Do Aliens Exist?

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

No, the GR theory isn't sufficient to explain quantum mechanics.

It's generally considered that QM is the more fundamental theory, and GR is emergent from it.

Singularity isn't light, so quantum mechanics does not come into the big bang either.

That's incoherent - a singularity is a mathematical artefact indicating the limits of a theory's applicability, it has nothing particular to do with light; the electromagnetic force emerged during the BB via symmetry breaking.

I've heard the particle-wave of light were coming into and going out of existence, but that isn't something that can be shown nor observed happening. It's just a presupposition or assumption to cause the big bang.

That too is incoherent - particle-wave duality is a feature of 'everyday' QM and is demonstrated regularly in school labs, e.g. the double-slit experiment. If you're talking about 'virtual' particles, they're just a way of visualising some gnarly quantum interactions. It's not particularly relevant to the cause of the BB.

Besides, Stephen Hawking admitted one needs spacetime for quantum mechanics and before the big bang there was neither.

Citation? I don't think that's right - recent ideas suggest that spacetime is emergent from quantum fields; Hawking was aware of that. One of his ideas was that there was no 'before' the BB, that time changed it's nature back towards the BB so that it simply closed off (by analogy with there being no 'north' of the north pole), so the universe was self-contained and just existed atemporally, but I don't think his version was successful...

To me the problem is there hasn't been an explanation to Neil Bohr's non-intuitive interpretation of the particle-wave experiments with light particles. He knew about the results and could only offer the Copenhagen theory, but it's the best we got so far from almost a century of work. This makes the quantum world weird.

QM is non-intuitive, but then so is GR; it's really just a matter of scale - we evolved at a scale where the world relevant to us approximates classical Newtonian mechanics, so that's what's intuitive to us.

There are plenty of formulations/interpretations of QM that are compatible with the mathematical formalism - Copenhagen is probably least popular among those that are interested in QM fundamentals. Everettian 'Many Worlds' is the simplest and increasingly popular, Bohmian Mechanics ('Pilot Wave' theory) has some unresolved problems, and there's a raft of objective collapse and transactional formulations... But they all purport to describe the same formalism.

The complex experiments have shown Bohr's weird theory to be right.

They show QM to be right - it was developed by quite a number of physicists (including Einstein); Bohr proposed the Copenhagen interpretation, which is falling out of favour for having an unexplained instantaneous wavefunction collapse that is not part of the QM formalism.

I mean while what happens in our macro world is explained by Newton's force theory, GR and SR, it doesn't hold in the quantum world. Yet, the quantum world makes up the macro world, so shouldn't they jibe?

Not necessarily - what happens at quantum scales results in semi-classical behaviour at macro scales; i.e. the everyday world we see is the aggregate effect of quantum behaviour at small scales, it is emergent from QM.

In the same way, our experience of air temperature and pressure, described by the gas laws, and the wetness, and flow characteristics of water, described by the laws of fluid mechanics, are emergent from the activities of billions of gas and water molecules, respectively. The individual molecules themselves don't have temperature, pressure, wetness, or flow characteristics, and are not described by gas laws or fluid mechanics - those are emergent properties of the bulk.

Is there anything to state for quantum gravity to get it into existence before the big bang? We don't have a good explanation for Bohr's theory so it's left open as the Copenhagen interpretation. The scientists think we just don't know what the others are, i.e. not enough data.

The consensus is that when we have a theory of quantum gravity that works in such extreme regimes, we'll have a mathematical description of what happened and a way to eliminate spurious explanations for how it may have come about, so we can narrow the options and maybe discover whether it could have been a bounce, a collision of branes, an energetic phase change, or whatever.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I just googled and Stephen Hawking let it out before his death, but he added that the multiverse hypothesis would allow for it. It's a way to explain what happened before the big bang and not have God, i.e. the science of atheism. It was he and his scientists who found the fine tuning parameters.

"Scientists have discovered a surprising fact about our universe in the past 40 years: against incredible odds, the numbers in basic physics are exactly as they need to be to accommodate the possibility of life. If gravity had been slightly weaker, stars would not have exploded into supernovae, a crucial source of many of the heavier elements involved in life. Conversely, if gravity had been slightly stronger, stars would have lived for thousands rather than billions of years, not leaving enough time for biological evolution to take place. This is just one example – there are many others – of the “fine-tuning” of the laws of physics for life.


