Humbled by Hubble

[Roosters for ever]

I think that's a fudge, personally. Quantum foam isn't "nothing". A quantum field isn't "nothing", even if its value happens to be zero everywhere at some particular time.

I recall it went something like this....
We once saw and defined nothing as "empty space" ....it certainly looks like nothing! and then it was shown that this empty space that we saw as nothing, was seething with virtual particles popping in and out of existence...or the "Casimir Effect"
He then goes on to define "nothing" as an unstable physical state or the quantum vacuum. He argues this "nothing" as a bubbling, dynamic field of virtual particles popping in and out of existence, capable of spontaneously creating "something" (matter and energy) through quantum fluctuations. A Universe from nothing in effect.
I havn't the book at this time, as I lent it out a while back and have not yet got it back.

If he wants to say that the universe came from a bunch of quantum fields, that still leaves open the question of where the quantum fields came from.

He speculates that these quantum fields defined as nothing, are what has existed for eternity basically.
Personally I find that far easier to accept than some magical supernatural creator.

(I must admit, I lost a lot of respect for Krauss after the details of various incidents in his personal life came to light. Turns out he also spent time hobnobbing with Jeffrey Epstein, and he's in the Epstein files - including where he asked Epstein for advice on how to handle negative publicity surrounding allegations of sexual harassment.

Not that any of this impacts whether he knows his physics or not, but it does mean that I'm not going to be giving him any money by buying his books, going forward.)

I had not heard of that and would have felt likewise. I bought his book long before I ever heard of Epstein.

 

[Roosters for ever]

Yes, it has always seemed to me that the hypothesis of the universe expanding from fluctuations in fields with a net value of zero is chiefly of interest in that it implicitly denies the concept of an original singularity, which is one of the other hypotheses. It is after all meaningless to speak of a "field" unless it has some spatial extent. Also it implies there was no start to time, i.e. no t=0 moment, as there is in the singularity hypothesis.

But neither of these conjectures is really science, as there is no way to make any observation to discriminate between these ideas.

A singularity, both from whence the big bang arose and what we have at the center of black holes, are where our laws of physics and General relativity break down. So it really doesn't deny the singularity concept. He "speculates" on what is happening at the singularity/quantum/Planck realm of space and time in some as yet unknown state, this unknown state being the quantum foam.
The start to time t=0 is the same as the start to space, "AS WE KNOW THEM" possibly speculatively from an epoch where we don't know them. (Or the quantum foam)
Yes it is speculation or if you like, conjecture, but Krauss doesn't hide from that position.

 

[Roosters for ever]

Yes, it has always seemed to me that the hypothesis of the universe expanding from fluctuations in fields with a net value of zero is chiefly of interest in that it implicitly denies the concept of an original singularity, which is one of the other hypotheses. It is after all meaningless to speak of a "field" unless it has some spatial extent. Also it implies there was no start to time, i.e. no t=0 moment, as there is in the singularity hypothesis.

But neither of these conjectures is really science, as there is no way to make any observation to discriminate between these ideas.

beil:

The big bang was the beginning of space as we know it. Space came into existence at the big bang and it has been expanding ever since. That's the theory.

 

[beil]

I am interested to know what your experience of World War II was like. Would you like to share a bit more about yourself? I don't get to talk to many 95 year olds. You must have a lot of experience worth sharing that would have to be more interesting that your pseudo-physics.

Once bombing became menacing, we kids were evacuated, like our equals in London. First trip to Chechislovakia in 1941, top secret/hidden because of impending invasion of Russia. Another 6 month in Austria, then on the Baltic seaside. Often saw hundrets of B17s, escort fighters. planes falling out of the sky. Music teacher secretly playing us Jewish composers. After Stalingrad prayer in church. ha ha. Lucky to be in the last pocket in May 1945. because !4 year olds in Berlin, Aachen were drafted into the auxiliary, -armed with bazookas, often executed when captured. thought to be Nazi fanatics, -- really boy scouts with German flavor. Left for North America to escape the constant turmoil in Europe.

