https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGwJvnTGKrrQvzpmpxMBqGCwCJM

"So far, this has all been theory. But a new experiment has now for the first time observed that quantum fluctuations can actually trigger a transition like that, luckily not for the entire universe, but for a small and safe test-setting in the laboratory with ultracold gases.

"You’d think that empty space is about as boring as it gets. But the question of just what it means for space to be empty is more difficult than you might think. You see, physicists believe that our entire universe was in some sense created from empty space. And if the empty space which we find around us now is not a true but a “false vacuum”, then it will eventually decay, too.

"These vacuum decays are similar to phase transitions that we can observe in nature around us.

"A good example of such a phase transition is chemical handwarmers like this one that I dug out of my children’s room. These handwarmers contain a liquid which is supercooled with a thin metal plate in it. That it’s supercooled means that it’s at a temperature below its freezing point, yet it isn’t a solid.

"Such a supercooled liquid contains energy that it wants to release by switching into another more stable solid state. You can trigger this transition by a large enough perturbation, for example pressure or a small electric spark by twisting this metal plate. The liquid then suddenly makes a transition to a solid, and the energy is released. This makes it warm up, which is why the thing is used as a handwarmer.

***

"Normally such phase transitions are caused by external forces. But theoretically they can also happen by quantum fluctuations in which case the system tunnels from the metastable to the stable state. These quantum fluctuations need no external cause. They just happen all by themselves.

"And this is one of the theories for how our universe might have been created with all that stuff in it. Once upon a time there was a false vacuum. It decayed and released a lot of energy that energy turned into matter. Some billions of years passed and now there’s us, the leftovers of that energy from the false vacuum.

***

"All of this is theory, mathematics equations. So far no one has actually seen a quantum fluctuation trigger such a phase transition or a bubble nucleation. And this is now what the new paper is about.

"They didn’t look at vacuum decay, but a phase transition triggered by quantum fluctuations and the bubble nucleation. For this they used a cloud of sodium atoms cooled to near absolute zero and put it into a magnetic field. The sodium atoms have spins, and they want to align themselves along the magnetic field. They also want to align themselves towards each other though. This creates a metastable state in which the atoms are all aligned in the same direction but not ideally aligned with the external field. Increase the strength of the external field and they’ll start flipping. They don’t flip on the borders because the magnetic field is weaker there.

***

"What does that mean? It means they have confirmed that these theories of quantum triggered phase transitions are correct and they also measured the dependence of the probability of the decay as a function of the energy. They’re now planning to do more experiments."

Comment: from a Hossenfelder video. Physicists hate 'something from nothing'. So, they invent possibilities. Note they used a magnetic field to influence the atoms. False vacuum is one invention and magnetic field another. That they could setup their experiment and succeeded only shows what works in the current universe. Guth et. al. showed we have no idea about the 'before', the first entry in this discussion.

Here is Ethan Siegel:

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/evidence-universe-before-big-bang/?utm_campaign...

"For many decades, these two notions of the Big Bang — of the hot dense state that describes the early Universe and the initial singularity — were inseparable.

"But beginning in the 1970s, scientists started identifying some puzzles surrounding the Big Bang, noting several properties of the Universe that weren’t explainable within the context of these two notions simultaneously. When cosmic inflation was first put forth and developed in the early 1980s, it separated the two definitions of the Big Bang, proposing that the early hot, dense state never achieved these singular conditions, but rather that a new, inflationary state preceded it. There really was a Universe before the hot Big Bang, and some very strong evidence from the 21st century truly proves that it’s so.

"Although we’re certain that we can describe the very early Universe as being hot, dense, rapidly expanding, and full of matter-and-radiation — i.e., by the hot Big Bang — the question of whether that was truly the beginning of the Universe or not is one that can be answered with evidence. The differences between a Universe that began with a hot Big Bang and a Universe that had an inflationary phase that precedes and sets up the hot Big Bang are subtle, but tremendously important. After all, if we want to know what the very beginning of the Universe was, we need to look for evidence from the Universe itself.

***

"...if we can search the Universe for signals that appear on super-horizon scales, that’s a great way to discriminate between a non-inflationary Universe that began with a singular hot Big Bang (which shouldn’t have them at all) and an inflationary Universe that possessed an inflationary period prior to the start of the hot Big Bang (which should possess these super-horizon fluctuations).

