pondering the universe

[Gaston]

i was just pondering about the universe and was wonder what other people think. if the universe is infinite, then wouldn't that mean that it would have to have an infinite amount of different things? in other words,everything in our imagination would have to exist somewhere out in infinity. and if the universe started from a big bang, then that means that there is a center and an edge travling outwards correct? and what was there before the big bang?

 

[Pommie]

You missed the bit about multiple universes. That is where there is a universe with every possibility. I like that theorem because in one of them universes I am an adonis.

BTW, the big bang is just a theory. The best we have at the moment but not proved. Some people say that god did it.

Mike.

 

[jpanhalt]

and what was there before the big bang?

How do you define "before" when time doesn't exist (yet)? John

 

[Pommie]

How do you define "before" when time doesn't exist (yet)? John

Allegedly. They had to dream up dark matter to make everything work. The whole big bang theorem is dubious.

Mike.

 

[jpanhalt]

I was merely addressing the OP's question. I've never really worried about the answer, particularly if there is a good football game on the tube. John

 

[Pommie]

I was merely addressing the OP's question. I've never really worried about the answer, particularly if there is a good football game on the tube. John

Silly me, I'll get me coat.

Mike.

 

[Gaston]

i don't buy into the dark matter thing either

 

[theinfamousbob]

You missed the bit about multiple universes. That is where there is a universe with every possibility. I like that theorem because in one of them universes I am an adonis.

BTW, the big bang is just a theory. The best we have at the moment but not proved. Some people say that god did it.

Mike.

For some reason I got reputation on it, so it was in my CP:

https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/imagine-the-10th-dimension-a-nice-demonstration.26148/

 

[Marks256]

I'm just going out on a tangent here and am going to say that the energy for the big bang came from another dimension. Sure, it may sound far-fetched (and i don't have any evidence to support it, as it is just a thought i have been tossing around in my head), but if you think about it, it seem quite possible.

Imagine a stick figure on a piece of paper (2 dimensional). Imagine that the stick person is alive... Ok, now stab a pencil through the paper the stick person is on. The stick person wouldn't see the pencil coming because the pencil is in a higher dimension. The only thing the stick person would see would be a quickly appearing "block (road block)" in his path. He wouldn't know where it came from, or how it got there.


Now, take us in the third dimension. What if something from a higher dimension came crashing into our little 3d world? Wouldn't it appear in the same way the pencil did for our little 2d friend? Just out of "nowhere"?



Just a thought. No real supporting argument...

 

[Salgat]

I'm just going out on a tangent here and am going to say that the energy for the big bang came from another dimension. Sure, it may sound far-fetched (and i don't have any evidence to support it, as it is just a thought i have been tossing around in my head), but if you think about it, it seem quite possible.

Imagine a stick figure on a piece of paper (2 dimensional). Imagine that the stick person is alive... Ok, now stab a pencil through the paper the stick person is on. The stick person wouldn't see the pencil coming because the pencil is in a higher dimension. The only thing the stick person would see would be a quickly appearing "block (road block)" in his path. He wouldn't know where it came from, or how it got there.


Now, take us in the third dimension. What if something from a higher dimension came crashing into our little 3d world? Wouldn't it appear in the same way the pencil did for our little 2d friend? Just out of "nowhere"?



Just a thought. No real supporting argument...

The theory already exists as Membrane theory. Think, two higher dimensions slamming into each other, each containing it's own universe.

 

[Gaston]

so if there are multiple universes, membranes or other deminsions, what is it that they are contained in if not the universe?

 

[Krumlink]

http://www.tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php

 

[ThermalRunaway]

Just this evening I was out pondering the Universe. We've got a crystal clear night here tonight, the first cloudless night we've had in weeks and weeks and weeks. There's no moon, so you can see all of the Stars. Mars is quite close to use at the moment, and you can see her clearly in the sky. So I was out looking at some of these things, and it always gets me wondering what's out there. And why is it out there. I could sit for hours and hours thinking about it all, except it was bloody FREEZING so I came in.

Brian

 

[Hank Fletcher]

Just this evening I was out pondering the Universe.

Just last evening, I was pondering Nominalism. The reason we can ponder the universe (and discuss it here) is because we have a name for it. But according to nominalists, there will always be a difference between the names of things and the actual things themselves. That might seem quite obvious to most sane people, for instance, here's a word: apple. But you can't eat that word, only a real apple. Maybe you've had to eat your words before, but that's getting off-topic.

An abstraction will always be just that, not the real thing. Apparent for things like apples, but when we start getting into ideas that are themselves very abstract in nature, the line between reality and understanding begins to get fuzzy. For most people, love is real, the universe is real, but both those things are abstractions. They're imaginations, speculations, anticipations, presumptions about what the real world might be that we live in, but they are not the real things themselves.

I'm not saying this to debunk the validity of the ponderings of the universe here, but rather the other way around. I'm trying to own up to the limitations of words. I consider myself a pretty eloquent guy, but I still buy holiday greetings cards - how do you sum up your love for someone? It's easier to just pay the $5 and have someone else do it for you!

But let's get back to words. Why challenge their validity? If you haven't noticed (and most people don't), we live in an, arguably, excessively literal society. Most people believe almost all of what they read. It's just human nature: we're wired to do most of what we're told to do, most of the time. Even as you're reading this, you're going, "Yep, that's true." But what proof do you have that that's real, other than my say-so? See? We're a pretty gullible species!

When reading was invented, we found a way to vicariously express ideas. You could read someone's mind without them even being there (or alive!). That added an extra component of abstraction to our already abstract method of thinking and sharing ideas orally. With reading, people were detached from time, from the real-time discourse over ideas, and separately people could build their own wealth of ideas. "That's not true," they started to say to each other, "It's not what's written here in the [cave, law, bible, etc]."

What might be reality started to be limited by what could be written down. That's even worse than presuming that the limits of reality are what any one person can imagine (that said, I don't have any hard evidence that any of you aren't figments of my imagination). What are the limits you put on your own understanding of the universe? What you can write down? What you're able to discuss with people? What you can imagine?

That's a lot deeper than I can fairly explore in a single post, but let's start with what's written down. What's a "universe?" What are the inherent limits of that word? What does that word mean, literally? "Universe" translates from Latin into, "turning into one." As postmodernists (as I'm guessing most who visit this forum are), though, how constrained do we feel by the strictly literal meaning of "universe?" Perhaps it's become a more general term, for some (maybe those with monotheistic inclinations) retaining it's original meaning, but for others being merely another expression for everything, infinite, etc squared.

My point is, are we really trying to determine the definition of "the universe" here, or are we perhaps exploring the limitations of human understanding itself? For some people, those might seem like incongruous ideas; for others, it might seem like splitting hairs. Both are journeys of a kind, although one certainly seems outward, and the other inward.

 

[Gaston]

If someone were born blind. Would they be able to comprehend what a color is? I would think that it would be totally imposible. So lets say that there are other forms of information out there that we just dont have a sense to pick it up. I would think that we would have no way of even imagining what it could be just as a blind person would have no way of imagining what a color could be. And who knows, there could be hundreds,thousands, or million other ......I don't know what to call it..Iguess mediums out there that we just can't pick up on or comprehend.

 

[colin mac]

Great documentary here, you might like.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program_d.html