5 ms·

The map of ideas how the universe appeared from nothing [pdf]

33 points by hunvreus 10y ago

quickben 10y ago
This will be an everlasting topic, as being inside this system we call a universe, prevents us from looking outside of it, and thus deriving the outer rules that drives it. Universe, uni verse, one song.
- ovibos 10y ago
  This point of view is addressed in 6.3
OtterCoder 10y ago
It's an overview, but not a particularly deep or accurate one. Good on you for starting to think about the big questions, but don't be so dismissive. Serious people with serious reasons have believed every one of these. Don't discount them until you know why they were believed.
- fiatjaf 10y ago
  It seems to be the classical first-grade-teacher mentality: "look at this shit people used to believe 1000 years ago, they were so stupid!". But if and when you go there and read the work in which these old people said what they believed you got convinced -- and you barely know that you are convinced of the same points you in the past found ridiculous under the guidance of your primary teacher.
  - OtterCoder 10y ago
    This is why I'm religious.
    - spacehacker 10y ago
      This is also why I'm agnostic. Thousands of people of equal brilliance have come up with vastly different explanations for what appears to be the same thing. As a conclusion they must all be vastly overconfident.
      - OtterCoder 10y ago
        Also a legitimate stance. I don't claim to have a corner on the truth, I just find that certain beliefs seem to serve mankind better than others, and they've earned my trust through application.
      - 13of40 10y ago
        I used to call myself an agnostic, but one day about 20 years back I sat myself down and asked, all bullshit and personal feelings aside, which narrative I thought was really true - evolution/chemistry/physics or the invisible hand of spirits. Since then I call myself an atheist.
    - fiatjaf 10y ago
      Are you being sarcastic? Because I actually think that is a good reason to be religious.
      - OtterCoder 10y ago
        No, I'm not being sarcastic. I'm fairly well read, and I believe in God. I don't think I have a complete knowledge of anything, but I've read and questioned and looked, and yes, I think there's more in favor than against. I also think there are a lot of people who say more than they know, on both sides of the argument, but that's true of any subject.
  - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
    Also, understanding what went wrong with their ideas is often very illuminating. For example, the failire of the Michelson-Morley experiment is the basis for relativity and their test equipment was essential for QM! LIGO, for all its complexity, is just the Michelson-Morley experiment again, this time sensitive enough to detect waves in the ether rather than drag from our motion. Of course we've switched a lot of terminology around since then, but the idea is the same. Similarly, interferometery is integral to QM studies, and is a critical tool of modern science.
- redial 10y ago
  > Don't discount them until you know why they were believed. It seems you already discounted most of them and chose the one most comfortable to you.
  - OtterCoder 10y ago
    That's quite a leap from a few hundred characters of comments.
- azatris 10y ago
  Perhaps there should be some sort of a collaborative peer-reviewed page of all ideas like that, so we don't miss out on anything.
amriksohata 10y ago
Great scientists including Oppenheimer and Einstein drew inspiration from Hindu texts, the Vedas and Srimad Bhagvatam goes into very specific detail of how the Universe was created. They go into detail of how many Universes actually exist in the causal ocean, these are created and destroyed in an instant, but their lifetimes seem an eternity to us inside the Universe. i.e space time being curved and all that. Hindu texts went into this detail long before any other scientists "discovered it" and Aryabhatta a Hindu scientist also elaborated on this.
- WhitneyLand 10y ago
  Putting quotes around Einstein discovering spacetime is insulting and totally incorrect. Hindu cosmology is based on religion and supernatural concepts, it is not science. It's interesting that Hindu mythology included references to a multiverse and other concepts that sound similar to modern theories. It's also interesting that science fiction writers have foreshadowed future achievements, but Jules Verne is not a scientist. A lot of scientists are inspired by fiction, that doesn't mean you start putting their accomplishments in quotes.
  - catawbasam 10y ago
    Minkowski, not Einstein.
  - DougN7 10y ago
    I think you're really just saying "your belief system is totally wrong and mine is the right one." If you're Hindu (if I understood the parent), it was known as much before as it was later known by Einstein. This is something that always intrigues me. People that believe in science (me included) don't see how much faith they too have in what they are taught. And that over time and with more understanding, what they were taught also ends up being false. For example, I was taught the ultimate truth by scientists that electrons orbited an atomic nucleus. I had blind faith. Turns out we were all wrong.
    - redial 10y ago
meric 10y ago
My religious belief is based on several categories in this post - the universe is created by God's observation of it, as God's experience, and this universe exists [in comparison to God] as much as our own experience of our reflection is real. And God is the ultimate reality, and our reality is merely a reflection of Him/Her. I.e. By analogy, As a man observes himself in the mirror, a reflection is created. And since all the intelligence and conciousness on Earth is part of this reality we experience, and Earth is such a small part of this reality, being more stars in the universe than sand on Earth, this reality is very intelligent and conscious. And this only illuminates and reflects the eternal and infinite power of God, the One, the most High.
- WhitneyLand 10y ago
  If you travelled back in time to ancient Greece, what would say to people who described polytheism with great reverence and said they believe in Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades because they represent the ultimate truth?
  - OtterCoder 10y ago
    I'd say the same thing I say to atheists who are convinced we are in a simulation: "That's one way to look at it."
    - cLeEOGPw 10y ago
      Then you sound condescending and all-knowing, when the real answer is - we don't know. It may be AI, it may be fluctuations, it may be some experience based thing, they are all different and are not "ways of looking at it". Don't pretend to know more than you do.
  - catawbasam 10y ago
    Look past the labels and you will find some familiar ideas: "The life of the unmoved mover is self-contemplative thought ("νοήσεως νόησις (noeseos noesis)", i.e. "thought of thought").[1][2] According to Aristotle, the gods cannot potentially be distracted from this eternal self-contemplation because, in that instant, they would cease to exist." from Wikipedia on Aristotle's Metaphysics
based2 10y ago
typo reserch
niels_olson 10y ago
I can't connect, and the Google cache is unreadable. Can anyone repost on a mirror?
senectus1 10y ago
This really does suffer from a significant flaw... That the universe (as we're aware of it) came from "nothing". Not to mention that we "know" what "nothing" is... we have no examples of "nothing". Not sure how we could really define it properly to begin with.

