Q&A: Origins of the Laws of Nature - Peter Atkins
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- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
- Can "nothing" have dimensions? What kind of energy is required to overcome entropy? Peter Atkins answers audience questions following his talk.
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Peter's book "Conjuring the Universe: The Origins of the Laws of Nature" is available now - geni.us/TXh2S
Watch the talk: • Origins of the Laws of...
Peter Atkins is a chemist and popular science author. His most recent book Conjuring the Universe: The Origins of the Laws of Nature is out now.
This talk and Q&A was filmed in the Ri on 21 May 2018.
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Master, you are my inspiration !
I don't think he answered the negative energy question successfully. What happened to conservation?
Phenomenal, Just phenomenal
I had to study Atkins, Physical Chemistry book, god that was a hard book to understand, now I can see why...
The question remains: What caused the dispersion of energy (from nothing into net nothing)? In my mind, there had to be energy necessary for this to occur... But from where did it came, if in the beginning there was nothing? It's like when you blow onto an old cupboard and all the settled dust comes apart... but for it to come apart, there first has to be a blow... Please correct me if I'm completely wrong here...
A humorous excerpt that very well sums up the entire first half of the Dr.'s lecture is 13:02:
(Q for questioning audience member, A for Dr. Atkins)
Q: ...there is net nothing?
A: Yes
Q: (quietly) Mmm.
A: But it's a much more interesting form of nothing.
Yeah right... "a much more interesting 'form' of *something*" there you go fixed it for him.
Watched all of it
9:00 "Why mathematics works as a wonderful description of nature"
That's a real teaser : he should have added, "The book is available in the foyer".
All we really need to know is that God knows everything and one day he will tell us.
These questions seem so disconnected from our everyday lives that it is way too easy to forget just how much they are, in fact, essential and integral to our general wellbeing. For better or worse, things will remain that way for some time to come as we are all currently too busy catering for our machines and technology. Now, I better go patch up some more code or, even better, write another useful and quite practical app...
Why can't humans just be happy? Is it so difficult. I am neither an expert nor all-knowing but a cow seems most of the time happier than most of the people I know... I'm not advocating intellectual primitiveness. I rather criticize the attitude of humankind as a whole, where every endeavor has the character of a drowning person grabbing a lifebelt. Only to tear it apart and cry for the next lifebelt. Why do we have to be like this?
We are strange beings indeed.
15:45 I actually think it might be the case. The universe is expanding and eventually might very well kind of "evaporate" back into nothing. Space and time will lose any meaning if the universe will be just space and time and stray photons. And who knows if virtual particles will be a thing or if the vacuum itself will degrade into nothingness.
you´re not the only one that essentially is what the big rip is all about
How does it happen that we can't define nothing in terms of coordinates, but can define zero energy, zero momentum, and zero time using the coordinate system?
The entire world is obsessed with law, the lawful regularities of our physical reality.
The law we experience is emergent, it is fractal. There are no perfect symmetries, everything we experience is an approximation of something else.
The relationship of time and perfect law is something altogether different.
There are many more ways to be disordered than ordered. There are many more ways to be unethical than ethical. Knowing good from evil requires a level of distinction we do not have access to. Light has the ability to explore state space in an instant of time. To give light something must be consumed. Light pierces the darkness and is consumed, truth pierces the chaos and is consumed.
The most mysterious law to science to me is the law of heat-trapping CO2 or GHGs.
Im making a book report about this, and I still dont understand anything from this book.
There could be various reasons why knowledge of the unified theory is possible but also impossible, depending on its nature
I think some comments stem from a misunderstanding of what he calls nothing. I don't think he describes nothing as the absence of things, but as he describes in the video, nothing is absolute uniformity. In this state, the universe has 0 entropy so the concept of spacetime does not exist.
Deep Sheep - He makes the same communication error as Laurence Kraus; he throws around the word "nothing" - which has colloquial baggage - but glosses over the concept without taking the necessary effort to be explicitly clear about what he's referring to. So the layperson walks away thinking he's just babbling nonsense and no with real understanding of what he's trying to convey.
He defines nothing with 3 properties. Hardly glossing over it, he literally defines it with pictures no less. It is the basis of his discussion, defining the properties of nothing & pointing out similarities with some of the more fundamental physical laws.
I'm not a layperson and as a Ph.D in theoretical physics I can get technical and explain why most of the terms this guy and many others like him use are overly anthropomorphic and in many cases (perhaps unconsciously) even culturally biased and Eurocentric. This guy just like many high profile so-called science popularizers is a charlatan, period. Just like Kraus he uses the term 'nothing' to attracts those like-minded individuals that have the same agenda as him (neo-atheism). I'm not a theist nor an atheist nor an agnostic as I find these labels freaking stupid and overly superficial and also I don't give a flying funk about any religion at all. However, when it comes to actual science my blood gets hot that these people prefer politics and personal interests over raw and neutral science. Please refer to my previous comments above for more details. And no English apparently is not my native language so please keep the grammar Nazism to yourself. Thanks.
