I just had a really stupid thought, after finishing reading the article.
So, the electron is an elementary particle, right? Compared to the proton, the electron is "simple", yes?
Despite this difference in complexity, an electron has a charge of -e and a proton has a charge of +e. They are exactly complementary regarding charge (if I am understanding right, I am not a smart person).
my question is... why? why must protons and electrons be perfectly complementary regarding charge? if the proton is this insanely complex thing, by what rule does it end up equaling exactly the opposite charge of an electron? why not a charge of +1.8e, or +3e, or 0.1666e, etc? Certainly it is convenient that a proton and electron complement each other, but what makes that the case? Does this question even make sense?
so, there's a concept of a "positron", which I can understand - of course it has charge +e, it is the "opposite" of an electron. it is an anti-electron. at least that makes some kind of sense. but a proton is made up of this complex soup of other elementary particles following all these crazy rules, and yet it also ends up being exactly +e.
No one who has replied to your question has got the right answer. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/21753/why-do-ele... has the right answer. There are multiple aspects to this argument, but essentially, the symmetries of your system force the charges in the Standard Model (quarks and leptons) to be the way they are due to gauge anomaly cancellation. If you believe in quark confinement, which is extremely well motivated, computationally, theoretically and experimentally, then the fact that the proton has exactly charge +1 follows naturally.
I am reading this as "it has to be this way, or the model does not hold", but it does not explain why. What causes it? Consistency of a model cannot be the ultimate reason, right?
> I am reading this as "it has to be this way, or the model does not hold", but it does not explain why. What causes it? Consistency of a model cannot be the ultimate reason, right?
Perhaps 'because' if the consistency did not exist then the universe would fail to exist.
There was the Big Bang, but we do not know what caused the Big Bang. But the particular Big Bang that started our particular universe may not have been the only one to occur. There could have been multiple previous Big Bangs where the 'properties' of each of those created universes may not have had the same consistency as we experience, and the inconsistency(s) could have resulted in a 'collapse' or 'destruction' of those universes.
Whereas it was just a coincidence that our Big Bang got things 'right' for the universe to continue to develop.
We could simply be experiencing survivorship bias in/with our universe.
As someone who dabbles in philosophy, and to use its language, our existence is contingent (we, and our universe, do not have to exist):
Which leads to the wonderful question: why are there any contingent things? And: why are the contingent things that there are as complex as they are?
I don't know of any plausible naturalist explanation besides Many-Worlds. And that supposes for the sake of discussion that Many-Worlds is in fact naturalist.
I've heard an amusing conjecture that I'm not sure how much to take seriously unless there's a mind underlying the universe (like in simulation theory).
The void in its infinite time and endless space (the same as neither existing) became bored with itself, and in its attempt to destroy itself, split and created the universe we have now. Full of endless wonders and anomalies and beauty and travesty. All for the amusement of itself as one that remembers the abyssal void.
Many-worlds doesn’t explain the complexity of the standard model at all. It merely gets rid of the arbitrariness and discontinuity implied by wave-function collapse.
I don't think many worlds is strong enough, since it still doesn't say anything about why anything exists to begin with. You need something like the principle of plenitude.
> Perhaps 'because' if the consistency did not exist then the universe would fail to exist.
I think the unsatisfactory feeling I get from these answers is that nobody ever tries to model worlds with different physics or different physical parameters and try to make them work.
It's one thing to know that everything will break down if parameters of this universe change slightly, but I don't think anyone ever actually seriously tried to make alternatives work, and simply assumed that the only model we know that works is the only possibility.
Of course, I understand it's hard, and we might not have the compute to properly run the simulations to see how things actually work out (without quantum computers, apparently the problem is exponentially hard on classical computers). But philosophically it feels lazy and unimaginative.
> nobody ever tries to model worlds with different physics or different physical parameters and try to make them work.
Alternative models are being explored all the time. There is incentive to do so, because coming up with better explanations is likely to win Nobel prizes. What is now called the standard model, however, so far explains the existing observations the best, despite being more complex and having a higher amount of arbitrariness than most physicists would like.
You're talking about better models for our current physical reality.
I'm talking about consistent models that don't match our physical reality, but that can potentially simulated and which can give rise to intelligent life.
I'm curious how the field that allows vibration exists instead of just pure nothing that isn't a field that doesn't allow vibration or bending or virtual particles etc. Heisenberg's principle seems contingent on the void of nothing being a field that can wobble.
> Heisenberg's principle seems contingent on the void of nothing being a field that can wobble.
Sadly (?) the word "nothing" seems to have become overloaded, so now—depending on who you talk to—you can have the word pointing to different concepts. See "seven types/levels of nothing":
A silly thought I had while reading that article: it presupposes that "nothing" is a noun. In doing so, it assumes that in the sentence "the <noun> <verbs>" you can substitute "nothing" and it would mean "<nothing> is an entity that does the <verbing>" instead of "<verbing> simply does not happen", and I feel that is a meaningful distinction.
> Sadly (?) the word "nothing" seems to have become overloaded
"Infinity" is another one of those things that used to be murky, but simple; after Cantor we now have different infinities ℵ0, ℵ1... an un-Ockhamian proliferation of terms, and we have to worry about the spaces between them. Science ruins everything!
I recently came into the concept of the great attractor; the mysterious force that our galaxy is hurtling towards. It is thought to be some supermass of star material and other things.
What if that supermass is another(the next?) big bang forming; energy just slides around some universe space banging off here and there, forever?
But it does feel like you might have a point here. If everything is moving away from each other, things must have a center some where, and thats where this new big bang is forming?
> If everything is moving away from each other, things must have a center some where
This is not correct: every object is getting further from every other object it's not gravitationally bound to, at a rate approximately proportional to the distance between them.
Not a physisist, but "consistency with the model" doesn't mean "because that's how some arbitrary model says it should be".
It's more like: "Because we have arrived at a model that describes well most other aspect of those particles and their behavior, and has verified predictive power, and given the constrains and calculations based on that model, that's what its charge would be".
Exactly this. Or to put it another way we don't actually know how the rules of the universe work. So we can't follow a process of deductive reasoning that "why" follows from this or that implication.
Take quantum mechanics. This came out of observations that particles exhibited wave-like behaviour. Mathematics predicts certain things when you start to apply the wave equation. These are then experimentally verified and the model is shown to be pretty good, although it has some deficiencies like not fully linking up with relativity. There are some doubts in some areas of what it predicts as well from what I understand from talking to researchers.
As the article says the original model was that protons were fundamental particles: nothing smaller. This model held up for quite some time but then observational data demonstrated it was insufficient. Same with the three quark model. Knowing the various deficiencies we might go so far as to say "the model that a proton is a +1 charge is good enough" and use that because that works for many situations and that's as much as we need. Although of course, there are always scientists looking to complete the picture.
Science is the incremental acquisition of knowledge through observation and experimentation - and there's an awful lot we haven't figured out.
I just would like to point out that "why" is not a scientific question.
Feynman mentions this quite a lot. The question "why" doesn't have answers in science. A question of "How" has a better chance of being answered in science.
I think that was a fairly idiosyncratic point of view of Feynman's. In actual scientific practice you can find hundreds of examples of published scientific papers that address 'why' questions. Here are a couple of completely random examples:
They answer the why's with the same way @hansbo complained about not answering the why, e.g:
" We show that the symmetries of this non-commutative space unify the standard model of particle physics with (2)
chiral gravity. The algebra of the octonionic space yields spinor states which can be identified with three generations of quarks and leptons. The geometry of the space implies quantisation of electric charge, and leads to a theoretical derivation of the mysterious mass ratios of quarks and the charged leptons. Quantum gravity is quantisation not only of the gravitational field, but also of the point structure of space-time."
It's not uncommon for a scientific paper to raise a question without fully answering it (science is hard). The point is that actual scientific practice does not appear to care about any distinction that can usefully be described as a distinction between 'how' and 'why' questions. You can keep asking 'but why?' ad infinitum and never arrive at a fully satisfying explanation. However, the same is also try of 'but how?' We will find no ultimate answers, but the questions that stimulate scientific research certainly seem to include 'why' questions.
"Why" is more of a philosophy question, pre-scientific or a-scientific if you like. Science question would be "How". Maybe not this particular Q, but having in mind that on every A-answer, one can again ask Q-question "Why". That's more philosophy not so much science, imo.
i.e. it's the only combination that works. A proton is a bunch of other particles that, when combined together, balance out an electron. The 'why' is 'because that's a stable configuration' in the same way that water at 25c is liquid not gas because the 'rules' of the local environment dictate that.
I mean, why do those particles exist at all? That's really what you're asking. Why do electrons exist, why do protons 'form' from subatomic particles to balance them out? Existential kinda question.
There are causal links, but we always have axioms for which either there is no reasons, they are just how they are, or we don't know the reasons, we have just experimental evidence for them. At the end, the answer to "why" is always, because they are just how they are.
Whenever you're asking for an explanation this deep in the ontology stack, you need to think about what kind of explanation would be satisfying to you, and whether you can reasonably expect intuitive answers in domains that lie far outside of your everyday experience. Human brains aren't built to grasp this stuff intuitively.
At a certain point, the reason we like some particular wacky physical model is always going to be "it has the best combination of explanatory power and simplicity"
A thing can be explained with its constituent parts or explained by a parallel analogy. If you don't understand the constituent parts or the analogy or there are neither of these. You won't understand it.
“The model does not hold” === “existence wouldn’t be possible”. We found atomic particles, then did some more experiments and found quarks within the atomic particles. The quarks appear to be complex but predictable subsets of the particles. So “why do those subsets add to 1” invites a tautology, because the whole reason we found them in the first place is that they add up to exactly one, and therefor can be part of atoms.
It’s like asking why the left engine of an aircraft happens to emit the same amount of thrust as the right engine; if that wasn’t the case, there wouldn’t be a plane to talk about in the first place, just an art piece or a flaming crash.
Isn't the primary experimental argument beta decay from that link? A nucleus can emit a positron, and observably loses nuclear charge equal to one positive electron.
So by a pretty simple inferrence you could conclude the proton has a positive in it, hence the charge (it of course isn't literally like this for other reasons though).
And since we also observe antiprotons, the opposite can clearly apply.
So a proton can emit a positron. Does that mean that the positron is somehow "part" of the proton? Does it mean that their wave functions interact in some specific way? Is there another reason?
Quantum physics has always bothered me, personally, since I find it difficult to understand reasons. Not philosophical reasons, I am fine with axioms and foundations to models, but rather intuitive reasons why it works a certain way. I know it is an extremely strong theory which makes unexpected, later confirmed, predictions, but there is a frustration that the only explanation to things is "math".
Sort of? But it's less "there is a particle doing things" and more "there's a probability field which can describe a particle doing something" (alongside a bunch of other probabilities it interacts with).
One of the ways you can calculate the probability of nuclear decay for example is to assume that the particle you expect to see is literally existent and trapped inside a potential well defined by the atomic nucleus and then calculate the probability it tunnels out of that to free space.
The thing is "why" does get pretty anthropic: protons match electrons because we observe them to, and then on top of that we observe nuclear decay causing the conversion of a proton to a neutron + a positron (within the limits of our instruments) - so our model predicts that these are in fact the same value, and we keep measuring to check that they converge in that direction (it would be a big deal, for example, if we discovered this wasn't the case - every physicist would love to find out that proton charge and electron charge are actually slightly different).
> Does that mean that the positron is somehow "part" of the proton?
No, and the standard intuition that there are discrete things made out of smaller parts breaks down when you look closely enough. The proton is a bound state of the quark and gluon fields, but it only "contains" individual quarks and gluons in a loose heuristic sense, and positrons are a different thing entirely.
> Does it mean that their wave functions interact in some specific way?
Yes, or more precisely it means that the quark fields interact with the electron field (free electrons and positrons are different states of the same underlying bispinor field) and the W boson field in some specific way.
> Quantum physics has always bothered me, personally, since I find it difficult to understand reasons.
Ultimately, the sort of mechanistic explanations you're looking for do not exist: the universe runs on differential equations and linear algebra, not billiard balls and clockwork.
I would posit that self-consistency is the only possible ultimate reason. Whatever other reason there is, you can always continue asking “why”, like children like to do, and will never come to an end. The only final explanatory is the absence of reduction ad absurdum. Another way to state this is to say that everything logically consistent probably exists, because there cannot be any other ultimate reason why it wouldn’t.
"Decay" is an unfortunate historical word for what are essentially bidirectional pathways between groups of particles. It usually just means "transform". We know a proton can transform into a neutron, positron, and (electron) neutrino in "beta plus decay" (and the reverse can also happen, and all sorts of other things). This is all the answerer means when they say "decay". When this transformation occurs, all conservation laws must hold; in particular, charge conservation. Therefore charge(neutron) + charge(positron) + charge(neutrino) == charge(proton), and we know charge(neutron) and charge(neutrino) are zero, so charge(positron) == charge(proton). I suppose it's possible we don't have a full picture of beta-plus decay, and there's some nearly undetectable fourth particle carrying off a tiny bit of charge, but my understanding is that a lot of the rest of our understanding of particle physics would have to be wrong for this to be the case.
This is not the same as "spontaneous proton decay", which has not been observed.
The top scored is just the answer liked best. The fact that it refers to proton decay and quantum gravity, both hypotheses which, as plausible as they might be, are not experimentally testable at this time, renders in my mind the confidence of the answer questionable.
The top answer has multiple reasons. The one I am referring to in particular is this section: "I should point out that if you believe that the standard model matter is complete, then anomaly cancellation requires that the charge of the proton is equal to the charge of the positron, because there is instanton mediated proton decay as discovered by t'Hooft, and this is something we might concievable soon observe in accelerators. So in order to make the charge of the proton slightly different from the electron, you can't modify parameters in the standard model, you need to add a heck of a lot of unobserved nearly massless fermions with tiny U(1) charge." It makes no reference to quantum gravity.
So, PBS Space Time did a video on this “fine tuned universe” theory and it, like all of their videos, is great. The concept seems to be that in an unbalanced universe, life couldn’t form, and we’d be incapable of having this conversation. So, either there are infinite universes and we exist as a result of being in the right one, or there’s one universe and we exist as a result of the one we’re in being right. Either way, we’re pretty lucky.
I can’t get behind all these fine tuning arguments. Who’s to say what life might form if the proton had a charge of 1.01e or if the fine structure constant was 1/138? Something about the line of reasoning that there is a multiverse and we just happen to live in favorable conditions reminds me of Pascal’s wager. It doesn’t do anything other than unfalsifiably assure the wagerer that they are important
A couple of the constants it's easy (for a real physicist, not for me) to prove there's no interesting structure to the universe anymore if they vary even a little. Like, no molecules are possible.
