The Final Theory

[questor]

C.C.- thanks for hearing me. i am not religious in the '' G '' sense of the word or as is espoused by the world's religions. however, in observing the way things work, it defies common sense that there is no creating force that put the cosmos in motion and controls it by forces that we only dimly understand. i do not see this as a caring or compassionate force, but rather as the ''bottom line'' of what was needed to create what we have. this force is present as gravity, energy, propulsion, and information, plus other components dimly perceived. the question then becomes- does it take a sentient force to create the cosmos, or is all that we see a result of non-creation. did the information stored in genetic matter occur with no sentient planning? does the fine balance of orbiting planets occur by chance? how do they propel themselves through their orbits with no external force and without slowing down? is the presence of math just a happenstance or is there thought behind it? what is thought? does it have mass, polarity, velocity or any ingredient we can measure it by? the superstring theory speaks of other dimensions. we cannot see them or understand them ( if they actually exist ) so was there any sentient planning here or does

all this exist because of non-creation?

[Boerseun]

Questor - fine and profound questions you put here. And this is the right place to look for answers and debate.

 

However, matters of the metaphysical should be raised, debated and answered in the "Religion" forum.

 

Go to the forum index, find the "Religion" forum, and raise a new thread there. You'll get some lively discussion regarding your questions there.

 

Welcome, by the way! ;)

[coldcreation]

I would suggest first reading some standard physics or cosmology textbooks, about forces of nature and so on, then draw your own conclusions based on the evidence. There are many differing ideas often about the same observations. One thing though, I would refrain from using cosmology as a "sentient planning" therapy or as a personal introspection treatment.

 

As far as the ultimate quest and the approach to finding the answers in some form of unified theory is concerned, "To this I answer with complete assurance, that in my opinion there is a correct path. Moreover, that it is in our power to find it.” (Einstein 1919, Ideas and Opinions 1954).

[questor]

to BOERSEUM..

why are the questions i have raised ''metaphysical''? are you saying there is no scientific

basis underlying the questions, or are you just saying that any question dealing with creation must deal with religion? why does the thought of a creator seem to shock and dismay many in the scientific community when it is quite obvious that there either is a creator or there is none? i am not pushing God or religion. i am asking questions which at sometime may be asked by many and perhaps be answered by scientific proof.

are you not interested in how a human thought is created? is it biochemical or some other

process? what is the process that creats life? what force propels the earth around the sun without the need for fuel? if the earth and the sun were formed at the same time,why does the sun produce such awesome nuclear power while the earth produces none?

perhaps someone here can answer these questions.

[questor]

sorry for the spelling error...Boerseun

[Boerseun]

sorry for the spelling error...Boerseun

No worries, mate!

 

The thing is that this specific thread deals with "The Final Theory", a book by McCutcheon.

 

We debate the pros and cons of that specific book here.

 

If you stray too far off the topic, I recommend you raise a new thread to cover that specific topic.

 

Look in the forum index; there's plenty of threads dealing with the creator/no creator issue.

 

And as far as metaphysics goes, the creator/no creator premise falls squarely, slap-bang into the metaphysical field.

[questor]

Boerseun, have to disagree with you about placing my questions into the metaphysical

trash bin of confusion and conjecture. i'm not trying to be argumentive, but if this thread

concerns the final theory, why is not the underlying force of evolution or creation or whatever you think caused all that we see the ''final answer''? in McCutcheon's theory,

what is the propulsive or motivating force that causes the expansion of bodies? do his theories also answer the ephemeral occurences such as thought, instinct, information?

yours for an open mind and a bottom line. Questor

[coldcreation]

No worries, mate!

The thing is that this specific thread deals with "The Final Theory", a book by McCutcheon.

We debate the pros and cons of that specific book here.

If you stray too far off the topic, I recommend you raise a new thread to cover that specific topic.

Look in the forum index; there's plenty of threads dealing with the creator/no creator issue.

And as far as metaphysics goes, the creator/no creator premise falls squarely, slap-bang into the metaphysical field.

 

Actually, Father George Lemaître tested the idea of destruction to the limits of Creation. And what comes through in the beginning is a primal force, the mother of all explosions.

 

Where Lemaître was vague on just how the origin of the universe was to be defined or discussed, Pope Pius XII was obscure but not vague. For him it was possible to articulate explicitly the way in which the universal was embodied in the transcendental Creator.

