Infinite Matter

For the world and universe to exist there must be space and matter. I was pondering the idea of infinite matter. Has matter existed infinitely? Matter would have been needed to start a "big bang" but where would it have come from? The second law of thermodynamics says that nothing can put the universe into a more orderly state and that it can only stay the same or become more chaotic so I somewhat agree with Dusang that matter is finite but it would take some sort of god to completely remove it from space. The way I see it is:

1. Matter has existed for an infinite of time.
   or...
2. Matter was placed in space by someone or something.

I would like to know the held by other members of this community... keep it relevant and intelligent!

 

No one claims to know or understand the origins of the universe at the moment. It's infeasible anyone ever will. Contrarily, I believe in God and subsequently, believe he's infinite and the matter he creates is finite.

 

Matter didn't have to exist before the big bang in respect to our universe. The big bang created matter from hot energy that expanded from a singularity that created the universe.

http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/cern/ideas/bang.html
Nice article from CERN about the concept.

The universe is finite as is matter. If it wasn't finite then why would it need to expand at an ever increasing speed? It would already be infinite, but from a human perspective the universe and therefore matter looks infinite. I mean, matter doesn't even make up a large portion of the mass of the universe. It doesn't even make up 10% the mass of the universe. An unknown makes up most of the mass of the universe.

 

The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed. However, energy can change forms, and energy can flow from one place to another. The total energy of an isolated system remains the same.
Where did the "hot energy" come from? And how does energy create matter?

 

There is also the mass-energy equivalence that connects what you just stated as the law of conservation of energy to the law of conservation of mass. Matter or energy is neither created nor destroyed but instead just changes forms.

E = mc^2 - Energy = mass x a constant (usually the speed of light) squared. This gives the energy that would be created from the conversion of mass and can conversely be used to tell you how much mass can be created by energy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass–energy_equivalence

It all goes back to the theory of relativity.


To answer your question no one knows where the pre-Big Bang energy/singularity came from. We currently can't see before the creation of the universe.


Also, hot isn't what you are think. Hot is the rapid vibration of the particles that had to slow down (cool) before they could consolidate into atoms. In the current accepted theory everything started as plasma.


The beginnings of the universe were a state of low entropy, which means little chaos and the entropy has increased over the expansion of the universe.

It is a lot of theories that all have to be weaved together into a blanket of creation.

 

Interesting... I found a good read on creating energy into mass. http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970724a.html

 

Which is pretty much what I just stated. If you consider the unimaginable amount of energy from the big bang it all fills in the gaps. I mean atoms were created microseconds after the Big Bang. It isn't like the universe was pure energy for thousands of years, but it was all created from the energy of the big bang. How or where did it come? Don't ask me, and honestly I don't think anyone has an answer that can be proven.

 

What benefit does the universe reek by giving life?

 

Rephrase that to where I can read it?

 

The universe doesn't have to reek any benefits. Life is a series of chance happenings. The universe, from a scientific standpoint, wasn't made for life. Life is a byproduct of reactions.

 

Building on Emperor_Nero, in an infinitely large universe, everything is bound to happen once (or twice). In our infinitely large universe, life is bound to happen somewhere once (or twice) - Remember, Humans aren't the norm, they are the exception.

 

Well put Nero.
So do you believe that "meaning and "purpose" are biproduct as well?

The universe must have a purpose, The fact that so many fundamental scientific theories are even accessible to our brain's, which in a purposless universe would be a byproduct of hunting prey or avoid being prey in the evolution of homo sapiens.

As long as we are drawn toward truth so is the universe that gave birth to us, we are afterall inseperable right?

>Appologies if if that comes off as attacking, I assure you guy's im not attacking or raging ha, all in good debate! alot of good posts so far!

 

What is an infinitely large universe to you? We humans only understand the concept of infinite, not the actuality of it?

Just incase someone does claim to understand infinite, what is your definition of it?

 

There doesn't have to be a purpose. Humans only look for purpose because that is our nature. We are an aspiration and future driven society. Do you think a snake lays on a rock and plans 'I am going to catch some mice tomorrow, and then the next day I am going to sleep all day'? No they don't because they don't have to have a purpose, they just know survival. Future consciousness and self-awareness is a result of large brains and evolution. We look for purpose because of this self-awareness. Psychologically we want to know that there is a purpose or a reason, and personally people find purpose but there is no grand purpose that we all work towards. This is just my opinion. I am not the most religious person, but I do like to entertain the idea of God as something that put this whole thing into motion. The truth is that none of us living folks know what the truth is.