So there's a question there for why the values are so exactly set, or if something forces them to be the value they are.
The anthropic principle (that if the universe weren't suitable, we wouldn't be here to know) always struck me more of reasoning that we're _not_ special.
"no molecules are possible" does not imply "absolutely nothing forms a structured dynamic", the thought experiment ceases prematurely if it stops there, partly because the structural makeup is not yet well enough known to consider those outcomes. the claim of a completely uninteresting outcome approximating true nothing is empirically unlikely. abstractions tend to fall over far faster than reality does
As I understand it, 'fine tuning' is simply a fact of the universe: that the fundamental constants have values that allow for the emergence of complexity, and that even slight changes to those values would lead to homogeneous and featureless universe. I don't have the physics background to demonstrate this for myself, but I believe it.
To then reason from that fact to the existence of a multiverse or the existence of God is an extra step that one need not take, but not taking either of those steps doesn't invalidate the appearance that the fundamental constants of the universe were fine tuned for the production of complexity/life.
Ok here’s the problem. What hubris does it take to assume the fundamental constants could be changed? Just because they appear in math equations doesn’t mean they can be twiddled and tweaked like programming variables. We have no prior knowledge or justification to believe any constants have been “tuned”, because we have no justification in suggesting other possible values.
We could just as easily say that life on earth was “tuned” to make ”intelligent life” evolve, but we don’t have any other 4 billion year test runs of earth to see what else might have evolved. In the same way we have no data at all about the phase space of other possible universes, their constants, or how their physics would play out on cosmological timescales.
It’s not that it isn’t fun to think about. It’s just that it is unscientific.
You're not entirely wrong that it's unscientific, I think we're answering metaphysical questions. (It seems like questions of "why" ends up unerringly in either metaphysics or religion at some point.)
That said, I believe the chain of logic (haven't watched the PBS video yet) is simply that were these fine-tuned constants to take any other value, there wouldn't be intelligent life to observe them. If the values were to be anything outside a narrow range, they would remain unobservable by entities within that hypothetical universe, and because we are making an observation we are implicitly sampling from the distribution of observable values. It's a Bayesian metaphysical argument?
That sounds like it presumes a multiverse, but I don't think you need an infinite number of universes or a god for that to be true... that said, it does purport to explain how fine-tuning doesn't violate certain (metaphysical?) principles of science that call for "naturalness" (which a friend once told me boils down to "all unitless constants should be either 1 or 0 otherwise it's inelegant" or something): the fine structure constant is what it is because otherwise nothing would exist to observe that it was 1/139 or 42 or whatever.
I hope this is even slightly more satisfying to read than it was to write.
I'm not assuming the constants can be changed; axiomatically, they cannot, because they're fundamental constants of the universe. I'm also not assuming that some agent was around to do the tuning. In its basic form 'fine tuning' just means that if one of the values were even slightly different we wouldn't have anything like the universe we see today, including life. The values of the constants appear as if they were tuned.
It's interesting you bring up evolution, because before that theory came about intelligent design was a reasonable assumption in trying to explain how well-adapted organisms seemed to be to their environments. It was as if someone had designed them for their roles! As it turns out the theory of evolution satisfactorily explains why organisms exhibit the appearance of design.
In a similar way the fundamental constants exhibit the appearance of having been precisely set. It's hard to imagine a scientific theory getting 'behind' the constants the way evolution was able to get 'behind' the appearance of organisms...
> if one of the values were even slightly different we wouldn't have anything like the universe we see today
This is a hallmark of a chaotic system. It's not impossible but the chances of sitting exactly on such an unstable point seems very low. It seems more likely that the constants are some optimum in a basin of attraction, a stable point in some higher order dynamic system.
>because they're fundamental constants of the universe
They're constants but are they fundamental? There are a lot (19?) of free parameters in the Standard Model. We determine them experimentally. But that doesn't mean that there isn't some deeper explanation that results in those values. We just don't know what it is yet.
Those constants are a feature of our models. We don’t actually know whether the constants themselves are part of reality, or whether they are just there so our models can approximate our observations.
The point is, there might be a mismatch between our model and the underlying reality. There could be an unknown deeper structure to reality which explained why those values appear to us as “fine tuned”.
> Ok here’s the problem. What hubris does it take to assume the fundamental constants could be changed? Just because they appear in math equations doesn’t mean they can be twiddled and tweaked like programming variables. We have no prior knowledge or justification to believe any constants have been “tuned”, because we have no justification in suggesting other possible values.
Nothing says that they couldn't be changed, but then there's the question of _why_ they can't be changed. What forced them to be the values they are? Some of them appear to be free, so are they?
> To then reason from that fact to the existence of a multiverse or the existence of God is an extra step that one need not take, but not taking either of those steps doesn't invalidate the appearance that the fundamental constants of the universe were fine tuned for the production of complexity/life.
I will add that, from a classical theological point of view, watchmaker type arguments are considered quite weak [0].
>doesn't invalidate the appearance that the fundamental constants of the universe were fine tuned for the production of complexity/life.
I think it's the other way around, it's because we are complex reasoning forms of life that we must observe fine tuning of physical constants, necessary for the emergence of complexity.
I also came up with my own variation of the anthropic principle:
- 1. Extend the anthropic principle beyond physical connstant. Include factors such as the goldilock zone from planetology, the symbiogenetic origin of eukaryotic cells, the presence of the moon, etc ...
- 2. Rethink the "anthropic situation" as a collection of coincidences. It doesn't directly "select for" observers, but for the right coincidences that allow them to exists.
Two paths open for us from here:
- 3.1. Either God (or whatever phenomenon can explain the presence of the right coincidences) exists and we were dealt with the right set of coincidences.
- 3.2. Or alternatively, this collection of coincidences was built up by a random sampling process. If this is the case, then we should expect this collection to contain *superfluous* coincidences that have no impact on the existence of observers. Imagine you lost the key to your house and someone cuts a key at random from a bit of metal, which luckily turns out to unlock your door. This key has more chances to feature superfluous, redundant notches, than to be an exact copy of the original key.
----
This brings a counterpoint to the cognitive perspective on pattern recognition and could be used to challenge or refine our understanding of why we perceive certain phenomena as 'coincidences' (for instance why the Moon/Sun ratios are the same for both their diameters and distances to the Earth, which allows us to observe quasi-perfect eclipses). This superfluous anthropic principle, in this case, suggests that these perceived coincidences might have an actual basis in the physical properties and probabilistic events of the universe. In other words, it is because God doesn't exist that we can see 'meaningful' coincidences "hinting" at its existence (from the perspective of magical thought).
AKA “God did it” with a sciencey sounding name. An answer which explains nothing, predicts nothing, satisfies no curiosity, and closes the book on any further questions.
The anthropic principle is actually the opposite - it's an objection to the fine-tuning argument that says something roughly like "well, of course the universe is configured in a way that allows us to be around. if it wasn't, we wouldn't be around to discuss it. thus, there is no need to appeal to an intelligent designer of the universe to explain its fine-tuned nature."
That aside, with respect to saying an intelligent designer designed the universe ("God did it"):
>explains nothing
Well, it explains why the universe is fine-tuned, if you buy the argument.
>predicts nothing
Yep, just like any other answer to the question, since it's a metaphysical question rather than a scientific one.
> "the opposite ... thus, there is no need to appeal to an intelligent designer of the universe"
I'm not saying it's an argument for God, I'm saying more that it's as logically poor and useless as 'God' as an answer to the question. "Why are my parents white?" "if they weren't, you wouldn't be asking why they are white". "Why am I typing with my fingers?" "if you typed with your toes you wouldn't be asking why you type with your fingers". It's not an answer, it's a wordplay loopback which takes up the place of an answer and blocks anything else from going there.
> "Well, it explains why the universe is fine-tuned, if you buy the argument."
No, it observes that the universe is fine tuned but doesn't explain anything. How the parameters could possibly vary (how could the 'charge on an electron' concievably be tuned across the entire Universe, by any means, where is the tuning knob?), how the tuning actually happened - what process, where the multiverse universes could physically or temporally be, how they could arise, why they arise with different parameters, nothing. Worse, it suggests knowledge that the parameters can and do vary, knowledge of a multiverse or a tuning process applying to one universe, when that knowledge doesn't exist. It reassures the existence of a larger more powerful unknowable thing behind the scenes which makes this universe perfect for humans (cough Godlike cough).
> "Yep, just like any other answer to the question, since it's a metaphysical question rather than a scientific one."
"We don't know" predicts nothing, but doesn't pretend to be an answer, doesn't pretend to be more than it is.
> "It offers an explanation."
It placates (or frustrates) with a non-explanation. It's feel-good sugar when you wanted nutrition.
> "closes the book on any further questions / No more than any other answer does."
Well, there is a sense in which it is a good answer to "Why are my parents white?" if the question means "Why did I just so happen to be born to white parents as opposed to non-white parents?" and not "What scientifically caused my parents to be white?". The question about constants is more like the former than the latter since it's a question not about what scientifically caused the constants to be a certain way (we already know that it's not some physical phenomena that caused the constants to be this way - the constants are not a physical event to be explained physically).
Pivoting to the fine-tuning argument (not the anthropic principle):
The argument doesn't purport to answer precisely the questions you ask here, but it's still an explanation. To use the card example I used elsewhere, if I kept pulling the ace of spades out of a deck of cards and showing it to you, the answer to the question of why I'm always pulling the ace of spades that I've arranged these events intentionally still leaves the door open for other questions. How do I know where the ace of spades is? Is this a standard card deck, or are there multiple aces of spades in my set of cards? The answer that I'm arranging the events intentionally explains why an otherwise low-probability event is occurring, but it doesn't answer these questions - but that's ok, an explanation doesn't have to answer all questions.
> "The answer that I'm arranging the events intentionally explains why an otherwise low-probability event is occurring"
Okay, I'll grant you that if someone only believes in a God creating conditions for life then the Anthropic principle sort of suggests a non-God possibility, along the lines that Evolution with natural selection presented a way for increasing complexity and intelligence to arise from random mutations without an intelligent designer.
Still, we humans exist in a visibly large and competitive 'dog eat dog' ecosystem, so observing that the ecosystem affects the life within it is a certain kind of idea which fits in with a lot of other observations. Your comment line which I quoted above assumes a low-probability event based on no other observations, when there's no reason to assume that, no sign of an 'evolution of Universes competing in a wider ecosystem of Universes'; you've declared this universe to be 'low probability' based on nothing and then seek to explain something about how we find ourselves in a low-probability universe. For all we know, this could be the only possible Universe configuration, the only solution to some Universe-equation, or an overwhelmingly likely one if all possible Universes are capable of supporting life [and the ideas of Universes which couldn't support life are, in some way, not possible].
Indeed, it doesn't seem to me that we have a good reason to believe that universal constants could have been otherwise, or even if they could have been otherwise, that the probability that they lie in the Goldilocks range is low, so I don't really buy the fine-tuning argument. Nonetheless, I think we should give credit where credit is due - it's still an explanation.
I suspect you're reading into my comment more than what I intended to say.
In the context of fine-tuning arguments for God, we really are just arguing that an intelligent designer designed the universe. In isolation, this doesn't necessarily commit us to some mainstream religion, and in this context, God is just the intelligent designer of the universe, nothing more (though proponents of the arguments will go on, through other arguments, to ascribe more properties to this thing).
>Goddidit is not an explanation.
I don't know why it wouldn't be. Suppose I kept pulling a card from a deck and showing it to you. Every single time, it was the ace of spades. Why is this? Well, one pretty good explanation is that I know where the ace of spades is in the deck and I'm intentionally picking that card out and showing it to you. That is, there is intelligence/intentionality that explains this event. You would probably consider this as an explanation. The fine-tuning argument's conclusion is just as much of an explanation.
>Nope, not like any other answer. Like Satandidit.
I don't know what you mean to say here. Satandidit doesn't predict anything either.
>No, not like other answers. Science never closes the book on further questions.
This isn't a scientific question though. This is a question about why the fundamental constants of nature are what they are. This is a question beyond the domain of science. Elsewhere in this thread, someone linked a video of Feynman (an atheist) on "why" questions and how at some point they have to bottom out - and at this point, science cannot provide the answers.
Besides, this doesn't close the book on further questions. We can still ask, "what kind of existence is this intelligent designer?", "why does this intelligent designer exist?", etc. And of course, questions that are normally under the domain of science are still under the domain of science.
I consider the person to whom you are responding a troll, because they are taking a hard line stance, using abrupt terms, shutting down discussion, and putting much less effort into things than you are.
That said, I agree with you roughly. I think suggesting an intelligent design as a possibility is not "shutting down curiosity". A scientific mind can entertain higher forms of power and look into it.
Accepting the possibility of a creator is not equivalent to blind devotion to one of the many existing faiths.
That's quite rich, coming from somebody who took a hard line stance, used an abrupt term, put very little effort in and shut down the discussion by calling me a "troll."
That said, intelligent design is shutting down curiosity. It's not an explanation for anything, it's not a falsifiable theory, and posits a supreme being that we can't possibly have any hope of ever understanding, as it is incalculably more intelligent and complex, thereby eliminating the need and desire for further research. The only way to accept it is to have "faith," not through reasoning. Intelligent design is basically goddidit dressed up in scientific jargon, incompetently so.
The fact that every single proponent of it, ever, was a religious person first, and then became an intellectual promoting intelligent design, and that no scientist who wasn't a believer first was ever convinced by the intelligent design argumentation, should tell you enough. But if that's not sufficient, there have actually been court cases in the U.S. where people tried to get it into schools on the basis that it's a scientific argument. Every time they failed, with the courts ruling that it's quack science that doesn't merit consideration. For the latest example, look up Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.
Again, I think you've brought a lot of baggage with you in reading this discussion. The conclusion of the fine-tuning argument [0] is different from intelligent design theory [1]. The fine-tuning argument only posits that the reason that the laws and constants of nature are what they are because of an intelligent designer. It does not posit that evolutionary theory is incorrect. That would be intelligent design theory, which is an entirely separate and distinct idea.
They are both goddidit, just dressed up differently (slightly so).
There is no baggage. You were trying to sell goddidit here as an "explanation" that should merit the same consideration as actual scientific theories, and deserved to be called out on it.