 

[Roosters for ever]

Once bombing became menacing, we kids were evacuated, like our equals in London. First trip to Chechislovakia in 1941, top secret/hidden because of impending invasion of Russia. Another 6 month in Austria, then on the Baltic seaside. Often saw hundrets of B17s, escort fighters. planes falling out of the sky. Music teacher secretly playing us Jewish composers. After Stalingrad prayer in church. ha ha. Lucky to be in the last pocket in May 1945. because !4 year olds in Berlin, Aachen were drafted into the auxiliary, -armed with bazookas, often executed when captured. thought to be Nazi fanatics, -- really boy scouts with German flavor. Left for North America to escape the constant turmoil in Europe.

Wow!!! As a 95 year old, and going through what you have, let me say that I admire your interests in astronomy/cosmology, despite having a wrong concept or two. If I personally have been hard on you (which I think I was in one particular post) I apologise.
What you have gone through and experienced, is astonishing, and I dips my lid to you.
My only criticism is that when you left Europe, it was for North America, instead of Australia. Unless of course you mean Canada.
If you mean the USA, to me anyway, it appears that this once great country under Trump, is now going through what Germany went through when Hitler came to power.
Anyway take it easy, and remember if you had come to Australia instead of USA, you would be receiving a telegram/document from King Charlie once you make the century mark, which I have no doubt you will. My congratulations in advance!
I have a way to go yet as I am only a spring chicken at 81 going on 82 year old.

 

[beil]

Wow!!! As a 95 year old, and going through what you have, let me say that I admire your interests in astronomy/cosmology, despite having a wrong concept or two. If I personally have been hard on you (which I think I was in one particular post) I apologise.
What you have gone through and experienced, is astonishing, and I dips my lid to you.
My only criticism is that when you left Europe, it was for North America, instead of Australia. Unless of course you mean Canada.
If you mean the USA, to me anyway, it appears that this once great country under Trump, is now going through what Germany went through when Hitler came to power.
Anyway take it easy, and remember if you had come to Australia instead of USA, you would be receiving a telegram/document from King Charlie once you make the century mark, which I have no doubt you will. My congratulations in advance!
I have a way to go yet as I am only a spring chicken at 81 going on 82 year old.

Well thank you for the personal slip in this science topic. It was a tossup for me in the 1950s between Australia and Canada to escape the mayhem of the Eurasian continent. I opted for Canada* because it was closer, my re-connection to the love of my life. Would have had a blast in OZ, with my favored sport: Surfing. Still have a 12 feet long board.
There is a deep meaning to life, and war drives that point very close to requiring an answer ( all the powers working together for this senseless, ultimately total killing of all life). So, hence my deep interest in the works of a possible creator. The more important issue.

My note to I am reading, as you recommended Weinberg's "The first 3 minutes" and found already 3 references to " pure energy" i.e. energy unattached to a known carrier, thereby bolstering my concurrent contention that there must have uncreated energy in eternal time before there was a
Hubble expansion, constant.
* Never been back to Berlin btw.

 

[beil]

That happened long before there were any stars or galaxies or what we might call regular matter (atoms, molecules, etc.)

Well, at the large scale of galaxies and stars and things, the only force that really exerts an influence between those things is gravity. Galaxies contain stars that interact with one another to bind the galaxy together gravitationally. But on an extragalactic scale, what we see instead is that galaxies are moving away from one another, apparently at increasing speeds.

So, really it's mostly a matter of the scale you're talking about.

As I said, the big bang happened everywhere. The universe has no centre. Galaxies aren't expanding outwards from a central point somewhere in the universe. Instead, all galaxies are moving away from every other galaxy (unless they are part of a galaxy cluster bound together essentially by the local gravity of the component galaxies).

If I understand things correctly, I would assume that the newest galaxies show the greatest relative velocities - or, rather, the speeds of all galaxies now are higher than they were in the past - since the universe as a whole seems to be expanding faster than it did earlier in its history.

Escape velocities from what?

 

[beil]

Escape velocities from what?

the book "The first 3 Minutes" mentions "escape velocity" several times. and it means a movement outward to a condition further apart from a tighter packed past volume. A earlier smaller volume filled with a higher temperature , higher speeds.

