Quantum fluctuations and Godless miracles

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by Magical Realist, May 7, 2011.

  1. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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  3. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    In a godless universe, that might happen right at the beginning, or some time later, or never.
     
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  5. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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  7. NMSquirrel OCD ADHD THC IMO UR12 Valued Senior Member

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    ignoring the 'suddenly' part..

    IF a big enough asteroid were to hit the earth, it would be possible(though unlikely) for it to catapult a chunk of earth into space,if that chunk contained a toaster, there is a probability that it could land on the surface of mars.(again odds are against it, but it is possible)

    case in point is the meteor that scientist think contain fossilized microbes from mars, theory has it a meteor ejected martian soil towards earth.

    so how old would we have to be? just old enough to invent toasters and have a meteor hit just right..
     
  8. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    All well and good, but that has nothing to do with making a toaster suddenly appear on Mars. You know..as in..uhhhh...well...oh yeah!...as in "quantum fluctuations"!
     
  9. NMSquirrel OCD ADHD THC IMO UR12 Valued Senior Member

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    i told you i ignored the suddenly part..it completely invalidated my posting...
    but a toaster on mars is possible.

    how would quantum fluctuations make a toaster appear on mars?
     
  10. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    The electric toaster at least got invented before Ludwig's death. Far more likely that an uninvented one would be in the space between stars or galaxies than on a planet, like the Boltzmann brains. (That age-old debate before bio-engineering: 'Which impossible chimera would be more likely to step through your front door first: The griffin or the gorgon?')

    Dennis Overbye ... "The basic problem is that across the eons of time, the standard theories suggest, the universe can recur over and over again in an endless cycle of big bangs, but it’s hard for nature to make a whole universe. It’s much easier to make fragments of one, like planets, yourself maybe in a spacesuit or even — in the most absurd and troubling example — a naked brain floating in space. Nature tends to do what is easiest, from the standpoint of energy and probability. And so these fragments — in particular the brains — would appear far more frequently than real full-fledged universes, or than us. Or they might be us."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

    Richard Feynman on Boltzmann Brains
    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/wp-content/themes/discover/img/cvbn.png

    Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs?
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/science/15brain.html
     
  11. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Coincidentally, or maybe even synchronistically, I was pondering the Boltzmann brain argument yesterday and concluded it a persuasive case for solipsism. Consider the likelihood of billions of self-aware entities actually evolving thru a series of random accidents compared to the likelihood that just one self-aware entity fluctuate into being who has constructed the illusion of living in a universe with billions of self-aware beings. Obviously since one random event is much more likely than a series of many many more random events, then it must be that I am the only self-aware entity and am only hallucinating the existence of others in my own mind. But then that sort of makes this whole post rather futile since you yourself would only be a figment of my own brain-constructed universe. So maybe sometimes it's just more practical to believe in the miraculous than in the probable (what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas baby!..

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  12. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Consider the unlikelihood of something as big and complex and enduring as a universe popping into being from a quantum fluctuation (a rather common theory among cosmologists these days). If something like that could happen what's to prevent a mere toaster appearing in a very tiny part of that same universe? In fact, the bigger, more complex, and older that universe is and becomes, then the greater the relative likelihood of a toaster appearing on mars someday. Indeed, in a universe of near infinite size and complexity and age, many toasters may appear on many planets at any given moment! Wouldn't THAT be a hoot!?
     
  13. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    "It is part of a much bigger set of questions about how to think about probabilities in an infinite universe in which everything that can occur, does occur, infinitely many times," said Leonard Susskind of Stanford, a co-author of a paper in 2002 that helped set off the debate. Or as Andrei Linde, another Stanford theorist given to colorful language, loosely characterized the possibility of a replica of your own brain forming out in space sometime, "How do you compute the probability to be reincarnated to the probability of being born?"===from above New York Times article.

    Indeed! If something like you has managed to happen once, what is the likelihood that it could happen again? And again..over and over again an infinite number of times? This hearkens to both Nietzsche's idea of the Eternal Recurrence, in which your life is lived over and over again forever and ever, and to the Hindu idea of the Wheel of Karma in which the cosmos iterates us over and over again like some infinitely self-reflecting house of mirrors. The Buddha "awakened" when he remembered being reincarnated as every being in the universe. Can we wake up out of our infinite fractal too?
     
  14. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    The original stuff is very limited and simple in its instances, not complex, and it takes time for composites to grow in complexity. Evolution of life forms or machinery doesn't happen instantly from a jillion chances coming together all at once but is slowly accumulative upon an already stable platform. While a working toaster may still form, instantly, the odds are very slight, for all the atoms in their right types and amounts and original source direction would have to suddenly lump in one spot with an almost infinite precision to make the perfect and working toaster, including the electric circuits, levers, and all else.
     