"Goddidit" is supposed to, I take it, refer to saying something like: "We don't know how to explain this. Thus, God did it." The fine-tuning argument isn't the same. The fine-tuning argument says, "We know that the universal constants, had they been slightly different, would not have allowed for a universe in which life was possible. The probability that these constants are what they are by random chance is very low---so much so that the probability that these constants are what they are by random chance seems to be much lower than the probability that these constants were chosen intelligently. Thus, we should believe these constants were in fact chosen intelligently, which implies a designer of the universe." It explains why the low-probability event of these constants being what they are occurred. You can have objections to the argument, that's fine, but it's an explanation nonetheless. And it has the same predictive power---that is, none---and leaves the door open for further inquiry just as much as the other explanations (e.g. "It's a coincidence" or "There's a multiverse" or "Of course it's this way, otherwise we wouldn't have been around to observe it").
It does not explain why the low-probability event of these constants being what they are occurred. It does not explain anything. All it does is move the goalpost for explaining beyond unreachable and trap the inquisitive mind in a box.
As to the predictive power, the multiverse theory does have it. The fact that we can't experimentally confirm it today doesn't mean that it's not falsifiable. I agree, however, that the anthropic principle does not have a predictive power, just like fine tuning, but at least the anthropic principle doesn't imprison the mind and stunt further research by positing an unexplainable super being.
Again, just like with intelligent design, there is not a single physicist who was an atheist first, and then learned about fine tuning and became a believer. Every single proponent of fine tuning was a person of faith first (predominantly Christian but some other faiths too) before they became a physicist. Can you name a single counter example? (that might make me reconsider)
>It does not explain why the low-probability event of these constants being what they are occurred. It does not explain anything.
Maybe you could explain (no pun intended) why it's not an explanation? Go back to the card example I used earlier - would you agree that me intentionally arranging the events is an explanation? What exactly is it that makes this an explanation, but not an intelligence behind universal constants (I won't use the word God so as to not offend you---again, the idea that there is an intelligence behind universal constants doesn't commit us to any particular faith, doesn't commit us to the idea that the intelligence must be the ultimate cause or omnipotent or omniscient or anything like that)?
>All it does is move the goalpost for explaining beyond unreachable and trap the inquisitive mind in a box.
What box-trapping are you referring to here? If by moving the goalpost, you mean that it doesn't explain anything about why the intelligence is what it is or how it behaves---yes, indeed, it doesn't, and we're still open to asking these questions. Again, we're not committing to any particular faith here, you could even use this argument to provide credence for the simulation hypothesis (something you're probably fine with since it's not a strictly theistic idea), since we're not saying anything particular about what this intelligence is like or how it came to be. In the context of the argument, we say "God" to just mean "intelligence behind the universe".
>As to the predictive power, the multiverse theory does have it. The fact that we can't experimentally confirm it today doesn't mean that it's not falsifiable.
Oh, interesting, what are you referring to here? What could empirically falsify the multiverse theory?
>Again, just like with intelligent design, there is not a single physicist who was an atheist first, and then learned about fine tuning and became a believer. Every single proponent of fine tuning was a person of faith first (predominantly Christian but some other faiths too) before they became a physicist. Can you name a single counter example? (that might make me reconsider)
I don't see why the behavior of people who accept or reject the argument is relevant. We don't reject intelligent design because it's pushed by Christians; we reject it because it appears to be inferior in terms of explanatory power and utility for scientists. (Of course, intelligent design is still an explanation; another key point here is that there's a difference between a false or bad explanation and a not-even-explanation---off the top of my head, I can't even think of what a not-even-explanation that purports to be an explanation looks like.)
In your card example, the theory that posits that you picked the cards intentionally is something that can be subjected to scientific scrutiny. We are allowed to ask where you came from, what caused you to form the intent, and then prove or disprove such claims.
No such inquiry is allowed with fine tuning, because it's designed to terminate the scientific probing. The designer is beyond understanding by definition. You say that fine tuning proponents are still "open" to figuring out why or what this intelligent designer is, but unless you can provide an example of a reputable physicist actually working on this, it's a false claim. If there is such a poor soul out there, they are working on a sisyphus task, hoping beyond hope to understand the supreme being that made the universe.
First we were supposed to believe that the earth was flat, because that's how God made it. Then when that was disproven, we were supposed to believe that it was round, but that it was made 6000 years ago, in 6 days. Then when that was disproven, we were supposed to believe that maybe it was older but it was the center of the universe. Then when that was disproven we were supposed to believe that maybe it revolved around the sun, but that God made us in his image. Then when that was disproven we are supposed to believe that evolution did happen, but only because God willed it by fine tuning the universe. With each new claim, religion moves the goal post further and further beyond the reach of contemporary science, but they are all designed to trap the mind within religious bounds, where once you get to God you are not allowed to ask any more questions. Look up Hegelian dialectics for a fascinating example of this. Fine tuning is but the latest example.
The reason why the behavior of people accepting the argument is important is because with an unfalsiable claim like fine tuning, if you're not patient enough to wait hundreds of years for physics to figure it out, one of the few things you're left with is appeal to authority. If you can trace the claim back to a bunch of religious quacks who otherwise never made meaningful contributions to science, you may decide that it's not worth your time. (I am obviously not talking about people who found evidence of fine tuning, but about people who then use that as evidence of a supposed intelligence).
>The designer is beyond understanding by definition.
Where in the argument is the designer defined this way?
The argument is, roughly speaking:
(1) The fine-tuning of universal constants is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
(2) It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
(3) Therefore, it is due to design.
>You say that fine tuning proponents are still "open" to figuring out why or what this intelligent designer is, but unless you can provide an example of a reputable physicist actually working on this, it's a false claim.
I said that the fine-tuning argument does not commit you to not asking further questions. Fine-tuning proponents generally aren't just using the fine-tuning argument in isolation but rather to support a particular set of views. But if there's something problematic here, it would seem to be not the fine-tuning argument but other arguments or views these people have.
Besides, the questions of "where you came from" and "what caused you to form the intent" are in the scope of theology, and there is a diversity of views in the exact answers to these questions and arguments for/against them. Of course, this isn't a science, but that's because the designer explanation for fine-tuning is not a scientific explanation, just as the anthropic principle explanation for fine-tuning is not a scientific explanation. You can reject these explanations as bad ones, that's fine, but not being scientific just makes them not-scientific explanations. Not being good explanations makes them not-good explanations. It doesn't make them not-explanations.
>Here is one physicist explaining how to falsify one version of the multiverse theory
As I understand it, the Many-World Interpretation is just related to interpreting the collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics---the other worlds in this interpretation don't have different universal constants or laws of physics; rather, the different possibilities that quantum mechanics allows for are all realized in different worlds.
Anyway, Carroll goes on to say that it's falsifiable, but it seems he only means falsifiable in the sense that quantum mechanics is falsifiable (obviously falsifying quantum mechanics falsifies interpretations of it), which is why he notes different interpretations which are experimentally indistinguishable. The issue is that this interpretation is not falsifiable with respect to other interpretations, which Carroll admits himself. But this is likely neither here nor there since MWI isn't the same as the multiverse response to fine-tuning, but maybe you can correct me.
In discussing the multiverse, Carroll himself has an interesting paper [0] on the multiverse and how its lack of falsifiability is fine. Indeed, he's quite on-point here, falsifiability is not really all it's cracked up to be as the field of philosophy of science has shown after Popper's formulation of it. Still, unfalsifiable.
So to be sure, my original point was that the fine-tuning argument for a designer is still an explanation (even if it's a non-scientific one or poor one) and has just as much predictive power as other hypotheses (none). It also doesn't close the door to any further questions any more than the other responses to fine-tuning---it might move them to the realm of metaphysical questions rather than scientific ones (and even if scientific, not empirically falsifiable or confirmable), but the door is open. Maybe theists will go on to close that door for a variety of reasons, but the fault doesn't seem to lie with the fine-tuning argument itself.
>If you can trace the claim back to a bunch of religious quacks who otherwise never made meaningful contributions to science
"This most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being." - Isaac Newton, in the appendix of his Principia, apparently!
>one of the few things you're left with is appeal to authority.
I don't see why we need to resort to appeal to authority when we can make grounded criticisms of the fine-tuning argument. For example, why should we believe that the universal constants being what they are has a low probability, as if they were pulled from some probability distribution? That is, we can simply reject premise 2 of the argument as I outlined above.
The point is not that it's the greatest argument, but just that it's an explanation, not just meaningless drivel (like "because pixel cooked the music") as you were suggesting. And it has comparable (zero) predictive power to other hypotheses.
I don't think this is relevant to the fine-tuning argument itself, but I'll respond to it anyway:
>First we were supposed to believe that the earth was flat, because that's how God made it.
This has never been a popular view among theologians or the church in the history of Christianity. The Aristotelian/Ptolemaic model (Aristotle, of course, not being Christian and writing centuries before the birth of Christ) seems to have been the dominant view until a bit after Galileo.
>in 6 days
We have discussion of this account in Genesis being allegorical among the early Church Fathers, very early in the history of Christianity.
>Then when that was disproven, we were supposed to believe that maybe it was older but it was the center of the universe. Then when that was disproven we were supposed to believe that maybe it revolved around the sun
We don't owe geocentrism to Christian thought but rather to the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic model. And geocentrism was on firm scientific ground at the time - astronomic tables in the Ptolemaic system and in the Copernican system had roughly the same magnitude of error. And the Ptolemaic system did not have the issue of not being able to explain why things on Earth did not move as if the Earth was moving - a problem that was only really solved until Newtownian physics, if I recall.
And the Copernican views weren't really problematic for the Church themselves, it seems that rabble-rousing by Giordano Bruno and Galileo was the real culprit for getting Copernicus's book banned. The Pope even gave Galileo a chance to express his views in the form of a dialogue, but Galileo didn't exactly give the other side a fair portrayal in this dialogue (calling the geocentrism-supporting character "Simplicio" and having him act like a fool).
Basically, it's just not true that geocentrism was church dogma held on religious grounds and refuted through science, at which point it was dropped---the history is more nuanced.
>God made us in his image
This is still held by Christians today and is not incompatible with evolution. Though yes, Christians certainly did not believe in evolution before Darwin.
>where once you get to God you are not allowed to ask any more questions
But we have a long history of Christianity being dominant among scientists asking questions about the natural world (and the intelligibility of the physical world is an idea very much in line with Christian thought). You talked about creationism - it was in fact a theist who formulated the theory of the Big Bang.
And indeed, theology is filled with questions about the nature of God and how to understand God's relationship with the world. See for example Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, which is nothing more than a list of questions and answers along with possible objections about reason, faith, God, and theology. Not a scientific work of course, but the point is you are certainly allowed to ask more questions.
>Hegelian dialectics
I don't see how Hegelian dialectics is an example of not being able to ask questions once you get to God? Or perhaps you mean that the supposed history of tension between religion and science you outlined is an example of Hegelian dialectics. I am not a Hegel scholar, but I thought dialectical tension is a good thing, not a bad thing?
>Where in the argument is the designer defined this way?
The argument is, roughly speaking:
(1) The fine-tuning of universal constants is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design. (2) It is not due to physical necessity or chance. (3) Therefore, it is due to design.
Ok, let me try and help you here.
In the argument, the designer is defined as beyond understanding right here:
"(3) Therefore, it is due to design."
Still having trouble seeing it? Let me try and help a little more. It's here:
"(3) THEREFORE, IT IS DUE TO DESIGN."
Do you see how absurd it would be for you to propose that this "design" came about on its own, or by chance? How that would put you right back on square one, exposing fine tuning as the mindless drivel that it is? Do you see how comical it would be of you to suggest that you have all the mysteries of this universe figured out and you are now ready to take on the challenge of figuring out its designer, or even more comically, that you have barely even begun understanding the universe you're in but you're "open" to leapfrogging right into figuring out the thing that designed it? Where else are you going to take this? The simulation hypothesis? As if the dude that built the simulator can be any less complicated than the dude that fine-tuned everything?
Let's resolve this disagreement before tackling the other issues you raise in your response. Do you still have trouble understanding where in the argument the designer is defined this way?
Yes, I still have trouble where "beyond understanding" is in (3). One reason I'm having trouble is because theologians, for example, have made arguments about ascribing various properties about the designer, e.g. that the designer is omnipotent, spaceless, timeless, etc. This shouldn't be possible even in principle if the designer is beyond understanding by definition, just like it's impossible to make coherent arguments that a triangle does not have three sides. You've suggested that it seems silly to be able to understand anything beyond the physical universe accessible to us when we don't yet have a full understanding of it, but "it seems silly" seems to be different from "it follows by definition". And in any case, the multiverse hypothesis is an attempt to understand something beyond the physical universe accessible to us, but presumably you wouldn't leverage this same objection against it.
If you really mean "beyond empirical inquiry", I would be inclined to agree, though I don't know how other explanations for the fine-tuning of the universe are better in this respect.
Ahh, theologians have made various claims about the designer? The same people that claim that he showed up as a burning bush one day, and as his own son the next?
Theologians have made many garbage assertions throughout centuries. Just because something is self-contradictory, paradoxical or nonsensical does not mean that a human hand can't put it down on paper. Here, watch this:
"A triangle does not have three sides. To find out why, and to get saved, come to the service on Sunday! (don't forget the donation)"
Other than theologians and their quackery, is there anything else that troubles you with regards to the assertion that the designer must be complex beyond understanding?
Furthermore, were you not trying to divorce religion from fine tuning? Are you finding that a little difficult? Do you see irony in the fact that you dragged it back into the dialogue all the while claiming that fine tuning can stand on its own?
These aren't the kind of assertions I'm referring to though---I'm referring to arguments whose conclusions follow logically from their premises, the kind you can't make about triangles not having three sides because you end up in logical contradictions. If you don't like theologians, go back to Aristotle and his arguments about, for example, the unmoved mover. I mention theologians because they are the ones most often in the business of making arguments about this subject. Of course, you still needn't buy into any religion or theology in going about this project of understanding the designer. Just one example: you might raise the famous problem of evil to claim that the designer cannot be all-good---that's a kind of understanding.
In an attempt to refute the point about the designer being beyond understanding, you appealed to religion, all the while claiming that you don't have to appeal to religion.
Then you claim that one can't make a kind of an argument that I just demonstrated one can make.
Now you bring the problem of evil into the dialogue, as if that somehow brings the designer within reach of our understanding, when if anything it moves the concept even further beyond our reach.
Not to mention that with the problem of evil, you're dragging morality into this, another framework of thought just like religion, and closely coupled with it, that science does not deal with or recognize. All the while claiming that fine tuning can stand on its own.
