Nihilo Nihil Fit – More Fun With Thermodynamics
22 April 2007 by KA
The theist’s song:
“I got plenty of nothing
And nothing is plenty for me.” Frank Sinatra, I Got Plenty O’ Nothin’
The atheist’s song:
“Nothing from nothing leaves nothing
You gotta have something to be with me
Nothing from nothing leaves nothing
You gotta have something to be with me.”
- Billy Preston, Nothing From Nothing
Here’s another flashcard – use it to your heart’s content.
I’ve run into this nonsense on the ‘Net more often than I care to – it’s simply semantical wordplay, and really, fairly ridiculous.
We constantly hear this crap about the ‘Uncaused Cause’. Or ‘How did the universe pop into being?’
Sophistry is the word that comes to mind.
The Internet abounds with amateur armchair philosophers (I count myself amongst them) – as if the ability to regurgitate some stream-of-consciousness is validation in and of itself, like for instance, this clown.
I call him a clown, because he blathers on about the ‘Uncaused Cause’, with all the tired canards of stereotypes, and a witless ignorance of science.
I watched this debate unfold, and just shook my head. It’s just too easy to debunk this.
So let’s debone the red herring, and fry it up for tonight’s dinner, shall we?
The First Law of Thermodynamics (aka the Conservation of Energy) stipulates that energy can’t be destroyed – that it only changes. So, unless there’s some scientific evidence to state otherwise, we will need to presuppose that energy is infinite in nature.
There – Herr Herring is now descaled. Now to fillet it:
As of May of last year (hat tip to Stardust for this one), apparently there was a contracting universe prior to this one.
According to some proposals, the Big Bang is a repeating cycle. Universes might expand, then shrink back to a point, then expand again. Thus the “bang” would be really more like a bounce.
So, infinite regress is back in the fold. Energy is infinite: the universe, not. Critical philosophers, rejoice!
There you go – science adheres to the complete opposite of exnihilation. Logic demands no less, and neither should we.
Newsflash: it’s the religious who claim something from nothing.
And nothing’s plenty for them.
22 April 2007, on 12:00 pm
KA, just read through “the clown’s” post you linked to and my head hurts. I had to go get another cup of coffee and come back to reread it.
I have to mull that over for awhile.
22 April 2007, on 3:09 pm
KA…Regarding those songs…realizing, of course that you’re homing in on lyrical “catch phrases”…I have a bit of ‘bone picking’ to offer.
First, regarding your Theist song choice…you’d have to associate the ‘blame’ on that tune to George Gershin’s “Porgy & Bess”. Actually it’s more about poverty and the Ghetto; nothing, really, at the level of any serious Cosmological consideration. However, Sinatra WAS, as far as I know…a Theist.
http://www.archivearts.com/Sheets/IGotPlentyofNothin.htm
As for the Billy Preston tune…the ‘blame’ for writing that little diddy, lays ’squarely’ on HIS coffin.
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=4411
In his case, he started off, at age 10, as a Gospel keyboardist and ended up in prison for drugs in 1997. Yikes! He, like Sinatra is dead, of course; but I certainly wouldn’t associate atheism with either the song or any probability of him having been an atheist.
I realize I’m nit picking here [and also kidding, a bit]…but I’m always somewhat amazed at how, particularly, POP song lyrics; many of which are just total B.S. or at best…personal, emotionally linked “Life Soundtracks”; are sought out, and dragged into rational discussions. Personally, I never bought into that Baby Boomer “Soundtrack of Life” mantra.
“Well…maybe Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”…You know…the Dances of the Young Girls?
[No lyrics, of course...just instrumental, subjective, 'aural impressions']
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rite_of_Spring
OK…OK…now that I finally got that old personal “pet peeve” off my chest(?)…
What’s that?…
“Don’t EVER bring that up again…you filthy swine!” ?….
or maybe “Rude, vile, pig!” ? [ala Elton John, of course]
As to that one quote in your post:
“According to some proposals, the Big Bang is a repeating cycle. Universes might expand, then shrink back to a point, then expand again. Thus the “bang” would be really more like a bounce.”