***

"What you need to do is perform a correlation analysis: between the polarized light and the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background and correlate them on the same angular scales as one another. This is where things get really interesting, because this is where observationally looking at our Universe allows us to tell the “singular Big Bang without inflation” and the “inflationary state that gives rise to the hot Big Bang” scenarios apart!

***

"The t that we see super-horizon fluctuations, and that we see them not merely from reionization but as they are predicted to exist from inflation, is a slam dunk: the non-inflationary, singular Big Bang model does not match up with the Universe we observe. Instead, we learn that we can only extrapolate the Universe back to a certain cutoff point in the context of the hot Big Bang, and that prior to that, an inflationary state must have preceded the hot Big Bang.

***

"... the super-horizon fluctuation test is an easy one to perform and one that’s completely robust.

"All on its own, it’s enough to tell us that the Universe didn’t start with the hot Big Bang, but rather that an inflationary state preceded it and set it up. Although it’s generally not talked about in such terms, this discovery, all by itself, is easily a Nobel-worthy achievement. "

Comment: I've left out all the complex background information he discusses. We still have the appearance of " something from nothing". The beginning is changed to inflation first, then the Bang

dhw: “Nothing will come of nothing.” (King Lear). How about an eternal and infinite universe of matter and energy, endlessly in flux? If the big bang happened, it was just one incident among many.

DAVID: The problem with that answer is it requires a universe with spacetime that is not flat, and all the evidence we currently have says it is flat.

dhw: I’m sorry, but I have no idea what this means. Perhaps you could explain. Nor do I have any idea how anyone can possibly know what an infinite universe looks like, since the vastness that we can observe would be infinitesimal in infinity. Nor do I know how anyone can possibly know what the universe was like before the big bang (if it happened).

DAVID: Explained in my book, Spacetime is flat, convex or concurved. Current evidence flat and will expand into heat death 100 billion years in the future.

dhw: If the universe is eternal, how does anyone know what happened BEFORE the big bang; if it’s infinite, how does anyone know its shape; and how does anyone know what will happen 100 thousand million years from now to all the parts of the universe that we currently know nothing about? And finally, I really don’t know how anyone can believe in a single eternal “first cause” conscious mind and yet regard an eternal "first cause" universe of non-conscious matter and energy as impossible.

DAVID: I know your agnostic brain about everything. I am telling you about current accepted theory and facts. Currently actual measurements of space time tells us it is flat, and if that is the case the universe will expand until it becomes cold and breaks apart.

dhw: Earlier (now bolded) it was going to expand into heat death. Ah well, never mind. I’m sorry, but I have no idea how current accepted theory and facts can possibly tell us what existed before the big bang (if it happened), or what lies beyond the range of our “actual measurements”. And I don’t see how a mysterious, unknown and eternal mind is deemed possible whereas eternally changing matter and energy is deemed impossible. And I boldly predict that during the next 99.99 billion years, scientists will discover a few things that will change current theory.

I'm only presenting current theory. "Heat death' and cold torn apart universe are all the same theory using different terms. I certainly agree what happened before the Big Bang is call foolish guesswork

dhw: “Nothing will come of nothing.” (King Lear). How about an eternal and infinite universe of matter and energy, endlessly in flux? If the big bang happened, it was just one incident among many.

DAVID: The problem with that answer is it requires a universe with spacetime that is not flat, and all the evidence we currently have says it is flat.

dhw: I’m sorry, but I have no idea what this means. Perhaps you could explain. Nor do I have any idea how anyone can possibly know what an infinite universe looks like, since the vastness that we can observe would be infinitesimal in infinity. Nor do I know how anyone can possibly know what the universe was like before the big bang (if it happened).

DAVID: Explained in my book, Spacetime is flat, convex or concurved. Current evidence flat and will expand into heat death 100 billion years in the future.

dhw: If the universe is eternal, how does anyone know what happened BEFORE the big bang; if it’s infinite, how does anyone know its shape; and how does anyone know what will happen 100 thousand million years from now to all the parts of the universe that we currently know nothing about? And finally, I really don’t know how anyone can believe in a single eternal “first cause” conscious mind and yet regard an eternal "first cause" universe of non-conscious matter and energy as impossible.

DAVID: I know your agnostic brain about everything. I am telling you about current accepted theory and facts. Currently actual measurements of space time tells us it is flat, and if that is the case the universe will expand until it becomes cold and breaks apart.

