Recent content by Athanatsius

Yes, but there have also been naturalists who were nuts with wacky beliefs, such as Stalin and Mao. If any leader's philosophy or religion calls for warmongering, oppression or injustice to advance their cause, beware. Carson has never said anything to indicate that he is like that, and the...

I rather doubt that Carson would venture to intrude into trying to cut funding for the sciences he is not trained in. But I think that we do have to admit that there is a lot of speculation and that there are "fudge factors" attached to the Big Bang theory, so he could eventually be regarded...

Again, thanks for taking the time to reply and clarifying some things for me, Peter.

Thanks again for your responses, Peter. Are you sure that the difference between "negative" gravitational potential energy and the "positive" kinetic and rest energy of baryonic matter is meaningless? Could it not be reflective of some energy or force that caused or is acting upon the universe -...

Peter, thanks for taking the time to answer. OK, I see your point that energy is not a vector. Perhaps I used a poor example, but I think you see my point that if a negative and positive energy cancel out such that there is zero net energy, there can still be a potential energy difference...

I read through Carroll's article again and it is making sense to me now. What I was reacting to was the following by Vilenken:“The way the universe gets around that problem is that gravitational energy is negative. That’s a consequence of the fact, mathematically proven, that the energy of a...

"How?" Suppose a strong man is pulling your left arm, and and another strong man is pulling your right arm in exactly the opposite direction. You then have zero net energy pulling at you, but certainly not zero energy, or you would not feel that your arms are about to be pulled out of their...

It seems that some of the new "free lunch" cosmological models promote the idea that if the universe has zero net energy, zero energy was required to create it. However, a closed system can have tremendous potential energy but zero net energy, so the idea seems questionable to me, even if the...