 

A paper was presented and printed in the world’s leading journal of physics, the year was 1952, the publication was Physical Review, and the author of the paper was George Gamow. A bad practical joke though it may have appeared to the subscribers, the paper nevertheless created a precedent upon which the big bang opposition would not fail to grab hold.

 

In the paper was introduced a long drawn out citation by the pope in which he unequivocally and in no ambiguous terms officially accepted the big bang picture of creation as a rational support for the [irrational] doctrines of the Bible. The pope embraced the scientific community for having definitively proved the Church’s long-standing doctrine—giving new credibility to an old commandment, let there be light, is just a confirmation of what many had suspected from the start and served only as fuel to the fire in a controversy between cosmology and spirituality, between big bang believers and its adversary.

 

“Indeed, it would seem” explains the pope, “that present-day science, with one sweep back across the centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to the august instant of the primordial Fiat Lux, when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, and the elements split and churned and formed into millions of galaxies. Thus with the concreteness which is characteristic of physical proofs, it has confirmed the contingency of the universe and also the well-founded deduction as to the epoch when the world came forth from the hands of the Creator. Hence, creation took place. We say: therefore, there is a creator. Therefore, God exists.” (see Kragh, 1996, p. 257).

 

The pope had done more than just read about the big bang: He inhaled it. Of course the pope introduces his own quasi-scientific expression: Fiat Lux, synonymous for Big Bang, and written with capitals to make it an entity superior to man.

 

I hope the stray was ok.

 

Coldcreation

[questor]

good post C.C.-- i guess now it would be a good idea to define our terms. exactly what does one have in mind when he says GOD. does he mean an old man in a gown sitting on a throne in heaven? this is a difficult concept to believe in. it flies in the face of reason and observation. however if he means the transcendental, inexplicable, ubiquitious, all powerful force that could create the cosmos we live in and maintain it---that is quite imaginable and reasonable. is it not?

[coldcreation]

good post C.C.-- i guess now it would be a good idea to define our terms. exactly what does one have in mind when he says GOD. does he mean an old man in a gown sitting on a throne in heaven? this is a difficult concept to believe in. it flies in the face of reason and observation. however if he means the transcendental, inexplicable, ubiquitious, all powerful force that could create the cosmos we live in and maintain it---that is quite imaginable and reasonable. is it not?

 

 

Questor, No it is not reasonable. Science is not meant to deal with transcendental, inexplicable, all powerful forces.

 

I did not mean to get your G-word taste buds all riled up in my last post.

 

It still seems as if you did not read another previous post with regards to the ultimate quest and the approach to finding the answers in some form of unified theory is concerned, "To this I answer with complete assurance, that in my opinion there is a correct path. Moreover, that it is in our power to find it.” (Einstein 1919, Ideas and Opinions 1954).

 

Einstein is not referring to a path that leads to an ad hoc Superforce or Bottom Line, to use your expressions. My sole intention of introducing Lemaître and the pope into the discussion was to show how absurd both models really are: the Big Bang and the One you incessantly hint at with capital letters.

 

It is my argument that modern cosmology had, first, accepted, endorsed and embraced the Biblical description of creation in the early 1930s when Lemaître, himself a Catholic priest and high-ranking member of the Pontifical Academy, founded the primeval atom hypothesis.

 

Though Lemaître and many of his contemporaries were upset with Gamow’s unconventionally droll joke. To them, science should remain detached from religion, at least overtly (what people did in their bedrooms was their own business) atheist or not, altogether these were religious scientists in a very complete sense. Their stances were built as much on faith in the big bang as on nonrepresentational considerations, a faith stimulated by a visionary experience more than one based on looking and then theorizing. Their stances were not identical and diverged considerably, but in the essentials agreement was close and both stances were verbalized with the same abstract vocabulary, with the same uncertainty.

 

That the Church is in accordance with cosmology (and visa versa) merely demonstrates the important connections and ties between the two overtly dissimilar but covertly identical doctrine. The relation science-church strikes a resonant chord with a large number of people. The poignant irony is that the turbulent flames of a profoundly rooted belief, ideal, and enmity still continue to glow amongst mankind, burning up any mutual hope of squaring off once and for all the separation of church and state. The language of science, nature, physics, has been so cunningly seized and siphoned off by religious fundamentalists that plausible, reality-based dialogue has become nearly impossible.

