If I Shake my Fist at the Sky

[Derideo_Te]

God is not going to just show up and PROVE himself to us. He wants us to to know Him thought belief and faith. If He were to just pop up and show himself to everyone on earth, it would be like forcing himself on us. He wants to know that we will believe in Him even though we have never seen Him. He sent us His Holy Spirit to speak to us for Him, and anyone that has the HS knows Him. You would never understand unless you experience it.

Why?

He is actually revealing Himself to us through the Holy Spirit. The HS is within ALL believers, and He actually talks to us through the HS. Do you have a conscience? It's sort of like that...you get this "feeling", something's telling you to do or not do something which could be good or bad. Then you decide if what you're feeling is of God. Would God give you the urge to rob a bank, or attack some person to steal from them? I don't think so...He's there telling you that's really not a good idea. He wants us to do the right thing and He's always there to help us with it. Because we're human and we can make some pretty dumb decisions on our own! But like I said, it's hard to explain to someone that most likely doesn't have the HS in them. That's what's so hard for people to understand.

Thank you for the explanation, CJ. The only question that comes to mind is how is this any different to just being a normal person with a conscience? Going by the golden rule and always being true to oneself seems to cover everything that you just provided. What am I missing?

 

[Dajjal]

If I shake my fist at the sky and declare to God that I am impressed with neither his presence nor his proofs to date, and I challenge the aforementioned God to kill me now or forever be regarded and described by me as fictitious, does that prove anything?

It proves you are your own man.

 

[hortysir]

I have proof enough. I am utterly and completely convinced of God's existence. And yet, all the personal experiences I have had can only translate in me being convinced. It seems clear to me that, for whatever reason, God's intent is to reveal Himself to people, usually one person at a time, using His own time table. Now that I'm a believer, I don't get bogged down in questions like, "Why did God wait until 10 years ago to reveal Himself to me," or, "Why did God reveal Himself to me, but not others close to me?" Those are interesting questions, but what's important right now is that I'm a believer and that won't change. I talk to people; I try to remove the barriers they put between themselves and God; I try to help reveal the truth and dispel misconceptions and dishonest claims; I do what I can. But ultimately no one I speak with or try to convince, will truly believe until God--through what's called the "Holy Spirit," effectuates change within that person.

I like what you have to say, and what you say certainly explains some of the current conditions in evidence on the ground, but it still doesn't explain why God refuses to provide crowd-stunning proof of Himself, when the ancient stories are peppered with spectacular reveals.

I like what you have to say about your personal experience with Divine revelation, but the question remains:

Why does God refuse to reveal Himself in the here-and-now, given His supposed history of newsworthy events?​

I think he just gives everyone the same "chance" to accept Him. He's most likely done things in your life that if you'd really been paying attention you would have seen Him at work. But too many people are too busy to pay attention to things like that.

He will someday reveal Himself to everyone....and the way this world is, I'd be surprised if it weren't soon! But when He does, there will STILL be people rejecting Him.

He WILL reveal Himself......

When He descends from the Heavens - Every eye will see, every knee shall bow, every tongue confess.


I've seen so many "coincidences" that could only be explained by Him putting the right people in the right place at the right time.
It's actually fun to watch when you know what to look for.

 

[Sunshine]

I like what you have to say, and what you say certainly explains some of the current conditions in evidence on the ground, but it still doesn't explain why God refuses to provide crowd-stunning proof of Himself, when the ancient stories are peppered with spectacular reveals.

I like what you have to say about your personal experience with Divine revelation, but the question remains:

Why does God refuse to reveal Himself in the here-and-now, given His supposed history of newsworthy events?​

I think he just gives everyone the same "chance" to accept Him. He's most likely done things in your life that if you'd really been paying attention you would have seen Him at work. But too many people are too busy to pay attention to things like that.

He will someday reveal Himself to everyone....and the way this world is, I'd be surprised if it weren't soon! But when He does, there will STILL be people rejecting Him.

He WILL reveal Himself......

When He descends from the Heavens - Every eye will see, every knee shall bow, every tongue confess.


I've seen so many "coincidences" that could only be explained by Him putting the right people in the right place at the right time.
It's actually fun to watch when you know what to look for.

Well, I've got the TV on listening to ghost stories while I paint the walls. I wish someone would send a painter! So far, no go on that one.

 

[hortysir]

I think he just gives everyone the same "chance" to accept Him. He's most likely done things in your life that if you'd really been paying attention you would have seen Him at work. But too many people are too busy to pay attention to things like that.