 

[beil]

There was no point of origin. All of the observable universe/spacetime came into existence at the BB. All of the universe/spacetime evolved at the BB. That's all we know with any certainty at this time. Everything we know of and can observe evolved from that fluctuation in the quantum foam, we now call the BB. The rest is speculation...some good, some not so good, others unscientific at best.
If this sort of speculation grabs you, then get a hold of Professor Lawrence Krauss' book, "A Universe from Nothing" and another great read, is Stephen Weinberg,s "The First Three Minutes"

 

[beil]

well
, as you recommended,.I read SW's "3 Minutes" he mentions "pure energy" several times, energy not as a property of some object. my contention is that there is an Energytime, predating our universe which is in spacetime.

 

[Pinball1970]

well
, as you recommended,.I read SW's "3 Minutes" he mentions "pure energy" several times, energy not as a property of some object. my contention is that there is an Energytime, predating our universe which is in spacetime.

Please give the context from Weinberg, he may be referring to radiation as opposed to mass.
As advised before sir, Energy time is not a thing and you are in the hard science SF.

 

[beil]

Please give the context from Weinberg, he may be referring to radiation as opposed to mass.
As advised before sir, Energy time is not a thing and you are in the hard science SF.

One of the 3 eferences is from page 91 -- At the temperature of several billion degrees-- " matter and Antimatter can easily be created out of PURE ENERGY --"
Pure energy to me meaning without a carrier.

 

[beil]

Please give the context from Weinberg, he may be referring to radiation as opposed to mass.
As advised before sir, Energy time is not a thing and you are in the hard science SF.

Rereading the passages, it appears that Weinberg is using the terms Pure energy and pure radiant energy interchangeably. Which leads to the

Question what did Einstein have in mind when writing e=mc^2.
we are discussing Hubble's work here, based on spectra, dark lines carried to us by light, radiation.
There was at one time during the first 3 minutes much more radiation, light than matter
so, perhaps light is both the messenger and the source of it all. The All aka universe.

 

[James R]

One of the 3 eferences is from page 91 -- At the temperature of several billion degrees-- " matter and Antimatter can easily be created out of PURE ENERGY --"

I don't know what he means by "pure energy". Energy isn't a substance that things can be created out of.

Pure energy to me meaning without a carrier.

Energy isn't a substance that can be carried. Nor does it make any sense to define energy in the absence of a defined system that has energy as a property.

Rereading the passages, it appears that Weinberg is using the terms Pure energy and pure radiant energy interchangeably.

If Weinberg meant "photons", he should have written "photons". Photons are definitely not "pure energy". They are not even energy. Energy is a number we can associate with a photon. If you like, it's perfectly fine to say that one of the properties a photon has is its energy. That goes along with other properties, like its spin, its momentum, its frequency, etc.

You wouldn't claim you can make matter out of frequency, so why would you claim you can make it out of energy?

It's a bit like saying "I can make a tennis ball from the 'pure' colour yellow."

Question what did Einstein have in mind when writing e=mc^2.

It's a derived result from the special theory of relativity. It says that a certain amount of energy is associated with a given amount of mass.

The point is that, in interactions between objects, mass is not necessarily conserved, but total energy often is. Also, part or all of the energy associated with the rest mass can be "transformed" into other types of energy.

 

[exchemist]

I don't know what he means by "pure energy". Energy isn't a substance that things can be created out of.

Energy isn't a substance that can be carried. Nor does it make any sense to define energy in the absence of a defined system that has energy as a property.

If Weinberg meant "photons", he should have written "photons". Photons are definitely not "pure energy". They are not even energy. Energy is a number we can associate with a photon. If you like, it's perfectly fine to say that one of the properties a photon has is its energy. That goes along with other properties, like its spin, its momentum, its frequency, etc.

You wouldn't claim you can make matter out of frequency, so why would you claim you can make it out of energy?

It's a bit like saying "I can make a tennis ball from the 'pure' colour yellow."

It's a derived result from the special theory of relativity. It says that a certain amount of energy is associated with a given amount of mass.

