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I think I'm right in saying that dark energy is a repulsive force acting in opposition to gravity.
yep - repulsive only in relation to gravity - doesnt appear to act through any of the other manifestations of the electromagnetic force.
It has to be really really big to do this as it has to take account of matter, weak gravity in this universe and dark matter - I think it's proposed that 75% of everything is dark energy.
This I think links to the cosmological constant - in proposing it, Einstein was considering a static universe - he abandoned it (I think this was quoted by him as the biggest blunder of his career) but after his death Russians took interest in light of cosmological acceleration / dark energy.
The problem seems to be that the universe is much too energy dense.
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
If you think about it you are correct. Otherwise if we divided subatomic particles smaller and smaller there would be nothing left to have attractive forces (or repelling) to constitute a interdependent structured universe. So dividing infinitely must be merely a thought experiment. That assumes that there is no fundamental and indivisible particle(s) that everything is made of. If there are fundamental particles then it is impossible to divide them by inifinitely small pieces.
Could be a thought experiment... or it could point to something non-conceptual (undefined). I have always thought that something is special about both zero and infinity: they seemed linked in some way. If I divide something into an infinite number of parts, that thing becomes nothing? If I divide something into no parts (1 part would be the whole), then I eventually reach infinity? Perhaps I am limited in my math understanding, but it seems like these two ends point to each other. Here is a little continuum I put together
X/0 ... X/0.25 X/0.5 X/1 X/2 X/4 ... X/(infinity) = = = = = = = (infinity) four times X twice X X half of X a fourth of X 0
In short if you separate something into everything, you get nothing. If you separate something into nothing, you get everything To divide is to separate... if I look at reality in smaller and smaller parts, I end up with nothing. If I look at reality in bigger and bigger parts (eventually something beyond the whole), I end up with everything. I might be completely off base...
Hmm... Infinity seems to show how there is no such thing as zero because If you divide a thing into an infinite parts, you will be doing so forever and will never reach zero because there is no such thing as "nothing".
If there was a time when there was nothing, there would have been no potential for changing from nothing.
What was there before there was anything? The potential for everything.
We can possiby (possibly) have zero apples but we cannot have zero everything. Even complete emptiness implies the potential for fullness and something being empty.
Infinity seems to be a real process but zero is just a mental construct which has no basis in reality.
Hmm... Infinity seems to show how there is no such thing as zero because If you divide a thing into an infinite parts, you will be doing so forever and will never reach zero because there is no such thing as "nothing".
If there was a time when there was nothing, there would have been no potential for changing from nothing.
We can possiby (possibly) have zero apples but we cannot have zero everything. Even complete emptiness implies the potential for fullness and something being empty.
Infinity seems to be a real process but zero is just a mental construct which has no basis in reality.
If anything, infinity disproves zero.
I guess it is how you look at it. Isn't nothing, the ultimate potential for everything? Perhaps if there was something, then you would have to work around that for everything else, but with nothing... the possibilities are endless?
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
edited October 2012
I don't know... There wouldn't be any possibilities. How could there be nothing and at the same time have a cycle of growing potential as well?
There is either nothing or potential... Can't have both.
I don't know... See, there wouldn't be any possibilities.
I guess I am looking at the idea of nothing differently.
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
I don't know... See, there wouldn't be any possibilities.
I guess I am looking at the idea of nothing differently.
Sorry, I'm bad for editing... The problem is that as soon as this "nothing" is given an attribute of any kind, it isn't really nothing.
There is no evidence of a true "zero" or absolute starting point. Even the big bang may have been caused and if that's the case, it isn't really the start of the universe.
It could be just one of an infinite amount of points that expand endlessly.
I don't know... See, there wouldn't be any possibilities.
I guess I am looking at the idea of nothing differently.
Sorry, I'm bad for editing... The problem is that as soon as this "nothing" is given an attribute of any kind, it isn't really nothing.
There is no evidence of a true "zero" or absolute starting point. Even the big bang may have been caused and if that's the case, it isn't really the start of the universe.
I am not looking at zero as a starting point.... but more so that infinity and zero point to the same undefined thing.
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
Are you kind of making a simile between zero (as in "nothingness") and emptiness?
For me, they mean two very different things.
Not that these things matter in any way as to come between us but I do find them fascinating.
Um... I wasn't actively going for that, but I guess what I am saying could be seen in that light. Although, I am not sure that I know what emptiness is well enough to be making that conclusion or parallel. If I think of emptiness in terms of empty of disturbance, stress, process, etc... then zero could work for that. Like how a wave could exist partly above X axis, and partly below the X axis (or I guess in front and behind the y axis). As the amplitude of that wave gets shorter and shorter, it would eventually become a line with a constant of zero.
