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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is the Higgs field named incorrectly?
« on: 02/10/2017 23:44:15 »"In that context, your question would reduce to the more fundamental, "what makes space?" My answer is simply, "nothing." "
Heh
You've come up with the dead-on correct answer: Nothing. If you consider the metaphysical fundamentals required for a universe to exist, whatever your perspective or beliefs, upon burrowing into their core you'll find it necessary to accept the existence of at least one Absolute Miracle.
Something must have existed without cause. Western religionists define an omnipotent God as that Miracle; likewise, Western scientists (probably all scientists) might define the "singularity" as that miracle, if they had any philosophical insights.
I prefer to treat "space" as an essential Absolute Miracle-- something that has no origin, no creator-- something that has always existed. However, to be useful, space must have, I think three properties. In addition to existence it must exhibit a fundamental force of some sort, and it must have a boundary condition.
You seem to ponder the same sort of questions there, what is 'nothing'?
SpaceTime is, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime, "any mathematical model that fuses the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single 4‑dimensional continuum."
Well, yea. That's one mainstream cosmological definition of our universe. Or you can see the 'universe' as a result of 'laws, properties and principles' communicating. Not as 'hands on' maybe but definitely more flexible. One way to look at it is from the 'whole', aka what you see looking out at the universe.
I'm with you on this. You could omit "laws" from your description because "principles" does the job, and laws are the kinds of arbitrary rules that people make up to control the behavior of nitwits lacking common sense. (No jaywalking!)
Another is to define it as if what we see is a result of those underlying 'laws, properties and principles'. And then ask what might 'emerge' from them.Evaluating properties and principles used to be what real physics was about, back when I fell in love with it. Now, it's mostly mathematical nonsense. I remain in love with the young woman from my college youth, and care little for the fat and wrinkled old crone into which she's morphed. Keep the faiith!
'c' is a very important concept when thinking of it that way.
I wonder about your "c" comment, particularly what ideas lie behind it.
It seems to me that the properties of "c" demand the existence of a medium (e.g. the aether). Theoretically the existence of such a medium has been disproved, but as John Schulenberger's paper, "Isomorphisms of hyperbolic systems and the aether" points out, the famous Michelson-Morley experiment could not have detected the aether. Thus its existence is not disproved. Googling the Schulenberger paper brings up more stuff, of course. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03605308008820135