I too am sorry that my response was shallow in depth. I find myself
discussing an area of intense fascination without having a solid background
of experience upon which to base. I thought I had achieved a sort of
circular logic in what I discussed as though I had come full circle in a
some sort of explanation of how in fact the energy may not be lost at all
and conservation may be said to hold true. Of course it was a weak
explanation but even the weakest of the four forces can have strength.
Obviously actual reality is only on one in describable level, a unity of
existance bound together by our own consciousness (awareness) of this
reality. Equally as obvious is that no theory of anything is universally
accepted. Discussion must therefore be filled with many theories each being
an individual aspect (point of view) which we must compile with our entire
knowledge as a way to formulate a concept of reality. By reality I mean a
cosmological explanation of the universe.
Of course I speak abstractly, and do forgive me, I speak of abstract things.
Merlin
merlin8@msn.com
Jack wrote:
Dear Merlin-
Each of us has(1)a way of looking at the universe and (2)a way of
describing what we see. David Bowman and I must look at the universe the
same
way, because we would make the same predictions for the result of any
experiment.
Our descriptions, however, might be quite different. All this is preface to
a
response to your posting.
It is easy to write grammatically correct sentences that have no content.
I invite you to revisit your posting and explain to yourself the content of
each
sentence. I suspect that you will find this hard to do.
Start, for example, with the statement "three levels at which we and the
universe exist." What does it mean "to exist" at a "level". This is a
trivial
criticism because you obviously mean that there are three levels of
description
of the universe.
It is certainly true that current thinkink deals with the universe at
two levels. These levels are often called "global" and "local". There is
no
need to have quantities that can be identified in a local description also
present in a global description. This is quite the case with "energy".
Energy
is a quantity that can be defined in a local description of a part of the
universe.
It is simply undefined in most global descriptions.
Here is a feeble analogy. Locally, on the surface of the earth, I can
ask the question, "Which way is North ?" Globally, looking at the earth
from all
external directions, the question has no meaning. The phrasing of the
question is
nevertheless grammatically correct in any context.
Regards,
Jack
David Bowman thank you for your excellant response. I appreciate your
promptness, please forgive lack thereof. I found your explanation to be very
educational. I am not a professional and am indeed lacking in some necessary
formal training. I am beginning to appreciate that there are then three (at
least) manners, or maybe better levels, at which we and the universe exist.
That is on one level, locally (supply your own definition), is for all
intents and purpose Newtonian, with conservation, inertia, almost
mechanical. Then possibly next is relativistic in which the Newtonian laws
begin to breakdown in favor of variances found in extremis, though
conservation is primarily retained intact.Third then is Hubble space in
which finally the laws of conservation begin to fail, the universe is
largely homogenous and recognized as a unit. These multiple levels
overlapped to form one space-time as if existance was only the interaction
of these various forces.
Though energy may in fact not be lost! Would it be more like the ratio of
energy-mass (same thing anyway) is decreasing. Less energy (well not exactly
energy, CBR radiation) more room. Like cooling the temperature of a volume
by adding more volume, or like heat lost as friction to the environment and
then lost into space as radiated heat. Which draws an interesting comparison
to the loss of radiation in CBR on the Hubble space level, and loss of heat
in a natural local setting. It would seem now that truly Newtonian mechanics
and the laws of conservation are now entirely theoretical and have no
pragmatic application as the creation of an isolated system for experiment
is physically and quantum mechanically impossible. Does this change the
manner in which rich new research caters to the laws of conservation? Is it
time to reformulate conservation to include a Universal Loss constant? I'm
fascinated by this discussion and look forward to continuation.