Why would God be interested in free lunches?

QED · Post by **QED** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 12:05 pm

Most of us are familiar with the saying "there's no such thing as a free lunch" and physics backs this up with the notion of conserved properties. The best known of these is probably energy which most schoolkids will tell us "can neither be created nor destroyed". Other example of conserved properties are electric charge and angular momentum. This jives with the idea of a provident God -- only he who has the power to break these universal rules and inject energy, charge and momentum into the unfolding universe. And what a lot of this we might imagine there to be!

But actually there isn't. All these laws of conservation hold within the universe, however they do not apply to the universe as a whole. The total mass-energy has a net sum indistinguishable from zero (when the negative contribution of gravitational potential energy is accounted for) and any imbalance in the numbers of electrons and protons would have a dramatic affect on structures of cosmic scale as the electric force is so much stronger than the force of gravity holding these structures together. If there was any net angular momentum to the universe then it would have shown as an increase in the microwave background radiation in the direction of its rotation axis. This radiation has now been measured to be the same in every direction to on part in a hundred thousand.

So why would a God with unlimited powers be so frugal? It's as though he's been down to the charity shop and blagged himself a universe for nothing. Perhaps it's the greatest testament to his ingenuity, but perhaps it's telling us something about the reason why we see the appearance of so much stuff when, with the proper accounting, it all sums to zero.

QED · Post by **QED** » Sun Aug 20, 2006 12:15 pm

achilles12604 wrote: Even the potential energy created by the gravitational forces, evens out does it not?

The point of the jack-in-the-box example was to explain how gravity (as an attractive force) represents a form of "negative energy" that counterbalances the positive energy represented by mass/energy.

achilles12604 · Post by **achilles12604** » Sun Aug 20, 2006 8:46 pm

QED wrote:
achilles12604 wrote: Even the potential energy created by the gravitational forces, evens out does it not?
The point of the jack-in-the-box example was to explain how gravity (as an attractive force) represents a form of "negative energy" that counterbalances the positive energy represented by mass/energy.

But the energy increased the total mass. Therefore it was positive energy. When that energy was released, it simply because positive energy somewhere else. It was never counteracting any of the energy inherent to the system. In fact it did the opposite. Negative energy doesn't make sense if it increases the energy when added to the system. It should have reduced the overall energy in the system if your theory was correct.

What about my point about the potential energy created by the gravitational forces equaling out because of the mass/distance ratio and the spherical design of the universe creating even and equal average space between the planets?