A hypothetical "state" of absolutely nothing can not have:
- Any boundaries, it has to be infinite
- Any changing principle
- Any waiting principle for a change
You can't explain away the origin of a reality from inside of it. There has to be some kind of reality outside of this physical universe that has properties of that reality that allow this one to come into existence. Properties of a different reality way beyond our ability to comprehend because it has to be way different than anything we got inside of this one.
I never understood this assumption. Why not assume that we do live in the totality of existence and wherever the universe started from it was still a part of a sum.
@@user-ox6hj6bm3t Because we exist in a reality/material universe that nothiong can come from a real nothing. Everything we see before us had a previous cause. This is the law of the universe we exist in. In the quantum world we only find forces and information and from that emerges a physical world. Experiments in the quatum world suggest consciousness/knowledge of something dictates whether a probabiltiy of something becomes physical or not. This leads me to believe the root of this reality starts with consciousness and from that everything else in the physical emerges. Then that begs the question of how could consciousness exist and for that answer we need to be outside of this reality to see how the laws of that base reality could exist. In the physical world I don't believe it will ever be possible to explain away the origins of consciousness.
@@Thefamiliaguy from what I understand the quantum is also revealed that spontaneity is the default state for the subatomic. We may require deliberate will to measure where an electron could be but 1. We never really could determine that with the best of ability 2. The electron does not need any external force for it to exist in multiple places within its orbit and 3. these weird effects don’t apply to large groups of the subatomic so this tells me that consciousness cannot determine existence but only attempt to observe it so it is peripheral to existence
@@user-ox6hj6bm3t "these weird effects don’t apply to large groups of the subatomic" Not exactly correct. True on the macro level we do not perceive or experience any of these effects, but at the same time based on what we observe we can theorize that it can and does happen on the largest of scales. If everyone on the planet decided to look away from the moon at the same time and no instruments were processing/measuring data of the moon then it theoretically would not be there but instead only exist in a large scale of possibility until rendered back into a conscious observable state. Sure it is way harder to replicate these kinds of observations on a larger scale but that would speak only to the extreme complexity of trying to do such an experiment.
The digital simulated universe hypothesis would best explain what we see in the quantum world. What you call "weird effects" are completely expected and normal in a digital reality. We do find both space and time digitized at the Plank level. The speed of light limit would reflect limits of the processing speed of the "machinery" behind the universe. The slowing of time near a blackhole or any larger mass speaks to the slowing of machine processing power that happens when there is more information to process. Everything that seems strange in this universe makes complete sense when you put it up next to a digital kind of universe. What good is any digital machine without it's users deciding input and experiencing the output.
Having consciousness first at the root of reality makes more sense than sentient consciousness emerging from a computational physical brain. What still can't be explained is how there could be consciousness at all but once again I go back to my original point in my first comment. Maybe consciousness is just the one thing that always existed and given infinity of time it found a way to create all of this universe as a playground for the mind.
@@Thefamiliaguy Given that consciousness requires a nervous system and this along with complexity in general is a late development in the history of the universe then I can’t see why consciousness is at the root of existence. In fact it makes consciousness a product of existence not ten opposite.
You’ve mentioned a few too many ideas that you tied together in a knot so I couldn’t follow your trail of thoughts sorry
Is Peter's Nothing, something in some other dimensions?
or
Did Something mearly transition through Nothing to become our Thing?
Option 1) something from nothing, in the beginning was nothing, then it exploded.
Option 2) perpetual motion, the universe has always existed but never runs down.
Option 3) intelligent design, there is an intent or purpose involved in the creation of the universe.
Special note; we cannot prove at this time what the engine could possibly be that started everything in moving.
Every engine takes advantage of a difference. In the beginning there was perfect symmetry. How is the symmetry conserved? The reason we can't start from nothing is symmetry, there would always have to be a difference but everything flows only until the difference is gone.
If it is relational, there's a geometry involved. Information is stored in the relationships. Meaning is a dance of mutual expression. Expression and experience are two sides of the same coin. Perception differentiates information, information is given value, value creates desire, desire creates intention, intention becomes expression, an echoing of possibilities.