I’m reminded of the Hindu/Buddhist’s: “In-breathing, and Out-breathing of Brahma”
And, by the way…a sneaky scriptural, ANAGRAMATIC, steal by the Babble-ists?….
Abraham = A Brahma = from Brahma?
“IN…OUT…IN…OUT…
COUGH!…
WHEEZE?”
As my “Redemptive Offering” to you…["Let the flogging begin"?...well..."I'll take a wanking instead"]
The real substance of your post, KA, is SO right on. The same old mind numbing arguments never cease; which is another reminder to me, of at least two head banging, surface images…
1) Computer, and
2) Wall.
Ya know…If I were still drinking booze; I might be switching from Scotch, to “Harvey Wallbangers”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Wallbanger
Hey…that drink really looks good! I missed that one in my drinking days. “Duh”!
Hmmm…and whatever happened to Harvey, anyway?
Maybe he had a brain aneurism from arguing WAY too much with Fundies…and the coroner, to conceal the truth, ascribed his death to…
Wall banging?
22 April 2007, on 3:47 pm
ChuckA:
Yes, you ARE nitpicking. I didn’t say the authors of said songs were religious or not. I was co-opting the lyrics, not laying anyone’s background out.
I find something I agree w/, I borrow it. It’s just…an evolutionary habit, I s’ppose.
I’ve been known to quote Lewis (sparingly), & even Chesterton (even MORE sparingly).
Sorry, you’re on your own there, friend. Hee-HEE!
22 April 2007, on 4:00 pm
KA, just yesterday I visited the BBC website and found more on what you’re talking about.
A Brief History of the End of Everything goes into five current models. Your “big bounce” is number three:
1. It’s OK, the universe is eternal
2. The universe will crash – we’re all doomed
3. Lets go round again
4. The universe is expanding – we’re all doomed
5. Oops, I’ve dropped an exotic particle
They’re all single audio programs, narrated by (holy cow!) Vatican Astronomer, Brother Guy Consolmagno. (I hope the links to the individual programs work; I haven’t bothered to listen yet…)
Without even listening, I would guess that he’s rather haughty, condescending and dismissive about these “not-gawd-driven” little theories. But I could be wrong…
22 April 2007, on 4:23 pm
Naomi:
That’s funny, but incorrect.
Energy is eternal – about the only thing that is. Unless someone comes along & disproves the 1st Law. #2 violates #1. #3 violates #1 (in a circular manner, hehehehe).
I’d like to see an ‘exotic particle’ on a stripper pole.
Er…maybe not.
“Physics talks,
But it can’t sing & dance & it don’t walk,”
(co-opted from Neil Diamond, sorry, ChuckA).
22 April 2007, on 10:44 pm
And supposing that the universe is a closed system, the 2nd law applies.
23 April 2007, on 2:25 am
A cyclic universe that expands then contracts and then expands again violates the second law of thermodynamics as entropy would ever increase and quite soon, after a few cycles, the universe would be too homogenous to contain life.
While the above doesn’t strictly rule out a cyclic universe, it does pretty much mean that testing the hypothesis of a cyclic universe is kind of outside the scope of science as we know it. Anyways, the universe doesn’t appear to be contracting, but the expansion is actually accelerating.
Also, energy is an abstract concept. It doesn’t make much sense to say that it can’t be destroyed or that it’s “infinite in nature”, what ever that means. The conservation of energy is simply an interesting consequence of the laws of nature. It tells us something of how ’stuff’ in the universe relates to one another. Or more specifically, it is a quantity that can be computed from theories of physics and a logical implication of those theories is that energy is constant, i.e. you can actually prove mathematically that energy is conserved, it doesn’t depend on empirical observations, provided that the theories themselves correspond to the observed universe.
