Dark Matter May Predate the Big Bang, New Math Suggests (sciencedaily.com) 112
The Snazster writes: Dark matter remains one of the universe's greatest mysteries, with no one quite certain what it is or where it came from, even though it may comprise as much as 80% of the universe (if ignoring the still hypothetical dark energy). A recent study at John Hopkins University is now suggesting that it may be older than the Big Bang itself, which would actually help explain why our previous searches for it have failed thus far. Although this is not a new idea, this is the first time the possibility has been described with calculations that seem to support it. "Using a new, simple mathematical framework, the study shows that dark matter may have been produced before the Big Bang during an era known as the cosmic inflation when space was expanding very rapidly," reports ScienceDaily. "The rapid expansion is believed to lead to copious production of certain types of particles called scalars. So far, only one scalar particle has been discovered, the famous Higgs boson."
"The new study also suggests a way to test the origin of dark matter by observing the signatures dark matter leaves on the distribution of matter in the universe," the report adds. The study has been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
"The new study also suggests a way to test the origin of dark matter by observing the signatures dark matter leaves on the distribution of matter in the universe," the report adds. The study has been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
Now that we got rid of the AC spam and APK, we can discuss things normally. We will know the answer to this in 2022 when the Euclid Satellite launches. The future is exciting.
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Moderation worked fine but Dice owns the site and can do its will.
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Moderation didn't result in stemming the flow of hate posts that contain content that is illegal in much of the developed world. The 8chan fiasco, where the shooter posted a manifesto bragging about his hatred of immigrants, forced 8chan off the net. Nobody wants to be the next 8chan because of assholes who are too lazy to create an account and don't want to be subject to account deletion. There's no obligation to provide a platform for hate speech, and plenty of business incentives not to - in particular
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Neither incels nor trans are in the habit of glorifying mass murderers and rapists and fomenting hatred in an attempt to create even more of them.
Free speech does not extend to persuading people to set fire to crowded theatres.
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I would have been happy with
At least I will now be spending mod points on modding shit up now instead of wasting them constantly squashing the spam...
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It rather looks like it, on this topic at least. I've not looked at Slashdot for a week or more, but on this topic, your comment is the only use of the string "Anonymous". Apart from this one. Oh, hang on ...
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If it was removed, its back. Meh, I've never thought ACing was of any great value.
Not a surprise... (Score:2)
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Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.
Story checks out!
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His disciples said to him, "When will the kingdom come?"
[Jesus said,] "It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'here it is' or 'there it is.' Rather, the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
--Thomas 113
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But of course, we don't.
God of the gaps?
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But of course, we don't.
God of the gaps?
If by God of the gaps you mean Flying Spaghetti Monster, you are absolutely correct.
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By god of the gaps, I mean when we don't know something, some people assign the mystery to god, as in, "Oh, well, you know god works in mysterious ways so that's why you don't know."
Some of those things we didn't know, we do know now. There went a god-gap.
God's real estate is shrinking.
An exciting feature of science is the ignorance of the gaps.
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Your sarcasm and humor detector is broken. I was trying to lighten up the conversation instead of rehashing Richard Dawkins books that came out in the 70's. I think that horse has been sufficiently beat to death, don't you?
You're attempting to recover from a mistake. "I was just kidding."
A horse may be dead, but you are confused as to which one it is, and you're not sure if it's a possum because your assertions are not correct.
From the 1880s, Friedrick Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part Two, "On Priests", said "... into every gap they put their delusion, their stopgap, which they called God."
The concept, although not the exact wording, goes back to Henry Drummond, a 19th-century evangelist lecturer, from his Lowell Lectures on The Ascent of Man. He chastises those Christians who point to the things that science can not yet explain—"gaps which they will fill up with God"—and urges them to embrace all nature as God's, as the work of "an immanent God, which is the God of Evolution, is infinitely grander than the occasional wonder-worker, who is the God of an old theology."
Is my sarcasm and humor detector broken once again?
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Is my sarcasm and humor detector broken once again?
