If all matter is energy condensed to a slow vibration .....

And energy cannot be created or destroyed only transformed as in the first law of thermo dynamics,
How could a god have created anything if its impossible to create something out of nothing?

I think a better question is how did anything come into existence if there was at some point nothing?

To me it suggests that there must have always been "something"...perhaps it was God.

Leave the heavy thinking to the Gods, kid. You'll hurt yourself.

and I couldn't help myself;

“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.

Here's Tom with the Weather.”

- Bill Hicks

reply to post by signalfire


That's the first thing I thought of too

Except I'm more familiar with it in this form...

Belcastro
And energy cannot be created or destroyed only transformed as in the first law of thermo dynamics,
How could a god have created anything if its impossible to create something out of nothing?

Well, matter is not energy condensed to a slow vibration. From a physics standpoint, the phrase doesn't make sense.

One way of looking at it, is that it's the universe's largest statistical deviation.

signalfire
Leave the heavy thinking to the Gods, kid. You'll hurt yourself.

and I couldn't help myself;

“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.

Here's Tom with the Weather.”

- Bill Hicks

i had forgotten where i had heard that from.
lol thanks.

Bedlam

Belcastro
And energy cannot be created or destroyed only transformed as in the first law of thermo dynamics,
How could a god have created anything if its impossible to create something out of nothing?

Well, matter is not energy condensed to a slow vibration. From a physics standpoint, the phrase doesn't make sense.

One way of looking at it, is that it's the universe's largest statistical deviation.

With his famous equation E= mc2, Albert Einstein proved that when you come right down to it everything in the universe is energy. Both in the physical plane of our reality of matter and the abstract reality of our mind are made up of energy patterns.

Belcastro
With his famous equation E= mc2, Albert Einstein proved that when you come right down to it everything in the universe is energy. Both in the physical plane of our reality of matter and the abstract reality of our mind are made up of energy patterns.

Well, no. What the energy equivalence equation tells you, is that if you lose or gain mass in some sort of interaction, that an amount of energy E is either required or released.

It doesn't mean that matter IS energy, just that if you lose mass to some sort of interaction, you're going to release energy at the rate mc^^2.

It's sort of like pennies and dollars. A dollar is equivalent to 100 pennies. But there's no pennies in a dollar - you can cut that thing to bits and nary a penny in it. But in an exchange where dollars are converted to some other form, say a stick of gum, then you may see pennies or other change result from the interaction.

Matter is not energy, per se. Just as a dollar isn't made of pennies. You get into special relativity, you start seeing that they're sort of aspects of each other. But it's not like a proton is made up of light, or kinetic energy, or gravitational potential energy. And "condensed to a slow vibration" is meaningless. I'm always interested - what's vibrating and how did you measure it?

eta: btw, "everything is energy" is as scientifically accurate as "what the bleep do we know", which is to say, not at all.

reply to post by signalfire


Bill Hicks. Gotta Love that guy. Too bad he left us so soon...... Syx.

coldkidc
I think a better question is how did anything come into existence if there was at some point nothing?

To me it suggests that there must have always been "something"...perhaps it was God.

Well you know I don't remember in any science class them saying something came from nothing and I think you are right when you something has always existed. I don't call it god I just call it something.

I am fine with that.

reply to post by Bedlam


Forget dollars and sense. Can't we just say we are a couple of horny leptons and quarks looking for a hot boson to settle down with?

reply to post by boncho


Well, I'm definitely capable of being lepton.

But a lot of posts are filled with bozons. Bozonium formation is a hazard of many threads on ATS.

I first heard that quote (the all matter is merely energy slowed) in a techno song, i went hunting for the quotes origin and found bills stand up show.

I was amazed this had come from a comedian.

Then after some thought about the origins of all energy in the universe and the big bang, it made sense that all matter was once compressed energy, all the energy in the universe being spewed out in one colossal explosion. Then as it cools and spreads the first particles are created and start clumping up into the first gas clouds, condensing down under their own weigh and finally fusing in suns to start creating the other elements, exploding, forming, exploding, forming for billions of years.

Yeah, sounds better than a deity putting each molecule together and creating everything.