He will someday reveal Himself to everyone....and the way this world is, I'd be surprised if it weren't soon! But when He does, there will STILL be people rejecting Him.

He WILL reveal Himself......

When He descends from the Heavens - Every eye will see, every knee shall bow, every tongue confess.


I've seen so many "coincidences" that could only be explained by Him putting the right people in the right place at the right time.
It's actually fun to watch when you know what to look for.

Well, I've got the TV on listening to ghost stories while I paint the walls. I wish someone would send a painter! So far, no go on that one.

Have you checked Angie's List?

 

[Sunshine]

He WILL reveal Himself......

When He descends from the Heavens - Every eye will see, every knee shall bow, every tongue confess.


I've seen so many "coincidences" that could only be explained by Him putting the right people in the right place at the right time.
It's actually fun to watch when you know what to look for.

Well, I've got the TV on listening to ghost stories while I paint the walls. I wish someone would send a painter! So far, no go on that one.

Have you checked Angie's List?

Better. Got actual estimates. Decided I still don't want to pay someone to do something I can do just as well for free.

 

[daws101]

You are fooling yourself Brother Daws.

Jesus told the Pharisees the same thing 2000 years ago.

They demanded a sign.

They also had explained miracles "by other means".

You somehow believe you are something new, unique.

But you are not.

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9



​

two things 1.I'm not your fucking brother.
2. you're falsely assuming you know anything about me..you don't
as to being unique, we are all unique, at the same time we are all the same.
I'm not asking any new or different question about the assumed existence of god.
what's different is, I can voice these question /criticism with out having to worry about little things like being stoned or burned at the stake etc.. all very christian punishments for asking question about ..you know who...
oh and btw THIS Ecclesiastes 1:9 is out of context.

Well, so much for rational discussion...

Next time, try to keep your demons under control Mr. Daws.

rational from someone like you now that is hilarious


Is religion rational?
No, because religion is grounded on faith, and faith requires a LEAP that necessarily goes beyond reason. This leap may be a necessary foundation for reason, and it may be wise, but it cannot be rational because it MUST be grounded upon premises that are simply assumed without further rational argument.

 

[daws101]

ALL non answers. No joke. Where did a "quantum field" come from?

What "thing" led to any fluctuation in it?

Without being TOO much of a wise ass: phlogiston does not cause "fire."

as already mentioned why did the quantum field have to come from anywhere? it's just as likely it had always been there.

Then it existed without being created?

And you are "comfortable" with this non-answer AS your "answer?"

yes ...because it's not a non answer...it's an answer that make you uncomfortable be cause it's ambiguous.
I've seen enough of your posts to know you like locked down squared away explanations.

 

[daws101]

God is not going to just show up and PROVE himself to us. He wants us to to know Him thought belief and faith. If He were to just pop up and show himself to everyone on earth, it would be like forcing himself on us. He wants to know that we will believe in Him even though we have never seen Him. He sent us His Holy Spirit to speak to us for Him, and anyone that has the HS knows Him. You would never understand unless you experience it.

not this shit again! " You would never understand unless you experience it".......
what you're ranting about is a completely subjective experience.....
I've done hundreds of evangelical "meetings" all the conversions I've seen are self hypnosis.

Well...can't help that that's the way it is. All believers have the HS, they know what it's like. If you don't have it, you don't understand it, plain and simple. No self hypnosis involved. Wasn't for me anyway. All I know for sure is I've been through some ordeals that I know I only got through with God's help. You can believe it or not, doesn't really matter to me because I know what He did for me and has done many times.

a nice but subjective answer..

 

[daws101]

Why?

He is actually revealing Himself to us through the Holy Spirit. The HS is within ALL believers, and He actually talks to us through the HS. Do you have a conscience? It's sort of like that...you get this "feeling", something's telling you to do or not do something which could be good or bad. Then you decide if what you're feeling is of God. Would God give you the urge to rob a bank, or attack some person to steal from them? I don't think so...He's there telling you that's really not a good idea. He wants us to do the right thing and He's always there to help us with it. Because we're human and we can make some pretty dumb decisions on our own! But like I said, it's hard to explain to someone that most likely doesn't have the HS in them. That's what's so hard for people to understand.

Thank you for the explanation, CJ. The only question that comes to mind is how is this any different to just being a normal person with a conscience? Going by the golden rule and always being true to oneself seems to cover everything that you just provided. What am I missing?

bravo!

