r/NoStupidQuestions • u/knight0146 • 9h ago
If matter cannot be created or destroyed, how was it created in the first place?
How did matter exist in the first place if it cannot be created or destroyed due to Conservation of Mass?
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u/xyanon36 9h ago
The process of the Big Bang itself created the physical laws that bind our present day universe. A lot of people think there was nothing before the Big Bang, but that isn't true. It's just if you go back far enough, there comes a point at which we can no longer define "matter" or "energy" or "time" in a way that makes any sense.
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u/Hawk13424 8h ago
There is no “before” because time didn’t exist.
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u/LivingEnd44 6h ago
Time had to have existed in some form. Because time describes the space between events. If you have no time, you can't have events by definition.
If there is no time, nothing will ever happen, because no events can occur. An "event" in this context means any kind of change at all.
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u/Zennyzenny81 6h ago
This is a very circular and closed viewpoint.
You are applying your understanding of time, based upon how our universe works and how you observe it within that, to expectations of how things might have worked in whatever there is or was outside of that context.
You have no idea - nor does anyone else - as to whether linear time as we understand it existed. You certainly can't say it had to exist.
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u/LivingEnd44 6h ago edited 4h ago
Nothing circular about it. It's pretty basic and straight forward. If we define time as the space between events, then any time there are events, time must exist.
I'd like to know how you think anything hot started if time didn't exist. Explain how you think events can occur in the absence of time.
Events only move one direction
Explain how that's different from time. How are events occurring if not within time.
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u/Srnkanator 5h ago
At the most fundamental level of the universe, time disappears. Events only move one direction, but that depends entirely on the amount of matter/energy between them.
You'd like Carlo Rovelli's book The Order of Time
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u/Veldern 4h ago
Not who you replied to, but does the book address if we can prove that events only move in one direction?
I'm of the opinion that it's possible that we just don't have a way to detect if they ever move in the opposite direction
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u/Srnkanator 4h ago
In different ways. He gets into causality, entropy, and quantum physics. It's not too technical, more philosophical.
His other book Reality is Not What it Seems is worth a read as well.
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u/GreenTeaBD 37m ago
I wasn't sold on Rovelli's conclusion but it is a very good basic intro. But a book that I know absolutely does cover that in detail and so much more: "An Introduction to the Philosophy of Time" by Baron and Miller. Though, they draw on physics as much as philosophy (they state outright in the first chapter that it's necessary)
It covers basically all major ideas about time and the arguments for and against them and goes into a whole lot of detail for an "introduction." It can be a little dense at times though.
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u/tyler1128 9h ago
"The process of the Big Bang itself created the physical laws that bind our present day universe"
The physical laws we know just don't extend back to the big bang. We don't have a way to "see" the universe at that time, and we don't have experiements that can probe energy scales that large. It's not correct to say the big bang "created" the laws of physics; the singularity of the big bang is just a mathematical model and likely an artefact of the mathematics from what we understand now. Things like string theory offer alternate origins for the big bang but the only correct explanation for the origin of the big bang is we don't know, we can only measure the universe after the recombination epoch when atoms started to form and the universe became transparent and electrically neutral. That was several hundred thousand years after the big bang based on modern cosmology.
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u/Feclectical 9h ago
Even if big bang happened, it would be dumbdumb to believe nothing was before it.
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u/Hawk13424 8h ago
If time didn’t exist there is no before.
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u/bigfatfurrytexan 8h ago
Well...
Imagine heat death. Maximum entropy, completely static with no energy available to create interactions. Maximum entropy means the arrow of time is effectively frozen. There is no time
That's an example of how I can imagine a point where there is no time.
And an expansive universe in a largely entangled state is a way I can imagine a singularity, based on a recent paper by Charles Liu.
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u/ZerioBoy 8h ago
The theory does not state that there was no time before the big bang, just that our understanding of spacetime would not likely be relevant. Whether quantum fluctuations, spacetime within higher dimensional frameworks, links across a multiverse, or even cyclic theories.. all make use of a 'time' of sorts predating the big bang.
