Certainty
Originally posted by Prisme
I never claimed to have written anything!!
…
this does not even remotely entail that I have made the statement. Instead of giving a hyperlink that most people would not bother to go and visit, I cut and pasted it.
Actually, unreferenced, the assumption would be that you wrote it. You should site your sources.
Ok. Matter is energy. We all knew that.
We also know that matter is only energy that is more dense and in a less accelerated state.
Still, matter decays. So basic energy, as the second law of thermo-dynamics specify, decay.
Absolutely not. Please see the first law of Thermodynamics, paraphrased as “Within some problem domain, the amount of energy remains constant and energy is neither created nor destroyed. Energy can be converted from one form to another (potential energy can be converted to kinetic energy) but the total energy within the domain remains fixed.” -
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/thermo1f.html
Nor can matter be destroyed ‘decay’. The closest you can come to the destruction of matter is converting it to energy… but it never goes ‘away’.
If some forms of energy are eternal, matter isn't one of them.
Wrong again.
There is no problem with the fact that some forms of energy are eternal, however, how can we explain that an eternal energy transform itself into a decaying form of energy?
No, all of the energy within the Universe that has ever been (including all that which appears as matter) is still here and will always be here unless you can discover somewhere else for it to go.
So the question stands: how does the anonymous eternal forms of energy (sorry, raithere didn't give out names) manage to reduce themselves to matter and play a role in our physical world?
Matter essentially condensed from the hyper-energetic state in the first few seconds after the big bang.
Why would these eternal forms of energy 'matter'?
if the laws of thermo-dynamics don't even bother to take them into account?
I don’t know what you mean here… all energy is taken into account by the laws of thermodynamics.
Thats a big 'If' disguised as an 'unless' raithere. I mean, we all know that most cosmological theories remain just that: theories.
So to prefer an imperfect theoritical model over another isn't a crime against humanity, much less rationality.
Not quite. The Ekpyrotic model fits all known facts. Now, that does not mean it has been proven… we’ll have to wait around for a few more trillion years or figure out some other method of discovering proof.
This, however, does not mean that all unproven theories are equal. Some, like the notion of a supernatural cause, are simply un-testable and meaningless. Even if we assume a supernatural cause, it tells us nothing. No further hypotheses can arise from such a supposition. There is no way, for instance, to jump from ‘a supernatural creator’ to ‘Yahweh.
1- Again, IF we are in a closed system.If the Universe is everything in ‘physical’ existence what is outside and how do you transfer energy there?
2- Energy conservation is another assumption from physiscists that leaves us with no guarantees.
The conservation of energy is no more an assumption than the law of gravity.
Every experiment ever done has confirmed the laws of thermodynamics without exception.
There is nobody that can "predict" that either in an infinite or closed system, energy "must" dissipate or be eternal.
Sure can. Look, you cannot just make shit up and pretend its science. If your hypothesis is that energy can leave the Universe or somehow go away then you must provide a mechanism for that and some way to prove or disprove the hypothesis. Otherwise you’re just blowing smoke out your ass.
In either systems,
the hypothesis that energy has a source is problematic at best
(if there is one we.. ain't found it yet)
Again, this is wrong. We know that energy can come from nothing (virtual particles from a quantum fluctuation). Mathematically there is nothing that prevents all the energy in the Universe coming from nothing as long as it eventually returns to nothing.
the hypothesis that energy is eternal is a 50\50 wager
No, it most certainly is not.
the hypothesis that basic energy does not decay is utopic
Wrong again. It is fact.
No, it is not 'quite wrong' as you put it. It merely represents the opposite of certain other physical theories that you have flashed us with.
No, it is wrong. As I stated above the first
Law of Thermodynamics is as sure a thing as gravity. Every experiment ever done has confirmed the laws of thermodynamics without exception.
As always raithere, you seem to feel free enough to juggle from one physical theory to another in order to defeat your opponant(s) with out-of-context controversies.
What the hell is out of context about the First Law of Thermodynamics or the Ekpyrotic Model when we’re discussing energy and the Universe? Please show me anything that I’ve written in this thread that is out of context. I’m not simply tossing one theory after another at you in the hopes of tripping you up, I have provided the relevant scientific laws and theories. If you want to play make believe then I suggest you not use a quotation that claims to be ‘scientific’ as your proposition.
However, when it would come to you to validate what you believe to be true concerning the physical universe, most of us would be unpleasently 'let down' by your own incapacity to hold and defend one single theory
I don’t hold to a single theory regarding the beginning of the Universe because there isn’t one that stands out far and away above some of the others. However, your initial proposition is invalid because it violates the known Laws of Physics, not because there is are alternatives to the ‘God’ hypothesis.
I suggested the Ekpyrotic Model because it seems to be the most complete theory we have currently, various ‘Big Bang’ theories are also good but have some difficulty explaining the recently discovered accelerating inflation of the Universe.
Truth is a hard thing to come by; in fact it is nearly impossible. It is this, more than anything else that I try to convey to people here. Certainty is the hobgoblin of the mind. The moment you are absolutely certain of something, the moment you hold faith in your mind, reality beings to slip away from you. The Universe is not static, it is always changing, and if we could really understand the immensity of that which we do not know and how much of what we thing we know is wrong… well most people probably could not handle it… they are so certain.
When your car doesn’t start do you check the gas and the battery or do you perform an exorcism to drive the demon out of your engine block? Physics matters because it works.
~Raithere