 

[IlarMeilyr]

as already mentioned why did the quantum field have to come from anywhere? it's just as likely it had always been there.

Then it existed without being created?

And you are "comfortable" with this non-answer AS your "answer?"

yes ...because it's not a non answer...it's an answer that make you uncomfortable be cause it's ambiguous.
I've seen enough of your posts to know you like locked down squared away explanations.

I like explanations that actually do that "explaining" thing.

That's true.

You seem to like gibberish and mumbo jumbo.



There's room enough for that. But lots of folks just call it "religion."

 

[daws101]

Then it existed without being created?

And you are "comfortable" with this non-answer AS your "answer?"

yes ...because it's not a non answer...it's an answer that make you uncomfortable be cause it's ambiguous.
I've seen enough of your posts to know you like locked down squared away explanations.

I like explanations that actually do that "explaining" thing.

That's true.

You seem to like gibberish and mumbo jumbo.



There's room enough for that. But lots of folks just call it "religion."

ambiguity is not mumbo jumbo, religious dogma certainly is..

 

[IlarMeilyr]

yes ...because it's not a non answer...it's an answer that make you uncomfortable be cause it's ambiguous.
I've seen enough of your posts to know you like locked down squared away explanations.

I like explanations that actually do that "explaining" thing.

That's true.

You seem to like gibberish and mumbo jumbo.



There's room enough for that. But lots of folks just call it "religion."

ambiguity is not mumbo jumbo, religious dogma certainly is..

Ambiguity is where mumbo jumbo lives.

Religious dogma might be mumbo jumbo.

Or, in some case(s), it might be spot on smart and correct.

Nonetheless, the point is that the claim "IT" was always there, is not an answer AT ALL.

It is a cool, keen, nifty way of ducking the actual hard question.

Phlogiston not only doesn't cause fire, no matter how dogmatic your faith in that "answer" might be, but it doesn't even actually exist.

Our BASIC premise remains: nothing that exists can possibly exist prior to itself.

Yet, when we go back to the most fundamental cosmological question, some of YOU seem perfectly content to say that the "stuff" of the big bang DID exist prior to itself.

 

[daws101]

I like explanations that actually do that "explaining" thing.

That's true.

You seem to like gibberish and mumbo jumbo.



There's room enough for that. But lots of folks just call it "religion."

ambiguity is not mumbo jumbo, religious dogma certainly is..

Ambiguity is where mumbo jumbo lives.

Religious dogma might be mumbo jumbo.

Or, in some case(s), it might be spot on smart and correct.

Nonetheless, the point is that the claim "IT" was always there, is not an answer AT ALL.

It is a cool, keen, nifty way of ducking the actual hard question.

Phlogiston not only doesn't cause fire, no matter how dogmatic your faith in that "answer" might be, but it doesn't even actually exist.

Our BASIC premise remains: nothing that exists can possibly exist prior to itself.

Yet, when we go back to the most fundamental cosmological question, some of YOU seem perfectly content to say that the "stuff" of the big bang DID exist prior to itself.

Something from nothing is a quantum possibility



Jan 12, 2009



Is it ever possible to get something for nothing? The global wave of financial scandals has been widely seen as confirmation that "only nothing can come from nothing", as the Greek philosopher Parmenides argued around 2,500 years ago and finger-wagging moralists have been telling us ever since. Slackers everywhere should therefore take heart from the mounting evidence that Parmenides and his ilk could not have been more wrong. It is now becoming clear that everything can - and probably did - come from nothing.


Whenever some common-sense view of the nature of reality is challenged like this, you can bet quantum theory will be involved. And so it proves in this case, with two recent advances in the understanding of the subatomic world adding to the weight of evidence. Unlike financial scam artists, physicists have been amassing evidence for their unlikely claim for decades, beginning with the discovery by a young German theoretician of a loophole in a supposedly inviolable law of nature.

As countless generations of schoolchildren are taught to parrot in class, the law of conservation of energy states that it cannot be created or destroyed, but merely transformed from one form to another. In 1927, Dr Werner Heisenberg showed that the truth is rather more interesting in a paper that addressed a philosophical question: how do we know what reality is like? The answer seems obvious: by making observations. But Dr Heisenberg pointed out that the newly emerging quantum theory implied that the very act of observation affects whatever is being observed. That, in turn, means it is impossible to know with total precision what reality is actually like.

