Theoretical Physics Question?

Question

It's interesting. I've always done really well in science. I pulled A's in it all through school and college. I however don't believe macroevolutionary theory. I've also come to disbelieve in the constancy of speed of light thorughout history even within a vacuum. This flies in the face of accepted theory. The constancy of the speed of light is the basis for several scientific theories. One thing at a time... Thermodynamics tends to fly in the face of so many other theories. Now, I'm not prone to believe that relativity absolutely breaks down with a nonconstancy of speed of light. Galileo fathers the relativity concepts. I would say that the known universe (all matter and energy discounting space outside these boundaries) parts is affected by all other matter and energy within the universe. I'll state it better. The placement of matter and energy throughout the cosmos does have a boundary though that boundary is constantly increasing into space. Despite that ever increase, we'll concentrate on those boundaries where matter and energy extend to.
It would seem that matter and energy are affected constantly by other matter and energy. There seems to be a field or fields of energy throughout the inward boundaries of the universe. As the matter and energy constantly moves outward past the said boundaries, it would seem that various laws are constanly affected by the expanse whether it be the various fields, the speed of expanse, and even the possiblity of the nonconstancy of speed of light due to this ever-advance and changing affects of fields throughout the ever expanding universe.
Now I admit that I take Genesis literally. I don't believe in the Gap Theory or other theories that are spliced together to reconcile Christianity/Judaism with "accepted" science. Some would call that a handycap, in that I believe the scriptures to a tee. I would call it a strength but it does kinda lend to the idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Or that logic is in the mind of the observer. I dunno.
I again say that relativity isn't necessarily attacked by the possiblity of nonconstancy. I would say that laws remain constant relative to each other as the expanse ever increases. This would or could possiblity keep the speed of light basis for other laws and theories in tact. I would hazard to say that as the decrease of lightspeed affects all other theories but not in so much a noticeable way.
Another factor... As the expanse of space increases, matter and energy tends to draw all other bodies and at times repels all other bodies. What if a slingshot effect is occurring? The universe (energy and matter) are expanding uot constantly due to being "slung." But then as matter and energy are slung out, they're still being pulled upon if even ever so slightly noticeable. It would seem that there is a posibility that the universe will snap back in the time to come. I wonder if the lightspeed would even increase back to its former state as the matter and energy pull back to the core of our universe. This would seem to evevn affect gravitational forces through all of our universe (locations of matter and energy and all the in between).
Now we know, gravity can affect how we perceive time. Even speed can affect how time passes for all things within the thing moving... One change in the governing laws affects the laws abroad maing it unnoticeable. Hmmm.
As for thermodynamics, the layout I have here would seem to indicate that the universe is a closed system due to the factors I've stated. That said... The First Law of Thermodynamics states the following that the total amount of energy in our universe, or in any isolated part of it, remains constant. Furthermore, energy can be transformed from one form into another, but it cannot be created and cannot be destroyed. As a consequence, the current amount of energy in the universe has been in existence for a long time. Natural processes cannot create energy, thus this energy could have been produced only by a force outside our universe. According to evolutionists, complex organisms evolved from simpler ones. Simple organisms were formed from matter and energy. They state that matter and energy appeared from nothing. This contradicts the First Law. On the contrary, Creation is supernatural and stands above the laws of nature. God can create matter, energy, and laws that govern them.
According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the energy available for useful work decreases in an isolated system, although the total amount of energy remains constant. This is because energy can transform only into lower forms of energy through natural processes. For example, electric current passing through a light bulb ends up transforming into heat, which is the lowest "quality" energy consisting of chaotic molecular movement. This Second Law introduces the concept of entropy, a measure of disorder. Entropy constantly increases in any isolated system. In other words, the system becomes disorganized and energy becomes less usable. Based on this law, the amount of information conveyed by a system continually decreases and its quality deteriorates. Basically, the law states that natural processes disorganize the state of objects and systems. Over time, everything decays and becomes disorganized. The universe irreversibly heads toward maximum disorganization. Just think about what happens with our house if we "comfortably" leave it by itself for a while, we don't clean up, arrange and mend all the time. Natural processes constantly destroy and disorganize it. Our house needs our useful and expedient work to maintain the order. Even atomic particles search the lowest energy levels, they "like comfort". The amount of information and the complexity of our universe perpetually decreases instead of increasing. According to evolutionary theory, life on earth progresses from simple to complex and never vice versa. Everything becomes more and more organized and entropy constantly decreases. Thus, macroevolution contradicts both laws of thermodynamics.
According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, everything degrades and breaks down. We can see this in the universe. The sun slowly but surely cools off, stars die, matter dissolves into radiation, etc. Our universe progresses toward its death, namely toward maximum entropy. This process is irreversible. If there was no Creator, this tragic end would certainly occur.
The Two Laws of Thermodynamics point not only to a death in the future, but also to the Creation in the past:
According to the First Law, the cosmos could not have created itself, thus an external force must have existed to create it.
According to the Second Law, if our universe was infinitely old, it would be dead and destroyed already. But this is not the case, so it must also have had a beginning. Sometime in the past the universe had been created and the cosmic processes were started.
Every star, the perfectly designed nature and all the accurate laws of nature bear testimony to the existence of a Creator who created them all.
We think that the amount of information is continually increasing on earth. Day after day, new inventions appear, just think about the development of the computer. How does this contradict the laws of thermodynamics? There is no contradiction, for these inventions were not the random result of natural processes, but human intelligence. Humans create the programs running on computers to make them do useful work. Natural processes don't produce anything with a goal in mind. Having a goal means thinking in advance.