Yes and many other things because you have engaged in a debate with no opponent. You are essentially debating yourself or some imaginary person. Good luck with that. :)
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I reject your deflection and point out that you are now off the original topic and have resorted, by way of failure, to personal attack.
We have your name and it's Ad Hominem, and I am not being sarcastic or kidding.
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Re:Not a surprise... (Score:5, Funny)
In the beginning there was nothing and God said 'Let there be light', and there was still nothing but everybody could see it.
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Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. Story checks out!
And then he turned water into wine and said: LET'S PARTAYYYYY!!!!
Re:Not a surprise... (Score:5, Funny)
In the beginning, there was nothing. And God said, "Let there be Light." And there was still nothing, but you could see it.
Re: Not a surprise... (Score:2)
Si the god thing takes aime LSD, isn't it ?
Inflation does not "predate the big bang" (Score:5, Interesting)
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He could be referring to eternal inflation [wikipedia.org], since for dark matter to predate the big bang there would have to be something present prior to the big bang. In eternal inflation space is expanding exponentially at a speed far greater than the speed of light. 13.8 billion years ago an event or force caused the rate of expansion at a single point to slow (the big bang). Space was initially still expanding at a speed beyond the speed of light (the inflation phase of the big bang), but it slowed rapidly. This
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He could be referring to eternal inflation [wikipedia.org], since for dark matter to predate the big bang there would have to be something present prior to the big bang.
And there would have to be some magic thing creating dark energy and something to create the magic thing that created the dark energy and something to create the thing that created the other magic thing that created the dark energy. It's turtles all the way down man...
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The big bang is wrong idea, an expanding change of state, promulgated by that change of state (life eh, altering the future by interactions with quantum space for preferred outcomes, altering outcomes in slower state, an expanding quantum flux). It probably would be better to consider our universe a pocket of slow time, within a quantum framework of quick time all bound within totality of existence of null time. So dark matter, not so much dark matter but simply quantum particle space, infinitely small and
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The big bang is wrong idea, an expanding change of state, promulgated by that change of state (life eh, altering the future by interactions with quantum space for preferred outcomes, altering outcomes in slower state, an expanding quantum flux). It probably would be better to consider our universe a pocket of slow time, within a quantum framework of quick time all bound within totality of existence of null time. So dark matter, not so much dark matter but simply quantum particle space, infinitely small and infinitely fast particles (relatively speaking to normal space), that have no mass individually but when clustered together more densely, express mass and drop down below the speed of gravity (gravity being the field displacement of quantum particles). Normal space particles do not directly interact with quantum particles, they only interact with regard to field affects, field flows of quantum particles affected by our very dense quantum particle clusters (lots of energy to create and lots of energy released when they come up, keeping in mind the quantum particle displacement affect of gravity, being a field energy state, expressed across a distance by the higher energy states of the displaced quantum particles, gravity (not necessarily all just some, probably best to assign different kinds of shapes to quantum particles, not about what shape they are, more descriptive about how that range particle functions can be defined by a shape, working on say quantum photonic particles or quantum gravitons etc.).
Kind of just have to accept what we can not see but who impact is well very clearly demonstrated, magnetic fields (quantum particle flows) and the alignment of normal space particles or light particles readily appearing and disappearing (absorbed and produced in interactions with quantum particle flows) or gravity clumping us together as we field displace quantum space.
This makes life a quantum particle state inherent to the creation of the universe. The universe has to be considered alive and we inherently express that aliveness. So the meaning of life. Life is a quest for the future, if you deny life a future, life will deny you and leave you behind to fade in the void, a silent scream in the dark. So normal space being well infinitely slower and larger than quantum space, relatively speaking, means that normal space interactions can be propagated out into quantum space far quicker, into the future quicker than normal space and feedback from those future interactions passed back and interpretation of those future quantum reactions interpreted in normal space to choose, to make that choice, to alter that future projection in quantum space, which exist but is now through into an expanding flux as it is altered by life's choice.
So the evolution of life is directly tied to reaching further and further into the future to alter outcomes to preserve existence, not just individually or even the bits we are made of but the universe itself and all of life as a part of it. All a field affect tied to particles states and those particles becoming so small they cease to exist individually and swing around to being infinitely slow and infinitely large, relative to normal space. We are the bit stretched between the two states.
