Even the very best of scientists can exhibit some sort of scientific sleight-of-hand and bamboozle their lay audience with absurdities. Actually, this approach often is just taking a lazy way out. Explaining things in sufficient detail, to avoid the absurdities, would either be too involved or take up too much text. At least I hope that’s the case. If some scientists actually believe what they write, then something is rotten in academia.
Continued from yesterday’s blog…
Dark Energy: Something from Nothing: This is really an extension of both the above and below in that apparently space is constantly being created as you read this and that explains why the Universe is expanding: more on that below. But the bit of creation that keeps on keeping on is with respect to Dark Energy which actually provides the oomph that drives bits of space further apart thus making available more volume to have additional space be created in. Since Dark Energy is a property of space, it all becomes very circular. Dark Energy creates more space and more space creates more Dark Energy and it’s all a sort of positive never ending feedback mechanism. It’s also something from nothing and you cannot create energy out of nothing. Wouldn’t it be great if the energy you use – gasoline, electricity, etc. – was available for free since you could create an endless supply of it out of nothing? Dark Energy is a free lunch – that’s an extraordinary claim!
Cosmology and the Expansion of Space: We are all aware, at least since the early 20th Century, that our Universe is expanding in volume. That’s the result of a rather messy trilogy of oomph events. The initial Big Bang explosion; a secondary extremely sudden and short-lived burst of ‘inflation’ that transpired almost immediately after the Big Bang; and finally a mysterious force called Dark Energy (named but not explained) that keeps shoving the already expanding Universe to ever greater and greater velocities. In other words, our Universe is not only expanding but the expansion rate is accelerating. Okay, that’s pretty much based on observational evidence. But that still leaves two scenarios. Following on from the above “keep it simple, stupid” rule, the obvious scenario is that all of the stuff of the Universe is expanding through existing and pre-existing space and time. However, standard model cosmologists, in keeping with their “something from nothing” rule, suggest that space itself is expanding; space itself is constantly being created (out of nothing), and thus space itself is causing the stuff of the Universe to spread farther and farther apart, the bits and pieces being dragged apart kicking and screaming somehow glued to their particular patch of space like dots painted or glued on the surface of a balloon that’s being inflated. Again, no cookbook is on offer that gives a recipe for expanding space or how you too at home can expand your space or create more space in which to store your knick-knacks. That space is currently being created out of nothing – that’s an extraordinary claim!
The Atomic Structure of Space-Time (Planck scales: lengths, volumes, etc.): By the very act of suggesting that space and time or space-time has a structure, one is suggesting that space and time are things, and like all things, at extremely tiny scales are subject to the laws, principles and relationships of quantum physics. In other words, space and time (like matter and energy) come in quanta – indivisible discrete units. It is proposed that these fundamental units of space and time or space-time are Planck units which they suggest are the shortest possible length (hence area hence volume) you can have; and a Planck length of time is the shortest measure of time that can exist. Now you will certainly find reference to these Planck units in the scientific literature. That’s not in question. What is in question is the interpretation. It is my understanding that Planck units are the smallest units possible where one can discuss meaningful events or happenings. There comes a time where a volume is too small for any meaningful physics to happen therein. There comes a point where a length of time is too brief for any meaningful event to happen within that time frame. That doesn’t mean that one can’t further divide a Planck unit into smaller and smaller segments unto infinity. It just isn’t meaningful to deal with such smaller units since nothing of significance can happen within them. So, space and time are not things. They can be subdivided indefinitely until the cows come home. There just is however a threshold value below which it’s not overly meaningful to discuss happenings there. If something meaningful is an elephant, it’s not meaningful to talk about an elephant inside a shoebox, though clearly shoebox volumes exist. If it takes a baseball one second to reach home plate from the pitcher’s mound, and it takes the batter say one-tenth of a second to react, then it is not meaningful for any discussion of that scenario to focus on billionths of a second time frames, though a billionth of a second is a legit division of time. That space and time can be constructed or formed out of discrete space or time quanta units – that’s an extraordinary claim!
Black Holes: Crossing the Event Horizon: For some inexplicable reason, I’ve noted several times some scientific author suggest that an external observer (call him Clive) will note that someone (call her Jane) about to crossover a Black Hole’s event horizon, will not only be travelling slower and slower by Clive’s clock as Jane approaches that event horizon, but in fact at contact with the event horizon, again as recorded by Clive, time will have stopped for Jane. In other words, Clive will never witness Jane’s crossover from outside the Black Hole to inside the Black Hole. Jane will appear to be frozen in time at the event horizon, yet as far as Jane is concerned, everything is normal in terms of time flowing at one second per second.
Now that’s a major paradox. Jane can’t be crossing the event horizon at one second per second while at the same time being frozen in time at the time of crossing according to Clive – the external observer. Of course the paradox is bullshit. To an external observer, Clive, time only comes to a screeching halt for someone like Jane, external to them, if they witness Jane travelling at the speed of light. That’s a physical impossibility. There’s no reason to believe that someone like Jane can be crossing the event horizon at light speed. There’s no absolute requirement that Jane is in fact crossing the event horizon at the speed of light. So, in actual reality, our observer Clive will see someone, anyone, including Jane, cross the event horizon, albeit at a slower rate than Jane herself, because Jane is travelling and doing the event horizon cross-over at less than light speed. That time stands still at the Black Hole’s event horizon – that’s an extraordinary claim!
Conclusions: Scientists are extremely fond of invoking the mantra that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. Unfortunately, I’m damned if I find any evidence, far less any extraordinary evidence, for the above statements or alleged truisms. The only way I know of that could give you something for nothing, or disregard causality with reckless abandon, would be if we were all products of a virtual reality, just existing in a software-generated simulated universe where anything goes. But that too is an extraordinary claim!
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