33 points by hunvreus 10y ago

This will be an everlasting topic, as being inside this system we call a universe, prevents us from looking outside of it, and thus deriving the outer rules that drives it. Universe, uni verse, one song.

ovibos 10y ago
This point of view is addressed in 6.3

OtterCoder 10y ago

It's an overview, but not a particularly deep or accurate one. Good on you for starting to think about the big questions, but don't be so dismissive. Serious people with serious reasons have believed every one of these. Don't discount them until you know why they were believed.

fiatjaf 10y ago
It seems to be the classical first-grade-teacher mentality: "look at this shit people used to believe 1000 years ago, they were so stupid!". But if and when you go there and read the work in which these old people said what they believed you got convinced -- and you barely know that you are convinced of the same points you in the past found ridiculous under the guidance of your primary teacher.
- OtterCoder 10y ago
  This is why I'm religious.
  - spacehacker 10y ago
    This is also why I'm agnostic. Thousands of people of equal brilliance have come up with vastly different explanations for what appears to be the same thing. As a conclusion they must all be vastly overconfident.
    - OtterCoder 10y ago
      Also a legitimate stance. I don't claim to have a corner on the truth, I just find that certain beliefs seem to serve mankind better than others, and they've earned my trust through application.
    - 13of40 10y ago
      I used to call myself an agnostic, but one day about 20 years back I sat myself down and asked, all bullshit and personal feelings aside, which narrative I thought was really true - evolution/chemistry/physics or the invisible hand of spirits. Since then I call myself an atheist.
  - fiatjaf 10y ago
    Are you being sarcastic? Because I actually think that is a good reason to be religious.
    - OtterCoder 10y ago
      No, I'm not being sarcastic. I'm fairly well read, and I believe in God. I don't think I have a complete knowledge of anything, but I've read and questioned and looked, and yes, I think there's more in favor than against. I also think there are a lot of people who say more than they know, on both sides of the argument, but that's true of any subject.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  Also, understanding what went wrong with their ideas is often very illuminating. For example, the failire of the Michelson-Morley experiment is the basis for relativity and their test equipment was essential for QM! LIGO, for all its complexity, is just the Michelson-Morley experiment again, this time sensitive enough to detect waves in the ether rather than drag from our motion. Of course we've switched a lot of terminology around since then, but the idea is the same. Similarly, interferometery is integral to QM studies, and is a critical tool of modern science.
redial 10y ago
> Don't discount them until you know why they were believed. It seems you already discounted most of them and chose the one most comfortable to you.
- OtterCoder 10y ago
  That's quite a leap from a few hundred characters of comments.
azatris 10y ago
Perhaps there should be some sort of a collaborative peer-reviewed page of all ideas like that, so we don't miss out on anything.