Now I want to hear your opinions about The Notebook (2004)PG-13 | 2h 3min | Drama, Romance | 25 June 2004 (USA)
Re:Inflation does not "predate the big bang" (Score:5, Insightful)
Your post is confusing and it's not because you are confused. In parts and places, you have words that are used in quantum field theory, but they are a mashup deliberately crafted to make you sound authoritative.
It doesn't work.
I'm not going to address your spaghetti nonsense point by point, but an obvious mistake is your attempt to extrapolate and connect quantum mechanics to humanity.
Hominids have been around about 1.3 million years. Modern humans appeared about 200,000 years ago and civilization goes back only 50,000 years.
The goddam universe is 13.8 billion years old. Quantum mechanics didn't wait for us to evolve.
You have stretched the string of logic to the breaking point.
I'm surprised you didn't throw in "blockchain."
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You have stretched the string of logic to the breaking point.
Dude, you're harshing his mellow. You should be getting a contact high from him, no matter where you are in the world.
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That's a pretty loose definition of "civilization" there, Butch.
10K years? Sure.
50K years? Is there any evidence of "civilization" back then? Ruins of a city? Small town? A building?
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You have a lot of questions and, therefore, a lot of reading to catch up on.
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The old jape on that bullshit -> "Consider a spherical cow."
"infinitely small and infinitely fast particles (relatively speaking to normal space)"
This crap is nonsense.
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So the evolution of life is directly tied to reaching further and further into the future to alter outcomes to preserve existence
I call bullshit on this. This is a baseless claim. Where is your evidence and how do you overcome the null hypothesis on this one? To me, this is a product of the human ego no different than the Geocentric universe: "give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe." The best you can say is we are a consequence of a complex series of cause and effect due to natural processes. For what existential purpose? We have no fucking clue and probably never will. The secret to life is to e
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The moment of the big bang is generally attributed to when the false vacuum of the inflaton field collapsed, ending inflation and dumping the field's energy. Space was pretty much empty, then suddenly it was really, really full. Bang.
Eternal inflation is the idea that the false vacuum collapsed only in isolated bubbles, one of which we're living in.
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All the definitions of the Big Bang I've ever seen or heard have taken it as the singularity that preceded cosmic inflation. That's the point of the Big Bang model: that the universe can be traced back down to a single point, which "exploded". You could maybe consider inflation part of the Big Bang, but saying the Big Bang occurred at the end of inflation is just not what the word means, and I've never encountered anyone using it that way until this article (and I work in cosmology, albeit not early univers
Re:Inflation does not "predate the big bang" (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never been comfortable with the inflation theory. It does make things work out well, but the explanation behind it: the theoretical causation, and the very early timing, while required to explain what we're seeing, has not been proven to my satisfaction.
But, it does work well, so that's that.
Regarding "dark matter," I've always felt that's a misnomer. What we're theorizing about is "invisible gravity," right?
It may have no "matter" component at all. And, I have to wonder about dark energy. We know that matter is simply frozen energy.
The invisible gravity may actually be linked to the ubiquitous dark energy by way of E=mc^2. So, using current terminology, dark matter and dark energy may be different phases of the same thing.
That's where I'm placing my bet.
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I've seen some attempts to explain inflation as an emergent phenomenon that occurs at extreme mass-energy densities, which has always struck me as more "comfortable" - like you, the notion of a field that just "shuts off" after some time period just feels wrong. Inflation as an emergent phenomenon of high densities simultaneously prevents singularities (including at black holes), and the phenomenon of evaporating black holes becomes equivalent to that of the Big Bang.
However, I know enough to know that I d
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However, I know enough to know that I don't know enough about this topic.
It's called "ignorance," and it's the most challenging and fascinating aspect of science. Welcome to the field. :)
Yes, I feel inflation is one of those ideas where, "This is what we are experiencing. It's for sure not linear, in a very radical way. Here's what MUST have happened, and it must have happened at this time after the big bang."
