by this.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Sunday March 01 2015, @10:47PM
science and zen don't coexist very well.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 02 2015, @09:03PM
The question of How the Earth / Universe were created is confounding. Though as a Bible Based Christian I should refer to Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth". I don't have any sleepless nights on where we came from or worry about the earth being demolished by a giant Asteroid. Without my belief in God there would be a great many things that are truly worrisome.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"