Dr Heisenberg went on to show that his now-celebrated Uncertainty Principle implies there is always some uncertainty about properties of any region of space - specifically, how much energy it contains over a given period. The "law" of energy conservation is thus merely a conceit, and one whose violation leads to some astonishing consequences - including support for the something-for-nothing view of reality.

Heisenberg's principle implies, for example, that the very space around us is seething with subatomic particles, popping in and out of empty space. During their fleeting existence, these "vacuum particles" interact with each other, and turn the supposedly dull vacuum of space into the quantum vacuum - which astronomers now know is anything but dull. Observations suggest the expansion of the entire cosmos is being propelled by quantum vacuum energy, in the form of enigmatic "dark energy".

Something for nothing can also be seen working its magic down at the other scale of things. In the late 1940s, the Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir predicted that the quantum vacuum could generate a force-field between two flat plates of metal. This "Casimir Effect" again emerges literally out of nowhere, pushing the plates together. The force is pretty feeble: between two book-sized plates separated by just a hair's breadth, it is equivalent to barely the weight of the ink in this sentence's full stop, and it was properly measured only in the mid-1990s. Even so, it's enough to cause the components of delicate micro-mechanical devices to seize up.

Fortunately, back in the 1960s some Soviet theorists predicted that the quantum vacuum can be engineered so that the Casimir force becomes one of repulsion rather than attraction. And last week a team of scientists in the US reported in the journal Nature that they had confirmed the prediction in dramatic style, using the repulsive form of the force to levitate a gold-plated ball. OK, the ball was less than the size of a full stop, but that's pretty impressive considering it was being held aloft by nothing but the energy of empty space.

Page 2 of 2

Some theorists now think they can go even further, and use the physics of something for nothing to explain the origin of literally everything. They claim that the Big Bang from which the entire universe emerged was the result of convulsions in the quantum vacuum which took place around 14 billion years ago. New theoretical work on the nature of matter suggests we may now have to regard even ourselves to be manifestations of the quantum vacuum.

All atoms are made up of electrons plus a far more massive central nucleus, made up of clusters of particles called quarks. It seems obvious that the mass of the nucleus must be the sum total of the masses of its quarks - but that reckons without the effect of the quantum vacuum. It turns out that the quarks account for only a tiny fraction of the total mass of a nucleus. By far the bulk comes from the subatomic "glue" that binds its quarks together. And this glue takes the form of vacuum particles flitting in and out of existence.

That at least is the theory. Confirming it requires some appallingly difficult calculations, involving all the different manifestations of quantum vacuum particles inside the nucleus - of which there are trillions. At the John von Neumann Institute for Computing in Jülich, Germany, Dr Stephan Dürr and colleagues have had a shot at doing this titanic calculation, using a computer capable of performing over 100 million million calculations a second.

After several months of number-crunching, the machine has now spat out its estimate for the mass of a hydrogen nucleus, and it is within 2 per cent of the value measured in the lab. In other words, virtually all the mass contained in atoms - and indeed us - appears to be nothing more than the evanescent energy of empty space. It thus seems that much as we may like to distance ourselves from financial scam artists and get-rich-quick schemes, we are all living proof that it's possible to get something for nothing.

Robert Matthews is Visiting Reader in Science at Aston University, Birmingham, England




Read more: Something from nothing is a quantum possibility - The National
Follow us: @ TheNationalUAE on Twitter | thenational.ae on Facebook

 

[IlarMeilyr]

ambiguity is not mumbo jumbo, religious dogma certainly is..

Ambiguity is where mumbo jumbo lives.

Religious dogma might be mumbo jumbo.

Or, in some case(s), it might be spot on smart and correct.

Nonetheless, the point is that the claim "IT" was always there, is not an answer AT ALL.

It is a cool, keen, nifty way of ducking the actual hard question.

Phlogiston not only doesn't cause fire, no matter how dogmatic your faith in that "answer" might be, but it doesn't even actually exist.

Our BASIC premise remains: nothing that exists can possibly exist prior to itself.

Yet, when we go back to the most fundamental cosmological question, some of YOU seem perfectly content to say that the "stuff" of the big bang DID exist prior to itself.

Something from nothing is a quantum possibility



Jan 12, 2009



Is it ever possible to get something for nothing? The global wave of financial scandals has been widely seen as confirmation that "only nothing can come from nothing", as the Greek philosopher Parmenides argued around 2,500 years ago and finger-wagging moralists have been telling us ever since. Slackers everywhere should therefore take heart from the mounting evidence that Parmenides and his ilk could not have been more wrong. It is now becoming clear that everything can - and probably did - come from nothing.