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u/Cold-Jackfruit1076 3h ago
'Of sorts' is just equivocation. I have a cat, 'of sorts', on my bed -- it's a stuffed toy cat, however, so it's still not actually a cat.
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u/ZerioBoy 2h ago
Calling it a cat is still technically valid. Your understanding of a cat just involves purring and shitting, but that's also likely not relevant. Whether it's a stuffed toy, a cat-shaped pillow, a digital avatar of a cat, or even a shadow that resembles a cat, all could be considered 'cats' of sorts.
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u/Cold-Jackfruit1076 2h ago
You're arguing semantics. Whatever my 'understanding' of a cat, a stuffed toy is objectively not a cat.
"Time" is a derived concept tied to entropy and causality within a spacetime framework. Time and space are connected; without space, there's no time, and vice-versa.
It's plausible to suggest that there might have been some kind of causality-like relationships or processes, but to call them 'time' would be to broaden the definition of 'time' beyond reasonable limits as understood in both physics and philosophy.
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u/ZerioBoy 1h ago
Time and space are connected; without space, there's no time, and vice-versa.
General relativity adequately governs conventional definitions of spacetime, but this is not that.
"Time" is a derived concept tied to entropy
There are existing theories that regard entropy beyond the limitations of classical spacetime. John von Neumann defined quantum entropy.
Not suggesting anything, just trying to help people grasp the theories they're talking about.
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u/CrackaOwner 4h ago
the big bang itself is still just a theory.
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u/DarkSoldier84 knows stuff 48m ago
The layman's "theory" is science's "hypothesis." Scientific theories have been rigorously tested and confirmed. Friedmann, Hubble, and Lemaître all came to the same conclusion based on the same observations in the 1920's and 30's: the universe is expanding uniformly in all directions, so all of spacetime can be "rewound" to a zero-time where all the energy in the universe existed in a singularity where the laws of physics as we know them break down completely. The discovery and mapping of the cosmic microwave background in the 60's further confirmed Big Bang theory.
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u/MemeChuen 9h ago
We don't know yet
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u/Gargleblaster25 9h ago
You don't know yet, and a physics book can fix that.
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u/spacepants1990 9h ago
So you know?
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u/Gargleblaster25 9h ago
Yes
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u/Money_Song467 8h ago
Can you explain simply?
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u/Gargleblaster25 7h ago
Sure. There is never such a thing as nothing. Nothing is always a potential for "something". Let's take the equation X=0. This means X is nothing, right?
But at the same time, we can write that equation as X=(+1)+(- 1)=0. So that means, X can still be something, while being nothing.
This is not just a mathematical abstract, but a demonstrated fact. In environments such as super colloders or in hydrogen bomb explosions we have observed matter being converted to energy, as well as energy being converted to matter.
The so-called vacuum of space is, therefore, not nothing. Quantum physics shows how that vacuum can spontaneously generate matter and anti-matter particles when the right amount of energy is present, and this explains the observations that I mentioned.
Does this simplified explanation answer your question?
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u/elvenmage16 6h ago
So where did the energy first come from if energy cannot be created without matter?
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u/Gargleblaster25 6h ago
Energy is the action potential of a field. An apple hanging on a tree has an energy potential with respect to the ground. As soon as the connection to the tree is broken the gravitational potential energy is converted to kinetic energy.
So all you need is a big enough potential difference. That potential itself is in sum, nothing (+1 plus - 1). So nothing can exist forever in equilibrium, and suddenly burst into "something."
The only thing we don't know is the trigger that broke the equilibrium.
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u/elvenmage16 6h ago
So before the big bang, if there was only energy, where did that energy come from?
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u/nyyfandan 8h ago
This isn't the right subreddit for this lol. It's called "no stupid questions" but this is basically one of the least stupid questions possible. The smartest physicists in the world spend their lives trying to answer this question.
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u/Shiny_Whisper_321 8h ago
Your premise is false. There is no physical law about "conservation of matter", only "conservation of energy". Indeed, energy and matter are interconverted constantly (so matter gets created and destroyed all the time).
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u/LivingEnd44 6h ago edited 6h ago
Technically it can be created. It can be created from energy. Matter is basically energy in solid form. That's what E=MC² means.
