Law of Conservation of Mass

[WaeV]

So, we know that matter cannot be created nor destroyed. Check.
We also know that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Check.

Yet at some point in time, vast quantities of matter somehow existed.

The question I'm driving at is, why does anything exist? Why does space exist? Why does time "exist?"
Why is there not a plane of nonexistence. In fact, the plane could not exist, so it would just be... nothing. Why is there anything?

All existence started with a set amount of matter/energy. No more of it can be created, no more of it can be destroyed. Does this solve your existential quandry?

If there was a start to existence that would signify that matter/energy was created at one point. The impossibility of matter/energy to create themselves from nothing is what he was addressing.

The second of Stephen Hawking's theories that I posted earlier says that matter didn't come from nothing because there never was nothing. There is no "outside" our universe, there is no "before our universe".

There was no infinite expanse of nothing before the first event of our universe.

[JunkfoodMan]

Anyone familiar with CERN and the LHC? This is one of the things they are looking into during their experiments. I know they are also striving to even create matter from the high energy released when the protons collide. I guess we will have to wait a couple of weeks before the experiments start to find out...

Yeah, they're trying to find the Higgs Boson.
Very brief explanation, there are these things called "Higgs Fields" in which when matter (I think it's only matter) passes through it it gains mass. In order for Physics to work (By that I mean be mathematically correct in some equations) , they need to confirm the existence of the Higgs Boson particle (Or the "God Particle")
They're also trying to find a collection of sub-atomic particles called Quark-gluon plasma or something, which is thought to be only present at the time of the big bang.
I probably got alot wrong. Oh well. I would try to explain more about what the LHC is trying to help us discover, but I havent had proper sleep in yonks.

Anyway, on topic, I was watching some guy's video response on youtube to somebody (a christian) asked about why the universe exists. I think he made a good point in saying something along the lines of "Perhaps we will never know the reason the universe exists. Maybe it will remain trapped in the existence itself.".
Thought I'd share that

[Philly]

That's some philosopical shit right there. Also, Stephen Hawking is £50 up as of yesterday.

[Ombre]

So, we know that matter cannot be created nor destroyed. Check.
We also know that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Check.

Yet at some point in time, vast quantities of matter somehow existed.

The question I'm driving at is, why does anything exist? Why does space exist? Why does time "exist?"
Why is there not a plane of nonexistence. In fact, the plane could not exist, so it would just be... nothing. Why is there anything?

All existence started with a set amount of matter/energy. No more of it can be created, no more of it can be destroyed. Does this solve your existential quandry?

If there was a start to existence that would signify that matter/energy was created at one point. The impossibility of matter/energy to create themselves from nothing is what he was addressing.

The second of Stephen Hawking's theories that I posted earlier says that matter didn't come from nothing because there never was nothing. There is no "outside" our universe, there is no "before our universe".

There was no infinite expanse of nothing before the first event of our universe.

Philly was right when he said this was philosophical. In fact, this only adds more paradox's.

[Xeno2]

Might want to watch the program on discovery channel called "before the bigbang" lasts about two hours and discusses everything from when Galileo first looked to the skies all the way upto the current ekpyrotic theory of the primordial atom.
you can find some information here.
I found it quite interesting but then im a bit of nerd and would rather watch scientific documentaries than sit down and watch sport for instance.

[SHOUTrvb]

The way I see it, it's like a blank piece of paper. There's nothing on the paper; it is blank without any purpose or reason, it's just paper. Also note that the paper has boundaries, but as far as the paper is concerned, there is nothing beyond the paper. From there, there's only 3 things that can happen.

1: The paper will rip, causing an imbalance in space and time.
2: Someone might knock some ink on the paper (Big Bang).
3: An artist will take the paper and draw creations (God).

There is no beginning or end; there's just paper with stuff on it..

[MaestroMan]

You know, that is an interesting theory, SHOUT.

[CompKronos]

so were only cartoons?

[MaestroMan]

Try to think of it more in terms of a claymation.

[DeadHamster]

Time doesn't exist. It doesn't measure anything, it is something that humans invented to measure something that cannot be measured. Centimeters measure the distance of an object, volume measures the space an object takes up, what does Time measure? Itself.

That has lead me to believe that there was no "beginning", because the "beginning" of anything is once again a human invention, because it is based on time. So, since there wasn't a beginning, everything has always been there and always will be.

It's hard to grasp at first after 17 years of conditioning to the opposite idea.

[CompKronos]

if i may pull a theory out of my ass here, i believe time exists: time exists as a higher dimensions than those conceptually fathomable.

[JunkfoodMan]

Time is another dimension, we are traveling through it. As we travel through time, our view/perception of things change (Universe expands, movement, thought etc).
Although time cannot be measured like other dimensions.
Yeah, that's what I believe.

[WaeV]

Philly was right when he said this was philosophical. In fact, this only adds more paradox's.

Such as?

Time doesn't exist. It doesn't measure anything, it is something that humans invented to measure something that cannot be measured. Centimeters measure the distance of an object, volume measures the space an object takes up, what does Time measure? Itself.

That has lead me to believe that there was no "beginning", because the "beginning" of anything is once again a human invention, because it is based on time. So, since there wasn't a beginning, everything has always been there and always will be.