Earlier (now bolded) it was going to expand into heat death. Ah well, never mind. I’m sorry, but I have no idea how current accepted theory and facts can possibly tell us what existed before the big bang (if it happened), or what lies beyond the range of our “actual measurements”. And I don’t see how a mysterious, unknown and eternal mind is deemed possible whereas eternally changing matter and energy is deemed impossible. And I boldly predict that during the next 99.99 billion years, scientists will discover a few things that will change current theory.

DAVID: I see outside our universe total void, a complete nothing. Why we are here is up to your reasoning. What is your first cause? That has to exist. We had a demonstrated beginning in time as the CMB demonstrates.

dhw: “Nothing will come of nothing.” (King Lear). How about an eternal and infinite universe of matter and energy, endlessly in flux? If the big bang happened, it was just one incident among many.

DAVID: The problem with that answer is it requires a universe with spacetime that is not flat, and all the evidence we currently have says it is flat.

dhw: I’m sorry, but I have no idea what this means. Perhaps you could explain. Nor do I have any idea how anyone can possibly know what an infinite universe looks like, since the vastness that we can observe would be infinitesimal in infinity. Nor do I know how anyone can possibly know what the universe was like before the big bang (if it happened).

DAVID: Explained in my book, Spacetime is flat, convex or concurved. Current evidence flat and will expand into heat death 100 billion years in the future.

dhw: If the universe is eternal, how does anyone know what happened BEFORE the big bang; if it’s infinite, how does anyone know its shape; and how does anyone know what will happen 100 thousand million years from now to all the parts of the universe that we currently know nothing about? And finally, I really don’t know how anyone can believe in a single eternal “first cause” conscious mind and yet regard an eternal "first cause" universe of non-conscious matter and energy as impossible.

I know your agnostic brain about everything. I am telling you about current accepted theory and facts. Currently actual measurements of space time tells us it is flat, and if that is the case the universe will expand until it becomes cold and breaks apart.

dhw: “Nothing will come of nothing.” (King Lear). How about an eternal and infinite universe of matter and energy, endlessly in flux? If the big bang happened, it was just one incident among many.

DAVID: The problem with that answer is it requires a universe with spacetime that is not flat, and all the evidence we currently have says it is flat.

dhw: I’m sorry, but I have no idea what this means. Perhaps you could explain. Nor do I have any idea how anyone can possibly know what an infinite universe looks like, since the vastness that we can observe would be infinitesimal in infinity. Nor do I know how anyone can possibly know what the universe was like before the big bang (if it happened).

DAVID: Explained in my book, Spacetime is flat, convex or concurved. Current evidence flat and will expand into heat death 100 billion years in the future.

If the universe is eternal, how does anyone know what happened BEFORE the big bang; if it’s infinite, how does anyone know its shape; and how does anyone know what will happen 100 thousand million years from now to all the parts of the universe that we currently know nothing about? And finally, I really don’t know how anyone can believe in a single eternal “first cause” conscious mind and yet regard an eternal "first cause" universe of non-conscious matter and energy as impossible.

DAVID: I see outside our universe total void, a complete nothing. Why we are here is up to your reasoning. What is your first cause? That has to exist. We had a demonstrated beginning in time as the CMB demonstrates.

dhw: “Nothing will come of nothing.” (King Lear). How about an eternal and infinite universe of matter and energy, endlessly in flux? If the big bang happened, it was just one incident among many.

DAVID: The problem with that answer is it requires a universe with spacetime that is not flat, and all the evidence we currently have says it is flat.

dhw: I’m sorry, but I have no idea what this means. Perhaps you could explain. Nor do I have any idea how anyone can possibly know what an infinite universe looks like, since the vastness that we can observe would be infinitesimal in infinity. Nor do I know how anyone can possibly know what the universe was like before the big bang (if it happened).

Explained in my book, Spacetime is flat, convex or concurved. Current evidence flat and will expand into heat death 100 billion years in the future.

dhw: “Nothing will come of nothing.” (King Lear). How about an eternal and infinite universe of matter and energy, endlessly in flux? If the big bang happened, it was just one incident among many.

DAVID: The problem with that answer is it requires a universe with spacetime that is not flat, and all the evidence we currently have says it is flat.

