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[Atreyu]

I'm not particularly up to date on my science, but is the going theory that the universe is infinite? If so, how could infinity come from one singular point? If everything came outwards from the Big Bang, it would suggest that the singularity was at the centre of the universe. But can there be a centre to an infinite space? Can there even be infinity if its manifestation has a probable origin?

I see no problem with that idea. I can imagine a center to an infinite space if that space grew from that point equally, like a growing sphere coming from a point.

Even with an origin, 'infinity' is a valid concept if it grows without end. It's infinite in time, if not in the present. If something finite is growing to infinity, we can say that it is infinite if we consider it outside of the present temporal moment.

If the universe is expanding equally everywhere, does it mean there are an infinite amount of centres? Isn't expansion an outward movement relative to a certain point? I am unable to visualize this idea, if it is expanding everywhere equally would not the objects in the universe be moving in different directions, appearing chaotic due to their exposure to the other infinite points of expansion?

Yes, I think that is quite right. I really don't know what Leo is talking about as bb theory clearly says everything began at a theoretical point. If not, as you said, we would see many more collisions of galaxies.

And I would also like to say that I agree that the balloon analogy is a very good one. But strangely enough, no one here as yet elucidated one of its most important parts, and that is that the dots themselves will also grow, eventually breaking into many, as the space between them also grows. This analogy implies that as the galaxies move away from each other they are also growing and becoming multiple galaxies. And it also implies that as we go back in time, moving the galaxies together, that they will eventually become single stars. Taking this to its extreme we have zero mass and zero matter (as we know it) once we reach the theoretical beginning point. So no big bang is needed, because by the time we get back to the 'beginning' we have 'nothing' (not absolutely, of course, but 'nothing' as we oridinarily know and define it in physics).

-- Updated July 23rd, 2014, 3:06 am to add the following --

This the myth I'm trying to dispel and I have the two greatest physics thinkers of the 20th century in my corner. Einstein and Wheeler were both convinced that simplicity is truth. Einstein famously said that if you can't explain your model simply it means you don't understand it well enough and it should therefore be possible to explain the universe to a barmaid. Wheeler said on many occasions that when we finally get to the truth the universe will reveal itself to be an entity of sublime austerity. Speaking solely for myself, I've been convinced of this since my childhood. Ever since I sacked god, in fact.

That's very interesting to me, because 'sacking god', or rather, dispensing with Consciousness as a fundamental primordial aspect of the Universe makes it all much more complex. Going from phenomena of a 'higher' order to a 'lower' order is much more coherent and simple than going from phenomena of a 'lower' order to a 'higher' one.

Going from Consciousness to life to mechanics is infinitely more simple and coherent for me than going from mere mechanics to life to Consciousness. By a long shot. The latter implies abiogenesis, a seemingly apparent falsity, and also implies consciousness arising somehow solely via mechanical forces. If either of these were true, why do we not ever see the former (abiogenesis), to the point that it was historically considered a law?And why cannot the latter (consciousness arising from mechanicalness) be demonstrated?

The reason why beginning with Consciousness is more simple is because it can be assumed that the process could not be known, and rightfully so. Beginning with only mechanical forces necessitates a very complex explanation which, if sound, we should easily be able to demonstrate. And we cannot demonstrate either that or abiogenesis which, in addition to their apparent complexity and sophistry, seem unsatisfactory due to their lack of any real world applications.

[Obvious Leo]

bb theory clearly says everything began at a theoretical point.

No it doesn't. It specifically says the opposite.

the dots themselves will also grow, eventually breaking into many, as the space between them also grows.

This is false because the galaxies are gravitationally bound.

And it also implies that as we go back in time,

Although the equations of physics are time invariant absolutely nobody accepts that going back in time is a valid construct. Time is universally accepted as being uni-directional.

I really don't know what Leo is talking about

Clearly.

Going from phenomena of a 'higher' order to a 'lower' order is much more coherent and simple than going from phenomena of a 'lower' order to a 'higher' one.