 

Boerseun is right. This is not the place for this discussion.

 

Coldcreation

[Tormod]

i'm not trying to be argumentive, but if this thread

concerns the final theory, why is not the underlying force of evolution or creation or whatever you think caused all that we see the ''final answer''?

 

I think you misunderstood Boerseun's post, questor. He simply pointed out that this is NOT a debate about the creator/no creator issue but about the book "The Final Theory". You might want to catch up on the thread from page 1 (no offense).

[questor]

C.C.- it seems i am not making myself clear, perhaps to more than one person..your

quote by Einstein; "To this I answer with complete assurance, that in my opinion there is a correct path. Moreover, that it is in our power to find it.” (Einstein 1919, Ideas and Opinions 1954). i totally agree with this and believe we will at some point discover the true working mechanism of the comos, although it will not be in our lifetimes.

my questions are quite simple. : what are the smallest building blocks of our cosmos and what forces initiate their activity? what forces initiate propulsion of planets around their stars and why do celestial bodies remain in their own space? this has nothing to do with religion, it has everything to do with energy, force fields, planetary formation and other

fields that we may not be aware of at this time. if i have missed your explanation of these

forces or particles, please direct me to them. it seems that the mention of God tends to short circuit some conversations. i have read excerpts of ''The Final Theory'' and i think it is mis-named. i do not pretend to be a mathmatician or theoretical physicist, but i am able to think independently, and i don't think we have arrived at a Unified Theory.

[Tom Palmer]

The problem arises when you write about the Doppler effect “We know this is the true...”

ColdCreation

 

Hello, ColdCreation,

 

Thank you for your excellent clarification on the status of the Doppler interpretation of the Hubble red-shift, and the alternative global spacetime curvature redshift interpretation, and the idea that what has been interpreted as “time variation in an expanding frame is now ascribed to a spatial variation in properties of a static universe.”

 

First, I want to correct my statement that there are only two possible mechanisms for the Hubble red-shift. I omitted mention of the postulated “cosmological red shift” as a possible third mechanism, although that presupposes an expanding universe.

 

I will grant that my statement that “we know [the Doppler effect] is the true cause of the Hubble red shift” was a bit too confident and overstated. My real intent was to contrast that notion (whatever its merits) with the patently absurd claim by Mark McCutcheon that the red shift could be explained thus: “light is widely known to be Red Shifted by other far simpler causes, such as merely passing through plastics and gases of all sorts” (from the website summary of Chapter 6).

 

Light may well be filtered in this manner, with the longer wavelengths being selectively transmitted (like the red-hued sky at sunset), but either McCutcheon doesn’t know enough real physics to even distinguish mere selective transmission from a true shifting of wavelengths (including the spectral patterns superimposed on them), or he is trying to “pull a fast one.” As I mentioned in one posting, he is a master of “finessing.” [One reference work defines “finesse” in this sense as “To handle with a deceptive or evasive strategy”; another says “To make, achieve, or get through contrivance or guile”].

 

The alternative ideas you discussed are most interesting. [i appreciated your reference to Hermann Weyl - many years ago I spent much time with my Dover reprint of his “Space - Time - Matter” (Raum, Zeit, Materie)].

 

I am particularly curious about the objects with luminous connecting bridges but very different red shifts. If the two objects differ greatly in mass, the Doppler explanation could still be “alive and well.” If not, ... well, that’s what makes cosmology so endlessly fascinating!

 

Thanks again for the fine information about a possible alternative explanation. Ideas such as that are far more worthy of serious consideration than the desperate dodge-and-weave "alternatives" so overconfidently promulgated in “The Final Theory.”

 

Tom Palmer

[ldsoftwaresteve]

Tom Palmer: I will grant that my statement that “we know [the Doppler effect] is the true cause of the Hubble red shift” was a bit too confident and overstated. My real intent was to contrast that notion (whatever its merits) with the patently absurd claim by Mark McCutcheon that the red shift could be explained thus: “light is widely known to be Red Shifted by other far simpler causes, such as merely passing through plastics and gases of all sorts” (from the website summary of Chapter 6).

