Before the Big Bang? (Origins)

by David Turell , Thursday, July 31, 2014, 02:46 (3766 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: The more you talk of “pure energy”, the more nebulous the concept becomes. How “pure” can it be if it is able to give rise to all these particles? I can understand the argument that matter came from energy, so perhaps we need a definition of “pure”. -I have to admit there is no such thing as pure energy in particle physics. All of us have trouble putting what has been found into words. What I envision to be present before the bb is a nebulous 'energy" which contains the particles we have found and the ones yet to be found. In my belief this is organized as a universal consciousness which went on to create the universe.
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> DAVID: In the aftermath of the bb there was plasma, and the particles fell out later (300,000 years)
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> dhw; But plasma is matter! -Correct, but it is at very high temperature, like a thick hot soup and all the particles are joined together, interacting in many ways all at once, but nothing is separate. This is sort of my concept of God, only much cooler.-> 
> dhw: Why does the first cause logically have to be pure energy? Why can't the first cause have been energy with particles? -Because all we know is energy and matter within the universe. We cannot know its form before the universe, but energy had to exist beforehand in some form, pure plasma with unseparated particles or perhaps separated.-> 
> dhw: QUOTE:“Since plasmas are made of charged particles every particle can interact with every other particle, even over very long distances. This makes plasmas behave very strangely compared to the other states of matter. When every particle “talks” to every other particle the material can form all sorts of waves and move in many complex ways. -Yes, plasma defined as seen in this universe.-> 
> dhw: If plasma is made of charged particles, I don't understand how particles “fell out” 300,000 years after the formation of plasma,-Because the plasma cooled and the particles separated into what we see now.-> dhw: And it doesn't help me to understand why the first cause should not be energy transmuting itself into matter.-And I don't know either. Only that our definitions are confusing. Please review the following from Strassler:-http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/mass-energy-matter-etc/matter-and-energy-a-false-dichotomy/-He admits the confusion and the terrible terms but I think he makes a good attempt to clarify the issues, and the changing meanings of the terms.
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> dhw: You and I both accept cause and effect, but once again you insist on “timeless” energy being first cause, even though cause and effect depend on time. Following Ockham, why not opt for the simplest scenario: the first cause as energy eternally transmuting itself into matter? Since the only energy/matter we know of is that of our own universe, why assume that the eternal past has been any different?-With my further reviews of Strassler, I'll accept your proposal up to the juncture of when I try to interpret how God must have been formed, noted above. I've made the judgment that intelligence preceded the bb. Trying to imagine how it was formed is impossible, but it had to be energy, or energy-matter as the physicists define it. -> 
> dhw: Since plasma is matter, what is “plasma energy”?-Since the universe went through a plasma phase, at that point it was matter/energy combined. As you can tell I get myself confused, because I started reading this stuff in the 1960's when as Strassler notes particles were particles and not smudges in fields. Now we have bosons that make fields and forces, and fermions which are the main basis of matter. Whew! -But the whole basis of the universe is in a quantum layer. We are not in that layer but are affected by it constantly. And I think Kastner has a good approach to it. Your questions are helping me clarify my own thinking.