Blind Luck?

By Mangone

Mon, 18 Apr 2011
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6 comments
 

I’ve heard that Hawking believes that gravity would be enough to create our universe.
If you look at gravity as universal love, an unconditional love that draws all material things together, then it doesn’t seem all that unlikely so long as you allow that certain extra conditions can be added over time to allow development.

However, I presume Hawking is thinking of the Big Bang model and I can’t actually see that it would work so well for that.
If gravity is going to be enough what caused and allowed the Big Bang?

I would have thought that the gravitational force generated by the condensed Universe would make it a Black Hole of the highest order that not only light or other radiation could not escape from but, indeed, that nothing could escape from.

So we would have to imagine that either there was no gravity or that whatever the Universe was composed of at that time was unaffected by gravity i.e. the Universe was weightless.

It would seem much more likely that if you want to believe in a Universe that is expanding at around the speed of light that it is not due to an explosion but rather to the limit that something can expand into nothing.

If you imagine that a powerful light was suddenly switched on in, an infinitely large, dark room then the light would spread out like a growing sphere weakening in intensity with the square of the distance it had travelled.
So, you would imagine, would an expanding Universe…
expanding because there is nothing opposing it since it is expanding into nothing. Hence there is no Black Hole because there is nothing there yet to contain it but space itself expands to fill the void.

It is difficult to know whether all the laws which physics proposes as Universal truly are - since we know such a tiny amount about the Universe and not that much more about our own Solar System.

Certainly it would seem likely that as the Universe expands the so called ‘constants’ might, like the expanding light intensity in the spreading sphere, alter with the square of the distance to the centre.

Yet, in any case we must be amazed when we consider how miraculous it was that a universe learned how to order itself. Not just that it found ways to create stronger attractions than gravity but also that it must have learned how to repel too - unless of course the Big Bang was gravity in reverse and the gravity that we know is not the whole story…

Even more miraculous was that the Universe not only formed particles but managed to find laws that would allow these particles to form families (which we name Elements) and rules that govern the amalgamation of families to form communities (molecular compounds) with an almost unlimited number of varying properties.

It reminds me of the old argument of the pocket watch (which at the time was a clockwork contrivance) as being an undeniable indication of a clock maker. Similarly, surely the presence in the Universe of such finely tuned laws is an undeniable indication of a Law Maker.

Yet how would these laws be found? Trial and error, blind luck?
Perhaps we just have a totally wrong idea of what the Universe is...

We don’t imagine that our bodies grow without a complex interaction of laws and rules.
Yet they obviously grow according to a plan - their DNA - and it is only on the rare occasions that there is a flaw in the development and a Siamese twin or perhaps a Thalidomide baby is born that we realise just how miraculous it is that the laws and rules that determine our physical bodies manage to govern such a complex process with so few mistakes.
So again how did these laws and rules develop - trial and error, blind luck?

Wouldn’t it seem more likely that luck has little to do with it?
That the Universe is not a product of blind chance - for how could it be argued that the Universe developed by survival of the fittest?
Surely, the development or evolution of all things is guided by something which we cannot understand but never the less exists...
or the laws and their interactions were predetermined.

I can’t see a need to attribute this guidance to a God, although I can’t see a need not to either, but I do argue that there must be an ‘awareness’ of what is necessary for the Universe to develop and some means for this ‘awareness’ to adjust the rules or even the local laws to facilitate this development.

I’m not arguing that this process is infallible but just as the laws and rules that govern new life tend to prevent most serious deformities most of the time I would argue that the Universal laws and rules would have a similar guardianship.