The idea of the breakdown of all things within the universe doesn't fly in the face of the nonconstancy hypothesis. Even the slingshot effect as the the universe returns to the core doesn't contradict this idea because as it returned to the core, collapse and degradation are the ultimate result, even with the increase of speed of light and relative affect on other laws as the phenomena occurred.

Your thoughts if any?

Answer 1

OK, first, there's no way to address all that in this kind of setting.



But here are a few tidbits based on what I could get. Before I answer, let me provide you with some background. I'm a physics grad student and a devout Christian - Catholic to be specific. I realize that by saying I'm Catholic, many Christian fundamentalists are just going to ignore the rest of this. If you're one of them, fine. But as a Catholic, I have to reconcile the apparent science and religion rift as well. The problem is, the rift is only apparent. If you accept the literal account of Creation, then it doesn't matter what the science says. A Creator can create the universe 6000 years ago and make it look 15 billion years old with no problem. He can also create the animals and make evolution look real. SO you have to accept that the Creator could have made Nature to look different than it really is. Why would he do this? I don't know. I don't think he did, but you have the right to believe whatever you want, and I respect that. Because I cannot prove you wrong based on science.



I think you will find that there is no scientific way (i.e., TESTABLE) to reconcile literal Creationism with Science. So you have yo resort to arguments like that above (I can make those arguments more concrete if you wish).



But if you want to understand the science, then I can help you with that. The reason I am seperating the two is because we can disagree all day long on theology. The science that you are addressing is very difficult to impossible to refute since ALL the evidence seems to be on the side of science. Every issue you took above with the science is not a real issue to anyone who has actually studied the subject matter in detail. As I said, addressing all of them needs to be done piece by piece. But let's try a few.



First, let's talk about relativity and the speed of light. Galileo formalized the mathematics behind "relativity" in the Pre-Einstein sense. This was accepted theory that agreed with experimental facts until right before the 20th century. That's when a few issues happenned. First, Maxwell formulated the Theory of Electromagnetism (Electrodynamics or whatever you choose to call it). These equations predicted electromagnetic radiation, which was verified to be light. According to Maxwell's Equations, light did not obey Galileo's Relativity, but said that the speed of light in vaccuum was constant to all observers. So either Maxwell was wrong, or Newton and Galileo was wrong. Experiments confirmed, Maxwell was right: light was constant (see Michelson-Morley experiment). So Einstein came along and rewrote Newton's equations and Galileo's so that they were now correct. That's where Special Relativity comes from. It directly depends on the constancy of the speed of light. Without that fact, time dilation, length contraction, and the universal speed limit would not be true. All of these things are experimentally verified to high precision. Furthermore, Newton's Law of Gravity had to be modified, and that's where General Relativity comes from. This made predictions that Newton's Law didn't (gravitational red shift and time dilation, precession of Mercury's orbit, bending of light around stars), many of which have been verified, but none of which has been contradicted. So your belief that the constancy of the speed of light is wrong has no experimental basis. It's actually just the opposite.