Whenever some common-sense view of the nature of reality is challenged like this, you can bet quantum theory will be involved. And so it proves in this case, with two recent advances in the understanding of the subatomic world adding to the weight of evidence. Unlike financial scam artists, physicists have been amassing evidence for their unlikely claim for decades, beginning with the discovery by a young German theoretician of a loophole in a supposedly inviolable law of nature.

As countless generations of schoolchildren are taught to parrot in class, the law of conservation of energy states that it cannot be created or destroyed, but merely transformed from one form to another. In 1927, Dr Werner Heisenberg showed that the truth is rather more interesting in a paper that addressed a philosophical question: how do we know what reality is like? The answer seems obvious: by making observations. But Dr Heisenberg pointed out that the newly emerging quantum theory implied that the very act of observation affects whatever is being observed. That, in turn, means it is impossible to know with total precision what reality is actually like.

Dr Heisenberg went on to show that his now-celebrated Uncertainty Principle implies there is always some uncertainty about properties of any region of space - specifically, how much energy it contains over a given period. The "law" of energy conservation is thus merely a conceit, and one whose violation leads to some astonishing consequences - including support for the something-for-nothing view of reality.

Heisenberg's principle implies, for example, that the very space around us is seething with subatomic particles, popping in and out of empty space. During their fleeting existence, these "vacuum particles" interact with each other, and turn the supposedly dull vacuum of space into the quantum vacuum - which astronomers now know is anything but dull. Observations suggest the expansion of the entire cosmos is being propelled by quantum vacuum energy, in the form of enigmatic "dark energy".

Something for nothing can also be seen working its magic down at the other scale of things. In the late 1940s, the Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir predicted that the quantum vacuum could generate a force-field between two flat plates of metal. This "Casimir Effect" again emerges literally out of nowhere, pushing the plates together. The force is pretty feeble: between two book-sized plates separated by just a hair's breadth, it is equivalent to barely the weight of the ink in this sentence's full stop, and it was properly measured only in the mid-1990s. Even so, it's enough to cause the components of delicate micro-mechanical devices to seize up.

Fortunately, back in the 1960s some Soviet theorists predicted that the quantum vacuum can be engineered so that the Casimir force becomes one of repulsion rather than attraction. And last week a team of scientists in the US reported in the journal Nature that they had confirmed the prediction in dramatic style, using the repulsive form of the force to levitate a gold-plated ball. OK, the ball was less than the size of a full stop, but that's pretty impressive considering it was being held aloft by nothing but the energy of empty space.

Page 2 of 2

Some theorists now think they can go even further, and use the physics of something for nothing to explain the origin of literally everything. They claim that the Big Bang from which the entire universe emerged was the result of convulsions in the quantum vacuum which took place around 14 billion years ago. New theoretical work on the nature of matter suggests we may now have to regard even ourselves to be manifestations of the quantum vacuum.

All atoms are made up of electrons plus a far more massive central nucleus, made up of clusters of particles called quarks. It seems obvious that the mass of the nucleus must be the sum total of the masses of its quarks - but that reckons without the effect of the quantum vacuum. It turns out that the quarks account for only a tiny fraction of the total mass of a nucleus. By far the bulk comes from the subatomic "glue" that binds its quarks together. And this glue takes the form of vacuum particles flitting in and out of existence.

That at least is the theory. Confirming it requires some appallingly difficult calculations, involving all the different manifestations of quantum vacuum particles inside the nucleus - of which there are trillions. At the John von Neumann Institute for Computing in Jülich, Germany, Dr Stephan Dürr and colleagues have had a shot at doing this titanic calculation, using a computer capable of performing over 100 million million calculations a second.

After several months of number-crunching, the machine has now spat out its estimate for the mass of a hydrogen nucleus, and it is within 2 per cent of the value measured in the lab. In other words, virtually all the mass contained in atoms - and indeed us - appears to be nothing more than the evanescent energy of empty space. It thus seems that much as we may like to distance ourselves from financial scam artists and get-rich-quick schemes, we are all living proof that it's possible to get something for nothing.

Robert Matthews is Visiting Reader in Science at Aston University, Birmingham, England




Read more: Something from nothing is a quantum possibility - The National
Follow us: [MENTION=27326]The[/MENTION]NationalUAE on Twitter | thenational.ae on Facebook

A quantum possibility that depends on the existence of some "field" that itself came from nothing -- and which got somehow perturbed.

