On Wednesday, August 20, 2025 at 6:18:06 AM UTC-6 John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 6:51 AM Alan Grayson <[email protected]> wrote: *>> I don't think it's silly at all. I admit we don't yet know if Einstein gave us the ultimate answer to the question "why does space expand" but we do know that either the ultimate answer is a brute fact, or there is no ultimate answer because an iterated sequence of such "why" questions goes on forever. * *> That's a peculiar attitude coming from a guy who hates the "shut up and calculate"* *If I thought we had reach the brute fact level in Quantum Mechanics then I agree that we should be satisfied with "shut up and calculate", but there is reason to believe that at least one further "why" question is possible because two different theories could provide an answer, one is Many Worlds and the other is Objective Collapse. Perhaps one of them is right, perhaps both of them are wrong and then, when it comes to Quantum Mechanics, I would become a shut up and calculate man. But when it comes to General Relativity there is nothing equivalent to Many Worlds or Objective Collapse, which makes me suspect we have reached the brute fact level, although we can never be certain. * > I'm not seeking "the ultimate answer", just one that makes some sense. AG *The mathematics of General Relativity says that a sufficiently negative pressure will cause space to expand, or to be more precise, if d is the energy density of the universe and the pressure is p then if (d+3p) < 0 then space will expand, but if (d+3p) >0 then space will contract. Apparently you believe another "why" question is in order, maybe so I don't know, but I don't see how you could say that it doesn't make sense, what Einstein said was very clear, there are no logical contradictions and so far at least it has passed all observational tests with flying colors. * *Maybe GR answers the question you raise. I don't know. But that's not what I called "silly". It's the idea that expanding space stretches the waves supposedly inherent in photons. AG* * John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a4536737-0129-4a6f-b570-8535e10ed290n%40googlegroups.com.