In non-linear dynamic systems the opposite is the case and the evolution of life is the most obvious example. It started with a simple self-replicating molecule and here we are chatting about it. Non-linear dynamic systems are self-organising, which means they become more complex. This process is described by a mathematical system called chaos theory.

The latter implies abiogenesis,

The alternative implies teleology which quite frankly makes me puke. That life emerged from non-life is unanimously accepted in biology and if you wish to argue otherwise the burden of proof lies with you. But don't do it here because the big bang is about physics and physics is not supposed to be a belief system.

And why cannot the latter (consciousness arising from mechanicalness) be demonstrated?

Are you not made of atoms and molecules like the rest of us. You are the living proof that consciousness is a mechanical process and neuroscience knows much about how it works. Dualism has no place in a scientific conversation.

You don't seem to know much about physics, Atreyu, and your logic could use some work.

Regards Leo

-- Updated July 23rd, 2014, 6:56 pm to add the following --

Atreyu. On the subject of abiogensis, which seems to be a particular sticking point for you for some reason, I'll give you the facts. Life cannot have existed in the universe until it was at least 7 billion years old, and perhaps not until it was 9 billion years old. If the latter figure is correct then life began on earth almost as soon as it possibly could have. The reason for this is that the complex molecules necessary for life simply didn't exist. They didn't exist because the very atoms that make up these molecules didn't exist. We are stardust and these complex atoms can only form after at least 3 generations of stellar evolution. If you want to argue for the invisible hand of supernatural forces then please don't do it here and bugger up this thread.

Regards Leo

[Atreyu]

No it doesn't. It specifically says the opposite.

I admit I'm not an expert in the theory but that is certainly how most people imagine it. Even to the point that in the sitcom 'Big Bang Theory' their intro says '.... and everything was in a hot dense state'. I'm not sure if you'd like to elaborate on the theory, but most people indeed view it that way and that is always how I understood it.

This is false because the galaxies are gravitationally bound.

I believe you're assuming galaxies merely 'expanding', as science imagines the Universe as a whole. But that's not what I mean at all. I mean they're growing in terms of total matter and mass. New stars over time. New matter being created in the cores of large bodies via pair production. This is a new idea you may not be familiar with. So gravity has nothing to do with it.

Although the equations of physics are time invariant absolutely nobody accepts that going back in time is a valid construct. Time is universally accepted as being uni-directional.

I clearly remember being taught that bb theory began by scientists extrapolating back in time, moving everything closer together. As far as I know this was the original impetus behind the idea. It doesn't matter how we cognize time, forward or backward. Lots of theories and ideas are based by extrapolating back in time. It's even a basic tenet of cause and effect. Like following footprints to see from whence one came. And actually time is most generally accepted as being the peculiar way we cognize and perceive the higher dimensions of space, hence the term space-time. It is not universally accepted that our cognition of chronological time has any real basis in the world. At any rate, I'm pretty certain that 'going back in time' was how bb theory originally developed. I think this is generally accepted and known.

In non-linear dynamic systems the opposite is the case and the evolution of life is the most obvious example. It started with a simple self-replicating molecule and here we are chatting about it. Non-linear dynamic systems are self-organising, which means they become more complex. This process is described by a mathematical system called chaos theory.

The evolution of life is a theory and it really sheds no light on the origin of life. It merely explains the processes of how it changes over time. You have nothing substantive to back up the idea that life somehow sprang from non-life. Neither does anyone else. Those who oppose this idea do. We never see life coming from non-life in nature. Ever. We don't see cells springing up from dirt. In fact, the idea that 'life only comes from life' was taught to me in biology years ago as a 'fundamental principle' of biology and the famous 'fly in the soup' experiment by Louis Pasteur was cited as proof of this. Abiogenesis is merely being 'accepted' by many people like yourself because you have no adequate explanation for how the first cells on Earth originated. The idea of 'migration' is more valid at face value and does not necessitate needing to violate a seemingly obvious principle -- all life as we know it apparently comes from other life via reproduction. That's all we see in nature, and there's no reason to violate this principle just because you can't explain the origin of life on Earth.