Certificate U
Non-fiction
Tales Of The Rainbow Dragon
Opinion

Comments

Submitted by Mangone on
More Luck? Continuing on the principle of intelligent design throughout the Universe it is interesting to consider the atom. Now according to established theory the atom is composed of two main parts - the electron shell and the nucleus. If we consider this arrangement from the perspective of intelligent design then we can see it, in a way, like an egg, or even a biological cell. The shell is primarily to protect the nucleus which actually defines what sort of an atom it is and its properties but at the same time the shell also communicates these properties to other atoms and facilitates connections which allow atoms to build molecules. However, being an intelligent design it seems quite likely to me that the nucleus, as the essence of the atom, being the most important would be the main deciding factor in which direction the atom will take… hence you would expect that essentially all the mass would be in the nucleus. Now we come to an interesting question as to whether Einstein was correct in his assumption that gravity was simply a form of acceleration and a man in a space ship accelerating at G (the acceleration due to gravity on Earth) would not be able to discern any physical difference from a man in his office were there no windows. If we imagine that the acceleration due to gravity is caused by the neucleuses pulling their shells down with them then it would be quite different from a physical acceleration where the electron shells force the nucleuses to move with them. Also we get a different idea of inertia which now has the added effect of the ’lag’ between the shell moving and the nucleus being forced by internal nuclear forces to follow on the one hand and the nucleus moving and the shell being forced to follow on the other. Since the nucleus can be said to have all the mass it would probably give the greatest ’lag’. It seems likely to me that isotopes would be effected slightly differently because they have a different nuclear mass but a similar electron shell. Regardless of the slight differences between the method of acceleration - atoms could act like billiard balls in certain circumstances where the shell might spin but the nucleus continues along its set course until there is a collision - at which time the spin of the shells of the colliders might have almost as large an effect on the resultant new course as the inertia of the nucleuses. It may be that the particles of the early Universe were not greatly effected by gravity and it was not until the Universe started to form protons that gravity began to really start to show its power.

Submitted by Mangone on
To clarify, I’m suggesting that an intelligent design would use the nucleus of an atom as the atom’s ‘DNA’ but that it would also be the source of certain aspects of material inertia. Attempts by the electron shell to accelerate the atom would be resisted by the nucleus and the resistance would be constantly proportional to the acceleration. Once the acceleration stopped then the nucleus would ‘catch up’ (I’m suggesting that the nucleus actually physically moves backward within the shell if the acceleration is forward) and then there would be no more resistance from the nucleus and the velocity of the atom would be constant. Since most forces are on the external electron shell but not the nucleus then it is easy to see why the nucleus would act like anything else that was a ‘passenger’ in an accelerated object - the difference here is that the ‘passenger’ is hugely more massive than the vehicle that it is accelerating in :O) While I’m sure that many will argue that since this concept depends on inertia for the behaviour of the nucleus then it is redundant and by the rule of Occam’s Razor it should be cut… However, from my point of view it does actually remove a layer of the mystery of inertia but more importantly it adds an internal means for the atom’s instantaneous inertia to be stored. As I mentioned earlier it does raise the question of whether gravity is a special case of acceleration because it is the only ‘force’ that directly effects the nucleus - the other forces being screened out by the electron shell - and of course I’ve no idea whether this is actually so... and even if it is how effective a screen the single electron of a hydrogen atom could produce. Mind you, hydrogen and helium could well have been the first attempts of the Universe to build atoms and it may well be that the design becomes more efficient with the later layers ;O) I’m busy just now but I intend to get around to the role of the nucleus in spin next because I feel it is an ‘acceleration’ that bears special properties.

Submitted by Mangone on
I haven’t had much time to consider just how the atom’s nucleus might be effected by orbits but if we consider the ’Wall Of Death’ it is easy to see that the nucleuses of the atoms would be inclined to move away from the centre of their electron shells pushing outward - in a manner similar to a weight being swung around your head on a piece of string keeps the string tight because it wants to move outward - and hence with sufficient speed (and because the shell is spherical) the force would be more than enough to counter that of gravity and keep the bike's tyres pressed against the wall and the bike and it's rider 'orbiting'. In space a similar process would counter gravity and create ‘weightlessness’ when the atoms were moving at just the right velocity… which explains why a space craft can be ‘weightless’ even when it is in a gravitational field. So now we see the connection between weight and mass and realise that is only constant when there is no acceleration but that of gravity (i.e. when the nucleus is allowed to be ‘pulled down’ by gravity without being significantly effected by any other acceleration)... Yet again we have to wonder if Einstein was correct because we need the constant acceleration of the nucleus to counter the acceleration due to gravity and I’m not sure that ‘curved space’ would work. I’m still considering what happens to the nucleuses of atoms that are part of a spinning body (such as the earth) which is also in orbit… any thoughts you might have would be very welcome.

