No, you don’t. I believe that if the OP continues to study cosmology they will find that information is something of intense interest to cosmologists – e.g., the intense debate between Hawking and others as to whether black holes destroy information. I’m not claiming I’m approaching the topic with their level of mathematical rigor, but I believe my intuitions are correct.
Having slept on the matter, let me lay out my intuitions in another way:
Complex things require more explanation than simple things. The universe is complex, regardless of what the sum total of energy in the universe might be. Nothingness is not complex. Therefore, the universe requires more explanation than nothingness.
On another note, I read an article recently which claimed that any mathematical physical theory contains a law of conservation of energy if “energy” is suitably defined, and that the sum of such “energy” is essentially an arbitrary figure which can be altered by further adjusting the definition. I’m not necessarily endorsing the claims of the article. However, it does seem consistent with my own physics education, in which concepts such as “energy gradients” and “usable energy” are more significant than “total energy.”
What is fact is that “the total amount of mass/energy sums to zero” ← that’s a quote from the course I’m taking. How to interpret that is what I’m putting up for discussion.
I think it can be compared to the following:
Suppose you had one object moving at 10m/s, and suppose you had another object moving at -10m/s (same speed, opposite direction). Since the sum of their velocities amounts to zero, are we to say there is no motion going on?
Well…the system would be moving at 0 m/s…or if they were the same mass you could say the center of mass was not moving, but the constituents would still be moving.
Maybe not a fair comparison, but certainly a fair analogy.
LOL. Well, I guess I’m done here. For what it’s worth, your failing is the inability to reason at the proper level of abstraction. The question posed is really far too simple and fundamental – and indeed nonsensical, in the sense that the guiding intuitions are so dubious – to require recourse to actual physics (as in hypotheticals accompanied by mathematical computations and analysis). The nonsensical aspect was one reason I felt unsure of what was being asked, initially.
The terms that I have used – such as “information” and “complexity” – address the question at the proper level of abstraction and obviate the computations. However, you incorrectly interpret abstraction as mysticism. It is nothing of the sort.
Why is gravitational energy a negative value? That’s also what some professor said at a lecture I recently attended. He also said that dark matter has a positive gravitational value, causiing the universe to expand exponentially. This would then be a recent phenomenon. I didn’t exacly grasp the entire model.
But as far as “'regular” matter goes I got the impression that Gib is right - that the values of matter and of gravitational energy cancel each other out. It would me a whole lot of sense, too. Nothing is more incomprehensible than some arbitrary and fixed amount of energy just existing for no particular reason.
I wasn’t sure, I just figured dark matter made more sense. Shows how little I understand about what the hell it all is. I just looked at cosmic inflation, the topic the lecture was about, and it seems you’re right.
Hmm… that makes sense. If dark energy is positive, then gravity is to matter as dark energy is to what? Space! Space, in other words, is the counterpart to matter (which, in this sense, must include forms of energy such as photons), just as positive dark energy is the counterpart to negative gravity. This makes sense when you think about it: empty space or absence would be the “negative” of matter or presence. However, it is still the negative 10^53 Kg worth of gravity that sums together with the positive 10^53 Kg of matter to get zero. This must mean that however much energy there is of the positive dark energy, it probably sums together with an equal amount of “negative” space to get zero (it makes me wonder whether a formula could be derived for converting space into kilograms). In that case, the question of how there could be a constant expansion of the universe - with more space and dark energy being produced - is answered thus: for every amount of space that is created ex nihilo, and equal amount of dark energy is created whose sum together with its corresponding space is zero, thereby preserving the net amount of space and dark energy at zero.
that would be the case with neutral, not negative matter or energy.
Negative gravity causes exponential expansion, so it’s gravitational value is positive. Right? I still don’t get it. It’s probably in the formula Anthem posted. But I am fundamentally opposed to learning mathematical code.
Well, I meant “negative” in a much more general sense - as in “opposed to”.
