How Did Matter Come into Being?

an0maly said:
Let's start with the fact that the universe we see now has matter, energy, space and time. We experience each in somewhat a separate way, for example eating food, lighting a match, traveling down the highway, and experiencing how each word you are reading in this sentence keeps slipping into your past.

Physics experiments and observations give a different view not obvious to our separations above. Space-time and matter as energy "tied in knots" are new ways of better understanding the underlying reality in combining our common sense (a problematic sense, in various ways) notions to gain deeper understanding of what is actually going on. We next need to get to the idea that if matter is a complex, trapped form of energy, that so called "empty space" is demonstrated as not empty, but seething with energy on a subatomic scale. In fact space-time is energy as well.

There is an old joke answer to the question, framed as a sort of Big Question, by Douglas Adams, of "Life, the universe, and everything," which is facetiously revealed as not even a question at all, in the final analysis, so then the question needs to be found. That old joke answer was, "it's turtles all the way down." This was in response to the fake answer of what is under it all ("it all"), as being a giant turtle, and then, well what is under the giant turtle?

So taking this into the modern knowledge of physics and cosmology so far, the answer to what is matter, is, it's energy all the way down. People are often after something more at this point, and The Big Question at is really at root when they ask what is matter, or similar questions. If that is what you're after, let me know and I will have a bit of fun digressing on that.
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1. That Douglas Adams joke is a reference to a much older idea, coming from Hinduism. The idea of turtles all the way down appears to have been popularized in the 19th century. One of my law professors loved that joke and I doubt he was conversant with Douglas Adams (though that's just a haphazard guess).

2. Space-time is not energy. I'm not sure what you means when you say matter is energy tied in knots. And the vacuum energy potential is energy in a sense, but I'm not sure I would call it seething. It's most inert. No work can be done with it.

3. What is energy? If you're going all the way down, I"m not sure energy solves that problem in any way.
 
an0maly said:
Let's start with the fact that the universe we see now has matter, energy, space and time. We experience each in somewhat a separate way, for example eating food, lighting a match, traveling down the highway, and experiencing how each word you are reading in this sentence keeps slipping into your past.

Physics experiments and observations give a different view not obvious to our separations above. Space-time and matter as energy "tied in knots" are new ways of better understanding the underlying reality in combining our common sense (a problematic sense, in various ways) notions to gain deeper understanding of what is actually going on. We next need to get to the idea that if matter is a complex, trapped form of energy, that so called "empty space" is demonstrated as not empty, but seething with energy on a subatomic scale. In fact space-time is energy as well.

There is an old joke answer to the question, framed as a sort of Big Question, by Douglas Adams, of "Life, the universe, and everything," which is facetiously revealed as not even a question at all, in the final analysis, so then the question needs to be found. That old joke answer was, "it's turtles all the way down." This was in response to the fake answer of what is under it all ("it all"), as being a giant turtle, and then, well what is under the giant turtle?

So taking this into the modern knowledge of physics and cosmology so far, the answer to what is matter, is, it's energy all the way down. People are often after something more at this point, and The Big Question at is really at root when they ask what is matter, or similar questions. If that is what you're after, let me know and I will have a bit of fun digressing on that.
Click to expand...

Fundamental matter particles are quantized excitations of their respective quantum fields within QFT, matter is not simply energy trapped or "tied in knots." Spacetime is a four-dimensional manifold, and its curvature is determined by the stress-energy tensor as the source term in the EFE, spacetime itself is not a form of energy. Spacetime is not "seething with energy," the energy density of the quantum vacuum, is extremely low, the measured cosmological constant is approximately $10^{120}$ orders of magnitude smaller than simple theoretical QFT predictions. Reality is not merely "energy all the way down." The structure of physical reality is differentiated by the Standard Model into fundamental forces, matter content, and their specific field interactions.
 
CeruleanBlueHeel said:
Largely through trial and error in launching the simulation, until just the right parameters were dialed in.
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The entire point of the simulation is to determine how long it will take an intelligent being to evolve within the simulation that will be able to figure the exact rules encoded in the simulation.

Once that is done the entire thing will be shut down.
 
stankeylegjones said:
Spacetime is not "seething with energy," the energy density of the quantum vacuum, is extremely low, the measured cosmological constant is approximately $10^{120}$ orders of magnitude smaller than simple theoretical QFT predictions.
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It is hard to grasp just how wrong that prediction is. I was trying to come up with an analogy and it's really hard. It's a hundred of orders magnitude more than the difference in size between sun and a proton. I thought someone had determined that the QFT projection was "only" about 95 orders of magnitude off, once various corrective factors are introduced, so if we go with that, we're still 75 orders of magnitude off.

So if you take every proton in the sun, and you blow it up to the size of the sun, it's still only about 70 orders of magnitude larger than a proton. I missed a cubic factor earlier, so actually the total volume of every proton in the sun, if the size of a sun, would be about 120 orders of magnitude bigger than a proton. So the original error.

