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From: obnoxio@BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Physical objection to Vacuum Genesis (Try II)
Message-ID: <8706291211.AA24764@brahms.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Mon, 29-Jun-87 08:11:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: brahms.8706291211.AA24764
Posted: Mon Jun 29 08:11:15 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Jun-87 03:32:40 EDT
References: <4148@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <8706281022.AA18649@brahms.Berkeley.EDU> <4158@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: obnoxio@brahms.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
Organization: Brahms Gang Posting Central
Lines: 41

This will be my last article on the >physics< of vacuum genesis.

In article <4158@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>, ed298-ak@violet (Edouard Lagache) writes:
>					        are you claiming that
>	the probablity of very energetic particles being created via the
>	uncertainty principle is 1.

Yes.  For one thing, you did not specify a per-universe time interval.
And even more confusing, "time" does not exist in the situation we are
talking about.  More to the point, the quantum vacuum *is* a raging sea
of virtual activity.  Guth and others have proposed that a bit of this
activity got "trapped" in a false vacuum, and had nowhere else to go but
(if you'll pardon the idiom) up.  More recently, this has turned into
the suggestion that "spawning universes in your own backyard" goes on
*all* the time.

I am also troubled by your "proof" even if the probability is < 1, and
even if you were to put in time limits.  I can't point at anything and
say this or that is wrong, just that the whole thing smelled like the
reasoning behind the St Petersburg paradox.  But I took the simpler ob-
jection.

Finally, I am troubled by what I feel was just too literal a usage of
probability here.  There has never been agreement about the interpre-
tations of QM in the first place, and when it comes to cosmology, they
tend to disintegrate.  I am not used to seeing quantum physics papers
state what interpretation they were using, excepting those *about*
specific interpretations.  But recently a number of otherwise normal
cosmology papers have spelled out the assumed interpretation.  So even
if my botherations in the previous paragraph are just bad intuition
on my part, I have strong reservations about the physical significance
of your argument.

>			       Golly, Physics sure has changed since
>	I last studied it.

Gosharoonie, I feel that way sometimes too.  And the last time I studied
any physics was yesterday.

ucbvax!brahms!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720
"Do not believe astrophysical observations until confirmed by theory."