Energy where does it come from?!

bluey

Krauss carries more weight than you or I because he is an expert in his field,for you to say he is very wrong and its just not true carries no weight whatsoever in the scheme of things,the only alternative argument (as weak as it is)I have heard has come from theology.

Whovian

Ugh ...

And I'd say that Krauss's argument's even weaker because it isn't exactly accurate with Quantum Mechanics.

And there's one more alternative argument, probably more accepted. That the Big Bang was the start of time, so thinking about before it is invalid.

And there's that argument again. "Experts cannot do wrong."

Farahday

There are two basic phenomena in the cosmos
1) Existence
2) Change
Energy is the potential or kinetic ability to cause change.
Since something must exist in order to be changed, change (energy) is a function of existence.
BTW - if change is a function of existence, the cosmos wasn't created. Existence is not the result of cause and effect (change) - just the opposite is true, existence is the source of cause and effect.
Too bad contemporary science has not recognized this simple axiom.

SHISHKABOB

bluey, twofish-quant just said that there's a good number of ideas about what happened before inflation. Those would be alternative arguments. Have you read about those and determined that they are not good arguments? Or have you only read this book by this guy who apparently has bad science in his book?

I have never read the book, and I don't know cosmology either. But if a guy with a doctorate in theoretical astrophysics is telling me that there are things that are wrong in a book, then I will believe him. I'd also like to understand what exactly is wrong, but I don't have a lot of knowledge about cosmology, GR, etc. in the first place, so I'd better learn those things first.

twofish-quant

I''m also an expert in astrophysics theory. There are people on this list who know more cosmology than I do, so if they say I'm wrong, I'll defer to them.

Basically,

1) WMAP results show that the universe has dark energy. If you have dark energy, that means that the total content of the universe not zero.

2) I'm trying to come up with an argument that non-technical people can follow that's better than "just trust me" about "virtual particles." Basically, if you take an introductory book to particle physics (say Aitchison and Hey's Gauge Theories in Particle Physics) most of the book involves the rules that you need to calculate virtual particle interactions, and you just can't have "something come out of nothing." For example, if you want an electron to appear, the charge conservation says that you always have to have an anti-electron.

Having a particle appear out of nowhere with the gravitational field to negate the energy has never been observed. Yes, you *could* argue that it happens by magic, but then that weakens the argument considerably.

3) Krauss's ideas are a rough guess, but they are *NOT* any sort of scientific consensus. One thing that seriously worries me is that by giving speeches on things that aren't consensus views, he ends up discrediting things that are. For example, we know that there was a "big bang" 13.9 billion years ago, and we can trace the history up until t=10^-52 seconds after time zero. At 10^-52 seconds, our theories break down.

One thing about scientists is that scientists are more likely to say "I don't know."

One other problem with Krauss, is that by presenting his ideas as "the consensus view" he doesn't talk about the dozen or so other ideas that people have had for what happened at t=0, for example. You can google the terms in quotes

Leo Smolin's "cosmological natural selection" - universes are created by black holes
The "ekpyrotic universe" - universes are created by colliding membranes
Various "cylic models" - Baum-Frampton and Steinhardt–Turok - universes are created by orbiting membrane
"loop quantum gravity" - the universe was always here but when you compress things a lot, gravity turns repulsive
the "eternal inflation" model - the universe is this constant expanding field and pops out.

This is an area of active research, and where I very, very strongly object to is Krauss giving the impression that people have come to a consensus about what is going on. Right now, everyone is guessing and there is no scientific consensus.

I ***hate*** argument by authority, and I'm trying to figure out how to convince you without saying "trust me" or pointing you to ten pages of equations that you can't read.

But, I've just given five scenarios for creating the universe that are scientifically viable at this point, so at the least, Krauss's book is very flawed because he has your attention for several hundred pages without pointing out that there are scenarios for time less than zero other than the one he presents.

Once I've convinced you that there *are* other scenarios for starting the universe, and that Krauss is at least remiss for not mentioning them, then you can ask yourself *why* people are looking for these alternative scenarios. If we've got "everything figured out" then why are people coming up with new ideas. The answer is that we haven't got everything figured out, and the scenario that Krauss presents has some pretty major flaws.

The other thing is that I did a literature search on Krauss (http://adswww.harvard.edu/) and while he has written excellent papers in cosmology, he has as far as I can tell, never written a peer-reviewed paper on what he talks about in his book. If he did, the reviewers would likely rip the paper to shreds.

The thing about scientists, is that when speaking in a public forum, they need to be very careful to separate what is consensus from what is personal speculation, because people like you can't tell. It's great that Krauss is thinking about these things, but it's a very, very, very bad thing that he hasn't made clearer what is personal speculation, and what is accepted consensus.

twofish-quant

Also one thing that I'm looking for, is some sort of review paper that will outline the major pre-big bang scenarios, and their current viability.