Of course this doesn’t in anyway validate cretinous rambling about Uncaused Causes and such. How’s spontaneous nuclear fission for an Uncaused Cause? They happen all the time, completely unpredictably. All we can know of them is how likely they occur in a given amount of time. I guess we must call nuclear power God power, since God must be breaking all those uranium atoms that start those chain reactions. I guess there is something that God does reliably, even without begging through prayer, after all!
23 April 2007, on 10:30 am
One hypothesis I’ve heard is that the 2nd law is an approximation: On the quantum level, it’s probabilistic, and on the macro level, entropy is always increasing, since the odds are in its favor, just like a casino consistently makes money.
Supposedly after the universe cools off into a sea of uniform particles, the infinite improbability engine of googals of years will inevitably have all, or at least most of those particles jump back into a singularity simultaneously, starting another Big Bang.
23 April 2007, on 11:52 am
Flaky:
A cyclic universe that expands then contracts and then expands again violates the second law of thermodynamics as entropy would ever increase and quite soon, after a few cycles, the universe would be too homogenous to contain life.
But it wouldn’t if it contracts entirely, & then explodes into another Big Bang, would it?
So the universe is expanding & contracting like a set of lungs, is it?
Also, energy is an abstract concept.
I don’t think of it like that.
23 April 2007, on 12:25 pm
Thanks, KA! I love your scientific posts (especially since I’m no good at writing ‘em myself; better you than me).
23 April 2007, on 2:48 pm
The Big Bang Theory is pure religion.
23 April 2007, on 3:12 pm
jimmy:
Ummm…what?
Is there a church you can direct me to via Yahoo maps? ‘Cause I wanna go worship there today!
/sarcasm off.
23 April 2007, on 5:29 pm
The truth is, we don’t know for certain exactly how the universe began. For all we know, it could have been sneezed out of the nose of the Great Green Arkleseizure and will end with the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief.
However, we should not forget that the plausibility of any hypothesis depends on the plausibility of any assumptions upon which it in turn depends. If you are going to evoke a creator, you have to accept the possibility that whatever process could have caused a creator to exist might have caused the universe to exist without the need for a creator. That’s at least equally plausible and raises fewer questions.
As a scientist, I can’t be too put out by all this not knowing. Either we’ll find out, and it will be so obvious that we will all wonder why we didn’t think of it before; or we’ll find out that there is no way to know, and then be forced to argue about something else instead.
If the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics are true, then eventually all the matter in the universe will be at a uniform temperature and no further energy conversions will be possible. There will be nobody alive to see what happens at the end, just as there was nobody alive to see what happened at the beginning.
I don’t think it’s impossible that in a dead, constant-temperature universe, some quantum mechanical phenomenon might cause the energy not to be evenly-distributed. Then there could be another Big Bang, life would arise all over again and nobody would know it was not the first one. Crucially, there would be no way to measure the length of time that elapsed between heat death and the next Big Bang.
And introducing a god only complicates things. At some level, something has to appear to arise spontaneously; whether that’s a creator god and a bunch of raw materials, with all the problems that throws up, or a ready-formed, no-gods-required universe.
I know which is simpler.
23 April 2007, on 9:53 pm
I do not, and will never believe in any supernatural power or force. When I say that the big bang theory is pure religion, Im going too far. I choose not to believe in the big bang theory. I think that space and time are infinite – so how could the universe have a beginnning or an end?
24 April 2007, on 1:29 am
jimmy:
I think you’re confusing your terms here.
Space & time are interlocked (via Einsteinian relativity) – but the universe is composed of matter. Matter is made of energy.
The big bang was a moment of non-time & non-space, folded deeply into itself, & then exploding.
Of course, there was the contracting universe that preceded it.
So the universe is a container – both holding time & space as well as defining the same.
A gravitational flower, blossoming, & galaxies springing forth from its pollen.