You brought up a bunch of very interesting points in one of your previous posts that I would love to respond to, and I have enjoyed the discussion thus far, but I feel like it would be pointless to engage further unless you can clean up and strengthen your argumentation with regards to understanding the designer, so that it's free of contradictions and self-refutations. Or at least demonstrate willingness to concede a point.
What I said is that the fine-tuning argument does not commit you to any particular religion. In demonstrating how we can understand the designer, I gave theological arguments about God as an example.
Buying some of the theological arguments about God, even if they are employed by theists, still does not commit you to a particular religion. You can agree to the omnipotence and omnipresence of the designer but not its moral interest in the good of humanity, for example. See Spinoza's Ethics for an example of a thinker who subscribes to this and fleshes out an entire system with this in mind. (There might be some controversy on this point, but Spinoza scholar Steven Nadler calls Spinoza an atheist. It's not a stretch to say that you could agree to all the arguments made in Ethics but still not subscribe to any religion.) And of course, as I said in the last comment, you can still go to Aristotle's discussion of the unmoved mover as an example of a thinker who predated Christianity and had no affiliation with any traditional monotheistic religion. The point is that we need not commit to any religion but can still make arguments about certain properties of the designer.
>Now you bring the problem of evil into the dialogue, as if that somehow brings the designer within reach of our understanding, when if anything it moves the concept even further beyond our reach.
>Not to mention that with the problem of evil, you're dragging morality into this, another framework of thought just like religion, and closely coupled with it, that science does not deal with or recognize. All the while claiming that fine tuning can stand on its own.
I only introduced the problem of evil so I could give a pithy description of an argument we can make that clearly does not commit us to any mainstream religion but still reveals something to us about the nature of the designer. This is just one clear example of how we could come to understand something about the designer, if you buy the argument.
But maybe this is the crux of the contention you're having with me - implicit in what you've just said is that when you say understanding, you only mean scientific understanding, and likely that when you say explanation, you only mean scientific explanation. As I said before, the fine-tuning argument does indeed move us out of the realm of science and into metaphysics. So the sense in which we can understand or explain things about the designer is no longer scientific, but metaphysical. But that's fine - understanding need not be scientific understanding, and explanations need not be scientific explanations.
Just to elucidate what exactly I've been defending:
The fine-tuning argument does not commit us to a particular religion (we can easily imagine that there is a designer but that no religion is true). It offers an explanation of why the universal constants are what they are (by design as opposed to chance or necessity). It does not shut down further discussion - we can still ask questions about the nature of the designer (see paragraphs 2 and 4 of this comment). The design theory has no predictive power, yes, just like how other explanations of why the universal constants are what they are have no predictive power.
You're arguing that it's impossible to consider the concept of a higher power without disregarding science. You're wrong. Period.
Alternatively you're arguing that examples of specific faiths you provide are equivalent to the broader concept of accepting the chance of a higher power. Which is also wrong.
Saying "because God did it" as an answer to any question has the same value as saying "because pixel cooked the music". If you want to consider those two groups of words "explanations" go for it. They are grammatically correct, and if they satisfy the curious mind they are good enough.
It's not uncommon now for people to use comment sections to deliver lectures, they already know what they want to say, they break it into multiple parts and they just paste it in assuming that other people will happily provide the right kind of conjugations. Good to point it out.
You've been explained time and again how the anthropic principle explicitly doesn't need "God" or any sort of intelligent design and is simply the conclusion that can be drawn from a statistic calculation yet you continue bringing that up.
Repeating the same argument despite it having been refuted isn't conductive to further discussion, at a certain point you'll only get replies out of pity at best, like this one.
> Saying "because God did it" as an answer to any question has the same value as saying "because pixel cooked the music".
The same ascertainable to humans value perhaps, but if one assumes they are necessarily completely equal (there is no God, in fact) you would typically want evidence. But this is only typically, some things in science don't need proof.
There are different kinds of explanations according to different measures, but all explanation is about identifying the causes of things. "You did it" identifies the agent, the efficient cause. I can, of course, explain how the agent (you) effected the cause, but youdidit is still an explanation, even if it isn't the kind you are interested in hearing.
Youdidit is an explanation, because it doesn't terminate the inquisition. You can then ask what caused you, then what caused the thing that caused you, and so on until you get to the point of saying "and that's as far as we know, we are working on figuring out the rest".
With goddidit, you abruptly got to the end through an escape hatch, and you are done having done no work. There is nothing that explains god, by definition, and there is no "figuring out the rest".
the anthropic principle is why we find ourselves in such an unlikely place (a habitable planet) instead of somewhere that can’t support life. it’s not an argument for god.
it’s not entirely trivial. if someone says “god did it” because we find ourselves on earth not mars the anthropic principle is a better explanation.
If somebody asks why Earth is more suited to life than Mars, we could talk about temperature, size, magnetic field, water availability. If someone asks but why Earth has all that and Mars doesn't, then "God did it" and "if it were the other way around you would be asking the other way around" both offer as little information (none), as little explanation (none) as each other.
My favorite version of the anthropic principle is one where you say that ALL of the universes exist -- with all possible values of arbitrary constants. We just observe this one because we're alive here (and most of the others are not habitable).
The same one which guarantees you will understand my point before coming in with a smug putdown about something I didn't say. "We don't know" is a far better answer than the Anthropic principle. The anthropic principle is worse than an answer, it has negative value, it answers nothing but has the shape and feel of an answer, it's a fake.
e.g. Earth is the only place where life could have formed. We have yet to set foot on even 1 another planet but we are pretty sure we are alone in the entire damn Universe.
This is an incredible misunderstanding of the Anthropic principle. It has nothing to do with god, it does not suggest that life could only exist on Earth, and it does not suggest that we are alone in the universe.
If anything it's an argument against Intelligent Design. E.g. life is the statistical result of a vast universe (or multiverse) of permutations - some of which are not conducive to life, and some of which are. And when life looks out and says "wow it's uncanny how perfect this place is, there must be a divine hand at work" - it's only observational bias that makes it appear that way. Because life could only exist to make such observations in regions of the universe which are suitable for life.
But on the other hand it also prevents one from saying "we exist, therefore intelligent life must be commonplace".
> we are pretty sure we are alone in the entire damn Universe.
We absolutely are not sure of that in any way, shape or form. Quite the opposite, given our knowledge of the universe and conditions necessary for life forming, it's highly unlikely we're alone. There's a reason that we call a paradox the fact that we haven't found any extraterrestrial life yet: the Fermi Paradox.
Anyway, the anthropic principle says nothing about that.
There doesn't seem to be any reason to believe that the defining constants of our universe are pulled from some uniform distribution though, which is the underlying assumption here. When you put it that way, that's a pretty strange and specific claim to make.
I don't think the claim requires a uniform distribution, just that the values come from some possible distribution (of any shape). With enough (or infinite) shots on goal, you're gonna get all combinations of them.
The question "why these values of constants instead of others?" sort of presupposes that other values are possible. If you instead believe that the values are fixed, then your answer is just "because that's the only value that's possible."
Yes, you're right, the distribution need not be uniform. The assumption is that the distribution is such that the probability that all the constants are within the Goldilocks range is very low (not even necessarily that the constants are fixed). But yes, either way, my answer is that there's no reason to believe this assumption.
Isn't that concept of "luck" as strange as considering us "lucky" for currently being? Non-existent things aren't in a lobby waiting to win a lottery. There was no choice; we came to exist, then considered ourselves. Whatever conditions create, does not imply luck for what is created.
I strongly dislike PBS Space Time, but I find it hard to explain why. I might also be just too dumb to get it. It's just the feeling of the goal not being the "listener gaining understanding", but rather "expressing how confusing and complicated it is".
The channel is definitely not targeted for the lay person.
A counter example, Derek from Veritasium, he did a phd in physics education and it shows. Some of his videos are complex in content, but dumbed down so most people can understand.
I enjoy PBS space time and listening to Matt O’Dowd, but I understand at the most 20-40% of what is covered on the videos. It is frustrating because I like the topics being discussed.
I'm not convinced. When he talks about things I understand, he does so in a way that I still find frustratingly convoluted. In these cases, it's not for a lack of education. It probably just means that this style of presenting topics just isn't for me, which is completely fine. Diversity in free education is great and commendable.
But I think you touch on the part that I think is the reason why. Because PBS tries to dumb things down, but instead of doing it like Derek does, which adds clarity, PBS does it by "mystifying" it. Probably tickles someone's itch, but I find it annoying.
Take the video posted, for example. It starts out immediately with thumbnail "Life = Multiverse?". If it really was for the niche audience, that title is remarkably dumb, although understandable for the same reasons clickbait titles work. Perhaps PBS meant to present the question whether one leads to or suggests the other? "Life ⇝ Multiverse?" would better express that. Though, the thought process of how multiverse and the anthropic principle go together is: "Multiverse ⇝ Life?".
The video starts out by expressing three statements, related to the Anthropic Principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle). Had they instead worded those statements as to be correct, it would be a very nice way of introducing the topic.
This is how it is presented:
"Life exists in our universe" ⇝ "Our universe is capable of producing and sustaining life". Which is fine. We understand what producing and sustaining life is, because it is really just the first statement with some added anthropomorphism.
The next one, which is the whole point of the "hook" for the video, and is probably intended to be a little bit cheeky, except that he keeps a straight face, so, unless you know enough, it'll probably just misinform you.
"Okay. Let's try one final uncontroversial statement. Therefore, there are countless universes".
Well, no. Multiverse theory is one way to explain the unlikeliness of the physical constants working out the way they "conveniently" do in our universe. But this logical inference is not an "uncontroversial statement". It doesn't qualify, yet it is dumbed down to suggest it does. I'm sure that the following "Hm", and look to the side, is meant to express this. What do I know. But I'm not particularly amused or impressed.
So, so far, we've seen the thumbnail, and the first three sentences before the intro video rolls. And, it's been 1. Inaccurate information in thumbnail, 2. incorrect logical inference 3. false conclusion.
I can probably continue the video, but this is why I dislike PBS so much. It doesn't really try to dumb things down. It just IMO, fails to communicate science well.
I believe you're in error with the assumption that "there are countless universes" means multiverse in his description. It means that there are countless universe possibilities we can imagine, one for each permutation of the universal constants. Other than a small subset of them, one of which we exist in, nearly all of them would not be able to contain life because they wouldn't have conditions to do so. It doesn't imply that these other universes exist in some "physical" sense, only conceptual.
Yeah, your confusion there is like being confused from the use of a literary device. The intent was exactly to illustrate why the implication 'life -> multiverse' may be problematic.
It was communicated just fine, I think you should continue watching?
Are you sure you got the argument I'm presenting? You did quickly make an edit to avoid a rather rude remark.
My point is that their use of literary devices, as you put it, are often misleading if not flat out wrong. The listener needs to he able identify them as such, and I don't think that's a good way to communicate science.
It doesn't mean that PBS is bad. Note that I have made no such statement. I'm just saying that I dislike it, and tried to be constructive as to why. If this offended you, like your initial remark might suggest, perhaps you are reading too much into it.
I did want to avoid implying that videos are harder to understand if you find nonverbal cues hard to understand, but sure. That would genuinely be a reason to avoid PBS videos and that's fine.
The point is their use of the literary device here was not misleading nor 'flat wrong'. It is serving as a jumping off point from the video title 'Does Life Need a Multiverse to Exist?'. You may argue that such a question is ill posed, but then state your argument properly.
Read: they are NOT talking about the anthropic principle here. You are probably confused because you are trying to shoehorn this into discussion when the video is not even talking about this yet. Yes the anthropic principle is cogent to the video but not until later.
The difference in opinion is that I don't consider literary devices to validate incorrect or misleading statements. Which is why I dislike PBS. You do, and that's fine. To each their own.
> Read: they are NOT talking about the anthropic principle here. You are probably confused because you are trying to shoehorn this into discussion when the video is not even talking about this yet. Yes the anthropic principle is cogent to the video but not until later.
You are not only confused because they are using a literary device, you are _primarily_ confused because you think they are talking about the anthropic principle, when they are not.
Anyways. I am sure you have your reasons for disliking PBS. Just that the reason you've given here is incoherent, for reasons I understand (trying to make a point quickly etc). No worries.
You seem very hung up on my incorrect assumption as to what extent the video was about the anthropic principle or not. I have not watched it, nor do I intend to, and I am happy with being wrong about it. That said, it also isn't relevant to my dislike of PBS, or arguments presented. I just happened to click and take a peek at this particular video, to see if I could pinpoint the kind of stuff that I have come to associate with them. I didn't need to watch very long to find examples. Examples, that you can take at face value, in it's own isolated context, which makes it completely irrelevant what you are hung up on, and suggesting I am confused by.
So, I'll make it simple.
"LIFE = MULTIVERSE?", is... a very dumb statement. It can function as a clickbait, but I'm assuming that PBS wants to suggest a relationship of inference. Why start out with possibly giving someone a wrong idea/concept? Now, this isn't a big deal. I just took a peek, and the first thing I saw was rather dumb. So, that's what I'll mention.
Secondly is the sequence of statements, that are explicitly stated as "uncontroversial" in the inference between them.
They are:
"Life exists in our universe" ⇝ "Our universe is capable of producing and sustaining life" ⇝ "there are countless universes".
I'm taking these at face value. Third inference is invalid for more than one reason. Yet, it is presented as nothing but. You consider that OK. I can only think of two possible explanations for why: 1. You consider it OK to be incorrect and misleading when it is used as a literary device. 2. You do not understand why it is an invalid inference.
Either is fine by me. However, I'm not really confused. This... isn't very confusing. The only thing I've stated as a personal opinion here, is that I dislike PBS for being misleading and incorrect, as a literary device. You suggested that they weren't being misleading or incorrect, because there is a "hint hint, nudge nudge" that it might be ironic. So, my person opinion is: well, that's pretty fucking annoying. Hence my conclusion. Which is why I'll just stick to Derek and the likes who can manage to dumb things down to my level. Everyone is happy.
PS: .. and in case you might argue this; it also doesn't matter what they explain later on, if that's why you mentioned I should watch on. There is no "uncontroversial" series of arguments that will reach the logical conclusion "there are countless universes". It's just one of several ways to reason about why life, and the laws of physics, happen to allow something otherwise improbable. Which is what I'm assuming they will get to, but again, I have no intentions of watching it.
> This is the title of the video: Does Life Need a Multiverse to Exist?
> Stew on that.
I'm starting to get the impression that you don't really follow my arguments.