The alternative implies teleology which quite frankly makes me puke. That life emerged from non-life is unanimously accepted in biology and if you wish to argue otherwise the burden of proof lies with you. But don't do it here because the big bang is about physics and physics is not supposed to be a belief system.

The idea that life has a cosmic function doesn't make all of us puke. Just people who are attached to religion and fiercely oppose it. Funny that someone who is arguing against mainstream theoretical physics would appeal to an 'accepted' view and then try to say the burden of proof lies with me. Really? You say abiogenesis is true in spite of no proof whatsoever in nature, in spite of all the facts, and then say that I am the one who must defend my position? No, the burden of proof is on you because you are the one making an assertion which is apparently false, not I. It's accepted simply because biologists haven't considered migration as an explanation for the first life on Earth. It came from other life, as it always does, but that source of life is unknown because it wasn't on the Earth. Life began elsewhere and then migrated here. That explanation at face value is just as valid and does not necessitate taking a position (abiogenesis) which violates everything we see in the real world in which we live.

Are you not made of atoms and molecules like the rest of us. You are the living proof that consciousness is a mechanical process and neuroscience knows much about how it works. Dualism has no place in a scientific conversation. You don't seem to know much about physics, Atreyu, and your logic could use some work.

Actually, it's your logic that could use some work because the phenomenon of consciousness and mechanicalness are inherently different. The constituent parts of our physical bodies mean nothing here. Neither can physiology, neuroscience included, shed any light on it. A mechanical phenomenon just 'happens', based on their interactions with each other. No one 'does' it. It just 'happens' based on the laws of physics. Consciousness is completely and inherently different. There, a conscious entity 'does' it. It chooses to make it happen. This is a completely different order of phenomenon and physics, mechanics, and physiology can in no way ascertain which is which. This is a question of psychology, not physics or physiology. You can only know consciousness in yourself.

The idea is very simple and obvious to those of us who understand the crucial and inherent difference between these two phenomena. Conscious entities can build machines. Design them. Even build machines which can build other machines. But no machines, especially without any design or plan, have ever, or could ever, churn out any conscious entities. Just trying to imagine this shows it utter absurdity. Consciousness is something that cannot just 'happen' by definition. If it merely 'happens', this implies mechanicalness. If it was 'done', this implies a conscious entity or entities were involved.

Please explain to me how 'dead matter' just 'happens' to become an entity which can choose and decide its actions? Just explain even how mere awareness can arise from 'dead matter' where formerly it wasn't present at all. Consciousness by definition cannot solely be a mechanical process and therefore cannot be explained within its parameters. And if you were right, again, science could demonstrate this by creating a machine which not only could churn out living organisms but also conscious ones.

The problem is not logic, yours or mine. We both have it. The problem is that you don't understand psychology. You're trying to reduce consciousness and life to mere mechanical phenomena because that's all you know and deal with, like most 'scientific-types'. Trying to reduce psychology to physiology, again, because that's all you know about and deal with. But they're not the same, and modern psychology is largely a fabricated affair.

-- Updated July 23rd, 2014, 6:56 pm to add the following --

On the subject of abiogensis, which seems to be a particular sticking point for you for some reason, I'll give you the facts. Life cannot have existed in the universe until it was at least 7 billion years old, and perhaps not until it was 9 billion years old. If the latter figure is correct then life began on earth almost as soon as it possibly could have. The reason for this is that the complex molecules necessary for life simply didn't exist. They didn't exist because the very atoms that make up these molecules didn't exist. We are stardust and these complex atoms can only form after at least 3 generations of stellar evolution. If you want to argue for the invisible hand of supernatural forces then please don't do it here and bugger up this thread.

