Large Hardon Collider

[Max™]

I would assume it would have to be a very finely tuned process, and incredibly focused.

Just because there have been catastrophic levels of energy released all through the Universe and as far as we know it hasn't happened yet.

[Khamsin]

So is there a specific process we must do in order to cause the universe to make this transition, or is any process (with a high enough focused energy) sufficient to cause such a transition?

Remember that video of supercooled water that froze when disturbed? Is there a specific process to cause the transformation into ice, or was it just any process with enough energy to disturb it past a certain threshold?

[Max™]

That is a good example, but that is also a much lower threshold of metastability than one can assume the vacuum resides in.

Incidentally my description of a black hole is similar to a phase change like that, but it is one which cuts itself off from the surrounding body of spacetime, different from one which propagates through spacetime.

[Khamsin]

That is a good example, but that is also a much lower threshold of metastability than one can assume the vacuum resides in.

True, it's a lower threshold, but is it necessarily any more complicated than the process to shake a vacuum into a more stable state?

[Woozie]

Remember that video of supercooled water that froze when disturbed? Is there a specific process to cause the transformation into ice, or was it just any process with enough energy to disturb it past a certain threshold?

Any process with enough energy would cause the water to escape from the metastable state.

Let's suppose this is any potential energy function (y is potential energy, x is position).

http://pyx.sourceforge.net/examples/graphs/function.png

You're an engineer, right? So you probably took a bit of physics, though I don't know if you remember this part.

It's easy to visualize the motion of a particle in such a potential. Think of what a ball would do if you put it onto a structure shaped like this (or better yet, a roller coaster). If you put it somewhere on a slope, it would roll down the slope. If it has enough energy, it might roll back up the other side of the slope and keep going. If it doesn't have enough energy, it will go up the slope until it's energy runs out, then fall back down and go the other direction (until it meets another slope that's too high to climb, then it would go up until it runs out of energy - slowing down along the way - and then eventually stop and roll back down the slope instead of making it all the way over.

So if a particle is put at x = 15, going to the left, and it has energy of .5, it will roll left, over the first two hills. Then it will get exactly halfway up the big hill in the center and then roll back down to the right. If we put a proton in a field that had this potential energy function, we'd see it move towards the center of the field, slow down before it quite reaches zero, then stop, then turn around and leave the way it came in. If it had energy greater than 1, it would make it over the hill in the middle and escape to the right.

Now suppose the particle has .05 energy and I put it on the valley farthest to the right (the dip a little after 10). It's trapped between two small hills, but it doesn't have enough energy to get over either one of them. However, note that the valley to the left of it goes down deeper than the valley it's trapped in. Since that valley is deeper, it has less potential energy. When I was talking about stability earlier, I mentioned less mass typically means more stable in particles. For water, I mentioned ice is more stable than water.

A more precise meaning of what I mean by that is: All phenomenon in nature seek to minimize potential energy. So the minimum potential configuration of a system is always the most stable. In the case of a ball rolling on a hill (or roller coaster, or a particle in a potential well that looks like this, or a proton in an electric field whos potential looks like this, etc), the most stable point is going to be one of the really low valleys. So the particle "seeks" to go there. But it can't because it's trapped in the other valley.

A loose definition of a metastable state is any state corresponding to a dip in potential energy that isn't the lowest point of potential overall. If there's a lower dip near you, but you're stuck in a dip that's not quite as low because you don't quite have enough energy to get out, you're in a metastable state or configuration.

There are two ways for a particle to get out of this state. One would be for the particle to get a boost. Some sort of push would easily get it over the hill and into the deeper valley. So anything you do to supercooled water could push it out of the metastable state. It just needs a slight "push".

The only other way is quantum tunneling, where you basically say "screw the normal laws of physics, I'm going to walk through this hill instead of traveling over it".

Edit: here's wikipedia's picture. It's better

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...-stability.svg

Edit2: Picture not showing up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastability

[Khamsin]

Any process with enough energy would cause the water to escape from the metastable state.

Thanks for the explanation, but I wasn't questioning metastable states, but rather responding to this...

So is there a specific process we must do in order to cause the universe to make this transition, or is any process (with a high enough focused energy) sufficient to cause such a transition?

...with a rhetorical question comparing it to the "process" required to bump supercooled water out of it's metastable state. In other words, I was suggesting that it may really be that easy to bump the universe out of a metastable state, given enough energy, without a complicated process.

