@SammDickens,
Samm;96181 wrote: ...Now maybe if you cut a quark in fact, and instead of becoming two or more discrete quarkpieces, the rascal disintegrated into pure energy, maybe that would clue you that you've reached an indivisible minimum.
Samm
Hah! I think you're onto something!
Pure energy gives rise to matter.
Doesn't E=MC squared work that way?
I'm not a physicist, but doesn't the theory say that at the speed of light matter transforms into pure energy. This means the converse would hold true, that at speeds less than the speed of light, pure energy transforms into matter. So it seems we need to take into account, the speed at which matter is moving, and its temperature. At infinite temperatures, perhaps matter transforms into pure energy. Maybe space is itself a unity of pure energy, and all matter in it, are particulars of pure energy in their transformed, concrete states.
---------- Post added 10-11-2009 at 06:32 PM ----------
Another thought considering what Samm said earlier on in this thread, about space going on and on with populations of whatever -photons, neutrons, stars, galaxies.
Who has heard of Olber's Paradox?
The paradox was coined after Olber, but it predates Olber.
It is, in summary: If the universe is infinite, it contains an infinite number of stars. This means that any line of sight in space must end at a star. The point must be occupied by the light emitted by that star. Consequently, if the universe is populated by an infinite number of stars, every place in the sky you look must be light.
Taken to an extreme. If the universe is populated by an infinity of stars, then the sky must be a burning inferno of light, just as strong as our sun.
Consequently (my addendum): If the universe is populated by an infinite number of stars then we'd all have burnt up into a cinder long ago. In fact, the universe as we know it, could not exist.
Thus, the universe is not populated by an infinite number of stars.
The universe must be finite.
This also leads to the conclusion that the universe, just as cosmologists now have it, is not infinite, and it must have had a beginning in time.