Because the hypothesis fits so neatly and because we may never know, I can let that part go, but there's an element of, "I don't know. It's a nice story, and I can't argu
(if ignoring the still hypothetical dark energy) (Score:3)
"(if ignoring the still hypothetical dark energy)"
Why ignore this? Energy can be converted to matter, and matter can be converted to energy, yes? Neither can be created or destroyed.
So instead of looking for this "dark matter" that doesn't exist anywhere , why aren't we looking at the massive amounts of energy that are currently still driving our universe to expand and an inconceivable rate.
Maybe that will make the equations "work"
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Dark energy isn't energy. It's not matter either, it's something different.
Matter is fairly easy to destroy. Energy is also not conserved in an expanding universe.
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Dark matter exists most every place you find matter. It's probably streaming through our bodies every moment of every da
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Yeah, hypothetical.
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Yeah, hypothetical.
I think what the parent was referring to is that the three components of the cosmological universe are matter, radiation, and dark energy. At least as we understand it today. That is matter scales at a^3 and radiation scales at a^4. Since dark energy is uniformed at all times it has a constant density it thus scales at a^0. Since the purposed dark energy scales differently than other known components, it is different in nature to matter and energy.
I mean I think that's what parent is referring to,
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Or look more carefully for matter. The extrasolar, dark planetoids being discoverd and hints of cold interstellar planets associated with no stellar formation are a fascinating possibility for the "dark matter". They require no exotic, undetectable exotic matter, merely a consistent failure to detect and notice a very modest amount of non-stellar planetary formation occurring since the big bang. They are _extraordinarily_ difficult to detect interstellar distances, and impossible to detect at intergalactic
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I think normal matter (stuff made of baryons) is ruled out as a candidate for dark matter. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The basic reason is that that baryonic matter would result in a distribution of element abundances that don't match observations. (its a very reasonable idea, just experiments show it to not be correct).
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There is an underlying assumption of most refutations of the idea: the idea that baryonic matter occurs only in significant quantities near deteactable objects. If baryonic matter clumps in even small amounts, to form solid bodies, during the formation of the universe since the big bang, it could exist in very significant amounts and be quite invisible to telescoic observation. It's cold, so it doesn't radiate at noticeably more than the background 3 degrees Kelvin of the universe. It doesn't occlude other
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I think the issue is that if there were more baryons in the early universe there would be more nucleosynthesis and higher percentages of primordial Helium and Lithium than we see. I think the fusion rates are well understood, so higher density of baryons -> more fusion -> more heavier elements.
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If it's collected in intragalectic planetary bodies, then would we "see" it? I'm not an astrophysicist, but the numbers concerning the "early universe" are extremely speculative. They're not firm or confirmed by any means, partly due to uncertainties in the original measurements from which we conclude critical facts like elemental composition, size, and distance of remote objects such galaxies and quasars.
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Astrophysics measurements have gotten a lot better in the last couple of decades. The modeling of the big bang is pretty good back until inflation. (models are probably good there, but there isn't yet direct evidence of inflation, but people are working on it). I think the models are quite good during the era when nucleosynthesis would have happened (seconds to minutes) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
During that time temperatures are within the range that can be tested with terrestrial experiments so we
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There is so little original data, gathered across such a distance of space and time for the "oldest" measurements, that I suggest it should be treated with suspicion. finely detailed measurements and extrapolations from such data should _especially_ be treated with suspicion.
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The prospect of coefficients and constants (maybe even laws of physics) changing over time is a mind-blowing one.
The significance would be great. Look at Hubble's constant that finally revealed that the universe is expanding.
That value was certainly, MGWAHN* during inflation and certainly shortly after. Other "constants," may be variable over time, as well.
If we discover that physics is an elastic discipline, things will get very, very interesting indeed.
*my god what a high number
Just one of many Big Bangs? (Score:2)
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I always thought of it like a cycle.
Explosion, expansion, collapse.
repeat.
if multiple explosions are happening maybe it would help explain the multiple dimension hypothesis. Perhaps there is an overlap between explosions.
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In the early years, that "Big Bounce," was a choice.
When Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding, a coefficient named after him, "Hubble's constant," described the RATE of expansion.
