Monday, December 14, 2009

I think I may have flipped out

This is gonna shock everyone in the blogosphere. XD

I think everyone is gonna be like, WTF, when they hear about this. XD

Here goes XD I don't think I'm an atheist anymore.

Now, before we go any further-

1) I believe in the big bang and in evolution.

2) I still am unaffiliated with a religion, and chances are I will remain that way.

3) I believe men and women should be able to interact the way they do in secular society.

4) I don't claim to have all the answers when it comes to the metaphysical, nor any of them for that matter.

5) I still dislike halacha. XD

So don't go on and callin me a frummy. I'm still basically secular.

What got me was I saw this youtube video, granted, the delivery was veeeeeeeeeeeeeery poor and presumptuous, nevertheless the point seeeeeems to be strong, I thought about it for a long time.


There are only four possibilities for cosmology.

1) Existence is an illusion.

2) Something came from nothing.

3) Everything always existed.

4) Everything came from God.

1 and 2 is absurd on the face of it.

3 is negated by way of entropy. The fact that entropy obviously has not run its full course seems to display that the universe is not eternal. Even the big bang theory says that the universe had a beginning.

Aren't we left with 4? O.o

37 comments:

Joshua Zelinsky said...

What one means by everything is an issue. There's no logical problem with an infinite chain of causes going backwards. Moreover, this really doesn't answer anything at all because "God" in this context is simply a place holder for something complete undefined. Indeed, one would a) then have the exact same issues with that entity and b) have no clear reason why that entity if it exists should be dubbed God.

Garnel Ironheart said...

Very good, SJ.

First of all, the argument over an eternal universe vs one of a finite age has been philosophically argued for millenia. Aristotle tried to prove the case for eternity and Rambam showed how he was in error. Nowadays given science's understanding of the expansion of the universe, it's a given that the universe began at some point.

So the question remains - where did it come from? Every possible non-God explanation relies on completely unprovable theories - a prior universe which compacted down and then expanded into ours (but where did that one come from) for example.

The most rational answer is that there was a first cause to everything. As Jewish sources have been saying for centuries, we call that first cause God.

So you and I can argue whether God remained involved with the universe, made His presence known to our ancestors etc. but you now realize He is out there.

Shalmo said...

Garnel Rambam plagarized all his answers to Aristotle from Ibn Rushd. And sadly he did not properly understand all his refutations to begin with, which is why you go to main man himself to hear the proper case against the eternal universe

SJ clearly the ideal religion for you is buddhism. The buddha answers that whether or not God exists the problem of purpose and suffering remains. Its a humanistic religion that may bst tailor your needs, more so than a humanistic synagogue I think.

SJ said...

Joshua, no logical problem with infinite chain? Look up entropy.

Garnel, don't be too excited, I still think the same as I did before on orthodox judiasm. XD

Joshua said...

SJ, nope not a logical issue. I presume you are referring to the laws of thermodynamics especially the second law. There are multiple loopholes to the second law. To list but a few examples: First, the second law is a statement about average behavior. Second, if one has a cycle of big bang/big crunches then the entropy gets reset at the end. Third you can have a function that is strictly decreasing but was still of finite value for any amount back in time. (For example, consider f(x)=e^-x which gets bigger as x gets more negative but never runs into any problem. In fact, exponential entropy would be freaking weird for a variety of other reasons, but the basic point works). Fourth, if you have universes spinning off from each other (such as from either new inflation or black holes resulting in new universes (the second looks unlikely given our current knowledge but the point still stands), then each universe starts with a new level of entropy and then decays from there.

Most importantly, it isn't even clear that the universe is a closed system. This is an important technical requirement in the second law. A universe which is expanding would likely not be closed. So the 2nd law doesn't apply to the universe as a whole anyways.

SJ said...

>> SJ, nope not a logical issue. I presume you are referring to the laws of thermodynamics especially the second law. There are multiple loopholes to the second law. To list but a few examples: First, the second law is a statement about average behavior.


"According to the second law of thermodynamics, during any process the change in entropy of a system and its surroundings is either zero or positive. In other words the entropy of the universe as a whole tends toward a maximum. This means that although energy cannot vanish because of the law of conservation of energy (see conservation laws ), it tends to be degraded from useful forms to useless ones." - The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition on Entropy http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/entropy.aspx


>> Second, if one has a cycle of big bang/big crunches then the entropy gets reset at the end.

