Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: Bill S on 12/12/2016 19:40:17
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Richard Muller, “Now” (2016) says: “In the initial Big Bang, before the appearance of the Higgs, all particles were massless.”
1. Is this the generally accepted view?
2. What about mass that is not dependent on the Higgs, would that have been negated by the extreme temperature?
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Perhaps I need to "pad" this a little to show the direction in which I was heading. Muller says:
“In the initial Big Bang, before the appearance of the Higgs, all particles were massless. There is also good reason to believe that during this period, even as the universe expanded, these massless particles had a “thermal” distribution of energies; that is, they matched the kind of distribution you get when you maximize entropy.
Now, it has been known since the 1970s that such a collection of massless particles does not change its entropy as the universe expands. The key point is that in the early universe, the entropy of all matter was massless, thermalized particles, so it wasn’t increasing. If time’s arrow were truly being driven by the increase in entropy, there would have been no arrow. Time should have stopped. We never should have left that era. With stopped time, the expansion would stop (or never proceed in the first place).”
I would really appreciate comments on this before I try to take my own thought "arrow" much further.
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You want us to comment on it?
I really need a understandable explanation to how he define "it has been known since the 1970s that such a collection of massless particles does not change its entropy"
Is he talking about 'light'?
A 'Big Bang' must have involved 'energy', 'gravity/mass' and so 'light'? If he means that light doesn't 'age'?
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If it is 'photons' 'waves' then they are force carriers. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_carrier)
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Another point might be that matter (proper mass/ atoms etc) transforms as in decay and other interactions. although isolated they won't age either as I understands it (broken down into atoms, or even smaller 'components' the last should be read as :)
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Let us assume that 'light' can 'bend' SpaceTime. Then is must have a arrow to do it in, otherwise that 'original light' must have been of some drastically new type. I'm not sure what he means by light having no 'entropy'?
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Thanks Yor_on. Those are the sorts of questions that I asked myself when I read Miller’s statement. Obviously, questions 1 & 2 in the OP still stand, but I need to add to that:
3. Where would one look for information about the possible entropy change of massless particles that he says has been known since the 70s?
4. At this early stage, would plasma have been the only content of the Universe?
5. Is plasma not subject to entropic evolution? If not, why not?
That’s before getting into the bits I think I might understand. [:)]
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A point "Maxwell's Demon, is a door / gatekeeper etc, that sifts particles such that these two sets end up apart from one another - say, the 'faster' particles on the left and the 'slower' particles on the right. The total energy has not changed (ignoring how the selection process works), the internal energy has not changed (particles are in different places but with their initial speeds), so what has changed?
The entropy - due to the re-arrangement, the internal energy (Heat) has been partitioned creating a gradient where there previously was none. This is despite the heat energy existing before in the same quantity. This means that a decrease in entropy, increased the amount of available energy in the form of heat." Mass, energy, and entropy (http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/168468/mass-energy-and-entropy)
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What I wonder about is what the 'entropy' talked about really means? 'Work done' is when you have a way to extract 'energy' from some 'system'. 'Maxwell's demon' can do it, but she's a demon (or he:) belonging to the magical realms.
And have a look at Black Holes and Entropy (http://www.google.se/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjQ2vSRvPbQAhVMBywKHZo6A3IQFggrMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.itp.uni-hannover.de%2F%257Egiulini%2Fpapers%2FBlackHoleSeminar%2FBekenstein_PRD7_1973.pdf&usg=AFQjCNFWE8XgFpkXQ3eMky70ltMfUWYtmg&bvm=bv.141536425,d.bGg)
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The point of that is that a black hole that grows tells you that 'massless particles' can 'act' in time. The black hole grows and we should be able to measure that growth. Whether that would be the same as them/it 'change its entropy' I don't really know? But they act. One has to see that everything has to do with 'mass', light too, as far as I get it?
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Ok, I'm simplifying it as we don't really know what happens inside that 'event horizon, but whatever is left won't be 'matter', although it still will represent a 'mass'. Alternatively you can think of it as 'suns feeding' that Black Hole, and yes, they can 'feed' it too, as far as I see.
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I did some reading about entropy and Maxwell's demon while in Hosp. and think I confirmed my previous impression that there really never was a paradox.