He theorized that the expansion was linear.
An interesting question emerged: Is the constant such that gravity would work against the expansion to 1.) halt it 2.) collapse the universe or 3. would the expansion rate be enough that the universe would grow forever?
We know now that the expansion is accelerating. That means
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In my mind I've also compared the big bang to a slow motion firecracker explosion. Thousands of tiny points of light (stars) blasting outward (universe expansion) .
Foolishness i'm sure. But imagination can often times be helpful.
Rather then the proven Dark Matter? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, Dark Energy is hypothetical, dark matter on the other hand... TOTALLY proven.
Scientists: Gravity doesn't seem to work on larger scales!
Other scientists: Dark Matter!
Scientists: Cool! What about where that doesn't work???
Other scientists: Dark Energy!
Scientists: Problem solved, no further investigation needed
*eye roll*
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There is some direct evidence for dark matter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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"Observations of other galaxy cluster collisions, such as MACS J0025.4-1222, are similarly claimed to support"
"Are claimed", does not equal "Direct evidence"
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"Scientists: Problem solved, no further investigation needed"
Seriously? You really think this is no longer investigated because "they have solved it"?
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I agree.
An interesting read is how many times physics has been declared dead.
"We have little else to discover." "We will, shortly, know all there is to know." "Scientists are working on the few remaining mysteries."
As it is, we have too much to learn.
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Wow.
"This solution doesn't fit all the data AND has not been detected AND requires Dark Energy to work... but since it is the "best" solution, it must be right."
Really?
Followed by
"You don't have a better solution, so mine must be right"
MOND works just as well as Dark Matter and doesn't require Dark Energy.
Just wow. Going to leave it at that, I doubt further discussion would be helpful.
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That's not correct.
Dark matter surfaced when velocity gradients across distances from the center of galaxies didn't fit the Standard model.
The outlier components are moving just as fast as the interior ones!
For that to happen, it would APPEAR that there is matter spread almost evenly from the center, out.
Black holes aren't really black. It's a term coined early on in jest in response to the radical idea.
That's what happened with dark matter. "Matter," is a presumption that has been ruled out for now because
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Yep. Then he said, picture me as a white dude, rather than an Arab guy, which all the people who believed in me looked like at the time.
What does "before" the Big Bang mean? (Score:3)
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It is.
We can speculate and even come to a consensus that we will codify because the hypothesis works well enough.
And then we can continue to work the problem with little expectation of success.
And there are storms we cannot weather ...
"I Dreamed A Dream"
(from "Les Misérables")
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Yes, that may be a very nice analogy.
It may just be that the language is confusing and they mean pre-inflation.
There are some attempts to talk about what happened "before" the big bang. Its probably a meaningful concept in some models. Really what we know about the big bang is that at one time, the universe was extremely hot and dense and expanding. Working backwards it seems top have come from a point, but we don't really know what happened in the very early stages of expansion. Scientists are workin
Dark matter may be older than The Big Bang. (Score:2)
Wasn't time itself created in the Big Bang? (Score:2)
If matter, energy, and time are all bound up in a common existence, didn't time begin with the Big Bang?
If so, what does "before" the Big Bang even mean?
If there was a "before" the Big Bang, it would seem to follow that matter and energy also existed before the Big Bang.
If all these things existed before the Big Bang, where then did they come from?
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If matter, energy, and time are all bound up in a common existence, didn't time begin with the Big Bang?
If so, what does "before" the Big Bang even mean?
If there was a "before" the Big Bang, it would seem to follow that matter and energy also existed before the Big Bang.
If all these things existed before the Big Bang, where then did they come from?
There is always a "before" there is always a "smaller".
What are quarks made of? How far is the end of the universe? Do neutrinos affect the taste of my coffee?
Infinitely smaller and larger simultaneously. This is what our science tells us thus far.
Science originally told us the earth was flat, and that it was the center of the universe.
We are getting closer
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There is always a "before"
Stephen Hawking disagrees. See http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-... [hawking.org.uk]
Dark money (Score:2)
So when we look at gravitational forces of the universe, we find that there should be a lot more matter than what we see. So we say there is "dark" matter lurking out there.