24 April 2007, on 2:47 am
My understanding of the second law is, much like what Bronze Dog wrote, that it applies asymptotically over time and space, but not locally. Consider having a set of coins, heads up, on a table. Then start flipping them in random. Soon enough you’ll have a disorganization of roughly even number of heads and tails in no particularly significant order, but there’s always a remote chance that you’ll flip the coins back to the original setting and at any particular flip, you can get closer to the original setup with a 50% probability, locally decreasing entropy.
KA: As AJS says, the universe would end up having uniform temperature, even when it expands and contracts, so eventually life would not be possible. But perhaps by a random chance of infinitesimal probability, the universe would “reorganize” itself every now and then. But that’s not really of relevant, as the universe appears to be expanding indefinitely.
24 April 2007, on 6:38 am
The Talking Heads’ song “Heaven”.
Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.
It is hard to believe that nothing could be so exciting.
24 April 2007, on 4:52 pm
Flaky:
Well, a bloggin’ buddy of mine talks about how it does apply locally, while it doesn’t seem to on a larger scale (i.e., dark matter, dark energy).
24 April 2007, on 6:48 pm
I was forgetting to comment with this quote, my favorite from among our many crazy fundy remarks:
“Science can prove nothing it is just backed up with evidence which is backed up with more evidence!” – Jim Kennet
So there, all you evil scientificoes!
Ah – it’s always good for a refreshing laugh…
24 April 2007, on 7:16 pm
“Science can prove nothing it is just backed up with evidence which is backed up with more evidence!”
Eve, I remember that oldie-but-goodie! LOL! Priceless!
24 April 2007, on 11:13 pm
Eve -that’s pretty hysterical. That rates right up there w/that 1 idiot, who claimed that suicide rates jumped up 1000%. I read that here (evolution? Abortion? I forget the topic).
That fella got savaged right quick.
24 April 2007, on 11:28 pm
The GifS Crazy Fundie Hall of Fame quote: “Science can prove nothing it is just backed up with evidence which is backed up with more evidence!” made by Jim Kennet on May 10, 2006 #277, in one of our longest and best comment threads ever….Paging Leni Riefenstahl by the late, great Sean.
25 April 2007, on 2:52 am
KA: I can’t say that I know much about dark matter and dark energy, except that dark matter interacts with ordinary matter only through gravity and maybe weak nuclear interaction (and not by electromagnetism) and that dark energy is somehow a constant “negative” energy of space and as space expands so does the amount of dark energy, and that dark energy causes the universe to expand.
Anyways, I don’t see how dark matter or dark energy would do anything to the second law. Could you elaborate?
25 April 2007, on 1:02 pm
Flaky:
Here’s a good paper on the subject:
http://www.citebase.org/fulltext?format=application%2Fpdf&identifier=oai%3AarXiv.org%3Ahep-th%2F0408170
Apparently, there’s negative thermodynamics, as well as phantom thermodynamics.
25 April 2007, on 3:01 pm
KA: Well, if we can have negative kinetic energies and temperatures, I guess that might change things a bit. As I’m not quite up to par on physics and cosmology, I can’t really offer any critical assessment of that article (I believe I shall try to rectify that within a few years), although I can note that it is rather speculative, which just goes to show how little is actually known about the universe.
25 April 2007, on 4:13 pm
Flaky:
Hey, I’m working on it as well – status is firmly in the amateur status.
I think it’s best to say, it’s ALL speculative, but some speculations are closer to the mark than others.
9 May 2007, on 11:07 pm
Krystalline Apostate – Doesn’t matter take up space? Am I to understand that the word “universe” is used by astrologers to describe only that which is material, excluding rays of energy?
I hear peole refer to a “multiverse” – perhaps that is where my issue is… I guess the word universe implies all encompassing… if the prevaling theory is that our universe is part of a multiverse, then I would be less skeptical of theories like the big bang… of course, the question still remains – what is the universe expanding into?