In a multiverse, is there a universe that started first?

[Obvious Leo]

When I said 'misleading' I meant your statement: ...do you dispute the fact that hot and high entropy are synonymous constructs? The phrase Synonymous constructs doesn't apply since cold and high are equally valid based on the state of thermal equilibrium in the system.

Don't forget we're talking about a closed system in which no state of thermodynamic equilibrium exists. We can meaningfully say that the system tends towards a state of thermodynamic equilibrium and it does this by seeking its lowest energy state. This occurs at all scales of physical reality and the convention in statistical thermodynamics is that this means hot bodies cool down, not the other way around. Disordered systems become more ordered and we have 13.8 billion years worth of evidence which shows us that this is exactly what has happened since the big bang. In the light of your earlier statement about the "almost" infinite high entropy state which obtained at the big bang I don't know how you could possibly claim that this is not so. Why can't reality simply be what it appears to be?

How is that so different from: ...high or maximal entropy refers to thermal equilibrium or extreme states of randomness. How is this an appalling use of language?

This is an appalling use of language for the reasons which I have clearly stated. Random motion would produce a universe with no order at all. Linearly determined motion would produce a universe which starts off in a highly ordered state and then becomes more disordered over time. Chaotically determined motion would produce a universe which starts off in a highly disordered state and then becomes more ordered over time.

As you can see the philosophy of the bloody obvious has been aptly named. We live in a non-Newtonian universe.

As for replacing space-time with gravity-time some current problems may disappear but it begs the question how many more will arrive in its wake. You can't honestly say that you know the answer to that as well.

Replacing the continuum of space and time with a continuum of gravity and time will resolve absolutely ALL of the paradoxes and metaphysical absurdities in the current models of physics and make them compatible with each other. This is all I ever set out to do and I've never claimed that this will be the last word on the subject. However I do see this as the end of physics and that physics itself will eventually be subsumed within the overarching science of non-linear computation. Whatever problems might arise in that pursuit will be many orders of magnitude above my pay grade and not even of particular interest to me. Science is always an incremental approach to the acquisition of human knowledge and we can't be expected to find answers to questions which haven't even been invented yet.

[Greta]

Don't forget we're talking about a closed system in which no state of thermodynamic equilibrium exists.

That's only an assumption. It may be a closed system.

How can we possibly know? The universe still could be just one "cluster of galactic superclusters" with others too far away to be observed.

[Obvious Leo]

Don't forget we're talking about a closed system in which no state of thermodynamic equilibrium exists.

That's only an assumption. It may be a closed system.

How can we possibly know? The universe still could be just one "cluster of galactic superclusters" with others too far away to be observed.

It could be an artefact of the mind of god. It could be a toxic fart emitted by a dragon with gastro-intestinal issues. It could be any bloody thing, Greta, but I don't know how that particular speculation amongst an infinite index of possibilities is supposed to help. Speculating about the existence of entities which cannot be observed by their very definition is not science and neither is it philosophy. Although I've made it clear that I only regard the big bang as the beginning of our current iteration of the universe and not as the beginning of physical reality itself it remains beyond doubt that the universe which "began" at the time of this big bang event is the only universe which science can make meaningful statements about. Whether anything exists beyond it is both unknowable and irrelevant because whatever dragons lurk beyond are not causally connected to our world. We can all make up whatever stories we like because it doesn't matter a fuck.

[Obvious Leo]

The universe still could be just one "cluster of galactic superclusters" with others too far away to be observed.

I presume you realise that this speculation is nothing more than a desperate attempt to salvage a theory which is demonstrably WRONG. There aren't even many theorists who fancy it although when it comes to clutching at theoretical straws without the aid of a single fact dark matter still remains popular after almost a century.

[Greta]

The universe still could be just one "cluster of galactic superclusters" with others too far away to be observed.

I presume you realise that this speculation is nothing more than a desperate attempt to salvage a theory which is demonstrably WRONG.

Leo, I don't care which theory is right. Unlike most, including you, I am not religiously wedded to ideas about the scale of the universe and don't make claims of certainty about that which we can't be sure.

I assume you're talking about string theory, which really is not what I'm talking about anyway. I suggest that you contact and enlighten enlighten Edward Witten, who apparently is in dire need of being informed by his intellectual superiors that his theory has been proved demonstrably wrong

[JSS]

How can we possibly know? The universe still could be just one "cluster of galactic superclusters" with others too far away to be observed.

That happens to be the only rational conclusion.

The Big Bang is just a modern day creation myth.

[Obvious Leo]

Greta. I wasn't talking about string theory because I assumed you were talking about eternal inflation, which still has a few half-hearted supporters. Nobody has proven string theory wrong because in forty years it hasn't yielded a single testable prediction and they know bloody well that it never could, even in principle. They've all just given up on it and moved on and except for Witten and a handful of others you'll hardly find a theoretical physicist in the whole world still flogging that dead horse. String theory is DEAD, and not before time.

[Greta]

Leo, I wasn't talking about eternal inflation or string theory. Just that this particular concentration of matter/energy that we call the universe might not be the only one.

We can't test it but the inability to test means nothing apart from inconvenience.

[Obvious Leo]

Just that this particular concentration of matter/energy that we call the universe might not be the only one.

I don't dispute this but merely refute the relevance of it. Such a universe cannot be causally connected to our own and thus no meaningful statements can be made about it. Therefore it lies beyond the domain of science or philosophy by its very definition, making it indistinguishable from the god hypothesis.

