Far out cosmology: spacetime explained (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, July 16, 2019, 13:17 (1740 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: It simplifies our understanding of space:

In all honesty, I find it far more confusing than simplifying!

https://www.agnosticweb.com/index.php?id=28167

QUOTE: "Particles, planets, people and all other symmetry-breaking stuff stems from differences that arose during the Big Bang. As the universe inflated into existence, quantum jitter in the space-time fabric grew into macroscopic variations, which evolved into the galaxies and voids and other structures seen today. If space-time’s symmetries hadn’t spontaneously broken at the outset, the universe would now be empty and uninteresting — and no one would be around to see it. Broken symmetries are necessary for existence. (DAVID’s bold)

DAVID: This explains the importance of the concept of spacetime as real and necessary. Time is not simply a sequence of events as our minds see it. It is built into the universe, Note my bold. At the basis of reality is the quantum state. And that is where the mind of God exists.

I am perfectly happy to accept that time as the sequence of before and after, cause and effect, is “built into the universe”, and if the BB happened, there was a sequence in which all forms of energy and matter broke up into particles, planets and eventually people. If there hadn’t been a sequence of before and after, cause and effect, and if there hadn’t been energy and matter, there would have been no you and me. I don’t know what “the quantum state” means or is, and I don’t know if whatever it is has a mind. Nor, as far as I am aware, does anybody else.