I think that nothingness is a contradiction as well... I don't see how nothing can exist, without itself being something.
Zero is the empty set - it is treated as an ordinary number for calculation purposes - without it, dealing with big numbers becomes a serious issue.
Inifinity is where maths breaks down.
A stretch to hold that the point where maths breaks down proves a handy fiction... one paradox on top of another!
What does empty set mean though? I know in math it means no numbers in the set... but what does an empty set really represent?
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
Are you kind of making a simile between zero (as in "nothingness") and emptiness?
For me, they mean two very different things.
Not that these things matter in any way as to come between us but I do find them fascinating.
Um... I wasn't actively going for that, but I guess what I am saying could be seen in that light. Although, I am not sure that I know what emptiness is well enough to be making that conclusion or parallel. If I think of emptiness in terms of empty of disturbance, stress, process, etc... then zero could work for that. Like how a wave could exist partly above X axis, and partly below the X axis (or I guess in front and behind the y axis). As the amplitude of that wave gets shorter and shorter, it would eventually become a line with a constant of zero.
I see what you're saying now. Okie doke... Sorry again as I do tend to go on.
Sometimes when we get into conversations about zero and stuff, some nhilistic views present themselves on the basis of what I think is a misunderstanding of emptiness (like nothing really matters).
I think that nothingness is a contradiction as well... I don't see how nothing can exist, without itself being something.
That's just it... "Nothingness" would be a quality... An attribute we give to something that shows the signs of being nothing (which is to lack any and all qualities as well as quantities)... A self negating term making it pretty illogical, lol.
Are you kind of making a simile between zero (as in "nothingness") and emptiness?
For me, they mean two very different things.
Not that these things matter in any way as to come between us but I do find them fascinating.
Um... I wasn't actively going for that, but I guess what I am saying could be seen in that light. Although, I am not sure that I know what emptiness is well enough to be making that conclusion or parallel. If I think of emptiness in terms of empty of disturbance, stress, process, etc... then zero could work for that. Like how a wave could exist partly above X axis, and partly below the X axis (or I guess in front and behind the y axis). As the amplitude of that wave gets shorter and shorter, it would eventually become a line with a constant of zero.
I see what you're saying now. Okie doke... Sorry again as I do tend to go on.
Sometimes when we get into conversations about zero and stuff, some nhilistic views present themselves on the basis of what I think is a misunderstanding of emptiness (like nothing really matters).
I think that nothingness is a contradiction as well... I don't see how nothing can exist, without itself being something.
That's just it... "Nothingness" would be a quality... An attribute we give to something that shows the signs of being nothing (which is to lack any and all qualities as well as quantities)... A self negating term making it pretty illogical, lol.
Yeah.. I used to be very nihilistic, but that was before I found buddhism. My buddhist studies actually forced me to look at nihilism very critically and realize that it makes no sense. It was like I was asking myself the wrong questions. Similar to how the buddha tells people that the questions they ask, make no sense based on reality. IMHO, to speak of nothingness in nihilistic sense, is to misunderstand something more fundamental.
So I guess where I was going with all that, is that I think there is more to zero than meets the eye. haha
Oh and don't be sorry... I do enjoy having a friendly back and forth
What does empty set mean though? I know in math it means no numbers in the set... but what does an empty set really represent?
The closest I have come to a coherent understanding is the maths one - 'a set with no things in it'.
Whether 'nothing' is possible in reality and what it means is something else - read a fair few books on the subject - none of them end in a conclusion... mostly in a smug sort of 'I'm clever enough to know your limits'! kind of way... or 'here's an equation, go figure'.
It seems to me to always hinge on / be relative to 'something' - i.e. in understanding it, we have to consider its opposite - that said, 'something' is also somewhat of a paradox in that we are led back towards zero or infinity.
My personal pit stop is that my brain is designed for monkey things - it operates within a certain reality - there is no reason that I should 'understand' the workings of the universe beyond my brain's natural capability within the framework of my reality - that said, I am a product of nature through and through - sure I may not understand but I understand that understanding itself is flawed by the inherent nature of the tools that create it/capture it/manifest it...
It seems to me to always hinge on / be relative to 'something' - i.e. in understanding it, we have to consider its opposite - that said, 'something' is also somewhat of a paradox in that we are led back towards zero or infinity.
That is why I think that dividing by zero is so interesting. If we don't have any parts to relate to each other, what do we have?