We can't test it but the inability to test means nothing apart from inconvenience.

It means everything. A scientific hypothesis which cannot be tested is known in the vernacular as a GUESS. It's worse than useless.

[Greta]

Just that this particular concentration of matter/energy that we call the universe might not be the only one.

I don't dispute this but merely refute the relevance of it. Such a universe cannot be causally connected to our own and thus no meaningful statements can be made about it. Therefore it lies beyond the domain of science or philosophy by its very definition, making it indistinguishable from the god hypothesis.

We can't test it but the inability to test means nothing apart from inconvenience.

It means everything. A scientific hypothesis which cannot be tested is known in the vernacular as a GUESS. It's worse than useless.

I appreciate science's need for discipline but the view expressed by you here was the prevailing one when black holes were first mathematically postulated. Pointless and unproveable. At the time. With improved tech, it became proveable.

You'll like this page: Ridiculed discoverers, vindicated mavericks: http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html

Even the Bible said that "God is found within", not outside so I'm not sure whose "God hypothesis" you're refuting. The idea that there could be larger fractal layers of reality beyond what we know is a completely different proposition.

[JSS]

A scientific hypothesis which cannot be tested is known in the vernacular as a GUESS. It's worse than useless.

And yet the very make of Quantum Physics. Although Quantum Mechanics is a limited valid tool in physics, Quantum Physics is sheer phantasy physics pretending the tool to be the only reality despite paradoxical conclusions proving otherwise. The very same promoters of Biblical type scripture ontological beings, now promote quantum physics ontological beings: colorful, charming, and friendly quarks with there ups and downs. It is like reading a comic book. Obviously someone has the authority to invent fanciful characters to inject into science, never witnessed, never tested, and have everyone accept it.

[Obvious Leo]

A scientific hypothesis which cannot be tested is known in the vernacular as a GUESS. It's worse than useless.

And yet the very make of Quantum Physics. Although Quantum Mechanics is a limited valid tool in physics, Quantum Physics is sheer phantasy physics pretending the tool to be the only reality despite paradoxical conclusions proving otherwise. The very same promoters of Biblical type scripture ontological beings, now promote quantum physics ontological beings: colorful, charming, and friendly quarks with there ups and downs. It is like reading a comic book. Obviously someone has the authority to invent fanciful characters to inject into science, never witnessed, never tested, and have everyone accept it.

The problem with QM lies in the assumption that it is in fact a physical theory but the blokes who pioneered QM never regarded it in this way. They were better schooled in the philosophy of knowledge than their modern counterparts and they saw QM as nothing more than a mathematical representation of a physical theory and not the theory itself. Einstein regarded both of his relativity models in the same way.

[Obvious Leo]

Greta. The moment you speak of reality in terms of fractals then you're squarely in the same camp as me and immediately disqualify the validity of the spacetime paradigm. A fractal universe cannot be modelled in a Cartesian space which uses a bi-directional arrow of time.

[Greta]

Greta. The moment you speak of reality in terms of fractals then you're squarely in the same camp as me and immediately disqualify the validity of the spacetime paradigm. A fractal universe cannot be modelled in a Cartesian space which uses a bi-directional arrow of time.

We have previously agreed that space is an illusion - simply a less concentrated state of matter than planets etc.

The fractal relationships are interesting - communities within communities - planet/moon systems → solar systems → galaxies → galactic super clusters → the cosmic web → ??

Ultimately, reality must surely just be all one thing - one thing with many orbiting, rotating, invaginating and expurgating, complexifying and dissipating areas of concentration and dispersion, with the approximate hierarchy above (I excluded life because most celestial bodies don't seem to have any).

[Obvious Leo]

We have previously agreed that space is an illusion -

"Illusion" is not my preferred form of language but essentially yes. In cognitive neuroscience 3D space is seen purely as a cognitive construct and the way this construct is formed in specific brain regions is reasonably well understood. Only a couple of years ago the Nobel prize for medicine was awarded to a team for work in this exact field. The brain receives only INFORMATION via the senses and formulates this information into a cognitive MAP of its surroundings but since the speed of light is finite it is an inescapable FACT that this information must pertain to events which exist no longer. Obviously the notion of a physical "space" extending to a no-longer-existent event is a metaphysical absurdity but an elapsed time interval between the event and the observer of it is not. That's what "collapsing a wave function" is. It is an act of cognition on the part of the observer whereby he applies a spatial extension to what is exclusively a temporal phenomenon.

So that's got quantum entanglement out of the way.

The fractal relationships are interesting - communities within communities - planet/moon systems → solar systems → galaxies → galactic super clusters → the cosmic web → ??

You missed out the bottom end of the scale because fractal systems are scale invariant.

Planck intervals > subatomic particles > atoms > more complex atoms > molecules > chemistry > life > mind.

Ultimately, reality must surely just be all one thing -

YES YES YES. At the Planck scale are only quanta of energy/information which self-organise into an embedded hierarchy of emergent structures like the Russian matryoshka dolls. Such a fractal reality is exquisitely modelled at the Planck scale by John Conway in his Game of Life but to truly grasp the full cosmological picture is a simple matter of understanding the Mandelbrot set. As one who is demonstrably well schooled in evolutionary theory you will also know that the Mandelbrot set is a perfect model for all self-causal systems, which is unquestionably what reality is.