[Discussion] How old do you think the Earth is?

[Ero sennin jiraiya]

Eh, you should probably look into some stuff...

OT: I'd say it's roughly 6000 years. Carbon dating (and other types of radioactive dating) has been proven to be flawed.

So the bible must be right? Look around you. Rock layers and water erosion make it painfully obvious the earth is well over 6000 years old. Also radio metric dating had around 97% accuracy last time I checked and is actually quite reliable. You can't even argue that it doesn't prove the earth is over 6000 years old because the science is there.

 

[SIR HERDERP PRESIDERP SDO]

This is true. I am aware of several very valid arguments against the notion of Relativity's validity - from analysis of the hardware and data of the orbital experiment to prove dilation does occur to the evaluation of the Sagnac Effect:

You must be registered for see links

I, personally, believe that the "way around relativity" is not to assume that time is relative - but to realize that causality is relative and requires information be exchanged in order to remain intact.

With a preferential - or "absolute" spatial frame, a lot the macroscopic implications of a non-relativistic universe play out through quantum mechanics... which allows us to create something very close to a unified field theory (even if there are a few outliers that suggest we will need to considerably re-evaluate our world).



I think that there will come a time when we discover new phenomena/forces/relationships that will allow us to put a lot of existing theories to the test about the underlying structure of reality.

Of course - this will just push the boundary further. I believe there will always be the fundamental question in regards to reality.

To this, I've often argued that the biblical quote where God references himself as "I am" represents a fundamental philosophical realization and resolution.

At the end of the day - you have two options:

You can come to the realization/acceptance of life as having an inherent value to its experience - regardless of what mechanics form its structure.

Or you can reject the notion that it has value and consequence.

God's response of: "I am" indicates a resolution to that issue. God is and has decided to act as if the universe has value. It is the only way a practical sentient being can honestly answer the question of "What are you?"

Of course - I could also be reading far too much into it.

I do think, however, that gives us some insight into what the actual "test" of physical theories will be.

All theories ultimately can be tested as to how practical they are - what can they be used to build? What can they be used to predict?

In this sense - the physical theories that have the most value to the human condition and give the most practical of outlooks will likely be the one that prevails even if it is logically incapable of being proven correct.

Even within science - we can never prove a theory correct. We can only eliminate ways in which the theory is incorrect. When faced with two theories, or models, that can't be falsified - the one that forms the most practical platform tends to become the most prevalent.

I am still somewhat skeptical that a Unified Field Theory or a Theory of Everything can be formulated because of Godel's Incompleteness theorem, though it can be argued that UTF, being expressed in differential calculus is non-axiomatic and therefore not under it, but even so, the question still arises: are the equations for a UTE the correct equations to begin with? are we truly able to predict all the observable data in the observable universe, because personally I think our modern physics is a pale approximation of objective reality (and even the objectivity of reality is put into doubt) before Classical Mechanics was thought to be the be-all and end-all of physics until Einstein came along and caused a paradigm shift, and in a few decades or centuries from now another paradigm shift might occur, so we can say Newtonian Mechanics and Relativity are approximations valid only within their certain limits.

 

[Callypigia]

I am still somewhat skeptical that a Unified Field Theory or a Theory of Everything can be formulated because of Godel's Incompleteness theorem, though it can be argued that UTF, being expressed in differential calculus is non-axiomatic and therefore non-axiomatic, but even so, the question still arises: are the equations for a UTE the correct equations to begin with? are we truly able to predict all the observable data in the observable universe, because personally I think our modern physics is a pale approximation of objective reality (and even the objectivity of reality is put into doubt) before Classical Mechanics was thought to be the be-all and end-all of physics until Einstein came along and caused a paradigm shift, and in a few decades or centuries from now another paradigm shift might occur, so we can say Newtonian Mechanics and Relativity are approximations valid only within their certain limits.

Don't try to impress me with your big words. You know good and well the Earth is 6,000 years old.

 

[SIR HERDERP PRESIDERP SDO]

Don't try to impress me with your big words. You know good and well the Earth is 6,000 years old.

But Earth is a mommy,ergo she fabricates her age. :sdo:

 

[Aim64C]

So the bible must be right? Look around you. Rock layers and water erosion make it painfully obvious the earth is well over 6000 years old. Also radio metric dating had around 97% accuracy last time I checked and is actually quite reliable. You can't even argue that it doesn't prove the earth is over 6000 years old because the science is there.