My personal pit stop is that my brain is designed for monkey things - it operates within a certain reality - there is no reason that I should 'understand' the workings of the universe beyond my brain's natural capability within the framework of my reality - that said, I am a product of nature through and through - sure I may not understand but I understand that understanding itself is flawed by the inherent nature of the tools that create it/capture it/manifest it...
That is a very good thing to understand . How can you trust your understanding of even that? haha.
I also am intrigued by the common properties of zero and infinity. It's almost a major field of study in itself, so important and difficult are these concepts in metaphysics.
The empty set is not nothing because it is a set. In the same way, the set of all phenomena is not the set of all phenemona because it does not include the set of all phenomena. Russell's paradox rears it ugly head about here. Set theory is very dangerous when applied to metaphysics unless we know how to transcend it for a fundamental view.
The idea that we end up with nothing if we keep on dividing, and everything if we keep on 'undividing' makes sense to me. But it does not quite work. Something that is undivided is a unity or continuum, and a unity cannot have parts. This means it cannot be extended in space or time. So a unity or true whole would be Nothing in physics. Whereas it would be the unmanifest in Buddhism, and beyond the categories of thought, so not Nothing or Something.
That's the paradox right there - the 'zero' used in maths is not a true zero - it's a zero in the context of something else (in this case, other numbers, or sets).
We can try to imagine a true zero but when we step beyond a local zero and explore the concept as possibly a universal issue, it rapidly breaks down and becomes illogical.
Now, when I try to imagine how I'd pick fruit to eat or how I'd cross the road without being squished I rarely encounter such difficulties!! frustratingly stoopid brain!! :dunce:
Yes. I don't think zero as usually defined is a paradox in maths, but as you say it becomes one when we try to use it to axiomatise mathematics or the universe. A universal zero may not be 'illogical', I'd say, (although it might be defined in two different ways) merely inconceivable or beyond the intellect. It would not be a member of any category and as such would be a conceptual void. (Kant calls this uncategorizeable and thus void phenomenon 'the proper subject for a rational psychology' - thus unwittingly agreeing with Lao Tsu et al). For his mathematical model of cosmogenesis in 'Laws of Form' Spencer Brown likens it to a blank piece of paper. This could not be explicitly included in any set theoretical model of the universe, but must be there as an axiom to make sense of it (as Kant and Brown and eventually even Russell realised).
I feel that if this point is understood then the Buddha's cosmology immediately becomes very attractive even to sceptical mathematicians. It is amazing that Russell never saw this.
The idea that we end up with nothing if we keep on dividing, and everything if we keep on 'undividing' makes sense to me. But it does not quite work. Something that is undivided is a unity or continuum, and a unity cannot have parts. This means it cannot be extended in space or time. So a unity or true whole would be Nothing in physics. Whereas it would be the unmanifest in Buddhism, and beyond the categories of thought, so not Nothing or Something.
Yes. I don't think zero as usually defined is a paradox in maths, but as you say it becomes one when we try to use it to axiomatise mathematics or the universe. A universal zero may not be 'illogical', I'd say, (although it might be defined in two different ways) merely inconceivable or beyond the intellect. It would not be a member of any category and as such would be a conceptual void. (Kant calls this uncategorizeable and thus void phenomenon 'the proper subject for a rational psychology' - thus unwittingly agreeing with Lao Tsu et al). For his mathematical model of cosmogenesis in 'Laws of Form' Spencer Brown likens it to a blank piece of paper. This could not be explicitly included in any set theoretical model of the universe, but must be there as an axiom to make sense of it (as Kant and Brown and eventually even Russell realised).
I feel that if this point is understood then the Buddha's cosmology immediately becomes very attractive even to sceptical mathematicians. It is amazing that Russell never saw this.
This is where I end up too. I suspect that the final step to getting to zero is similar to letting go of the raft after crossing the river
Yes. Or stepping out into the void like Indiana Jones on the way to finding the Grail. There shouldn't be anything there but the chasm turns out not be nothing after all.
Oops. I meant 'not to be nothing after all'. Can't see an edit button.
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
Zero could be the empty set but only conceptually because the set is not "nothing"... Like a porcelain cup could be empty but still contains porcelain. Empty space isn't "nothing" because even empty space has properties.
I agree zero is a handy fiction (I'm guessing that is why the Mayans invented it) but I think it can also create many misunderstandings about the nature of reality.
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
edited October 2012
There is no way one can be divided except by the breaking down into parts. But those parts will always break into something smaller.