Let's apply this principle to my bank account. If my account balance is a lot bigger than my annual income can explain, I could say there was "dark money" in my account. Further, I'll tell them that this dark money appeared in my account even before the account was created. That's what I'll tell the jury. Do you think they will believe m
The fluctuating universe (Score:2)
The first Big Bang wouldn't have any dark matter but subsequent ones would.
big bang unknown (Score:2)
ok, maybe not unknown, but we're probably very wrong about the time the big bang happened.
recently a star has been discovered that is older than the big bang.
https://www.express.co.uk/news... [express.co.uk]
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x^2 - y^2 = xy - y^2.
(x + y)(x - y) = (x + y) (x - y)... Your division was the fail. You proved that (x + y) = (x + y), so all is right with the world.
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INTEGRAL (1/x) dx
u = 1/x , dv = dx
du = -1/x2 dx , v = x
INTEGRAL (1/x) dx = (1/x)*x - INTEGRAL x (-1/x2) dx
= 1 + INTEGRAL (1/x) dx
which implies that 0 = 1.
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Re:Math isn't always correct (Score:4, Funny)
Correct math is always correct. However, YOUR math isn't correct because it isn't correct.
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Correct math is always correct. However, YOUR math isn't correct because it isn't correct.
Which is exactly my point. We created math. It isn't perfect. We might now have all the "correct" rules yet.
The rest of the original post :
"The problem with extremely advanced math is that we don't always know the rules.
The double slit experiment, that long time staple of the best possible real world "evidence" of superposition is a good example.
A lot of math theory was devised based on this experiment. But what if we are missing something simple?
Like that you can't divide by zero."
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We didn't create math. We discovered it. Math is a real thing. As real as the laws of Physics. We just created the notation.
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We didn't create math. We discovered it. Math is a real thing. As real as the laws of Physics. We just created the notation.
Imperfect notation.
I'm not saying math isn't math, I'm not saying that math isn't good. I'm saying we do not know what we do not know and walking around using an incomplete understanding of math and passing it off as fact can be dangerous.
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Whenever I ask how this can be, I am presented with maths that would require me to take a university course to understand.
It puzzles me that people ask incredibly complex questions, then don't want to put in the effort to use enough brain cells to understand the very complex answer.
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Too harsh I think.
Complex questions can be answered at levels tailored to the capability of the inquisitor to understand.
I suspect that a question was asked and instead of evaluating the source and providing a reasonable answer, the dude or dudette who didn't actually know the answer threw a bucket of maths on the inquisitive.
It's unfortunate that an opportunity to enlighten failed. The blame is solidly on the explainer.
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I see this quite often where someone who never bothered to learn asks something that would take an inordinate amount of time to answer, but they expect people to stop what they're doing and hold their hand through it... then... they say something along the lines of "i still don't buy it." It's real simple... if you want to learn, it might take a little effort on your part, especially large complex things which don't have a 5 second soundbite answer. Additionally, if you want a good answer to any phy
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You're approaching the disparity of knowledge from the learner's point of view, which you appear to despise what with your snobbery. The real disconnect is that you are not grounded in the fundamentals to the point of looking at it from the teacher's side.
Good explainers remember what it's like not to know.
I am a fundamental quantum theory lecturer and I use absolutely NO math at all.
Example from another field:
Special relativity equations are pretty simple, but what do they mean?
They mean that a mass appr
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No.
I see this quite often where someone who never bothered to learn asks something that would take an inordinate amount of time to answer, but they expect people to stop what they're doing and hold their hand through it... then... they say something along the lines of "i still don't buy it." It's real simple... if you want to learn, it might take a little effort on your part, especially large complex things which don't have a 5 second soundbite answer. Additionally, if you want a good answer to any physics subject, you better be prepared for a shit ton of math, and 1+1 is not in the realm of shit ton.
Worse than someone not really wanting to learn is someone that once they get an answer, they change the question to something completely different and complain that the given answer didn't ALSO answer the second question.
