Originally posted by zamb
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for the second bit, i don't think science is supposed to answer the "why" for many questions, why is the universe organized as such, why does the standard model have 16 components, why does the higgs field exist, but rather the how -- what gives matter its mass ? well the newly-detected higgs particle and its field do. to ask for demonstrative proof is not reasonable, you cannot demonstrate that evolution has occured over a billion years because that doesn't fit into a laboratory, and you cannot demonstrate that even when travelling at 99.999% the speed of light, to the observer light still passes him at the constant speed of light (due to collapsing of spacetime) and you cannot demonstrate that dark matter isn't composed of some massless particle that can move faster than speed of light hence our inability to detect it other than its gravitational consequences.
i guess my point is, science and mathematics in particular is just a language with which we describe nature. and just as with any language, you can write more and more specific sentences that more accurately reflect observations. and sentences with contradictions are thrown out, and those that can be improved are. now the issue is, how can you connect the description of the very small with the very big ? well, for the time being people use semicolons ( quantum ; general relativity) but string theorists are hard at work with ideas that are mathematically sound but for now not empirically observed (11 dimensions, sub-electronic vibrating strings that determine what fundamental particles they become, etc)
as for the universe, well there are suggestions that beyond lies virtual particles that are popping in and out of existence (this is consistent with the mathematical models) and that the big big bang was a consequence of some broken symmetry during one of these events -- so in theory if we looked past our sheet of a universe which is expanding faster and faster (and at some point expansion will surpass the speed of light leaving us seemingly in the middle of nowhere) we could observe other universes forming.
but let's not go too far down the rabbit hole , perhaps this post really deserves the title of its thread
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