amriksohata 10y ago

Great scientists including Oppenheimer and Einstein drew inspiration from Hindu texts, the Vedas and Srimad Bhagvatam goes into very specific detail of how the Universe was created. They go into detail of how many Universes actually exist in the causal ocean, these are created and destroyed in an instant, but their lifetimes seem an eternity to us inside the Universe. i.e space time being curved and all that. Hindu texts went into this detail long before any other scientists "discovered it" and Aryabhatta a Hindu scientist also elaborated on this.

WhitneyLand 10y ago
Putting quotes around Einstein discovering spacetime is insulting and totally incorrect. Hindu cosmology is based on religion and supernatural concepts, it is not science. It's interesting that Hindu mythology included references to a multiverse and other concepts that sound similar to modern theories. It's also interesting that science fiction writers have foreshadowed future achievements, but Jules Verne is not a scientist. A lot of scientists are inspired by fiction, that doesn't mean you start putting their accomplishments in quotes.
- catawbasam 10y ago
  Minkowski, not Einstein.
- DougN7 10y ago
  I think you're really just saying "your belief system is totally wrong and mine is the right one." If you're Hindu (if I understood the parent), it was known as much before as it was later known by Einstein. This is something that always intrigues me. People that believe in science (me included) don't see how much faith they too have in what they are taught. And that over time and with more understanding, what they were taught also ends up being false. For example, I was taught the ultimate truth by scientists that electrons orbited an atomic nucleus. I had blind faith. Turns out we were all wrong.
  - redial 10y ago

meric 10y ago

My religious belief is based on several categories in this post - the universe is created by God's observation of it, as God's experience, and this universe exists [in comparison to God] as much as our own experience of our reflection is real. And God is the ultimate reality, and our reality is merely a reflection of Him/Her. I.e. By analogy, As a man observes himself in the mirror, a reflection is created. And since all the intelligence and conciousness on Earth is part of this reality we experience, and Earth is such a small part of this reality, being more stars in the universe than sand on Earth, this reality is very intelligent and conscious. And this only illuminates and reflects the eternal and infinite power of God, the One, the most High.

WhitneyLand 10y ago
If you travelled back in time to ancient Greece, what would say to people who described polytheism with great reverence and said they believe in Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades because they represent the ultimate truth?
- OtterCoder 10y ago
  I'd say the same thing I say to atheists who are convinced we are in a simulation: "That's one way to look at it."
  - cLeEOGPw 10y ago
    Then you sound condescending and all-knowing, when the real answer is - we don't know. It may be AI, it may be fluctuations, it may be some experience based thing, they are all different and are not "ways of looking at it". Don't pretend to know more than you do.
- catawbasam 10y ago
  Look past the labels and you will find some familiar ideas: "The life of the unmoved mover is self-contemplative thought ("νοήσεως νόησις (noeseos noesis)", i.e. "thought of thought").[1][2] According to Aristotle, the gods cannot potentially be distracted from this eternal self-contemplation because, in that instant, they would cease to exist." from Wikipedia on Aristotle's Metaphysics

based2 10y ago

typo reserch

niels_olson 10y ago

I can't connect, and the Google cache is unreadable. Can anyone repost on a mirror?

senectus1 10y ago

This really does suffer from a significant flaw... That the universe (as we're aware of it) came from "nothing". Not to mention that we "know" what "nothing" is... we have no examples of "nothing". Not sure how we could really define it properly to begin with.