The Multiverse - is there one, where is the line between science and metaphysics, and just how much stuff is there?

[Jabberwocky]

electrons are not a part of the physical, as in the way I see it, electrons are what combines our material world to the spiritual world.

i’m afraid i don’t really understand your post. if electrons are not part of the physical, but we can measure them physically, do they some how mediate between the physical and the spiritual? electrons are both physical and spiritual? by what mechanism do they interact with the spiritual and how do you know? why electrons? why not photons or quarks? what about positrons?

to me, the spiritual is exclusively physiological, so in that sense, as the brain operates by electric currents, i guess you could say our souls consist of electrons, but it doesn’t gain us any explanatory power, which is a hallmark of a good theory.

Offcourse electrons exist.

according to our best current physics, which we know is wrong because quantum mechanics and general relativity contradict each other, electrons don’t exist. there is a single electron field, and what we measure as electrons are actually disturbances in that field. but, as i just said, we know quantum field theory is wrong, so its unlikely the electron field will survive as a useful interpretation once we get a grand unified theory.

its a fact of logic that you can't prove one interpretation over another, there are an infinite number of interpretations that fit a given mathematical structure, so the probability of physicists having hit one that genuinely reflects reality is infinitesimally small. hence, it is infinitesimally unlikely that what we conceive as electrons of the electron field exists, whatever is there instead will have exactly the same mathematical structure so we have no way of working out which interpretation is correct.

Our whole universe exists out of vibrations, ever considered or noticed that?

i have a phd in quantum computing, so i spent 4 years reasoning off the very basis that everything is vibrations. but i suspect i mean something very different to what you mean by vibrations. for instance, i mean the extra frequency terms that drop out of the fourier transform of the solution to the schrodinger equation for a hydrogen atom, which we interpret as phonons. or the wave packets we call photons. these are precisely defined mathematical objects. so unless this is what you mean by vibrations, then, no i probably have not considered the fact that our whole universe is vibrations, and in fact don’t even know what that means.

 

[Shady's Fox]

You say the same things in different words.. Pinocchio was confused with a fish by Geppetto because he wanted something to eat but Pincchio it's better than something to eat because he could rescue him so he doesn't need to eat and then Pinocchio wants to make a fire and Geppetto rejects because he wants to make a fire, this is the structure and the resolutions that needs to die in order to give others the chance to be born, to grow. What frequencies dear? Geez, my eyes bleed, a big no. Do not mislead people or at least learn to adapt, people come here to read this and they want to see something that's new, make sense and it has it's transformation essence. The world it's made out of object but it's made of order and chaos, yin-yang and it manifest unconscious and conscious. To make it short > by constrast so to speak about the multiverse it's about parallel universe where you here might be sad and there be happy, in the other universes you might be just a energy form and not physical, you risk exposing yourself to opposite principle. Quantum hasn't anything to do, we don't talk about warmholes even though the multiverses it based mostly on them, space travel, space distortion.

 

[Jabberwocky]

if the poster means the same thing as me when they say frequencies, they will understand, at least vaguely, my examples of frequencies.

this question specifically references the line between metaphysics and science in the title. i have a degree in physics and philosophy, so you could say this is my specialist interest. i have studied this a lot and felt i had something to contribute.

if you clicked on the wikipedia article referenced by the OP, you'd see a specific reference to the many universes interpretation of quantum mechanics. as it happens, there is a universe when you're happy, one where you're sad, 5 where you win at russian roulette, 1 where you don't. everything possible is happening in one of the universes. but the title of the thread isn't 'what happens in alternate universes.'

wormholes aren't anything to do with the multiverse, they take you from one point in this universe to another, ditto space travel and distortion. those are just general relativity.