  15. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Explicit or formal knowledge is either constructed or approved by social efforts -- compared to tacit knowledge, which the individual just has or does minus having worked out an established scheme or description for its public consumption (or having learned it from such). Solipsism is not possible for society, and even experience is not possible for it despite its human components having the capacity (information is inputted to the "group game or system" as language, etc.).

    Thus, some possibilities like solipsism must be rejected by the intersubjective or public domain no matter what, and also by any individual properly adhering to the needs and protection of society. Although there is this division between what is possible for society and what is possible for the individual, the latter must nevertheless remain silent and inactive about her/his/its frail options for "what might ultimately be transpiring". Since, in the end, they are just that: Pretty frail possibilities. :bawl:
     
  16. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    I'm thinking a singularity that can self-complexify into a spacetime continuum and a universe and life forms and conscious entities and goddess knowz what else is not a very simply thing at all. Remember, its emergence has to occur beyond spacetime itself in a sort of holistic all-at-once state that only gets played out in time as it's successive evolving states. Despite our limited understanding of it, the vast potential to do this inheres in the nature of singularity itself, much as say the potential for an infinitely complex fractal inheres in the nature of the iterated equation. Think of this in terms of Bohm's implicate order, where there is a higher-dimensional omnipresence of complexity "piloting" the waveform of the cosmos. Now comparing the appearance of something like THAT to a bunch of quantum fluctuations momentarily adhering in the form of toaster, obviously the toaster is much more likely to happen. And the more complex the fluctuated singularity the more likely the toaster.
     
  17. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    Considering the already incomprehensible improbability of such an event, it might as well be

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    a Star Wars toaster that makes Darth Vader toast.
     
  18. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    But isn't the existence of others a form of "a posteriori knowledge"--perhaps ultimately inferred but nevertheless based on experience--while the existence of oneself is a form of "a priori knowledge"--a kind of knowing that cannot be denied except in contradiction to itself. We can afterall more easily imagine everybody else not existing while we remain existing than we can imagine ourselves not existing while everyone else is existing. At least phenomenally it seems to me the existence of the self is more apodictic than the existence of others or indeed of even the entire universe. Indeed, if everyone in the universe except you died tonight, you might very well wake up in solipistic universe, especially if we acknowledge the validity of some the basic arguments of a Berkelyan idealism ("to be is to be perceived").
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2011
  19. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    All we need is a beginning with low entropy. What room is there for disorder in a singularity?
     
  20. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    What room is there for disorder in a human ovum? Probably not near as much as there is in a mature human body. Yet are we prepared to say that for this reason alone an ovum is more likely to be quantum fluctuated than the physical evolution of it's later human body? I'm not. With the occurrence of an ovum you have the enormous complexity and information of the DNA molecule. With a mature human body you simply have replication of the same based on that DNA. A singularity, though tiny, contains a vast amount of inherent information. Laws and mathematics and language etc. Are you saying this could be easily fluctuated due to low entropy?
     
  21. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not talking about the cause of the fluctuation itself (if a fluctuation as we understand it even occurred) but about the initial state of our universe. I am simply suggesting that since there is no room for disorder in a singularity, it makes sense that we started off with a highly uniform state. All the apparent complexity that we see today is possible because of this initial state.
     
  22. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    Further, the early universe wasn't capable of supporting intelligent life, since the requisite components didn't yet exist, nor were a number of other conditions even remotely conducive. So language, and toasters, had to come much much later. Conversely, the future universe wont support life either, since it will eventually die a heat death and reach maximum entropy. In both the beginning, and the end, we have a universe with all the same laws of physics, but one in which toasters are impossible.

    But all is not necessarily so miserable. Roger Penrose has recently suggested that the end of our universe is essentially the singularity that gives birth to the next one (not by virtue of a big crunch, but something quite different).
     
  23. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    Even if there is infinite universes, who's to say that they aren't all exactly the same bar one small particle? (or more likely with the advent of Quantum Computers a difference in observed properties of a particle) If you were to design a universe to be "integrated" with in regards to a Singularity design (To my knowledge meaning, Where many universes of difference work together to create the whole multiverse composite that's assumed to be a single universe), you would start with infinite identical universes which you'd assign difference to yourself.

    The reason for this is because actually designing and integrating into design requires it to be mathematically complicit, this means rather than dealing with "Chaos", you'd want to deal with an ordered system to begin with.

    The ordered system can then encapsulate having entropy within it. So rather than having "Order within Chaos", you have "Chaos within Order".
     

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