On 5/7/2012 8:30 AM, Richard Ruquist wrote:
The combination of MWI and string physics may suggest a reason why quantum physics must
exist and it has to do with the string landscape plus the acceptance on your part of
some of the (outrageous) claims of string theory. I say that the most outrageous claim
of string theory is that the compactified dimensions, (the so-called Calabi-Yau
Manifolds (CYMs), which are discrete ball-like particles a thousand Planck lengths in
diameter) possess the constants and laws of physics. So assuming that every CYM is
identical in our universe, then the number of possible different universes depends on
the number of distinct versions of the CYMs, which is the so-called String Landscape.
Now according to Yau in his book "The Shape of Inner Space" each CYM particle has 500
topological holes, more or less I presume. And a constraining higher-order
electromagnetic flux winds through these holes. Now if the CYMs contain the laws of
quantum physics, it is reasonable, but perhaps not necessary, that that quantum physics
applies to this flux and that it may exist in any number of quantum states. To determine
the string landscape, string theorists have assumed the nice round number of 10 for the
number of quantum states the flux may possess. If so then the number of possible
different configurations of a CYM is 10^500. (For comparison the number of Planck
volumes in our universe is at least 10^175 or the number of CYMs is about 10^165).
So in a MWI context, even if each universe in the multiverse required a distinct CYM,
there seems to be more than enough to go around. Even if the number of flux quantum
states were say equal to the CYM dimensionality (6), the number of distinct CYMs at
10^390 seems to provide ample MWI universes, even for a Omniverse. But if the CYMs were
like a classical computer rather than a quantum computer, the number of distinct CYMs at
2^500= 10^150 seems insufficient for MWI.
I don't see how you're connecting MWI to different string physics? MWI is about different
observations in *the same* physical universe. It has nothing to do with different
effective quantum fields or different symmetry breaking.
Brent
Therefore if all these assumptions are acceptable to you, quantum physics must apply to
the CYMs for there to be enough distinct CYMs to support MWI. That is a reason why we
have quantum physics (Perhaps a LoL rather than a QED is appropriate here)
Richard
On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 9:42 AM, Pierz <pier...@gmail.com
<mailto:pier...@gmail.com>> wrote:
The question, "Why is there anything at all?" used to do my head in when I
was a
kid. I can still sometimes get into kind of head-exploding moment sometimes
thinking
about it. Russell's answer to me remains the most satisfying, even though
in a sense
it is a non-answer, a simple ackowledgement that there is no logical reason
why
there has to be a cause of 'everything' even though everything may have a
cause.
Krauss's argument - I admit I haven't read the book (yet), so I am speaking
of what
I understand rhe hist of his argument to be - may be interesting
physics/cosmology,
but I agree with the critics that it doesn't really get to the bottom of the
proverbial 'turtle stack', and it shouldn't claim to, because such a bottom
turtle
is in principle impossible.
John Clarke claims that a 'nothing' that contains the laws of quantum
mechanics and
the potential to produce time, space and matter is a very pitiful something
if it is
a something at all. But I think it sneaks a lot more into its pitiful
somethingness
than at first meets the eye. Not only the laws of quantum mechanics, but
the laws of
logic and mathematics without which quantum mechanics could not be
formulated or
expressed - as Bruno woukd be quick to point out. I really must read the
book to
understand how this vacuum can be unstable in the absence of time - doesn't
stability or instability depend on time by implying the possibility or
otherwise of
change? But even accepting this it seems to me that in order to reason
about the
properties of this vacuum (e.g., its instability or otherwise) means that
the vacuum
must exist. Getting what seems like extremely close to non-existence is
still a
million miles (actually an infinite distance) from actual non-existence,
because
what defines the distinction between non-existence and existence is not
anything to
do with being extremely minimal. An extremely small number, say 10 to the
-100000,
is extremely minimal, but still not zero, and still an infinite distance,
in a
sense, from zero.
Krauss's argument may satisfy the cosmologist's desire to see the cause of
the
universe reduced to something extremely simple, but it does not satisfy the
wondering child or philosopher who is thunderstruck by the strangeness of
there
being any existence at all, however simple or rudimentary its origins. It's
wrong to
say such a child or philosopher is caught in a pointless mind loop trying
asking how
something that does not even have the potential to produce anything can,
nevertheless, produce something. Of course that is absurd. The question in
my mind
as a wondering child was never 'How did the nothing that must have come
before the
universe produce the universe?' It was my mind chasing the chain of
causation of
things and realizing that, whatever that chain looked like, I could never
trace it
all the way back to absolute nothing - so why this mysterious beingness?
The fact is
it's beyond reason. Call it a gift or a miracle and you're as close to it as
anything. God is no answer, mind you - he's just another spurious bottom
turtle.
God, laws of quantum mechanics: it's just different attempts to stop the
rot of
infinite regress, hammer in a wedge somewhere and say "Because". Why do
the law of
quantum physics exist? Because. Why does God, the UD, the Buddhist void
exist? Because.
As for the remark about nothingness having only one way of being and there
being a
lot more ways of existing, it's cute, but it's sophistry. Non-being is not a
countable way of being. It's the absence of being - obviously - so can't be
presented as one among a myriad of possible configurations of the universe.
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