 

[Shady's Fox]

The degree doesn't matter if you can't comprehend your imagination into simple words so others can understand, work on this one before you work on multiverses. Now if you wanna play the smart one I will leave you with the last word, I already explained few interesting things on the first page. The line between metaphysics and science? what if one doesn't belive in metaphysics nor science? There isn't a line, there isn't about science, it's about math and from math the subcategory called science was born. You go way into the subject and this it's your first mistake, we already closed the subject on the first page.

 

[Ganjcat]

What does it even matter if we cant see it with the naked eye or detect these so could other universes their is probably a reason for that common sense folks except its not very common these days.

 

[Jabberwocky]

i read the entire first page and to be honest didn't see a whole amount i understood, people taking very different perspectives from the one i take. but i saw nothing that indicated you'd closed the subject. that's not really how philosophy works. that's why we still don't really know what knowledge is, or truth. there will still be philosophy papers written about this very subject in the future, which would strongly suggest that whatever point you think closed the subject actually doesn't.

do you know what? in my 1st year philosophy we studied truth, we got told that Tarski solved a lot, but it was too complicated to teach 1st year philosophers. i was offended, i thought they should have tried. in my masters in mathematical logic, we did the proof they'd mentioned in my 1st year philosophy. Taski's undefinability of truth. i realised it was way too hard for a load of 1st year philosophy students, very difficult maths. they were right. they couldn't explain it to us. because you needed to work your ass off in maths to understand it. some things are just like that. its not lack of imagination. this is why physicists groan at popularisations of physics, as soon as they're translated into natural language, out of the precision of maths, they're wrong. they lose their precision.

so i can't explain things in natural language without bastardising them to the extent they're almost meaningless, because its not possible. as i said, the person i directed the comment to about vibrations will know what i mean if they mean the same thing as me.

 

[Shady's Fox]

Yet even you don't have a fuckin clue of what you tryin to knife down, photons, first of all you should say if a photon it's linked to dark matter, if it's has a mass or not because some people don't know and what you tryin to do here instead to inspire others to write some specific thoughts you just makin some nonsense with everything you said in both of your answers, the one on the first page it's acceptable. Photons in the multiverse they don't touch each other, they are both completely strangers, their behavior it's like a thunder when the + meet the - pole there you have what's call rain, in this case with photons but different way, multiverses I don't think they exist to be honest and photons they know that they don't exist either. It's a interpretation that shouldn't be taken personal. This question it's like the cat paradox that science didn't addresed. Isn't real, what you tryin to do here and no offence more power to you but you just let loose of your imagination giving nothing concludent, they don't exist. The alternate universes could be so different that there isn't anything there to be called photons.

 

[Xorkoth]

So Shady, is your point that we shouldn't talk about this, or something? Personally I really appreciate chinup's perspective as someone who has studied this sort of thing to a very high level. I'm also not into trying to shut down any kind of opinions. You've got yours, I've got mine, we've all got our own opinions/ideas about topics like this. None of us really knows what's up when it comes to the idea of a multiverse, but it's still fun to discuss, and I'm not sure why you're being so aggressive.

 

[Jabberwocky]

i didn’t say what a photon was cos i was mentioning it in passing, but i’ll attempt to explain.

photons are the carriers of the electromagnetic force, which means they transmit electromagnetic energy, a bit like the way water transmits mechanical (i.e. moving) energy. so, they are what hits your eyes as light. they transmit radio waves, gamma rays, and everything in between. and, hopefully obviously, they mediate all electricity and magnetism. you couldn’t be typing on the laptop you’re typing on, or communicating over the internet, if we didn’t have a good understanding of what photons are.

they have no mass. they are pure energy. this means they travel at the speed of light, which nothing with mass can travel at, because of the amount of energy required to accelerate mass to speeds close to the speed of light. it would take infinite energy to accelerate mass to the speed of light. this is unphysical, a good way to know you’ve gone wrong somewhere in your working.