Please be patient. I need to sort things out in my mind, and that is not always quick or easy. [:)]
Are you making a link between Maxwell's demon and that first fraction of a second of the Universe?
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:)
Not really.
Then again, what do I know?
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To fall back on 'magic' of any kind you will need a logic. That is what builds science, and fantasy writers that are good know it too. Will you call logic a magic?
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We can put it this way, a logic that builds on experiments done, is a logic that fits. whether it ends in definitions as 'symmetries' is not what defines it. The experiments do.
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And measurements :)
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Another way to define it would be that what not fitting our measurements and experiments, can't be what exist, for us that is. Whether that will hold true 'every where' is another question, but meaningless for us existing inside SpaceTime.
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But yes Bill, you touch a essential question there. What makes the world go round? Although the question will always be philosophical, it's not about 'science' because science builds on measurements, experiments, and whatever logic we can construct explaining it in a sensible way. But I think you're correct in that it never ends. There will always be a uncertainty existing.
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I need to check my understanding of a few points relating to current theory.
1. Is it generally accepted that at this early stage, the state of the Universe would have been a quark-gluon plasma?
2. Gluons are massless, but quarks have mass.
3. If "2" is correct, what justification is there for saying a quark-gluon plasma would be massless?
4. A plasma has an energy structure. Wouldn't this mean it had mass, independently of the mass of individual particles?
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I just found this:
“Mass arises from interactions between energy constituting these” [energy?] “structures and the space that the structure resides in. Plasma state only means there’s more free-floating energy around that structure, which reduces the mass by making the structures less dense.”
I’m OK with the idea that this makes the structure less dense, but don’t see how that would reduce the mass.
Am I out of my depth? Be brutal! [:(]
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:)
I'm in good company then.
Who said that a quark-gluon plasma is massless? It seems more of a liquid to physics, and a massless liquid seems as a contradiction in terms to me? LHC produces 'primordial soup' of the Universe using less particles than thought possible (http://www.sciencealert.com/lhc-produces-primordial-soup-of-the-universe-using-less-particles-than-thought-possible)
Maybe this will give you some more ideas Are Gluons Massless? Is There a Big Problem With Little Physics? (https://owlcation.com/stem/Are-Gluons-Massless-Is-There-a-Big-Problem-with-Little-Physics-and-Other-Gluon-Questions)
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Apropos 'energy densities' The Big Bang's Pervasive Plasma (http://www.lnl.infn.it/%7Ealice/QGP)
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The Gibb's free energy Equation is G=H-TS, where G is free energy, H is enthalpy (internal energy), T is temperature and S is entropy.
If entropy is infinite, there is no free energy left for internal energy, like mass, or else the free energy would need to be more than infinite. For internal energy, like mass to exist, infinite entropy has to decrease to below infinite. This will release free energy for mass.
If we started with a pure energy universe, energy does not clump like matter. Energy can overlap and superimpose through wave addition. However, in a pure energy universe, without matter, there is no persistent order; infinite entropy. The energy waves can add to create node and nodal, but these are transient; ebb and flow. Inertial reference is not persistent. The only persistent reference is the speed of light, which all the energy shares. The loss of entropy reflects a local slowing of reference, from C, to C-, implicit of mass appearing for persistent inertial reference.
In the lab, stable and persistent mass only appears at extreme energy via matter and antimatter pairs. The decrease from infinite entropy is releasing free energy to help boost some of the energy into matter and anti-matter. A pure energy universe is at lower potential than a universe based on mass, since mass needs a boost to appear.
If entropy continued to decrease; forming more and more matter for the primordial atom, eventually the internal energy of the primordial atom gets too high, to where matter is no longer stable. Now the pendulum swigs the others way back to increasing entropy; boom!
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So you're thinking of in terms of a 'infinite entropy' being massless at 'the instant' of a 'Big Bang'? But that's not a quark gluon plasma, is it? It's more an idea of how it might have started, from the view of entropy :)
Very nice description of it puppypower :)
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Who said that a quark-gluon plasma is massless?
Putting 2+2 together; that would have to be Muller, but only assuming he was referring to the Q-G plasma when he said the Universe was massless at this stage.
