The origins of space and time

Nature ran a pretty cool feature of the origins of space and time a few days ago.

In 1995, Ted Jacobson, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park, combined these two findings, and postulated that every point in space lies on a tiny 'black-hole horizon' that also obeys the entropy–area relationship. From that, he found, the mathematics yielded Einstein's equations of general relativity — but using only thermodynamic concepts, not the idea of bending space-time.

“This seemed to say something deep about the origins of gravity,” says Jacobson. In particular, the laws of thermodynamics are statistical in nature — a macroscopic average over the motions of myriad atoms and molecules — so his result suggested that gravity is also statistical, a macroscopic approximation to the unseen constituents of space and time.

In 2010, this idea was taken a step further by Erik Verlinde, a string theorist at the University of Amsterdam, who showed that the statistical thermodynamics of the space-time constituents — whatever they turned out to be — could automatically generate Newton's law of gravitational attraction.

And in separate work, Thanu Padmanabhan, a cosmologist at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India, showed that Einstein's equations can be rewritten in a form that makes them identical to the laws of thermodynamics — as can many alternative theories of gravity. Padmanabhan is currently extending the thermodynamic approach in an effort to explain the origin and magnitude of dark energy: a mysterious cosmic force that is accelerating the Universe's expansion.

There's a lot more mind-bending stuff at the source

Lovely, but I think you'll probably get more mileage out of this in the Science & Technology forum. Here, it will just degenerate into a God did it/no God did it shouting match.

The thing about "Creation" that many people just do not catch, comes from false knowledge and too many opinions and not enough logical points or facts. For example, You ask a normal everyday person if time is infinite, a majority will say yes, this is a difficult question. However the answer is no, Time is finite. All time actually means is, the passing of events. Now there are two points, the spark from a singularity, and now. If time were infinite we would never reach the current point where we are now because there would have been an infinite number of events before now, thus logically making time finite. That is a very important piece of information to have if you would like to figure up the origins of space and time. Now, earlier I mentioned a singularity, a singularity here means the point that it all came from, that perfect line up that "pushed" the universe into being. We all agree that the universe came from somewhere, and that the universe expands and shrinks. We also agree that the universe, Earth especially, is fine tuned, we could not, and suspected by what we are able to understand, that there is only one way a planet can support life, our life, but what could have fine tuned this, and made our existence within the universe and the universe even possible, whose to say?

Heffinator
The thing about "Creation" that many people just do not catch, comes from false knowledge and too many opinions and not enough logical points or facts. For example, You ask a normal everyday person if time is infinite, a majority will say yes, this is a difficult question. However the answer is no, Time is finite. All time actually means is, the passing of events. Now there are two points, the spark from a singularity, and now. If time were infinite we would never reach the current point where we are now because there would have been an infinite number of events before now, thus logically making time finite. That is a very important piece of information to have if you would like to figure up the origins of space and time. Now, earlier I mentioned a singularity, a singularity here means the point that it all came from, that perfect line up that "pushed" the universe into being. We all agree that the universe came from somewhere, and that the universe expands and shrinks. We also agree that the universe, Earth especially, is fine tuned, we could not, and suspected by what we are able to understand, that there is only one way a planet can support life, our life, but what could have fine tuned this, and made our existence within the universe and the universe even possible, whose to say?

You state that time is finite as if it is fact.. This is false. It is unknown if time is finite or not. Also it would seem logical that time did exist before the Big Bang as for a bang or similar to occur would imply a pre existing something to create that bang.. And so there would be a point in time leading up to the Big Bang or whatever happend. This is logic. It is also illogical that the Big Bang came out of absolutely nothing. This is impossible by the very definition of the word "Nothing".

Also the fine tuning of the universe looses all its mystery if u take into account the possibility of multiple universes. Now this is only a theory but an interesting one none the less. If there is an infinite amount of other universes then there would be endless amounts of universes with different laws of physics and "turnings" of cosmological constants etc.. So it would seem that there would also be endless amounts of universes that are hospital to life and its no surprise to find us living in one of those.

reply to post by DigitalResonance


now you make a point or two however the big bang was an event, the first event that we can actually pick at and study, so a majority of scientist use that as the basepoing of refference to time. the big bang could not have come from nothing, because matter can neither be created nor destroyed so there was in fact something, which does really mess with the idea of time in the first place, that is undeniable. Time is defined as the passing of events, i have already stated that time can not be infinate because there would have been an infinite number of events before now, which is the furthest it has gone, now as far as fine tuning, i also stated that it is life as we understand it, i never sad that there werent multiple galaxies, but there is The Universe that is fine tuned to even be able to support itself. I do not wish disagree with what you have to say i would actually like you to elaborate so i can understand your point of view.

reply to post by Heffinator


Ok.. I think you may of missed the idea I was trying to convey..

So firstly I will start by saying that your idea of time being finite because of the infinite amount of steps between 2 points if its infinite could be misguided if u look at this a different way. If time, just like energy, matter and space is quantised like quantum theory dictates to us then time can be infinite and there would be a smallest unit of time.. Just like the plank length when it comes to distance. Cutting a plank length in half has no meaning. It may help to think about pixels.. U can't have half a pixel. A pixel is a fixed size and cannot be devided smaller. Space and time according to quantum mechanics are indeed quantised and so time can indeed be infinite but finitely divisible. This goes a lot deeper but that's the basics.

Now in my previous post I wasn't referring to ther galaxies but indeed other universes. I know the word universe means the whole but here we are dealt another problem. What we call the universe may indeed turn out to be just a tiny spec of a much larger structure. This structure is able to have multiple perhaps even an infinite amount of expansions taking place at different locations. Each one of these expansions are what we would call a universe. U see our Big Bang that occurred may be one of an infinite amount of big bangs taking place in a much larger multiverse. Each one of these big bangs would lead to unique laws of physics according to the initial setting of the scalar type field that set the bang in motion. Inturn you would get differernt values for the strengths of different forces like gravity, electroweak, the cosmological constant etc. some universes would never be able to form stars if the gravity was to weak or other forces to strong. Some universes would bang and radiation decay would be the entire contents for said universe. Others would be similar to our own universe just by chance. U see.. If there are infinite amounts of universes then there are infinite varietys of these universes and so once again this is why it may be no coincident that we find ourself in just such a universe with the fine tuning it does.. No mystery if there is infinite variety.

I hope this helps see things from a different angle.