Allow me to have a little fun with your argument:

How old is the Coffee produced by the Star Trek Replicator?

Quite clearly, the Coffee was just created.

Yet, we know from experience that for Coffee to taste correctly, it must be composed of molecules that would, upon observation, imply an organic origin from a plant. Without it - the Coffee just isn't Coffee.

So - the God Replicator created the Earth 6,000 years ago.

What logical argument would you have for it appearing any differently than it does, today?

If the Coffee in Star Trek would, by all appearances, have come from a tree back on Earth - why would an Earth created a few thousand years ago look any different than what we see?

Or - I suppose in another sense: "What would an Earth created 6,000 years ago look like?"

What comparison do we have?

Now - I admit this boils down to a philosophical argument - but from a standpoint within QM, a system placed into a super-position can assume a wide range of states and any concept of past or future is merely inferred from the observation of the current state. Which means that, if we were to think of the Earth as being in a superposition (or the universe) - then any past we perceive is merely inferred from our limited knowledge of the mechanics.

It's like walking in on a board game, watching how a few of the pieces move for several turns, and then making an inference about all of the turns leading up to the moment we walked in from the start of the game (we also have to infer how that game would have been set up to start).

Perhaps when we walked in -was- the start of the game and our attempt to construct a "start" for the game is simply an erroneous assumption. Later, when a piece we haven't seen move before does - and in a way we didn't predict - we have to change our entire estimate of what the past we couldn't witness looked like and certain assumptions about how the game could have started get blown out of the water.

 

[SIR HERDERP PRESIDERP SDO]

Allow me to have a little fun with your argument:

How old is the Coffee produced by the Star Trek Replicator?

Quite clearly, the Coffee was just created.

Yet, we know from experience that for Coffee to taste correctly, it must be composed of molecules that would, upon observation, imply an organic origin from a plant. Without it - the Coffee just isn't Coffee.

So - the God Replicator created the Earth 6,000 years ago.

What logical argument would you have for it appearing any differently than it does, today?

If the Coffee in Star Trek would, by all appearances, have come from a tree back on Earth - why would an Earth created a few thousand years ago look any different than what we see?

Or - I suppose in another sense: "What would an Earth created 6,000 years ago look like?"

What comparison do we have?

Now - I admit this boils down to a philosophical argument - but from a standpoint within QM, a system placed into a super-position can assume a wide range of states and any concept of past or future is merely inferred from the observation of the current state. Which means that, if we were to think of the Earth as being in a superposition (or the universe) - then any past we perceive is merely inferred from our limited knowledge of the mechanics.

It's like walking in on a board game, watching how a few of the pieces move for several turns, and then making an inference about all of the turns leading up to the moment we walked in from the start of the game (we also have to infer how that game would have been set up to start).

Perhaps when we walked in -was- the start of the game and our attempt to construct a "start" for the game is simply an erroneous assumption. Later, when a piece we haven't seen move before does - and in a way we didn't predict - we have to change our entire estimate of what the past we couldn't witness looked like and certain assumptions about how the game could have started get blown out of the water.

The cat that jumps is not the same cat that lands.

 

[Aim64C]

I say older than me.

Aim64C and Sir Derp, can you try dumbing it down for us scrubs next time? It sounds interesting but I'm not following...

It's hard to address each individual thing we've talked about in a "dumbed down" fashion. It would take a lot of metaphor and analogies ... and I am indulging myself a bit too much in forums, these days. My apartment is a horrid mess that I am ashamed of to the point that I wouldn't even commit suicide in this thing because of what someone would have to walk in on and clean up.

It's very easy for one such as myself to get lost in talk and theory. It's both one of my greatest assets and my most ashamed delinquencies.

Anyway -

There exists, in Physics, a considerable set of problems.

Logically, the forces that give rise to things like the atom and chemistry should also give rise to things like electromagnetism and gravity... which should in turn give rise to the physical world of both Earth and the Cosmos.

The problem is that all of our understanding of these things has been developed from somewhat isolated perspectives. Our concept of gravity comes mostly from observations of the cosmos - and even that is becoming problematic as galaxies exist in forms that they shouldn't under current theories of gravity and it's becoming painfully obvious that the formulas that work to describe how the Earth and planets orbit the Sun do not completely describe the behavior of things outside of our solar system.