Good links, thanks.
infinite entropy has to decrease to below infinite
I think I see the point you are making, so I’ll try to pretend you didn’t suggest that something infinite could become finite. Let’s not go there. [:)]
The loss of entropy reflects a local slowing of reference, from C, to C-
Lost me!
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I think you got it Bill :)
You just want it put in black and white.
'c' may be a constant, observer dependent, but you can 'slow it down'. At least the way I see it, so 'matter' handle it 'differently', although it depends on definitions.
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Imagine that a particle has absolute zero kinetic energy. It will be at absolute zero temperature. How then does it express its mass? The question is how do we define mass? We can only weigh an object when it experiences the force of gravity. If we take away all the kinetic energy does mass have a meaning? Most of the mass of a proton is not composed of its constituent's rest masses. So what exactly bestows this extra mass? It is worth investigating this point. You gain some interesting insights.
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Imagine that a particle has absolute zero kinetic energy.
It'll be interesting to see if anyone objects to that on the grounds that it's impossible. Same way someone usually objects to imagining a massive object travelling at c.
You make an interesting point about k/e and mass, but rest mass doesn't include k/e, does it?
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Imagine that a particle has absolute zero kinetic energy. It will be at absolute zero temperature. How then does it express its mass? The question is how do we define mass? We can only weigh an object when it experiences the force of gravity. If we take away all the kinetic energy does mass have a meaning? Most of the mass of a proton is not composed of its constituent's rest masses. So what exactly bestows this extra mass? It is worth investigating this point. You gain some interesting insights.
Mass doesn't seem to have a meaning as a intrinsic property of a wave. We can measure mass through gravity force or inertia but can a body have mass without exerting any gravity force? I think not. If we can understand how light waves interact with other waves creating a trajectory deviation we call gravity, then we can understand what gravity is. I think we should focus on this.
You said: the proton mass is not composed of its constituents rest mass. That proves or at least suggests mass is only a relativistic effect. String theory also treats particle as vibrating strings. That means particles constituents are never at rest but travel at c. It is obvious since electromagnetic waves travel at c, electron waves excite the same fields and must travel at the same speed.
A black hole is an object that behaves like a particle. It is possible to simulate a black hole made entirely of light waves. If BH were tiny as atoms we would think of them as new particles with rest mass. Simply because they are big they can capture all sorts of particles and extreme amounts of energy.
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Possible progress check on initial 5 questions. Is this where we are?
1. Is this the generally accepted view?
No, but experimental work on this sort of plasma is in its early days.
2. What about mass that is not dependent on the Higgs, would that have been negated by the extreme temperature.
Mass could not be discounted because of the mass/energy relationship, but if everything existed in the form of energy the dynamic of the Universe would be different from what it would be with a physical mixture of matter and energy.
3. Where would one look for information about the possible entropy change of massless particles that he says has been known since the 70s?
Apart from asking Muller – don’t know.
4. At this early stage, would plasma have been the only content of the Universe?
It seems the Universe would have consisted of a quark-gluon plasma.
5. Is plasma not subject to entropic evolution? If not, why not?
Still looking for info.
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I think you got it Bill :)
You just want it put in black and white.
'c' may be a constant, observer dependent, but you can 'slow it down'. At least the way I see it, so 'matter' handle it 'differently', although it depends on definitions.
What slows down light when traveling through a material, slows down other particles. That must be trajectory deviation.
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Imagine that a particle has absolute zero kinetic energy.
It'll be interesting to see if anyone objects to that on the grounds that it's impossible. Same way someone usually objects to imagining a massive object travelling at c.
You make an interesting point about k/e and mass, but rest mass doesn't include k/e, does it?
Again it depends upon how you view mass. Kinetic energy is not considered an element of rest mass as far as I know. That is why it is called rest mass. However, since nucleons consist of quarks, rest mass is not so easy to define. Binding energy then comes into play. The gluons must move in order to confine stray quarks, like an elastic band?? Maybe a bad analogy. So their kinetic energy must express itself as a part of the rest mass term.