That is simply false and arbitrary. Only life as you know it could not have existed until such complex molecules came into existence. Not life as a general principle, and that is exactly what I'm talking about. You are assuming that the only life in the Universe is life as we know it. So called 'carbon-based' life. And that is quite an assumption.

And yes, abiogenesis is indeed a 'sticking point' for me because I find the idea utterly absurd at face value. I'm sticking with the evidence, the facts, you guys are not. Too bad you guys have to believe in such a ludicrous proposition which contradicts all we see in nature just because your minds are not imaginative enough to consider possibilities for the origin of life which do not violate the law that life only comes from other life, such as 'migration', which I briefly delineated above.

First try to form a cosmological model that fits the obvious facts, rather than trying to make the 'facts' fit into a model that is appealing to you for personal reasons. You should exhaust all other possibilities in your explanations before you resort to questioning a known and established law. Therefore, the explanation of 'migration' for the origin of life on Earth should be considered before one considers abstractions like 'abiogenesis' which have no facts whatsoever to back them up.

[Obvious Leo]

I have no interest in your pseudo-science and thus have no opinion to offer on a single word of your post. However I have a word of advice for you, courtesy of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent"

Regards Leo

[reflected_light]

Okay Leo of been thinking about your universe and the molecular relay race that you have based it on. First it's the questions about the baton, the baton being the information passed from one now moment to the next. I'm guessing the baton grows in size, for the lack of a better word. Does the information that is the baton exist at any time else other then the present now moment? Does the baton ever become too heavy or too large to further pass on. What if the baton is dropped?

Another force at play would be the race itself in this case I believe it is the expansion of the universe or space time. There is no race without movement so what initiated this movement and as it infinite entropy would say no. So what happens when the race is over and the present now moment is left holding the baton with no one to relay it to?

[Obvious Leo]

I'm afraid I don't understand your question at all and your metaphorical imagery escapes me completely. Information self-organises into structures and structures evolve over time into more complex structures. This is what the history of the universe shows and this is the basic principle of all non-linear dynamic systems, thus this applies both within the universe and also to the universe as a whole. The information/energy content of the universe is finite and thus there can be no such state as a state of infinite complexity, only maximum complexity. Incidentally there's no such thing as infinite entropy either, or infinite anything for that matter because an infinite entity cannot be contained within a finite one. The only infinite construct that makes any sense is infinite time and in fact in the absence of a creator time cannot be other than infinite. The first law of thermodynamics ensures that this is so.

If you'd like to try phrasing your question more precisely I might be able to figure out what you're asking and answer it for you.

Regards Leo

[reflected_light]

You proposed that there is only now and the "knowledge" of past and future nows. All the information from Now is passed onto the next Now along with all new information that the previous Now acquired. This information, in my analogy, is the baton. The baton is being passed from the current Now to the next, on and on.

In order for the information to be passed along there must be forward movement, in this case temporal, which in my analogy would be the runner, and with each new 'lap' the baton would be passed on to another runner, though I guess it would be the same runner but slightly older.

So, I asked, does the information that resides in the "baton" exist only in the now, or is all past information viewable? When a telescope looks into deep space, do you believe it's looking back in time at past information?

If this still doesn't make sense than scrap it.

Is your hypothesis reversible? Would it work if time was moving backwards?

I might need 40 years to wrap my head around this..


If the balloon analogy works, what was happening before the balloon was being blown into?

And isn't time itself 2 dimensional using the balloon analogy? One axis being the "outward" movement of the balloon and the other being the distance light travels between the dots on the surface of the balloon and the respective time it takes to do so.

[Obvious Leo]

reflected_light. Now I get it. Thanks for the clarification.

You proposed that there is only now and the "knowledge" of past and future nows.