Infinity disproves zero.
Actually, wouldn't the 3rd law of thermodynamics disprove zero anyways?
Unless we are "nothing" in totality but to me, that seems meaningless... Not that we have to mean anything but that it doesn't make sense in light of cause and effect/karma.
The third law of thermodynamics establishes a temperature scale that isn't an arbitrary freezing and boiling properties of water.
It establishes the zero of temperature though I am not sure what it refers to and if that is also arbitrary. It can't be totally arbitrary because the Kelvin scale solves some problems that Celsius or Fahrenheit cannot.
Just sharing what I recall from school 15 years ago. :dunce:
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
The third law of thermodynamics establishes a temperature scale that isn't an arbitrary freezing and boiling properties of water.
It establishes the zero of temperature though I am not sure what it refers to and if that is also arbitrary. It can't be totally arbitrary because the Kelvin scale solves some problems that Celsius or Fahrenheit cannot.
Just sharing what I recall from school 15 years ago. :dunce:
DOH!!!
I'm a dummy sometimes, geez... All this talk of zero, lol!
I meant the conservation of energy laws, all appologies.
No worries. Third law does establish a 'zero energy' in terms of the lowest possible temperature. The first law is no creation of energy or destruction. The second law is that with a closed system the arrow of time and spontaneous process are always towards more randomness.
There is no way one can be divided except by the breaking down into parts. But those parts will always break into something smaller.
Infinity disproves zero.
Can't it subtract by itself?
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
There is no way one can be divided except by the breaking down into parts. But those parts will always break into something smaller.
Infinity disproves zero.
Can't it subtract by itself?
Not really... Subtract itself to where exactly?
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
1 - 1 may equal 0 on paper but putting the theory into practice (say by getting rid of the paper in reality) will only lead us to the Higgs Boson until we figure out how to isolate different aspects of that.
It’s hard to imagine a more fundamental and ubiquitous aspect of life on the Earth than gravity, from the moment you first took a step and fell on your diapered bottom to the slow terminal sagging of flesh and dreams.
But what if it’s all an illusion, a sort of cosmic frill, or a side effect of something else going on at deeper levels of reality?
So says Erik Verlinde, 48, a respected string theorist and professor of physics at the University of Amsterdam, whose contention that gravity is indeed an illusion has caused a continuing ruckus among physicists, or at least among those who profess to understand it. Reversing the logic of 300 years of science, he argued in a recent paper, titled “On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton,” that gravity is a consequence of the venerable laws of thermodynamics, which describe the behavior of heat and gases. For the rest of the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/science/13gravity.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
There is no way one can be divided except by the breaking down into parts. But those parts will always break into something smaller.
Infinity disproves zero.
Can't it subtract by itself?
Not really... Subtract itself to where exactly?
To the same place that the divided portion goes? What's the difference between x/2 and x - (x/2)?
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
There is no way one can be divided except by the breaking down into parts. But those parts will always break into something smaller.
Infinity disproves zero.
Can't it subtract by itself?
Not really... Subtract itself to where exactly?
To the same place that the divided portion goes? What's the difference between x/2 and x - (x/2)?
Then it isn't really being subtracted, it's only being moved around.
What does x represent?
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DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
Zero is a useful concept but it is based on convienience and to be blunt, fantasy.
We use it so we can avoid facing that which we for some odd reason feel is unfaceable.
Running away from it won't make infinity go away... It is the reality.
Not only that but I'm willing to bet it will be powering our world one day soon.
I'm reminded of my son's solution to the problem. When he was about 16 he asked me to explain what a pardox is. I stupidly picked Russell's paradox to explain. (The incoherence of the idea of a 'set of all sets'.) He thought for a moment and then said 'But that's stupid. There's no paradox if we don't make up sets.' And there you go, this is the solution. I had nothing left to say.
Comments
It has to be really really big to do this as it has to take account of matter, weak gravity in this universe and dark matter - I think it's proposed that 75% of everything is dark energy.
This I think links to the cosmological constant - in proposing it, Einstein was considering a static universe - he abandoned it (I think this was quoted by him as the biggest blunder of his career) but after his death Russians took interest in light of cosmological acceleration / dark energy.
The problem seems to be that the universe is much too energy dense.
If there was a time when there was nothing, there would have been no potential for changing from nothing.
What was there before there was anything? The potential for everything.
We can possiby (possibly) have zero apples but we cannot have zero everything. Even complete emptiness implies the potential for fullness and something being empty.
Infinity seems to be a real process but zero is just a mental construct which has no basis in reality.