Stephen Hawking's final theory sheds light on the multiverse
Read more
Some philosophers think the fine-tuning is powerful evidence for the existence of God. However, in his 2010 book The Grand Design (co-authored with Leonard Mlodinow), Stephen Hawking defended a naturalistic explanation of fine-tuning in terms of the multiverse hypothesis. According to the multiverse hypothesis, the universe we live in is just one of an enormous, perhaps infinite, number of universes. If there are enough universes then it becomes not so improbable that at least one will chance upon the right laws for life."

Did the dying Stephen Hawking really mean to strengthen the case for God? | Philip Goff

Thus, it wasn't something coming from just creationists. I think Hawking had to get evidence and more support for his Multiverse by the quantum mechanics scientists before he confessed.

What do think caused the big bang if that's what you believe?

Multiverses are predictions of well-tested physical theories, they were known about, but not taken very seriously by the mainstream, well before the fine-tuning argument blew up. It was then realised that a multiverse would make a logical, if unsatisfying, solution to fine tuning problems, so physicists began to take more interest. Many still want to find explanations for fine-tuning by deriving the physical constants from fundamental physics, because the statistical explanation is aesthetically unsatisfying.

There's an obvious analogy with the puzzle of life on Earth - once the size of the observable universe and the number of planets in it became apparent, and the likelihood of a vastly greater number beyond that, the idea gained traction that if life was possible, even though unlikely, there was good chance it would occur somewhere (as it did).

 

[jamesbond007]

Except, as @Speedwell pointed out, you are just dividing scientists along an incredibly arbitrary line, which is basically: those that I support because of my religion, and those I do not.
To call historical scientific minds 'creation' scientists is also ahistorical and just asinine: they may have believed in the Seven Day creation story of the Bible, but that does not mean that they based their work around Biblical creationism, which is what anyone who is actually called a creationist today does.

I get sucked in again as I have to correct yout untruths.

The dividing lines are where people fall when it comes to their beliefs of reality, opinions, thoughts about what other people are like such as the people we are voting for today, the issues of how we conduct our life, etc. Before we go on, it's also the science of atheism that my findings are based on. For example, it was believed that intelligent aliens exist because we exist and the universe is a big place. Whatever caused us caused the aliens. The belief in no God and atheism is a religious belief as it has to do with a natural cause and no creator. Thus, aliens are fine. Just no creator aliens. It's a religion based on the belief that there are no God/gods.

Anyway, the creation science came about because it honors our creator, but more important Christians found that the Bible isn't a science book, but science backs up what it states about the universe and Earth in Genesis. Much of it is in Genesis, around 85%, with a few other scientific questions answered in other books or chapters.

It appears that scientific atheism also has a book and that was the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin as well as Principles of Geology by Charles Lyell. Lyell was student of James Hutton, an atheist. Atheistic thinking existed long before that and it goes back to the dawn of civilization.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

It appears that scientific atheism also has a book and that was the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin as well as Principles of Geology by Charles Lyell. Lyell was student of James Hutton, an atheist. Atheistic thinking existed long before that and it goes back to the dawn of civilization.

This is really all anyone needs to read to understand your viewpoint on science. And it's not surprising in the slightest, but it is sad.

 

[jamesbond007]

It's generally considered that QM is the more fundamental theory, and GR is emergent from it.

I'm beginning to think you know very little about the science and the histories of science and it's not worth my time correcting your mistakes. What was the theory of special relativity based on? Which came first special or general (which you like to tout so much).

QM came out after the discovery of light.

I stopped reading about that.

 

[jamesbond007]

Multiverses are predictions of well-tested physical theories, they were known about, but not taken very seriously by the mainstream, well before the fine-tuning argument blew up. It was then realised that a multiverse would make a logical, if unsatisfying, solution to fine tuning problems, so physicists began to take more interest. Many still want to find explanations for fine-tuning by deriving the physical constants from fundamental physics, because the statistical explanation is aesthetically unsatisfying.

There's an obvious analogy with the puzzle of life on Earth - once the size of the observable universe and the number of planets in it became apparent, and the likelihood of a vastly greater number beyond that, the idea gained traction that if life was possible, even though unlikely, there was good chance it would occur somewhere (as it did).

Aren't the theories which you claim are well tested which the Multiverse is based on are things like infinite spacetime, many worlds hypothesis from quantum mechanics, and string theory, which no one has shown? That isn't well tested. What did I leave out?

Your posts contain a lot of contradictions, so I'll leave it at this.