 

^Exactley

I believe that snake you speak of sitting on the rock does have a purpose. That purpose would be for Human beings to observe what role it play's in our world,Which is to eat that mouse so it doesent make 100 more mice and over populate..and i mean that in just general..not that that is every snakes purpose.

If there is no grand purpose why are we subjects of experience?Why are there subjective components to experience?

Think about when our brains engage in visual and auiditory information-processing we have visual and auditory experience...Like the sensation of your favorite note (middle c,sharp..u know) or the quality of deep blue? Yeah we get those sensations physicaly, but what reason do you have for them giving us such an awesomly rich inner life?

Just in my opinion if we had no purpose, We would see the world in dark and have robot/computer brains, not being able to distriguish race and differences..afterall that would lead to a sort of utopia...no racism, everyone would like the same thing...no outside stimulation to distract us from our meaningless lives...Why would we be subjected to this apparently unnecessary conscious experience?

So I believe something wanted us to see the world and do what we are discussing here..Searching for truth

 

We are arguing two different things here though. You are arguing we have individual purpose as a society, but I am arguing as an existence we have no purpose. We are a flash in the pan in the grand scale of things, how long have humans or some form of intelligent and self-aware humanoids been around. Few million years? That is nothing. The earth is what, a few billion years old? We don't even understand a small percentage of what is going on around us. We have no sole purpose for existence. People may have individual purpose but as a greater whole the human race has no purpose. We aren't even a grain of sand on the beach of the universe. Everything is relative to the viewer, and since we are currently the only viewers that we know of the human race has gained a self-importance that is undeserving. In a universe as large as our own, but by no means infinite, life isn't a rare thing.

Look at this, it is the Drake Equation and explains the chances of life existing other than our own:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

 

Your wrong, if our universe is infinitely large then everything that can happen(infinite possibilities) has happened an infinite amount of times. To prove this we can halve infinity and its still infinite.

1 2 3 4 5 6, i've just created an infinite sequence that can carry on forever, it is infinite.

I've created the big bang, it is infinite.

Matter or energy DID have to exist before our universe as we currently understand it. We know that energy can create matter and matter can be turned into energy. Unless you've found a new religion emperor?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10, I'll stop and call that infinite? The point to infinity is that it always continues, the fact the universe is expanding would further suggest an infinite universe. We can't comprehend how big infinity is but if we use small numbers we can see the gist that it always continues and never stops.

Emperor you keep quoting singularities and don't quote me but I thought singularities occured when the gravitational field becomes infinite?

 

We've already had this argument, and you never proved to me how it could be infinite you keep just saying it has to be infinite because numbers. How do you know numbers are infinite? Numbers are a creation of man and therefore can't be infinite because man cannot understand the true concept of infinity. You've not made any new points that bear discussing, now if you wish to bring up some new points and provide evidence for it then please do.


No matter what you try to argue, matter has been proven to not be infinite.

 

Infinite can only exist in the absence of time...Which exists does it not?

And for the drake equation, The galaxy is billions of years old. A few hundred thousand years is the blink of an eye by those standards. There is no reason to expect that all galactic civilization would rise and grow within such a short time span. If other civilizations existed in the galaxy, we should expect them to be spread out not only in space, but in time as well. For example, if there were 10 civilizations in the Milky Way, then we should expect the first one to be a billion years old, the second to be 900 million years old, the third to be 800 million years old, and so on...

And the radio communications of any civilization older than one million years should have reached us by now, no matter where this civilization was located in the galaxy. But wait, you might say, if a civilization is too old, maybe they've moved on to some other form of communication not based on the EM spectrum, and the radio tide from them has come and gone before Homo sapiens even existed. Perhaps. But a civilization advanced enough to develop non-EM communications should have left some other visible traces in the sky, like unusual heat signatures (infrared emissions) around their parent star, or ringworlds, or Dyson spheres, or something. The idea that a civilization could be millions of years old and leave no visible clues to its existence is absurd. Such a civilization should be expected to have left behind the equivalent of a giant neon sign saying "WE ARE OVER HERE."

 

Actually, there are stars trillions of light years away which means that it is going to take trillions of years for their signals to get here. I mean if you look out on the sky we are witnessing the past, if aliens looked from their planets out to earth it would see it how it was millions of years ago. Though I think we have gotten way too far off topic on this subject, if you want you can PM about it.