A big crunch seems to be highly unlikely, dark energy counteracts gravity.



>> Third you can have a function that is strictly decreasing but was still of finite value for any amount back in time. (For example, consider f(x)=e^-x which gets bigger as x gets more negative but never runs into any problem. In fact, exponential entropy would be freaking weird for a variety of other reasons, but the basic point works).

Speak English. I don't see how this is relevant. I didn't say "exponential" entropy so it looks like a strawman really.



>> Fourth, if you have universes spinning off from each other (such as from either new inflation or black holes resulting in new universes (the second looks unlikely given our current knowledge but the point still stands), then each universe starts with a new level of entropy and then decays from there.

Are you sure new universes spin off from each other? I know the physicists these days say that, but where's the proof? O.o



>> Most importantly, it isn't even clear that the universe is a closed system. This is an important technical requirement in the second law. A universe which is expanding would likely not be closed. So the 2nd law doesn't apply to the universe as a whole anyways

Decay does not apply to the universe as a whole? O.o

Joshua said...

SJ,

Simply put, that's a bad definition. While it is likely true, it isn't obviously true. The 2nd law is a statement that applies on average to systems that obey certain constraints. It isn't completely clear that our universe as a whole obeys those constraints.

A big crunch seems to be highly unlikely, dark energy counteracts gravity.

Potentially yes. Dark energy is really poorly understood.

Speak English. I don't see how this is relevant. I didn't say "exponential" entropy so it looks like a strawman really.

Unfortunately, the language of physics is math so it is hard to discuss these issues without someo tiny amount of math. In any event, you seem to be missing my point. The comment about exponential increases in entropy levels (or exponential decreases in order levels) was regarding the example function I used. The point is that you can have a function that is strictly increase and yet always have it have a finite value for any point back in time. So the 2nd law doesn't inherently trigger entropy issues.

Are you sure new universes spin off from each other? I know the physicists these days say that, but where's the proof? O.o

Actually, very few physicists would support this sort of multiverse hypothesis today. There are apparently deep issues with this sort of multiverse hypothesis. Although I'm a mathematician (well a math grad student really) the math behind why this form of multiverse is unlikely is apparently really complicated and specialized. (It has to do with topological considerations of space-time and I really don't know much beyond that). However, this is one of the more testable multiverse hypotheses. If it is correct, we should expect to live in a universe that has parameters that make lots of black holes. That seems to be the case. But we don't currently have a good enough understanding of how much one could tweak those and still have that be the case. If it turns out that the relevant parameters are at a local maximum (or even better a global maximum) this would be pretty good evidence for some version of this hypothesis. This gets to interact in some interesting ways with variants of the anthropic principle (for example, if the maximal black hole production will occur in universes that don't support life we won't end up seeing it). (There are other more likely multiverse theories also but they take more time to explain. They also are less likely to be that relevant).

Decay does not apply to the universe as a whole?

Possibly not. It really depends very much on the nature and set up of your universe. The short answer is that we don't know.

There are other issues also such as the classical Boltzmann style argument concerning fluctuating entropy in a large universe. These get into deep issues related to pretty weird ideas like Boltzmann brains, Loschmidt's paradox, and whether the H-theorem and analogues apply to our universe and if so how they apply.

G*3 said...

How about option 5, "We don't know?" Remember, there is no reason to even list God as an option. There is no evidence of any God, nor any reason to posit His existence other than the argument-from-ignorance you cite.

SJ said...

Joshua, by entropy, I mean universal decay in general. The stars aren't eventually gonna burn out? O.o What will happen to gravity when stars burn out? O.O

If the universe were eternal, it would seem to me that the very consumption of energy would be at the end of the line at no matter when you are in time.

In other words, in an eternal universe represented as a numberline, no matter what point you are on, it would seem that something consuming energy would always be burnt out due to the infinite amount of time beforehand.


The big crunch theory also has no evidence for it that I've heard of.


G3, it is worth listing God as a possibility, and by that I don't mean the God of orthodox juadism, just a god in general. I don't presume to know what the nature of God is, nor can anyone.


If you can't have an eternal universe and a spontaneously appearing universe, what's left? O.o


Also argument from ignorance is, "I don't know what caused it so it must be God." That is not what I'm saying.

Joshua said...