 

[jamesbond007]

This is really all anyone needs to read to understand your viewpoint on science. And it's not surprising in the slightest, but it is sad.

I was pointing out that the arguments for a creator(s) vs natural cause(s) go back to the beginning of civilization. Isn't that the crux of everything here in Physical & Life Sciences? What has been shown to be reality and truth vs. our biased thinking?

I can and do discuss with other Christians which I like and it helps me to understand creation theories better. Creationists can accept a big bang expansion with God as creator, but there is no need for a cause as well as cosmic inflation. 7 days is what's required with Christianity. With atheist science, some of it is too esoteric like string theory and branes although it may be what we will be arguing about next.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

I was pointing out that the arguments for a creator(s) vs natural cause(s) go back to the beginning of civilization. Isn't that the crux of everything here in Physical & Life Sciences? What has been shown to be reality and truth vs. our biased thinking?

I can and do discuss with other Christians which I like and it helps me to understand creation theories better. Creationists can accept a big bang expansion with God as creator, but there is no need for a cause as well as cosmic inflation. 7 days is what's required with Christianity. With atheist science, some of it is too esoteric like string theory and branes although it may be what we will be arguing about next.

You pointed out nothing of the sort. You just restated the same old tired argument that people in the world suddenly became atheists because Darwin wrote Origin of Species, a spurious and insipid claim that is nothing more than childish.

Physical & Life Sciences is about the discussion of the title: the physical science and the life sciences. It's you and your ilk who always end up butting in with talks about creator vs natural causes.

And I've see the way you discuss with other Christians, and buddy, I am not impressed in the slightest.

 

[SelfSim]

Aren't the theories which you claim are well tested which the Multiverse is based on are things like infinite spacetime, many worlds hypothesis from quantum mechanics, and string theory, which no one has shown? That isn't well tested. What did I leave out?

Your posts contain a lot of contradictions, so I'll leave it at this.

 

[SelfSim]

I can and do discuss with other Christians which I like and it helps me to understand creation theories better.
...
With atheist science, some of it is too esoteric like string theory and branes although it may be what we will be arguing about next.

Why don't you spend more time finding out how scientific thinking actually works then and demonstrate responsibility for your own understanding of concepts, before criticising your own misunderstandings of them?

Do you always only ever listen to other people beliefs which happen to align with your own?

(Its fleas in a jar .. when the lid is opened they keep jumping to the height of where the lid was previously constraining them).
I really think premature exposure to religious indoctrination irreparably alters the brain's natural learning pathways .. Show me I'm wrong someone .. Please!? ..

 

[Speedwell]

It appears that scientific atheism also has a book and that was the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin as well as Principles of Geology by Charles Lyell. Lyell was student of James Hutton, an atheist. Atheistic thinking existed long before that and it goes back to the dawn of civilization.

There you are mistaken. Origin of Species and Principles of geology are not regarded in the same light as divine revelation, never to be contradicted. Darwin and Lyell are respected for their insights, but science has long since passed them by and their works are now regarded as being of no more than historical interest.

 

[Speedwell]

I was pointing out that the arguments for a creator(s) vs natural cause(s) go back to the beginning of civilization. Isn't that the crux of everything here in Physical & Life Sciences? What has been shown to be reality and truth vs. our biased thinking?

You have created a false dichotomy. A creator and natural causes poses no theological difficulties for the majority of the world's Christians.

 

[sjastro]

There are a lot of misconceptions about the Big Bang theory flying around in this thread.
First of all the Big Bang theory is a theory of about the evolution of the universe not its creation.
First of all the confusion of when the Big Bang occurred needs to be addressed.

The Big Bang is commonly attributed as the first event in the creation of the Universe occurring at the cosmological time t=0.
The problem with this notion we have absolutely no idea of the state of the Universe when the cosmological time is t < 10⁻⁴³ s when the Universe was in perfect symmetry and all the fundamental forces were unified.
Our current knowledge of physics breaks down below this time scale and it is pointless of referring to a Big Bang at t=0.

There is another Big Bang that cosmologists are interested in which occurred around
t =10⁻³⁰ s and is consistent with theory being based on evolution and not creation.
This is the Hot Big Bang which can be explained with current physics in the form of Quantum Field theory (QFT).
In QFT there is no such thing as an empty vacuum, rather a true vacuum is a quantum field of the lowest energy level.
The quantum field in a true vacuum have been confirmed in the laboratory via the Casimir effect.
A false vacuum on the other hand behaves like a true vacuum except it exists at a higher energy level.
The transition of a false vacuum to a true vacuum releases energy while mathematically complicated can be explained by the Mexican hat potential.