Belief systems are filters and perception is differentiation or division, so where is truth in all of this? Deception's role in value creation is a tricky subject. Value generators rely on connections and death is a form of separation. This reality has the curious habit of moving us towards value no matter what the truth happens to be. Notice that the definition of value becomes all important. So there would be this idea that truth, however important it might be is often at an angle or direction that is different from value (Buridans donkey) and the engine or motivation is a movement towards a perceived value. The terrible truth and the beautiful lie. In the fitness landscape, we have fitness peaks and attractor basins of various geometries with perception playing the role of differentiating these features. Everything is approximations, nothing is discrete. Choosing requires good timing and here too, deception plays a role. Spirituality is the alignment of truth and value.
A perfectly mixed or blended input of sensory data would essentially be random noise with no
differentiation from any of your senses. So, we could say that perception creates a
differentiation and all sufficiently complex events are statistically impossible, they are all
one time events. In assuming this, we must add the degrees of precision the brain will use
to process the data. Next the brain will add expectation values to the data to create a best
guess and viola, you have cognition.
Since all sufficiently complex events are statistically impossible, does cognition round off
the statistical impossibility of a complex event? If we are in a simulation, there might be
processing limitations involved.
Intent, process and perception as a key principle of reality. All particles have a form of
awareness, an exchange of information. In the hierarchy of this process, consciousness
emerges. Living systems concentrate order from their environment leaving a ripple of
disorder in their wake. As order emerges in the living system, a proportional amount of
disorder is also created. This has something to do with meaning. When we attend a
moment, we give it value as a consequence of memory and when we place intention upon
it, the value fluctuates as it branches out into the future as possibilities. The value or quality
of information has everything to do with meaning.
We live in the shadows of perception. All behaviors are constrained by the relationships in
their frame of reference. In the end all we have are the relationship of measured things and
incomplete descriptions.
Can immortality be achieved by controlling the rules or laws that govern the variation of
relationships? How can we save our memories? What is the best way to store information?
To have a continuity of consciousness requires precise relationships. At what level would
the variation cease? Could the variation cycle? Could each cycle present a slightly new
version of these relationships and still retain continuity? What would we become over vast
amounts of time? Only a perfect law could control the variation, to create the most meaning
and the most value.
Our perception creates a differentiation of meaning, and our consciousness recombines
these disparate things in novel ways.
The holomovement and process; the undivided whole is differentiated by perception, this
creates a disturbance in the field. The disturbance is information but it is different, new or
novel because of imprecise perception and intention. Perceptions are always a best guess or
controlled hallucination. From this information, intention is formed in the form of an echo
from a previous intent but again this is an approximation to some degree of resolution.
Expression and experience move together in and out of these nested hierarchies, creating
new or novel information. The geometry involved is a novelty or imagination engine.
Quantum uncertainty is always creating novel relationships to some degree of resolution.
This is the dance of expression/experience. Self referential noise is the fiddler.
I have a set of possibilities before me, my perception of these possibilities is imprecise. I
make a choice, my intention causes a course of action in the material world. This creates an
expression that I experience, generating another set of imprecise possibilities. This
continues ad infinitum.
Perception and understanding move together, and are, in a sense, a division of the
holomovement. A division of time creates conscious moments, these moments are part of a
nested hierarchy. Our experience cannot be contained in any particular level of this
hierarchy, our experience is smeared across many levels. The multi-dimensional experience
is at times, thin at one level and thicker in another, very much like the surface of the ocean
when you broaden or narrow your scope.
The mind is never still, what is fluctuating is awareness. An insufficient level of awareness
is indistinguishable from ignorance. It is certain that there is a spiritual component to our
reality. If you don't see it, it is because of your dull awareness. Do not let others do your
thinking for you.
Understanding is life, islands of order in a sea of chaos. Perception creates division. The engine is imagination and the fuel is novelty. Innocence is unfiltered perception. We live in the shadows of perception where all belief systems are filters. Meaning is created through this process. In order to create meaning something must be consumed. Light pierces the darkness and is consumed, truth pierces the chaos and is consumed. The universe behaves more like a song than an equation. Math is about static law, music is about dynamic expression. How can location exist in a song? We can give behaviors location, beyond that we cannot say.
Process divides truth (through self referential noise) perception divides process.
The incessant scrambling to find a geometric description of reality fails to define the fluidity of subjective reasoning that colors our filtered perception. All of the meaning is stored in the relationships. The "stuff" of reality is created by the relationships. Nothing is absolute or discrete, the variation is scale dependent.
The universe is irreducibly complex and has a complete awareness of itself. Perception divides process, process creates expression, expression creates experience, experience creates sensation, sensation creates perception, it is here that awareness lives. Everything is linked to value creation with varying degrees of freedom. All material expressions rely on action, all actions rely on intent, all intents rely on desire, all desires rely on values, all values are tied to belief systems and all belief systems are filters. Truth is outside of time and innocence is unfiltered perception.
