Ultimate free lunch ?

[Autechre]

I recently found this article - http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury...thing.html
The original papers are here - http://fisica.ciencias.uchile.cl/~gonzal...ang_90.pdf

Just wondering if anybody knows if this theory has been developed/scrapped. Can't find a lot of information about it. Would be very interested in hearing peoples views.

[theVOID]

They shouldn't call it nothing, it's misleading, there is still a thing, it just has no 'force' so to speak, no energy to do work against anything else (because there is nothing else to work against.) but some fluctuation happens disrupting the net energy of 0 and then you have energy to do work, creating an sort of feedback loop.

[Autumnlicious]

A universe that acts like a virtual particle? Fascinating.

[Welsh cake]

Cosmological inflation is the theoretical exponential expansion of the early universe.

Inflation is not concerned with any theory of how reality came to be, the coming into existence or origin of the universe.

Zero-energy universe is merely a hypothesis with zero explanatory power (no pun intended) since negative energy hasn't been demonstrated to exist yet and shouldn’t be conflated with the inflation model because it is a cosmological argument in theoretical Physics, attempting to explain what happened after the Big Bang, not before, while not fully understood what mechanisms were at work, inflation at least makes a number of predictions confirmable by observation.

Alexei V. Filippenko and Jay M. Pasachoff should learn the scientific distinction between cosmological and cosmogonical ideas before writing articles that throw out buzz-words like there's no tomorrow.

[reverendjeremiah]

Wait..is this saying that the universe is a closed system? Thats what I get from "no net output'..am I reading this correctly? So this would mean that inflation isnt an increasing of enrgy, but a spreading thin of already existing energy? Also what does Hawking radiation from the poles of black holes do for this? Does that mean the exact amount of energy being consumed by a blackhole is equally ballanced by the amount of Hawking radiation coming out of it?

Ive been on and off studying quantum mechanics, and I must admit I have a hard time grasping it..also trying to grasp how they can say that only 11 or so dimensions exist, yet the system they use to come to this conclusion can easily be used to keep going ad infinitum...which doesnt sound like a 0 net sum to me.

I dont know..my speciality is the electron, everything else I have self taught by books or the net...perhaps someone can clarify for me.

[theVOID]

No, the amount of Hawking radiation is relatively miniscule.

Closed system only means no energy coming in, isolated is neither in or out.

The energy going into a black hole isn't necessarily leaving the universe, only being redistributed in one place.

[reverendjeremiah]

No, the amount of Hawking radiation is relatively miniscule.

Closed system only means no energy coming in, isolated is neither in or out.

The energy going into a black hole isn't necessarily leaving the universe, only being redistributed in one place.

I ask you to firgive me of my ignorance. The vast majority of my higher education is applied electronics, power systems, robotics, logic controls and such. My sicence understanding is admittedly electron heavy. In highschool I always registered top tier in general science on my SAT's. I have done personal studying on the side on general science; Dawkins, Hawkings, Neil Degrass, Sagan, etc.. and I got a very basic understanding of the basics. I know enough about science to hold a general conversation about it, when to tell if someone is tossing baloney into the conversation, and wether something meets scientific methods.

With that said, I am very new to quantum mechanics. I tend to go with Einstein's statement that Quantum mechanics sounds too much like magic and not enough like physical sciences. That doesnt mean I will stick to that quote 100%, as I am open minded as well. With that said I was wondering if people who are better versed in these subjects to help explain them to me, as I have said before, I am too highly specialised in electronics/electrons.

Here are my questions:

- Is quantum mechanics replacing the theory of relativity?
- How does Quantum mechanics approach Hawkings statement that "if one were to say the universe has an intent, then I would say its intent was to create black holes" (I am not quoting him exactly)
- Is Quantum mechanics approaching a GUT (Grand unified feild theory between the very small and the very large)?
- How can quantum mechanics declare that it knows the origin of the universe (work with me here, I know my words arent perfect) when it is generally agreed upon that time and space did not exist before the singularity of the big bang? In other words, how can you have something "outside" of time and space? It sounds like magic to me.
- E=MC2 has a long proven track record. Hawking said it ultimately means the universe has an undivisible sum of "1", meaning that wether you have converted matter to energy, or energy to matter, the value ratios between the 2 always amount to the same sum at any moment in time regardless of the flux. How does this equate to "ultimate free lunch"?
- Is there any videos or sites that you can send me to to help me educate myself to Quantum mechanics. At least the basics. Something in laymans terms that can teach by giving examples instead of abstract formulas.

Again, forgive me of my ignorance and try to work with my wording please. I havent been in a class room since 2001. Quantum Mechanics have always cought my interest, but everytime I try to get into it I am bombarded with abstract formulas that I am not up to date on to understand. My math skills go as far as applied physics for logic controls and circuits.

[theVOID]

Is quantum mechanics replacing the theory of relativity?

Yes and no... A theory of everything will one day encompass both, but the calculations in dealing with the large scale universe will still essentially be relativity and those dealing with the words of atoms still some form of Quantum theory - The divide mostly rests at a lack of Quantum understanding of gravity, once that is resolved the two can largely be merged.

How does Quantum mechanics approach Hawkings statement that "if one were to say the universe has an intent, then I would say its intent was to create black holes" (I am not quoting him exactly)

I have no idea, you'd have to ask him what it means. To me the universe no more intends to make black holes as it does anything else. He could just mean that Black Holes are inevitable.

