Uncommon Descent Uncommonly Decent On Relativistic Physics But What In God’s Name

[rug]

By Sascha Vongehr | June 10th 2013 03:18 AM

Vincent J. Torley in “Bad science by Dr. Victor Stenger, arguing in the cause of atheism” argues well about quite difficult and controversial physics. The article claims that NewAtheist Victor Stenger is another case of bad physics arguments in support of atheism and how they backfire - a favorite topic of mine; I could assemble a book from my articles trashing atheist-physicists’ scientistic arguments that effectively support creationism.

Victor J. Stenger is a retired elementary particle physicist who worked on neutrinos and he is author of twelve books including the 2007 New York Times bestseller “God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.” His latest book is “God and the Atom: From Democritus to the Higgs Boson.”

The article “No cause to dispute Einstein” from Victor J. (the Physicist-V.J.), which Vincent J. (the Creationist-V.J.) mainly attacks, argues that faster than light neutrinos (FTL-Neutrinos) would not go against Einstein’s relativity, which is good to point out.

Physicist-V.J. however seems to think that “causality” somehow derives from an already otherwise (not by causality) determined direction of time. This makes him then say, contrary to his own title (“No cause to dispute Einstein”), that Einstein’s further statement about cause always preceding effect* would indeed be disputed by FTL-neutrinos! This leads him then to disrespect god in its role as the ultimate cause, kapoof! Do not blame Creationist-V.J. for taking a one-liner too seriously - it is Jerry Coyne’s blog Why Evolution Is True who did that for him: “Vic Stenger on speedy neutrinos – did we cause God?”

http://www.science20.com/alpha_meme/uncommon_descent_uncommonly_decent_relativistic_physics_what_god%E2%80%99s_name-114369

[Jim__]

1. I'd be curious to know if Stenger ever replied (the Stenger - Torley exchange is from 2011).

I definitely agree with Vongehr that, at least, the first half of Torley's article is worth reading. It is an interesting and eye-opening discussion of FTL travel and cause and effect. I need to read some of the references to see if I can understand how cause and effect could be reversible at the quantum level but not at the macroscopic level. I know the article attributes the reason to entropy, but it's not clear to me why that wouldn't apply at the quantum level. An excerpt from Torley, quoting Vongehr:

...

In modern physics, it is well understood how particles can travel with superluminal velocity without violating special relativity or causality. I will discuss such a mechanism here and the novel experiments it suggest in case the recent neutrino physics observations do hold up to scrutiny.

One possibility is very intuitive: Our three dimensional universe may well be due to a three (or more) dimensional membrane inside a higher dimensional, so called bulk space. This is called “universe on a membrane” or short “membrane universe” (MU). This is a well known scenario in string theory but not restricted to string theory. In the MU scenario, our light velocity c is the maximum velocity of excitations inside the MU membrane, the latter being by the way the very reason for why the MU universe observes Einstein relativity inside of it. That velocity c may be very small compared to the maximum velocity of particles that are not bound to our MU membrane, those that speed freely through the bulk space…

The MU scenario is just one – there is a shock wave scenario that is not so intuitive to laypeople. All such scenarios do not touch the relativity that is valid inside the MU: Relativity theory is not violated! The superluminal velocities here can also not violate causality, although relative to carefully selected reference frames inside the MU, the particles actually go somewhat into those reference systems’ past (however, no excitations ever enter a past light cone!). Causality is here trivially guaranteed by the mere fact of that the MU lives through the more fundamental time of the bulk space-time around it (or in other words: the past ‘simply does not exist anymore’ according to the more fundamental bulk time).

If you do not believe me and like to read literature about these scenarios, there are many sources. References to for example the MU and the fact that superluminal speed does not necessarily violate causality you can find in my up to date discussion of these topics Supporting abstract relational space-time as fundamental without doctrinism against emergence.

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