Virtual particles and the existence of God

[Faith1960]

They have one more piece of empirical evidence to substantiate the theory that there is an omnipresent field, which is used to further postulate that there is a non-divisible force that holds the world together, explains the origin of material substance, explains why elementary particles have mass.

But even with the discovery of this Higgs particle, the theory that they are propounding will still be incomplete. We have yet to make sense of gravitational force. There are still alot of things to be done. What to do? God created a freakingly complex universe that human brains aren’t sophisticated enough to understand.

What if they eventually make complete sense of all the things they still don’t have figured out yet? For instance, scientists are justhisclose to revealing that they’ve found the “God Particle.” I mean, seriously, every week there’s some big honking headline facing me on my computer screen that sounds like an article and discovery that will undermine our faith.
Here’s the latest:

huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/02/higgs-discovery-cern-god-particle_n_1642672.html?utm_hp_ref=science&icid=maing-grid10%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl9%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D174981

 

[ThinkingSapien]

What if they eventually make complete sense of all the things they still don’t have figured out yet? For instance, scientists are justhisclose to revealing that they’ve found the “God Particle.” I mean, seriously, every week there’s some big honking headline facing me on my computer screen that sounds like an article and discovery that will undermine our faith.

Well, “God Particle” is a bit of a misnomer. The search for the Higgs Boson need not have an impact on your religious faith.

 

[DeepBlueSea]

Well, “God Particle” is a bit of a misnomer. The search for the Higgs Boson need not have an impact on your religious faith.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

How do virtual particles affect the existence of God?

For the lost:

Virtual particles have no apparent cause; they create themselves. With virtual particles ‘something comes from nothing’.

***** The dimensions of space and time are inextricably linked in a field named “spacetime.” Spacetime is the very fabric of the universe, and it is in spacetime that we exist. All of spacetime is overlaid by electron-positron fields that are essentially electromagnetic in nature. (The positron is the antiparticle of the electron and is positively charged.) It is possible for photons (the smallest constituent part of a light wave) to interact with and transfer its energy to an electron-positron field. When this happens, an electron and a positron are created from the field. These are real particles, and not virtual. Occasionally, however, particles can create themselves out of an electron-positron field without the energy from a photon to convert into mass. Ideally, due to the Law of Conservation of energy, this could not happen. However, due to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle the energy of a system can become uncertain thus making it possible for these particles to exist for a limited amount of time. The lifespan of a virtual particle is on the order of 10-43 second and decreases as the non- existant energy used to create the particle and its antiparticle increases. Virtual particles, unlike their real counterparts, are undectable and do not interfere with the physical world. The proof of their existance lies in that they affect probabilities of scattering processes by offering alternate pathways for the scattering, and so their presence can be observed by comparing computed probabilities to the actual results.

And from Yahoo Answers:
Virtual particle pairs are postulated to come into existance because of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Basicaly it says that you cannot know either energy or rate of change of energy, both precisely. An area that is known to have zero particle and zero energy violates that since you know both precisely at the same time, zero and zero.
So an area of zero-everything violates the HUP. In such a situation virtual particles are thought to materialize and vaporize into and out of existance, thereby creating a small uncertainty in the local energy.

Take the event horizon of a black hole,for instance: It should have zero energy density and zero rate of change of energy there since it all gets pulled into the bh. But you can’t have exactly zero, you have to have some kind of fluctuation so it is postulated that virtual particle pairs come in and out of existance.

This is a result of quantum physics.

So if virtual particles do not have a real cause it can be argued that the universe could have poped into existence (like one giant virtual particle).

So how do virtual particles affect the existenceof God? Any help here?

I know nothing about the more esoteric aspects of science but the Church teaches that there cannot be a fundamental disagreement between science and the teachings of the Church. Whatever the nature of these particles, they come into being and exist, however temporially, by the creative act of God - for His own good reasons. To say that they are uncaused is simply wrong. The church teaches that there is no such thing as chance. Just because you can’t prove it, doesn’t mean it isn’t so. See Part 1 of the Catechism ot the Catholic Church.

 

[sw85]

How do virtual particles affect the existence of God?

For the lost:

Virtual particles have no apparent cause; they create themselves. With virtual particles ‘something comes from nothing’.

[snip]

So how do virtual particles affect the existenceof God? Any help here?

Courtesy of a Catholic astrophysicist:

It turns out that the number of finite beings is actually more problematic than the number of Gods. Finite beings have a passive element, so the same pattern can be instantiated multiple times. Why, then, should there be any particular number of any given type of being? Why are there six billion humans but zero unicorns? For that matter, how do I know an infinite number of unicorns won’t pop into existence in five minutes and fill up the whole universe? Unlike God, finite beings seem to be dangerously underdetermined.