SJ,

Entropy has a specific mathematical definition. There seems to be a slight issue that you don't have much background on the underlying physics and math. For example, you ask "The stars aren't eventually gonna burn out? O.o What will happen to gravity when stars burn out?" In fact, when stars burn out they are left with almost all their mass intact. The sun for example will convert around an order of 10% of its hydrogen to helium in its lifetime. But the overall mass loss from that conversion and subsequent conversion to heavier elements will be a very tiny fraction of the sun's mass.

This isn't that hard to work out even just by a back of the envelope calculation. Say for example that we're generous and assume that the entire sun were made of hydrogen. That's a major overestimate but let's be generous. Assume also that the sun is made completely of deuterium (just because that's going to make this calculation easier. It will be within an order of magnitude or so correct). Now, if all the sun's hydrogen then fused into helium, we'd replace every 2 deuterium nuclei with a He4 nucleus. A quick look up shows that deuterium has a mass of 2.014102 u or so two of them would have a mass of about 4.002804 u. An He4 nucleus has a mass of about 4.002602 u. This gives loss of mass of about .6%. That's pretty tiny. Now, assuming our friendly star goes up to iron and loses the same amount for every single fusion (which can't happen because their will be less mass loss in subsequent fusions) that would give us a total of 26 fusion events. This is a loss of about 2% of a star's mass. And this is under extremely generous conditions. So no, gravity will be just find even after all the stars have burned out (in fact, the larger stars will turn into neutron stars and black holes which have very high gravities.)


Regarding a big crunch situation: The short answer is we don't know. It looks now like dark energy will prevent such a situation. Unfortunately we don't have any idea what dark energy really is and whether it will continue to act the way it has. (And this is where we really start to get beyond my knowledge base). So at this point that particular possibility doesn't seem very likely. However, I listed these possibilities to make a general point about how many other options there were. In fact, there are quite a few more. These are just some of the ones off the top of my head.

Unfortunately, these are complicated issues and having some background knowledge is necessary to discuss them in detail.

SJ said...

It would seem to me that while perhaps entropy in a math thing has a specific mathematical definition, entropy in general means the descent from order into disorder in general.


I don't know where you get deuterium from Joshua, the sun's reaction is hydrogen -> helium. Deuterium gets used up fast and astronomers try to find deuterium when they want to find new stars (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/deuabund.html).


Joshua you seem like a smart guy, let's compare your post with an article from NASA, "http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/dwarfs.html"


>> In fact, when stars burn out they are left with almost all their mass intact. The sun for example will convert around an order of 10% of its hydrogen to helium in its lifetime. But the overall mass loss from that conversion and subsequent conversion to heavier elements will be a very tiny fraction of the sun's mass.


NASA says, "Medium mass stars, like our Sun, live by fusing the hydrogen within their cores into helium. This is what our Sun is doing now. The heat the Sun generates by its nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium creates an outward pressure. In another 5 billion years, the Sun will have used up all the hydrogen in its core."


>> This is a loss of about 2% of a star's mass


NASA says, "The Sun will not be very stable at this point and will lose mass. This continues until the star finally blows its outer layers off. The core of the star, however, remains intact, and becomes a white dwarf." Does this sound like a retention of most of its mass? O.o


Also, you didn't even respond my point, "In other words, in an eternal universe represented as a numberline, no matter what point you are on, it would seem that something consuming energy would always be burnt out due to the infinite amount of time beforehand."

SJ said...

The NASA link again is "http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/
docs/science/know_l1/dwarfs.html."

For some reason the text didn't wrap properly in the column.

Joshua said...

It would seem to me that while perhaps entropy in a math thing has a specific mathematical definition, entropy in general means the descent from order into disorder in general.

You can use it if you want to mean that, but if you do, you can't rely on the 2nd law. In which case the argument just becomes something like "well, things seem to become more disordered in some vague notion of disordered." That's not a terribly helpful argument. (And indeed, most of the above examples of issues would still apply).

I don't know where you get deuterium from Joshua, the sun's reaction is hydrogen -> helium. Deuterium gets used up fast and astronomers try to find deuterium when they want to find new stars (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/deuabund.html).

Please reread what I wrote. I'm assuming in the given calculation that the sun is entirely deuterium because it makes the calculation much easier. But the mass conversion rate is about the same but calculating it for straight hydrogen fusion is a bit more difficult. If we wanted to try to get a really accurate number we'd need to think hard about the proton-proton chain and CNO cycle and how they interact. And I have neither the time nor the expertise to do so. Hence, making a rough calculation to get the right order of magnitude. This is known as a back of the envelope calculation, where one makes a rough estimate of many quantities and introduces simplifying assumptions that won't introduce too much error. Physicists are quite fond of them.

