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From: gjerawlins@watdaisy.UUCP (Greg Rawlins)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: two questions for physicists
Message-ID: <6766@watdaisy.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 26-Nov-84 15:11:11 EST
Article-I.D.: watdaisy.6766
Posted: Mon Nov 26 15:11:11 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Nov-84 03:55:02 EST
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 33


["I don't want millions, I just want answers to my questions"]

	Here are some more questions that have kept me awake
at night, can anyone out there in netland answer them for me?
	(1) - Over the past little while there's been a lot
of discussion on the net of "semi-cosmological" issues, my
question is extremely simple. How can we talk about events
which occurred when the universe was 10**-43 seconds old? Can
such a concept as TIME exist when all the things we use to
measure it are coalesced into one huge ball of superhot
matter? For example, the best timepieces we have right now
are atomic clocks, can we speak about a "time" before even
atoms existed?
	(2) - What justification is there for the
omnipresent assumption that all sub-nuclear particles are
the *same*. Are they indistinguishable because they are so
small relative to any measuring device that any deviance
cannot be detected? Or is it just an assumption about the
sub-nuclear world that we've made and never thought about?
------
"These people were so amazingly primitive they still thought
that digital watches were a pretty neat idea."
-- 
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