306. Fear of a Black Universe (5)
1 (45m 18s):
Well, here's my point. The,
2 (45m 20s):
There is this idea that there was nothing in the early university That's right. In its
1 (45m 24s):
Past. Yeah. Well, this is where I'm going with this. You know, theists always say, Well, you can't get something from nothing. Well, apparently you can, if what you just said is correct, but I guess it depends on what you mean by nothing.
2 (45m 35s):
That's right. So then what you know, so then, you know, That's right. So nothing meaning that, you know, you'd get no part, you know, if I, I can now define the notion maybe of empty space with no particles, right? We can run the clock back and model a universe and, and have a, some description mathematically of that. We could talk about that. But the minute you sort of turn on quantum mechanics, right? Then it's really an operational question. You know, what fineman and his colleagues taught us is that, that question, it's nothing dependent on what nothing on, for example, at what resolution, temporal resolution scale.
2 (46m 22s):
You are asking that question. You are asking about what's around, What finally would say is that if I, if I, if I can blink my eyes, you know, 1000000000th of a second I'll actually, I, I I, you know, I'll actually see things coming in and out of existence, right? But if I, if I have a very show slow shutter camera, right? Then it'll appear that there's nothing there,
1 (46m 47s):
Right? So yeah, So you, you make a statement in your book about like the early universe, even if you, well, let me see if I get this straight. Even if you took all the stuff out of the universe, there's no physical stuff at all. There would still be the fields. So when people like you or Steven Hawking famously said something like, you know, quantum foam fluctuation out of which the universe arose, what does that mean? Quantum foam fluctuation? It's one of these fields, right? Is that what you're, is that what that means?
2 (47m 15s):
Yeah, it's right, Right. That's right. It's these fields that's, it's these fields seen through a given representation of the field. So, you know, there are different ways of, of describing the field. So for example, I could, I can, I can, the fields are there and then I can say, well, if I choose to look at the feel through the lens of vibrations, right? I'll see this foamy business. But Right. If I look at the feel where those are not good observables, for lack of a better word, I may not, you know, I, I'll probably miss those, but I mean, but Steven is absolutely correct in what he, what he said.
2 (47m 56s):
Of course.
1 (47m 58s):
But I suppose the theist would then say, Well, where did the field come from? Who made that? Is that even the right question? Maybe it's just was al there's always fields and our universe is just in manifestation of one of these fields.
2 (48m 12s):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this goes back to is the field description and the end story, the end game. So right now, what we, what we do have in terms of the physics, we know that we've experimentally tested at the large Padron collider is that it seems that everything, everything, all these fields, but then there's this idea of the unified field theory, the idea that maybe there's some overarching structure that's beyond fields. Okay. Where fields come from and you know, so some people are saying, Well, actually it's strings like string theory and that, you know, the fields emerge from these strings. And in fact, that's a, that's one of the things that actually string theory, so does predict actually you, you know, the, I can start with, with strings and when I quantize these strings, it generates a different vibrational patterns of the strings.
2 (49m 6s):
Give me the different fields actually that we appear, that appear to be different from each other. But from the perspective of string theory, it's just this string that's, that's generating this spectrum of fields. There are some other answers that say maybe it's a matrix, right? That basically it's really, you know, you, you have to give up the very, the very structure of space time that we have been talking about that contained fields, you have to give that up and then, you know, space and time actually become this very weird, bizarre situation that it's hard to even speak about with words. At least I can't do it.
2 (49m 46s):
Right? So there's words like non-communicative geometry, or that maybe the universe is digitized in some ways. It's the idea of how do you interpret, Right? These, these equations is always, you know, gonna be an issue. But I I, I do believe fundamentally that, that there is something beyond in terms of these fields, because the name of the game in, in physics research, at least, it's like we, we have the theory, but what we, what we do now is look at where the theory fails, where it fails experimentally and, or like maybe there's some experimental, you know, some, some anomaly in the experiments that the theory itself cannot explain or fails at explaining or even some issues with the theory, certain divergencies, certain instability in the theory.
2 (50m 36s):
And the idea is that, you know, it's our job to, in trying to fix those problems, right? It could lead us to the correct, the clearer. It's, it's, we're really searching for clarity at the end of the day. So we're not just trying to get lost in the mathematics, right? We're using the math as a tool to give us conceptual clarity about the physics. But there is math that we have to, to, to deal with and we talk to mathematicians and we talk to the experimentalists, but we, it's because we're searching for that clarity.