The point is that, in interactions between objects, mass is not necessarily conserved, but total energy often is. Also, part or all of the energy associated with the rest mass can be "transformed" into other types of energy.

The quote relates to this passage:

Ultimately, at the temperatures of several thousand million degrees that we encounter in the early universe, even atomic nuclei dissociate readily into their constituents, protons and neutrons. Reactions occur so rapidly that matter and anti- matter can easily be created out of pure energy, or annihilated back again. Under these conditions the conserved quantities are not the numbers of particles of any specific kind. Instead, the relevant conservation laws are reduced to just that small number which (as far as we know) are respected under all possible conditions.

This is found on p.93 of the version I found on line here: https://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Steven Weinberg - The First Three Minutes, A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe.pdf

It is unfortunate wording, but from the context what he means is that matter, i.e. particles with mass, can be created from the energy in (massless) radiation. One suspects Weinberg took a decision, when writing this for a non-scientific public, not to worry about misleading people over the notion of "pure energy". (Roosters for ever will know, from his queries on the .net site some years back, that energy is indeed just a property of a system and that therefore "pure energy" is a wrong idea.)

I've skimmed the introduction and Chapter 7 which deals with hypotheses around the first 1/00th of a second. Nowhere does Weinberg suggest the universe at this time consisted of "pure energy". On the contrary, he speaks of a "cosmic soup" of leptons, photons and hadrons in thermal equilibrium at a very high temperature. So this soup constitutes the "system" to which an energy can be ascribed.

 

[beil]

I don't know what he means by "pure energy". Energy isn't a substance that things can be created out of.

Energy isn't a substance that can be carried. Nor does it make any sense to define energy in the absence of a defined system that has energy as a property.

If Weinberg meant "photons", he should have written "photons". Photons are definitely not "pure energy". They are not even energy. Energy is a number we can associate with a photon. If you like, it's perfectly fine to say that one of the properties a photon has is its energy. That goes along with other properties, like its spin, its momentum, its frequency, etc.

You wouldn't claim you can make matter out of frequency, so why would you claim you can make it out of energy?

It's a bit like saying "I can make a tennis ball from the 'pure' colour yellow."

It's a derived result from the special theory of relativity. It says that a certain amount of energy is associated with a given amount of mass.

The point is that, in interactions between objects, mass is not necessarily conserved, but total energy often is. Also, part or all of the energy associated with the rest mass can be "transformed" into other types of energy.

I found the book hard slogging. I can not defend Stephen Weinberg's choice of terms or my hamfisted version of it. When I think of Energy it is a very general term. as it is expressed in many forms, (let the learned reader fill in the specific iteration that fits the circumstance) after all, even the most famous equation does not specify any specific expression of the term 'e'
Hubble and his followers must have measured the energy of the incoming radiation from these distant and early objects.
What would it have been like, what would have been the readings of these tests ( assuming it would have been possible) at an earlier time, during the "first 3 minute" if you will?
What would have then been the redshift with an very rapidly expanding ("explosive" is the term used) space, or distance between objects?

 

[Pinball1970]

I found the book hard slogging

I read it in the late 80s early 90s and remember being very impressed with it. It is not an easy read though, we agree there.
I think I connected because I was just getting interested in physics at the time, I was lucky that I was mixing with some very smart people on a daily basis.
Five of those people were studying Physics, two maths, lots of "computer" people and the occasional Chemist and life science guys.
They explained a lot of the big stuff, star formation/supernova and where the elements came from and the first three minutes.
Besides feeling spectacularly stupid and ignorant, I was also completely fascinated.
Hawking said the book was good for the general reader in his own book, Big bang to black holes, I can't remember the title.

