The Hadron collider

[Roo]

What are Mr. Roo's views on the following?

1) what collided to cause the Big-bang if there was no matter, atoms, elements etc before it?

I ain't even going to try to write this, so over to the man himself....

'Hmm, a number of theories on this from sensible all the way to giant turtles. For most of us the question itself has a bad assumption in it. Time did not exist 'before' the big bang. So there was no 'before'. Essentially Time is a dimension (one of at least 4, maybe 13+ if string theory turns out to be correct). As you go back towards the beginning of time then time and space sort of merge/swap places. Rather than time being tracked back in a straight line to the 'beginning' it starts to curve as you get there and never quite reaches it (asymptotic). I think there is a good image of it in A Brief History of Time (sad, I know, but someone did actually read it).'

Edited May 21, 2008 by Roo

[the_white_stuff]

My thinking on time (from a totally amateur viewpoint) is that its just a form of measure used by humans. The universe doesn't 'know' what time is does it?

I did start reading A Briefer History of time a few months ago then just stopped for some reason. I'll have to dust it off and start again methinks.

[Admiral_Bobski]

My thinking on time (from a totally amateur viewpoint) is that its just a form of measure used by humans. The universe doesn't 'know' what time is does it?

I did start reading A Briefer History of time a few months ago then just stopped for some reason. I'll have to dust it off and start again methinks.

I would highly recommend reading "The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene - it's extremely well written, makes very complicated theories accessible to the layman and is basically just a joy to read. It covers all the main points of current physics research, including current thoughts on String Theory (largely by dint of the fact that Dr Greene is a String Theorist). If you want to go more deeply into String Theory then Dr Greene's book "The Elegant Universe" is a great place to start. Even in this layman's guide, though, it does start to get quite complicated towards the tail-end of the book.

(And to tie this all in to the topic in hand, Dr Greene mentions the LHC and what he, and others, hope it will confirm...!)

There is a section in both books, I believe, that discusses possible origins of the Universe from random vacuum fluctuations explained in the book), which are possible using current quantum theory, to two space-time sheets (called "branes") smashing together, which is a possibility if String Theory holds true in the future.

Time is a rather difficult concept to discuss because it's such an intangible thing, but it seems to be a dimension like space (there may even be more than one time dimension, it has been suggested, but I'm not sure quite how that would work). The human concept of time as a measure is to the Time Dimension what a yard or a metre is to the Space Dimension - a yard is a manmade construct, created as a way of measuring space. A second or an hour is a manmade construct, created as a way of measuring time.

Hope this helps (though it probably doesn't!).

CB

Edited May 21, 2008 by Captain_Bobski

[I can't believe it's not better]

I ain't even going to try to write this, so over to the man himself....

'Hmm, a number of theories on this from sensible all the way to giant turtles. For most of us the question itself has a bad assumption in it. Time did not exist 'before' the big bang. So there was no 'before'. Essentially Time is a dimension (one of at least 4, maybe 13+ if string theory turns out to be correct). As you go back towards the beginning of time then time and space sort of merge/swap places. Rather than time being tracked back in a straight line to the 'beginning' it starts to curve as you get there and never quite reaches it (asymptotic). I think there is a good image of it in A Brief History of Time (sad, I know, but someone did actually read it).'

How do we know that was really Mr Roo saying this stuff?!

[Roo]

How do we know that was really Mr Roo saying this stuff?!

You don't.....maybe it was a pixie from the planet Zarg!

[seriously, this has some good information on it, from his old antimatter research group]

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/positron-physics/

Edited May 22, 2008 by Roo

[stewfox]

What are Mr. Roo's views on the following?

1) what collided to cause the Big-bang if there was no matter, atoms, elements etc before it?

God created the heaven and the Earth so I guess created the big bang

[Gray-Wolf]

God created the heaven and the Earth so I guess created the big bang

and who, pray tell, created Mr God???

[pottyprof]

God created the heaven and the Earth so I guess created the big bang

and who, pray tell, created Mr God???

Lets not go down this route any further guys..

[laserguy]

Oh the suspense,the suspense!!....

http://www.lhcountdown.com/

[J07]

Oh the suspense,the suspense!!....

http://www.lhcountdown.com/

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Bloody computers....and I was only trying to recreate the big bang!

[phil47uk]

I ain't even going to try to write this, so over to the man himself....

'Hmm, a number of theories on this from sensible all the way to giant turtles. For most of us the question itself has a bad assumption in it. Time did not exist 'before' the big bang. So there was no 'before'. Essentially Time is a dimension (one of at least 4, maybe 13+ if string theory turns out to be correct). As you go back towards the beginning of time then time and space sort of merge/swap places. Rather than time being tracked back in a straight line to the 'beginning' it starts to curve as you get there and never quite reaches it (asymptotic). I think there is a good image of it in A Brief History of Time (sad, I know, but someone did actually read it).'