Next i imagine you are going to tell us that if we expect to use a computer we must first be able to smelt ore, refine silicone, fabricate our own CPU's, discover electricity , and write our own operating system? yes?
You don't HAVE to be a dick. Consider it.
Now show me you can make a fucking computer from SCRATCH, or you are worthless and so are your opinions.
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Preach it.
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And not a goddam thing to do with anything.
We can plug a number into a quadratic equation and rise up the nonlinear asymptotic and get a great shock at the expansion.
Doing so, what have we learned about the parent?
Not a goddam thing.
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Consider this - in the early 1800s, astronomers noticed that the orbit of Uranus wasn't matching their predictions. Some of them at the time proposed that we would need to modify the formulas used to describe orbital motion, that gravity behaved differently in the far reaches of the solar system. Others proposed that there was a yet unseen planet (or a "dark planet") whose gravity was disturbing the orbit of Uranus. Twenty some years later, and the second group turned out to be right. We now call that dar
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Very good points.
So often in science, preliminary confusions spawn speculation. That's healthy.
As possibilities narrow down to probabilities, some early adopters latch on to an idea as if the science is settled.
I'm talking to you, Percival Lowell.
With time and especially the increased sophistication of technology, we eliminate some closely-held and coveted theories and hypotheses.
That's where we are with this. It's a work in progress and premature to discard ideas.
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Consider this - in the early 1800s, astronomers noticed that the orbit of Uranus wasn't matching their predictions. Some of them at the time proposed that we would need to modify the formulas used to describe orbital motion, that gravity behaved differently in the far reaches of the solar system. Others proposed that there was a yet unseen planet (or a "dark planet") whose gravity was disturbing the orbit of Uranus. Twenty some years later, and the second group turned out to be right. We now call that dark planet Neptune. Or for another example; in the late 1920s Pauli discovered that beta decay did not seem to obey the laws of energy conservation. So he proposed that there was an extremely hard to detect particle (not too different from most dark matter proposals today) that would make the math add up right. It was several decades before we directly detected that particle; we call it the neutrino.
Of course, on the flip side, there have been times when new theories have been needed, like how when people noticed Newtonian gravity didn't describe Mercury's orbit well, but Einstein's theories matched its path more accurately. Various modified gravity theories have been put forward as an alternative to the dark matter theory, to explain things like the rotation curves of galaxies acting strangely. Yet a variety of observations seem to to fall more on the dark matter side. For example, the bullet cluster (and some others) show gravitation lensing that is disconnected from the visible matter. Or there have been two galaxies discovered that DO have rotational curves matching what our regular gravity theories predict. That is really hard to make work with any modified gravity theory, but with the dark matter theory we can just say those galaxies happen to not have much dark matter. And on the flip side, there is a galaxy (Dragonfly 44) that from gravitation lensing seems to be as massive as the milky way, yet is only 1% as bright. Easy to explain with the dark matter theory, but difficult with the modified gravity.
Yes, and let us consider the double slit experiment , where a wave function creates an interference pattern through a set of two slits.. One of, if not the most prominent recreatable experiments that help prove superposition.
If we "observe" the experiment then the interference pattern collapses. When we shoot particles at the slits instead of waves we still get the interference patterns.
The logical explanation? That the particle actually goes through both slits at the same time, and interferes with itsel
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Umm, many times in human history we had to make assumptions for things we could not detect or see. In the past, we attributed lots of those things to magic and deities. Now it's dark stuff. But, we will eventually figure it out and it won't be so magical once we figure it out.
Magic is real. Did you ever see fire? Ever play with a magnet? Real magic is all around us all the time.
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It puzzles me that otherwise rational people expect me to believe ...
There's one of the sources of the difficulty you're experiencing. (There are others and I'll get to that.)
Science is not faith-based. It does not ask you to believe. It doesn't even ask you to accept. Rather, it encourages and applauds skepticism.
Whenever I ask how this can be, I am presented with maths ...
You're not equipped to understand the maths.
I don't say that to disrespect you. Few of us have invested the time to understand the maths.
If a person cannot explain a scientific principle to you in clear lay language, they do not know the answer well enough.
There's