I’m sorry, but I have no idea what this means. Perhaps you could explain. Nor do I have any idea how anyone can possibly know what an infinite universe looks like, since the vastness that we can observe would be infinitesimal in infinity. Nor do I know how anyone can possibly know what the universe was like before the big bang (if it happened).

DAVID: I see outside our universe total void, a complete nothing. Why we are here is up to your reasoning. What is your first cause? That has to exist. We had a demonstrated beginning in time as the CMB demonstrates.

dhw: “Nothing will come of nothing.” (King Lear). How about an eternal and infinite universe of matter and energy, endlessly in flux? If the big bang happened, it was just one incident among many.

The problem with that answer is it requires a universe with spacetime that is not flat, and all the evidence we currently have says it is flat.

“Nothing will come of nothing.” (King Lear). How about an eternal and infinite universe of matter and energy, endlessly in flux? If the big bang happened, it was just one incident among many.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/11/27/ask-ethan-how-did-the-entire-un...

"As I wrote back in 2018, there are four scientific definitions of nothing, and they’re all valid, depending on your context:

"1) A time when your "thing" of interest didn't exist,
2) Empty, physical space,
3) Empty spacetime in the lowest-energy state possible,
4) Whatever you're left with when you take away the entire Universe and the laws governing it.

"We can definitely say we obtained “a Universe from nothing” if we use the first two definitions; we cannot if we use the third; and quite unfortunately, we don’t know enough to say what happens if we use the fourth. Without a physical theory to describe what happens outside of the Universe and beyond the realm physical laws, the concept of true nothingness is physically ill-defined.

"In the context of physics, it’s impossible to make sense of an idea of absolute nothingness. What does it mean to be outside of space and time, and how can space and time sensibly, predictably emerge from a state of non-existence? How can spacetime emerge at a particular location or time, when there’s no definition of location or time without it? Where do the rules governing quanta — the fields and particles both — arise from?

"This line of thought even assumes that space, time, and the laws of physics themselves weren’t eternal, when in fact they may be. Any theorems or proofs to the contrary rely on assumptions whose validity is not soundly established under the conditions which we’d seek to apply them. If you accept a physical definition of “nothing,” then yes, the Universe as we know it very much appears to have arisen from nothing. But if you leave physical constraints behind, then all certainly about our ultimate cosmic origins disappears.

"Unfortunately for us all, inflation, by its very nature, erases any information that might be imprinted from a pre-existing state on our observable Universe. Despite the limitless nature of our imaginations, we can only draw conclusions about matters for which tests involving our physical reality can be constructed. No matter how logically sound any other consideration may be, including a notion of absolute nothingness, it’s merely a construct of our minds."

Comment: I see outside our universe total void, a complete nothing. Why we are here is up to your reasoning. What is your first cause? That has to exist. We had a demonstrated beginning in time as the CMB demonstrates.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2017/06/stephen-hawking-was-wrong-the-mystery-rema...

I cannot copy the site, but it presents the same material. there is no theoretical source for the Big Bang. How about God since it is a creation from?

https://phys.org/news/2017-06-universe-big.html

"According to Einstein's theory of relativity, the curvature of spacetime was infinite at the big bang. In fact, at this point all mathematical tools fail, and the theory breaks down. However, there remained the notion that perhaps the beginning of the universe could be treated in a simpler manner, and that the infinities of the big bang might be avoided. This has indeed been the hope expressed since the 1980s by the well-known cosmologists James Hartle and Stephen Hawking with their "no-boundary proposal", and by Alexander Vilenkin with his "tunnelling proposal". Now scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute/AEI) in Potsdam and at the Perimeter Institute in Canada have been able to use better mathematical methods to show that these ideas cannot work. The big bang, in its complicated glory, retains all its mystery.

"One of the principal goals of cosmology is to understand the beginning of our universe. Data from the Planck satellite mission shows that 13.8 billion years ago the universe consisted of a hot and dense soup of particles. Since then the universe has been expanding. This is the main tenet of the hot big bang theory, but the theory fails to describe the very first stages themselves, as the conditions were too extreme. Indeed, as we approach the big bang, the energy density and the curvature grow until we reach the point where they become infinite.