Belcastro
And energy cannot be created or destroyed only transformed as in the first law of thermo dynamics,
How could a god have created anything if its impossible to create something out of nothing?

Energy is not made of things (plural). Energy is the complete whole thing - one thing without a second (check out Advaita -endless-satsang.com... ).

Here and now energy is appearing - it's current configuration looks like this (whatever is being seen/known/experienced presently). Is there any thing else/other (is any thing separate?).
The energy is constantly changing it's configuration - the present is always appearing different.

So energy is not made of things, however the energy can appear as a word - the word implies thingness. Thingness implies something but it is just energy which is not a thing.

It is the words which seem to separate the whole energy into things.
There is actually no things, just words.

God is a word which points to the whole/complete energy - which is not a thing.

reply to post by Bedlam


Sorry, no. If energy is constant, and after some loud noises you have lots of kinetic energy and a bit less mass, then mass is a form of energy. And so is static position in a field. Now a better thing to ponder would be, right at the bottom, what is energy....

As to the original posters's question, you have to understand that 'nothing' is actually an incredibly high density energy. And before I'm accused of new-age claptrap, go read up on the casimir effect. Standard physics.

Some of the most ingenious thinking on this was by Boltzmann, in mant ways the father of thermodynamics (who was ridiculed by other physicists while he was alive, (who'd guess that could ever happen! They're scientists!)

He had the idea of a 'Boltzmann Brain', extended by some more recent thinkers. Given eternity in a quantum flux 'nothingness' at some point, a random fluctuation in this field may take the form of a sentient brain for a VERY short time, and then wink out of existence. But in that moment, it could "observe", collapse a wave function and initiate a big bang.

So in that case, the creator would be 'outside' the universe, but it would be very short lived and have no subsequent effect. I'd suspect that only universes that hit on the 'life' meme (stretching the word there a tad, to apply to the possible pattern space of universes) survive to be interesting.

Please note that I'm not very convinced that this is how it works, but it is a neat piece of thinking and opens a world of possibility.

(observe: a word not sufficiently explored in main stream physics I think, possibly a nervousness that if you find what ppl like Schroedinger suspectd, you'll be chucked right out of the physics club)

asciikewl
reply to post by Bedlam

 

Sorry, no. If energy is constant, and after some loud noises you have lots of kinetic energy and a bit less mass, then mass is a form of energy.

Well, too, if flying monkeys emerge from the sound, the mass has to be reduced.

As to the original posters's question, you have to understand that 'nothing' is actually an incredibly high density energy. And before I'm accused of new-age claptrap, go read up on the casimir effect. Standard physics.

Which will tell you that it will press two microscopic plates together, if you have them very very close to start with. Such incredible energy!

He had the idea of a 'Boltzmann Brain', extended by some more recent thinkers. Given eternity in a quantum flux 'nothingness' at some point, a random fluctuation in this field may take the form of a sentient brain for a VERY short time, and then wink out of existence. But in that moment, it could "observe", collapse a wave function and initiate a big bang.

I saw that movie! Fiend Without a Face, wasn't it? Really awful. Did Boltzmann's Brain have that little spine thingy where it could suck out your brains to feed on?

reply to post by Belcastro


The only theory that really indicates that mass could be some type of vibrational energy is string theory, but it certainly wouldn't be a slow vibration, it would be an ultra fast vibration, so fast that it creates the illusion of being solid, like the flashing frames of a TV screen.


reply to post by coldkidc

coldkidc
I think a better question is how did anything come into existence if there was at some point nothing?

To me it suggests that there must have always been "something"...perhaps it was God.

This is exactly why science is in such a pickle. The only way around this is to say that at the start of time there was already an infinitely dense point of energy which existed without needing to be created, and then it suddenly decided to expand for no particular reason. This is obviously an absurd line of reasoning, and it prevents us from thinking about what caused the big bang and where the energy came from and what might have existed before the big bang, because something obviously did exist before the big thing. It's extremely egotistical to think that our universe was created at the start of time, it's just an extension of us being the center of the universe. But science refuses to explain where the energy of the big bang came from for two reasons: it violates their idea that energy cannot come from nothing and because if energy has always existed then one can reasonably argue that some sort of god must exist. The answer imo is quite simple, energy cannot usually be created, but an event like a big bang is the exception to that rule. Hawking recently made the following statement in one of his doco's:

We were taught that you never get something for nothing. But now, after a life time of work, I think that in fact you can get a whole Universe for free.