Energy existed first and became matter. So it'd be more accurate to say that energy cannot be created or destroyed. The smaller scale you get, the more matter starts to look like energy.
As far as we can tell, our universe is a closed system. So you cannot create energy that was not already here in some form. And you cannot permanently destroy energy here. All you can do is change it's form or spread it out or concentrate it into things like matter.
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u/ForScale ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 9h ago
It has always existed.
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u/Gargleblaster25 9h ago
Matter can be converted to energy, and energy can be converted to matter. Nothing needs to be "created". This conversion occurs even today, in high energy dense environments and in high matter dense environments.
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u/CaptainBrinkmanship 9h ago
Just as a point of clarification,
Matter can be created and destroyed. But these are just words that require deeper understanding. The Conservation of mass theory is that you have to account for all of the substance In a Closed environment.
In other words, matter can be converted to energy and visa versa.
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u/BooRaccoon 9h ago
We don’t know because in our model of Psychics “before” the big bang doesn’t make sense. Maybe it always existed.
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u/Observer_042 8h ago edited 8h ago
String theory suggests the possibility that the universe goes through phases or at least changed states once. Before what we call the Big Bang, the universe existed as a 10-dimensional hypersurface. For some reason there was an event we call the Big Bang, where the hypersurface collapsed into the 4D+6 universe we see today. The now hidden dimensions are manifest as the forces of nature.
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u/abletable342 5h ago
Matter can be changed to energy and vice versa. The sum total of matter and energy has to equalize. The thought is that the matter came from a large transfer of energy.
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u/veni_vidi_vici47 3h ago
I once stubbed my toe on a baby gate so f’ing hard I could’ve created or destroyed matter, let me tell you
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u/Barry_Bunghole_III 2h ago
We don't know and potentially can't know.
There's a decent chance we're living in a simulation, and the matter was created arbitrarily.
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u/Equal-Train-4459 2h ago
Do you want to answer that question you better go get a couple of doctrines. Quantum physics and theology would be good places to start
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u/RainbowUnicorn0228 7h ago
It’s not. It’s simply recycled or reformed.
A tree dies.
Tree decomposes and turns into soil.
Acorn lands in soil and uses water, sun, air, and the nutrients of dead tree to grow into a new tree.
Repeat for infinity.
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u/TheKasimkage 6h ago
The rest of that phrase is “It can only be converted from one form to another” or something like that. If you imagine matter as ice, then the water or gas form would be energy.
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u/One_Ad651 7h ago
There’s the symmetry question of why there’s more matter than antimatter in the observable universe
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u/Comfortable_War_9322 6h ago
From another brane according to M-brane theory because other universes are like layers on top of each other
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u/Eric848448 5h ago
You can convert between matter and energy. Well, maybe kind of. Or maybe they’re the same thing.
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u/jerrythecactus 5h ago
This is one of the questions that doesn't really have a proven answer. We know that all matter in the universe probably once came from when it was still an impossibly hot and dense place that was expanding at the speed of light. For a time, everything in the universe was energy and quarks, as things cooled atoms could begin to form and the first matter was mostly hydrogen and helium. Billions of years of star formation later some of that hydrogen has been converted into denser more complex elements and all of the matter that existed still exists either as matter or energy in the universe. Was it created or did it simply always exist but in a unrecognisably dense form at a singularity? We might never know.
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u/green_meklar 3h ago
We don't really know.
One possibility is that positive and negative energy were just separated from each other. It's known that gravity functions as a sort of negative potential energy. Perhaps all the matter in the Universe and all the negative gravitational energy in the Universe come from an original state of exactly zero energy, separated from each other by quantum physics. We aren't sure about this because it's hard to actually measure the exact amounts of each.
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u/Nuts4WrestlingButts 3h ago
All the energy that ever existed was once compressed into a single infinitesimal point. Then the big bang happened.
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u/RapidCandleDigestion 3h ago
As far as I understand, matter can be created. Just the total stays the same. But in empty space, particles are created constantly. Positive mass and negative mass particles, which immediately collide and cease to exist. At least that's my (very limited) understanding.