Now about thermodynamics and evolution: You're using the Laws wrong. You're not considering the Universe as a whole, only life as a separate system. You cannot do that. Life and Evolution DO obey the Laws of Thermodynamics. As a matter of fact, these Laws are used in biophysics to understand the physical and chemical processes that occur in the body.



Do not try and contradict science unless you understand it. Conceptual thinking is not enough. You have to understand the Math and the Experimental evidence. This requires quite a bit of education.



If you want to discuss this in more detail, please feel free to email me. As long as the conversation stays polite, I'm more than happy to talk about it.

Answer 2

Wow, what a question!

A vacuum is a vacuum no matter how big it is. Therefore I'd say the constancy of the velocity of light in a vacuum is a safe bet.

I don't know how you can reconcile Genesis with an expanding and contracting Universe.

I suggest you write down your ideas into a logical sequence of steps to see whether there may be some problems.



Also have a look at "self organising criticality" as a possible explanation for the evolution of life and consciousness.

God uses His own processes (physics) to create, rather than a snap of His fingers, and bingo there's planet Earth, bingo there's Adam and Eve.

It's a long drawn out process in fact.

After all God's not pressed for time, now is He.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization



Self-organization is a process in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases in complexity without being guided or managed by an outside source. Self-organizing systems typically (though not always) display emergent properties.



The most robust and unambiguous examples of self-organizing systems are from physics, where the concept was first noted. Self-organization is also relevant in chemistry, where it has often been taken as being synonymous with self-assembly. The concept of self-organization is central to the description of biological systems, from the subcellular to the ecosystem level. There are also cited examples of "self-organizing" behaviour found in the literature of many other disciplines, both in the natural sciences and the social sciences such as economics or anthropology. Self-organization has also been observed in mathematical systems such as cellular automata.



Sometimes the notion of self-organization is conflated with that of the related concept of emergence. Properly defined, however, there may be instances of self-organization without emergence and emergence without self-organization, and it is clear from the literature that the phenomena are not the same. The link between emergence and self-organization remains an active research question.



Self-organization usually relies on four basic ingredients:



Positive feedback

Negative feedback

Balance of exploitation and exploration

Multiple interactions



And on it goes....................................................



I've read a few books on it, and it's really impressive stuff.

Answer 3

You have displayed a thorough misunderstanding of the laws of thermodynamics.



The complexity of human beings comes at great cost to the rest of the universe. Our ordered state essentially causes a lot of disorder around us. Think about all of the processes that go into making a human being. Each step increases the universes' entropy.



Therefore, even though we are more complex and ordered, our existence still has increased the overall entropy of the system (universe).



Inventions do not constitute "information" in the sense as it is used in information theory and thermodynamics. You are applying the wrong definition of the word information here.



-Tom



P.S. I am a practicing Roman Catholic and a physicist. Genesis is a story from which we are meant to learn. It is not a literal account of creation. For that, I prefer The Flying Spaghetti Monster version! It's much funnier, and based purely on evidence, just as plausible as a literal reading of Genesis.



P.P.S. the absolute speed of light doesn't matter. It's value relative to other fundamental constants does.

Answer 4

So youre saying you believe that the Sling-Shot theory is false, Well, I agree with you the Universe is always expanding, Scientists have actually proven that the core of the universe does not have enough gravitational pull to slingshot the universe to the core. But what the heck does this have to do with thermodynamics?

Answer 5

You revealed the fatal flaw in your argument with "bear testimony to the existence of a Creator who created them all."



All in all, though, you are certainly one of the most OVERSTATED boosters of "(intelligent?) design" I've come across.........

Answer 6

Dewd........ Your ratio of fecal mass to total mass is getting dangerously close to one.





Doug