> > There is no "uncontroversial" series of arguments that will reach the logical conclusion "there are countless universes"
> Oh but there is. That's the point of the video. The arguments are laid bare if you care.
Yeah, I skimmed the video now. It's all related to the anthropic principle. Also, nothing is particularly complicated, and, it's exactly what I expected it to be. Hence my previous stated assumption "... is one way to explain the unlikeliness of the physical constants working out the way they "conveniently" do in our universe". I think I could get a a 10 year old to fully understand the fundamental concepts here, though certainly not by having them watch the video.
At 12:47 he states:
"The strong anthropic principle seems to make sense of the incredible fine tuning of our own universe. [Pause for effect] But does that fine tuning actually predict the multiverse? Well, this is a highly controversial point".
So, I suppose it's nice that you made me watch a bit more. Turns out I was right about what you convinced me I was wrong about (It's all tied to the anthropic principle, which includes details on the physical constants I referred to, and how the multiverse is a way to speculate as to why), and it also turns out PBS explicitly agrees with my objection. You know, the one about the initially stated inference being "totally uncontroversial". Telling me to watch the video to find out why, where they say the inference is controversial..... nice. But I have to ask then, did you watch it? That said, I did expect PBS to actually understand the topic. So it wasn't all that surprising that they would contradict the initial statement. After all, it was just a "literary device".
Have a great day.
PS: Regarding, "If only you'll watch the video to understand why it might in fact be a valid inference!". It's either a valid inference, or it isn't. (My point: It isn't, so it shouldn't be presented as if it is)
PPS: PBS is alright. It isn't for me, as it annoys me more often than not. I don't expect everyone to agree, nor is that my goal or desire. Heck, if PBS comes across this and thinks there are any take-aways, maybe that's all worth while. If nothing else, I do genuinely wish for you to have a nice day.
For shits and giggles, I pasted this prompt into ChatGPT4: "Related to the anthropic principle, here are three statements, and a suggested inference between then. Can you point out any issues? They are all states as being totally uncontroversial: "Life exists in our universe" ⇝ "Our universe is capable of producing and sustaining life" ⇝ "there are countless universes"."
--- ChatGPT response start ---
""""
The three statements you've presented related to the anthropic principle and the suggested inference between them touch upon a range of complex issues in the philosophy of science, cosmology, and metaphysics. Here's a breakdown and analysis of each statement and the potential issues with the inference:
"Life exists in our universe" - This statement is indeed uncontroversial and supported by empirical evidence. We have direct evidence of life on Earth, and current scientific endeavors are exploring the possibility of life elsewhere in our universe.
"Our universe is capable of producing and sustaining life" - This follows logically from the first statement. Since life exists in our universe, it is a direct observation that our universe has the necessary conditions to produce and sustain life, at least in some regions like Earth.
"There are countless universes" (Multiverse Theory) - The leap to this statement from the previous ones introduces several controversial aspects:
- Lack of Direct Evidence: There is currently no direct empirical evidence for the existence of other universes, making this a speculative hypothesis rather than a well-established scientific theory.
- Inference from Fine-Tuning: The argument often used to support the multiverse concept is based on the fine-tuning of the constants and laws of physics that make life possible in our universe. The reasoning is that if there are countless universes, each with potentially different physical constants and laws, it wouldn't be surprising that at least one of them (ours) has the right conditions for life. However, this inference is a significant leap from the observational statements preceding it and rests on speculative physics and philosophical arguments rather than direct observation.
- Philosophical and Scientific Controversies: The multiverse hypothesis raises numerous philosophical questions about the nature of reality, the definition of a universe, and the limits of scientific knowledge. It also challenges the principle of parsimony or Occam's Razor, which suggests preferring simpler theories until more complex ones are necessitated by evidence.
Issues with the Inference:
Non-Sequitur: The inference from the universe being life-sustaining to the existence of countless universes is a non-sequitur, meaning it does not logically follow from the previous statements. While the first two statements are grounded in observation, the leap to a multiverse requires additional assumptions not contained within the observational evidence.
Speculative Nature: The multiverse hypothesis, while a fascinating area of theoretical physics and cosmology, remains highly speculative and beyond the current reach of empirical verification.
Philosophical Implications: The argument touches on deep philosophical issues about the nature of existence and our ability to understand the universe. It also involves the anthropic principle, which has various formulations that can lead to different conclusions about the nature of the universe and the significance of human life within it.
In summary, while the first two statements are uncontroversial and empirically supported, the inference to the existence of countless universes introduces speculative elements that are not directly supported by the evidence cited.
"""
--- ChatGPT response end ---
Nice that ChatGPT and I seem to agree. Apologies for the formatting mess.
Here is a suggestion:
"Life exists in our universe" ⇝ "Our universe is capable of producing and sustaining life" ⇝ "The fundamental laws and constants of our universe are finely tuned to allow the existence of life" (aka the anthropic principle).
And then something like... "This fine-tuning can lead us to speculate that our universe might be just one of many, each with different laws and constants, in a vast multiverse". Or something along those lines.
> But it may be a valid inference. No one knows, that's the point.
... well, if you were offended by me linking the scientific method... it's because it might bridge the gap in why you think "that's the point".
It seem to me that, after all this, you still fail to understand the argument I've presented. I've made a lot of effort, in good faith, in trying to figure out why, and address it. The argument is also remarkably simple, as is the examples given. The argument wasn't so much physics, as didactics. But we got stuck on the physics part, because we don't share the same understanding of what logical inference requires. Hence... the aforementioned suggestion.
But, it has reached the point of just being silly. One can only lead the horse to the water. Doesn't seem productive to carry on with the spoon feeding.
Oh the irony. The entire point of the video is to explore the other side of the argument. Pointing out the scientific method here only demonstrates your confusion.
It is exactly a problem with didacts with you. I'm sorry you are completely lost when literary devices are used.
And if you still don't see how this may be a valid inference, take it to PBS for even posing it as a possible question to investigate then. I'm sure you'd jump at the chance to tell them they actually don't understand the scientific method. Funny stuff, if it weren't so sad.
You.. still don't address the topic. Which leaves me to conclude you are not actually interesting in discussing the same thing. My point is that I do not like when literary devices are used the way PBS uses it. Your counter-points do not make any sense, because it is based on the invalid premise that I do not understand it.
So, what's the point of this? I was explaining things for your sake. You do not seem to care for it. So, just leave it be then?
It’s like a listicle that tells you every best coffee machine in 2024 is a valid purchase to the right kind of consumer when you’re looking for the best one.
Imagine you have a bunch of fulcrums in the air and items droping down. If the things that land on the fulcrums don't balance each other out the fulcrum tips and the items keep dropping. Eventually all the fulcrums are balanced.
A lot of these things coalesce until they are stable enough they don't fall apart. If there is a stable form and you have enough of them, eventually you get a lot of stable forms.
It is not some magical thing that makes all this balance, it is more of a settling thing where things eventually drop to a stable state. There is lots of matter that is still unstable.
Mathematically it works out that way because the standard model is build up from symmetry groups. The hand wavy explanation is that the symmetries observed in nature wouldn't be reproduced if the charges differed by random irrational numbers.
The same is also generally true of other conserved quantities in the SM. Noether's theorem unifies symmetries and conservation laws as the same thing.
As far as a more fundamental explanation as to WHY the universe is this way, ask your god i guess.
Could be a bit of anthropic principle at play. Universes where things don't work out with some stability might not support chemistry, and biology is especially finicky chemistry.
No. These are not numbers physicists just pulled out of their asses. You act like the mathematical model could have been anything else. That's not just wrong, but decidedly anti-science.
We can test your theory: if the entire purpose of the mathematical model was to "add up neatly", and that's the reason why charge(proton) / charge(electron) is a nice round -1, then that should be true for other properties, right? What is mass(proton) / mass(electron)? It's 1836.1526734... Is that nice and neat? No, it's not. And yet physicists didn't decide to adjust their theory because that number offended them, as you suggest. Turns out you're spreading anti-science disinformation for absolutely no reason.
The purpose of the theory is to describe reality. In the case of charge, it is reality that adds up "neatly".
No, these are models with simple, testable properties. You can't wave away the fundamental charges as something somebody made up to make the models nice, conspiracy theories don't work when there is a simply observable truth.
Yes they are just that, models, which is what I said. We need X to describe Y therefore we don’t need to pretend X is a miracle because it was always designed to describe Y. It was deduced from Y for this purpose.
No idea what you’re getting at with that conspiracy theory comment, or rather I do and think you need to touch grass and stop projecting some boogey man onto people for stating an objective fact. These are predictive models not divine truth and if you think this is a conspiracy theory you either havent studied much math yourself or your are seriously brainwashed. This is not a fringe view and is a core debate within the philosophy of mathematics with no definitive answer.
With the minute difference that we do not have experimental validation for Angels dancing on a pinhead whereas there is a massive amount of experimental validation for the standard model.
Its still purely theoretical, but a lot of work has already been done to show experimental evidence of angels. I think we're pretty close to confirming their existence.
Because that is the universe we live in. We don't know where the universal constants come from, if they are random, or selected. Science can't really answer the question of "why", it only does "how".
You're effectively asking why universal constants are the value that they are. Eventually there's no answer other than "it's a property of the universe we live in that we observed."
If you keep asking why eventually you'll reach a ratio between two values: constants and you can't really go further deeper than that. Even if the values we have now end up not being the most fundamental, eventually you'll run into the fundamental ones and still have the same question unanswered.
It is quite inaccurate to say this. The correct way to phrase this is that the speed of light is 1/sqrt(permeability * permittivity) of the medium through which the light is traveling.
For a perfect vacuum, these two properties of that vacuum give a result as specified above. For other specified medium, you will get a different value, which could be greater than or less than the above figure.
Little technicalities matter in such cases, as it opens up the discussion. Part of that discussion is that solar space or interstellar space or intergalactic space will have distributions of matter that can alter what the speed of light is away from the assumed perfect vacuum speed of light.
Simple assumptions such as perfect vacuum are quite likely to affect how accurate our models of the universe are. The problem for us is that we are here and not out there making actual on location measurements of the permittivity and permeability of the relevant regions. The assumptions made in our models can come back and bite us in the long term.
Now as for the models we use currently for proton and neutron structure, there are assumptions here that could well be misleading us even though our models appear to work. There are alternate models available (since at least the early 20th century) which have, as far as I know, not been investigated with any detailed effort. Now, of course, it doesn't mean that these alternatives are actually viable, but we don't really know at this time.
The obvious way in which those constants are arbitrary is that the meter is just a random length we compare other lengths to (and the gram is an arbitrary mass we use). So, the precise numbers are only meaningful as part of a system built on these units
"Since 2019 the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of
1/299792458 of a second, where the second is defined by a hyperfine transition frequency of caesium."
Some of you are talking past each other. The speed of light being exactly the number c is arbitrary, because the choice to use the ephemeris second as the base unit of time (regardless of the precision we get by now using cesium atom “beats”) is arbitrary even though it’s based on something real. That’s just standardizing our arbitrary choice.
The charge of an electron is also effectively arbitrary for the same reason. We can have our units based on whatever real thing we want.
What isn’t arbitrary is that, whatever units we use and whatever number we arrive at for the charge of the electron, it true that the quark charge units are (1/3)e. Thus, as the poster pointed out there is a fundamental difference in asking why it works out that way compared to asking why the speed of light is a particular derived number.
tldr: The poster above is wrong about his claim that it’s like asking “Why is the speed of light…” because he’s comparing a number to a relationship.
OP: "It’s essentially asking why is the speed of light 299,798,452 m/s or the gravitational constant 6.67x10-11 Nm2/kg2
I’m sure a universe could work with those constants varied but that’s the one we have in our universe.
There could be hypothetical universes with protons being half of electron and atoms would have twice the protons.
However the fundamental constants are just that. A number that allows us to reason about how the universe works.
As to why the number is that, gotta ask your God why they chose that specific value."
And so the post I responded too said these constants are totally RANDOM / ARBITRARY.
But they cannot be otherwise the universe wouldn't work (as far as we know).
The measurements or units we use to express these are arbitrary-- but the constants themselves are DERIVED from the system we call the universe. Without them the system wouldn't work.
As I said, people were talking past each other. I don’t agree with the guys argument as to why that matters. I just don’t agree with your explanation.
My objection to your post is that the meter being defined based on physical reality isn’t meaningful. It isn’t the same thing as saying “the speed of light is c because c is the speed of light and we’ve derived it to be c (in our system of units).”
The relation between the meter as defined and the speed of light isn’t arbitrary. But the value of c in terms of meters isn’t really privileged compared to the value of c in parsecs: both numerical values are only the number they are because you’ve picked an arbitrary unit to measure them by.
Right. It's not so much that the speed of light itself is arbitrary, it's that the number 299,798,452 is arbitrary. Humans picked it because they liked those units for distance and time.
If we had two different types of universal-constant speed, we could measure the ratios between them. But there's only c.
Charges of elementary particles, on the other hand, we do have multiple examples. And whether we call an electron "-1" or "4895", there is an exact ratio between different particles that is an intriguingly simple number.
The ratio being such a simple number tells us something about the universe, in the way that most constants don't.
Or to put that another way, "299,798,452" is derived from both facts about the universe and arbitrary human choices. "1/3" is only derived from facts about the universe. It being such a simple number then begs for explanation, because humans didn't intervene to make it such a simple number.
And on top of that, if the speed of light or gravitational constant changed by .00001, nothing would happen. If the electron and proton didn't match perfectly, a ton of stuff would break.
Or, there's some more fundamental rule that's being followed that we haven't discovered yet that explains these numbers.
Physicists have been searching for the Grand Unified Theory since forever, and so far, no real luck. The closest is something i'm not too familiar with called M-theory (which is a derivative(?) of string theory).
'Grand Unified Theory' or the 'Theory of Everything' is to unite Quantum Mechanics with General/Special Relativity.
At scale of things in space (asteroids, planets, satellites, stars, galaxies) - We only need two constants (speed of light, and gravitational constant). The spacetime fabric bending explains everything we see at the scale. Things are very deterministic and have been verified with tons of experiments for decades around the globe.
At the quantum scale, gravity is an extremely weak force but it is still there. We have planks constant (h), elementary charge (e), speed of light.
You are right, that someday we may derive gravitational constant from another elementary particle constant.
Ok probably a dumb take but: doesn’t that “stable forms become more common over time” principle also apply to protons purely by principle of them being in opposition to electrons? Ie the field that coalesces into the quarks we see today because those quarks can ultimately form atoms.