And what caused the perturbation?

Oh -- nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly; but the special version of "nothing" that exists in the quantum physics sense . . . .

And its damn funny to see folks lapping this up as though it provided explanatory power.

It might be "true" in some profound sense.

But it doesn't "explain" shit.

 

[daws101]

Ambiguity is where mumbo jumbo lives.

Religious dogma might be mumbo jumbo.

Or, in some case(s), it might be spot on smart and correct.

Nonetheless, the point is that the claim "IT" was always there, is not an answer AT ALL.

It is a cool, keen, nifty way of ducking the actual hard question.

Phlogiston not only doesn't cause fire, no matter how dogmatic your faith in that "answer" might be, but it doesn't even actually exist.

Our BASIC premise remains: nothing that exists can possibly exist prior to itself.

Yet, when we go back to the most fundamental cosmological question, some of YOU seem perfectly content to say that the "stuff" of the big bang DID exist prior to itself.

Something from nothing is a quantum possibility



Jan 12, 2009



Is it ever possible to get something for nothing? The global wave of financial scandals has been widely seen as confirmation that "only nothing can come from nothing", as the Greek philosopher Parmenides argued around 2,500 years ago and finger-wagging moralists have been telling us ever since. Slackers everywhere should therefore take heart from the mounting evidence that Parmenides and his ilk could not have been more wrong. It is now becoming clear that everything can - and probably did - come from nothing.


Whenever some common-sense view of the nature of reality is challenged like this, you can bet quantum theory will be involved. And so it proves in this case, with two recent advances in the understanding of the subatomic world adding to the weight of evidence. Unlike financial scam artists, physicists have been amassing evidence for their unlikely claim for decades, beginning with the discovery by a young German theoretician of a loophole in a supposedly inviolable law of nature.

As countless generations of schoolchildren are taught to parrot in class, the law of conservation of energy states that it cannot be created or destroyed, but merely transformed from one form to another. In 1927, Dr Werner Heisenberg showed that the truth is rather more interesting in a paper that addressed a philosophical question: how do we know what reality is like? The answer seems obvious: by making observations. But Dr Heisenberg pointed out that the newly emerging quantum theory implied that the very act of observation affects whatever is being observed. That, in turn, means it is impossible to know with total precision what reality is actually like.

Dr Heisenberg went on to show that his now-celebrated Uncertainty Principle implies there is always some uncertainty about properties of any region of space - specifically, how much energy it contains over a given period. The "law" of energy conservation is thus merely a conceit, and one whose violation leads to some astonishing consequences - including support for the something-for-nothing view of reality.

Heisenberg's principle implies, for example, that the very space around us is seething with subatomic particles, popping in and out of empty space. During their fleeting existence, these "vacuum particles" interact with each other, and turn the supposedly dull vacuum of space into the quantum vacuum - which astronomers now know is anything but dull. Observations suggest the expansion of the entire cosmos is being propelled by quantum vacuum energy, in the form of enigmatic "dark energy".

Something for nothing can also be seen working its magic down at the other scale of things. In the late 1940s, the Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir predicted that the quantum vacuum could generate a force-field between two flat plates of metal. This "Casimir Effect" again emerges literally out of nowhere, pushing the plates together. The force is pretty feeble: between two book-sized plates separated by just a hair's breadth, it is equivalent to barely the weight of the ink in this sentence's full stop, and it was properly measured only in the mid-1990s. Even so, it's enough to cause the components of delicate micro-mechanical devices to seize up.

Fortunately, back in the 1960s some Soviet theorists predicted that the quantum vacuum can be engineered so that the Casimir force becomes one of repulsion rather than attraction. And last week a team of scientists in the US reported in the journal Nature that they had confirmed the prediction in dramatic style, using the repulsive form of the force to levitate a gold-plated ball. OK, the ball was less than the size of a full stop, but that's pretty impressive considering it was being held aloft by nothing but the energy of empty space.

Page 2 of 2

Some theorists now think they can go even further, and use the physics of something for nothing to explain the origin of literally everything. They claim that the Big Bang from which the entire universe emerged was the result of convulsions in the quantum vacuum which took place around 14 billion years ago. New theoretical work on the nature of matter suggests we may now have to regard even ourselves to be manifestations of the quantum vacuum.