Substance and Difference by Gregory Bateson
faculty.washington.edu/jernel/521/Form.htm
He is not answering the questions.
Nothing is the absence of variation at every scale.
Oh no it's not. Empty space fits that description. That's uniformity.
Empty space is the very antithesis of nothingness. Please educate yourself and learn about our current scientific understanding of the Vacuum. QED vacuum has interesting and complex properties. In QED vacuum, the electric and magnetic fields have zero average values, but their variances are not zero.
konnektlive
Do you understand the distinction between the singularity and the vacuum?
Singularity a point with no dimensions.
The effects of vacuum energy can be experimentally observed in various phenomena such as spontaneous emission, the Casimir effect and the Lamb shift, and are thought to influence the behavior of the Universe on cosmological scales. Using the upper limit of the cosmological constant, the vacuum energy of free space has been estimated to be 10−9 joules (10−2 ergs) per cubic meter.
Very cool, Mark.
Nothing he said in his video gave an explanation for the origin of any law in nature. All his attempted explanations used laws in them.
He explained why light looks as if it travelled in straight line.
@@NetAndyCz there is no light traveling through space in any path. There is no space or time. Both an illusion. What actually is going on is sequential information processing of the experience called light that appears to be traveling straight but is going to directional vary based on the information load processing at the limits of the universe clock speed processing.
Physicists who think time does not exist should join a church
In their effort to debunk creationist the scientists seem to constructed their own religion under the garb of non-spiritual particles.
There can be no Good yet everything came from nothing. How illogical have we become!
Scientists have their own blind believe but complain about others...the irony.
AntiMessiah - Yet, if "god" existed, it still wouldn't answer a single one of these questions.
AntiMessiah - Also, you're using the word "religion" wrong. Nothing he proposed had anything to do with any gods or any other supernatural occurrences. There are no tenets to follow. There are no requirements that you believe a certain thing.
There is nothing that makes it even similar to a "religion". Except, perhaps, that a lot of what he said sounds fanciful. But making up bullshit or spinning a yarn is NOT the same thing as religion.
Wood 'n' Stuff w/ Steve French maybe but it still doesn't give us the liberty to have blind faith to prove some theoretical physics equations as the ultimate truth.
If we do so what difference remains between the people of knowledge and those who make up divine knowledge to usurp power and fame.
Time and Space come to existence from absolute nothing? Is that a joke? What do you define nothingness in the first place? Is it definable? If it is, then it is SOMETHING, if it is not, then how can you think/judge or have idea about something that can NOT be defined/imagined/interpreted/measured/observed or quantified? How can you all call this a scientific talk at this level? Why not simply say that you don't know? I guess I know why... But I leave the judgement to others...
konnektlive we can't define nothingness, because there's nothing to define. Its more philosophy than science, its very sad and rude to think that science has to come up with every answer.
Maybe its like the end and beginning of a circle it start's everywhere and and end's always or does it . Time seems for me to be a 2 dimesional sheet and when nearing lightspeed the sheet does t he 90 degree flip.. Cant explain further
@Preetha, it's very rude and unscientific to religiously defend and rely on something that cannot be defined in the first place. Not only that, it can't even be imagined, measured, observed or talked about. It can't even be experienced neither objectively nor subjectively, then how can someone *objectively* and *scientifically* prove that everything come from that nothing? See the logical contradiction? See the arrogance? To be frank, see the stupidity? ...
As a scientist with a Ph.D in QM and a thesis done in relation to the concept of the observer effect in different schools/interpretation of QM, I can get technical and explain to you both logically and philosophically and also scientifically that nothingness just like infinity and the origin of time is just an anthropocentric concept that has nothing to do with reality. Please respect the humanity by respecting the power of reason. Without reason and critical thinking we will simply fall into darkness again.
konnektlive you're right or you may be right, but its a thought experiment for a veteran like him. And I'm not a religion woohoo... :) and I never believe in stuff like" reality need an observer to collapse the wave function", I don't even believe in consciousness and freewill.
Does not matter what you believe or not believe. Belief has nothing to do with reality, period. BTW, how can anyone not *believe* in consciousness? It's pretty much only thing that we can believe in! and surely exists without any shadow of doubt as it is the very fundamental context for thoughts, experience and sensory information lol. BTW, do you have any idea why we have gazillion different QM interpretations? Yeah you guessed right ^^ Because physicists *subjectively* think differently and *ATTRACT* to different conclusions. See how subjectivity is important? I suggest you read some materials by D. Chalmers, Roger Penrose and many others like them to realize how absurd is the current mainstream scientific communities in general. BTW, what is the definition of *matter* anyway? Yeah I thought so...