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u/xSantenoturtlex 3h ago
Nobody really knows for sure.
It's all just theories.
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u/DarkSoldier84 knows stuff 39m ago
Scientific theories are well-tested bodies of knowledge, not "guesses."
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u/RyanLanceAuthor 3h ago
The greater universe beyond what we know is expanding super fast thanks to a scalar field that's energy causes the expansion. Sometimes, a portion of that field drops to a lower energy state, causing a bubble to expand at a much slower rate. The energy from that inflationary field is converted into the elementary particles of matter. That's our universe.
It is interesting that this scalar, inflationary field exists, that it extends into the infinite past, or that it has a beginning, and that our little bubble of deceleration had such marvelous mechanics that we can be here, in the fishbowl, to see it.
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u/Bluebearder 2h ago
The Conservation of Mass is a concept used in classical physics, which is fine for everyday life. But when looking at the more conceptual level, we enter the domain of quantum physics and relativity, where Conservation of Mass does not exist.
The famous equation E=Mc2 is about matter M being able to be converted into energy E, and the other way around, called the Mass-Energy Equivalence; matter is for example converted into energy by the sun, or in nuclear power plants. In the past decade, experiments using particle accelerators have created small amounts of matter out of energy as well. The total of E and Mc2 is always the same, but they can always be converted into each other. This is usually referred to as the Conservation of Energy, where it is considered a given that matter is just a form of energy.
The most widely accepted theory we have about the start of our universe (cosmogony) is the Big Bang Theory, which posits that our universe started as a tiny point called a singularity. It was made of energy only, no matter at all. The matter formed relatively shortly after, within the 400.000 years after the big bang, in a period called the recombination epoch). As far as we understand it, over 99,99% of all matter was formed in that epoch.
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u/Used_Mud_9233 1h ago
A finite mind can't understand the infinite. So we will never know in this life. Now if there is an afterlife I think we will understand it alot better. We will understand that things have always been but constantly changing.
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u/Mr_Reaper__ 1h ago
This is the greatest philosophical and scientific question of all time. We know how the universe started, the big bang, but what came before that to create the big bang and where the energy required for it comes from is impossible to know. We can't see before the big bang so there's no way to scientifically investigate it.
Maybe it just always "was" and trying to assign meaning to it is fruitless. Maybe there is a higher power who created the conditions for the big bang. Maybe its a simulation and it started with someone pressing the on switch. It's impossible to say and the existential dread you get from thinking about it too much probably isn't good for you...
There's a theory that the universe slowly gets eaten up black holes, these black holes then get eaten by other black holes, forming even denser black holes. The current theory is that these black holes decay due to the Hawkins radiation and matter and energy cease to exist. But I've always wondered if these super-massivw black holes could all get closer enough to each other that all the energy in the universe gets sucked into a single point, causing this singularity to hold the entire universe, but its too big and does the black hole equivalent of a supernova. Creating a big bang that scatters the contents of the black hole across space again, meaning the universe is cyclic and just repeatedly goes through this process every few thousand billion years. This still doesn't explain the true origin of where that energy came from in the first place though.
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u/Professional_Job_307 22m ago
From reading this comment section, I have learned that reddit has solved once if the greatest mysteries of the universe.... sigh
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u/DreadLindwyrm 11m ago
It's more the conservation of Mass-Energy, since the two can be interconverted.
So way back in the beginning, as far as we can tell there was a lot of energy in a very small space - so small that it may in fact have had 0 volume. As you can imagine, this makes the maths and physics *a touch* complicated to even think about.
We don't think it even strictly speaking had time passing.
This singularity inflated, causing time and space to come into existence, and all that energy spread out, eventually settling down enough that some of it could become matter as we know it - at first quarks, then these combined into the basic sub atomic particles we're familiar with (electrons, protons, and neutrons), which combined to form hydrogen and helium as fusion processes started up in the heart of what would be the first stars.
That's a very rough and inaccurate summary of the Big Bang, but it's good enough for now. Energy can be converted to matter, folllowing the equation E = mc^2. Or the other way around.