particles travelling at the speed of light behave oddly. if you’re on a train, next to a train going at the same speed, it appears stationary to you. if you travelled on a beam of light next to another beam of light, the other beam of light would still be travelling at the speed of light. no matter how fast you’re moving, light always moves at the same speed. this was the thought experiment that lead einstein to develop the theory of special relativity, which explains that, for light to travel at the same speed regardless of the speed you’re observing it from, space and time actually expand and contract.


photons are quantum mechanical. they have wave and particle behaviour. if you shine light through double slits, it will show bands, an interference pattern, because its like a wave. if you use a source that only emits one photon at a time, so you know its not interfering with other photons, you will still get the interference pattern. if you want to know which slit the light passes through, so put a device to check next to each slit, then boom! no more interference pattern, now it’ll look more like a target that balls have been fired at. so, when you interact with it in a wave like manner, it behaves like a wave, if you interact with it as a particle, it’ll behave like a particle.

photons can be created and destroyed. if one impacts an atom, it will disappear, and an electron on an outer shell of the atom will get some energy. the photon is no more. eventually the electron will lose that energy, and the energy will be released as a new photon. the energy that the electron loses determines the frequency, and hence colour, of the photon. though the concept of colour doesn’t make sense for single photons.

dark matter is dark. it doesn’t interact with light.

as photons are inherently quantum mechanical, they do exist in many universes, until the wave function collapses, and the universes spilt and become causally distinct (incapable of interacting with each other). so, if you had a source that emits two photons together, those photons are entangled. entanglement means they are not really distinct objects, they are two aspects of the same object. but say we want to know something about one of the photons (because even though they're only one system, sometimes we want to know something about a subsystem). say we know that if photon 1 is a, then photon 2 is b. until we measure that thing, the property isn’t actually defined. it doesn’t make sense to say that photon 1 is a until we measure it. because until we measure it, it is both a mixture of a and b. upon measurement, the wave function collapses (the universes split), and from this moment on both photons 1 and 2 have specific properties, not a mixture. this happens instantaneously even if the photons have travelled lightyears apart, because no matter how spatially separated, they were still one system.

the example i gave with photons similar to schrodingers cat, just with two photons not a single cat. the paradox IS understood, it was understood before schrodingers cat was invented, the purpose is to show how weird quantum mechanics is if we try to treat everyday objects in the same way.

BUT photons are just our current interpretation, which we know is wrong. they fit our maths perfectly and our next, refined, view of the universe will have to make the same predictions. its very unlikely that they will survive into a grand unified theory. so in that sense, they don’t exist, because there is a vanishingly small probability that any of our current interpretations of the structure of the universe are correct, that would be too lucky.

i've just reread that and it barely makes any sense because i'm trying not to write an essay but i hope the vague gist. i'm not sure more words would be better anyway, these concepts fit nicely into mathematical representations, but are quite far removed from our everyday experience, and hence what natural language is well suited to explain.

i hope that has answered your questions shady but if you have any more, do feel free to shout and i’ll try my best.

 

[Foreigner]

Shady, please chill out. Not everyone articulates things the same way you do. We all have different levels of expertise here.

 

[Chris42393]

Awesome post! Love reading what you guys have to say! Sorry I got nothing to add... Its definitely not my area of expertise by any means (even though I love this type of stuff).

 

[Jabberwocky]

This gravity shit is complete bullshit.

what evidence do you have for this? can you explain why electromagnetism is so much stronger than gravity? its explained well here

dark matter is different to dark energy. link.

 

[F.U.B.A.R.]

So, everything has this electromagnetic field. I know because I see them. This gravity shit is complete bullshit. Planets revolve around stars because the stars have incredibly powerful electromagnetic fields. This whole galaxy, does it revolve around the supermassive black hole in the middle? Or is this galaxy revolving with the black hole?

