such that the largest mass in the universe has no weight. — Gregory

Strictly speaking, no mass itself has any weight. What mass has is mass.

if you were this matter you would have no way metaphysically to determine your metaphysical size because you have no size. — Gregory

Matter does not determine anything, metaphysically or any other way. Enough confusion here to unwind the rest.

I am simply trying to understand this better. — Gregory

A good place to start with the distinction between mass and weight, staying with it until you have it "in your bones."

A physicist would probably tell you it's basically entropy. At some point, in the ridiculously far off future, the universe will simply just run out of its own disorder and randomness, as things inevitable tend towards spending their energy, but that's theoretical and based on the concept that the universe is losing energy faster than it takes it in and has no real proof and may never have proof. But if there only ever was and ever will be just one big bang, the universe will basically run out of energy, at least as we perceive it currently in 3 dimensions or 4 with time or however you see this reality.

But from what the science tells us, from Brownian movement we have lots of chaos and volatility when things are excited, often the analogy of heat is used and heat was where the research into entropy originated from. At absolute zero, nothing happens at the internal level. Even time loses meaning Experiments with photons of light have shown that the photons can be almost suspended in super cold temperatures close to absolute zero (-273). Experiments seem to suggest that without some warmth, nothing happens, literally nothing.

So we think of temperature as some physical property of hot or cold. But really we just perceive it as cold or humid based on out physiology. At the extremity of hot and cold is basically entropy or a lack thereof. Entropy ultimately fuels it all. Without some disorder and chaos, there is no energy and nothing happens. As to where the entropy originally came from, it's more philosophy to conjecture on. Who pulled the trigger for the big bang? Was there just one. Do they happen periodically? Is there more than one currently in our universe. We can't even answer it. There is a limit on how far we possibly see backwards in time that no instrument can overcome. Somethings may always remain in the realm of philosophy, as they perhaps should.

Edit: In a roundabout way what I'm trying to say is things whizz about and bump into each other from entropy really. If there is no entropy - no chaos, madness, volatility, interesting things happening - there is no motion. No motion, no entropy and vice versa.

Thanks guys. I wrote an initial paragraph in response in Notepad but then accidentally deleted it. The point I am trying to make is that simply because something cannot be measured absolutely or because two motions cannot be distinguished by physics does not mean, to me, that there is no objective shape and size of objects. Natural heaviness as a property would then be a further thought based on this, and motion could be based upon that property. There is a relation because opposite sides of an object that is maintained by the matter they bind and that is why geometry can describe them. There is some confusion in how GR is presented to the public in general. It is often said that Einstein found that his equations meant that the universe expands. He added a "constant" to the equation to make the equations tell us that the world is static, although he didn't have evidence as yet for its existence. So it sounds like this added part of the equation says how the cosmological constant prevents the universe from expanding. However people now call dark energy the cosmological constant even though it appears to do the opposite of what that term meant for Einstein. There seems to be a lot of moving around, among and within, equations and it creates confusion for a lot of us. I am just looking for a basic material format in which to see frame the universe so that it is self consistent. (The details may vary)

The capitalist market moves by selection of the fittest product. To say that this "invisible hand" is really the Illuminati or something behind the scenes is a conspiracy theory. So following Occam's its natural to look, not to supernatural intervention, but to be the universe itself to see if matter, time, space, and causality can work together in the sense of a universal physics. Using the "God of the gaps" argument is giving up on the question and positing, within that context, a supernatural conspiracy theory. If the likelihood of the whole universe being here and having life is very unlikely, whether its more likely that there is a God or many Gods is another question. How they can exist and what is the likelihood of they being able to exist is philosophy. But ye we are talking about science, and there can always be posited a further realm of matter that hypothetically explains how our visible universe could have allowed life within all reasonableness. A material object, it seems to me, can definitely change what would be a random event into something determined. It could answer the fundamental why, although some would say it's still a "how" and not a "why". However, what I think about a lot during the day is how matter can move and cause things within the bounds of matter only and how all of matter (all it's kinds whatsoever) can be and make sense on its own.

I like my original paragraph better :( Darn electronics

If I am understanding Newton correctly, smaller objects gain their weight from larger ones, such that the largest mass in the universe has no weight. — Gregory

Poor Newton. What? I don't think that's right. After all, Newton well knew that as the earth pulls on the moon, the moon pulls on the earth. "To every action there's an equal and opposite reaction." The largest mass in the universe gains weight from all the rest of the mass of the universe.

Speaking of poor Newton, after he became a wealthy and famous man he lost a fortune in the South Sea bubble. He famously said, "I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."

The largest mass in the universe gains weight from all the rest of the mass of the universe. — fishfry

Oh your right. We can't imagine every action causing an equal immediate reaction in the opposite direction though because things wouldn't move in that case.