I'm tackling this question from a new perspective first and then I'll look at it more generally. I'm glad you put the word "knowledge" in the inverted commas. Our knowledge of past events is of course our memories, and memories in the human brain are not filed in the way that memories our filed in our computers. Computer memories are always faithfully reproduced but human memories are a brand new re-construction every time we remember them, which means our memories could easily be false and very often are. Essentially we're making up the story all over again because the real past no longer exists. Our knowledge of the future is best regarded as an analytical process whereby we assess and weigh an infinite index of future possibilities, some of which will be realised but most of which will not. Since the future does not yet exist there's obviously a significant error margin in this analytical process because only a tiny fraction of the possible variables are accessible to our analysis. It's better than a guess but not by much. This is the central plank of chaos theory where the unpredictability of a non-linear system is a function of its complexity. Chaos is entirely deterministic, a point which a lot of people don't seem to understand, but complex systems contain so many inter-related variables that the final outcome of any complex process is literally impossible to predict. This applies most essentially to the universe as a whole but it's well worth thinking about this in the language of our own cognitive experiences. The future will be whatever it will be because it hasn't been made yet and we can't possibly know everything about what will cause it to become the way it will become. I hope this strikes you as bloody obvious because it has profound consequences on the cosmic scale. It specifies the Turing Machine.

So, I asked, does the information that resides in the "baton" exist only in the now, or is all past information viewable? When a telescope looks into deep space, do you believe it's looking back in time at past information?

Three very good questions which tell me that you've been giving this some very serious thought. The answer is yes to all three. The information exists only in the moment Now but this goes to the very heart of the observer problem. Your moment Now is a different moment Now from mine because each moment Now exists only in its own referential frame. This applies all the way down to the sub-atomic level and below but it's fine to just think of this at the macro level for the purposes of this explanation. You exist solely in your own temporal referential frame, as do I, but on the cosmic scale our temporal referential frames are very closely co-located. If we stand side by side and observe something we will both observe almost exactly the same thing. I say almost because this is only approximately so, and this has nothing to do with how we interpret our observation, which is an entirely different matter. For my purpose here we'll falsely assume that we interpret our observations identically. However, even if we're standing side by side, we are literally seeing something slightly different, which is exactly the same conclusion we can draw from Special Relativity. However this doesn't mean that there's no such thing as an objective reality because what we observe quite literally no longer exists in the form that we're observing it. The object of our observation has changed because changes in physical entities take place at the speed of light, as the Standard Model of Particle Physics tells us. We each observe our own subjective version of this objective reality, simply because of this unique temporal referential frame. Your past is your past and my past is mine.

This minuscule effect in everyday observation is negligible because the speed of light is so bloody fast, so in every practical sense if you and I are standing side by side we will each subjectively observe the same objective reality. But we must never allow ourselves to forget that this is not quite true and as we move further and further apart from each other this becomes incrementally less true. The objective reality is unaffected, but the relationship between our unique temporal referential frames and the objective reality under observation is affected. Once again this is entirely in accord with SR, but SR reaches the same conclusion spatially because it treats time as a Cartesian spatial dimension. My contention is that this is cockheaded and unnecessary and Occam economy insists that that which is unnecessary cannot be. Simplicity is truth.

On the cosmological scale our different temporal perspectives only become significant over cosmological "distances" and this is entirely relative, depending on how far away the entity is that we choose to observe. If we want to observe our moon from the earth , for instance, it won't make much difference whereabouts on earth we put our telescope. If we want to observe Mars it'll make even less difference. But if we want to observe our moon from Mars it'll make a hell of a difference. Light takes a significant interval of time to travel from our moon to Mars and and there is a small but non-trivial possibility that the moon we observe from Mars has actually been blasted to smithereens by a catastrophic asteroidal collision. The information from this event simply hasn't reached us yet but the objective reality is unaffected. Clearly the same applies here on earth but we can meaningfully say that our information about the moon is more true if we observe it from the earth than it is if we observe it from Mars. Once again I hope this strikes you as bloody obvious. This is entirely due to the relative temporal "distances" between the three bodies we're talking about. The moon lies further in the past of Mars than it lies in the past of the earth.