But if it requires more energy than cosmic rays colliding head on in space, then that may be why it hasn't happened yet.

[Woozie]

Oh okay, my bad.

[Max™]

There may be a less energy intensive manner, I don't know, but as far as the application of a "shock" like jostling a bottle of supercooled water, that would require an appropriately large shock.

Tapping the bottle gently won't do it, bumping it hard enough to almost knock it over will, so it's somewhere between there.

We can assume that no natural process could get the vacuum out of a metastable state because if it IS in a metastable state, it hasn't been knocked out of it yet (though there could be a wall of unreality approaching us at light speed as I write thi

[Khamsin]

There may be a less energy intensive manner, I don't know, but as far as the application of a "shock" like jostling a bottle of supercooled water, that would require an appropriately large shock.

Tapping the bottle gently won't do it, bumping it hard enough to almost knock it over will, so it's somewhere between there.

We can assume that no natural process could get the vacuum out of a metastable state because if it IS in a metastable state, it hasn't been knocked out of it yet (though there could be a wall of unreality approaching us at light speed as I write thi

Don't forget, that's also assuming that anything that can happen has happened. Thing about low probabilities in a finite-time universe, is that something with a low enough probability might not have happened yet. We've only been here 14 billion years or so. There could be any number of universal "firsts" between now and, say, the 50 billion year mark. Or 100 billion year mark. Something may happen for the first time in the universe on it's 1 trillionth birthday.

[Psion]

While we're on the general subject of energies, there's one question that's been bugging me. The life we see around us is made up of matter, and utilizes energy in it's process of living, such as chemical/electrical/kinetic/etc. But what I'm curious about is, is the opposite also possible? Could there have been/can be/are creatures made up of energy, that perhaps utilize matter in their process of living? For all we know, could that hurricane forming in the Atlantic just be a finger of a creature as big as the earth or larger? I would imagine that for such a creature to be stable, if possible at all, it would have to be so gigantic that it would be hard to realize it was alive simply from the scale.

Maybe the reason magic is in all cultures is because a creature used to exist that controlled energy to people, and it died and no one would realize it?

I dunno, it just makes me wonder just how far out you can get when it comes to life.

Also wondering that if higher dimensions exist, would there be life in those higher dimensions as well? And wouldn't such creatures seem like gods to us? :s

Or maybe we're just the only life in the universe, though the odds of that seem rather low.

[Acturus]

is the opposite also possible? Could there have been/can be/are creatures made up of energy, that perhaps utilize matter in their process of living?

"With God, all things are possible"
Matthew 19:26

[Zalius]

why is the bible in military time

[Khamsin]

"With God, all things are possible"
Matthew 19:26

"With Science, all things are falsifiable."

Khamsin 05:45 (PDT)

[Mizango]

"With Science, all things are falsifiable."

Khamsin 05:45 (PDT)

<3

[Acturus]

"With Science, all things are falsifiable."

Khamsin 05:45 (PDT)

Well played.

[Cadsuane]

Just wanted to say thanks to Kaylia and Woozie for fucking around with that limit. I ended up using a different approach, but it helped to see some rationale.

[Eliseos]

Physics grades are in! (I'm the top entry) Kind of surprised at the exam scores. I definitely thought someone would have done better than a 33/60 as the highest, considering the homework scores. Ah well, I will take doing better than the average on the exam, and even better overall on the homework scores.

[Pirian]

Wow those scores make me feel good about my physics grade

[Eliseos]

Wow those scores make me feel good about my physics grade

Ha, some of them make me feel good about my own scores lol. I would not want to be in the guy at the bottom's shoes.

[Kaylia]

Also wondering that if higher dimensions exist, would there be life in those higher dimensions as well? And wouldn't such creatures seem like gods to us? :s

Or maybe we're just the only life in the universe, though the odds of that seem rather low.

/cue to Men in black's ending.

As long there is structured matter, there is no reason why "life" couldn't exist. It's even more likely if there is a certain recurrence between structure. But for now, let's start solving the problems between quantum mechanics and relativity. We can wonder about higher dimension after.


I do love the idea of giants being made of universe thought..it's just awesome

Just wanted to say thanks to Kaylia and Woozie for fucking around with that limit. I ended up using a different approach, but it helped to see some rationale.

Out of curiosity, can you show me how it was done. I tried it to do your way, but couldnt come up with something satisfying.