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Author | Topic: Big Bang Found | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NoNukes Inactive Member
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As long as I've been participating in this discussion you've had a physicist commenting. A physicist who believes that the surfaces of pillows can attain infinite rates of acceleration? I think I can be forgiven for not recognizing your expertise. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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kbertsche Member (Idle past 2385 days) Posts: 1427 From: San Jose, CA, USA Joined: |
NoNukes writes:
If you would actually try to understand the topics discussed and to carry on a real conversation, this interchange would be much more productive. But unfortunately, you seem to be only interested in winning arguments by mischaracterizing and belittling those you disagree with. Like the YECs, you can't attack the content, so you attack the person. A physicist who believes that the surfaces of pillows can attain infinite rates of acceleration? I think I can be forgiven for not recognizing your expertise. Edited by kbertsche, : No reason given."Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Like the YECs, you can't attack the content, so you attack the person. So you still maintain there is some way for a ball to cause a depression in a cushion in zero time that I ought to 'understand' better? Then why did you not address any of the arguments that such a thing was not the case. If you thought that my post was disrespectful, you could have addressed Paul. No, attacking the person is not a substitute for understanding addressing the content. I agree with that. However, any honest person reviewing the discussion to date can see that I have addressed your arguments with substance, on point argument at and even some citing of references. It is your own responses that lack an element of rigor. And let's not pretend that your own posts have been insult free. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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frako Member Posts: 2932 From: slovenija Joined: |
No, I specifically mentioned the Casimir effect as caused by external influences. It is caused by the quantization of the wave function and the fact that an external apparatus has been set up to provide boundary conditions which eliminate many of the potential modes. (Your video explains how the plates do this). Without such external influences to set boundary conditions the effect won't exist. It dosent matter it shows us that there are so called virtual particles that pop in and out of existence. The vacuum, the plates all that do sent matter its just a way to detect them. virtual particles don't need a vacuum don't need a plate to be "caused" in to existence. Its just easier to detect them that way. Christianity, One woman's lie about an affair that got seriously out of hand What are the Christians gonna do to me ..... Forgive me, good luck with that.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1698 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Like the YECs, you can't attack the content, so you attack the person. But aren't you doing the same thing that you describe here, not offering an argument, just belittling us YECs as a group? ABE: Rewritten to remove irritated tone. And thank you for your apology. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Dogmafood Member Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
Unstable nuclei do not age, and yet at some point they emit a nuclei, and at times prior they don't. We can predict statistically when a bunch of them will decay. But no examination of the state tells us that nuclei X is on its death bed. Wouldn't the fact that different materials have different half lives indicate that there is in fact some mechanism at work?
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Son Goku Inactive Member |
Okay I see your point now. I still think it can be useful to point out. A lot of these ideas about the universe's origins in theistic accounts are defended by standard ideas about cause and effect. Quantum Mechanics shows that those intuitive ideas, upon which a lot of Western philosophical thought on the issue is based, are not fundamentally correct. Even if the quantum mechanical ideas aren't directly related to "creation" itself.
One thing:
As far as I am aware we only have an excessively idealised and over-simplified QCD description of alpha emission, so this is not exactly surprising.
Even in the Quantum Chromodynamical picture the actual emission itself would be uncaused though, right? Even if we didn't simplify the QCD description of the complex internal state of the nucleus, the alpha particle and the surrounding field states, (which we simplify to two quantum balls with a potential between them), we wouldn't find the emission itself being caused. I don't think a full QCD calculation would reveal it to be caused and the lack of causation being simply an unsurprising feature of a simplified model.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Wouldn't the fact that different materials have different half lives indicate that there is in fact some mechanism at work? I don't think so, but I am not completely sure what your argument is. Could you expand on your thinking? As I see it, there is an energy hurdle that must be overcome or tunneled through to escape, and surely that hurdle is different for different nuclei. That is enough distinction to explain the difference in rates. But unless nuclei age in some way, there is no reason why an old nuclei would be more likely to emit a radioactive now particle than would a young one. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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kbertsche Member (Idle past 2385 days) Posts: 1427 From: San Jose, CA, USA Joined: |
Faith writes:
Sorry for the broad brush. You have certainly been much more civil and cordial in your exchanges with me than has NoNukes. I've tried to explain repeatedly that nuclear decay DOES have a cause, but he (and others here) have fought this in every way possible. Will they pay more attention to cavediver?
How interesting that you yourself, Mr. Physicist, have descended to this very tactic you describe in this sentence. No argument against us YECs so you belittle us as a group.cavediver writes:
Or will they continue to think that they understand physics better than we do? We'll see. "This is why claiming that nuclear decay is "uncaused" and therefore we have an example of how the Universe can come into being "uncaused" is completely bogus. (FYI, I have plenty of arguments against YEC, both biblical and scientific, but this is not the thread for such things.) Edited by kbertsche, : No reason given."Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger
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Son Goku Inactive Member
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Well, let's make it simpler. The timing of nuclear decay is uncaused.