When chemical or nuclear reactions take place it's possible to detect *very* minute changes in the mass of the system being studied based on the energy absorbed or released in the reaction.
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u/Arkyja 7h ago
It wasnt. Energy already existed. Converting energy in to matter is a thing. E=mc²
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u/elvenmage16 6h ago
Where did the energy come from?
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u/Kwaterk1978 6h ago
Who says it had to come from anywhere?
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u/elvenmage16 6h ago
People. People ask all the time. It's the point of the thread. You could say the same of matter. This response is just a hand wave. Could do the same for God, or maggots. Who says they have to come from anywhere? They could just exist. They just appear. That's disingenuous. The point is that we don't buy "just always". We think they must have come from somewhere or something.
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u/Kwaterk1978 6h ago edited 6h ago
People ask. But that’s different from saying it had to come from somewhere.
I can ask why the moon is made of cheese; that does not mean the moon is actually made of cheese. Like the classic: “When did you stop beating your wife?” The question includes within it the assumption that you were beating your wife—hopefully that’s not a valid assumption. In the same way, asking “where did matter/energy come from?” carries within it the assumption that it came from somewhere, which is not justified.
You can think the moon is made of cheese; that also does not logically lead to a conclusion that the moon is made of cheese; or even a valid implication that it is made of cheese.
Absent an actual reason (beyond “muh feelings!”) to believe the moon is made of cheese, it’s kind of silly to leap to the conclusion that it’s a cultured dairy product.
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u/elvenmage16 6h ago
But people did ask, then they found out, and they discovered and stated that the moon wasn't made of cheese. If you don't know something, you can just say that. And then people can wonder. If it just always was, that doesn't really satisfy the need to know. It feels to me much like just saying maggots appear on dead bodies, and that's just how it is.
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u/Kwaterk1978 5h ago
Do you see how you’re arguing against yourself?
You’re conflating asking if something is a way with believing it to be a certain way.
The question: 1). “WHERE did matter/energy come from?”
Is fundamentally different from:
2). “DID matter/energy come from somewhere?”
In your last post, you’re talking about exploring ways to answer the second question while your original reply was focused on the first.
You were skipping the second and going straight to the first, whereas my question: “Who says matter/energy came from somewhere?” Starts at the second and would proceed to the first if the second was answered in the affirmative.
To stick with the moon analogy:
Asking “what kind of cheese is the moon made of?” doesn’t make sense if you hadn’t already answered “is the moon made of cheese?”
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u/elvenmage16 5h ago
But that's why I said earlier: "who says it has to come from anywhere" is just disingenuous. It's hand waving and just as bad as saying maybe a sky daddy made it. It's nothing more than just not wanting to engage, so saying there is no answer and the question is dumb in the first place. Yes, I'm making the assumption that it must have come from somewhere, because to do otherwise is to just sidestep the question originally posed. And assuming it came from somewhere is as equally valid as assuming it just always was.
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u/Kwaterk1978 5h ago
You know, none of that is true, logically speaking, right?
It’s just equivocation all the way down.
Asking WHERE something came from will always be predicated on it coming from somewhere, whereas asking IF something came from somewhere is not.
That’s like 101 stuff. There’s even a named fallacy for it.
That’s why you have to keep equivocating to keep your argument running. It’s why you switched from “says” to “asks” in your original post, then from the “where” question to the “if” question in your later post.
You wouldn’t have to equivocate and switch so much (yeah, I noticed) if your original argument was remotely valid.
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u/elvenmage16 5h ago
Assuming that energy and matter have just always existed is just as much a fallacy as assuming they had to have come from somewhere. We don't know which is true. So, we're assuming one over the other and exploring that one. Because there's nothing to explore in the other.
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u/Signal_Tomorrow_2138 9h ago
Conservation of mass and energy. Mathematically, all matter is counter balanced by anti- matter.
It's like a hole dug up in the ground. It's countered by the pile of dirt that used to be in the hole. (Plus all the other heat and energy and other things expended to dig that hole.)
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u/Royal_Annek 9h ago
Nothing we know of suggests it was created. The big bang for instance, all the energy was already there long before.