 

[Roosters for ever]

The obvious question remains, "where did energy come from?" The ultimate answer is from a point approaching infinite density, at which our laws of physics and general relativity fail us, or from an unknown state of existence. From this unknown state of existence, emerged time and space in a more familiar picture. The definition of a singularity being a point of infinite density and spacetime curvature is redundant and rejected nowdays by most physicists.
Logically all we can say is that the singularity is a region of spacetime at the quantum/Planck level, (t+10-43 seconds or thereabouts) where all our laws of physics and general relativity fail us.
We are able to deduce that matter did not exist, but that possibly what existed was spacetime in an unknown form we call quantum foam.
Ultimately, because our current laws of physics break down at the singularity, the true origin of the universe's energy remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in science.
Cosmologists don't have a satisfying answer, but I'll take "we don't know yet" any day over "it just is"
What I did find was...

--Universe Forum--Big Bang--What powered it?

A new form of energy may have powered the Big Bang.

Although astronomers understand what the universe was like just a few seconds after the Big Bang, no one yet knows what happened at the instant of the Big Bang - or what came before. What powered the Big Bang? Where did all the stuff in the universe come from in the first place? What was the universe like just before the Big Bang?

Scientists have developed a number of new ideas about what might have powered the Big Bang. They are also creating bold new space missions to test these ideas.

The "inflationary universe."
The leading idea is called the "inflationary universe" model. The key assumption of this model is that just before the Big Bang, space was filled with an unstable form of energy, whose nature is not yet known. At some instant, this energy was transformed into the fundamental particles from which arose all the matter we observe today. That instant marks what we call the Big Bang.

A remarkable consequence of this model is that, if even a pinpoint of space contained this primordial form of energy, then the pinpoint of space would expand extremely rapidly and would bring into existence more of the same kind of energy. In fact, all the matter in the universe could have arisen from a bit of primordial energy weighing no more than a pea. This amazing scenario is a consequence of applying Einstein's theory of gravity to the inflationary universe model. Thus the known laws of nature can in principle explain where the matter and energy in the universe came from, provided there was at least a tiny seed of energy to begin with.

A model is useful only if it makes predictions that can be tested with evidence. The inflation model makes several testable predictions. One of the most important is that the primordial energy would have been "lumpy" - i.e., unevenly spread out in space - due to a kind of quantum noise that arose when the universe was extremely small. This pattern would have been transferred to the particles that burst into existence during the Big Bang. As a result, the matter that filled the universe then would not have been uniformly spread out; some regions would have slightly more matter, some slightly less. This lumpiness of the baby universe is fortunate for us: Had the universe been uniformly filled with matter, then stars and planets would never have formed. We wouldn't be here.

Evidence for the inflationary model of the universe.
If the inflationary universe model is correct, then we should see this lumpy pattern in the afterglow from the Big Bang. Astronomers have observed exactly this predicted pattern, in a spectacular picture of the Big Bang's afterglow, taken in 2003 by NASA's WMAP space probe. The picture shows us what the universe looked like about 300,000 years after the instant of the Big Bang.

The inflationary universe model is important because, for the first time, it gives us a glimpse of how nature may have arranged to create all the matter in the universe: only a tiny "seed" amount of space and energy would have sufficed.

But what was this primordial form of energy? And where did the "seed" of space and energy come from in the first place? How did the universe as a whole begin?
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
As per Lawrence Krauss', interesting speculation, it promotes thought and as per Isaac Newton's reported quote" I see as far as I do, because I stand on the shoulder's of giants" until appropriate evidence is found, (a validated QGT) the answer "we don't know yet" any day over "it just is" is the only one.
The highlighted final sentence remains as the current position, while interesting speculative scenarios are put forward.

 

[beil]

If the farthest objects show the greatest expansion velocities-- Their signal, image must be the oldest, having travelled the longest. -- so:
why do we not recognize that outward velocities were greatest just after the so called . "Big Bang" The Start, The beginning of spacetime? ?

Roosters for ever​

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• May 24, 2026
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• #98

quote:" --The obvious question remains, "where did energy come from?" The ultimate answer is from a point approaching infinite density, at which our laws of physics and general relativity fail us--", so:
If our laws fail us to account for the pre-Big Bank era, who says that Energy then did / does have to have a carrier, is always the condition of Matter?
Energy is eternal, is un-created,l can not be destroyed, is already in the future. exists in Energytime, ( see the 'ALMA' thread).

 

[James R]

Energy is not "stuff". Energy is an accounting system. Just a number.