- Is Quantum mechanics approaching a GUT (Grand unified feild theory between the very small and the very large)?

Sure, everything we learn is one step closer, so it's 'approaching' it, what form it will be in and when it gets here is another thing entirely. M theory might be correct, we haven't got any way of testing it for now, so perhaps we're already sitting on the theory of everything.

How can quantum mechanics declare that it knows the origin of the universe (work with me here, I know my words arent perfect) when it is generally agreed upon that time and space did not exist before the singularity of the big bang? In other words, how can you have something "outside" of time and space? It sounds like magic to me.

It simply supposes that spacetime is an expression of something else, before space and time there wasn't something 'outside' it, space and time themselves were compressed into something with no dimensions, this dimensionless point still encompassed everything.

- E=MC2 has a long proven track record. Hawking said it ultimately means the universe has an undivisible sum of "1", meaning that wether you have converted matter to energy, or energy to matter, the value ratios between the 2 always amount to the same sum at any moment in time regardless of the flux. How does this equate to "ultimate free lunch"?

The article wasn't talking about the conservation of energy being the 'free lunch' it was talking about the event that expanded the singularity and created matter and energy as a 'free lunch' - It's not a perfect description, it's a headline, don't pay too much attention to it.

- Is there any videos or sites that you can send me to to help me educate myself to Quantum mechanics. At least the basics. Something in laymans terms that can teach by giving examples instead of abstract formulas.

Read This:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e...er%27s_Cat

You can probably pick it up cheap somewhere.

Again, forgive me of my ignorance and try to work with my wording please. I havent been in a class room since 2001. Quantum Mechanics have always cought my interest, but everytime I try to get into it I am bombarded with abstract formulas that I am not up to date on to understand. My math skills go as far as applied physics for logic controls and circuits.

That book is formula minimal.

[lilphil1989]

Zero-energy universe is merely a hypothesis with zero explanatory power (no pun intended) since negative energy hasn't been demonstrated to exist yet

The anti-particle solutions of the relativistic wave equations (Dirac, Klein-Gordon, Proca...) are negative energy solutions. Whether you take them to be negative energy just depends on whether you like the Feyman-Wheeler interpretation (antiparticles as particles moving backwards in time) or not.

Also, the energy of something in a bound state is usually defined to be negative. They're saying that the total energy of the universe (rest mass and kinetic) should be balanced by the total gravitational binding energy of the universe.

- Is quantum mechanics replacing the theory of relativity?
- How does Quantum mechanics approach Hawkings statement that "if one were to say the universe has an intent, then I would say its intent was to create black holes" (I am not quoting him exactly)
- Is Quantum mechanics approaching a GUT (Grand unified feild theory between the very small and the very large)?
- How can quantum mechanics declare that it knows the origin of the universe (work with me here, I know my words arent perfect) when it is generally agreed upon that time and space did not exist before the singularity of the big bang? In other words, how can you have something "outside" of time and space? It sounds like magic to me.
- E=MC2 has a long proven track record. Hawking said it ultimately means the universe has an undivisible sum of "1", meaning that wether you have converted matter to energy, or energy to matter, the value ratios between the 2 always amount to the same sum at any moment in time regardless of the flux. How does this equate to "ultimate free lunch"?
- Is there any videos or sites that you can send me to to help me educate myself to Quantum mechanics. At least the basics. Something in laymans terms that can teach by giving examples instead of abstract formulas.

Quantum mechanics doesn't replace relativity. It's already been successfully combined with the special theory of relativity, and this (along with quantum field theory) is the basis of the standard model of particle physics.
A huge topic in current physics research is to look for a way to combine general relativity with quantum theory.

Quantum mechanics does not declare knowledge on the origin of the universe. The ideas about the universe beginning as a quantum fluctuation are really just speculation. So is the idea that "space and time did not exist before the big bang". We're not in a position to say anything about conditions before the big bang, and perhaps never will be.

A great video on the basics of quantum mechanics is this lecture by Feynman:





In fact, if you have 7 hourse free at any time, I'd recommend the whole lecture series.

I tend to go with Einstein's statement that Quantum mechanics sounds too much like magic and not enough like physical sciences

It's definitely counter-intuitive. But QM is well-supported by a huge amount of experimental evidence. Einstein didn't like the idea of non-locality associated with wavefunction collpase in QM. In the 80's Alain Aspect's experiments showed that this non-locality really does exist in nature (This is what the entanglement experiments that occasionally make it into the press are usually about).


EDIT: great quote on the counter-intuitiveness of quantum theory:

[Anomalocaris]

Also what does Hawking radiation from the poles of black holes do for this? Does that mean the exact amount of energy being consumed by a blackhole is equally ballanced by the amount of Hawking radiation coming out of it?

No. when a quantum fluctuation occurs near the event horizon such that results of the fluctuation escapes as hawkings radiation, the exact amount of energy radiating away as hawkings radiation is being subtracted from the total energy content of the blackhole. Thus the net energy of the fluctuation remains zero. Since quantum fluctuation occurs continuously near the event horizon, a blackhole not being replenished by infalling matter is gradually losing mass to facilitate the hawkings radiation. Eventually all blackholes will gradually return all of their energy/mass back to the universe outside through hawkings radiation and completely disappear. So it is not true that nothing can return from black hole. In fact the blackhole keeps nothing and returns everything, if you wait long enough. The net mass/energy removed by black hole from the universe outside its event horizon over the long run is ultimately exactly zero.[/i]