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Imagine that a particle has absolute zero kinetic energy. It will be at absolute zero temperature. How then does it express its mass? The question is how do we define mass? We can only weigh an object when it experiences the force of gravity. If we take away all the kinetic energy does mass have a meaning? Most of the mass of a proton is not composed of its constituent's rest masses. So what exactly bestows this extra mass? It is worth investigating this point. You gain some interesting insights.
Mass doesn't seem to have a meaning as a intrinsic property of a wave. We can measure mass through gravity force or inertia but can a body have mass without exerting any gravity force? I think not. If we can understand how light waves interact with other waves creating a trajectory deviation we call gravity, then we can understand what gravity is. I think we should focus on this.
You said: the proton mass is not composed of its constituents rest mass. That proves or at least suggests mass is only a relativistic effect. String theory also treats particle as vibrating strings. That means particles constituents are never at rest but travel at c. It is obvious since electromagnetic waves travel at c, electron waves excite the same fields and must travel at the same speed.
A black hole is an object that behaves like a particle. It is possible to simulate a black hole made entirely of light waves. If BH were tiny as atoms we would think of them as new particles with rest mass. Simply because they are big they can capture all sorts of particles and extreme amounts of energy.
I said most of the proton mass not all of it. That is an important distinction. While trajectory deviation is an effect of gravity its cause will be in the form of a negative 'energy'. This may be the wrong way to view things though.
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Well, a 'zero kinetic energy' is impossible :) I think
Both due to uncertainty as well as 'entropy
Myself I think of it as uncertainty, but "The third law of thermodynamics states (in one form) that no process, no matter how idealized, cannot reach absolute zero in a finite number of steps. In other words, no matter what process of taking away heat you can think of, no matter how efficient it is, will take infinite time to cool something to 0K.
This is because cooling an object down requires you to extract heat from the system. As you get closer and closer to absolute zero, each amount of heat that you extract reduces the temperature by smaller and smaller amounts. So temperature will asymptotically approach zero. An analog would be continuously accelerating an object. Each bit of force that goes to accelerating it will produce a smaller and smaller increase in velocity, as it asymptotically approaches the speed of light." by Snoofleglax
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy
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I said most of the proton mass not all of it. That is an important distinction. While trajectory deviation is an effect of gravity its cause will be in the form of a negative 'energy'. This may be the wrong way to view things though.
Yes, I know you said most of the mass. But the constituents (quarks and electrons) obey the same rule in my opinion. The mass of an electron is generated relativistically. For example an orbiting photon as a hypothetical (H) particle can have a huge relativistic "mass" at rest if we consider the centre of the orbit as the particle position. I think this is the principle of rest mass.
A quark at rest has a small mass. However within a proton, if quarks move at a higher speed the relativistic mass increases up to the total mass of the proton. Gravitational effect cannot hold the proton together though. Strong nuclear force must be an effect of the way quarks interact with each other.
Energetically if we compare a photon and the hypothetical particle, when you push energy into a photon it increases it's frequency. The H particle will do the same as the centre of the orbit accelerates. The speed limit for the H particle is obvious. The frequency increase of the H particle is explained by the photon frequency increase although this is not very clear to me other than energetically (for a fixed amplitude of the EM wave).
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I do think of it in terms of this universe becomes a expression of symmetries, and maybe fractals too. And assuming locality being what defines physical laws, what we see may not be as 'infinite' and 'time dilated' as we assume. To me it more or less becomes a question of the scale you use defining.
And a merry xmas btw :)
I love TNS
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There’s been some interesting stuff in this thread, even if much of it is “drift”.
Getting back towards the OP; I had overlooked the fact that quarks are elementary particles, so would not have mass prior to the “appearance of the Higgs.” (Right?)
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Oops! I think I dropped the ball there. Quarks are fundamental particles which acquire mass due to their binding energy, not from the Higgs. Even so, it seems to make sense that they would be massless due to lack of binding (?) at this stage.
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Quarks and electrons interact with the Higgs field via Yukawa interactions. So don't think you are wrong, just read more on the Higgs. I believe that a modified equation for the Yukawa potential could connect quantum mechanics and relativity. But that is just my hypothesis. Without the interactions, no mass. What would prevent the interactions?
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Yukawa interactions
I'm sorry you mentioned that! [:)]
I know I'd be way out of my depth with the maths involved.