Mark M

Too add to the above comments, there are many, many models besides Krauss' idea of quantum cosmology that are just as viable scenarios. Here is an overview of pre-big bang string cosmology:

http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9907067

An introduction of to Loop Quantum Cosmology:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.5160

Sean Carroll's model:

http://arxiv.org/abs/hepth/0410270

Just to name a few. Also note that these models are also authored by cosmologists too, so the fact that Krauss is a cosmologist doesn't automatically validate his scenario.

bluey

Lets look at an analogy here,I post on a forum that I have a brain tumor and seek advice on a neurosurgeons new technique that he has written a book about.no-one it seems is against it except for a patronizing ear nose and throat specialist who thinks everyone is below his intelligents if they don't follow his point of view but strangely there are no objections from other neurosurgeons?

twofish-quant

Look at the thread, someone just posted a nice citation to other papers.

See also

http://blog.vixra.org/2010/09/08/kra...e-against-god/

The actual situation is that you have a famous neurosurgeon that publishes a book with so many flaws that even an ear, nose, and throat specialist can find serious flaws with it, it got to be pretty bad. So bad in fact that most other neurosurgeons think it's a waste of time to argue against it.

Don't mistake silence for agreement.

Many people dislike religion because they dislike "argument from authority." It's ironic that you we're getting into a situation where the argument is from authority. Also "argument from personality" is also a bad heuristic. If someone is a patronizing, arrogant jerk that means that they are unpleasant, it doesn't mean that they are wrong. Maybe the doctor is being a patronizing, arrogant jerk, because they are trying to save your life (i.e. any episode of House).

There are enough papers that outline enough alternative scenarios to Krauss that I think you can conclude that:

1) there is no scientific consensus on what happened before the Big Bang
2) Krauss's book is deeply flawed for not mentioning that

My own concern is that because Krauss does a horrible job of separating personal views from scientific consensus will lead to disaster because it's quite likely that when we do figure out what's going on before the big bang, it may have nothing to do with what Krauss says. At that point people start questioning things that *are* in the scientific consensus.

twofish-quant

One other thing. Physicists and astrophysicists communicate in a way that seems confrontational and arrogant to outsiders. There are some very interesting sociolinguistic things that are going on, and I've found that I've had to very, very consciously communicate in a different way at work.

The basic issue is that one of the purposes of language is to reduce social conflict, so in day-to-day speech, people will communicate in ways that reduce social conflict. To do science it's necessary to encourage conflicting ideas, so astrophysicists will usually communicate in ways that deliberately *increase* social conflict.

Also the culture of science is such that intellectual conflict doesn't necessary correspond to social disapproval. For example, in a non-astrophysics situation, if I present an idea and then everyone starts saying how *bad* it is, that means that they don't respect me. By contrast, in an astrophysics situation, if I present an idea and people don't try to kill it, that means that I don't have much respect. (This applies to Krauss's book, the fact that it's being ignored means that it's not being respected.)

There are also linguistic cues that are different. For example, in ordinary daily life, if I strongly defend an idea, that implies that I very strongly emotionally support that idea, and there are these social cues that indicate strength of belief. One thing that will happen in astrophysics is that someone that is arguing with you will *deliberately* hide how strongly they believe something, so that you focus the argument on the idea rather than on the person. So you have people very strongly defending ideas that they don't believe in, because someone has to act as "devil's advocate." (I've found that lawyers do the same thing.)

OmCheeto

What a wonderful question.

I often ask such things.

I'm a former electrician by trade, and thought I knew how diodes worked. One day, I entered university, and it seemed there was more to their life then just a simple bias. They were filled with dopes and holes and what-not. Later, I joined a science forum and probed a bit deeper, into the quantum world of diodes. And being that I had no comprehension of the quantum world, I decided I did not know how diodes worked.

hmmm....

So where does energy come from?

To me, that's like asking where "red" came from.

Energy is.

Chronos

That is an obvious indulgence in 'appeal to authority' logic. But, of course, it was an understandable reaction to being unfairly confronted with genuine physics. So, short of admitting the possibility of error, being cryptic and vague is always appealing.

bluey

What has this to do with where energy comes from? I find your statement puzzling, bipolar maybe? What about instead of unfairly confronting me with genuine physics why don't you fairly confront me with these genuine physics that show me where energy comes from?

Hypo

Huh, I guess after a while this question goes deeper and deeper in our minds and leave you wondering. Welcome you all... To my world!

Hypo

I guess no one knows. Can't be created, nor destroyed what a major load of confusion.
Whats left is philosophy to answered what you and I can't see lol.

Drakkith

Energy comes from the state of a system at a point in time. It is simply the result of the way it is "setup" for lack of a better description. A ball rolling down a hill has a certain velocity with respect to a stationary object at the base of the hill. Knowing the balls mass and velocity we can find out how much "kinetic energy" the ball has, which just means we can predict how much work we can accomplish using that rolling ball. That potential to use the ball to perform work is what we call "energy".

Personally I don't see energy as a "thing", so it cannot be created or destroyed.

OmCheeto

Has anyone answered my question yet? "Where does 'red' come from"?

Or should I start a new thread?