As a matter of fact, we must be pretty sure that an infinite number of unicorns aren’t going to pop into existence. If things like that could happen, the universe would be completely unintelligible. It would not evolve according to regular laws, as it seems to. How do we explain this? First, let me note two explanations that won’t do. First, we can’t explain why things don’t pop into existence by invoking a law of physics: conservation of mass or energy, symmetries in a Lagrangian, a divergence-free stress-energy tensor, etc. These are just mathematical restatements of the fact that things don’t just pop into existence. Second, we can’t get away with saying that things can pop into existence, but that they probability for its occurrence is low (like quantum tunneling across a high energy barrier), so that it happens sufficiently rarely that it is unnoticed. Suppose this were true, and a certain non-existent object had a certain low probability of popping into existence. I could always imagine another object, no more nonexistent than the first, with all of the same properties but a very high probability of popping. All nonexistent beings are equally nonexistent, so this second kind of object is as valid as the first. If we say that the probability of popping is set by some other object that actually does exist, than that object would be the cause of the other thing’s coming into being. We would have a case of one being acting to cause another, something that doesn’t raise any problems for the intelligibility of the universe. It seems that this type of coming into existence, that of being caused by something that existed already, is the only way that finite beings can come to exist.

One might object that things popping into existence uncaused must be possible, because physicists sometimes assert that such things happen: virtual particle-antiparticle pairs pop into and out of existence out of nothing, and the universe itself is said to have popped into existence during the big bang. No doubt physicists do make such claims in popular expositions of their work, but it’s a very sloppy description of the actual theories. I once attended a colloquium at which a string theorist boasted that it had been proven that the universe came into existence out of nothing, but that “nothing” has a structure which they’re still working out. Now, of course, if something has a structure, one with causal effects on the actual universe, it’s most certainly not “nothing”. Similarly, the picture of particles popping into existence uncaused is not a tenable interpretation of quantum field theory. First of all, it’s not just anything, but standard-model particles in particular combinations that are said to populate the vacuum. If this really were uncaused creation, any particle one could imagine might pop into existence, the popping wouldn’t satisfy any conservation laws (like charge or lepton number), and so forth. Of course, this doesn’t happen. What does happen is limited by the standard-model Lagrangian. Why? It must be because this Lagrangian reflects the nature of something—a field, a collection of fields, or a medium of which the known particles are oscillations—that actually exists prior to the particle creation and, being its cause, fixes what can even temporarily come into being. Avoiding the metaphysical impossibility of uncaused creation is the very condition for having a sensible interpretation of these or any other physical theories. (A good deal more might be said about the pitfalls to be avoided in going from mathematics to ontology in contemporary physics, such as the unwarranted assumption that terms in a series expansion—which is all Feynman diagrams really are—represent actual events. However, what I’ve said already should convince the reader that modern high-energy physics does nothing to alter the basic problem of finite existence.)

 

[Gods_Peace]

“wetness” is an example I use on this forum a lot. If you search on it in my old posts, it comes up a bunch, and I’m the one pressing both the complexity and difficulty of “wetness” as a seemingly simple phenomenon, as well as pedagogy for emergent characteristics.

I’m not sure that’s true, or rather, I think “same” is a tricky term to use there, but no matter: in either case, I suggest the goal obtains in terms of raising the concept of emergence.

Yeah, you’ve been reading my posts, I guess!

This is emergence. It’s phenomenologically new and novel, but it’s not magic, it’s just more fundamental components interacting in ways that produce properties and dynamics not exhibited in the component bits alone.

That’s one way to emphasize the role of emergence, sure.

OK, well this takes us back to “same”, per my comment above. Wb, as I understand it is just a different mode of description of the same physical phenomenon.

Well, it’s important to note that Schrödinger’s ideas on this were informal, non-scientific conjectures. He’s welcome to them, but these are not ideas scientifically delivered. Watson of DNA discovery fame thought that DNA was dropped here by aliens, Newton in his off time pursued crazy imaginations about alchemy, aether, and the Trinity, among other things.

We have to be careful to look at the science a scientist is offering, qua science. Speaking on other grounds, they are often as nutty as the rest of us, and sometimes more. As I understand Schrödinger, his “Mind and Matter” was heavily influenced by his love of Schopenhauer’s ideas. Whoops. That’s his prerogative, but we’re off in left field, far from science and into the wilds of incorrigible intuition at that point.

Hmmm, I thought that was a question under considerable scrutiny and dispute? Doesn’t materialism hold otherwise?

Where is this shown? I missed that. I’m aware of the strong superstitions people have on this issue, but not aware of any science or demonstrable knowledge concerning the non-reducibility or dualist nature of mind.

Well, that makes your statements above somewhat of an overreach, then, eh? From a scientific standpoint, I’m not aware of ANY performative models that are not purely naturalistic. So while I’m happy to say the matter is still under dispute, from a scientific perspective, this is a discipline that is just getting off the ground, but dualism and supernatural hypotheses don’t even qualify epistemically for consideration.