The Hot Big Bang is believed to be the result of the Universe going from a false vacuum to a true vacuum.
In this case the field associated with the vacuum is the inflaton field Ф which causes an exponentially rapid inflation of the universe for a brief interval.

Like the ball in the Mexican hat potential, the universe can be visualized as a ball (slowly) rolling down the field; when it reaches the bottom into the true vacuum state it oscillates around the minimum and reheats the universe resulting in the Hot Big Bang.

Another misconception is that inflation "violates" the laws of physics.
For objects in spacetime the laws of physics tells us nothing can exceed the speed of light.
This doesn't apply to spacetime itself where inflation is required in the early universe for spacetime to expand many orders of magnitude greater then speed of light in order for all regions of the universe to be causally connected such as the uniform cooling of the universe.

 

[sjastro]

Conservation of energy is law and not an approximation. Maybe you do know Einstein's general relativity, but go wrong when starting out?

A physical law is based on experiment and observation such as Newton's second law of motion F=ma.
As theories advance these physical laws can be derived from the theories themselves.
For example Newtonian mechanics evolved into Lagrangian mechanics where Newton's second law is derived directly from the theory.
Since theories by their very nature are approximations the laws are approximations which are also limited by the accuracy and precision of the experiments themselves.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I'm beginning to think you know very little about the science and the histories of science and it's not worth my time correcting your mistakes.

OK, do me a favour and just point them out

What was the theory of special relativity based on?

Not quite sure what you're after here, but, as I understand it, Einstein was puzzled by the conflict between Maxwell's equations and Newtonian mechanics; and Michelson & Morley's failure to demonstrate the aether suggested there must be an alternative approach. His patent office work experience with clock designs may well have primed his imagination.

Which came first special or general (which you like to tout so much).

Special, of course - odd question...

QM came out after the discovery of light.

Well obviously - we didn't evolve in the dark!

I stopped reading about that.

It shows.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Aren't the theories which you claim are well tested which the Multiverse is based on are things like infinite spacetime, many worlds hypothesis from quantum mechanics, and string theory, which no one has shown? That isn't well tested. What did I leave out?

Not really. For example, the standard model of cosmology is well-tested and pretty successful within the current limits of its scope - and it tells us spacetime is as close to flat as we can tell. This means it isn't definitely closed and finite, and is at least 100 times the volume of the observable universe; it may even be spatially infinite - that's always been the default assumption. But even if it's 'only' 100 times the volume of observable universe, those other volumes are causally isolated from each other - not least because space is expanding. That makes those volumes, to all intents and purposes, separate universes, known as 'Level I' universes (of course, if it's infinite, there will be an infinite number of these universes).

Inflation theory, which produces the inflationary multiverse ('Level II' universes), isn't as well tested, but has passed a number of observational tests, and is quite widely accepted as it kills several puzzling cosmological birds with one stone.

Quantum mechanics is very well-tested - arguably the best tested theory in physics. The strict mathematical formalism predicts a branching universal wavefunction, where each possible outcome of an interaction with a system in quantum superposition entangles with, and decoheres into, the environment. This multiple-outcome decoherence results in the Everettian 'Many Worlds' multiverse ('Level III' universes). The Copenhagen and other wavefunction collapse formulations need to add an inexplicable and ad-hoc random 'wavefunction collapse' postulate to make all but one entanglement outcome instantly disappear.

Other multiverse models are speculative, but there's nothing to stop the simultaneous existence of Level I, II, and III universes.

Max Tegmark covers these quite well in 'Our Mathematical Universe', as does Sean Carroll in 'From Eternity to Here' and 'Something Deeply Hidden'.

Your posts contain a lot of contradictions, so I'll leave it at this.

Do me a favour and just point them out for me

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Conservation of energy is law and not an approximation. Maybe you do know Einstein's general relativity, but go wrong when starting out?

No, physical laws are not necessarily absolute (e.g. the laws of thermodynamics are probabilistic, aka statistical mechanics) and energy is not conserved under GR. Didn't you watch the Sabine Hossenfelder video posted by sjastro?

 

[jamesbond007]

Why don't you spend more time finding out how scientific thinking actually works then and demonstrate responsibility for your own understanding of concepts, before criticising your own misunderstandings of them?