It's hard to imagine and conceptualize on these things, at least for me

We can't imagine every action causing an equal immediate reaction in the opposite direction though because things wouldn't move in that case. — Gregory

Newton perfectly well explained the motions of the planets in the solar system using equal and opposite reactions as one of his physical principles.

Newton perfectly well explained the motions of the planets in the solar system using equal and opposite reactions as one of his physical principles. — fishfry

Hmm, well those who propagated his theories to the public said that God had to be the ultimate engine behind everything. Descartes's alternate vortex theory had God behind it as well, but Descartes wrote in his Reply's on the Meditations (1642) that physical motions of extension don't necessarily need a supernatural cause as its absolute explanation (in terms of physics). So yes I'm thinking about how to imagine and conceptualize that. Stephen Hawking thought a lot about this as well

Here is one of the quotations that has got me thinking about these issues: "The philosopher's claim is based on the intellectual insight that the extremes of an external body do not coincide but actually have a certain distance between them. An extended body has an objective and definite length even if we have no means of measuring this length absolutely. The attribution of objective length to a body does not mean that the size remains the same regardless of the state of motion of the body. A body's length may stretch or shrink whenever the body undergoes a change in its state of motion, or may appear longer or shorter when observed from different rest frames." Henry J. Koren,1965

... what is the engine of causality in relativity then? — Gregory

Vacuum fluctuations (—> cosmic inflation) :roll:

If you have a motion (try picturing it) and then another, previous to it in time, we have the a series (causality comes into the picture and was a question raised by Hume). The series either goes on (or went on, rather) forever in the past, or it stops at... what? If you've reached a singularity, you have fluctuations still in it, one previous to the other. Otherwise, what do you have in material terms?

Doing away with absolute time is essential to understanding this in modern terms. But force and causality is still a concept we use. It seems to me the series has to be either eternal or it came out of nothing. An intermediate stance between these 2 postulations would be interesting and I've had a lot of glimpses of it but it's hard to put into words and if I can't explain it to others well enough I probably don't understand it well

But then it's not a question of motion, as motion is defined as the change in position of an object over time.

the series has to be either eternal or it came out of nothing. — Gregory

If you run the known motion of the matter in the universe backward, you get the big bang. That was the initial oomph. And what caused the big bang, and what came before it, and do we know it's even true? Nobody knows but everyone has an opinion. Lawrence Krauss says that In the Beginning was the quantum soup and the laws of physics. Genesis says that In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Can anyone clearly distinguish science from theology here? Of course the simulationists say that In the Beginning was the great computer in the sky, and we're all programs. I'm Microsoft Word, and you're Tetris. Science? Or theology? The Many Worlds folks insist that while in this universe I wrote this paragraph, in some other universe I thought better of it and didn't. Science? Or theology? And why is it exactly that so much of our science lately is indistinguishable from theology?

If you run the known motion of the matter in the universe backward, you get the big bang. That was the initial oomph. And what caused the big bang, and what came before it, and do we know it's even true? Nobody knows but everyone has an opinion. Lawrence Krauss says that In the Beginning was the quantum soup and the laws of physics. Genesis says that In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Can anyone clearly distinguish science from theology here? Of course the simulationists say that In the Beginning was the great computer in the sky, and we're all programs. I'm Microsoft Word, and you're Tetris. Science? Or theology? The Many Worlds folks insist that while in this universe I wrote this paragraph, in some other universe I thought better of it and didn't. Science? Or theology? And why is it exactly that so much of our science lately is indistinguishable from theology? — fishfry

Very good

In the latter part of the 20th century when the 19 measurement constants were codified, a lot of people (pastors, priests, and lots of others) wrote books and stuff about how it was very unlikely that life would result from the Big Bang. Some people respond that we don't how many times the "universal" dice (in that the universe was a pair of dice) was rolled. I don't see this is THE appropriate initial response because it directly denies the premise without looking at the evidence for it. However, what actually tipped the balance in the favor of the current universe could have been a marble (we can call it Parmenidian if we like, or not) we can't detect, a random flutuation we can't detect, or anything the imagination can imagine and beyond. The core, basic "principle" behind the universe can be random or deterministic, personal or material. Furthermore, we don't know what forms of life would have arise if the "universal dice" fell differently. We are physically "talking meat" as one writer put it (who's article on the subject I read in college). A metal based life would think we were weird. My perspective is that even beauty is subjective, so we can't say that life is the roll's outcome that "should have happened". Any way the universe fell is equal to any of the others, in those terms. The universe is beautiful because of our "collective dream". We are made of what the universe is made of in a sense. We are not dark matter or dark energy however. I don't know what life made of those things would be like, but their lives might be better than ours if they exist. So my basic point is that we can't prove spiritual things from the necessary (determined) and contingent (random) aspects of science. Nonetheless, General Relativity is a trip, and gaining a better understanding of it from a philosophical perspectives perhaps is something that is understudied these days. Too many people wasting their ink trying to prove their is a God (and just one of them! lol)