Likewise, as we dive deeper into the particles that make up the atom, we are still clueless as to how such a thing as "mass" comes into existence - since no particle has yet presented itself as a carrier of it. Some models predict that it exists - but searches for them have turned up nothing or insist that it exists at levels deeper than what we can currently analyze. Particles like the Higgs Boson simply haven't panned out.

On another front, we have the integration of the behavior of the Quantum Mechanical world with the "Classical" world.

In Quantum Mechanics, the propagation of energy potential that gives rise to temperature is known as a "Phonon." But, within Quantum Mechanics, even the densest of crystals are composed of structures of atoms that are mostly empty space. Why, then, in "classic" physics is there a distinction between "radiation" and "conduction" of thermal energy? Why are photons involved in the exchange of energy between radiated sources but not in the exchange between two crystals in close contact?

Recent experiments have shown that Phonons are capable of tunneling across empty space.

Tunneling is a phenomena in Quantum Mechanics where the mathematical calculations for where a particle can appear (known as a "wave function") cross a boundary through which the particle, itself, cannot pass. Thus, a certain percentage of the time, we would expect to find the particle across a boundary it should not be able to cross.

It's tantamount to saying that if you have a tennis ball and a wall - that you can throw the tennis ball at the wall and, eventually, the tennis ball will appear on the other side of the wall without any hole in the wall at all. The phenomena of quantum tunneling is well documented - many of today's electronic devices have been built upon the phenomena - from ultra-sensitive receivers to voltage regulating devices, we have used the mathematical description of tunneling to build devices that work.

Yet the logic of it is completely contrary to classical physics.

[video=youtube;CBrsWPCp_rs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBrsWPCp_rs[/video]

That video is a pretty decent primer of the issues behind Classic versus Quantum mechanics.

The main struggle is attempting to formulate a theory that naturally predicts the fundamental forces - electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force, and gravity/mass. Currently - each of these 'fields' is described by separate mechanical descriptions based on observation. We can describe how they work and some of the components, but the goal is to develop a theory that explains those components and predicts their behavior - thereby predicting all of the fundamental forces.

From a Unified Field Theory - it should be possible to create a sort of "Grand Unified Theory" that predicts all of classical mechanics - including phenomena we have yet to observe in the natural world - as well.

Of course - I'm of the opinion that we do not properly understand gravity well enough, yet (as evidenced by the 'need' for dark matter that we can never seem to find) and that many of our assumptions about the cosmos are flat out wrong - and therefor merging 'wrong' theories with theories we have the capacity to perform experiments on to verify is a fool's gambit.

Basically - I argue that we should 'build' from the atom up based on direct observation rather than get carried away by trying to merge testable theories with inferred theories (the cosmological theories). Although I do permit myself to engage in rampant speculation - I believe that a truly successful unified field theory will be more of a logical additive process (such as fractal equations) rather than a differential merger.

I am still somewhat skeptical that a Unified Field Theory or a Theory of Everything can be formulated because of Godel's Incompleteness theorem, though it can be argued that UTF, being expressed in differential calculus is non-axiomatic and therefore not under it, but even so, the question still arises: are the equations for a UTE the correct equations to begin with? are we truly able to predict all the observable data in the observable universe, because personally I think our modern physics is a pale approximation of objective reality (and even the objectivity of reality is put into doubt) before Classical Mechanics was thought to be the be-all and end-all of physics until Einstein came along and caused a paradigm shift, and in a few decades or centuries from now another paradigm shift might occur, so we can say Newtonian Mechanics and Relativity are approximations valid only within their certain limits.

I think the main problem with a unified field theory is fundamentally plagued by an intrusion of classical mechanics.

For example:

You must be registered for see links

It's not healthy for my ego that I continually find verification for my predictions of what will be found.

I've said for quite some time that time is an emergent phenomena of QM and is not a physical property. This, blatantly, throws relativity right out the window.

"Until now. Today, Ekaterina Moreva at the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRIM) in Turin, Italy, and a few pals have performed the first experimental test of Page and Wootters’ ideas. And they confirm that time is indeed an emergent phenomenon for ‘internal’ observers but absent for external ones."

Or, rather, it embeds relativity as observer experience rather than a physical property of the universe.