Nonetheless, very big.
 
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superrific said:
It is hard to grasp just how wrong that prediction is. I was trying to come up with an analogy and it's really hard. It's a hundred of orders magnitude more than the difference in size between sun and a proton. I thought someone had determined that the QFT projection was "only" about 95 orders of magnitude off, once various corrective factors are introduced, so if we go with that, we're still 75 orders of magnitude off.

So if you take every proton in the sun, and you blow it up to the size of the sun, it's still only about 70 orders of magnitude larger than a proton. I missed a cubic factor earlier, so actually the total volume of every proton in the sun, if the size of a sun, would be about 120 orders of magnitude bigger than a proton. So the original error.

Nonetheless, very big.
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You don't get the name the "worst prediction in theoretical physics" for nothing!
 
an0maly said:
Let's start with the fact that the universe we see now has matter, energy, space and time. We experience each in somewhat a separate way, for example eating food, lighting a match, traveling down the highway, and experiencing how each word you are reading in this sentence keeps slipping into your past.

Physics experiments and observations give a different view not obvious to our separations above. Space-time and matter as energy "tied in knots" are new ways of better understanding the underlying reality in combining our common sense (a problematic sense, in various ways) notions to gain deeper understanding of what is actually going on. We next need to get to the idea that if matter is a complex, trapped form of energy, that so called "empty space" is demonstrated as not empty, but seething with energy on a subatomic scale. In fact space-time is energy as well.

There is an old joke answer to the question, framed as a sort of Big Question, by Douglas Adams, of "Life, the universe, and everything," which is facetiously revealed as not even a question at all, in the final analysis, so then the question needs to be found. That old joke answer was, "it's turtles all the way down." This was in response to the fake answer of what is under it all ("it all"), as being a giant turtle, and then, well what is under the giant turtle?

So taking this into the modern knowledge of physics and cosmology so far, the answer to what is matter, is, it's energy all the way down. People are often after something more at this point, and The Big Question at is really at root when they ask what is matter, or similar questions. If that is what you're after, let me know and I will have a bit of fun digressing on that.
Click to expand...

Course, cultures all over the world for as long as anyone can remember have said that it's god all the way down. Brahman, Tao, Great Spirit, Great Mystery, Kami, Celtic Otherworld, Australian Dreamtime...it's cool how the world's different pre-modern traditions are near univocal on this question.
 
You know, we joke about things but it is truly a wonder.

How I'm talking to you right now. How your children communicate with you. How you even had children in the first place.

It's all a wonder.

The days grow short now, literally and figuratively.

If any of us knew how matter came into being, we would be gods. And we're not.

Nonetheless, the mystery remains. Something happened a long time ago.
 
TarSpiel said:
Course, cultures all over the world for as long as anyone can remember have said that it's god all the way down. Brahman, Tao, Great Spirit, Great Mystery, Kami, Celtic Otherworld, Australian Dreamtime...it's cool how the world's different pre-modern traditions are near univocal on this question.
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True but there is no particular reason to believe their philosophy was superior to their science and technology, both of which have seriously advanced.
 
finesse said:
True but there is no particular reason to believe their philosophy was superior to their science and technology, both of which have seriously advanced.
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This. And the commonalities of early civilizations to create some type of supernatural entity to explain an unknown phenomenon is expected since human evolution selects for cognitive traits like hypersensitive agency detection systems and theory of mind. Why does that round, orange fireball cross the sky each day? Well its a god of course -- just ask the Incas (Inti), Egyptians (Ra), Greeks (Helios/Apollo), Hindus (Surya), Azetcs, Mesopotamians, Romans (Sol), Zoroastrians (Mithra), Japanese, Norse, Celtics, etc etc. Or maybe its just a star according to science. I'll stick to science and not ancient religions' intuitions.
 
finesse said:
True but there is no particular reason to believe their philosophy was superior to their science and technology, both of which have seriously advanced.
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Equally no reason to believe their philosophy was inferior to it.
 
Milk and Cookies said:
This. And the commonalities of early civilizations to create some type of supernatural entity to explain an unknown phenomenon is expected since human evolution selects for cognitive traits like hypersensitive agency detection systems and theory of mind. Why does that round, orange fireball cross the sky each day? Well its a god of course -- just ask the Incas (Inti), Egyptians (Ra), Greeks (Helios/Apollo), Hindus (Surya), Azetcs, Mesopotamians, Romans (Sol), Zoroastrians (Mithra), Japanese, Norse, Celtics, etc etc. Or maybe its just a star according to science. I'll stick to science and not ancient religions' intuitions.
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It's a common misconception that religion is basically about people trying to answering questions.

Wrong, but a whole lot of people make that mistake. And it often comes with a kind of sniffy sense of the superiority of the modern western materialist worldview.
 
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