If anything, infinity disproves zero.
There is either nothing or potential... Can't have both.
There is no evidence of a true "zero" or absolute starting point. Even the big bang may have been caused and if that's the case, it isn't really the start of the universe.
It could be just one of an infinite amount of points that expand endlessly.
Are you kind of making a simile between zero (as in "nothingness") and emptiness?
For me, they mean two very different things.
Not that these things matter in any way as to come between us but I do find them fascinating.
Inifinity is where maths breaks down.
A stretch to hold that the point where maths breaks down proves a handy fiction... one paradox on top of another!
I think that nothingness is a contradiction as well... I don't see how nothing can exist, without itself being something.
Sometimes when we get into conversations about zero and stuff, some nhilistic views present themselves on the basis of what I think is a misunderstanding of emptiness (like nothing really matters). That's just it... "Nothingness" would be a quality... An attribute we give to something that shows the signs of being nothing (which is to lack any and all qualities as well as quantities)... A self negating term making it pretty illogical, lol.
Yeah.. I used to be very nihilistic, but that was before I found buddhism. My buddhist studies actually forced me to look at nihilism very critically and realize that it makes no sense. It was like I was asking myself the wrong questions. Similar to how the buddha tells people that the questions they ask, make no sense based on reality. IMHO, to speak of nothingness in nihilistic sense, is to misunderstand something more fundamental.
So I guess where I was going with all that, is that I think there is more to zero than meets the eye. haha
Oh and don't be sorry... I do enjoy having a friendly back and forth
Whether 'nothing' is possible in reality and what it means is something else - read a fair few books on the subject - none of them end in a conclusion... mostly in a smug sort of 'I'm clever enough to know your limits'! kind of way... or 'here's an equation, go figure'.
It seems to me to always hinge on / be relative to 'something' - i.e. in understanding it, we have to consider its opposite - that said, 'something' is also somewhat of a paradox in that we are led back towards zero or infinity.
My personal pit stop is that my brain is designed for monkey things - it operates within a certain reality - there is no reason that I should 'understand' the workings of the universe beyond my brain's natural capability within the framework of my reality - that said, I am a product of nature through and through - sure I may not understand but I understand that understanding itself is flawed by the inherent nature of the tools that create it/capture it/manifest it...
The empty set is not nothing because it is a set. In the same way, the set of all phenomena is not the set of all phenemona because it does not include the set of all phenomena. Russell's paradox rears it ugly head about here. Set theory is very dangerous when applied to metaphysics unless we know how to transcend it for a fundamental view.
The idea that we end up with nothing if we keep on dividing, and everything if we keep on 'undividing' makes sense to me. But it does not quite work. Something that is undivided is a unity or continuum, and a unity cannot have parts. This means it cannot be extended in space or time. So a unity or true whole would be Nothing in physics. Whereas it would be the unmanifest in Buddhism, and beyond the categories of thought, so not Nothing or Something.
Just waffling.
We can try to imagine a true zero but when we step beyond a local zero and explore the concept as possibly a universal issue, it rapidly breaks down and becomes illogical.
Now, when I try to imagine how I'd pick fruit to eat or how I'd cross the road without being squished I rarely encounter such difficulties!! frustratingly stoopid brain!! :dunce:
I feel that if this point is understood then the Buddha's cosmology immediately becomes very attractive even to sceptical mathematicians. It is amazing that Russell never saw this.
Zero could be the empty set but only conceptually because the set is not "nothing"... Like a porcelain cup could be empty but still contains porcelain. Empty space isn't "nothing" because even empty space has properties.
I agree zero is a handy fiction (I'm guessing that is why the Mayans invented it) but I think it can also create many misunderstandings about the nature of reality.
Infinity disproves zero.
Actually, wouldn't the 3rd law of thermodynamics disprove zero anyways?
Unless we are "nothing" in totality but to me, that seems meaningless... Not that we have to mean anything but that it doesn't make sense in light of cause and effect/karma.
It establishes the zero of temperature though I am not sure what it refers to and if that is also arbitrary. It can't be totally arbitrary because the Kelvin scale solves some problems that Celsius or Fahrenheit cannot.
Just sharing what I recall from school 15 years ago. :dunce:
I'm a dummy sometimes, geez... All this talk of zero, lol!
I meant the conservation of energy laws, all appologies.
What does x represent?
We use it so we can avoid facing that which we for some odd reason feel is unfaceable.
Running away from it won't make infinity go away... It is the reality.
Not only that but I'm willing to bet it will be powering our world one day soon.