If, on the other hand, we are resigning ourselves to a battle of conflicting intuitions and superstitions, and not looking for any objective arbitration on the matter via science, we can just give up now – it’s all theology, hopelessly futile and intractable as a matter of inquiry.

That would or will be quite a feat, yes. But you could have said the same thing about reducing matter to elementary particles not so long ago, too. Importantly, science is not aware of any problem in principle with the reducibility of mind to natural processes.

Yes, but we could say the same things about physics, particularly when physics at Planck scales got the focus of inquiry. Complex is an understatement. And yet, it’s reducible, natural, non-magical, non-supernatural, the working models we’ve produced.

Crucially, Ross does not and cannot provide a means of testing whether his ideas are right, or wrong. Like Searle, Kripke and others, this is an appeal to intuition, or “pure reason”, if I recall Ross, his hangup is determinacy. But it’s a dead end, because it’s analytic philosophy, ideas which cower and hide from the adjudicating light of science. We can’t make any progress on Ross’ ideas because he hasn’t got any epistemic ground to judge them on.

That’s not shown. It may be they are just as reducible as wetness, just much more complex, beyond our current capabilities to reverse engineer.

Science doesn’t “prove”. That’s an archaic conceit of abstract and analytic philosophy. Science builds models and tests them, and prefers more performative and economical models over less performative and less economic models.

Scientists can make headway on this, at least in principle. Philosophers are completely impotent on this question, unless they defer to science.

No, but we are not aware of any insuperable problems, and science has in its wake a long list of “reductions” of other complex phenomena that were once thought to be magic, or supernatural or otherwise non-reducible, non-mechanistic. None of that guarantees anything, but it’s a pattern that should inform our expectations. In contrast to the poverty of dualist intuitions in terms of evidence and performative models we can test, it’s a conspicuously lopsided contest between them.

It’s a familiar and now time-honored trend. Science just de-magicalizes, naturalizes and mechanicalizes one thing after another. Science is a major killjoy for superstitious types.

-TS

Ahh… Trying to use science to deconstruct religion are ya bud? Fools fall into their own trap

Andrew

 

[JDaniel]

How do virtual particles affect the existence of God?

For the lost:

Virtual particles have no apparent cause; they create themselves. With virtual particles ‘something comes from nothing’.

***** The dimensions of space and time are inextricably linked in a field named “spacetime.” Spacetime is the very fabric of the universe, and it is in spacetime that we exist. All of spacetime is overlaid by electron-positron fields that are essentially electromagnetic in nature. (The positron is the antiparticle of the electron and is positively charged.) It is possible for photons (the smallest constituent part of a light wave) to interact with and transfer its energy to an electron-positron field. When this happens, an electron and a positron are created from the field. These are real particles, and not virtual. Occasionally, however, particles can create themselves out of an electron-positron field without the energy from a photon to convert into mass. Ideally, due to the Law of Conservation of energy, this could not happen. However, due to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle the energy of a system can become uncertain thus making it possible for these particles to exist for a limited amount of time. The lifespan of a virtual particle is on the order of 10-43 second and decreases as the non- existant energy used to create the particle and its antiparticle increases. Virtual particles, unlike their real counterparts, are undectable and do not interfere with the physical world. The proof of their existance lies in that they affect probabilities of scattering processes by offering alternate pathways for the scattering, and so their presence can be observed by comparing computed probabilities to the actual results.

And from Yahoo Answers:
Virtual particle pairs are postulated to come into existance because of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Basicaly it says that you cannot know either energy or rate of change of energy, both precisely. An area that is known to have zero particle and zero energy violates that since you know both precisely at the same time, zero and zero.
So an area of zero-everything violates the HUP. In such a situation virtual particles are thought to materialize and vaporize into and out of existance, thereby creating a small uncertainty in the local energy.

Take the event horizon of a black hole,for instance: It should have zero energy density and zero rate of change of energy there since it all gets pulled into the bh. But you can’t have exactly zero, you have to have some kind of fluctuation so it is postulated that virtual particle pairs come in and out of existance.

This is a result of quantum physics.

So if virtual particles do not have a real cause it can be argued that the universe could have poped into existence (like one giant virtual particle).

So how do virtual particles affect the existenceof God? Any help here?

Cool:

If all of this is “virtual,” i.e, existing in the Mind of God anyway, wouldn’t all of it be “virtual” per definitionem? Think scripturally: Here

 

[KingCoil]

Allow me to insert this comment from myself in the Facebook page of Professor Matt Strassler, Physicist.

KingCoil:

Professor Matt Strassler, Physicist
facebook.com/ProfMattStrassler

Marius Dejess * aka KingCoil ]*
2 minutes ago

• Comment from Marius Dejess ]*

I like very much to ask you this question.