All atoms are made up of electrons plus a far more massive central nucleus, made up of clusters of particles called quarks. It seems obvious that the mass of the nucleus must be the sum total of the masses of its quarks - but that reckons without the effect of the quantum vacuum. It turns out that the quarks account for only a tiny fraction of the total mass of a nucleus. By far the bulk comes from the subatomic "glue" that binds its quarks together. And this glue takes the form of vacuum particles flitting in and out of existence.

That at least is the theory. Confirming it requires some appallingly difficult calculations, involving all the different manifestations of quantum vacuum particles inside the nucleus - of which there are trillions. At the John von Neumann Institute for Computing in Jülich, Germany, Dr Stephan Dürr and colleagues have had a shot at doing this titanic calculation, using a computer capable of performing over 100 million million calculations a second.

After several months of number-crunching, the machine has now spat out its estimate for the mass of a hydrogen nucleus, and it is within 2 per cent of the value measured in the lab. In other words, virtually all the mass contained in atoms - and indeed us - appears to be nothing more than the evanescent energy of empty space. It thus seems that much as we may like to distance ourselves from financial scam artists and get-rich-quick schemes, we are all living proof that it's possible to get something for nothing.

Robert Matthews is Visiting Reader in Science at Aston University, Birmingham, England




Read more: Something from nothing is a quantum possibility - The National
Follow us: [MENTION=27326]The[/MENTION]NationalUAE on Twitter | thenational.ae on Facebook

A quantum possibility that depends on the existence of some "field" that itself came from nothing -- and which got somehow perturbed.

And what caused the perturbation?

Oh -- nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly; but the special version of "nothing" that exists in the quantum physics sense . . . .

And its damn funny to see folks lapping this up as though it provided explanatory power.

It might be "true" in some profound sense.

But it doesn't "explain" shit.

not to your satisfaction any way.

 

[IlarMeilyr]

Something from nothing is a quantum possibility



Jan 12, 2009



Is it ever possible to get something for nothing? The global wave of financial scandals has been widely seen as confirmation that "only nothing can come from nothing", as the Greek philosopher Parmenides argued around 2,500 years ago and finger-wagging moralists have been telling us ever since. Slackers everywhere should therefore take heart from the mounting evidence that Parmenides and his ilk could not have been more wrong. It is now becoming clear that everything can - and probably did - come from nothing.


Whenever some common-sense view of the nature of reality is challenged like this, you can bet quantum theory will be involved. And so it proves in this case, with two recent advances in the understanding of the subatomic world adding to the weight of evidence. Unlike financial scam artists, physicists have been amassing evidence for their unlikely claim for decades, beginning with the discovery by a young German theoretician of a loophole in a supposedly inviolable law of nature.

As countless generations of schoolchildren are taught to parrot in class, the law of conservation of energy states that it cannot be created or destroyed, but merely transformed from one form to another. In 1927, Dr Werner Heisenberg showed that the truth is rather more interesting in a paper that addressed a philosophical question: how do we know what reality is like? The answer seems obvious: by making observations. But Dr Heisenberg pointed out that the newly emerging quantum theory implied that the very act of observation affects whatever is being observed. That, in turn, means it is impossible to know with total precision what reality is actually like.

Dr Heisenberg went on to show that his now-celebrated Uncertainty Principle implies there is always some uncertainty about properties of any region of space - specifically, how much energy it contains over a given period. The "law" of energy conservation is thus merely a conceit, and one whose violation leads to some astonishing consequences - including support for the something-for-nothing view of reality.

Heisenberg's principle implies, for example, that the very space around us is seething with subatomic particles, popping in and out of empty space. During their fleeting existence, these "vacuum particles" interact with each other, and turn the supposedly dull vacuum of space into the quantum vacuum - which astronomers now know is anything but dull. Observations suggest the expansion of the entire cosmos is being propelled by quantum vacuum energy, in the form of enigmatic "dark energy".

Something for nothing can also be seen working its magic down at the other scale of things. In the late 1940s, the Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir predicted that the quantum vacuum could generate a force-field between two flat plates of metal. This "Casimir Effect" again emerges literally out of nowhere, pushing the plates together. The force is pretty feeble: between two book-sized plates separated by just a hair's breadth, it is equivalent to barely the weight of the ink in this sentence's full stop, and it was properly measured only in the mid-1990s. Even so, it's enough to cause the components of delicate micro-mechanical devices to seize up.

