Venus: Hothouse Planet (or Venus vs. Uniformitarianism)

Astrobiology Magazine ^ | Aug 16, 2004 | Henry Bortman

[billybudd]

There's nothing wrong with my statement. I'm making an argument *against* a temporally finite universe. I'm saying *if* the universe didn't always exist, energy would have had to be created at the beginning of time.

Your arguments support my point. If there is no "before" the creation, then you can't say the universe "began" at any time, so it must have always existed in some form. You could have always done the time measurements, albeit on a quantum scale, reaching back into infinity. (Also, we don't know that the universe was always expanding from one point - the universe could have expanded/contracted forever).

[RightWhale]

All the matter that composes the universe compressed into the size of a walnut

Everything was smaller then. There was about twenty pounds of mass, but we shouldn't call it matter since we don't have a clue what matter is aside from something substance is made of and that is philosophy not physics.

[burzum]

Your arguments support my point. If there is no "before" the creation, then you can't say the universe "began" at any time, so it must have always existed in some form. You could have always done the time measurements, albeit on a quantum scale, reaching back into infinity. (Also, we don't know that the universe was always expanding from one point - the universe could have expanded/contracted forever).

You did not read my post. Or you did not understand it. Read it again. It does not say anything of that sort. All that it says is that time is defined *after* t=0 (as in that any function that uses time as a variable is defined--t=0 is just a number). It doesn't say anything about being able to use t=0 or t<0 in functions. Don't think you can bring up quantum mechanics to confuse me. I have studied quantum mechanics for many years. You don't escape anything by claiming that you could do it on a 'quantum scale.' This sounds silly to me. Zero is zero. When I say 0-D I don't mean and a 'little' bit of 3-D so we have room for a tiny experiment. I mean 0-D. If you don't make that distinction then you would obviously have wavepackets that have various components that spatially extend to infinity.

[Old Professer]

The whole business of matter always existing is kinda mind-boggling as well; to me it implies that we are all Sisyphean in nature without even knowing it.

[AndyTheBear]

so the universe is temporally infinite

I'm not sure what temporally infinite might mean here.

If the universe was created at some point, the energy would have had to be created too.

Yes, which implies it was a supernatural event.

Conversely if we reject the notion that natural law can be violated by a supernatural event, then we are left having to assume there is a natural exception to either the first or second law. The first law insists that energy always existed, and the second law insists that it could not still be usable if it were. But such an assumption would be based on a naturalistic faith, not on science.

[SunkenCiv]

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