If you’re right that dark energy is positive, then there seems to be two ways to pair things up:
so that their sums amount to zero, in which case 10^53Kg of matter gets paired up with -10^53Kg of gravity, and XKg worth of dark energy gets paired up with (presumably) -XKg worth of space (if that can even be put in terms of mass).
or -
so that they simply oppose each other in terms of their nature, in which case matter gets paired up with space (i.e. presence vs. absence), and inward pulling gravity gets paired up with outward pushing dark energy. Note how in this pairing, the sums of the pairs don’t necessarily amount to zero (although it would be interesting if a conversion of dark energy or space into kilograms yeilded 10^53).
Yet, there still is the matter of the point prof. Whittle made about the expansion of space borrowing its energy from gravity. Does that mean that the total amount of gravity in the universe is slowing being drained as dark energy slowly builds up, and if so, is there a mirror process going on between space and matter (i.e. the more space expands, the less matter there is)?
See Dr Milo Wolfe for his discription of how nothing is moveing as as a solid through space. Matter is a wave function that move more like eneregy transference. The energy more like migrates as heat from the pan and on to the handle. The wave function collapse moves along something like a wave on the surface of a pond.
He also explains the red shift and why we think the universe is expanding.
Another aside note “…Our result suggests that the energy of absorbed light resides in two places at once - a quantum superposition state, or coherence - and such a state lies at the heart of quantum mechanical theory.” - physorg.com/news184423418.html
I have always said there is nothing there and the mind floats in it.
Scientists and their Craps!! Everything = Nothing blah blah!! No wonder they’re not anything bigger than a Scientist!
That nothing or Zero that they’re talking about is the balance the world has. That’s the Neutral Nature of the universe. It has nothing to do with humans that can manipulate enrergies. The fact that Human always lives in Pain and Confusion is exactly because they can’t stand on that balance and always cross the lines. And the World will answer: Fuck U Human. Don’t cross the line! BOOM!! It smack them back to the Zero again and again.
Yes
If the mind can let go it can know. The five senses make us feel that the world is real. The mind is attached to the five senses and accepts everything as real without questioning. I do not know if we can shut the mind completely that is to say to cross the line and be in total nothing. And from that nothing where we come and from which physicality comes from as well. So I do not know if we can cross that line.
gib: a gravitational field doesn’t consist of negative energy. See page 185 of doc 30, which is Einstein’s The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity. Here it is, but note that it’s a 3Mbyte pdf: alberteinstein.info/gallery/ … 46-200.pdf. Note where he says “the energy of the gravitational field shall act gravitatively in the same way as any other kind of energy”. I’m afraid the idea that gravity is negative energy is a myth. The equality is that a given amount of stress-energy causes a given amount of gravity. It’s rather like action and reaction or stress and tension being balanced. A gravitational field pulls, so we tend to think in terms of tension, particularly because of the rubber-sheet analogy, but actually it’s a “negative tension gradient”, which is a pressure gradient. There’s more stress-energy, or vacuum energy per unit volume, in the space surrounding a planet than in free space. Like TheStumps said, space isn’t nothing, because it has energy, and energy isn’t nothing.
Farsight;
I wouldn’t say that the negative is completely a myth, but rather that the terms of thinking that the negative represents an absence of something is a myth.
I see that negative quantifier and positive quantifier as pull vs. push. Draw vs. displace. The concepts of tension on both ends of the spectrum.
-1 vs. 1
-1 + 1
So I think that the negative stands correctly mathematically, but that the interpretation of what that mathematical symbol means has been somewhat confused.
Our push is the mass itself in volume; the draw is the gravity such mass causes in tension in space.
So, it stands to reason perfectly logically to me that the amount of mass would directly balance the amount of gravity, and that the amount of gravity would directly balance the amount of mass.
And that we would have no excess of either.
Why would we?
Yes, I’d agree with that, though I’d say gravity is actually a negative tension that “pulls” because light and matter is dynamical. If you were a photon, it’s like swimming up a pool with a viscosity gradient from left to right causing you to veer to the left. If you were an electron, it’s like swimming round in circles causing you to work over to the left because you’ve got spin/angular momentum/magnetic moment.
Right, sorry if I was confusing there…I intended to represent gravity as a negative tension using the -1 and being a pull, whereas the mass is the 1 and the “push” of displacement.