Fortunately, back in the 1960s some Soviet theorists predicted that the quantum vacuum can be engineered so that the Casimir force becomes one of repulsion rather than attraction. And last week a team of scientists in the US reported in the journal Nature that they had confirmed the prediction in dramatic style, using the repulsive form of the force to levitate a gold-plated ball. OK, the ball was less than the size of a full stop, but that's pretty impressive considering it was being held aloft by nothing but the energy of empty space.

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Some theorists now think they can go even further, and use the physics of something for nothing to explain the origin of literally everything. They claim that the Big Bang from which the entire universe emerged was the result of convulsions in the quantum vacuum which took place around 14 billion years ago. New theoretical work on the nature of matter suggests we may now have to regard even ourselves to be manifestations of the quantum vacuum.

All atoms are made up of electrons plus a far more massive central nucleus, made up of clusters of particles called quarks. It seems obvious that the mass of the nucleus must be the sum total of the masses of its quarks - but that reckons without the effect of the quantum vacuum. It turns out that the quarks account for only a tiny fraction of the total mass of a nucleus. By far the bulk comes from the subatomic "glue" that binds its quarks together. And this glue takes the form of vacuum particles flitting in and out of existence.

That at least is the theory. Confirming it requires some appallingly difficult calculations, involving all the different manifestations of quantum vacuum particles inside the nucleus - of which there are trillions. At the John von Neumann Institute for Computing in Jülich, Germany, Dr Stephan Dürr and colleagues have had a shot at doing this titanic calculation, using a computer capable of performing over 100 million million calculations a second.

After several months of number-crunching, the machine has now spat out its estimate for the mass of a hydrogen nucleus, and it is within 2 per cent of the value measured in the lab. In other words, virtually all the mass contained in atoms - and indeed us - appears to be nothing more than the evanescent energy of empty space. It thus seems that much as we may like to distance ourselves from financial scam artists and get-rich-quick schemes, we are all living proof that it's possible to get something for nothing.

Robert Matthews is Visiting Reader in Science at Aston University, Birmingham, England




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A quantum possibility that depends on the existence of some "field" that itself came from nothing -- and which got somehow perturbed.

And what caused the perturbation?

Oh -- nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly; but the special version of "nothing" that exists in the quantum physics sense . . . .

And its damn funny to see folks lapping this up as though it provided explanatory power.

It might be "true" in some profound sense.

But it doesn't "explain" shit.

not to your satisfaction any way.

It shouldn't "satisfy" anyone to get an alleged "explanation" that has no explanatory power.

 

[PixieStix]

If I shake my fist at the sky and declare to God that I am impressed with neither his presence nor his proofs to date, and I challenge the aforementioned God to kill me now or forever be regarded and described by me as fictitious, does that prove anything?

If you are sincerely looking for truth, it will indeed be revealed to you. Not in your time but in His. After all God lives where there is no limit of time

 

[daws101]

A quantum possibility that depends on the existence of some "field" that itself came from nothing -- and which got somehow perturbed.

And what caused the perturbation?

Oh -- nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly; but the special version of "nothing" that exists in the quantum physics sense . . . .

And its damn funny to see folks lapping this up as though it provided explanatory power.

It might be "true" in some profound sense.

But it doesn't "explain" shit.

not to your satisfaction any way.

It shouldn't "satisfy" anyone to get an alleged "explanation" that has no explanatory power.

that would depend on the anyone.
besides should is subjective...

 

[Sunshine]

If I shake my fist at the sky and declare to God that I am impressed with neither his presence nor his proofs to date, and I challenge the aforementioned God to kill me now or forever be regarded and described by me as fictitious, does that prove anything?

If you are sincerely looking for truth, it will indeed be revealed to you. Not in your time but in His. After all God lives where there is no limit of time

Yes, you must 'ask, seek, and knock.' If you are a seeker you will get the answers you need.

Matthew 7:7-12

New International Version (NIV)
Ask, Seek, Knock

7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

I have particularly enjoyed looking into some of the ancient writings we have available to us these days.

I don't really think that just accepting 'salvation' is enough. Jesus taught that we need to seek answers.

He also promoted industriousness:

Matthew 25:14-30

New International Version (NIV)


The Parable of the Bags of Gold

14 “Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. 15 To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag,[a] each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. 16 The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. 17 So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. 18 But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

19 “After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. 20 The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’

21 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

22 “The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two bags of gold; see, I have gained two more.’

23 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

24 “Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25 So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’

26 “His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? 27 Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

28 “‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. 29 For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 30 And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’