Hawking On The Edge Of The Universe

jackmell

Quote by emc2cracker

And I think we fail to recognize these "critical points" because we have never seen one..

Maybe you're referring to the Big Bang but in ordinary life, we see critical points all around us. The point at which water freezes is a critical point and some descriptions of water reach a "singular point" and cannot be applied to the solid ice. For example, the slope reaches an infinite value and it's past that point that we use some different descriptions to describe it's solid behavior.

In the text, "Perspectives of Non-Linear Dynamics", the author asks,

"what happens to a fly, a corporation stock, a star, or a civilization when respectively a venus flytrap closes, there is a stock market crash, it becomes supernova, or a nuclear war breaks out?"

Singular points are reached in these cases (I believe) and the descriptions for the fly, markets, civilizations, and stars cannot (in some ways) be used to adequately describe the dynamics of the phenomena past these singular points.

I bet that's the way it is with the Universe as a whole. Some qualitative extension of our current understanding will be required to further our understanding of it in the same way the qualitatively different "round earth" was used to answer the question of what happens if we keep walking in a straight line.

Just my opinion. :)

*emc2cracker*

I am talking strictly cosmology, I got the impression you were calling singularities in cosmology critical points.

In short I believe if there is a supreme intelligence then he is a scientist, as such everything we see should be explainable by physics. I am excited to be alive and studying cosmology, I have this crazy dream that maybe years down the road I can contribute, and if I cannot master the math then I'll leave it up to my children whom I am trying to brainwash into becoming cosmologists lol.

I respect your outlook though and I am by no means saying you are wrong, the plain truth is none of us here can say for sure... it may be that infinities are a crucial part of this universe being here and have no explanation.. but I like to think we can figure it out in due time.

TimBowe

No physicist holds that the singularity actually exists it's just an ideal mathematical limit to a series in a sense of calculus.

TimBowe

In Hawking's model time becomes another dimension of space, it is spatialized.

We might decide that there wasn't any singularity. The point is that the raw material doesn't really have to come from anywhere. When you have strong gravitational fields, they can create matter. It may be that there aren't really any quantities which are constant in time in the universe. The quantity of matter is not constant, because matter can be created or destroyed. But we might say that the energy of the universe would be constant, because when you create matter, you need to use energy. And in a sense the energy of the universe is constant; it is a constant whose value is zero. The positive energy of the matter is exactly balanced by the negative energy of the gravitational field. So the universe can start off with zero energy and still create matter. Obviously, the universe starts off at a certain time. Now you can ask: what sets the universe off. There doesn't really have to be any beginning to the universe. It might be that space and time together are like the surface of the earth, but with two more dimensions, with degrees of latitude playing the role of time.

Stephen Hawking

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TimBowe	No physicist holds that the singularity actually exists it's just an ideal mathematical limit to a series in a sense of calculus.