I hope this makes sense but if it doesn't please press me further. It's a simple enough concept which has now formed such an integral part of my world-view that I sometimes forget that what seems bloody obvious to me may not be so to others. The further away we focus our telescope the less true the information is about what we're observing. I can focus on a distant quasar and learn all sorts of things about what quasars do and how they behave but I need to exercise some caution with the tenses of my verbs. All the quasars are billions of "light-years" away from me so what I'm learning is actually what quasars used to do and how quasars used to behave. There are no quasars in a universe that's 13.8 billion years old. They've evolved into different structures about which I can know nothing with any meaningful degree of certainty. The entire cosmos is continuously evolving , because evolution towards informational complexity is the fundamental self-organising principle of our cosmos. In a nutshell that's what non-linear dynamics is all about if we look at it on a cosmic scale. Which we must if we want to fully understand it.

Is your hypothesis reversible? Would it work if time was moving backwards?

Strictly speaking what I'm proposing is not a hypothesis but rather an alternative explanatory paradigm. I question none of the findings of physics and I'd be a bloody idiot to so so because I'm not a physicist. What I call into question is their explanation for their findings and even the the most hard-nosed and fundamentalist physicist will agree that their models are predictive models only with no explanatory authority.

The notion of reversible time is actually a non-sequitur because I equate time with causation. At the fundamental level all events are preceded by causes and this applies all the way up the hierarchical network. To suggest that an effect could precede its cause is nonsensical by definition.

Regards Leo

-- Updated July 24th, 2014, 12:32 pm to add the following --

I assume that the balloon analogy question wasn't directed at me because I made it clear that I don't use this analogy.

-- Updated July 24th, 2014, 12:37 pm to add the following --

To be honest I don't reckon the balloon analogy is much use in any cosmological model because it ignores gravity and a universe without gravity is like a beer without a glass to put it in. Useless.

[reflected_light]

Leo, I am beginning to grasp the fundamental ideas of your universe, and much of it seems quite logical.

What if you have an absolutely dark room, a person at one end and another person in the opposite end . There is , lets say, a chair, slightly closer to one person. While it is dark is neither persons observation truer than the others? When the light is turned on, the person closer to the chair makes the more accurate observation. If the light is turned back off, does the closer persons memory of the chair make his observation more accurate, even in the absence of light?

I understand that observation in the absence of light is impossible, but a mental realization, (using the recent memory of the observed chair) that the chair is indeed closer and therefore more accurately 'perceived'.

Though, If the lights came back on again , and the chair was gone, that would prove that an assumption is not anything like an observation , though an assumption may prove to be true it cannot be verified without observation. Stating the obvious. I may have answered my own question...

[Obvious Leo]

I think you more or less did answer your own questions, mate. We all make assumptions about our observations every minute of our lives and in our everyday world they are usually very reasonable ones. But you're quite right. In general the more closely the observer and his observation are co-located the more accurate his assumption will be. But not always.

I've got a very intriguing thought experiment for you which shows you how the holographic universe of the observer works. We actually observe our world backwards and to show this I need a truly absurd and contrived scenario, but not a very complicated one.

The first thing we need to do is slow down the speed of light because 300 million m/sec is simply too fast for us to get our heads around. I'm going to slow it down to 1m/sec which is a sensible speed which I can visualise. You and I have managed to get tickets to the football and we head off together to watch the game. Unfortunately we were unable to get seats together so we decide to just watch the game anyway and meet up again in the pub afterwards. As it turns out your seat is in the very front row of the stadium and mine is in the very back row and this is a very big stadium because it's 20km in diameter. This means I'm watching the game from 10,000m further away than you are ( I have very good eyesight ) and this has some very odd consequences. First of all I have to wait three hours for the game to start even though we arrived just in time for the coin toss. In fact by the time I see them toss the coin the game is actually over. It gets worse. Let's assume that everybody in the stadium gets up and leaves as soon as they see that the game is over. This means that you'll leave the ground three hours before me and get a solid head start on me in the pub. And yet it still gets worse. We can imagine all the spectators leaving the ground row by row as they see the game conclude and you'll be one of the first blokes in the pub. The stadium empties row by row from the inside out but this is the exact opposite of what I observe. I see the stadium emptying from the outside in and see you as being one of the last to leave, but I still need to hang around till the end of the game with all the other back row spectators. In my temporal referential frame the players are the last to leave the ground but we all know that they're actually the first. I'm watching the world happening backwards and by the time I get to the pub I discover that you got so drunk waiting for me that the barman chucked you out.

