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lord_shiva 28-Feb-24, 11:51	Multiverse I invited a former astronomy professor from Gonzaga University to speak to the Spokane Astronomical Society (SAS) regarding multiverses for our March general meeting. I will let you know how that goes. I'm interested in the topic. I know the first search for universes other than our own met with no success. We looked for the scars of collisions from other universes upon our own. That study was led by... a famous guy whose name escapes me at the moment. Here is another study on the subject: www.newscientist.com The results of these tests are probably decades away, and it is highly doubtful we could ever cross into another universe or we might have detected evidence of that.
victoriasas 28-Dec-24, 20:53	What evidence exists for another universe (in addition to our own?) Is it just an idea? Or is there anything concrete to support it?
lord_shiva 29-Dec-24, 03:31	Good Question Multiverses are a consequence of the Many Worlds variation of the Copenhagen Interpretation, wherein the universe bifurcates at every juncture, typically associated with decisions but which could boil down to non deterministic observations. It is important to note that the personal beliefs of observers do NOT have any impact on proper measurements, but that what constitutes a device capable for of making measurements remains in the domain of classical physics. While this may come across a mumbo-jumbo, it accurately reflects our current understanding. In the example of Schodinger’s Cat, the cat in the box exists in both states (alive and dead) until an observation forces the collapse of a wave function rendering the cat to adopt one of the two possible states. This is the result of coupling a macro cosmic event (cat’s life) to a microcosmic event (detection of the decay of a single atom of an unstable isotope). In the many worlds, cats live in some and die in others, branching from our universe at each point a decision is reached to make an observation, with 50/50 odds matching the isotope half life. I personally have no stake either way in this idea, but simply note it is an interpretation of modern physics. A person isn’t forced to believe or disbelieve anything not demonstrated. Most of the talk did not delve into the many worlds. Instead, it involved the evolving understanding of our own universe, from the geocentric model of Plato and Aristotle through the heliocentric version of Aristarchus and Copernicus, championed most heavily by Galileo. Only the last part of the lecture delved into multiple universe scenarios, none of which enjoyed observational support. So far as we know this universe is it, and is finite rather than infinite. I go with that, given it matches observation, though some features lack explanation. For example, we do detect galactic structure at an epoch earlier than anticipated, which conflicts with measurements from COBE further bolstered and refined by WMAP. I suspect incorporating dark matter and dark energy may rectify the discrepancy, but that remains to be seen. The search for DM remains underway, with a number of careful experiments probing resonant frequencies much like cryogenic tuning forks (the topic of another lecture). One of these experiments is being conducted by the University of Washington, but I have not yet visited that lab. I HAVE made multiple pilgrimages to western LIGO, and one to a NASA rocket engine testing facility not far from eastern LIGO. LIGO has nothing to do with multiverse theory, the instruments were constructed to detect gravitational waves, at which they admirably succeeded.
mo-oneandmore 29-Dec-24, 03:54	Shiva I go with the finite universe of maybe about 47C years and the likelihood that there is but one universe, but I have little problem with a few more universes as long as they have a physics that near-parallels ours for, among many reasons, that I have difficulties visualizing the survivability a universe that violates our universe's surprisingly simple but near impossible to understand rules for matter assembly and such. And did the astronomy professor use string theory in is multiverse discussion, or did he not dive into mega-dimensions?
lord_shiva 29-Dec-24, 04:07	Fundamental Forces There are four. Initially these were one force, but gravity snapped off the bundle of forces shortly after God spoke our universe into existence. Actually, there was no sound as there was no medium. The voice of God permeated the universe at a slightly later stage, when its expansion and cooling resulted in a gong reverberating through all existence. I hearken that moment as God’s voice, as it preceded atomic nuclei capturing electrons, resulting in light emission. Fiat lux. So when gravity snapped there were two forces, gravity and the other bundle of electromagnetism with the nuclear forces. We don’t have a name for that (I searched), but we do for the unified force. We call it grand unification theory, or GUT. next the strong nuclear force broke free, and we named the remaining bundle the electroweak force. We know far more about it than we know about gravity. Freeman Dyson calculated that a detector the size of Earth would be required to observe gravitons, the gauge boson (or vector boson) that mediates the gravitational interaction, and that this detector would have to operate across the current lifespan of the universe for 50/50 odds of detecting one event. Alternatively, if we could construct a detector the size of Jupiter we could shorten the event success rate down to a million years. We would want multiple observations (a few hundred) for reliable measurement of graviton parameters. So that seems like a no go. But recent theoretical work points to an alternate way more apt to reside within the realm of possibility. No physical work has yet commenced on this. Gluons are the gauge bosons that mediate the strong nuclear force. This force binds “bipolar” quarks into mesons, and triplets into baryons. Mesons are quark/antiquark pairings, whereas baryons bind three quarks or three antiquarks, but never a quark with an antiquark. There are six quarks, and six antiquarks. There are three quarks “colors” of gluons, and three different colors for anti gluons. We use “color” to describe quark “charge” as it isn’t bipolar but “tripolar”. So gluons are mapped to the three primary colors, even though photon frequency (actual color) has nothing to do with it. So strong nuclear interactions are covered by the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) whereas atomic interactions are mediated by photons, the force carrier of electromagnetism. This is covered by quantum electrodynamics, or QED. I only recently learned what the distinction was between these two. Electromagnetism then broke free from the electroweak force, yielding the weak nuclear force mediated by a pair of gauge bosons, the W and Z particles, and electromagnetism mediated by the photon. Electromagnetism is weaker than than either nuclear force, but vastly stronger than gravity—by far the weakest force. Gravity is so weak we can only accurately measure G to three decimal places. We have nine or ten places for c. This pretty much completes the standard model, though we could now toss in a scalar boson for the Higgs field. Mo pointed out to me neutrinos outnumber all other particles in our universe, so I was disappointed to calculate the potential axion mass to represent only a small fraction of the total DM mass. When we find axions, we still won’t account for most of our universe, and we haven’t even touched on dark energy.