EDIT: after reading the great Wikipedia article above, and a connected one [1], I think I can restate: the only place we can look for these particles is in atoms, so it shouldn’t surprise us that they come in convenient forms to support atom formation.
when you understand quantum theory correctly, you will realize that particles don't exist by themselves. They are a temporary localization. this means that the number of quarks inside a proton is not actually fixed.
when a particle becomes disentangled with the system, that localized it, there's no longer a particle
I mentioned this recently, in the context of the laziness in language, leading to the miseducation of those who don't know better, and was heavily downvoted and ridiculed
keep it up, hn, you'll see idiocracy soon enough and then no one will trigger you
Reading your other comments down thread doesn't paint you in a good light. Maybe your argument about laziness in language wasn't as cogent as you thought. Maybe you aren't as good at presenting arguments as you thought.
but if you knew for sure you'd be able to be sure of that and also show the proof
instead what you did is present the impression that you had which is a synthesis of what you encountered and what was in you from the past.
If you study much philosophy, you'll have to admit the fact that a large number of people turn away from what is true. It's not pleasant to you, I know. nor is it pleasant for you to see the product of the system that you want to close your eyes to talking to you in an unpleasant manner.
that may be true, but I'm already highly trained at that. But hey, what if you just ratchet up the difficulty to infinity. Then it will train people even better. Either that or it'll destroy the community because you dont have any criterion of right and wrong in your claim.
It doesnt matter how correct people are. The more correct people are the worse they're treated. The better we get at presenting true arguments the more you will resent us and the more you have no choice but to react with violence (being unable to admit your lie), as HNers do now with trap counterarguments and gaslighting. No wonder suicide is on the rise.
I feel what you’re saying, but it’s incumbent on people who understand stuff to explain it to people who don’t in a way that they can comprehend
The reality is that we’re all ignorant about most things, so having an attitude with someone around something you know - irrespective of how you know it - is a losing strategy and as you said leads to poor interactions
Try to give people more grace and you’ll find people are more capable than you might know
the lie i meant is if people claim to want to know what they dont yet. it usually happens without their realization.
look in the history of the greater philosophers
you see it in the mechanism of narcissistic abuse as well
you might also read up on the girardian scapegoat. the point is people like the comfort of falsehood so it tends to propagate more easily. few who were around masters wanted the actual teaching rather than some life quality improvements and basic answers. One of the merits certain people can get by hanging out around a real teacher is that those people can pretend that they were one of the people who wanted to know in front of those who don't know any better.
What do you mean by "temporary localization"?
That protons move? That they can poof? They dont seem to self destruct.
On a side note: are there any models that assume that there are fields/shapes that are constanly bombarbed by neutrinos and other stuff. Thks bombardment seems to be always ignored
> We could as well say that proton has 3 and electron is -3 charge?
Absolutely! In fact that would have been much more convenient, since the "quantum of charge" appears to be 1/3 of the charge of the proton. All units of charge we've ever observed seem to be integer multiples of 1/3e.
Couldn't there be a different physics where protons had a charge of 0.5 and, therefore, every atomic nucleus would have twice as many protons as electrons? Or pick any other ratio you like.
Or course, I don't mean to hand-wave away the potential implications of this. Maybe there would be no atomic nuclei in such a universe, for all I know. But if not, why not?
Presumably the same way we distinguish individual quarks: by smashing the atoms up.
(The more interesting question would be the opposite: what if it was two electrons per proton? Then you could throw around some photons and end up with a half-proton negatively-ionized molecule. What would that look like?)
You are going down the path of theoretical particle physics! It is the ultimate question of that to answer what is the fundamental element that makes up matter and what should we "name" that has a useful property that can either be used or
helps to explain how other things work.
In reality, "protons" do not "exist" but are semi(very) stable collections of energy that interact in an interesting enough way in a group that it is useful for us to retain the name, rather than refer to it by its constituents.
Electrons don't really glob up into things like atoms due to repulsion (no moderation by the stron/weak nuclear forces) so we don't have a really useful reason to keep going beyond the definition of the electron so we just stop trying to find additional constituent parts.
If that were to be the case, we'd have to change the values of the other forces that these charged particles interact with, such as the strong force.
Not that it wouldn't necessarily be possible, but it would require everything we know about physics to be remodeled because the consequences are vast, fundamental even. So yes, with an entirely different model of the universe that would likely be possible.
And free quarks within stars in conditions where they are not confined.
They can exist unconfined for a real short time. At the start of the big bang there were a lot of them.
Quark stars, a type of star whose density sits between neutron stars and black holes are theorized to exist, though we have no conclusive observations of one yet.
This is called "charge quantization", and it is not definitively explained by modern theories. There are some very good arguments for it, to be sure, but I don't think they're quite case-closed, of-course-it-must-be-that-way good. It is related to C symmetry, as a discrete symmetry, which ties in to Lorenz invariance and all that, so there's that angle too.
But also in some sense "it has to be that way," since without charge balance atoms wouldn't exist as we know them, and thus neither would all the chemistry that creates the macroscopic world we inhabit.
That's a variation on the anthropic principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle Maybe a kind of observer bias. If the universe weren't seemingly-perfectly balanced to allow emergent complexity in matter, we wouldn't be here to point out how seemingly-perfect it seems. (If you subscribe to a multiverse interpretation, perhaps most of the infinitely many other possible universes are dead and void.)
I'm not very sympathetic to the view that we're very lucky to be in this universe. That said, there is an interesting response to the anthropic principle response, which I'll mention here just because I think it's interesting to think about what's wrong with this objection:
Suppose you and I were living in a totalitarian state. The state decides that you and I are to be put to death. They drag us into a field, and a shooting squad of several marksmen surrounds us. They all fire - but miraculously, every single one of them misses us.
I then turn to you and say, "Wow, the odds that all of those bullets missed us by sheer chance are so incredibly low. Clearly, it wasn't by chance - they must have coordinated to ensure they missed us, intentionally."
You then turn to me and say, "No, that's silly. It's simply that if any of the bullets had hit us, we wouldn't be around to talk about it."
Your line of reasoning here doesn't seem to be very compelling. Why?
A small note: the anthropic principle doesn't make us "lucky" to exist in a universe that supports life, quite the opposite. The probability of life coming to existence in a place (universe, celestial body, whatever) that doesn't support it is zero. The fact that we exist in a place that supports life is simply due to the probability of it happening here is >0, therefore we're here only because statistics determines that we can't be anywhere else. It's not luck, it's simply a statistic outcome.
Yes, right. Maybe you misread me, I meant to say that I'm skeptical that we're lucky because I'm sympathetic to the anthropic principle response. I then go on to play devil's advocate.
How about the universe kept starting and collapsing/crashing in an infinite loop until by chance the electron and the proton had the exact charge and the universe as it is now could go beyong the initial stage and could continue?
( Ok this feels like a trial an error of somebody playing universe ).
How about the universe that quantum-emerges in a truly random sequence of quasistates which disintegrate immediately, and once in a while it happens to be the state that includes "your" "memory" of the previous ones. I mean chronologically from your perspective, they don't even have to appear in order.
By an amazing coincidence, this particular "frameset" is logically consistent and pretty boring, so you have no intergalactic empires, no magic, and no job.
If perception emerged directly from chaos like that, wouldn't you expect to perceive chaos, rather than a rich world built upon billions of years of evolutionary history?
I don't think there's "rather than" in this idea. You surely will perceive every state that is perceivable at all, but time and continuity have no meaning here. Specific history is just an image that always exists only for an instant. Eventually that universe might enumerate all states, so they'd form all sorts of sequences, but that's coincidental.
Sure, such a universe would create all states, but if perception from chaos were possible, then there would be overwhelmingly more chaotic states to perceive than sensible ones, so you would expect to find yourself perceiving chaos.
I think perception cannot exist without a robust evolutionary history to build upon, which is why you perceive something sensible.
It depends on what we see as "perception". Imagine in our regular universe model, the "perceptor" quickly switched between all creatures just like a CPU core switches between all busy processes. That wouldn't invalidate any of the creatures/processes "experience" and wouldn't mix them (ignoring cache, processes aren't that isolated really). All these processes are transient states of the same physical CPU core.
Back to the chaotic universe, the "perceptor" switches between the states, every state is a complete picture. Yes it does see more chaotic states, but they don't leak into each other, including through expectations. There's no memory outside of a state that it could accumulate and experience continuously. Eons of state changes pass between two attoseconds, but there's no way to remember.
That's what I mean by perception. In-frameset perception obviously has to be continuous to make (or not make) sense.
That would still make the human brain an exceptionally rare state, compared to all the other chaotic states the perceptor perceives.
This particular human brain refuses to believe that the perceptor perceives anything when selecting a chaotic state. If you'd like to hear chaos' opinion on the matter, please pound on your keyboard for a while.
It is however, not an unreasonable one. The main problem with the anthropic principle is if you use it to justify adding free parameters to models which don't otherwise have any physical meaning, and then tune them so they correct out the problems, wave your hands and say "it must be this way because if cannot be any other".
We can say most positive integers are greater than 5. Or most real numbers are irrational. Half of all integers are even — even though there's just as many of both!
On the topic of the ‘Most Complicated Thing You Could Possibly Imagine’:
Imagine that physics is like Microsoft COM (or C++ pure virtual function tables), so there's a base IUnknown interface, hiding innumerably different possible concrete implementation classes, that can expose arbitrarily many other abstract interfaces, so you can call iUnknown->QueryInterface(uuid, &otherInterface) to ask for other interfaces like IAtom, IElectron, IProton, IQuark, IParticle, and IWave, and there are also many other obscure higher level dynamic and reflective interfaces like IDispatch, ITypeInfo, and IPersist, just waiting to be discovered and exploited, if only we knew the right uuid to ask for.
And then physics research boils down to QueryInterfacing objects with random uuids, and when that succeeds in finding new interfaces, calling their random functions with random arguments to see what happens. That's probably what the black hole supercomputer at the center of the galaxy is doing.
Disclaimer: I am not a theoretical physicist (but I am an experimental one...).
If the universe, at the time of the big bang, had no net charge to begin with, and charge is conserved, then it follows that we would have particles whose charge will on net cancel out, and therefore charge would be quantized in some reasonable way. Note that there are doubly charged particles (e.g Delta++) but they're not stable. Some theories do predict fractionally charged particles (millicharged is the term of art) but there is no experimental evidence.
Now, was the universe neutral to begin with? If it wasn't , then that would presumably leave a strong imprint on early universe cosmology. I believe that current measurements of galaxy structure formation, cosmic microwave background and big bang nucleosynthesis probably place extremely strong constraints on early universe neutrality, though there may be caveats I'm not aware of.
There's also a anti-proton which has a negative charge. I think this is probably the smallest charge there is.
A neutron can decay into a proton, electron, and anti-neutrino. So maybe one way to think of it is that a proton is a neutron that is missing an electron, that's why it has the opposite charge of the electron.
The quarks that make up a proton (or neutron, etc) have charges that are multiples of 1/3 the electron charge. So in one sense that is the real unit charge. But because as far as we know quarks can never exist in isolation we can only ever see particles with multiples of the electronic charge.
The number assigned to charge is an arbitrary convention. You could assign quarks with full numbered charges, instead of fractions, but you'd have to rework and recalculate all of physics and chemistry to get the new values right, and that's just too much work.
No matter what arbitrary value you assign to the electric charge, quarks will always be 1/3 of that. That's the problem in question, not the absolute value.
So quarks have a charge of 2 or -1, and a two of the former and one of the latter make a proton, which therefore has charge 3. An electron is elementary, but also has charge 3. The question is: that seems like a weird coincidence, how come it's like that?
Charge is quantized. You cannot have just any amount of electric charge. An electron has three elementary units of negative charge, quarks have -1 and 2. Whether it's a coincidence that proton and electron charge are of the same magnitude (and the neutron is neutral) is another question, but at the elementary level you don't have that much choice for what the charge of a particle is.
In the Standard Model properties are defined as relationships within/between symmetry groups. There are only so many things you can do to/with/in a symmetry group, and that's where the quantisation comes from.
But... that's a mathematical metaphor applied to observations. It's a good fit, but it doesn't explain why it's those symmetry groups and not others, or why symmetry groups are a good fit at all.
There's likely some kind of fundamental mechanism that generates these symmetries, and no one knows what that is.
Is it true that the quarks themselves, in isolation, have that charge? Or is it that combining quarks into a baryon or meson gives the resultant particle a charge according to a fixed ratio of the constituent quarks?
Gemini advanced says it’s the latter, because of color confinement. But I’d defer to a human expert
Quarks can not be alone, because of this confinement. What we see experimentally is that when we add energy to particles at some point they split into new particles and we never see a naked quarks.
We explain this by saying the quarks have a color charge and it must always be neutral. A single quark would be lets say red, but that's for some reason not possible. If we try to rip the quark out, it takes so much energy that this energy can be used to create another quark that results in a color neutral particle (red, antired)=meson, (red,green,blue)=baryon.
NB: this is a bit simplistic and other comments explain this quite in detail
NB2: this color charge is just a name, its not an actual color
It’s even more complicated. The charge on the electron is partially screened by virtual positive charges emerging briefly from the vacuum, so what we measure is less than the actual charge.
I don't know the actual answer, but from my understanding of QFT the answer is going to be roughly this shape:
Charge is not actually a quantity on the real number line; it's more of a "count" of something. Not sure what exactly. The "topological defect" model of charges in 2d is a decent analogy though, in which a charge can be e.g. a count of how many vortices there are in a field which are oriented in a certain direction (picture a bathtub with a bunch of drains, and ask, how many tornado-like vortices, if we count clockwise vortices as +1 and counterclockwise as -1, are there? The number can vary but obviously it has to be an integer because what would half a vortex even mean?)
But that model is too simple for charge, since quarks have +-1/3 or 2/3 but the result always adds up to an integer in a hadron. Maybe it's something like a type of winding number or linking number? I don't know. Whatever it is, when the "correct" explanation is found, it will be obvious why it is always an integer and why its constituents are always 1/3 or 2/3, and it will no longer seem interesting to ask why it can't be any old fraction, because that misunderstands the "type" of object that it is counting.
To be clear, we say that an electron has -1e charge: that "e" is the absolute value of the charge of an electron. The charge of an electron is approximately −1.602176634×10^−19 Coulombs. Quarks have either +-2(1.602176634×10^−19)/3 or +-(1.602176634×10^−19)/3 coulombs charge.