It's hard to grasp at first after 17 years of conditioning to the opposite idea.

Time measures duration. You can measure something's length, width, and depth, but you can also measure how long it lasts.

[Aumaan Anubis]

Time is a measurement of position.

X, Y, Z, and Time.

Fourth dimension.

To further clarify WaeV's point.

[WaeV]

Thanks. Also:

The way I see it, it's like a blank piece of paper. There's nothing on the paper; it is blank without any purpose or reason, it's just paper. Also note that the paper has boundaries, but as far as the paper is concerned, there is nothing beyond the paper. From there, there's only 3 things that can happen.

1: The paper will rip, causing an imbalance in space and time.
2: Someone might knock some ink on the paper (Big Bang).
3: An artist will take the paper and draw creations (God).

There is no beginning or end; there's just paper with stuff on it..

If there's no beginning or end, then what are the boundaries? I would modify this theory by saying that the paper is curled up such that there are no boundaries, and that the size changes depending on the paper's contents.

An example of 2D gone 3D with no boundaries:

[CompKronos]

hey, wait a minute i already posted the klein bottle a page back and said that a page back. I am however and was still in agreement with that idea

also thats actually a four dimensional object, an easier example is the mobius strip (the u has an umlaut).

1) grab a piece of paper, a pen, scissors, and tape because its experiment time w00tz!
2) using your pen establish that the paper has two distinct sides, if i draw on one side then i need to pick up the pen to draw on the other
3) cut a small about 3/4" wide x 11" tall strip of the paper
4) twist one end of the paper once
5) connect the two edges with tape
6) using the pen you can now draw on the inside and outside without ever having to pick the pen up

are those your brains on the floor, or did i just blow your mind

lol

also what makes this interesting is that stitch enough of the strips together you get the Klien bottle which waev has posted above, similarly you could also stitch two Klien bottle's together on their edge, yet because we can't yet see in 4d we cannot see this 4th dimensional edge

[WaeV]

hey, wait a minute i already posted the klein bottle a page back and said that a page back. I am however and was still in agreement with that idea

Oh, I wasn't sure if it had been posted and was too lazy to check.

Could you explain why the klein bottle is 4d? If I had to guess I would say because of the part where the tube goes through the side; it would need to be four-dimensional to not intersect, I think.


Also: More mobius experiments!

So if you take a piece of paper and just make a regular loop (not mobius) and cut it down the middle, it splits the strip in half and you get two strips, right?

But if you cut a mobius strip down the middle, it makes one BIG strip, weird, huh?

And if you go even further and cut a loop with TWO twists in half, you get two connected loops.

[Ombre]

Philly was right when he said this was philosophical. In fact, this only adds more paradox's.

Such as?

Do I really need to explain this? To say there was never nothing implies that there was always something, this in itself is a logical and scientific paradox. (It's also what Atheists so often bring up in arguments against the existence of God). You can post all the pictures of 3d or 4d loops as you want, but each loop has a beginning. Forgive me for this crude analogy, but imagine if you will, that there was going to be a NASCAR race that lasted forever, while ignoring all the technical impossibilities of this, that looped race needs a beginning in both time and space, the flag needs to be waved and there needs to be a start line. So in short, every loop needs a beginning, and before the beginning of any loop there was obviously no loop, no race, aka, nothing. I don't know how well this conveys my meaning, but I hope you get the drift of it.

[WaeV]

Ok, I see where you're coming from.

I didn't mean "there was never nothing" such that the universe has an infinite duration.

I meant to say that the universe does have a finite size in length, width, depth, and duration, but that there can't be anything "before", "after", or otherwise "outside" the universe because length, width, depth, and duration wouldn't apply.

To bring up the globe example again, Imagine that a horizontal cross section of earth is the universe, and that time begins at the north pole and ands at the south.

At the north pole, the universe is incredibly small, but expands rapidly (the Big Bang, except without a singularity). At time goes on, the universe exands more and more, then begins to shrink at the equator. As the south pole draws nearer, the universe again shrinks and time draws to a close. You can't continue going south beyond the south pole, because south only means anything whilst on earth. Therefore south (time) is finite but has no boundaries.

[AbeFroman]

i have to disagree with the klein bottle being the shape of the universe, cuz if you were floating in space you could look "up" and see stars, "down" and see stars, left and right and still see stars, if anything the universe would be just a huge sphere, but the key word is IF ANYTHING, i would say it has no shape at all, only problem is humans have a nature of trying to identify something by shape, so it's hard to imagine something that has no shape. which kinds relates to what i said earlier about we can't grasp the concept of existing forever, because we, ourselves, have a beginning and an end and therefore end up assuming everything else does.

for understanding the "shape" i'm talking about, imagine it like air.

if air were to be inside a balloon, it would have a shape, since air has a tendency to take the shape of it's container, right now this air is very unlike the universe in that it has a shape, which is the ovalish circle type thing. so lets say the balloon popped, now the air has no shape and is very much like the universe in that it has no shape.

edit:
so if i were to take a picture of the ENTIRE universe, it would not look like this

it would look more like this

note that the bottom is supposed to represent the ENTIRE universe, but it is impossible to take a picture of the entire universe because it is infinite, and has no shape BECAUSE it is infinite.