Yes indeed my friend, observer problems are tricky things and we must be cautious with our assumptions. Things are not always as they seem and what I've described here is exactly how holograms work. Needless to say exactly the same thing happens if light travels at its normal speed but because its normal speed is so insanely fast the effect of this is negligible. Negligible in our everyday world, that is, but far from negligible on a cosmological scale.

Regards Leo

P.S. You can't cheat and ring me on my mobile phone after the final siren to tell me the score of the game because it'll take days for your call to reach me. By the time your call is routed through the phone tower the stadium might have burnt to the ground and I've been back at work all week.

[reflected_light]

You forgot the part where you get to your seat, and it takes your buddy another sixty years to walk to his.

Unless you propose that the speed of light could decrease while temporal movement does not. But does one not coincide with the other, the speed of light and the speed of time? Aren't they actually one and the same?

[Obvious Leo]

You're absolutely right and I'm delighted because this means you understand where I'm coming from. If the speed of light slows down then everything slows down, just like in a black hole. No doubt there are black holes where the speed of light is in fact 1m/sec but this is woolly thinking because there's no such thing as universal time. This 1m/sec is only true if we measure the lightspeed in our seconds, but if we measure lightspeed in the black hole's own referential frame it will be 300 million m/sec. The speed of light is observed to be a constant only in its own referential which means it's the antithesis of a constant in the real universe, where the referential frame is variable all the way down to the quantum level because of gravity. This is quantum gravity.

I said my thought experiment was absurd and hopelessly contrived because I adjusted some parameters without adjusting all of them. Physics does this all the time, especially in QM, so I plead mitigating circumstances. By contriving my experiment in this way I enormously exaggerated the effect I was attempting to demonstrate but the effect is real nevertheless. We do observe reality backwards but it doesn't matter in the slightest. I'll explain what I mean.

I'll stick to the rules of both physics and logic this time but I still need an impossible scenario. We imagine the big bang as an explosion from a point and this is completely wrong but it'll do for the moment. It actually emerges from a point rather than explodes but that's really here nor there. I need Superman for this experiment and I use Superman a lot in my essays. Superman has infinitely super vision and can see all possible wavelengths of electro-magnetic radiation. This gives him greater powers than all the tools of physics can imagine but it means he can see beyond the cosmic microwave background which marks the dawn of light in our universe. This occurred some 380,000 years after the big bang and it is as far back in time as human technology can reach. Prior to this time the universe was simply too hot for us to observe it but Superman is not constrained by this. He can see all the way back to the big bang itself. Will he see the universe exploding from a point, or even emerging from a point, as I dare to claim? Not a chance. What Superman will see is the universe sucking itself back in to a point, the exact temporal opposite of what actually happened. Whichever way we decide to define the big bang the observer can only see it happening backwards because the observer observes a hologram. QED.

Regards Leo

-- Updated July 25th, 2014, 9:55 am to add the following --

A lot of the woolly thinking in physics results from us thinking of the universe as a place. This is completely wrong-headed because the universe is an event. If we look through a telescope at a distant galaxy we can think "Aha, this galaxy is a place in space" and this is easy to imagine. However if we think of the big bang we don't think this way. We think of the big bang as an event and events occur in time. We can even date the time of the occurrence of this event with considerable accuracy. Well we can't have it both ways. The galaxy we observe must also be an event. Either the universe is a sequence of events which occur in time or it's a collection of objects which move in space. It can't be both and we can't just shift the ontological goalposts to conform to our conceptual convenience. Space and time are mutually exclusive.