Submitted by Mangone on
Having given it a bit more thought then it seems to me that Einstein’s Relativity would work just as well as Newtonian physics. If we consider that the speed and direction of the weightless orbiting atom are relatively constant (the direction is constantly forward ;O) then there will be no acceleration on the nucleus and it would be central within the atom; the thing to remember it would usually be pulled down by gravity (as is almost everything on Earth). The speed would be seen as that of the atom, or (say) the orbiting object consisting of such atoms. So, the atom simply orbits the Earth because the gravitational field is curved - in other words it always stays at exactly the same distance from the centre of the planet (all things being equal). Mind you it isn’t as easy to explain what it is that cancels out the gravitational force and it would have to be related to the forward speed of the atom... unless Relativity would see the nucleus as pulled down by gravity and explain it as falling around the Earth - so if the atoms made up (say) a spaceship then the things in it would be weightless too because they were also falling round the Earth. Makes me wonder if relativity is actually just a way of looking at how things ’seem’ to be to different observers but that Newtonian physics gives the ‘true’ picture. Certainly, the atom would know whether its nucleus was central or not by the balance of the internal nuclear forces and I suspect that Newton would be correct and that the force of gravity would be balanced by the ‘outward’ force of the orbiting atom. It would be interesting to decide on a formal notation to differentiate the velocity of the atom’s shell from that of its nucleus and I would expect it to be in some form of spherical vectors. In the meantime I’m having a lot of fun imagining I’m the super heavy passenger within a vast, almost weightless, spherical spaceship and wondering what effect my position within the ship has upon its speed and course - can I lean it ‘round corners etc. :O) Also interesting to consider what happens when you join a lot of these ‘ships’ together to form a physical structure - would the passengers all tend to move in unison as (say) passengers strapped into a plane in turbulence or would it be the overall trend, the statistical average that reflected in the motion of the structure?

Submitted by Mangone on
I suppose most of us think that you need to go into space to experience weightlessness but it seems very likely to me that all you need to do is to jump into the air - alright for a very brief period of weightlessness… but when exactly would you be weightless? It is more fun imagining how physical bodies might react in everyday situations and jumping is fun. Okay you jump up and your atoms all accelerate upward pulling their nucleuses with them - mind you a lot depends on the style of jump - and on the way up you are still being pulled down by gravity until the bodies acceleration stops and the nucleuses catch up and then, for a brief moment their inertia cancels out gravity and you are weightless. It’s difficult to guess how long it takes for gravity to reverse the direction of the nucleuses acceleration but very quickly it will - and the nucleuses will start to fall and pull the body back down with them. I’m assuming that though the electron shell has very little inertia that it is also hardly effected by gravity and so the nucleuses will start to fall before the shells do. It is also fun imagining how atoms transfer their energy from one to the other when they are connected in various ways - you can wonder how Newton’s balls manage to take all the energy from the nucleuses of one ball and pass it on to another and yet it is easier to see why a ball with twice the mass (double the number of nucleuses) will have half the acceleration and to marvel at the incredible design of the atomic shells to withstand such impacts and yet be so relatively weightless. Of course the actual physical strength of the materials themselves depends on the molecular bonding etc. but, as we all know, it takes a huge amount of energy to actually split an atom. If you do give some thought to the atom you quickly begin to see what a miracle of design it really is and to realise what hubris we have when we imagine we can improve on, what for lack of a better phrase, I can only call Nature’s Designs. Yes, we can adjust things to be more useful to us but at the same time we lose things that we don’t value yet but which will prove to have a purpose that we simply could not anticipate. You see science fiction films where robots are super strong almost indestructible and able to do everything better than a human and fail to see that not only is that impossible but the huge amount of power needed to simply animate them would be unsupportable... Think of a car and a horse - the car may be faster and more comfortable but it will never run on a handful of hay, take care of itself and take you home safely when you’re too drunk to drive :O)

Submitted by Mangone on
A Matter Of Curvature. Thinking about the spaceship orbiting Earth being a balance between the gravitational force on it and the inertial force resulting from the ship’s constant change of direction it occurred to me that all bodies in a stable, circular orbit would be ‘weightless’ in respect to the thing they were orbiting. From this it seems likely that as we are in orbit around the sun we are ‘weightless’ as regards its gravitational attraction, as in fact would all the planets be and hence they would feel their own gravity unaffected by that of the sun. Pondering why the planets velocity around the sun did not decrease with the square of the distance to the sun it occurred to me that it is because orbits are a balance between the gravitational attraction of their sun and the amount of inertia caused by the path of the planet - in other words it is a matter of balancing curves. When the curve of the orbit matches the curve of gravity then the planet is in orbit. Since the curve of gravity depends on the distance to the sun and the curve of the planet depends on its orbital speed then a body that is travelling too slow will fall and a body that is travelling too fast will ‘rise’. In a way it is a battle between the straight and the curve and the strength of the gravitational field simply results in varying scales since a circle is a circle is a circle.