You write so much about this topic:
Virtual Particles: What are they?
profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/virtual-particles-what-are-they/

Suppose you tell us lay folks right away does a virtual particle exist at all in objective reality?
Or it is only in our mind, i.e., there is no such a thing that exists in objective reality corresponding to the concept in our mind of virtual particle.

Now, how do I understand objective reality versus the realm of concepts in our mind?

By way of examples, objective reality is that realm of everything that exists even though humans with a mind do not have any thought about it in their mind, or even though there is no human doing any thinking or mathematical computation whatsoever in the mind about it, for examples:

An apple is a concept in our mind but it is also an object in objective reality, so that even though there is no mind of humans thinking of an apple or there are no humans at all ever, the apple still exists in objective reality.

Now, here are examples of a concept that is in the mind of humans, an invisible pink unicorn or a flying spaghetti monster, they exist as concepts in the mind of atheists but they do not exist in objective reality, at least not in the objective reality that is accessible to humans.

So, please tell us right away, do virtual particles have any existence as objects in objective reality outside the mind of humans?

Of course, you can tell us that they do not have as of now with humans any objective reality outside our minds: because we have not yet seen them even indirectly from the effects of virtual particles in things that do exist already in objective reality.

Then you can add that we or physicists are still looking for them in objective reality, namely, still looking for virtual particles that correspond to the concept of virtual particle in our mind, and we are still doing experiments or trying to contrive instruments that can detect for us the presence if any presence at all in objective reality of virtual particles, virtual particles that correspond to the concept of virtual particle in our mind.

So, I like you to tell us that virtual particles are what I call mental constructs, but as of today and here in our realm of objective reality that we do have access to directly or even indirectly (by the effects of virtual particles in things which do already exist in objective reality), we still do not have contact with virtual particles even just one particle, and even just indirectly, as for example, owing to the detection from instruments we have invented if any at all now.

My idea is that you might be very accessible to us in your explanation of virtual particles, if you would just first make a distinction of concept in our mind and object in objective reality, and answer right away: whether virtual particles are all in our mind, or they are also in actual objective reality, i.e., there are objects in actual objective reality that correspond to the concept of virtual particle in the mind of very learned and most profound and most subtle thinkers among the best physicists of whatever kind of physics they are into.

Thanks for reading this comment, and I hope you will follow my proposal and tell us in your comment in your here page in Facebook, your answer and explanation to the question: Do virtual particles have existence in objective reality, or they are presently only in the minds of the most learned and subtle thinkers or manipulators of concepts in their mind, among physicists of all whatever kinds of physics.

Thanks in advance for the kind of indulgence of readers and posters here.

KingCoil

 

[Linusthe2nd]

How do virtual particles affect the existence of God?

For the lost:

Virtual particles have no apparent cause; they create themselves. With virtual particles ‘something comes from nothing’.

***** The dimensions of space and time are inextricably linked in a field named “spacetime.” Spacetime is the very fabric of the universe, and it is in spacetime that we exist. All of spacetime is overlaid by electron-positron fields that are essentially electromagnetic in nature…

Yes, I can help if you will just listen. The number one thing is that our Catholic Faith is what we live by, it is what we believe or we cannot be practicing Cathoics. If we reject the teaching of the Church, we are committing a mortal sin against Faith. Please read my post again,

" I know nothing about the more esoteric aspects of science but the Church teaches that there cannot be a fundamental disagreement between science and the teachings of the Church. Whatever the nature of these particles, they come into being and exist, however temporially, by the creative act of God - for His own good reasons. To say that they are uncaused is simply wrong. The church teaches that there is no such thing as chance. Just because you can’t prove it, doesn’t mean it isn’t so. See Part 1 of the Catechism ot the Catholic Church. "

Futher, space and time are two separate absolutes depending on material being, without material being they do not exist. So all this stuff about the " bending " of space and time is pure nonesense, it is nothing but wild speculation on a mathematical formula designed not to reveal reality but to predict outcomes.

As for the Heisenberg principle, it too is wild speculation. And irregardless, no one can demonstrate a negative. No one can demonstrate that these " quanta " come from nothing, anymore that one can demonstrate that the universe had a unique first of creation. The latter we accept solely on Faith, as St. Thomas taught and as the Church teaches. Science is engaging in pure postulation here. And by Faith we know only God can create. So if these particles are indeed " jumping " into existence from nothing, it is God who is doing the creating, for only God can create anything - even ultimate " quanta. ".

I would suggest you read Banckrupting Physics by Alexander Unzicker.

Linus2nd

 

[DrTaffy]

Well, “God Particle” is a bit of a misnomer.

Anecdotally, his publisher wouldn’t let him call it the “Goddamn” particle, so he took the closest he could get.