I don't even know what you know or evidence that you have to get up on your high horse and criticize me. @Warden_of_the_Storm has been debunked and put in her place as someone who doesn't have much evidence for her scientific beliefs.

The evidence backs up what I have been stating, i.e. no aliens because... and no abiogenesis because... That gives me the edge in the discussions here.

There are different types of scientific thinking. I'm the one pointing out that we still have no evidence of aliens and abiogenesis anywhere. These are required for the science of atheism to continue.

For example, Earth would be the perfect place for abiogenesis to happen, but it doesn't so one scientific thinking states it does happen and then found the reasons for why it doesn't happen while looking to explain the big bang. Instead, the ones with no evidence, you?, criticize me for my correct and proper scientific thinking. The experimental evidence also backs me up as only existing life can create other life.

 

[Speedwell]

There are different types of scientific thinking. I'm the one pointing out that we still have no evidence of aliens and abiogenesis anywhere. These are required for the science of atheism to continue.

Finding evidence of aliens or abiogenesis is not necessary for the continuance of atheism. Likewise, such evidence would not disprove theism. The question of whether there are aliens or whether abiogenesis occurs is beside the point. Atheists--and most theists, I think, understand that the existence of God is an unfalsifiable proposition. Nothing that science has discovered or in principle could discover about the natural world can disprove the existence of God. The existence of life on other planets can't do it, a fully naturalistic abiogenesis can't do it either.

 

[jamesbond007]

OK, do me a favour and just point them out

Just read my previous posts in this thread for starters.

For example, the standard model of cosmology is well-tested and pretty successful within the current limits of its scope - and it tells us spacetime is as close to flat as we can tell.

Please explain your std model of cosmos. The universe being flat like a scroll backs up creation science. I'll add we found the edges of the universe curve, too. It means the universe has a boundary.

it may even be spatially infinite - that's always been the default assumption.

That's why I asked where the energy came from for this "infinite" space to accelerate and continue expanding? Even the energy for the stars, moon, planets, etc aren't explained. Instead, all of your origin hypotheses have whatever you need already assumed to be there such as spacetime.

Maybe space has to continue expanding in order for time to move forward. What's weird is if we look out into space and see heavenly objects, those objects are from the past. We can't see the present in space except to project their movements (which may be enough) to get us there assuming we can. We need to use a telescope to see what's out in the deep field, but even then it's the past. This shows the one way direction of time and we can't see the present.

The most troubling is the stars exploding and galaxies colliding of the deaths of these heavenly objects that has already happened. That's why there is cosmological belief that the Milky Way, too, could end up as space fodder. That would be one extinction event, but not just one relegated to the Earth only.

Inflation theory, which produces the inflationary multiverse ('Level II' universes), isn't as well tested, but has passed a number of observational tests, and is quite widely accepted as it kills several puzzling cosmological birds with one stone.

Do you mean cosmic inflation? I hate that as it violates the laws of physics.

Quantum mechanics is very well-tested - arguably the best tested theory in physics.

Yet, it is a strange explanation that needs to be observed to explain the particle-wave behavior of light and to see what the entangled pairs are. There isn't a physical explanation that doesn't violate the laws of physics, so we wait to find out more about its nature. At this time, we can't explain our macro view of the universe based on it. We can use the knowledge of it and it seems possible to build a quantum internet and space communications.

Max Tegmark covers these quite well in 'Our Mathematical Universe', as does Sean Carroll in 'From Eternity to Here' and 'Something Deeply Hidden'.

I'm going skip Mr. Tegmark because he's a believer of multiverses. Anyway, I have an explanation for what we see as observation. Strictly my thoughts. I think an individual light particle acts as a wave when it goes through both slits. Thus, we get the wave patterns. The collapse explains what we see in quantum entanglement. We can only observe one pairs and its entangled pairs. The other particles to show the wave for some reason just aren't recorded or observed, but I think they're there. The collapse is the illusion. Maybe the observation can't record the others because of some strange time function.

ETA: What I'd like to do is shoot entangled particles through one-at-a-time. Then we should just see the two bands. Next, use a measuring device to record and observe. It should be the same.

We'd have to account for each particle to make sure. Then shoot non-entangled ones and we should see the wave pattern. Keep track of how many were fired. Next, observe those with the measuring device. We should just get the entangled pairs, but it will be less than the number of shots fired. That would mean the wave pattern is there, but we just couldn't see it or record it.