~ Stephen Hawking

reply to post by Bedlam


Einstein told us that "mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing". The proof of this is most apparent in particle accelerators, where the momentum of the colliding particles can be directly transformed into mass to produce never before seen high energy particles. Quarks are another good example of energy being directly transformed into mass. Color confinement restricts particles such as quarks from being separated, and if you attempt to separate a quark pair the bond will eventually break, however the binding energy will go directly towards creating two new quarks, and you end up with two quark pairs instead of one. However, the real problem here is defining what "energy" is. We typically think of energy as electrical energy, but that's really just flowing electrons. Ambient/radiant energy is just electromagnetic waves (photons). We use the term "energy" to define anything capable of doing work. We should really be attempting to describe the nature of "pure energy", which is at the heart of this problem.

ChaoticOrder
reply to post by Belcastro

 

Einstein told us that "mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing". The proof of this is most apparent in particle accelerators, where the momentum of the colliding particles can be directly transformed into mass to produce never before seen high energy particles. Quarks are another good example of energy being directly transformed into mass. Color confinement restricts particles such as quarks from being separated, and if you attempt to separate a quark pair the bond will eventually break, however the binding energy will go directly towards creating two new quarks, and you end up with two quark pairs instead of one. However, the real problem here is defining what "energy" is. We typically think of energy as electrical energy, but that's really just flowing electrons. Ambient/radiant energy is just electromagnetic waves (photons). We use the term "energy" to define anything capable of doing work. We should really be attempting to describe the nature of "pure energy", which is at the heart of this problem.

I think you have hit the nail on the head there.

We are limited in our depth of knowledge, as well as our definition of things.

An Atom, at absolute zero, is barely moving, but is full of energy. If you could smash two atoms together at absolute zero, you would still get the resulting atomic explosion.

(This might not make sense, but gonna put it here anyways). If energy is defined by "doing work", what about a pillar support that is holding a floor up? It's immobile, but it is doing work. It's at rest, but at work at the same time.

Molecular energy is so much more vast than what we normally understand. Atoms, and smaller items contain vast amounts of energy. Yet we cannot see them unaided. Just like we cannot see the wind blowing without the aid of trees, clothing lines, and fluttering flags.

How much is going on behind the scenes, that we cannot see? More knowledge is sorely needed.

I'm probably off my rocker on this post. I understood everything I read, but I probably make no sense..

reply to post by Belcastro


What this shows is that rationality is irrational and reasoning is unreasonable. Its unreasonable and irrational for things to happen "just because" and that yet that is the only way to get something from nothing.

You've discovered the end of reasoning and the beginning of the gut feeling guesswork.

reply to post by Cygnis

If energy is defined by "doing work", what about a pillar support that is holding a floor up? It's immobile, but it is doing work. It's at rest, but at work at the same time.

You could say the same thing about the planets orbiting the sun. They could theoretically orbit the sun forever if the sun could burn forever because there is no air friction in space. Of course that wont happen because there is all sorts of stuff floating through space and colliding with the planets, so eventually the planets will fall out of their stable orbit or the sun will burn up. But the concept is what matters here... are the planets doing work just by having a stable orbit around the sun? Or what about the electrons that have been "orbiting" around the nucleus of atoms for billions of years? Are they also doing work?

The answer is no, they are in a stable state that is not consuming any energy. It's a type of perpetual motion but that doesn't mean it's a source of infinite energy. The moment you attempted to extract energy from the momentum of the Earth and use it do work, you would slightly destabilize the orbit of the Earth in doing so. Eventually you would extract enough energy that the Earth would fall into the sun. The same thing applies to the electrons in atoms; in order to fall down to a lower energy orbital state the electron must emit a photon with an energy equal to the difference in energy states, and then we can use that photon to do work.