mo-oneandmore 29-Dec-24, 04:15	And indeed. A major problem that I have with a far larger size universe than Man will ever see is the many, many theories, conjectures and wild-eyed ideas about what happened during the 200 millionths of a second or so of inflation during the early post Big Bang era --- if our universe expanded from a near-infinitely small size to something the size of a grapefruit, as many argue, during that 200/1,000,000 seconds, where did the rest of that 47 billion C size; or even 14 billion C size come from, huh y'all?
lord_shiva 29-Dec-24, 04:21	No Strings Attached He might have mentioned strings, I don’t recall. He probably did. But he didn’t really delve into any of the competing multiverse models. He just mentioned them. I was only mildly disappointed by that. I’m always happy to review the history of our understanding of our universe, especially when it details what observations lead to what conclusions. For example, the firmament was demolished, but I forget how. Would need to look that up again. We determined air doesn’t exist in space by cleverly measuring the weight of our own atmosphere. By the 1700s we became aware the stars were not part of our solar system. In the 1920s (merely a century ago) it became obvious island universes were other galaxies within our universe, and by expansion that our universe enjoyed an initial start. It wasn’t until the 1960s Bell Labs ruled out the oscillating and steady state models. So only sixty years of that.
mo-oneandmore 29-Dec-24, 04:27	Shiva And, although I agree that the universe popped-up with a quiet whisper (the Big Bang is sorely miss-named), I disagree that God needed to "speak" his magnificent universe into existence. He would have needed nothing more than an instant of THINKing to do it all in my opinion --- something like how He might have breathed into an animal to make it speak; as a Muslim archeologist once argued while I was attending his lecture, I suppose.
mo-oneandmore 29-Dec-24, 04:41	Strong, unforgetable words The Muslim archaeologist's statement: "Who are you to wonder how Allah might have breathed into an animal to make it speak?" was actually a strong retort to a Muslim student at the lecture who wanted to argue the 6,000 year idea.
mo-oneandmore 29-Dec-24, 05:01	And indeed: The count of Neutrinos in our universe is today thought by many learned folks to be equal to the sum of ALL particles in today's universe (see the mysterious disappearance of negatrons --- a loss of antimatter that HAD to occur, to fit our understanding of physics, somewhere around 300,000,000 years after the BB.). --- It's thought that neutrinos might somehow have replaced those negatrons during some miraculous event such as "and God saw that it was good", etc.
lord_shiva 29-Dec-24, 05:32	Oh I like that “and God saw that it was good” part. I think you meant 300,000 as opposed to three hundred million. Back to quarks. There are six. We called them up, down, truth, beauty, strangeness, and charm. Later we changed truth and beauty to top and bottom. The top quark is the most massive and short lived, and does not take part in the formation of any meson or baryon. It doesn’t last long enough to bind with the others. Does not play well. The up quark is the lightest, then the down quark. But quark mass is not conserved in particle formation, actually 90% of the mass comes from the gluons in binding quarks. Imagine you have two eight pound bowling balls and one ten pound bowling ball. You put them in a light weight bag. You place the bag on a scale and instead of 26 lbs it reads 300 lbs. And it feels like 300 lbs. But take them out and individually each weighs 8 or 10 lbs, respectively. Three up quarks form a short lived baryon. So do two strange quarks and a charm quark. We have names all the three quark baryon combinations and measures most of their masses and half lives. They are all super transient except two, one of which is stable. Two up quarks and a down quark form a baryon with no measurable half life. According to the standard model it should decay, so we built Kamiokande to measure the proton half life. No decays were detected, so we rebuilt it, superkamiokande, and still no decays. Not sure if they will proceed with ultrakamiokande or not. But the proton half life, if it exists at all, is as far beyond the present age of the universe as the universe is to the neutron half life (two down quarks and an up quark lasts twelve minutes). So an anisotropy lead to matter domination, that is that in the era where baryons and anti baryons met, an imbalance produced an excess number of positive nucleons. For some reason neutron half life is extended when bound in atomic nuclei, with some isotopes being apparently stable (no measurable neutron decay). We can translate the gong from the expansion as God’s voice, and “it was good” to positive matter excess as opposed to complete annihilation.