Well, at least you're able to admit you were wrong. By your own admission, you haven't read the book and I commend you on your ability to understand its contents thus. You remain fixed on the notion that light is a wave and if you had read his book, McCutcheon thinks that the colors of light are particle bundles. He simply says that as those bundles travel through space and whatever is there, it is entirely conceivable that some of the particles get stripped off of the bundles. This should be measurable because it would seem to indicate that 'velocities' thus inferred would follow measurable jumps. In other words QM jumps, if I understand the concept correctly. In other words, what if all such measurements were plotted? Is there any evidence that the measurements from the same areas in space don't change gradually but jump?

[Tom Palmer]

Well, at least you're able to admit you were wrong. By your own admission, you haven't read the book and I commend you on your ability to understand its contents thus. You remain fixed on the notion that light is a wave . . .

 

Once the famous editor George Horace Lorimer sent back a manuscript to a hopeful author. She retorted: "Last week you rejected my story. I know you did not read it, for, as a test, I pasted together pages,15, 16, 17 and 18, and the manuscript came back with the pages still stuck. You are a fraud; you reject stories you haven't even read!" Lorimer wrote back, "Dear Madam: At breakfast when I open an egg, I don't have to eat the whole egg to discover that it's bad!"

 

I must say I understood Mr. Lorimer’s feelings when I got a good whiff of The Final Theory. Having already been overwhelmed by the unmistakable scent of hydrogen sulfide, I have no plans to “eat the whole egg,” and, while wishing to be fair and objective, I feel quite justified in pronouncing this particular egg inedible without feeling obliged to first consume the whole thing.

 

By the way, I didn’t admit to being “wrong”; I confessed to undiplomatically asserting a disputed point in a manner that was “a bit too confident and overstated.” B-i-i-i-g difference!

 

Quantum electrodynamics (QED) regards a photon as both a particle and a wave. Conceptually, this may seem contradictory, but mathematically, it works. Among familiar phenomena which reveal the wave nature of light are constructive and destructive interference, and diffraction effects (color fringes, etc.). Even the alternating hot and cold spots in my food when I microwave a frozen dinner display the interference pattern of the 12-cm wavelength of its microwaves.

 

It is important to note that mathematical QED theory predicts the quantities involved with extreme accuracy, and these have been confirmed experimentally. In fact, the prediction of a tiny difference in two energy levels (the “Lamb shift”) in the hydrogen atom matched the subsequent measurements to some eleven decimal places, and this is considered the most accurate quantitative prediction ever made on the basis of any scientific theory.

 

When McCutcheon can make a similarly precise quantitative prediction on the basis of his model, I’ll take him more seriously. But I don’t believe bad eggs can turn good, so, once again, I’m not holding my breath.

 

Tom Palmer

[ldsoftwaresteve]

Tom Palmer: It is important to note that mathematical QED theory predicts the quantities involved with extreme accuracy, and these have been confirmed experimentally. In fact, the prediction of a tiny difference in two energy levels (the “Lamb shift”) in the hydrogen atom matched the subsequent measurements to some eleven decimal places, and this is considered the most accurate quantitative prediction ever made on the basis of any scientific theory.

Okay, good. Then the current model for that measurement works. That doesn't mean the model is correct though. When I read up on the Lamb Effect it mentioned 'virtual protons' so, I suspect that there is still something that is not quite understood in that model.

Bundling photons into stable configurations representing discreet colors of light where the difference between two adjacent colors might be constant or might not. In other words, 'frequencies' of light would progress in jumps between stable configurations. Assuming we actually have an accurate way of measuring those differences, perhaps we could infer something about the composition of the 'frequencies'. But see, we wouldn't look there if we are hanging on to the wave theory of light.

[coldcreation]

Okay, good. Then the current model for that measurement works. In other words, 'frequencies' of light would progress in jumps between stable configurations. Assuming we actually have an accurate way of measuring those differences, perhaps we could infer something about the composition of the 'frequencies'. But see, we wouldn't look there if we are hanging on to the wave theory of light.

 

For now those quantized jumps in redshift you refer to are no proven, as far as I've read. They may exist, but it seems up until now, few cosmologists are willing to accept it as standard. Yes, it might be because there is no explanation for the jumps in z if the Doppler effect is chosen as real. I would wait until definitive proof comes in before ranting and raving about Lamb-shifts.

 

I agree with Tom Palmer.

The Final Theory is no final theory.

 

Coldcreation