I read it, plus the universe in a nutshell and a whole other bunch of books, but as a musician I can't say I was that much wiser in the final analysis. I have to read the same paragraph about twenty times before it starts to sink in.. But at least as a layman I'm having a go I suppose. The Physics teachers in all the schools I go to look blankley when I start going on about modes and their use within contemporary music, so I don't feel too bad:lol:

Edited May 22, 2008 by phil47uk

[Admiral_Bobski]

As a slight aside, but staying with the theme of time...

String theory has some interesting things to say about time. If String theory is true then there's a good chance that space and time are granular - that is to say that they are not infinitely divisible, completely continuous structures but are composed of indivisible chunks. In this case, the smallest chunk of space would be one Planck length (about 1.6 x 10^-35 m) and the smallest chunk of time would be the Planck time (about 10^-43 seconds).

If this is the case then we have actually probed back to the Big Bang as far as it is possible to go - if the smallest unit of time is 10^-43 seconds (which is how close to the Big Bang we have been able to extrapolate) then the only step further back is t=0 which, as Mr Roo has said, is a meaningless point in time (since the only possible frame of reference is from within our own universe, and our universe creates its own time, there is no "outside" point of reference to describe t=0 in any meaningful way).

This is the main way in which String theory is able to marry Relativistic theory with Quantum theory - quantum effects make nonsense of relativity only at lengths of less than the Planck length and at times of less than the Planck time. If there is nothing smaller than these measures then both relativity and quantum theory can coexist. It does mean that there's no such thing as a singularity, which means (besides anything else) that Black Holes and the starting point of the Universe need to be redefined in terms of finite measurements. (The reason Relativity doesn't work in Black Holes is because they are singularities, which are infinitessimally small.)

Confused?

CB

[the_white_stuff]

A little :lol: , but now I've read through a few websites and books I'm starting to understand it all better now. You have to really think hard to take it in though

[phil47uk]

..Yeah it is hard to comprehend. I read all this stuff in bed, but am still no wiser.

I wonder if there will ever come a time in mankinds existance when they will know eaxtly what it's all about. How the universe came into being and what/where ( if anything ) did it come from. Are we ( Our universe ) small in comparison to other universes? Are we large? Where did it all start and where will it all end? I should imagine there is an answer, but everytime you cross one hurdle, you come up against another. Could there be an ultimate final hurdle somewhere along the line?

Does there need to be and if not why?

It just shows you how much we really know about why we exist, or why we exist at all for that matter. Fascinating!

Phil.

[PersianPaladin]

String theory contradicts occam's razor though.

[Admiral_Bobski]

String theory contradicts occam's razor though.

How?

CB

[J07]

String theory contradicts occam's razor though.

Almost everything in small scale physics does this. If Newtonian mechanics is found to be utterly wrong at quantum levels, why on earth would a philosophical meandering from some medieaval monk have any relevance?

If quantum mechanics contradicts our notions of common sense (and it does) then it throws a lot of philosophy AND intuition out of the window. Uncharted waters, how do we know what old notions we can trust anymore?

For the record, I think string theory is not very good at all.

However, we really are just paddling in the pool here- there's only so far that popular science can take people in understanding this stuff. There comes a point where you *have* to get stuck into the mathematics because we can no longer explain things to the "layman" since there are no physical analogues that you can link the theories to.

eg, simple example is electrons orbiting a nucleus. How do you explain this to the man on the street? The old model of the planets going around the earth? Well, we can't do that because it simply isn't right, it's not the same thing and it distracts from the truth. The problem is that we can't explain electrons orbiting a nucleus because it isn't anything like what we see in our day-to-day lives. The theory is only of any use once you understand the maths. Sad, but true. I mean, the idea of electrons floating around in a "cloud of probability", or something along those lines....it's useless on an intuitive sense. Quantum physics has the fortunate situation of being very "sexy" but the unfortunate situation of being so out of this world, so alien to our standard existence that it descends very rapidly into abstract mathematics contained in a theory which (to quote Feynmann) "no one understands".

Frankly, in this wierd world I think Mr Occam has long outlived his use.

[SnowBear]

String theory does not contradict Occam's Razor. If the simplest theory to explain everything turns out to be 100 times more complex than what we know today, and yet is the correct theory, it cannot and never will contradict the Razor, it will be truth which is far more important than some medieval ramblings of Mr Razor.

Einstein himself spoke on the Razor and said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

To bring together the laws of nature, (Einstein's equations, Newtons, Maxwell's etc and so on) and to combine the laws of Gravity, Electro-magnetic, weak nuclear, strong nuclear, laws of light, etc, it has been seen that they all fit into a theory of everything equation without crazy infinity values if extra dimensions are added, to probably 10-13 dimensions + 1 of time. The Razor in reverse, if the simplest (the 3 dimensions we see, time and the laws of gravity, electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear forces) do not explain all then we must assume there is more to the theory than first thought. If 4 dimensions does not explain, does 5 and so on.

We are now finding hundreds of new types of particles, sub-atomic particles, forces and waves than before, and they all need to be explained and brought into the equation somehow.

I agree with J07, Occam's Razor is now a lot of the time out of date and maybe even dangerous to use in today's complex science and theories.

