The universe - big innit

[Bold Seagull]

If the universe is infinite.. which it may be.. then everything exists.. everything that can possibly exist exists..

I've seen a few posts about 'how incredibly small we are' ... but you've also got to consider that space doesnt just 'go outwards' for unimaginally vast distances.. it also goes inwards to unimaginally small proportions.. It gets smaller and smaller and smaller.. From that perspective, we are in fact incredibly big!

The greeks came up with atoms.. we then find they are made of protons, neutrons and electrons, we then find these are made of smaller bits and pieces.. quarks.. even one called 'strangeness' and another called 'charm' (I'm not making this up) and now we know these are made of even smaller 'particles' and it goes on.

It may go 'inwards' as much as it goes' outwards' now that really is a headspinner.

Also notice I used 'particles' in apostrophes.. because as we now no most of an atom (99.99 %) is empty space.. and the other bits and their sub atomic componants are actually imnpossible to put a definate finger on anyway.. The best way to describe them is as 'clouds of probability'... So what actually really exists anyway ?? Is anything real.. or just the product of our projective imagination ?

Consiousness might itself exist outside of time and space.. this is controversial, but this 'dualistic' idea is gaining support recently in philosophical circles..

Oopppss sorry.. just realised I am rantinig like a nutter

Weirdly, in our scale we are in the 'middle' of things. Supposedly, the distance to the theoretical 'Planck Scale' is a similar multiple smaller, to the multiple of how far the edge of the universe supposedly extends.

In quantum mechanics, is it reality that is outside time and space, and our consiousness and perception that is linear??

 

[Igzilla]

The 'infinite' nature of the universe is a real mind-bender for me. Theoretically, in an infinite universe, there will be an infinite number of planets like earth, an infinite number of other life-based civilisations and, assuming that there is some way of travelling ridiculous distances (such as folding space or utilising alternate dimensions) an infinite number of civilisations that are able to utilise this technology. Therefore, the chance of none of these civilisations happening upon Earth or our transitions is correspondingly zero. In which case why haven't we heard from them?


*This post is sponsored by the two pints that I had instead of lunch*

The radio waves we have sent out have only gone about 110 light years in a sphere centred on our solar system. Given that the flux density of these radio waves decreases inversely proportionally to the square of the distance, the strength of the signal falls away quite rapidly. In addition, in the last 10 -15 years, the total EM signals sent out into space by TV & Radio has dropped off massively, due to cable and satellites. Nowadays, any message "sent to ET" tend to be tight beam transmissions at a specfic target and unlikely to be intercepted accidentally. Given we are doing this, and presumably in another 50 years all communications will be optimised to limit leakage into space, why wouldn't another civilization take a similar route? The window of opportunity for detecting signals like this might only be 150 years, and if you make a broad assumption that species can exist for hundreds of thousands of years before becoming extinct, that's not much time.

 

[sten_super]

The radio waves we have sent out have only gone about 110 light years in a sphere centred on our solar system. Given that the flux density of these radio waves decreases inversely proportionally to the square of the distance, the strength of the signal falls away quite rapidly. In addition, in the last 10 -15 years, the total EM signals sent out into space by TV & Radio has dropped off massively, due to cable and satellites. Nowadays, any message "sent to ET" tend to be tight beam transmissions at a specfic target and unlikely to be intercepted accidentally. Given we are doing this, and presumably in another 50 years all communications will be optimised to limit leakage into space, why wouldn't another civilization take a similar route? The window of opportunity for detecting signals like this might only be 150 years, and if you make a broad assumption that species can exist for hundreds of thousands of years before becoming extinct, that's not much time.

I'd imagine that, if humans ever discovered how to travel to other planets, we'd be off all over the place as quickly as we could. While I can imagine that we might limit ourselves to 'Earth-like' planets, we wouldn't wait for others to contact us, and we'd still explore a huge number of planets very quickly. Assuming an infinite number of races exploring an infinite number of planets (and accepting that the number of races is likely to be only a tiny fraction of the number of planets) surely the chances of us having been found are very high (I want to say 'infinitely high' even though that's not mathematically correct)?