Anyway, so I strongly feel I know at this point, generally what comprises the Universe. So there is pure energy that vibrates. Energy that flows right through the vibrating energy. And we have "empty space". So I understand that scientists are calling this emptiness dark "matter" ,really, just call it dark energy. I hate the word "matter" because it's really just pure energy. So, I have to ask, does "nothing" truly exist? I read that some of these subatomic particles can flow in and out of this dark energy. What interaction had to take place in order to produce these kinds of energies and in these ratios. Another thought, could dark energy suddenly become its opposite with the right interaction? Geez it's getting me a little freaked just typing this now. Hmm I don't think I believe in an infinite universe/s now. It feels too unique and unreplicable. Something.. An unfathomably powerful mind.. Some scary powerful shit had to create all this fuckin energy man.. It's a bit frightening to ponder the true beginning to this. And what is to become of it. Shit.. Maybe a scary powerful character in a dream, in the midst of true nothingness, just thought this universe up. A dream in actual nothing creating the thought which manifests this.. New dream. Ah! Aaand because the energy was just thought up, it's not real! How is there an unfathomable amount of energy in the universe? Because everything isn't tangible. The entire fucking universe is pure energy. I envision this energy sphere that eventually fades into true nothingness.

Hmm, so just because you have a 'feeling' then generations of greater minds than you or I are all wrong? Perhaps you ought to research 'The scientific method' to appreciate what is involved in turning an hypothesis into a theory - I.e. proven beyond all reasonable doubt. That's not to say that all theories are 100% correct, just that they are working models that provide reliable predictions of behaviour. Much more so than a stoner's intuition...

 

[F.U.B.A.R.]

So chinup, gravity is basically magnetism. You and clammy ole know-it-all, believes he's sheldon, smart ass F.U.P.A over there must be those main stream scientists that still believe in the obsolete Newtonian model of "matter". You both prob still think its a solid, tangible world huh? Btw haven't vaped for 10 months and don't intend ever doing it again. Alright, so what is an atom? Let's start with that you smart asses. An atom is basically a small amount of pure energy with tons of empty space right? Its proven, i read it, and no i'm not linking shit for both your smug asses, look it up for yourselves. Truth is, you both will never know what this truly is because you both live in this tiny cardboard box in your heads.

Heheh,

F.U.P.A . lols etc....


Please explain how you 'see' electromagnetic fields. You must be one special dude...



And I'm glad you decided to edit your post as the first incarnation included some derogatory bullshit about Chinup being a woman....

 

[Shady's Fox]

I saw, why? bcz I saw it on a documentary, hahaa. Curtis, don't get offended by a post, grow up. So there is a thing called paradox where you use your imagination to describe the tree of elements. Hugh Everett first came with the notion of multiverse, Schrodinger's cat example helped us to understand it a bit better. Subatomic particles are in all possible locations and velocities before being observed. It's possible that others infinite universes to be freezed and it's 0% chance that things would move. There could be Gatekeepers. Think about energy, how it would move in a portal which doesn't allow motion because it doesn't have any gravity, then well you would think but wait? an atom it's an empty space ready to go on a tug-a-war with colours. So other universes may as well haha be like we used to once watch cartoons when we were kids, black and white. We want to know something but don't know why we want to understand it.

 

[Jabberwocky]

gravity is basically magnetism.
...
main stream scientists that still believe in the obsolete Newtonian model of "matter". You both prob still think its a solid, tangible world huh?
...
Alright, so what is an atom? Let's start with that you smart asses. An atom is basically a small amount of pure energy with tons of empty space right?
...
Truth is, you both will never know what this truly is because you both live in this tiny cardboard box in your heads.

do you mean magnetism as in electromagnetism, or magnetism as in ferromagnetism? i.e. typical magnetism. ferromagnetism arises when the 'spins' of electrons all align in a bulk material. electromagnetism has been unified with the strong and weak nuclear forces, so our current model of the universe has 2 forces. can you please explain why gravity is so weak compared to magnetism if they are in fact one and the same? please answer this question, the burden of proof falls to you.

mainstream scientists do not believe the obsolete model of newtonian mechanics, it has been replaced by quantum mechanics and general relativity.

an atom is a nucleus, made of protons and neutrons, where the strong and weak nuclear forces act, this is positively charged. a relatively long way from the nucleus, is the electron cloud, which is arranged in orbitals based on certain principles of quantum mechanics (the schrodinger equation and the pauli exclusion principle). an atom is not pure energy, it has mass. if it was pure energy already, then how would we convert mass into energy for nuclear power and bombs? we get chemistry from the interactions between the electrons in the outer shells of atoms.

ad hominems are invalid in a philosophical discussion.