It's a fraction because we simply decided it was easier to describe an electron's charge as "e" and quark charges as being a fraction of that. It's entirely by convention.
We could've just as easily have described, like you mentioned, a quark to have either +-q or +-2q charge and electrons have -3q (where q=(1.602176634×10^−19)/3 C). We just happened to find electrons significantly before. It's also convenient as we don't see free quarks so every charge we see in the universe is a multiple of e, there's no advantage to going smaller than that.
The fact that the proton has the same charge in absolute value as the electron is just a consequence of the fact that the 8 elementary particles at the lowest energy level, i.e. electron and its neutrino, the 3 up quarks and the 3 down quarks have charges that sum to zero in a 3-dimensional charge space.
These 8 particles and their 8 antiparticles are located in the corners of 2 cubes of unit edge in that 3-dimensional charge space. One cube is in the first octant of the coordinates, with 1 corner in the origin, while the other cube is in the opposite octant, also with 1 corner in the origin.
The neutrino and the antineutrino are in the origin, while the electron and the positron are in the opposite corners of the cubes, in the points (-1,-1,-1) and (1,1,1), and the quarks and the antiquarks are in the 12 off-diagonal corners of the 2 cubes.
As functions of the position vector of a particle in this 3-dimensional charge space, the electric charge is the component of the position vector that is parallel to the cube diagonal that passes through origin and the corners of the electron and positron, while the corresponding component that is orthogonal to the diagonal is the so-called color charge (hence chromodynamics; while the electric forces attempt to make null the 1-dimensional electric charge, the strong forces attempt to make null the 2-dimensional color charge), which is non-null only for the quarks and antiquarks, which are off-diagonal, and it is null for electron, neutrino and their antiparticles.
The projections of the off-diagonal corners of the cubes on the diagonal are at one third and two thirds distances from origin, which is why the electric charges of the quarks are 1/3 and 2/3 in absolute value (where the unit of electric charge is the electron charge, i.e. the diagonal of one unit cube), even if in the charge space all the particles have coordinates that are either 1 or 0 in absolute value.
While this symmetry of the charges is interesting, it is not known why it is so.
In any case, if this symmetry had not existed, the Universe as we know it could not exist, because this symmetry ensures that in the nucleons the total color charge of the quarks is null, so they no longer interact through strong forces (except at very short distances, where the residual forces bind the nucleons into nuclei) and at the next level the total electric charge of the atoms is null, so they no longer interact through electric forces (except at very short distances, where the residual forces bind the atoms into molecules).
The same symmetry exists for the other 2 groups of 8 particles and 2 groups of 8 antiparticles, where the muon and the tauon correspond to the electron, because those particles have greater masses but identical charges with the first groups.
In the initial state of the Big Bang, this symmetry of the charges ensures that even if there were only particles in equal numbers and without any antiparticles, the total electric charge and the total color charge of all matter was null.
While the neutrinos do not contribute to any of the charges, their presence ensures that the total spin, i.e. the total angular momentum, was also null.
We know that the electric charge is not fundamental, but a projection of the weak isospin and hypercharge after the Higgs field symmetry breaking. How are weak isospin and hypercharge related to the 2 cubes?
I do not remember now where to find a suitable figure, but these are the coordinates of the corners of the 2 cubes:
neutrino & antineutrino: (0,0,0)
electron: (-1,-1,-1)
positron: (1,1,1)
down quarks: (-1,0,0), (0,-1,0), (0,0,-1)
down antiquarks: (1,0,0), (0,1,0), (0,0,1)
up quarks: (1,1,0), (1,0,1), (0,1,1)
up antiquarks: (-1,-1,0), (-1,0,-1), (0,-1,-1)
The particle-antiparticle pairs have an inversion symmetry over the origin.
The quark triplets have a rotational symmetry of order 3 around the principal diagonal of the cubes that passes through the origin.
The weak isospin and the hypercharge are an alternative equivalent expression of the charges, but I prefer this picture as it is easier to understand and visualize. It also demonstrates the quantized nature of the charges that determine the strong and electromagnetic interactions, and that they are based on the same quantum, so they are not independent interactions. The also quantized spin must be added as a fourth value, to completely determine the weak interactions too.
The various sets of values that can be taken as charges are related by bijections (one-to-one correspondences), so which are taken as fundamental is a matter of convention.
In any case the chromodynamics is useful only for providing qualitative insights and for distinguishing things that are possible from those that are impossible. It is completely useless for computing quantities that are useful in practice.
As it is also obvious in the parent article, it is still impossible to compute the mass and the magnetic moment of the proton, much less for any more complex nuclei or hadrons.
> why must protons and electrons be perfectly complementary regarding charge?
According to QED's spin origin of charge, it's because charge comes from spin. What values a particle's spin can take are restricted to certain integer or half-integer values.
> According to QED's spin origin of charge, it's because charge comes from spin.
Children have the remarkable ability to see the world as it truly is, and so are able to ask the most profound questions. As adults, we learn to obfuscate our, ah, knowledge deficiencies in various ways, and so lose that ability over time. I'm of the opinion that great physicists are like children in being able to see through to the heart of the matter, and ask -- and answer -- questions that matter. This is certainly a theme you can see with Einstein, Bohr, Feynman, and others.
Why do I say this? Because GP's question was profound, and saying "it's because charge comes from spin" is the sort of obfuscatory answer I see most physicists give very, very often when they're faced with such questions.
That's completely aside from the fact that "it's because charge comes from spin" is entirely incorrect. All charged particles have spin, but not all particles with the same spin and other similar properties are charged.
The question wasn't "why do protons have +1 charge", it was "why do protons have +1 charge, *considering electrons have -1 charge". The fact that possible charges are restricted to a few values is a much more satisfying answer to the latter than the former
> deflects the question one level down without explaining anything
There’s a lot of levels to SOC. Which do you think is “because it is?”
If you’re asking why spin values are restricted, it’s in the spin-statistics theorem [1]. If you’re asking why spin causes charge, that’s SOC. There are lifetimes of understanding contained within those layers.
Don’t take things described by physical models (proton, electron, the idea of “charge”, etc.) at too much of a face value.
All it is is a web of predictions: we do A then B seems to happen, reliably. We then transform it into a story of sorts, to categorize and classify, find patterns and correlations—that’s just how our minds work—and those models are useful, as they create shortcuts for more useful predictions—but it’s all too easy to start thinking of entities these models describe as if they were real, concrete things (that’s also how our minds work).
I recommend to maintain a sort of Schrödinger’s treatment (they exist if convenient, but otherwise they don’t really) for things described in physical models, because none of the above-mentioned categorization and classification is set in stone. None of it can be proven to be objectively true, unless you have some sort of exclusive access to the fabric of underlying reality that bypasses your consciousness.
With that in mind, you would see that the weird coincidences are not that problematic. It just means there is a better model out there, and that will always be the case.
In the same vein, a neutron can decay into a proton, an electron and a neutrino (Beta decay), so in some sense the neutral neutron is the combination of an electron and proton. (A connection is there?)
In a simplistic way, I see a neutron star as just being a lump of regular (atomic) matter where the high pressure has forced all the electrons into the protons.
Question for someone who might know: Was pressure so high in the early universe that matter originally formed as neutrons, then as pressure reduced electrons and protons were able to separate? Sort of like the formation of a neutron star in reverse?
There is no reason to prefer any of the possible particles, but as all of them are unstable - minus the proton - they eventually decay to that state. (neutrons are not unstable in nuclei and such).
NB: this is quite simplistic and I skipped many details
I think you might need to define your terms more specifically/clearly to be able to get an answer to this.
There's always the layman vs scientists definition of true. Like I think most people would say we know gravity exists, but in actuality we don't really know what gravity is, but we can measure how objects behave and make useful predictions about our world and universe because of that, with it lining up with other stuff we think we know.
Sorta similarly there's the scientific definition of something like dark matter/dark energy where there useful for modeling stuff but unlike what the general public thinks nobody has actually been able to point to a physical object that is dark matter to my knowledge, it's dark because it's unseen, not because it's like chunks of black stuff we can't see.
I am going to get downvoted into oblivion again for asking this follow up question but that’s what I live for. What is the line between Physics, a scientific endeavor, and Metaphysics, a philosophical one?
Please set my transparency as high as you can. I totally deserve it. Let me fade into oblivion.
Broadly speaking, philosophers of science don't think there's a generic answer to what differentiates scientific inquiry from not-scientific (or pseudoscientific) inquiry. Popper put forward the criterion of falsifiability (if it's falsifiable, it's science, otherwise, it's not science), but after Kuhn and Feyerabend's arguments, philosophers generally drifted away from thinking there's some hard-and-fast rule to differentiate science and pseudoscience.
If you're interested in these issues, you might enjoy Chalmers' What is this Thing Called Science?, an introduction to the philosophy of science that addresses issues like these. Or a primary source like Feyerabend's Against Method, quite a fun read, though maybe not one that many philosophers of science today would give their full-throated endorsement of.
As long as it's called a theory instead of fact, then why isn't it science. We might not have enough tech or information on being able to create the test.
First, I am not a physicist. That said, he's my attempt at an answer that satisfies me:
Part of the reason is charge quantization. Neither could be some fractional charge. We also observe charge conservation and electromagnetic force laws as described by quantum electrodynamics (QED). These necessitate that the electron and proton charges be precisely balanced for the universe to function as it does.
I think this is more of a historical artifact rather than a fundamental measurement. In the Millikan oil drop experiment he was able to measure quantized units of charge by stripping a single electron from a drop [1], so much later when quarks are figured out they are proportional to the base unit of charge.
This is similar to how Ben Franklin, having no knowledge of elementary particles, defined the positive and negative polarity of electricity, so we have "electron holes" flowing from the positive end of a battery to the negative end in "conventional current." [2]
Edit to add: the electron's non-even charge numbers comes into light when you see that the charge is 1.602176634×10−19 Coulombs, where 1C/second= 1 ampere. If we were trying to come up with the definition of an ampere with nice base 10 numbers of electrons this would be much different.
In QCD, they cannot. All Feynman diagram vertices involved in producing these things (in fact all QCD vertices period) only deal in integer charge units and never leave fractional charges floating around.
Not a physicist at all but I'd offer the following thoughts on the question of "why":
- Take a neutron, pull out an electron (and an antineutrino), and you're left with a proton.
- Asking why protons and electrons are so different is a little bit like asking why hydrogen and iodine have exactly opposite charges even though iodine is so much more complex: they're made of different things
That video really annoys me. He's right at one level but totally wrong at another. Yes, you have to explain everything in terms of things people can understand and if they don't know much you can't give a correct explanation... but also, if you actually try, people can understand a lot more than he's pretending they can. Not at a technical level, yeah, but intuitively, it is possible to get general understandings way beyond his attempts at answering that question.
For instance fundamental charges are a lot like positive and negatively-oriented vortices in a fluid, which when they touch cancel each other out and radiate energy away. They're not _exactly_ like that, but they're a lot like it, and that's a model people can understand without knowing the first thing about quantum field theory. Sure, you won't understand from that why like-charges repel each other, not really, but if you play with the analogy for a while it starts to seem why that might be true as well.
Magnetism is quite a bit trickier to explain in this model but it can done with some work. In particular: a charge radiates little linear packets of energy just by existing; when one of these packets hits another charged particle it moves a tick closer or further away (based on +/-). A current/moving charge/magnetic dipole radiates away little spiraling packets of energy which are aligned in the plane orthogonal to the conventional magnetic field; when these hit another charged particle they get rotated a tick.
> Not at a technical level, yeah, but intuitively, it is possible to get general understandings way beyond his attempts at answering that question.
The issue with giving people an intuitive model that's not at the same level of complexity to the mathematical models, in my experience, is that a lot of people, including out-of-field experts then run with the intuitive model into bizarre territory and treat it as a prediction of the original tested theory. They reason correctly within the simplified world of the analogy but when it clashes with the real world, they dig down and reaffirm their preconceived notions.
On the other hand, I suppose they were never going to honour Cromwell's rule anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter.
Yeah my read on this is that Feynman enjoys being kind of a know-it-all prick, but he caught himself here for the sake of the interview.
His first instinct was to be a dick about it, then he sort of softly walked that back using an excuse about it being a long explanation. In the end, he gave a good answer, he just had to first pretend that it was a pain because of how smart he is and how much he understands.
At the end of the day loads of these types of questions boil down to the anthropic principle. If it didn’t work out so that things could be stable, nothing would be asking the question.
That’s not a satisfying answer but we don’t have a better one in the realm of science. All we have left is either randomness/serendipity or spirituality/religion.
One issue I have with anthropic filter is that for some reason fundamental parameters fit into a tiny neat table. So out of the vastness of incredibly complex universes that boggle the minds of their creatures we ended up here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Standard_Model_of_Element...
Maybe there’s an inverse relationship between complexity and the odds of it being stable. Universes with 500000 elementary particles might end up as entropy baths with no interesting structure.
Meanwhile those with too few might be “crystals” with no dynamism.
In all kinds of systems including computational models like cellular automata there exists a threshold known as the “edge of chaos” where among other interesting things universal computation becomes possible.
First-principles question from an ignorant thinker: why couldn't it be that the presence of +/-e in one of them is due to the subtraction of +/-e in the other? Do we know anything about the finer details of quarks and electrons beyond what we currently can resolve?
Maybe think of it more simply, one precedes the other, this much positive charge in one place attracts negative charge of equal magnitude around it: if you send more electrons (and to be honest, talking of positive charge for a proton is a bit wrong: a positive charge being the absence of electrons... and electrons giving the "negative" charge as they add up), they'll detach and push away those that were already there.
There is nothing convenient, it's as logical as saying that you were tshirts when you go out: there is nothing extraordinary that one torso = one tshirt, as having two or zero tshirts wouldn't help: 0 would make you want one more tshirt, 2 would make you want to remove one.
In a "grand unified theory" (which does not include gravity) the strong, electromagnetic and weak forces are unified into one gague theory. SU(5) is one choice. In these theories, the electron, quark and neurtinos fit together as if they were different versions of the same particle, just as in the standard model the up quark has three "colors". In these theories there is a well defined relation between the charges. You can lookup the SU(5) unified theory to see more. I would say these theories are widely believed, but we have not managed to put them all together yet.
There’s a few good “particle zoo” videos out there for the building blocks.
I took some advanced courses and from my understanding it comes down to the pieces that make up protons and electrons. In the quantum realm it adds some fuzziness to the answer by introducing quarks. The net charge may be one thing but I would defer to a physics paper for a deeper understanding.
