The Big Big Thread of Religious Discussion

[Tydeus]

Originally Posted by The Kneumatic Pnight

And it's time for another installment of...

More Random Science Information that Barely Pretains to the Topic at Hand


The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is a mathematical limit to the precision of measuring a physical system. If one were to have, say, an infinite understanding of the system, say, during the Singularity (when we don't understand how the current laws of physics apply), one could necessarily make accurate predictions infinitely far into the future.

But how would one start with said infinite understanding (I think perhaps "absolute" understanding might be a better term)? Measuring a particle's velocity means that you can't as accurately measure its position. It doesn't matter if you're trying to do that at the moment of the universe's conception, or now, or any time inbetween. The principle does not change. Indeed, it would be exceedingly difficult to measure any particle's position at the beginning of the universe, when the velocities would have been fantastically large.

Tachyons travel faster than light.

....If they existed. You realize that they don't exist, right? They're theoretical particles, and there has never been any evidence of them. "Tachyon" is just the name we ascribe to any theoretical FTL (faster than light) particle. It's a name for an idea, not a particle/wave. So, no, they don't go faster than light.

Gravitons could theoretically be accelerated to above the speed of light as well, though they aren't there naturally.

How, exactly? Last time I heard, Einsteinian gravity was still the standard model...

In fact, gravity waves (which have been observed) travel at exactly the speed of light. Gravitons, like tachyons, are also theoretical. We don't even know that such particles/waves exist in the first place. It would make sense for the gravitational force to have a carrier particle as the other three do, but it has not been determined.

Forgive me for being skeptical that it would not be widely publicized if the last ~80 years of the study of gravity were overturned...

And, while not information, there's a number of things relating to 'Quantum Computers' that I, admittedly, don't really understand, but theoretically -- while they couldn't exchange information at faster than light speeds -- they might be able to use parts on the other 'side' of the universe as if they were all one piece.

Quantum entanglement, you mean? In this as well, FTL is still impossible. The time it takes for the information to travel between entangled particles is based on the speed of light. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, as far as we currently know. Information, energy, whatever.

And there are a number of other theoretical ways to skirt the speed of light. The only real issue is causality, but there's absolutely no reason to believe that causality preserves itself, rather than other forces acting to preserve causality. Hell, at a quantum level, causality is... for lack of a better word, sketchy.

No, there really is no way to skirt light speed. It's an unfortunate reality of the universe as we know it today. We may be proven wrong someday, by future discoveries, but for now all your claims regarding FTL are baseless.

Creating a universe is not so hard as one would think. There are numerous theories as to how we could create a universe -- many include the possibility of getting ourselves there as well.

And how, pray tell, would we transmit ourselves from one universe to another, when there is a very high likelihood that their laws of physics, their inherent properties are vastly different? You can't just state these outrageous claims and then provide no explanation. My claims rest on all our established knowledge of fundamental principles of the physical universe. Yours rest on what, sensationalist predicitions and wonderings in Popular Mechanics? 'Cause that's what it sounds like.

There are some who theorize that we have already created universes, albeit accidentally, in particle accelerators and the like.

I don't know if this is true, but either way, it doesn't matter. Do we have any plausible, hell, possible way to even detect such universes, let alone transmit ourselves into them, and become all-powerful beings of omniscience?

This being, of course, the ironic conclusion of our discovery that we are abjectly unimportant. Our world, our solar system, our galaxy are not the center, are not unique. Even our universe is almost certainly not unique. So much so that even we could create one.

It's an amusing reversal, no?

It is indeed.