Although in truth I would still say the decay itself is uncaused, quantum mechanics simply states that the alpha particle's wavefunction spreads out of the atomic nucleus. However it still has a probability for being located inside the nucleus and a probability for being located outside the nucleus. However that is all. Either one of the probabilities can occur, being outside (decay) or inside (not decaying). Which one occurs is uncaused. What is "caused" is the shape of the wavefunction itself, the distribution of the probabilities. However that isn't a cause of the decay, just a "cause" of its likelihood.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
I've tried to explain repeatedly that nuclear decay DOES have a cause, but he (and others here) have fought this in every way possible. Will they pay more attention to cavediver? Amusing. Did you read cavediver's opinion that decay was uncaused?
cavediver writes: As I tried to explain in my reply to SG, yes there is a more fundamental mechanism (nuclear QCD) and that is where the half-life is determined, but I'm not trying to discount the uncaused nature per-se, just that it occurs at a deeper level. The problem with your definition is that it covers everything that occurs in this universe regardless of it's relationship to any other events or the fact that we can readily identify the trigger. The for Venus being closer to the sun than earth is that is its creation. The cause for Usain Bolt being the fastest man alive is his creation. In short, when identifying causation becomes problematic, in the case say of the triggering of an electron's fall from a higher state, you avoid making an explanation of a trigger and simply say that it was the placing of the electron in the higher state alone that is the cause. Let's contrast that with the fall of a rock back to earth after being thrown into the air. We could attribute the fall to the initial throwing, but we don't need to do that. Gravity acting on the ball from its peak height, or from any other point in its trajectory is sufficient explanation for both the falling and the path of of the rock. We don't have to instead explain the rock cycle and the placement of the rock in front of a throwing boy. You ignore that fundamental difference as being of no consequence. That's fine until you begin to generalize all of that to the universe itself. Because you insist that it must have a cause of the type that you don't require for decay. Then you couple that with a bad argument that we routinely observe causes where the effect does not proceed them and make no response to anyone who points out what they see as an obvious flaw in your argument. You can complain all you want about my manners, but you are not giving any better answers to anyone else regardless of their politeness. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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kbertsche Member (Idle past 2385 days) Posts: 1427 From: San Jose, CA, USA Joined: |
PaulK writes:
I didn't answer this earlier because I though the answers were so obvious that it didn't need explaining. But perhaps it would be helpful to state the obvious. kbertsche writes:
You mean that the ball suddenly appears on the cushion simultaneously with the dent ? I've never seen that. Based on my experience the ball, when placed on the cushion would deform the cushion by it's weight over a period of time. quote: For example, consider a heavy ball on a cushion. The ball causes a depression in the cushion. The ball is the cause, the depression is the effect. The cause and effect are simultaneous; as long as the ball is on the cushion, it continues to cause the depression. Time is not an issue in this situation. Look, you're talking about causation effecting a change, not maintaining an existing condition without considering at all how it came to be. So that example completely misses the point. The example of ball and cushion (or pillow) goes back to Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason. Obviously, the example does not consider how the ball came to be there, but only considers the state of the system after the ball is in place. In this static system, the deformed state is caused by the presence of the ball. If someone were to ask, "Why is there a deformation in the cushion?", the answer "Because there is a heavy ball on it" is perfectly accurate and acceptable. The ball can be said to cause the state of deformation, with no reference to time. Of course, other answers for causation are also acceptable. E.g. a more complete explanation of the atemporal state of the system, "Because there is a heavy ball on it exerting a downward force due to gravity, and for the resilient cushion to exert an equal and opposite upward force it must be under compression". Or a mechanistic, temporal description of how the system got into this state, "Because Paul placed a heavy ball on the cushion and this compressed it". Or even a teleological description of why the system got into this state, "Because Paul wanted to squish a bug and the only thing he had handy was a heavy ball". All of these explanations can be accurate and acceptable explanations of the cause of the deformation of the cushion. But this should all be quite obvious to everyone here. Any state or event can be explained by a number of different but equally accurate causal explanations. Causation can be explained by an immediate cause, a more fundamental cause, any of the preceding events in a causal chain, or the purposes of an actor. Any and all of these causal explanations can be accurate, and none of these explanations rules out or "trumps" the others."Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
The ball can be said to cause the state of deformation, with no reference to time. Simply being able to make a sentence without the word 'time' in it does not mean that the deformation could occur without the passage time. You claimed that our experience was that causation could occur without time being involved. You made that claim because people were claiming that the creation of the universe included the creation of time. Simply saying that you can describe the event without reference to the time that was surely a part of the event is a non-argument. And without getting into whether your argument makes sense, we can say that it is irrelevant and does not address the issue of causation without time. It simply involves grammar.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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kbertsche Member (Idle past 2385 days) Posts: 1427 From: San Jose, CA, USA Joined: |
Son Goku writes:
Better, but to avoid confusion I recommend completely eliminating the word "uncaused". How about, "The time of decay of any particular nucleus is stochastic"?
Well, let's make it simpler. The timing of nuclear decay is uncaused. Son Goku writes:
Here are some questions for those of you who still want to maintain that nuclear decay is "uncaused". How can a large collection of these "uncaused" events have extremely predictable, deterministic behavior? What causes this predictable and deterministic behavior, if the system is nothing more than a collection of "uncaused" events?!? Although in truth I would still say the decay itself is uncaused, quantum mechanics simply states that the alpha particle's wavefunction spreads out of the atomic nucleus. However it still has a probability for being located inside the nucleus and a probability for being located outside the nucleus. However that is all. Either one of the probabilities can occur, being outside (decay) or inside (not decaying). Which one occurs is uncaused. What is "caused" is the shape of the wavefunction itself, the distribution of the probabilities. However that isn't a cause of the decay, just a "cause" of its likelihood. If you give me 10^12 radioactive atoms (there are about this many atoms of C-14 in 20 g of modern carbon), I can predict extremely accurately how many will remain in one half-life (about 5730 years)--exactly half of the original amount, with an accuracy of about 1 ppm. If each decay is truly "uncaused", what causes a macroscopic collection to have such predictable, deterministic behavior?"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger
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Dogmafood Member Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
Could you expand on your thinking? I'm tryin. I guess that I was thinking along the lines of what KB asks about the predictability and stability of decay rates. Really though, I think that I just have trouble with the idea of events that have no preceding event.
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