Regards Leo

[Teralek]

Wow Leo! You obviously do some studying! Seriously! You say you do essays. What are you studying?

I just have a question/remark

We don't know if this space/time continuum is infinite. If it is not infinite then I think you are 100% correct. If it is infinite then to talk about a "point" is misleading. From moment ONE the Universe was already infinite with infinite mass. Immediately started to expand in it's infinity creating "empty space" between it's infinite matter/energy content. Either way, infinite or not The Universe started everywhere because space time came along with it as you very well said.

Can you please explain better why the fact that the observer sees an hologram makes him watch events backwards? How do you decide "backwards" and "forwards"?

Edit:

Space and time are mutually exclusive.

Wait what?!?! are you forgetting Einstein?!

[Obvious Leo]

The physics layman is perfectly justified in asking such questions as "expanding into what?" or "what do you mean there's no center?" or "how does empty space expand?" or "what do you mean a particle can be in two places at once?" or "how can light bend?" etc. These are legitimate questions and the layman is entitled to answers he can understand. Physics cannot provide these answers because physics thinks in the language of mathematics. Mathematics is the perfect language to describe the universe, and it is the perfect language to make predictions about its behaviour, but it is completely the wrong language to explain the universe. We can't think the world in the language of mathematics. For this we need logic and reason, otherwise known as common sense.

Regards Leo

-- Updated July 25th, 2014, 10:42 am to add the following --

What are you studying?

I'm an ambitious bloke and presume to study the nature of physical reality. I've been doing this for over forty years and I've been writing for even longer. Needless to say it's a pretty big subject so it's fair to say that I study everything, with the possible exception of popular culture, which I find shallow and boring.

We don't know if this space/time continuum is infinite.

it isn't infinite because the spacetime continuum is non-existent. There's no such thing. It is a mathematical description of the universe, not an ontological explanation for it.

From moment ONE the Universe was already infinite with infinite mass

Sorry. An infinite universe makes no sense and in any event contradicts the evidence. I can prove this quite easily, albeit not briefly, so I won't attempt to do so here.

How do you decide "backwards" and "forwards"?

Too easy. Forwards is when effects are preceded by their causes. Backwards is the temporally reversed image. This is what the models of physics are modelling.

Wait what?!?! are you forgetting Einstein?!

Not at all. You're late to the conversation so you've missed a fair bit. I'm agreeing with Einstein completely and Einstein is one of my greatest heroes in science. He said from the outset that spacetime should NEVER be regarded as physically real but only as a model of the physically real. He stressed this throughout his life and I simply took him at his word. Niels Bohr said almost exactly the same thing, as did John Wheeler. I'm not a physicist so who am I to argue?

Regards Leo

-- Updated July 25th, 2014, 10:51 am to add the following --

An infinite universe makes no sense and in any event contradicts the evidence.

I better qualify this because it's poorly phrased. The universe cannot be infinite in the sense that it cannot contain an infinite quantity of mass/energy. In this paradigm it is in fact temporally infinite in the sense that it is eternal. The less about spatial infinity the better.

Regards Leo

[Felix]

Obvious Leo said: "On the subject of abiogensis, I'll give you the facts. Life cannot have existed in the universe until it was at least 7 billion years old, and perhaps not until it was 9 billion years old. If the latter figure is correct then life began on earth almost as soon as it possibly could have. The reason for this is that the complex molecules necessary for life simply didn't exist. They didn't exist because the very atoms that make up these molecules didn't exist. We are stardust and these complex atoms can only form after at least 3 generations of stellar evolution. If you want to argue for the invisible hand of supernatural forces then please don't do it here and bugger up this thread."

First off, we're not sure about the numbers (age of the Universe), but this information doesn't imply abiogenesis, panspermia perhaps but that is just an evasion of the question of when/how life began. I'm not aware of any credible evidence to support the abiogenesis hypothesis.