NASA says, "The Sun will not be very stable at this point and will lose mass. This continues until the star finally blows its outer layers off. The core of the star, however, remains intact, and becomes a white dwarf." Does this sound like a retention of most of its mass?

You are confusing two different types of mass loss. My comment about star's losing mass was in reference to your question that "The stars aren't eventually gonna burn out? O.o What will happen to gravity when stars burn out?" That's talking about loss of mass by conversion to energy. The sort of mass loss that occurs when a star loses its outer layers at the end of its life isn't a destruction of mass. The mass is still around it just has gotten thrown off the star. The mass isn't part of the star anymore, but the total mass is the same. There won't be any impact on gravity.

Also, you didn't even respond my point, "In other words, in an eternal universe represented as a numberline, no matter what point you are on, it would seem that something consuming energy would always be burnt out due to the infinite amount of time beforehand."

There are a lot of issues here. First, energy isn't consumed it simply moves from form to another, generally a less useful form. But this isn't a great example since if you see above, I didn't even list a conventional steady state as an example of an explanation for the entropy /energy use problem. But even if one did believe in a steady state universe, it doesn't necessarily run into this problem. As I tried to explain with the example of a function that is strictly decreasing as a matter of time but always had a finite value. (That was f(x)=e^-x from earlier). So one doesn't need to worry about there being an infinite amount of time before hand. The total available energy could still always have been finite. That's weird, and not very intuitive, but completely logically consistent.

Moreover, another type of response that I briefly touched on, that is a Boltzman type argument, will also deal with this sort of problem.

SJ said...

>> There are a lot of issues here. First, energy isn't consumed it simply moves from form to another, generally a less useful form.

So after all of your smart talk, you basically said entropy happens. XD

Joshua said...

SJ, please read that in the context of everything else I wrote.

To be blunt, I think your lack of math and physics background is really showing in this discussion.

These are difficult issues that really do require some understanding of relevant math and physics. I'm a mathematician, not a physicist and so I'm painfully aware of how much this conversation is pushing on the limits of my knowledge base. But it is also very apparent to me that there's a lot of basic background material that you just don't seem to have and it is resulting in confusion over very simple issues (such as confusion of the conversion of mass to energy with the expulsion of mass, the lack of understanding a standard sort of back of the envelope, etc.)

These issues really require a fair bit of basic knowledge and a healthy understanding of basic mathematics. And there's really no way to get around that. Simply labeling that "smart talk" really doesn't help.

SJ said...

I see Joshua. Entropy does not happen, then it does happen, then it does not happen, then it does happen.


You're an atheist fundamentalist.

Joshua said...

SJ,

These are complicated issues. Taking complicated issues and dismissing them doesn't help. Nor does labeling someone else as "an atheist fundamentalist." It is particularly unhelpful to do so when the individual is trying to explain flaws in your reasoning.

Frankly, despite the strong temptation otherwise (summarized by http://xkcd.com/386/ ) I'm not going to continue this conversation. At the point where the response is solely to make ad hominem attacks it is clear that this isn't going to be a productive conversation.

SJ said...

What's complicated? XD

Entropy = dissent from order to disorder, useful energy to nonuseful energy.

Stars burning out isn't entropy? O.o

Joshua said...

SJ,

Yes, stellar fusion results in an increae of entropy in the technical sense.

But using entropy to mean an increase of disorder is simply hopeless ill-defined. This is a classic example where there's a laymen's explanation which provides a very rough analogy but it really isn't ideal.

Moreover, the discussion about stellar issues started in response to your comment about gravity. It is really a distinct issue from the entropy claim.

Joshua said...

Also, it may help for you to either take some courses in astronomy and physics or read up on them. There seem to be gaps in your knowledge base which are interfering with this conversation. There may also be related Dunning-Kruger issues.

SJ said...

I think the core of the disagreement is that you can describe something both mathematically and by English. While entropy by a mathematical definition may be only for a closed system, entropy by an English definition clearly is universal.

And Joshua, after all of your ad hominems, I think you got your butt kicked out of your overlooking of the fact that stuff can be described both mathematically and by English.

G*3 said...

> G3, it is worth listing God as a possibility

Why?

> Also argument from ignorance is, "I don't know what caused it so it must be God." That is not what I'm saying.

