• Ephera@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    To my knowledge, we also have zero evidence that they didn’t exist. Nor have we ever observed matter/energy appearing out of thin air vaccuum, so it seems unlikely to me.

    • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      My layman’s understanding is that virtual particles can and do emerge from vacuum, but in ways that usually cancel out before affecting anything. Occasionally it does affect normal stuff - see the Casimir effect acting on surfaces very close together.

      I personally suspect this is an explanation for dark matter and a possible origin of the universe.

      If there’s tiny bits of stuff and anti-stuff blinking in and out of existence, anywhere there’s a big fat nothing, both halves should still exhibit gravity before blipping back out. It wouldn’t show up as normal matter because it spends most of its time not existing. The vacuum really is empty… on average. It just hums with enough short-lived quantum shenanigans to have nonzero mass.

      And if this follows a steep curve for distribution, then it’s like blackbody radiation. A hot rock will overwhelmingly emit photon wavelengths near the peak, for any given temperature, but in theory any temperature can emit any wavelength. It just happens with vanishing rarity as you get up into the spicy photons. If vacuum will occasionally fart out a particle and antiparticle, then very occasionally it should fart out two particles and antiparticles, together. And with vanishing rarity it can theoretically fart out an arbitrary quantity of mass, alongside a negation that is presumably equal. But if that’s off by a little bit - if it’s allowed to be off by a little bit - then an equally arbitrary quantity of mass will remain. Even if the masses have to match exactly, they could recombine in ways that produce angular momentum and never properly rejoin. And if vacuum produces gravity, well, anything that’s left will accelerate away in all directions.

      On cosmic timescales it’s possible that matter just kinda happens. We’d be left with the question of why the fuck that’s how anything works, and where all this quantum vacuum bullshit came from. But creationist cranks would have to retreat back to the first sentence. In the beginning, there was nothing. And it was slightly heavy.

  • Spykee@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    I know it’s old, but I still cannot believe it’s the same woman in every panel. Girl looks like a different person in each pic.

    • Jyek@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      The original commercial was showing different women as if to imply it works for anyone. The arrangement of the panels is different from the original ad. It looks like panels 2 and 4 are swapped. I believe there are 2 different women.

    • shastaxc@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      That’s what I was thinking. And I just noticed that in 2 of the pics the shoulder strap to her shirt is different. If it’s not different women, it’s at least different shirts in some of the panels

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    Hey, man, we’re all just echoes of light bouncing around and making good vibrations as we bounce pgf of each other. Yeah, man, like, totally trippy when you think about it.

  • count_dongulus@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Well, the equations that predict black holes also predict white holes, and the big bang is functionally equivalent to a white hole. And we have found black holes. So…seems like the most plausible explanation for the big bang is…it was a white hole. Still can’t extrapolate backwards for the same reasons, but there are at least implicit causes of white holes suggesting there was spacetime before the big bang.

  • Zess@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Well you’re forgetting about the big unbang, which occurred just before the big bang and condensed all matter and energy into a tiny speck.

    • Jyek@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      Not a tiny speck. You’re not far off however. Theoretically, before expansion, all matter and energy is contracted into an infinitely dense space. Infinite density of infinite mass and infinite energy occupied infinite space. Or at least that is the start of the big bang.

  • Codex@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    The hot big bang is basically just “let there be light” wrapped up in science words and don’t get me started on the period of rapid inflation. It’s incredible to me that the bedrock of modern physics is hand-waved away to get grad students focused back on either bigger nuclear plants and bombs or more qubits.

    • RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 months ago

      It’s incredible to me that the bedrock of modern physics is hand-waved away

      Nothing is waved away. It’s just a point the math breaks down, just like black holes. That all evidence so far supports the math doesn’t help explaining what exactly is/has been happening there.