 

[Xorkoth]

It would be nice if everyone could cut out the personal attacks and aggression, it's completely unnecessary for a discussion. And further personal attacks are going to result in disciplinary action. it's possible to disagree without disrespecting someone.

 

[CurtisO]

Ad hominem - in a way that is directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining. I apologize then Mr. F.U...B.A.R and Mrs. Chinup. I get most of my science from the Chernobyl HBO miniseries. Does anyone watch it by the way? Alright then! Lets continue to attack each other's positions shall we?

The Electric Universe Theory

Highlights the importance of electricity throughout the Universe

www.electricuniverse.info

That's one of the sites dealing with an electromagnetic universe. There are others saying gravity is a myth. Meh.. That's still nothing compared to what I'd really like to know though. I'm more curious about the neutrino than anything. Even that's getting off topic. So metaphysics would be like the saying "This is all a dream". Science requires intensive research and lots of money. Hmm this is a bit over my pay grade. Mr. F.U.B.A.M.A.S and Mrs. Chinsups, Joking ok! I trust you both will continue with your outstanding research in finding out the.. "What the fuck"!? of everyt.. Well the shit that matters anyway.

 

[wizardknight17]

This is a thread I definitely want to come back to but it's way too early and my mind can't successfully read and understand everything at the current moment. Haha.

But just real quick points of my belief for the OP:
-Multiverse CURRENTLY seems more LOGICAL to NOT exist. (Though I believe it to be likely)
-i don't think we'll understand ENOUGH until quantum computers advance. Currently we (the world, i.e. China, America, places I'm sure we don't even know of) are in the baby stages of quantum computers similar to how 1950's was for "regular" computers.
- if you take into account Moore's law (number of transistors that fit on a given amount of space doubles every two years which simplified basically= technology doubles every two years) and know where we're currently at in the quantum world then you'll know that if (and most likely when) they figure out the bugs they're working on our information available will literally multiply by millions.
- take all that. Roll it together. Now imagine everything the world has accomplished over the last 150 years. All that technology from cars to microwave to freezers to jets and airplanes, ect...
- in that 150 years we've advanced 150 years worth. Assuming the same rate of advancement With quantum technology in the next 150 years we will advance approximately 6,000-7,000 years worth.

I say all that for this...

Think of what a computer was in 1950 and then think of it in the year 2000.
If something doesn't kill us or send us back to the stone age in the next 50 years (i.e. another ice age, war, coronal mass ejection from the sun, asteroid, AI, ect...) then we will know (as a species at least) all the answers to your questions. ;-) Haha

 

[Jabberwocky]

yep, its mint!! its like we live in the future, but it's now!! you have no idea how happy it makes me to read a sensible post in here.

and your analogy about 1950s computers being quantum computers is how i view it. alan aspuru guzik puts it like were at the vacuum tube stage of quantum computing. and we need the silicon chip to come around. the only problem is, at least as of 2013 (when i last studied this seriously) there was no mathematical proof that we can control as many quantum mechanical systems in the manner required for a quantum computer. you need 900 qubits (ignoring error correction) to rival a modern supercomputer, i think we were at around 100 when i was doing my PhD.

i will stay re moores law, there appears to be a physical limit to it- i.e. the quantum limit, and quantum computers won't solve that cos they're crap at storing things (actually, they're great at storing things, but you can't get much data out due to the way measurement works).