That's exactly what your saying, you just disguised it by listing God as an option. The only reason I can see to include God on the list of possibilities is as a stand-in for ‘I don’t know.’ You have three logical possibilities, all of which you reject (the first two kind of arbitrarily). You are then left not knowing how the universe came into being, so you choose option 4, “I don’t know / God did it.” That you put God down as an option doesn’t change that resorting to God as an explanation is an argument from ignorance.

Of course, even if you assume that God is a valid option, you still have the problem of infinite regression. God would have had to either come from nothing, which you say “is absurd on the face of it,” or He would have had to always exist, which you say, “is negated by way of entropy.”

Joshua said...

SJ,

I'm not sure where you are getting your ideas from. These are complicated issues. And telling you that you don't really have the background isn't an ad hominem argument. It is a simple statement. An ad hominem argument would be an argument of the form "Problem with you, and so your argument is wrong." That's not the observation being made. The observation is that after repeated attempts to explain to you the issues at hand and getting little responses like being told to "speak English" and statements that "So after all of your smart talk, you basically said entropy happens" So you'll have to forgive me if I concluded that those responses combined with your very basic misunderstandings of astronomy and related issues that would be cleared by an undergraduate intro astronomy course leads me to conclude that you need to learn more. Stargate may be an awesome trinity of series but it doesn't substitute for actual background in either basic math or basic astronomy.

Responding to that by calling me an "atheist fundamentalist" isn't productive. Frankly, it is a bit amusing a claim given that I'm getting up in less than 8 hours to help make a minyan for sachris.

you got your butt kicked out of your overlooking of the fact that stuff can be described both mathematically and by English.

Comments like this make me wonder how much of what I wrote you actually understood. For example, both big crunches and spin off universes handle vague notion of entropy.

Moreover, vague notions like this can exist, but they aren't terribly useful. if one is trying to discuss something like "should entropy overall tend to increase?" or "does a tendency for entropy to increase imply a finite age for the universe?" Or "Is the tendency for entropy to increase offset enough by fluctuations such that given a stead state universe it will occasionally have large enough Boltzmanish fluctuations that one will still have periods that appear highly ordered?" All of these questions, all relevant to this sort of argument, don't have meaningful answers unless one is dealing with a precise, definition of entropy. It might matter if you use Gibbs entropy or Boltzman entropy or some more general definition. But you need some definition and it needs precision. And the way to do that is math.

Let me put it this way. Have you heard of Oresme? Oresme was a very smart philosopher and mathematician in the 1300s. Among other ideas he came up with the idea of gravity (or at least he gave the first coherent extant explanation). He suggested that matter might be attracted to other matter and that the more nearby that other matter is the more it is attracted.

Now, that sounds very much like what Newton came up with. Why do we remember Newton 300 years later? Because Newton came up with a precise, mathematical formulation of gravity, the inverse square law. So Newton's version was precise, testable and applicable to practical uses.

You can talk about deep issues that involve the nature of the universe and the universe's long term behavior. You can talk about cosmology and astrophysics, and whether the universe will inevitably decay. But that handwaving isn't very useful unless you have some minimal mathematical grounding.

Joshua said...

And I really think I'm done at this point. If you are actually interested, I can recommend some relevant reading. But I don't think any further discussion is going to be productive at this point.

SJ said...

G3, let's get something straight, I am not a religious fundamentalist, my background is that of a non-halacha following agnostic and I still don't bother with halacha for reasons which is for another thread.


Frankly, accusing me of disguising argument by ignorance reeks of being more conspiratorial than anything. Argument by eliminating the impossible is NOT argument by ignorance.



Entropy as defined by energy becoming useless happens all over the universe by way of stars burning out.


And Joshua, if you want to go by argument by authority, Stephen Hawking said that there was no time before the big bang.



Lastly I would like to say that the universe is probably finite because an infinite universe to me would seem to violate the law of conservation of energy. Infinite universe seems to me to be another way of saying energy perpetually being created. How possible is that? O.o


Quite frankly Joshua, you are a sarcastic person who can't admit it when you are wrong on something.

G*3 said...

> G3, let's get something straight, I am not a religious fundamentalist, my background is that of a non-halacha following agnostic and I still don't bother with halacha for reasons which is for another thread.

And therefore… what?

I was addressing your argument. I really don’t care what your personal beliefs are, and they’re irrelevant to this discussion.

> Frankly, accusing me of disguising argument by ignorance reeks of being more conspiratorial than anything.

I’m not suggesting you did it deliberately.