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Don't worry Bill it is difficult to grasp some of the mathematics. I struggle with it. Merry Christmas Bill. Have a good one.
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The gravitational field around a black hole is considered a fossil field. This is assumed if the star takes an infinite amount of time to collapse. Otherwise virtual bosons are invoke that travel faster than light out of the event horizon but convey no information. Since the mass of the star would all need to be behind the horizon for the said horizon to exist then to the rest of the universe the mass does not exist even though the fossil field would reveal its prior existence.
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First of all mass concept started from newtonian mechanics which has absolutely nothing to do with the fundamental level of the reality which I think is the electromagnetic field. Therefore I find difficult to find a true definition of mass.
A definition of mass could be this one: For a certain volume of space and at an instant of time, mass is the total magnitude of the excitation in the electromagnetic field. This includes amplitudes and frequencies of the waves within that region. However exactly the same thing you can say about energy. Therefore we can write E=M*k, where k is a constant and only because of how mass and energy have been already defined, k = c^2. But speed doesn't matter because it is always constant. Hence, we don't need mass concept anymore (this applies only to a fundamental level theory ) , we can only keep energy.
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If you look at the direction of potential in our universe, the direction of potential shows a net conversion of matter to energy, and not energy into matter. Both directions occur; reversible, but the net direction is matter to energy. This means mass and matter is at higher potential than energy.
As an analogy, in a chemical reaction, reactants can spontaneously go to products. The net direction of the reaction is the direction of lowering potential. If we start with O2 + H2 --> H2O, lower potential is H2O and energy; final products.
In terms of reference, going from matter to energy means going from inertial reference, to the speed of light reference of energy, therefore the speed of light reference is at lower potential than inertial reference. The speed of light is the same in all references since it is the common ground state, relative to all inertial references, all of which exist at various degrees of higher potential. The analogy is sea level is the same for all the water on the earth, no matter where it exists; clouds to streams. Sea level is a common ground state.
The answer to the question of the early universe being massless is ,yes, if you assume the universe began at the lower potential; speed of light reference.
To explain this, say we had nothing but energy in the universe. There are nothing but photons moving at the speed of light in all directions; extreme entropy. Energy does not clump like matter, at low density, and will not form clumped pure energy stars and planets. Through wave addition, semblance of local inertial reference might appear, but this will be fleeting and changing as the photons come and go and waves collapse. The only reference that is stable is the speed of light reference, seen by all the photons.
To form matter and inertial reference we need some of the wave addition to create the equivalent of extreme energy photons; waves, so matter and anti-matter pairs can appear. If we can somehow remove the anti-matter, like occurred in our early universe, then the pure matter than remains will be at extreme potential, but with no easy way back to the ground state; C-level. The matter will need to piece meal its way back, via the forces of nature; back to C.
The current traditions tend to place the speed of light at higher potential than inertial reference, since we compare these two references based on velocity, with the earth reference called the ground state. Since this is upside down, relative to the universal flow of potential, answering the question is harder with that convention, since you need to include conversion factors and hidden energy, since you are not at zero.
On the other hand, it is not easy to visualize from the POV of the speed of light reference and transfer what you think you see, so others can also see. The method of science requires repeatable observations, which is not easy to do using the speed of light reference. We live in inertial reference with our eyes tuned to energy moving through inertial reference. We can't directly see at C, except mathematically, intuitively and logically. The ground state at C, sort of walks the fence in terms of the scientific method. But it does allow one to go further back in terms of the beginning of the universe; before the primordial atom and the BB. You can go back to the C ground state, even before energy; state of infinite entropy.
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Aren't you referring to entropy there puppypower?
If you do I'm not sure where that would place 'photons'. To me it seems to depend on their 'energy' and 'momentum'.
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OK, let's start with the assumption that the early universe was massless.
By this we mean no rest mass.
This means that all particles are in states that cannot interact with the Higgs field.
Would this still apply once the force of gravity separated out?
Or would the negative potential have to increase to a point suitably close to zero?
Does rest mass then play any part in generating the gravitational field?
If not then it is mass derived via energetic interactions that counts.
Hence the stress/energy relationship.