This is a disingenuous rebuttal and unworthy of you, uwot. I always use the quotation marks "" when referring to a "curved" space to illustrate the point that this is NOT a physical statement but merely a mathematical metaphor for the fact that time passes at an inconstant speed, as mandated by gravity. This is a perfectly legitimate and non-contradictory way of interpreting the evidence supporting GR without the need to invoke any spooky-action-at-a-distance, and exactly the same explanation can be applied to the so-called "expanding" space suggested by the galactic redshift. To say that space can "expand" and "contract" and "bend" and "twist" and "curve" is not in fact to make a physical statement at all but merely to make a mathematical statement about the relationship between gravity and the speed at which time passes.uwot wrote: Obvious Leo wrote:
We know from GR that time passes more quickly between galaxies than it does within them and this not only accounts for the redshift but ALSO accounts for the fact that more distant galaxies appear to be accelerating away from the observer. So much for dark energy. The same simple FACT that time passes more quickly between galaxies than within them is also a complete and adequate explanation for gravitational lensing. So much for "curved space".
You mean the curved space on which GR is predicated and which you cite in support of your initial premise?
Once again you ignore galactic motion and treat the galaxies as closed systems, or "island universes", as they were once supposed to be.uwot wrote: Obvious Leo wrote:
And after it has all turned to dust the thinking philosopher turns to Anaximander. The dust re-accretes under the influence of gravity and forms itself into yet more complex structures.
Anaximander's apeiron was a plenum, sounds more like Democritus. Anyway, nah. What happens is that every time a star goes nova, it fuses lighter elements into heavier ones, which could be construed as more complex structures, but a lot of the interesting chemistry is dependent on lighter elements. Heavy elements are great if a universe of hammers and fishing weights is what you're after, but since all the hydrogen will have been fused into iron and lead, there won't be any water to fish.
I don't think of the universe in terms of size because I don't define it as a place. In process philosophy the universe is defined as an event, which brings us back to the nature of determinism from whence this digression proceeded. It has been known since Newton that the motion of every single entity in the universe is causally determined by the motion of every other,and NOT by any such thing as a "physical law". Kindly address your remarks to this unassailable proposition because it applies to the motions of planets. stars and galaxies on the cosmological scale as well as to electrons, quarks and bosons on the subatomic scale. It is for this reason and this reason alone that such subatomic processes can only be modelled probabilistically and NOT because these processes are indeterminate. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is a statement about relativistic gravitational motion because the motions of subatomic particles are continuously being determined by EACH OTHER and NOT by some over-arching transcendent suite of laws whose origins lie external to the universe itself.uwot wrote: Obvious Leo wrote:
Chemistry has come a long way in 13.8 billion years via exactly this mechanism and you and I are the living proof.
Make the most of it, chemistry that results in life, at least as we know it, has a limited shelf life. Why do you cite 13.8 billion years? If you attribute the red shift to gravity, how big do you think the universe was, and how big do you think it is now?
If you're seriously trying to suggest that the behaviour of subatomic particles is being determined by laws which pre-existed the existence of the particles themselves then you're making IC's Platonist argument better than he's making it for himself but your argument still makes exactly the same amount of sense as his does. NONE.