> Argument by eliminating the impossible is NOT argument by ignorance.

Of course not. But if you start with three plausible options and one option which you have no reason to include, eliminating the plausible ones doesn’t lend the one that’s left any more support than it had to begin with. You’re left with, “I don’t know,” not with, “God did it.” As I said before, there is no good reason to include God as an option.

As an example, let’s suppose I find a typewritten note on my desk saying, “call me later,” with no name or number. I can reasonably assume it’s from someone with keys to my apartment, and the only people with keys are my wife, my mother, or my mother-in-law, so it must be from one of them. Or space aliens from the planet kazoo. I call my wife, mother, and mother-in-law, and each of them tells me they didn’t leave note. Does this now mean, by process of elimination, that the note was left by the space aliens from the planet kazoo? Or does it mean that I simply have no idea who left the note?

Incidentally, you didn’t address the problem of infinite regression I pointed out.

SJ said...

>> As I said before, there is no good reason to include God as an option.

This is purely your opinion not a fact.


G3 If you can't understand how the cosmological argument tackles the issue of infinite regression then you need to take an introductory college philosophy course.

G*3 said...

>> As I said before, there is no good reason to include God as an option.

>This is purely your opinion not a fact.

Granted. Now please explain why my opinion is wrong.

The cosmological argument just states that everything must have a cause; therefore the universe must have a cause; and then asserts that the cause is God. Claiming that God is the prime mover is a non-sequitur, as it does not follow from the necessity that everything has a cause that the cause must be God, and even if we accept that the cause of the universe was God, it does not address what caused God. Claiming that God doesn’t need a cause is just special pleading.

SJ said...

>> Granted. Now please explain why my opinion is wrong.

Because it's a possibility. One don't know if there really is God until the person dies.

You obviously don't understand the cosmological argument very well. A proponent of it would argue that if the supposed first cause is something other than God, then it is apart of the regression and not the first cause.

The cosmological argument is not a perfect argument and I have a thread on that, but obviosuly G3 you don't have a firm handle on it.

Larry Tanner said...

Something can come from nothing. It's perfectly consistent with know laws of physics. I can link you to one video that discusses this, but there's much more to see and learn.

http://larrytanner.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-everything-came-from-nothing-no-god.html

G*3 said...

> Because it's a possibility. One don't know if there really is God until the person dies.

Yes, it’s a possibility. In the same way that the aliens might have left me a note is a possibility. Are you really trying to argue that God should be included as a possibility because we can’t prove He doesn’t exist?

> A proponent of it would argue that if the supposed first cause is something other than God, then it is apart of the regression and not the first cause.

Sure, but that’s beside the point. It still leaves the question: what caused God?

SJ said...

Soooo Larry, both gravity and matter negate each other to make everything into something not really existing therefore everything can come from nothing? Wooooooooooooow.


G3, let's pretend that you are in law school, and the professor tells you to to explain how the cosmological argument handles the issue of infinite regression. Remember, you are in law school now so you have to explain it to show that you have a grip on it.

Something really tells me that you don't.

Brian said...

Can the universe be like a yo-yo that always existed, gravity bringing it to a point and then pressure exploding it outwards, and gravity eventually bringing it all back together again?

How does "entropy" make things "less useful"? By 1) turning the matter into energy, so eventually there is no gravity left, so there can't be an infinite yo-yo universe, or 2) will it just make matter in the universe less ordered, which doesn't affect the gravity that brings everything back together again?

SJ said...

>> turning the matter into energy, so eventually there is no gravity left, so there can't be an infinite yo-yo universe, or

I'm not sure all matter will turn into energy. Organic and radioactive matter, definitely on a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery eventual basis. It's actually dark energy that could tear the rest of the universe asunder.

If everything is less ordered what mechanism could there be to restore order?

Brian said...

The mechanism I had in mind was gravity, (if dark matter doesn't keep the universe expanding), gravity would collapse everything back to a point causing the next big bang. That's where the new order would come from, since each explosion would have the same amount of matter as the previous one. Each big bang event would have the same amount of matter to work with, so there could be an infinity of those.

SJ said...

That is a possibility but a big crunch has lost some support these days.

Brian said...

I agree that everything having always existed depends on the big crunch, which recently fell mostly out of favor. But considering how uncertain the whole field is, it seems more likely to me that everything started at one point or everything has always existed, than an outside intelligence made everything. Everything we know about intelligence depends on it having a physical base.