Maybe it's so difficult because it's not a constant, but a magic number used in the code. (yeah, I'm dealing with lots of magic numbers in some code currently being worked on)
So first off: charge is quantized. Glossing over some weird particles (like quarks) which can't exist by themselves an integer multiple of e as their charge.
It's been a while since I finished undergrad so my knowledge is rusty, but I don't recall any isolatable particles whose charge wasn't -1e, 0, or 1e. If that's the case, the easiest explanation for why they have the same charge is that if they didn't have opposite charges there wouldn't be anything holding them together in an atom.
clearly related to measure (in the abstract sense) and harmonics of natural numbers. what has fascinated me for years has been the sense that we need to rebuild number up using complex numbers and harmonic measures. what we get are still numbers but no longer this monotonic sequence which is a ‘lazy’ or ‘simple minded’ way of ordering N. when ordered by harmonic measures of primes, N itself has structure (beyond a simple incrementing list) but the order is strictly limited to measures provided (rational) with the prime roots of the measure. (an example is the ‘primorial’ harmonic measure of {2, 3, 5} - think rings).
in these harmonic measures, ‘gaps’ between various levels naturally would arise from simple (x) op. For non-relative prime members, the mapping n x n is all over the place but for relative prime members, n x n always results in another relative prime in the ring, so, naturally those ‘lines’ are ‘stable’ and ‘in phase’ so ‘manifested’.
in other words, there is stuff in the R realm — in between ‘quanta’ — but we’re not allowed, capable, ever, of seeing or measureing it.[edit: as in they ‘exist’ in the same realm that (sqrt -1) i exists in — an unseen realm we call ‘imaginary’..]
Oops, missed the edit window. That was supposed to be "Glossing over some weird particles (like quarks) which can't exist by themselves, all particles have a charge which is an integer multiple of e"
I believe the end of my physics textbook in college just said “be grateful that the charge on the electron is what it is because without it our universe wouldn’t exist if it was even slightly different” or something to that effect.
Our universe may be the trillionth trillionth one created and we are in an anthropomorphic universe just like we are on an anthropomorphic planet. It always makes me grateful.
>The charge on a proton is +1.602 x 10-19 C, and the charge on an electron is -1.602 x 10-19 C.
>why must protons and electrons be perfectly complementary regarding charge? if the proton is this insanely complex thing, by what rule does it end up equaling exactly the opposite charge of an electron?
Perhaps "complexity" and "anti-complexity" are the forces that attract. Order and chaos. To have one you must have the other. Without both nothing about this universe would work.
One thing to note is that up and down quarks are separated by exactly one unit of charge (2/3 is 1 more than -1/3).
The charge coincidence is one of the reasons that scientists are looking for a grand unified theory -- part of which would ultimately mean that in some sense quarks and electrons are _the same thing_, and the electroweak and strong forces would be unified.
I'll take a shot at this. The "answer," such as it is, is symmetry. The electron belongs to a group called the leptons, which is to say they are lightweight. Leptons obey certain sorts of statistics and consist of the electron, the muon, the tau lepton, the electron neutrino, the muon neutrino, the tau neutrino, and their antiparticles. That's twelve in total.
The mirror of the leptons would be quarks. Up, down, charm, beauty, top, and bottom ... and their antiparticles. Twelve again! Their charges are 2/3e, -1/3e, 2/3e, -1/3e, 2/3e, -1/3e, and the reverse for the antiquarks. One bundle of three quarks is the proton, and it happens to be 2/3e + 2/3e + -1/3e. But so what? There's all kinds of other bundles. Three-quark bundles are typically hadrons (heavyweight) and two-quark bundles are mesons (medium weight). So you have a lot of choices on the other side!
The choices are caused by something called color confinement, which states that you will not get quarks alone. Indeed, you can take a pair of quarks in the aforementioned meson, and if you stretched them further and further apart, when the bond between them (mediated by gluons) snapped, you would have put so much energy into the stretching and snapping to create two new quarks, one at each end of your broken rubber band. Just as you cannot cut a piece of string such that it only has one end, so you have it with color confinement. I don't want to get too far away from the main point but because of this, quarks are found (normally, outside of Big-Bang quark-gluon plasmas) in combination ... and so eventually one of the combinations has a charge number resembling that of the electron.
Also, positrons aren't really the opposite of electrons. They're opposite on the matter/antimatter axis, which automatically flips the charge, q. They are not opposite along the lepton-quark axis, nor are they opposite along the electron-neutrino axis. Instead of one mirror, imagine many mirrors at angles to one another, and "opposite" becomes a less useful term.
One problem with your explanation is that the muon and the tau (and the pion as a decay product of the tau) all decay into electrons, neutrinos and photons, which would suggest that neither muon or tau are fundamental.
This would put the fundamental leptons being only the electron (and its antiparticle) with the neutrino and the photon.
I never suggested that they are fundamental, and nobody said that the symmetry is perfect. In fact, the way the various symmetries break is what gives rise to all of this complexity and only raise more questions.
Also, photons are not leptons -- wrong spin for that. Which in turn can raise yet another axis for our funhouse of mirrors: fermions versus bosons.
I think we simply observe the most stable states of existence which preclude asymmetry and all other states of matter have either gone extinct, or are so fickle that we can only observe them momentarily. So the deep truth behind why and what exists and what cannot is pretty straightforward.
A simple answer could be that there is an elementary charge. No free particle can have less than this charge and charges are quantized in terms of this elementary charge.
This is in opposition to e.g. mass. There is no elementary mass, and so no particles need to have the same mass.
Huh. It would make a lot more sense if the "complicated" proton was +3 and always paired with three "simple" -1 electrons. Maybe someday we'll find the electron is really three of some even more fundamental particle.
Electrons balance the nuclear charge by their distance from the nucleus. They’re not perfectly equal; the electrons move closer or farther to maintain balance with the nucleus. I think it’s called effective nuclear charge.
Why does light decay quadratically and not linearly? Why are the laws of physics algebraic at all? Why did the Big Bang happen? Ask enough why's and get to: we just don't know. Turtles all the way down.
Maybe the proton is not complex but the process to probe it is. Proton is an aggregate of emergent phenomena like mass and its resultant properties. For a simplistic model assume that proton is a tetrahedron with energy wave generators at the vertices and how those waves interact with each other creates the emergent phenomena like mass, charge etc. It will be difficult to probe such a tetrahedron by just studying the properties of the waves and the peaks in those waves/interference which are perceived as particles by the probes.
The typical model of superconductivity says that electrons in the material pair up to form a quasiparticle -- the "cooper pair" -- with new properties, namely not experiencing resistance. The original quantized charge of the electrons still adds up to the same amount.
Unlike protons an neutrons, electrons are considered elementary particles that can't be broken down any further, so their charge can not be "divided" into something less than 1.
> The fractional quantum Hall effect is more complicated and still considered an open research problem. [2] Its existence relies fundamentally on electron–electron interactions. In 1988, it was proposed that there was quantum Hall effect without Landau levels. [3] This quantum Hall effect is referred to as the quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) effect. There is also a new concept of the quantum spin Hall effect which is an analogue of the quantum Hall effect, where spin currents flow instead of charge currents. [4]
> The fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) is a physical phenomenon in which the Hall conductance of 2-dimensional (2D) electrons shows precisely quantized plateaus at fractional values of e^{2}/h, where e is the electron charge and h is the Planck constant. It is a property of a collective state in which electrons bind magnetic flux lines to make new quasiparticles, and excitations have a fractional elementary charge and possibly also fractional statistics
> Despite this difference in complexity, an electron has a charge of -e and a proton has a charge of +e. They are exactly complementary regarding charge (if I am understanding right, I am not a smart person).
> my question is... why? why must protons and electrons be perfectly complementary regarding charge? if the proton is this insanely complex thing, by what rule does it end up equaling exactly the opposite charge of an electron? why not a charge of +1.8e, or +3e, or 0.1666e, etc? Certainly it is convenient that a proton and electron complement each other, but what makes that the case?
Because if it were any other way then you wouldn’t exist to sit there and ponder the question. That’s the unsatisfying answer.
I think it makes sense to draw an analogy to evolution—stable arrangements of elementary particles that (somehow) reinforce similar arrangements around them will come to dominate the observable universe.
In a CRT monitor, you have a ray of electrons that travel in vaccum and it is electricity outside wires. With a similar device, you can create a ray of protons and have also electricity with protons instead of electrons.
Another posibility is to use a water solution with acid. A part of the electricity is made of H+ that are just protons. (Actually, each proton is atached to a water molecule, so it's more like H2O+ than a plain H+.)
I'm triying to imagine a wire where protons can move. I don't think it's theoreticaly impossible, but they are mmuch heavier and bigger than electrons, so they it looks very difficult to find a material where they can move freely.
In solids (like metals and semiconductors) the atomic nuclei form stable structures (often crystals). Protons are bound to their nuclei, and the nuclei don’t move, so neither do the protons.
Electrons, on the other hand, can move between atoms, which allows them to form an electrical current.
There are special cases, but that’s the basic answer.
Not sure, but Protons are ~1800x more massive than electrons even though they have the same electric charge, so it seems like they would need 1800x more energy to move them.
Power in an electric circuit is Watts, which is current in Amperes times voltage. Amperes are one Coulomb or 6.241509x10^18 electric charges per second flowing through a conductor. So a fixed amount of power (Watts) moves a known amount of charges. If we were sometimes moving protons instead of electrons, maybe we’d notice three orders of magnitude difference in quantity of charges in different experiments?
It is not yet proven that electrons need to flow from point A to point B to transfer electric energy. There is local movement but not in the sense that electrons are flowing through a hose to transfer power.
Electric Power isn't like a pipe and water wheel where you need a net flow of electrons. The work is done by the electric field, which is why we can have AC power where electrons don't have any net travel.
This also is why electric power flows along a wire at the speed of light, while electrons can only travel along a wire at the speed of a snail, or about 1 mm per second
> The work is done by the electric field, which is why we can have AC power where electrons don't have any net travel.
One doesn't follow from the other. We can easily transport power by making things like a chain or a fluid move back and forth, without any net travel. In a setup with a loudspeaker and a microphone as just one example the air transfers energy from one to the other without any net movement. In those cases it's clearly the movement itself which transfers the energy. Therefore energy transport by AC is no proof for the need of an electric field for energy transport.
That's not say to there is no electric field, or to deny its role in power transfer. There certainly is an electric field. But that field is intimately tied to the electrons in the conductor, and power transfer is intimately tied to movement of those electrons and the way electrons repel each other stronger when they get closer together (or other charge carriers, but in typical conductors that means electrons). You can't have one without the other.
Indeed! My points was that you aren't consuming electron charge, like you consume kinetic energy of water flowing through a stereotypical waterwheel. That is to say, I was giving a example, not claiming a rule.
> "The work is done by the electric field, which is why we can have AC power where electrons don't have any net travel."
Still though, you asked how we know electricity uses electrons rather than protons and I'm sticking with "they're 2000x different in mass, there would be some measurable difference between them" even in an AC circuit. Oscillating a more massive conveyor belt back and forth 'in-place' is harder work than oscillating a lower mass belt. "Electrically charged" means "interacts with the electric field" and if energy in the electric field is moving heavier protons back and forth, wouldn't that be distinguishable from moving lighter electrons back and forth? Slower movement of protons, more heat generated, something like that?
I mean it's not that complicated to understand. e is just a physical constant. It's been measured as such, with varying degrees of precision. The creator is as lazy a programmer as we are. To make the math work, + and - are used.
friendly suggestion, avoid describing yourself as "not a smart person". Research definitely shows that self-talk can have significant effects. I know this from my own life and experiences, but for the sake of writing this response I asked ChatGPT to look up some research to back me up:
"Sure, positive and negative self-talk can have significant effects on various aspects of mental health, performance, and well-being. Here are some scientific research findings on this topic:
Impact on Stress and Coping Mechanisms:
Research suggests that positive self-talk can help individuals cope with stress more effectively by promoting adaptive coping strategies and reducing negative emotional responses. Conversely, negative self-talk is associated with increased levels of stress and maladaptive coping behaviors such as avoidance (Hanssen, M., Vancleef, L., Vlaeyen, J., & Peters, M., 2013).
Influence on Performance:
Studies have shown that positive self-talk can enhance performance in various domains such as sports, academics, and professional settings. Positive self-talk is associated with increased confidence, motivation, and persistence, leading to improved performance outcomes. Conversely, negative self-talk can undermine performance by inducing self-doubt, anxiety, and distraction (Hardy, J., Hall, C., & Hardy, L., 2004).
Effects on Mental Health:
Positive self-talk is linked to better mental health outcomes, including higher levels of self-esteem, resilience, and subjective well-being. On the other hand, negative self-talk is associated with symptoms of depression, anxiety, and lower overall psychological functioning (Marshall, S., Parker, P., Ciarrochi, J., Sahdra, B., Jackson, C., & Heaven, P., 2015).
Physiological Responses:
Research suggests that self-talk can influence physiological responses such as heart rate, cortisol levels, and immune function. Positive self-talk is associated with reduced physiological arousal and stress reactivity, whereas negative self-talk can trigger a stress response and impair immune function (Penley, J., Tomaka, J., & Wiebe, J., 2002).
Neurological Correlates:
Neuroimaging studies have identified neural correlates of self-talk, showing that positive self-talk activates regions of the brain associated with reward processing, cognitive control, and emotional regulation. In contrast, negative self-talk is linked to increased activity in brain regions involved in threat perception and emotional reactivity (Morin, A., & Uttl, B., 2013)."
Anyway, I'm sure you're not beating yourself up all the time about being a dummy, but like I said in the beginning of this response, just a friendly suggestion about mindset and word-choice :)
So, the electron is an elementary particle, right? Compared to the proton, the electron is "simple", yes?
Despite this difference in complexity, an electron has a charge of -e and a proton has a charge of +e. They are exactly complementary regarding charge (if I am understanding right, I am not a smart person).
my question is... why? why must protons and electrons be perfectly complementary regarding charge? if the proton is this insanely complex thing, by what rule does it end up equaling exactly the opposite charge of an electron? why not a charge of +1.8e, or +3e, or 0.1666e, etc? Certainly it is convenient that a proton and electron complement each other, but what makes that the case? Does this question even make sense?
so, there's a concept of a "positron", which I can understand - of course it has charge +e, it is the "opposite" of an electron. it is an anti-electron. at least that makes some kind of sense. but a proton is made up of this complex soup of other elementary particles following all these crazy rules, and yet it also ends up being exactly +e.