Other theories postulate that Gravity is an emergent phenomena:

You must be registered for see links

This gives an overview of some of the theories.

You must be registered for see links

This runs through a set of experiments which, frankly, I'll have to study in far more detail and do far more research on the math and concepts they are testing, here, to fully appreciate what they are saying.

I get quite a bit of it - but my lack of formal education and discipline in the field shows, here.

Eliminating Gravity as a necessary "fundamental force" makes the job of a Unified Field Theory far easier.

Of course - it also leads to the idea that we are not nearly as wed to the limitations of classical motion and mass-reactions, as well. The notion that we could create 'antigravity' by a process of countering/reversing entropy as opposed to needing to require some kind of thrust or repulsion.... Magical hovering cars and cities sound awesome.

It also completely changes our understanding of things like Black Holes and time... speaking of time - since we have illustrated that it is an emergent phenomena... it has interesting implications for Relativity's predictions of temporal displacement.

Of course... I'm somewhat guilty of what I suggest we are unjustly doing and imposing "macroscopic" interpretations of classical theory on top of Quantum Theory.

We can only make limited predictions with the theory we have and test them within the constraints of our ability to do so. Once confirmed, we can make additional predictions based on validation of those theories and devise means of testing those.

Then we leave Star Trek in the stone age.

 

[SIR HERDERP PRESIDERP SDO]

I think the main problem with a unified field theory is fundamentally plagued by an intrusion of classical mechanics.

For example:

You must be registered for see links

It's not healthy for my ego that I continually find verification for my predictions of what will be found.

I've said for quite some time that time is an emergent phenomena of QM and is not a physical property. This, blatantly, throws relativity right out the window.

"Until now. Today, Ekaterina Moreva at the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRIM) in Turin, Italy, and a few pals have performed the first experimental test of Page and Wootters’ ideas. And they confirm that time is indeed an emergent phenomenon for ‘internal’ observers but absent for external ones."

Or, rather, it embeds relativity as observer experience rather than a physical property of the universe.

Other theories postulate that Gravity is an emergent phenomena:

You must be registered for see links

This gives an overview of some of the theories.

You must be registered for see links

This runs through a set of experiments which, frankly, I'll have to study in far more detail and do far more research on the math and concepts they are testing, here, to fully appreciate what they are saying.

I get quite a bit of it - but my lack of formal education and discipline in the field shows, here.

Eliminating Gravity as a necessary "fundamental force" makes the job of a Unified Field Theory far easier.

Of course - it also leads to the idea that we are not nearly as wed to the limitations of classical motion and mass-reactions, as well. The notion that we could create 'antigravity' by a process of countering/reversing entropy as opposed to needing to require some kind of thrust or repulsion.... Magical hovering cars and cities sound awesome.

It also completely changes our understanding of things like Black Holes and time... speaking of time - since we have illustrated that it is an emergent phenomena... it has interesting implications for Relativity's predictions of temporal displacement.

Of course... I'm somewhat guilty of what I suggest we are unjustly doing and imposing "macroscopic" interpretations of classical theory on top of Quantum Theory.

We can only make limited predictions with the theory we have and test them within the constraints of our ability to do so. Once confirmed, we can make additional predictions based on validation of those theories and devise means of testing those.

Then we leave Star Trek in the stone age.

Entanglement of the observer with the particle giving emergence to the concept of time, it is indeed an intriguing hypothesis, concerning its implications, if we assume that time emerging from quantum entanglement is correct, then our ability to remember the past and not the future is in reality the amalgamation of correlations between interacting particles, of course this is more of philosophical rumination, something that the hardcore reductionists and materialists detest, but it cannot be avoided when we discuss the depths of what makes reality real, so to speak, as for entropic gravity, I am not so sure, but I have yet to read more on that subject matter.

 

[Callypigia]

But Earth is a mommy,ergo she fabricates her age. :sdo:

"To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead." - Thomas Paine

OT: No amount of make-up can hide Mother Earth's stretch marks.

 

[Aim64C]

"To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead." - Thomas Paine

OT: No amount of make-up can hide Mother Earth's stretch marks.

Since we're on the subject of reason:

Spoiler

You must be registered for see images

While I agree that observations have pretty much disproved the Big Bang and that there is more evidence for a "Steady State" universe - this does not, in the slightest, resolve the issue.