"As an alternative, the "no-boundary" and "tunneling" proposals assume that the tiny early universe arose by quantum tunnelling from nothing, and subsequently grew into the large universe that we see. The curvature of spacetime would have been large, but finite in this beginning stage, and the geometry would have been smooth - without boundary (see Fig. 1, left panel). This initial configuration would replace the standard big bang. However, for a long time the true consequences of this hypothesis remained unclear. Now, with the help of better mathematical methods, Jean-Luc Lehners, group leader at the AEI, and his colleagues Job Feldbrugge and Neil Turok at Perimeter Institute, managed to define the 35 year old theories in a precise manner for the first time, and to calculate their implications. The result of these investigations is that these alternatives to the big bang are no true alternatives. As a result of Heisenberg's uncertainty relation, these models do not only imply that smooth universes can tunnel out of nothing, but also irregular universes. In fact, the more irregular and crumpled they are, the more likely (see Fig. 1, right panel). "Hence the "no-boundary proposal" does not imply a large universe like the one we live in, but rather tiny curved universes that would collapse immediately", says Jean-Luc Lehners, who leads the "theoretical cosmology" group at the AEI.

"Hence one cannot circumvent the big bang so easily. Lehners and his colleagues are now trying to figure out what mechanism could have kept those large quantum fluctuations in check under the most extreme circumstances, allowing our large universe to unfold."

Comment: this study refutes the 'something from nothing' theory based on quantum mechanics.


> dhw: One more try. As I understand your post, we already have an “integrated quantum pattern” which could only have been devised by your God, and no matter what new discoveries are made, they will also have been devised by your God. I don't think we can carry this discussion any further, can we? - Agreed. done.


> dhw: Ignorant though I am, I do understand what the LHC is looking for (and so far failing to discover). I also understand that the Higgs boson completes one particular segment of the great jigsaw puzzle of our universe, but there are many other pieces that are still missing, which is why various websites insist that the standard model is not complete (or is “circumscribed” as you now put it).-One more try. I understand what you understand, BUT, we don't know what were missing. That is my point. We are in a new discovery phase. Strings, membranes, supersymmetry, etc. all unproven.

dhw: If there are major problems not solved by the standard model (as there were with the geocentric model of the universe), we must accept the possibility that the standard model may be wrong, and those aspects of it that are correct may have to be reshaped into a new pattern. But that really isn't the point of our discussion, is it? “Who ordered that?” is the real point. And no matter what new discoveries are made, and no matter what pattern is formed, in the composition of the universe as in the history of evolution, you will look for God and find him. Who knows, you may be right.-You still don't understand. What the LHC does is increase its energy level to discover new particles. They theoretically comprise what is not in the current circumscribed standard model. The Higgs which ended this segment of exploration was not as heavy as theorized, but it has been carefully studied and accepted as fitting into the model. No one knows what new particles might be, whether they fit current theories or not. View this area of research like Columbus discovering the New World. What will be added will be new and more than likely not change anything now known as old info, except as to how he old will relate to the new.-I should mention something else, a book, The God Particle, by Leon Lederman. 1993, Nobel Prize winner) touting the super collider being built in Texas (never funded fully or completed, but over twice the size of the LHC. The whole book is a history of atom smashing, while touting that the Higgs must be found. He was looking over the horizon. That is what is happening now.


> dhw: No disagreement here. It may even be that the Standard Model pattern has to be completely written, and the segment culminating in the Higgs will take on a completely new shape. Some of us might say that patterns are only complete when they are complete.-Once the basic standard model was established, every subsequent event supported it. No surprises that didn't fit. But along the way, in the 20th Century, there were surprises (new particles) that had to be studied and understood as part of the pattern. A famous quote is, "who ordered that?" by I.I. Rabi when the muon first appeared:-https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjJlP_dpeXOAhWPZiYKHSEXCMsQFggcMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMuon&usg=AFQjCNHKRZtPxd_CXrFjsfR4R3W_lLldig&sig2=Lvw8jM7Skr-0n78UYphUdA&bvm=bv.131286987,d.eWE-Once again, to penetrate your thinking, they are currently looking for something new outside the standard model! Higgs completed this circumscribed segment of our knowledge. Whatever is out there will confirm current theories about the next giant step or bring surprises like the muon was. By the way I knew the quote from the reading I did years ago but looked it up just for you to show you how the discoveries tumbled out as atom smashers smashed and folks were surprised. It was one surprise after another, but a pattern appeared they were able to understand. Comprehensible is comprehensible. By chance or from a mind?