Moorad Alexanian wrote:
>
> I posted the following some time ago but it is relevant to your post.
> Whence the dirt? Scientists need a starting point, Who or What provides
> that? You can't get around the fundamental need for science to begin with
> all sorts of assumptions and with matter/energy, space and time. In the
> final analysis science never deals with the real thing but a mere replica of
> it. The whole thing can go out in a puff and no scientific theory could
> ever have predicted that. The question of origins is not a scientific
> question. Period!!! Moorad
You're correct that science must begin with something, but that something
is probably not matter/energy & perhaps not space & time either. As many authors
have pointed out, we can envisage a theory embodying quantum theory, relativity &
Newtonian gravitation in which a state containing no masses or other forms of energy
makes a quantum transition to a state containing masses, but whose negative
gravitational energy just cancels out the positive mc^2 & kinetic energy. Somewhat
more speculatively, the linkage of space-time with matter in general relativity suggests
that such a theory might include the origin not only of matter but of space and time.
The dirt joke is amusing but the irreducible stuff physics has to start with is
probably quantum fields & the laws describing them, not kickable stuff.
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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