I'm not saying that we have or we haven't - just that, within our understanding of 'infinite', probability suggests that it's quite likely to have happened or going to happen. Of course this is all predicated on an assumption that the laws of physics that govern the universe (well beyond our current understanding) allow rapid travel of huge distances, which is far from clear.

 

[Igzilla]

If the universe is infinite.. which it may be.. then everything exists.. everything that can possibly exist exists..

I've seen a few posts about 'how incredibly small we are' ... but you've also got to consider that space doesnt just 'go outwards' for unimaginally vast distances.. it also goes inwards to unimaginally small proportions.. It gets smaller and smaller and smaller.. From that perspective, we are in fact incredibly big!

The greeks came up with atoms.. we then find they are made of protons, neutrons and electrons, we then find these are made of smaller bits and pieces.. quarks.. even one called 'strangeness' and another called 'charm' (I'm not making this up) and now we know these are made of even smaller 'particles' and it goes on.

It may go 'inwards' as much as it goes' outwards' now that really is a headspinner.

Also notice I used 'particles' in apostrophes.. because as we now no most of an atom (99.99 %) is empty space.. and the other bits and their sub atomic componants are actually imnpossible to put a definate finger on anyway.. The best way to describe them is as 'clouds of probability'... So what actually really exists anyway ?? Is anything real.. or just the product of our projective imagination ?

Consiousness might itself exist outside of time and space.. this is controversial, but this 'dualistic' idea is gaining support recently in philosophical circles..

Oopppss sorry.. just realised I am rantinig like a nutter

That's not taking into account of course 10 dimensional string theory - 11 if you count time, for the pedants, and the deeper theory that posits an original 26 dimensional Universe...that's enough to make anyone need a lie down in a darkened room.

 

[Dub-67]

Weirdly, in our scale we are in the 'middle' of things. Supposedly, the distance to the theoretical 'Planck Scale' is a similar multiple smaller, to the multiple of how far the edge of the universe supposedly extends.

In quantum mechanics, is it reality that is outside time and space, and our consiousness and perception that is linear??

Now I knew it was weird, but it keeps getting wierder... We are in the middle !! with it getting bigger and smaller in both directions.. in and out... WTF?

and wow.. consciousness and perception is linear... well this kind of makes sense because time is often said to be a product of consciousness.. and that in fact the universe (or multiverse) is static and unchanging.. a finished whole, and our individual consciousnesses are passing though it.. The idea that time and space do not represent 'reality' but that consciousness and 'experience' do does ring true true to me.. but then maybe I fried my noodle in the 90s ?!

 

[Dub-67]

That's not taking into account of course 10 dimensional string theory - 11 if you count time, for the pedants, and the deeper theory that posits an original 26 dimensional Universe...that's enough to make anyone need a lie down in a darkened room.

and this is what our best scientists and mathemeticians tell us.. and yet they diss more 'primitive' creation theories as fantasy.... Is it any less ridiculous than to say the universe was farted out of a cosmic snakes bumhole?

 

[Igzilla]

I'd imagine that, if humans ever discovered how to travel to other planets, we'd be off all over the place as quickly as we could. While I can imagine that we might limit ourselves to 'Earth-like' planets, we wouldn't wait for others to contact us, and we'd still explore a huge number of planets very quickly. Assuming an infinite number of races exploring an infinite number of planets (and accepting that the number of races is likely to be only a tiny fraction of the number of planets) surely the chances of us having been found are very high (I want to say 'infinitely high' even though that's not mathematically correct)?

I'm not saying that we have or we haven't - just that, within our understanding of 'infinite', probability suggests that it's quite likely to have happened or going to happen. Of course this is all predicated on an assumption that the laws of physics that govern the universe (well beyond our current understanding) allow rapid travel of huge distances, which is far from clear.

I remember an old Tharg's Future Shock strip in 2000AD, where one of the Voyagers reaches interstellar space, only to be stopped by a barrier with a sign on it saying "Quarantine"...