mo-oneandmore 29-Dec-24, 05:50	Shiva Y'all's "I think you meant 300,000 as opposed to three hundred million." comment. No. I meant three hundred million years --- not 300 thousand years. But the estimated timing might have changed during the past few years to account for those pesky "too early" galaxy formations that Webb has found --- even though there seems, to me, to be a valid explanation for them (See super, super dense hydrogen clouds that produced super, super giant stars that maybe survived for a few minutes before they produced super, super massive black holes that grew the early galaxies.).
victoriasas 29-Dec-24, 07:17	So to sum up, no evidence exists for another universe. Sounds like molecules-to-man evolution.
mo-oneandmore 29-Dec-24, 07:53	Deleted by mo-oneandmore on 29-Dec-24, 07:59.
mo-oneandmore 29-Dec-24, 08:04	That is correct, Vic. And evolution has been around --- seemingly since Allah breathed the big bang, except that Darwin's evolution had nothing to do until life sparked.
victoriasas 29-Dec-24, 08:35	As I’m sure you know, I think molecules-to-man evolution is nonsense. I don’t dispute evolution takes place within a common-sense definition of species, though that may better be termed adaptation.
lord_shiva 28-Jun-25, 10:13	Many Worlds A fascinating video explaining in part the compelling reasoning behind the multiverse: www.youtube.com
lord_shiva 28-Jun-25, 10:37	Nonsense What is nonsense is simply rejecting biology because it conflicts with religious ideology. Granted, some who claim they reject science insist they do so for legitimate scientific reasons, despite their objections being answered by every biology department across the world. Gemini offers: In science, a theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method and repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation. The theory of evolution, which explains how life on Earth has changed over time, is supported by a vast body of evidence from multiple scientific disciplines. Here's why evolution is considered a scientific theory: Explanatory Power: The theory of evolution provides a comprehensive explanation for the diversity of life on Earth, including the fossil record, genetic similarities between species, and the adaptation of organisms to their environments. Testability and Falsifiability: The theory of evolution is based on testable hypotheses and predictions that can be examined through scientific experimentation and observation. If evidence were to contradict the theory, it could be revised or even replaced by a better explanation. Evidence-Based: The theory of evolution is supported by a vast array of evidence from various fields, including paleontology (fossils), genetics, molecular biology, and comparative anatomy. Consensus in the Scientific Community: The vast majority of scientists in relevant fields accept the theory of evolution as the best explanation for the diversity of life. End quote. Consensus among scientists within a discipline is an important consideration. All scientists (naturalists) in the early 19th century were creationists. This includes such luminaries as Linnaeus, whose work organizing biology laid the foundational groundwork for the theory of evolution. Scientists of Darwin’s era recognized the power of his theory and their work in attempting to refute it got nowhere. Generations of creationists (both young and old) had opportunity to propose a superior theory, absent any success. 150 years of abject failure. Meanwhile, the proportion of scientists rejecting evolution has dwindled away to virtually nothing. There is a small and weak cadre who continue insisting evolution (while essentially correct) might be overlooking some critical component. Most of this cadre rejects the ID movement’s insistence that component is some outside force (a Creator). Some use the existence of these questions as evidence the entire theory must be unsound. Nothing could be further from reality. Back in reality, the phylogenetic tree exists as independent confirmation of the extreme robustness of evolutionary theory. Why are all mammals synapsids? Creationists cannot provide any credible explanation for this fact, nor for the hereditary nature of mtDNA, genetic molecules found in mitochondria, the energy organelles in eukaryotic cells. Evolution provides the obvious answer. Ultimately biologists will succeed creating diapsids mammals, something a Creator could have easily achieved simply to dash cold water on the obvious implications of the Linnaeus tree of life hierarchy. Do plants have mitochondria? Gemini: Plant cells contain mitochondria, according to biology resources. While plants are known for photosynthesis in chloroplasts, which produces energy, they also need mitochondria for cellular respiration, a process that occurs in mitochondria and generates ATP, the cell's energy currency. This means that plant cells have both chloroplasts for photosynthesis and mitochondria for cellular respiration.
mo-oneandmore 12-Jul-25, 12:34	Paul Your "Noncense" commonent. Exactly Any man, animal or tree should be able to see that if they have taught themselves how to assemble, and/or separate the facts from the fiction and THINK no, so what's gone astray with you, Vic? Not that I'm arguing that the Holy Bible is all fiction, Victoria.

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