A...question.
Aug. 24th, 2012 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerI'm wondering if it's possible to explain this to me without beginning with "It's not quite as simple as that..." Because I think it kind of is.
As I understand it, it's a basic principle of physics that all motion is relative, that there is nothing in the universe that is at absolute rest. The moon moves relative to the earth, the earth to the sun, the sun to the galaxy, the galaxy relative to the Local Group, and so on outward. I get all that; the first part I understand. It's the second part that gets me.
Because if A is in motion relative to B, then B must in respect of that particular motion be at rest relative to A. For every motion, every expenditure of kinetic energy, there must be a thing which is at rest relative to the moving thing. So surely, eventually, when you get to the end of that long string of movement and sum all the velocities and directions, logically there must be a thing, or a point in space, or a field or something, which is at rest relative to everything. If everything in the universe is moving outwards, there must be an in to be moving outwards from.
There is in the Sagittarian 'verse. Towards the end of the Sagittarian Age, scientists traced back the paths of all known metastellar bodies, based on data collected over the preceding several thousand years, and located a point in space which, according to their findings, approximated to the point of origin of the universe, and a team of specialists used one of the three remaining Gilchrist machines capable of large scale transmissions to travel there. They found, precisely at the indicated point, a roughly spheroidal black rock about eight miles in diameter, and for some years thereafter speculation raged across the nets about whether any of its surface features could be interpreted as deliberate markings, whether its age corresponded to that of the rest of the matter in the universe, and so on; in short, whether it had been put there or just got left behind. No conclusive answers were ever forthcoming; the only solid fact about the rock that could be ascertained was that, as far as could be told, relative to every galaxy, nebula, star, planet and asteroid in the universe, it was at rest. Everything was moving away from it, and had been for billions of years; it wasn't moving at all. And so, as ever, people made up their own minds according to their preferences. But that's fiction, and this is real life, probably.
I realise that this is a variation on the old Unmoved Mover argument which was one of Aquinas's proofs of deity, but that's not where I'm going with this. I would honestly like to know in what way my logic is faulty, if it is. If it can be done in a way that I can see makes sense, that would be good.
And if the Higgs field turns out to be the thing relative to whch everything else is moving, that would be rather neat.
As I understand it, it's a basic principle of physics that all motion is relative, that there is nothing in the universe that is at absolute rest. The moon moves relative to the earth, the earth to the sun, the sun to the galaxy, the galaxy relative to the Local Group, and so on outward. I get all that; the first part I understand. It's the second part that gets me.
Because if A is in motion relative to B, then B must in respect of that particular motion be at rest relative to A. For every motion, every expenditure of kinetic energy, there must be a thing which is at rest relative to the moving thing. So surely, eventually, when you get to the end of that long string of movement and sum all the velocities and directions, logically there must be a thing, or a point in space, or a field or something, which is at rest relative to everything. If everything in the universe is moving outwards, there must be an in to be moving outwards from.
There is in the Sagittarian 'verse. Towards the end of the Sagittarian Age, scientists traced back the paths of all known metastellar bodies, based on data collected over the preceding several thousand years, and located a point in space which, according to their findings, approximated to the point of origin of the universe, and a team of specialists used one of the three remaining Gilchrist machines capable of large scale transmissions to travel there. They found, precisely at the indicated point, a roughly spheroidal black rock about eight miles in diameter, and for some years thereafter speculation raged across the nets about whether any of its surface features could be interpreted as deliberate markings, whether its age corresponded to that of the rest of the matter in the universe, and so on; in short, whether it had been put there or just got left behind. No conclusive answers were ever forthcoming; the only solid fact about the rock that could be ascertained was that, as far as could be told, relative to every galaxy, nebula, star, planet and asteroid in the universe, it was at rest. Everything was moving away from it, and had been for billions of years; it wasn't moving at all. And so, as ever, people made up their own minds according to their preferences. But that's fiction, and this is real life, probably.
I realise that this is a variation on the old Unmoved Mover argument which was one of Aquinas's proofs of deity, but that's not where I'm going with this. I would honestly like to know in what way my logic is faulty, if it is. If it can be done in a way that I can see makes sense, that would be good.
And if the Higgs field turns out to be the thing relative to whch everything else is moving, that would be rather neat.
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-25 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-25 09:34 pm (UTC)Saying "it's turtles all the way down" is just something to say. Language can encompass it, so can imagination up to a point, but logic falls over. And given the vast amount we still don't know about the universe, I don't see how such a definite negative statement can be defensible. And that's what I was hoping someone could explain to me: the how.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-25 09:58 pm (UTC)You can only come up with a "sum of all motions" by picking a group of things and ignoring other stuff.
No-one knows how much stuff is out there in the universe, but between dark matter and dark energy, I believe that we can only "see" about 5% of the universe, so really hard to do a "sum of everything".
The only thing "at rest" is the observer. Read up on inertial frames of reference.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_frame_of_reference