1 (51m 7s):
Hmm. Just as a, just as a technical note, you know, the, the metaphor of the planet going around the sun, not by gravity, but because the sun distorts it like a, a big lead ball on a rubber sheet and the marble goes around it, not because it's being tugged toward the, the big, the big lead ball, but because it's falling around that warped thing. Okay. How does that explain, you know, my pin just falls. Oops, sorry. You know, the pin just falls straight down. Well, that's gravity. It doesn't, it doesn't seem like that metaphor. It's bending around the weight of what, I mean, it's just falling on my desk.
2 (51m 43s):
Good, good. So the, yeah, so that's good. So the, the, the, the form of the gravitational field, meaning it's shape, it's contours will change, you know, as I go from, from different, when I go from say very close to the earth. So once I'm in, once I've, so there's a notion of, of in the gravitational when I took a two gravitational bodies, right? Where the warping of space time really has to do with also the state of motion. It's not just only a function of like, you know, so gravity, you know, is a dynamical field, right?
2 (52m 26s):
So the warping is not something that's just fixed in time, but it also depends on the velocity. So if, if, if, if the two planets, one plant's moving fast enough, right? It experience a warp of space that's or geodesic, Okay. That is circular or elliptical. However, if it doesn't have a fast enough velocity or it's at rest, the nature of the gravitational field will be to pull it in. So it can be shown that they're both mathematically consistent with Einstein's field equations, meaning the equations that determine these field lines. Okay. Or this warping of the space time. That's a, that's a great question.
1 (53m 6s):
Yeah. Yeah. Good. Now you mentioned the limitations of words, you know, at some point we just end up, we're using words. What do they mean? Do you think There's just some limit epistemological limitations to our cognition. We just don't have the, the words or the mathematics to get at some further question down the line before the big bang or whatever, whatever, where'd the field come from? Well, it came from this and at some point we just hit a wall and we, we can't talk anymore. Right? There's no more math to do. And maybe the aliens, maybe the aliens have brains 10 times the size of ours, cuz they're females have much larger pelvis, so they can have huge headed babies or whatever, and they can figure it out because they have, you know, bigger brain. I don't know, what do you think about that?
2 (53m 48s):
Yeah, yeah. I go back and forth with, with actually that thought because, you know, the kind of things I work on definitely is mind bending, for lack of a better word. And so there are times when I'm just like, okay, I'm getting a headache here. There's no way that, you know, and then there are times where like, I mean, and connected to that is thoughts where I'm like, okay, you know, there are times where I'm like, I wish I was as smart as Edwin, for example, because if I was as smartest Edwin, I'll be able to really see, I'll be able to solve this problem. And then I would have the thought. But imagine that there's a being that's a million times smarter than Edwin.
2 (54m 32s):
Okay. Right. So the question now is, is there, are there things that even that mind or that brain cannot conceive of that has to do with our reality? That's a question that I've, I've definitely asked. And so I come to, so there's a thought experiment that I've had, which is exactly what you said there, which is could it just be that by definition there's just some things definitely the human mind could just never know because of the hardware. Right? Okay. So there's definitely that, I've definitely had that thought and I still lean on that and I still believe that more than this other thought.
2 (55m 13s):
The other thought is, yeah, but it's, it's nuts that if you look at, for example, our percept perceptual apparatus, right? Seeing whatever the different ways we perceive the reality that we're in, that we have that mathematics is this one counter example. Like, it's like through mathematics for example, and now computation, we can know things that we were not designed to know, right? It seems, it seems that like, that we, our perceptions, we can come to know these things. Right? And you know, as you know, Einstein had like this interesting quote, which he said like, the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it's comprehensible at, at all.
2 (55m 59s):
Meaning that there's some things that could be comprehended. Because in his mind, I guess it's just like, that's, that that ability to comprehend, he found it to be incomprehensible. Trying to understand that is incomprehensible, but you know, which is this paradox, which is it appears that every time I think that we are not gonna be able to understand something, somebody understands it. And, and I'm talking about in physics, right?
1 (56m 27s):
Right. Yeah. Although you could apply it to larger questions. Like why, why should you trust science? Why use science? Or what's, how do you know rationality is the rational thing to do? You know, you just turn it on itself and you know, maybe that's just one thought, too many just, just stop asking questions. It's how the hardware runs. You know, we make logical productions and, and it doesn't get it any further to ask again, why is it that way? That's just the way, it's like, it'd be like asking why does my calculator, you know, multiply the way it does. That's what it's designed to do. That's what the hardware does, right? And so, you know, maybe asking those kind of questions, it just, you just hit a wall there and we can't go any further.