Worse:

You must be registered for see links

"This is an elegant and powerful idea. It suggests that time is an emergent phenomenon that comes about because of the nature of entanglement. And it exists only for observers inside the universe. Any god-like observer outside sees a static, unchanging universe, just as the Wheeler-DeWitt equations predict.

Of course, without experimental verification, Page and Wootter’s ideas are little more than a philosophical curiosity. And since it is never possible to have an observer outside the universe, there seemed little chance of ever testing the idea.

Until now. Today, Ekaterina Moreva at the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRIM) in Turin, Italy, and a few pals have performed the first experimental test of Page and Wootters’ ideas. And they confirm that time is indeed an emergent phenomenon for ‘internal’ observers but absent for external ones.

The experiment involves the creation of a toy universe consisting of a pair of entangled photons and an observer that can measure their state in one of two ways. In the first, the observer measures the evolution of the system by becoming entangled with it. In the second, a god-like observer measures the evolution against an external clock which is entirely independent of the toy universe."

Well ****.

We can now account for the possibility of a being that exists outside of time and worldly experience using QM. One could even say that such a situation is predicted by QM.

This will become more clear as larger systems of entangled properties are placed into superpositions and run through similar experiments illustrating how the "god-like observer" can conduct limited interactions that influence the potential 'experience' of the "normal observer."

While it would be logically impossible to -prove- (at least with known methods) God exists - that QM can predict and describe the position of a God is ... actually a little disturbing. I'm not so shallow as to fail to realize the consequences of vindication on this front....

But - just as there are those within religion who renounce reason; there are those within science who believe they are not religious and therefor rooted in reason.

 

[Ero sennin jiraiya]

Allow me to have a little fun with your argument:

How old is the Coffee produced by the Star Trek Replicator?

Quite clearly, the Coffee was just created.

Yet, we know from experience that for Coffee to taste correctly, it must be composed of molecules that would, upon observation, imply an organic origin from a plant. Without it - the Coffee just isn't Coffee.

So - the God Replicator created the Earth 6,000 years ago.

Also, arguing that God must have created the earth because you think the Big Bang theory is ridiculous is

What logical argument would you have for it appearing any differently than it does, today?

If the Coffee in Star Trek would, by all appearances, have come from a tree back on Earth - why would an Earth created a few thousand years ago look any different than what we see?

Or - I suppose in another sense: "What would an Earth created 6,000 years ago look like?"

What comparison do we have?

Now - I admit this boils down to a philosophical argument - but from a standpoint within QM, a system placed into a super-position can assume a wide range of states and any concept of past or future is merely inferred from the observation of the current state. Which means that, if we were to think of the Earth as being in a superposition (or the universe) - then any past we perceive is merely inferred from our limited knowledge of the mechanics.

It's like walking in on a board game, watching how a few of the pieces move for several turns, and then making an inference about all of the turns leading up to the moment we walked in from the start of the game (we also have to infer how that game would have been set up to start).

Perhaps when we walked in -was- the start of the game and our attempt to construct a "start" for the game is simply an erroneous assumption. Later, when a piece we haven't seen move before does - and in a way we didn't predict - we have to change our entire estimate of what the past we couldn't witness looked like and certain assumptions about how the game could have started get blown out of the water.

For the record, I consider myself agnostic as the existence of a creator cannot be proven or disproven it seems the most logical standpoint as far as I'm concerned, though some people think saying you're agnostic is a cop out.

What would an earth created 6000 years ago look like? Well, going off what we have inferred about planet formation based on mankinds observation of the universe, nothing like the earth looks right now. Certainly it wouldn't be flourishing with life but this is just my assessment as someone who believes in the theory of evolution, which has been observed on a small scale to be real. Not only that but we have thousands if fossils of different species further backing the theory of evolution (which at this point is practically fact because of the overwhelming evidence)




Evolution is something that occurs slowly over generations of organisms. The amounts of variation of life on earth and the millions of extinct species makes it very difficult for one to argue the earth is only 6000 years old.

Also about the Big Bang.... You can't just assume every atheist believes that theory. Many do but not everyone. We know for a fact that the universe is expanding. This is why the Big Bang theory is the most popular as it says there was an explosion and since then the universe has been steadily increasing in size. No person can prove there was a Big Bang just as no one can prove the existence of a God. However, at least the Big Bang theory has some evidence backing it.