J07, string theory is the one for me, at the moment, which is the leader in the Theory of Everything. No other theory explains or combines all the particles, forces and laws so well. The problem we have, being earth bound beings and stuck in 3 dimensions + 1 of time is that it is so hard to imagine a new dimension, yet by no means does it say it does not exist. There could be thousands of other dimensions. I personally think this universe is far more complex than we know today even.

String theory and its probabilities are crazy and hard to imagine, but only by our simple 3 dimensional minds (+1 of time). How can light be both a particle and a wave, but only one or the other depending on how we observe it. How come if we observe its motion, we cannot see its location and visa versa. It can be explained partly if we take from string theory and M-theory the notion that light, and indeed all the forces of the universe are the effects of other dimensions on our space-time. Take gravity, lets say that is the effect of dimension 9, the dimension is wound up so small that we cannot observe it, yet all matter feels the effects of gravity because dimension 9 is everywhere (as is the normal spacial dimensions we know of, 1,2,3). We feel the effect of dimension 9, but we cannot see it. Light could be an effect of say dimension 5, as a ripple in our dimensions that we can see with our 3 dimensional bodies, brains and sight, and the fact that it is so hard to measure both speed and location is because to do that we need instruments in the 5th dimension to do so.

Now, if the above turns out to be truth, that is all that matters and Mr Occam can stay where he should be, firmly in the history books and the past.

[Admiral_Bobski]

Well said, J07 and SnowBear. If we simplify (!) the argument further, though, String Theory is actually quite simple - what it says is that all matter is made up of strings of a finite size rather than point-particles of infinitessimal size. Not only is this simple, it actually makes more sense, physically, than the alternative. It makes more sense that objects be comprised of finite-sized pieces than for them to be comprised of pieces of no physical substance (for that is what an infinitessimal small point-particle effectively is).

What is complicated about String Theory is the formulation. Exploring something which is fundamentally simple but completely beyond our sphere of experience or understanding is guaranteed to be a complicated task, so while the formulation of the theory may be complicated that is not to say that the end result won't be simple.

With any luck String Theory will get some much-needed empirical vindication when the LHC comes online. Hopefully they will find the supersymmetric partner particles of basic matter (not to be confused with antiparticles, which have already been observed). These particles were first postulated by String Theorists, but over time the idea has been successfully incorporated into the Standard Model of physics. The Standard Model can survive with or without these partner particles, but String Theory absolutely requires them, so the observation of these particles wouldn't actually prove String Theory to be true, but the absence of them would disprove the theory.

Exciting times!

CB

[Gray-Wolf]

So could we have our ancestral 'otherworld' sharing the same space and time as our reality with natural anomalies providing temporary portals twixt both............or am I spending too much time alone........

Edited May 27, 2008 by Gray-Wolf

[The Penguin]

...........or am I spending too much time alone........

Relatively.

I believe it's time for lunch. Absolutely.

[Soaring Hawk]

The problem we have, being earth bound beings and stuck in 3 dimensions + 1 of time is that it is so hard to imagine a new dimension, yet by no means does it say it does not exist.

Thank goodness for that. Let's hope this gets enough proof to be generally accepted. Perhaps the people I know will now stop seeing me as totally and completely mad.

So could we have our ancestral 'otherworld' sharing the same space and time as our reality with natural anomalies providing temporary portals twixt both............or am I spending too much time alone........

Clearly not as much as I am Gray-Wolf; I'm always being told I'm off in some 'otherworld.'

[phil47uk]

Well I started all this off and now everyone has gone right over my head..

I'm a bit behind some of you guys to put it mildly , so I tend to watch these videos for a layman's view.. That's about my level..I noticed that one of the physics teachers in a school I go to uses these videos in class. Mmmmm About my level I suppose.LOL.. Very interesting although, the bit about observing electrons and them virtually having a mind of their own lost me somewhat, as with the second video and the bit about one electron on one side of universe acting instantly like it's partner on the othe side of the universe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5poD3nXdJ8...feature=related

Edited May 27, 2008 by phil47uk

[robl1200]

In 40 days the Hadron Collider will be up and running and soon hopefully be operational giving its first results in a matter of months.

One thing thats bothered me though is this..

The universe came from a singularity point (wether this had infinite mass is still debateable) and there was basically nothing else outside of this singularity, no time, no space, nothing.

The scientists hope to re-create the moments of the big bang on a minute scale, but the way there doing this is irrelevant because the big bang wasnt created by 2 particles fired at each other because there was only 1 singularity point.

Plus theres already time and space outside around the explosion so the mechanics of how the universe was created will be innacurate.

Just something Ive been wondering about to myself all day.

Basically all the scientists are doing (to me it seems) is firing 2 particles at each other and seeing how the explosion looks like, but the whole point is to re-enact the big bang scientifically when infact there doing the experiment by methods that didnt happen at the beginning of time and space.

[Osbourne One-Nil]

Hi Rob, I'm going to merge this with the existing thread, called, The Hadron Collider!