ed298-ak@violet.berkeley.edu (Edouard Lagache) (06/30/87)
My argument against an infinite regress of Vacuum Genesis events simply doesn't have any particular formalism. It is simply a thought experiment based on the inherent properties of the uncertainty principle. Vacuum Genesis requires the occurance of an extremely unlikely event. It is "excusable" as a theory if only one such occurence is needed - but an infinite number of times? For an infinite series to work, the link between successive states of the series must be sure, otherwise some point along the line a link will fail and the series will stop. The link between successive states of vacuum genesis is an extremely unlikely event, thus an infinite series of vacuum genesis events just isn't a satisfactory explanation. One other point concerning time. Indeed, time between states isn't defined in any clear way. If each state is like our own universe (which is an assumption!) then presumably there can be an arbitrary (although necessarily finite) amount of time before the next genesis event. Unfortunately that won't help either, since in order for that condition to induce the infinite regress, it would be necessary for the probability of a genesis sized particle to be created in any universe over an arbitary time span to be one. The uncertainty principle doesn't permit that conclusion. Finally, I don't see any benefit in having a infinite regress of vacuum genesis events. What does that explain that simply postulating a single event doesn't. If one is going to postulate a vacuum that obeys all our physical laws, what is one more assumption? Edouard Lagache School of Education U.C.B. lagache@violet.berkeley.edu
franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) (07/02/87)
In article <4188@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> lagache@violet.berkeley.edu (Edouard Lagache) writes: > For an infinite series to work, the link between successive states > of the series must be sure, otherwise some point along the line a > link will fail and the series will stop. The link between successive > states of vacuum genesis is an extremely unlikely event, thus > an infinite series of vacuum genesis events just isn't a > satisfactory explanation. This assumes there is at most one such event per universe; this is an unreasonable assumption. If the average number of events per universe is greater than one, then with finite probability, from any given starting point, there is a chain of universes infinitely far down. It is not obvious how this relates to there being a chain infinitely far *up*; but it is at least possible. (I am, of course, ignoring many important questions here, including but not limited to: time, size of universes and correlations between such, open vs closed universes, etc. It is not clear how many of these questions make sense.) -- Frank Adams ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka Ashton-Tate 52 Oakland Ave North E. Hartford, CT 06108